The Basement Vault Read online

Weaving through the crowd, I passed my exhausted coworkers, their faces gaunt and ghostly pale in the fluorescent lighting. All of them were salivating before the punch-out clock like a pack of ravenous hounds eager to tear into the flesh of that Friday night. They leaned from one leg to the other, purses in hand, sunglasses dangling from open collars. The din of conversation lessened as I neared the clock, and all eyes were cast upon me.

  They were thinking, “Is he really going to do it? Is Powers leaving early?”

  The receptionist’s sharp stare nearly stopped me in my tracks, her eyes burning with scorn from behind her blond bangs. But I ignored her gaze and approached the clock. My time card was in my hand, ‘Evan Powers’ scribbled hastily on top. The paper glided effortlessly through the punch-out machine, making a slight mechanical noise as it stamped out the time, 4:47. The clicking noise echoed in the now-silent room, and I hightailed it to the door, daring my eager coworkers to follow.

  Warm air cloaked me in all of its glory as I flung the door open. My flesh tingled—honest to God, tingled—like the sun was drawing out some poison from the office’s artificial cold air.

  As I crossed the parking lot toward my car, I resisted turning to look through the wall-length window of the manager’s office. Kim would be staring up from a stack of papers on her desk, watching me in disbelief as she checked the time on her watch. No one left before the clock struck five. No one.

  Yeah, I did it. I left early. But fuck it—I quit. So there’s that.

  The well-traveled engine of my Buick rumbled to life, sputtering out clouds of grey exhaust. I backed out, put the car in drive, and sped the hell out of there.

  A cigar was waiting for me in the glove box, and I clamped it between my teeth as I loosened the collar of my button-up shirt.

  I laughed out loud, feeling a bit like a madman who laughs alone at the world, thinking, “I’m free, you fuckers—I’m free!” A cloud of cigar smoke was sucked out the window, replaced by the clean springtime breeze.

  Traffic was already forming on the highway, but I had managed to beat the mass of cars that would stretch on for miles only minutes after five o’clock. The landscape gradually changed to an immense array of blossoming trees and flat wilderness as I distanced myself from town, driving deeper into the heart of the New Jersey Pine Barrens. My housemate Nick and I rented a nice piece of property: three acres of trees and land, with many more acres of wilderness in every direction. Our nearest neighbor was old Mr. Patrick, or Grandpa, and we didn’t cross paths with the man too often. We invited him over whenever we had parties, but Grandpa rarely showed up and never stayed for long. He was cool with us, but when our parties got going, and a handful of ragged hippies turned into twenty, thirty, forty, sixty—whatever—he would take off. Not before schooling us all in a game of horseshoes, of course, and drinking about a six-pack of beer. The man could put them away.

  I drove past Grandpa’s mailbox and our driveway soon appeared. Nick’s work truck came into view as I pulled in, and way out in the back of the yard I spotted him standing beside our massive garden. Nick had been living in the rental house for nearly fifteen years. We had had another housemate for the past five years, named Darin Long, but due to his mother recently discovering that she had cancer, he had moved back home to Montana. Now it was only the two of us, all alone in that low ranch in the middle of the woods.

  Hippie Nick, he was sometimes called, or more recently, The Old Man. It was a term of endearment. The guy had lived through the cultural revolution of the ’60s and ’70s, which meant that for most of our friends, myself included, Nick Grady was the closest thing to a legitimate hippie that we would ever encounter. The guy followed the Dead, marched at civil rights protests, and did all of that fun stuff that made him practically a sage in the eyes of my stoner friends.

  I got out of the car and passed Nick’s work van on the way to the house. The G and R in Grady Construction and Repair on the side of his van were barely legible, faded with time.

  Our front door was unlocked, and I went straight to the kitchen. We had a strict nonsmoking rule indoors, for everything other than herb, so I had to be quick with my still-burning cigar. I grabbed two beers from the fridge and went out the kitchen door to the backyard. Immediately, music washed over me. Nick was under the apple tree next to the garden, swaying with a beer in hand. The Dead blared from his portable CD player, the extension cord trailing all the way back to the house, lost like a snake in the grass.

  Water droplets rained down from the sprinkler over the budding tomato plants, zucchinis, peppers, and everything else we’d planted only a few weeks ago. The corn stalks were already about two feet tall.

  Nick swayed to the music, barefoot, with his wrapped hemp necklaces and beadwork bouncing on his grey-haired chest. When he saw me approaching he nodded. The only article of clothing the guy ever wore at home was a pair of cutoff jean shorts.

  “Hey there,” I said.

  Nick smiled a crooked smile, a rubber band stuck between his lips as he pulled his long hair out of his face. A cooler was out there next to the few battered Adirondack chairs, and I could tell by the look in Nick’s eyes that he was already a few beers in. I handed him the beer I had brought from the kitchen anyway. Sierra Nevada, always Sierra Nevada. It was the only beer the guy would drink if given a choice. However, if he didn’t have a choice, he’d drink most anything. Especially bourbon. We went through the stuff like it was water.

  The song ended and he called, “Yo, Powers! What’s up man?” He was evidently in a great mood.

  “Nothing, Nick.” I tried to be nonchalant, but my lips cracked into a smile. “I did it.”

  His eyes lit up. “You quit?”

  I nodded.

  “Ha!” He bounced over on quick feet and hugged me with his strong, skinny arms. “I’m so happy for you, brother. I know that job was dragging you down.”

  “Thanks, man.”

  “Want to call some people up, get the bonfire going?”

  I shrugged. “I wouldn’t mind having a few beers.”

  His face was radiant, and I knew he was swallowing back the question he’d been asking me for years now. The words were trying to burst free from his mouth, but I was going to wait a little while longer before letting him know that I would work for him full time. And I’m not talking about his handyman service; as good as he was at repairing cabinets, replacing shingles, and even doing some landscaping for a handful of local Pineys. I’m talking about his other job. His real job.

  “You doing some shooting?” I nodded towards the small arsenal on the coffee table: his old western style six-shooters. They were a hobby of sorts, first for him, and then for me. After all, we did live in the middle of the woods. Not to mention that the house one over from old Mr. Grandpa’s was the fire chief’s, and the man was a regular at our parties—as clean cut as he was—and he kept an eye on the police radio for call-ins about noise. I consider myself clean cut as well, in comparison to most of the transients who pass through our doors. My hair is short, I usually wear nice pants and shirts, and I keep myself in decent shape. Ever since I met Nick, I’ve been trying to get the guy to go running with me, or use the weight bench in the basement. But he always declines. “Look at me,” he says. “I’m skinny enough. There won’t be nothing left of me.” It was true. The guy was a rail: skinny and strong. A lifetime's worth of hard labor made it impossible for him to ever be a pound over weight.

  Nick looked to the black powder pistols. “Knock yourself out,” he said, and went back to swaying with the music, mumbling along with the words while looking out over the sea of vegetables glistening from the sprinkler water.

  As the sun began to set and the beer in the cooler dwindled, we loaded and fired the six shooters at a wide tree stump across the yard. The process of loading a black powder revolver is tedious, but that made shooting them all the more enjoyable. We had to work for our fun.

  While we were shooting, the house phone rang several times, and soon ou
r driveway became illuminated by headlights. A few people showed up with more beer, weed, and various low-grade narcotics and hallucinogens. Ritalin, Adderall—that sort of thing. Most everyone, myself excepted, got stoned the minute they crossed onto our property. Weed was never my thing. I rarely smoked, which was in contrast to the company I kept.

  This guy named Mario showed up tripping on mushrooms, sitting a foot away from the blazing flames in the fire pit, his bright orange hair seeming to glow in the flickering light. I thought about asking him for a few caps, but decided against it. Ever since Darin moved out, Nick and I had to be on the lookout for people fucked up on the more serious drugs, like cocaine, heroin, and even speed. That was a big no-no at our home. Darin used to be our enforcer of sorts. He was a strong guy, although his short and stout build made him appear youthful, especially with his long dark hair kept up in a ponytail. Ex Army, believe it or not. But that life wasn’t for him. Darin was a feel-good stoner who liked lounging around the house shirtless, just like Nick.

  But Darin was gone, so it was up to Nick and I to watch over our guests. Just last party I found a guy taking a line of coke in our bathroom. He was so strung out that he forgot to lock the handle, and when I told him to get rid of the shit he started spewing vulgarities at me through his clattering jaw. Before his erratic mind thought it was a good idea to throw a swing, Nick and I had his arm behind his back, and we did the old heave-ho out the door, holding the back of his belt and his collar. I learned long ago in my bartending days to never let the other guy swing first. Unless of course the other guy was so fucked up that he couldn’t hit the side of a wall. Or if the guy was a lawyer. Never hit a lawyer first. But back at my old bar, the local clientele were far from lawyers.

  Lucky for us, the crowd was mellow as the alcohol and marijuana flowed. At some point the fire chief showed up, wearing a big grin. He disappeared with Nick inside the house, and when he came back out, he was baked out of his mind.

  “Hey, Powers,” he said, his red eyes sparkling.

  “What’s up?”

  “Check this out.”

  The fire chief swung a canvas duffel bag around from his shoulder and opened the zipper. A copious amount of fireworks lay inside.

  “Cool, huh?”

  “Yeah,” I smiled. “Cool.”

  The night wore on and the fireworks were ignited to thunderous ovation from the enamored crowd. The fire chief kept his radio turned up in case the noise got called into the cops.

  Maybe fifteen people were gathered in the backyard when I saw headlights approach from down the driveway and stop short of the house. I checked the time on my watch. It was impossible to see in the darkness, but I knew the headlights belonged to the black car that had been arriving at our house at that same time every week, for years now. It was an older Plymouth Fury Gran Coupe from the seventies or so, and it still looked immaculate. I looked for Nick in the crowd and spotted him by the fire.

  “Hey,” I said, approaching.

  When Nick looked at me, I tapped my watch and nodded toward the car. His face soured.

  “Motherfucker,” he muttered, and swilled back his beer.

  Nick went to the house, and a moment later he emerged from the front, walking toward the car. He opened the passenger door, momentarily illuminating the car’s interior before stepping inside.

  It wasn’t long until the passenger door opened again and Nick got out. The Plymouth reversed out of the driveway, not bothering to swing around the circle. Nick had told me in the past that the man didn’t like it when strangers were at our house during his stops. But then he had gone on, “If he makes his stops on a Friday, it can’t be avoided. Fuck him.”

  When Nick got close, I handed him a beer. His face was set in the same crazed anger that always overtook him after leaving the man in the Plymouth. I silently prayed that he wouldn’t start hitting the bottle hard, like he often did after the man’s visits, and go off on one of his insane rambles. Not now, not tonight. Tonight, I was celebrating my new life. My new path, as twisted as it might become.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  Nick took the beer and our eyes met. His face softened. “Yeah, man.” He patted me on the shoulder, and we walked into the yard to join the circle of people watching the fire chief light off the last of his fireworks.

  And there was Becka. Her fair complexion illuminated in bouncing shadows from the fire, her dark, somewhat curly hair pure black in the night.

  “Hey,” I said, walking up to her. “When’d you get here?”

  She turned and smiled at the sound of my voice. “Hey, Powers. Just a minute ago. I was looking for you.”

  She patted the grass beside her and I took a seat, making it a point for our thighs to touch.

  “I did it,” I told her. “I quit.”

  “The office?”

  “The office.”

  “Powers,” she exclaimed. “That’s wonderful, man!”

  She reached over and wrapped her arms around me, burying her face in my chest.

  This was good. This is what I needed. I needed Becka, her arms holding me tight all night long. When was the last time we’d hooked up? A week ago? Maybe more. Nick jokingly referred to Becka as my girlfriend, but we were nothing like that. Just friends. Two people in their mid-thirties who had been in terrible relationships, much like all the other loners out there who find themselves still single past their twenties. We just wanted to keep things cool. Sure, we liked each other, but we didn’t want to make our relationship something more than it needed to be. For her birthday last year I bought her a small oval locket. Nothing fancy or expensive. I immediately regretted giving it to her when I saw the surprise and uncertainty on her face. She did wear it, though, up until recently. She said she misplaced it, put it down somewhere, and that it’s got to be around. Probably at home. Probably fell from the kitchen sink. She’d find it, she told me.

  But who knows.

  Becka had been friends with Nick for years longer than I’d known either of them. I originally thought that Nick and Becka had a romantic past, but Darin later set me straight. Besides, their ages are decades apart ... not that that would stop either of them.

  As the last explosion filled the air, the fire chief turned to the crowd. “That’s it,” he said, displaying his empty duffel bag. “That’s all she wrote.”

  Nick stood a few feet away from the crowd and we caught each other’s eyes.

  “Hey, Becka, you gonna be here for a few minutes?”

  She looked up at me with a smile and then back to the fire. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  I hugged her shoulder and stood. “Be right back.”

  “Hey, grab me a beer while you’re at it?” She displayed her near-empty bottle, the light from the fire making it transparent.

  “Of course.” I smiled, walking towards Nick. “Be right back.”

  Nick and I stood apart from the group as the fire chief shook out a few stray firecrackers into the fire, turning the duffel bag upside down and shaking it out.

  “Hey,” Nick shouted over the roar of our friends laughing and jumping away from this madman dumping explosives over the open flame. “I got something serious I want to talk to you about.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I know.”

  “You give my proposition some thought?”

  I nodded, not that he could see me with his eyes transfixed on the fire. With Darin gone, Nick was shorthanded. He’d been asking me to work full time at his operation for years, but I always declined. I was too clean-cut for that life, I always thought. I was better off as a part time employee. But after spending three years stuck at a cubicle in the stalest environment that I could possibly imagine, wasting away the best and most productive time of the day—between nine and five, when the human mind and body is at its best—I was starting to see things in a different light. Plus, he was offering me more than just hours—he was offering me a management position. Small responsibilities at first, but they would grow over time.
But the real benefit, I thought, was that Becka and I would be spending more time together.

  “Yeah, Nick, I’ve given your proposition a lot of thought. I’m in. I’m all aboard.”

  He turned to me. “Seriously?”

  “Seriously.”

  He extended a hand, smiling like a little boy. “Oh, brother, you are most needed!”

  We shook, and then of course he hugged me.

  “Man, this is going to be great!” he shouted, arms out in the air, holding his beer aloft to the night sky. The light from the fire flickered dancing shadows all over his body.

  “We’ll start tomorrow,” he said, taking a swig of beer and bouncing on his toes.

  I smiled.

  He tossed the empty straight into the roaring flame, and grabbed two cold beers from the cooler. He popped the caps and handed one to me.

  “Cheers, brother,” he said.

  We clinked glasses.

  “Cheers.”

  He took a long pull, and I again prayed to myself that he wouldn’t get too fucked up. I didn’t need him screaming crazy shit at our guests, crying, sobbing, and making no sense at all.

  “I think it will be best if we start late,” he said after a burp.

  “Agreed.”

  Sipping my beer, I watched Becka transfixed on the fire, a smile on her radiant face as she swayed slightly to the music. As much of a free spirit as she was, Becka had something about her. She had class, and an amazing mind that I wanted to keep discovering. She wasn’t the type of person to lay her cards out on the table; I had to keep guessing what was in her hand. Her beauty was the type that tongue-tied men, but there was more between us than sheer attraction. We had a chemistry that couldn’t be put into words, but only be felt. It was a throbbing heat in my chest. It was intrigue that kept me coming back for more; it was her quiet, pondering eyes that displayed indecipherable emotion. Simple words from her lips carried the weight of the world and affected me like I imagine poetry inspires minds greater than my own.

  Her shadowy form beckoned me to approach and sit with her on that lush field of grass for as long as eternity would allow.

  Turning, I grabbed two beers from the cooler. I was about to tell Nick that I would be back, but he had seen the rapture in my eyes and had already begun to drift away, chatting with the fire chief.

  “Welcome back,” Becka said, looking up to me as I approached. There was longing in her eyes.

  Feeling a bit drunk, I smiled coolly and took a seat beside her to watch the roaring flames.

  Tomorrow, my life would change—for the better, I thought. I would be managing a productive and quite illegal drug operation. But now, in the present moment, I didn’t want to contemplate the future or lament the past. I wanted to stay stuck in time, right where I was.

  Chapter 2