Kon Tikki

4 - Closet Elf

4 - Closet Elf

Hey, what are you doing?

Josh froze at the querulous tone, his meaty fists stopped mid-distance from the vitrine. He could see the moist imprints on the glass, evaporating. He turned, in a slow motion, keeping his hands in view, palms up.

Like he had learned to do when walking or driving alone in trendy New-York neighborhoods, all brimming with white cops who couldn’t recognize the chef of a celebrated Luck Traveler. When Rafe was with him, however, the same cops would treat them like visiting royalty. But then, Rafe’s Testarossa or Kia would attract envious gazes.

The guard’s uniform fabric had a dark Demerara sugar tone that clashed with his pasty skin. He wore no beret or cap, but his balding dome shone under the porcupine-spine fixtures of the mall’s center. The corners of his mouth were downturned in a sour expression.

Josh looked about the brown-sugar uniform for a firearm, but the guard carried only a short stick. He felt a marginal relief, as he discarded the idea of being summarily shot for loitering. He had become aware his chocolate skin upped the probabilities of meeting with a fate similar to the teenager shot by a white man while crossing a property.

He chose the direct answer.

“There’s someone inside the store,” he said, gesturing toward the interior.

The officer ambled around and, keeping a wary eye on Josh, cast a quick glance in. The mop had stopped moving.

“I don’t see a thing,” the guard said.

Josh couldn’t shake the feeling someone was there, and hurting. Maybe even unconscious, the way the mop stopped moving.

“There’s someone in the closet. Probably wounded. Maybe you could check?” Josh said, in his most amiable voice.

The guard squinted.

“Yeah, sure, I should unlock the door to let a bum in?”

Josh had had enough. He picked up his bags, full of fresh vegetables and vibrant salads.

“I am Josh Tallgate, owner and manager of the Kon Tikki,” he said.

The restaurant’s opening had been promoted by and large, so the name struck the guard. He licked his gums.

“That the new place on the pier? My bro told me the food’s great.”

Josh nodded, and saw an opening.

“Yes, and I would never let one employee locked in,” he said, keeping an eye on the mop strands. “What if they found a corpse tomorrow because you didn’t act?”

The threat of the responsibility, of negligence, prodded the guard to a conciliatory attitude. He looked up Josh again, noting the black apron with the lobster logo, and the name in red letters printed over it. Finally he looked away, having decided the tall brown man was not a threat.

“I guess it can’t hurt to make a short check. But you stay out.”

Josh nodded. He stood rooted as the guard used his row of small cards to tap the door mechanism. Whatever happened to the good old metal keys? Finally a clack sounded, and the paunchy man stole inside, clicking open his lamp. Josh followed as his bald dome floated over the shelves in the alleys, then stopped.

He heard an expletive. Then the guard retreated and got out.

“Mr. Tallgate, there’s definitively someone breathing in the closet. But there’s a heavy box blocking the door.”

Josh followed the smaller man in. He stood next to the mop head wedged in the crack of a door, the strands splayed over the carboard of a fridge box. The box was not alone: a mid-sized box was stuck between the larger, coffin-sized box and the base of a shelf support. The screwed-in base prevented anyone from pushing off the boxes and free the door.

He looked around, to locate any hand truck, flatbed pushcart or even forklift that would move the coffin-box. There should be one such tool in a*****e this size, but he didn’t find any.

“Can’t move the damn thing,” the guard said. “But, with your help…”

Josh rose on his heels to peer at the crack, over the top of the fridge box. The inside of the closet was dark, the bulb probably out. But he could hear a low, rasping breath.

“Hey, hang on in there,” he called out, trying to imbue his guttural voice with reassurance. “We’re getting you out.”

It took some work to dislodge the smaller box, its sides announcing “the freezer of the future”. Josh recognized the make with the double F imitating an old Fantastic Four logo. It contained a smaller storage unit, but still quite heavy. The fiftyish guard was perspiring as they pushed it out of the way.

“Those frikkin' fridges are so damn heavy,” the man huffed, as he looked at the coffin-sized box.

Josh took a look at the perspiring guard, a textbook example of a candidate for an acv.

“Let me do it,” he said.

The security guard wiped his brow.

“Thanks,” he said. “I’m not twenty-five anymore.”

Josh braced himself against the side of the box. He groaned aloud as he pressed on, his body forming a perfect 45 degrees angle against the vertical surface, the imprint of his fingers sinking in the dun cardboard.

He pushed, and pushed with all his might, his legs banded. The box was incredibly heavy. Josh felt grateful for his gym sessions and the constant exercise running a restaurant required of him: lifting boxes of cans, hauling bags of potatoes, pushing tables and chairs around, hooking the fluo nets in place.

He was pouring sweat when the friction resistance gave in, and the fridge moved, inch by inch, the base of the box emitting a papery groan.

Josh thought that it would have taken two or three men to pull it in place. Especially as the appliance section was at the other end of the store.

At last, with a triumphal Han! the hefty obstacle had cleared a space wide enough of a man to step in the closet. The store lit up at the same time: the guard had found the master switch for the store.

The halogen-white overhead lights fell the jumble of cleaning tools in the storage closet, the shelves full of toxic detergents, the round soaking pail, the fallen mop, over a prone, unmoving body facing the wall, one arm draped over his torso, the hand invisible. A smell of acid cleaning fluids, urine and turpentine pervaded the space.

Was he too late?

He had heard horror stories of guys dying in confined spaces, where fermenting grains pulled all oxygen from the air. Do not put yourself in danger, his reasonable part told him in his father’s voice.

Josh held bis own breath, long enough to hear the soft breeze of the air wheezing from the man’s lungs. A young man, he saw now with the lights on, clad in a sweaty Tee-shirt and apron of the store with the Tool Barn logo. A mane of flame hair was all he could see of the head. He took a sniff at the air, but beside the turpentine, coming from a badly closed can, he did not identify any poison.

As a cook in training, then as a restaurant manager, Josh had had a first responder formation. He bent over the clerk, to check for a head or neck wound. He touched a strand of hair sticky with blood, that he retraced to a scratch at the back of the skull. There was no artery hemorrhage, as the blood had caked.

He squeezed one shoulder, feeling the bone under the thin fabric.

“Hey, hey, are you there?”

No response. The store clerk was still unconscious. Josh delicately turned the young man into a recovery position, one hand cupping the head while the other pulled the shoulder.

Doing so, Josh felt a jolt of surprise.

The slender arm attached to the shoulder wore an artistic drawing of a wave, the white foam done so elaborately that he was reminded of the Island’s sea, and his gramp’s fishing boat. The ink covered one forearm, the wave rolling up the elbow to swell around the biceps in a “sleeve” tattoo pattern. The light was strong enough to let his eyes roam along the blue-green wave, the flat boat, the two men aboard, clinging to each other for dear life as the wave rushed over their heads.

As the young man’s face came in view, Josh felt a more familiar jolt, one he had felt a few times in the big City.

The store clerk’s face had the surreal purity of an anime character, or an elf from those Tolkien tales, ivory-skin with a smattering of pale freckles under a mop of red curls. Josh had almost the urge to drag his finger along the pale, unlined skin, from temple to the tip of the triangular chin. Wide-set eyes rested under long lashes, also glowing the same soft orange as the brows. The pale budding rose lips were thin, but well-defined, half-opened over pristine, regular teeth.

Josh almost expected those eyes to spring open, showing enormous, watery dark pupils over blue or green itises. He was not aware of the wild thrumming of his heart, until the guard’s voice startled him.

“Is he OK? Should I call an ambulance?”

Josh almost jumped out of his skin, his hand slipping from the shoulder to ram on the floor. He tamed his beating heart before answering.

“Yes, I think we should—”

“NO!”

The power of the single syllable shook both rescuers, even as Josh felt the reed-like body getting taut under his arms. Presently, he turned to the voice, and

and

couldn’t

tear his eyes off.

The closet elf had the most unusual eyes Josh had ever seen, better than an anime character’s, the irises a liquid, icy blue that was the exact complement of his fiery hair. For a second, Josh sensed a powerful will at odds with the reedy frame of the young man. The blue eyes tore through Josh like lasers, scanning him over like a shelf produce.

And Josh suddenly hoped those uncanny, icy anime eyes liked what they beheld.

Then the brows drew up, and the incredible power seeped away, leaving only naked fear. Josh felt the same change echoing in his own body.

Shit, he thought.