SQN - Sine Qua Non - Issue 1 - Journal - Page 104
poems.”
“Yeah, I heard you’re a reformed English teacher or something. That’s very helpful,
professor,” Denisovich replied. “But let’s concentrate on Jane Doe here, so Mariana Cadaver
can get her tagged and bagged.” He jerked a thumb toward the coroner, hovering in the
doorway.
“Her name’s Caderno,” Rodriguez said, nodding at their colleague. Her cheeks were
sallow, her eyes rimmed dark with eyeliner and tiredness. She didn’t respond except to blink,
as if making a sign she was still alive.
“You have to admit she looks like a pale freaking vampire waiting for us to invite her
over the threshold.”
Rodriguez wouldn’t admit it, not out loud.
“You know what they call you? Angel of Death.”
It wasn’t very fitting. He’d never killed anyone. Angel Rodriguez had come to the force
late, after failing as a teacher around the same time he’d failed at being married. It all seemed
too abstract between him and his students. He’d wanted to dig his fingers into real life. He’d
wanted to change things. But things don’t change. In school he had been the guy to analyze
literature. Here, too, he came in after the story was written, after the murder or the robbery,
when it was too late to do anything but hunt for that elusive thing called justice. But you
couldn’t witness that every day without losing a piece of yourself. He wasn’t the Angel of
Death; he was the angel of dying a little bit each day.
He watched as Denisovich pulled on a single glove, maybe because he was lazy, or too
disorganized to find a second. He picked up the first page of a stack of papers lying next to
the deceased’s head. He stroked his goatee with his ungloved hand. His brow was furrowed
but went smooth as he handed the page over to Rodriquez.
“You’re the big reader, what do you make of it? Doesn’t look like your average suicide
note.”
Rodriguez took the paper in his gloved hands.
The first time I vomited up a story I was idling at the intersection of Townsend and Mt. Eden
Avenue, waiting for a parking space to open up. A man crossed the street in front of me, holding
the hand of a little girl. He was listening to her tell a joke or a story. His torso was curved towards
her like an ear.
I felt it coming on before they even touched the curb at the other side. I reached into my purse,
only then remembering the sales rep at work had taken my pen to write out a purchase order and
I’d been too polite to demand it back.
The words came out of my mouth like words should but with such force I was afraid they
would crack the windshield. I clamped a hand over my mouth and pushed some of them back. They
burned like bile in my throat. The rest tumbled out and over. The first words clung to me the whole
way home. ‘Even the best fathers leave. Death is the greatest temptation, stronger than any mistress.’
It was a heart-breaking, ground-breaking story. But I had nothing to contain it. I would have
written it in blood if I could have found a penknife in my bag. The ending dribbled out the open
window. The middle sagged into the carpet and stuck like crumbs in the cupholder, falling apart
when I tried to pick the pieces up later.
It happened at the supermarket at checkout. The toddler swinging his feet in the cart in front
of me threw a squarish package of cheddar crackers onto the conveyor belt. I got suddenly sick with
a creative nonfiction piece about the goldfish I had had as a kid that my mother killed. By accident.
I think. It was touching but humorous too, but the receipt was too short to capture the ending. I
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