lever with the notch had jumped out of place and the bolt moved freely now. I slid it in and out of the case. Then back in for good. The latch above the bolt and lever, the coiled spring behind the latch. Something I decided to call the plunger, and I was sure that was the word. A sort of cam, and in its center, in the middle of the table, the corner of the room, the square hole through which the spindle passed.
I put the lever back the way it was. Beneath its curving edge a metal spur poked out from inside the case. Put the cover back on and close one eye just long enough to see a key, what you think is called a skeleton key, see what it raises and pushes when you put it in the lock and turn it. See the notch the blade will need in just the right place so it can clear the spur and do what it does.
Things were getting simpler. I remembered the piece of spring steel that had struck me, found it on the carpet under the table. I held it with a certain respect, loaded it back into place and felt the energy fill the lock again. The tension I’d restored would push the lever down each time the bolt went home.
I couldn’t hear the train at all. I’d heard its gradual approach, its passing, but not its departure, the fading into distance. It wasn’t there.
But it took the screaming with it.
After I had the cover back on for good I tried something. Took the large paper clip that fastened my rental agreement together, straightened it and bent the tip into an L. Holding the lock in the palm of my hand, I slipped the end into the keyhole, into what was back in the dark again, what was only there and in my head. I scraped around, feeling for an edge until I felt it. I pushed up and it gave, and then it gave back and I felt the warm itch in my eye and behind it. What was no longer a paper clip kept slipping off the edge. I’d hear the lever clicking back into place then, and again, and I did this till it couldn’t teach me anything else.
I had to look for what I’d removed. I put the lock back in and reattached the faceplate and the knobs. I screwed everything back on tight and then shut the closet door, feeling it latch, flat and flush in the wall. There was a full-length mirror in it. My eye looked like it felt, pink and half-closed, but dry. I opened the door again, closed it. Only I could let them in.
Then I filled the bathtub full of hot water and fell asleep in it.
IBRAHIM said, “I’m looking for someone to trust.” He had long deep scratches on his arm and on his neck, just under the jaw. They looked recent.
“I need someone for up front,” he said. His English wasn’t broken, but sometimes rearranged.
“Spell your last name,” Wanda said. She was Wanda and she wrote it down on a yellow legal pad. She assured me that this was only a temporary measure, that I would be filling out a real application as soon as—it had just been so crazy lately you wouldn’t—they just needed something on paper for now. I nodded. I could see that this was a place where certain things didn’t always get done. I relaxed a little in my madras shirt.
“Someone to make keys,” Ibrahim said. “To cover the drawer, sell locks, track inventory. Someone to clean up.” He sat on one of the stools in front of the counter, his hands moving. I sat on the other one. The man with the newspaper wasn’t there.
“Social security number?” Wanda asked. Address. Date of birth. “You look younger,” she said. I thanked her but I wasn’t sure I was flattered. Maybe she hadn’t looked closely.
“You see what a mess we are here,” Ibrahim said. He gestured at the display over and around the counter, “We need this organize.” Many different kinds of the same few items—key chains, holders, fobs, those colored rubber rings you put on the heads of similar keys to tell them apart. One of the key chains had a rubber pig at the end of it. It farted when you squeezed it.
“Just throw it in the garbage,” Wanda said.
“Reorganize. Fix up.”
“It doesn’t make any money.”
“The phone please, Wadiya.” The phone sounded like a weapon in a video game and once it started it didn’t stop. Wanda wore a headset. She asked someone for a job number. She wrote it down on a slip and gave it to Ibrahim, gave him something to do with his hands.
“Could I see your driver’s license?” she said. I gave her my state ID. “You don’t have a license?”
“I don’t drive.”
Ibrahim looked at me. “Why you don’t drive?”
I improvised some inept jazz about being out of work for a while, about lapsed insurance. Suspension of privileges.
“Hard times.” His eyes wandered. He kept folding the slip of paper, making it smaller. “How you getting to work without a car? You go on the bus?”
“He lives at the Avenue,” Wanda said.
“Around the corner.” Ibrahim nodded. “No excuse, then. And how is Mrs. Ivy?”
I said she seemed to be herself. I looked at him. “She has account with us,” he said. “I know her for years. Every time a tenant leaves I rekey the lock, put on a master system.”
“Work history,” Wanda said. The phone went off. She spoke into the little tube, listened, pushed a button. “He’s calling from a bar . . . locked his keys in his car.”
“It’s early to drink in the morning,” Ibrahim said.
“His engine’s running.”
“I hope is not a baby in the car.”
“The baby in the car,” Wanda said, kind of reverently. “Tell him that one.”
“I don’t touch a drop,” he said.
“How many exemptions do you want to claim?” Wanda asked.
“What you’re talking exemptions? I’m not even hire him yet.” Ibrahim looked at me. “Tell me why I should hire you.”
“You’ll hire him.”
“This is not your say, Wadiya.”
“Don’t call me that.” She looked at me. “A-rabs.” She said the A the long way.
“In Syria,” Ibrahim said, “the woman walk ten steps behind the man.”
“In Syria they eat snakes. We don’t play that shit here.”
“Here you walk only five steps behind.”
“Eat pork.”
She told me she needed three references.
“I need a people person,” Ibrahim said. That could be tricky. It wasn’t necessarily that I didn’t like people, I just wasn’t very good with them. They wouldn’t give you your three feet.
“Take your time.”
“When is not busy you can wash the windows, clean the bathroom. Sweep the sidewalk in front.”
“When it’s not busy,” Wanda said. She answered the phone. The door chimed. Ibrahim’s
