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NICK ARCHER WAS ON his fourth Foster’s, a final swig lingering in the rounded basin of the large can. He wondered if it would be worth the story later to approach the strange woman winking at him behind too much blue eye shadow at the other end of the bar. There was just enough alcohol flowing through his bloodstream to give it serious thought, but he figured it would be an embarrassment to tell people he’d caught syphilis from its Patient Zero. He sucked down the final drops of warm beer before shoving off the barstool and into the street.
The air hit him hard as he stepped onto the sidewalk. He passed by a dirty man in a goose down coat rifling through a garbage can.
“Gotta quarter?”
Nick waved him off and kept walking.
“She should be asleep by now,” he said to himself, looking at his watch.
He had taken to leaving his cell phone at home just so his mother wouldn’t be able to reach him. It was an awful thing to do considering the state of her health, but his moments of solitude were scarce and precious.
The doctors said it was a combination of asbestos and cigarettes that caused his mother’s emphysema and eventual cancer. Early retirement from the world of textile manufacturing left her with a healthy pension, but an unhealthy dose of mesothelioma.
When the state went smoke-free she stopped leaving the house. It was the only place she could smoke while doing all the things she loved, but eventually everyone but Nick stopped coming to her. Her friends refused to leave the beautiful comfort of their new senior center to aggravate their angina in the less desirable part of Mid-City.
Sweat emerged from his receding hairline and rolled down his forehead as he ascended the steps of the house he grew up in. The atmosphere changed as he opened the front door, not necessarily for the better. The cold breeze of central air and cigarette smoke produced a haze thicker than the smog on the 405 and Nick was beginning to wonder if he wouldn’t get emphysema himself just from living in the house. He tried to make the best of his situation and he loved his mother, but his tolerance deteriorated every time someone commented on how much his clothes stank.
Janice Archer was in front of the television, passed out in her easy chair. In one hand, she held an unfinished crossword puzzle from Parade magazine, and in the other, an uncapped ballpoint pen. There were tiny black lines written on the arm of the chair from the times she had stirred. A cigarette with a long ash hung from her lips, pieces of charred tobacco and menthol dusting the paper in her lap.
Trying not to disturb her, he pinched his thumb and forefinger together to pluck the cigarette from between her lips. He pulled it free, a dark ring of lipstick around the filter. Nick found it amusing that she took the time to make herself up every morning, though she knew he would be the only one to see her. She joked that if he spent every day looking at her “without her face on,” he would be dead long before her. Janice Archer had a self-deprecating sense of humor that Nick had inherited and appreciated. It kept them both from taking life too seriously.
The removal of the cigarette brought her back to life and she sprang awake, hacking with a low and familiar cough. The expulsion of air from her lungs blew the long ash from the cigarette onto Nick. He wiped it off his shirt before grinding the remains of the butt into a nearby ashtray.
“Ma, you gotta watch the falling asleep while lit up.”
“Ah, I ain’t dead yet. The Good Lord will take me with my lungs burning from the inside or outside.”
“Yeah, but then I’ll have no place to live.”
“Sorry. Next time I get sleepy, I’ll be sure to ponder the current state of the housing market and put out my butt. You happy?”
“Thank you. C’mon, let’s get you to bed.”
“You forgot your phone again. The department called while you were out.”
“Ma, I told you not to answer my phone.”
“Well, maybe if you weren’t such a Mr. Forgetful, I wouldn’t fret that you were missing something important.”
“Even if I were, there would be no way for you to call me to pass on the message, so who cares? Just let it go to voicemail.”
“Like I want to be your secretary anyway, big shot Detective Archer.”
“You gonna start with that again?”
She shrugged.
“What’d they want?”
“They said you should come in an hour early tomorrow. Something about a backlog of cold cases. I don’t even know what that means, just what he told me to tell you. Made me repeat it back to him. That Jenkins you work with is a condescending prick, you know that?”
“You don’t have to tell me. I know. Thanks for getting me the message, Ma, I appreciate it.”
“There you go, that wasn’t so hard, offering a little thanks to your mother who you leave all alone to go drink swill and not come home with a girl.”
He hated when his mother baited him into talking about anything remotely resembling his love life. He was glad she cared, but the last thing he wanted to talk to his mother about was picking up some chick at a bar and bringing her home to hump in his boyhood bedroom.
“I had one, but she was about twice your age and half as good looking.”
“Hey, take what you can get. Maybe she has a brother for me.”
“All right, enough banter with you, it’s late. You need any help getting up the stairs?”
“You gonna put me on your shoulders and piggy back me up there? I’m fine. Go watch some TV. But not too late, remember, early to rise in the morning.”
“G’night, Ma.”
Nick watched his mother cough thick phlegm into a handkerchief as she steadied herself on the wooden banister. He waited for her to disappear into the bathroom before he went to the refrigerator to grab a beer, hoping to ride his buzz into dreamless sleep.
Flipping the bottle cap into the ashtray on the coffee table he stretched himself out on the couch and stared up at the tar-stained ceiling, wondering what kind of horse s**t Jenkins was going to throw at him in the morning.
- Writer
