Page 43 of Life’s Too Short

I set my coffee cup down and immediately started for the door. “What’s going on?”

“I need you to come with me to my dad’s.”

I paused with my hand on the doorknob. “Your dad’s?”

“Like, it’s not a call-the-police thing, but it’s definitely urgent, and I need someone strong to help me. My hand is too weak, no one’s home at Brent’s house, and I don’t know anyone else.”

“Okay. Let me get dressed,” I said, making a beeline for my room.

“Don’t wear anything you’ll be sad to douse in gasoline and set on fire later.”

Vanessa left Grace with Yoga Lady—whose real name was Dawn. I drove.

“What happened?” I asked, getting onto the freeway.

She was wringing her hands. “Some stuff fell over and he’s trapped.”

I jerked to look at her. “Trapped? As in under it?”

She nodded. “Yeah, but it’s just his legs. He was able to call me. He’s not in any immediate danger. I don’t think he’s hurt or anything. He just can’t get out by himself.”

I shook my head. “And you didn’t want to call 911? They would have gotten there faster.”

“I can’t call the police to that house. They’ll red tag it.”

I drew my eyebrows down. “Red tag it? What’s wrong with it?”

She let out a long breath. “Remember I told you about the muddy hill of shit yesterday? And you were all cavalier and wanted to be my friend anyway?”

I changed lanes. “Yes…”

“Well, this is the slide.”

Fifteen minutes later we pulled up to a two-story house in Eagan. Vanessa jumped out and ran up the walkway and went inside without waiting for me. When I came up behind her, I stopped dead in the doorway.

The smell hit me like a wall.

I came slowly into the entry breathing into my elbow. I’d never seen anything like it. Not in real life.

Floor-to-ceiling stacks as far as the eye could see. Shit literally everywhere. Every standing surface had a pile on it.

The love seat in the living room was completely covered with some sort of magazine/newspaper collection piled so high it blocked the light from the window. There was a broken blender on the credenza filled with bottle caps next to a rotting gourd with fruit flies buzzing around it. Bins everywhere, lining the walls with God knows what in them, the rim to a tire, a box filled with broken picture frames, one of those white wicker baskets used for flowers at weddings in the 1980s with a dented pink helium tank sitting in it—

There was a chaotic method to some of the madness. Certain things seemed to be grouped together. A stack of board games piled on a chair, a CD collection. But all around it was garbage and decaying food. Broken, useless trinkets and appliances.

Vanessa called me from somewhere deeper in the house and I picked my way over the clutter on the floor to a hallway that was so crowded with stuff I had to turn sideways to squeeze through it. Vanessa stood in a room at the end trying to lift a fallen armoire off a pile of clothes.

“I got it,” I said, heaving it up and leaning it against the wall. Only after I had it moved did I realize there was a man under it.

Vanessa was already digging her dad out from under shirts and pants. “Dad, you okay?” she asked, pulling him to his feet.

He brushed his sweater down, a sock still draped over his shoulder. “Fine, fine, pumpkin. I put some laundry on an open drawer and it must have been too top-heavy. Toppled it onto me. Had a nice little cushion for the fall though.”

Vanessa looked back at me, a tired expression on her face. “Thanks for helping.”

Her dad gave me a broad used-car-salesman smile. “We haven’t been formally introduced,” he said, extending a hand. “Gerald Price.”

I was feeling nauseous. My eyes were starting to water. “Adrian Copeland,” I managed, shaking it.