Holy Water Read Free Page A

better now than when he first came through it with his father in the eighties. Transvestites beating off in the men ’ s room then. Foul-smelling squatters in the waiting room. The stars overhead in the main concourse buried beneath generations of diesel soot and cigarette smoke, decades away from restoration.
     
    It ’ s a terminal, not a station, his father had corrected him back then. Stations connect to other places. Terminals terminate. They end.
     
    He accepts a complimentary tulip from a blue-eyed, pink-cheeked girl and asks how the weather is in Holland this time of year, hot and muggy or cool and dry. Armpits of the world want to know. The girl hesitates a moment, looks at the bunched tulips in her hand as if they are a bouquet of roadkill, then looks over her shoulder for help from her team leader. Of course she ’ s not from Holland, Henry realizes. She ’ s just some college kid part-timing for a travel bureau, wearing a costume like a Disney character.
     
    His father was forty-six when he died at a corporate teamwork off-site. Massive heart attack. Jostling among junior execs eager to be the first team member to administer CPR, to catch the eye of the boss. Then a dozen white-collar workers in matching T-shirts that say No Limits! carrying his stretcher in a synchronized sprint to the ambulance, the medi-chopper, all thinking, or at least attempting to demonstrate, Together we can do anything while the paddles fail and the tiny monitor flatlines .
     
    That ’ s how Henry imagines it, anyway.
     
    He puts up his hand to retract the question, to wave off the not quite Dutch girl, but before he can speak he ’ s jolted by the vibrating phone in his pants. Rachel. He recently told her it has become illegal to use the phone on the train, so now she calls him within minutes after his scheduled arrival.
     
    “ Yes? ”
     
    “ Did you check . . . ”
     
    “ Yes. ”
     
    “ And the pool? ”
     
    “ Yes? ”
     
    “ It ’ s green. Again. Like a fluorescent radioactive green. What did you do? ”
     
    “ I used the tester. I added the stuff. ”
     
    “ Did you? ”
     
    “ No. I ’ m lying. I ’ m lying about the pool, Rachel. ”
     
    “ When? ”
     
    “ Last night. ”
     
    “ In the dark? ”
     
    “ I could do it in the day, but that would mean I ’ d have to quit my job to be a full-time pool boy. ”
     
    “ I just didn ’ t notice. ”
     
    “ I did it at three a.m. when I woke up downstairs in front of the TV. ”
     
    “ All I know is our pool is disgusting. ”
     
    He takes a breath. He doesn ’ t want to fight. Doesn ’ t want to feel this way toward her. “ You don ’ t even like to swim, Rachel. ”
     
    “ It ’ s an embarrassment. Every other pool on this block is a perfect shade of blue, but ours looks like a Superfund waste site. ”
     
    “ Every pool except at the houses that have been foreclosed. Look, I ’ ll check it again when I get home. ” He moves to hang up, but reconsiders. “ Listen, did you, you know, think about going back to talk to that guy? Philip? ” Her shrink.
     
    This time she clicks off. He puts the phone in his briefcase rather than his pocket. She ’ s not a bitch, he reminds himself. She ’ s afraid.
     
    “ Actually, I ’ m not from Holland, ” the young woman tells him. At first he has no recollection of speaking to her, no idea what she ’ s talking about. Rachel ’ s calls have a way of doing this to him, detaching him from the present, clouding reality, making him breathless with what he hopes is anxiety, because he ’ s far too young for a heart attack. “ But, ” she says, “ I hear it ’ s real sunny this time of year. ”
     
    He scrolls to Scissor Sisters ’ cover of Pink Floyd ’ s “ Comfortably Numb, ” taps Play.
    ~ * ~
     
     
     
     
    The Land of EEEE
     
     
     
     
    Four years ago they transferred him from Oral Care to Non-headache-related Pain Relief. Three years ago they transferred him from Pain