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“Other than that, how are you?” she asked.
“Down there,” I gestured toward the storm drain.
“Let’s take a look.”
The sewer worker took a long, yellow, rubber-coated flashlight from the cab of the truck and moved to the drain. She squatted next to it and shone the powerful light through the grate. The beams illuminated something silver below, but it was a good fifteen feet away, and neither I nor the sewer worker could testify that the reflection was my keys.
The sewer worker flicked off the flash and stood up. “I don’t suppose you could call your wife to bring you a spare key,” she said. There was Hispanic blood somewhere in her family tree, but her voice had the flat twang of America’s northern states.
“I’m not married,” I told her.
“Girlfriend?”
“Not at the present time.”
“Really?”
The sewer worker smiled again; her face lit up like a hundred-watt bulb, and I said, “Hey.”
She was in her late twenties, a little more than five foot six, about 120 pounds. Her hair was the same color as her eyes; a bandanna kept it off her neck and shoulders.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Why do you need to know my name?”
“It’s only fair since I’m about to risk my life for you.”
She was putting me on, yet she spoke in such an earnest manner that for a moment I couldn’t be sure.
“What do you mean, risk your life?”
The sewer worker gave her head a small, sad shake and moved toward her truck.
“Wait a minute.” I followed her. “What do you mean, risk your life?”
The sewer worker opened the back of the truck and retrieved a pair of coveralls that she quickly slipped into. The name on the coveralls read BENNY. She put on a pair of knee-high rubber boots and heavy gloves. She said, “If anything happens, my name is Benita. Benita Rosas. Tell them . . .” She bowed his head as if the words were simply too painful to speak.
“What are you talking about?”
Benita gently placed her hand on my shoulder. “This is his sewer,” she said.
“His sewer?”
“I don’t mind the raccoons,” Benita said. “The bats, the cockroaches, the spiders—I can live with them, as well. And the rats.”
“Rats? There are rats down there?”
“Of course there are rats down there,” she replied somberly. “It’s okay. The rats are our friends. Where there are rats, there’s air. It’s just him we need to worry about.”
“Who’s him?”
“He doesn’t have a name. We just call him—him.”
“All right, then. What is him?”
“A twelve-foot alligator.”
“An alligator?”
“A twelve-foot alligator,” she corrected me.
“There are no twelve-foot alligators in the sewer system.”
“Ten-foot, then. You know how people exaggerate.”
“There are no alligators, period, in the sewer system.”
Benita looked at me with such an expression of sadness that for a moment I felt compelled to apologize for doubting her. But only for a moment.
“Seriously,” I said.
“We’re not supposed to tell the public. The authorities are afraid of panic.”
“Cut it out.”
Benita averted her eyes, looking out toward the people moving in and out of the library entrance, many of them children. “See them,” she said, gesturing with her hand. “Kids.” She sighed heavily. “We need to protect the kids.”
“Oh, brother.”
Benita took a measuring wheel from the truck. She went to the sewer drain opening and set the wheel at the edge of the metal grate. Without a word, she started walking in a more or less straight line. I followed.
“Three hundred sixty feet,” she announced when we came to the nearest entryway to the sewer system. “That’s 360 feet through the tunnel to where you dropped your keys and another 360 feet back. That’s a long way—with him down there.”
“Honest to God, Benita, I wish you’d stop saying that. I know you’re joking.”
“Call me Benny,” she said, and smiled.
I liked her smile. I liked her face. She wasn’t so attractive that I would have noticed her in a crowded room, yet the more I looked into her soft brown eyes, the more I liked what I saw.
“Benny,” I said.
She smiled some more.
Using a metal rod with a handle on one end and a curl on the other, Benny pulled the heavy iron lid off the sewer pipe and slid it away. She checked her flashlight by shining it into the palm of her hand.
“Here goes,” she said.
She stepped on the rungs of a ladder that led to the entrance of the sewer tunnel and began her descent. Her body was halfway into the sewer when she stopped and gazed into my eyes.
“Wait,” she said
“Yes?”
“It’s all right,” she smiled. “If your face is the last thing I see—that’s good enough for me.”
That caused me to laugh. I couldn’t believe this woman.
She climbed down the ladder. I watched her. When she got halfway, I called to her.
“Hey, Benny?”
She looked up.
What the hell, I thought.