Where Fools Dare to Tread

by David William Pearce

  After I parked and we put the groceries away, I snuck back out and found the bug on the rear bumper. It was a small round magnetic thing. It seemed terribly old school; I mean how many people drive cars these days with metal bumpers? I carefully removed it and placed it in the wheel well of Agnes’s car. I looked around to see if anyone was watching. I then snuck back into the house.

  Agnes sat at the kitchen table and watched as I cooked. I found it unsettling, but I could tell this would be a common occurrence should our attempt at a committed relationship survive. I decided to make small talk.

  “Did you call your daughter?”

  “Yes.” She said this like a child who had been forced to do something she didn’t want to.

  “And?”

  “And, I decided to take your advice.”

  “And?” It was like pulling teeth.

  “And she agreed to meet us.”

  “So why the face?”

  “Because she wants us to come to the restaurant tomorrow night around nine, that way she’ll have more time because it slows down by then.” Seemed reasonable.

  “And you don’t like that because…”

  “Because it means Simon will be there, hovering, interfering.”

  Simon. I was growing tired of someone I hadn’t even met.

  “It’ll be alright. Plus, it’ll give you a chance to show me off.”

  “I suppose.” Agnes was tapping on the table with her fingers. “Is it ok if we go up on highway 1 instead of I-5? I like that better. We can see the ocean and feel the breeze.”

  “We can do that.”

  Dinner was a chance to slow down and chill out. I found some outdoor candles and we ate on the patio in the backyard. We went easy on the wine. I was tired, and she needed to pack. The air was cool and, for this part of town, remarkably clear. We listened to the sounds of the birds comingling with the gurgling and rustling of the noises from the surrounding houses. It appeared, outwardly, to be a nice little neighborhood, a pocket of solace, like the bungalows, in this incessantly throbbing city. Agnes, as I suspected, was rapidly declining into repose. Not surprising given that she’d had too much to drink and too little sleep the night before. Throw in a decent amount of emotional turmoil, and I was amazed she’d lasted this long.

  I gingerly roused her and got her into the bedroom where she slowly assembled what appeared to be enough clothes for a month. The suitcase was in the closet and she mashed it all in before falling on the bed. I grabbed a small case and once again roused her, onward and upward, to the bathroom, where she piled the wherewithal to maintain her beauty, reluctantly brushed her teeth, and relieved herself. She barely made it to bed before quickly falling asleep.

  Ah, the joys of connubial bliss.

  As I watched her sleep, it again amazed me how fast this had all come about. How long? Two weeks? Something like that. I thought of Astral, where I jumped all too quickly into a life I had given no thought to. I’d had no license with her either. You’re supposed to learn from the past. Yet here I was, as Johnny D had warned me, caring for this woman I barely knew. I returned to the backyard to clean up and found myself back in the chair, where it was quiet, where the lights obscured the stars, where I could collect myself. I nursed the last of the wine and watched the moon, a waxing gibbous, break free of the neighbor’s tree.

  Who uses such language? I remembered a book on astronomy and cosmology I’d read years before back in Virginia. I had lots of time back then to read. The things you remember. I had a head full of them. They were swimming around, waiting to surface. The wine was finished and it was time to go inside. I cleaned and put away the dishes, then headed outside.

  I had rethought the plan.

  The street remained untouched. No new vehicle or person. I removed the bug from Agnes’s car and put it back on mine. If they were going to follow me, so be it. I opened the trunk and took the 45 from the tool bag. Just in case.

  It was still heavy.

  28

  The evening came and went, as did the night. Other than rolling Agnes onto her side, she snored when she slept on her back; sleep came easy. Maybe it was the loaded cannon under the bed, maybe it was the exhaustion from the day before, but unlike most mornings, I felt rested and was ready for the first light, ready for the day to begin.

  Agnes? Not so much.

  She remained deep in slumber as I got cleaned up and dressed. I loaded up the cooler and basket and put them in the trunk. I also put the gun back in the tool bag. I casually looked up and down the street. To my surprise, I noticed something different. At the end of the street, behind an old Honda Accord, was a blue sedan with two guys in it. I made a mental note and went back inside. I brought out the two suitcases, and looked to see if they were still there.

  They were.

  I took the gun back out and put it in my pocket. The car didn’t move, nor the characters in it. I closed the trunk and returned to the house. I set out breakfast and went to the bedroom to wake Sleeping Beauty. I tried being gentle, but that got me nowhere. She finally relented after a few well-timed, well-placed gropes.

  “I’m up, I’m up! Next time a ‘mother may I’ if you want a handful,” she wailed.

  “No, I’ll have to come up with something else. Mother may I kinda weirds me out.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  Agnes wandered to the bathroom as I went to the kitchen to cook breakfast. Something simple, scrambled eggs with leftover mushrooms, peppers, and cheese, a muffin on the side, black coffee in the pot. I put out the plates, spooned the breakfast onto the plates, poured the coffee and buttered the muffins. After bellowing, I heard Agnes making her way to the kitchen. If nothing else, her disposition had perked up. She was still in her robe, but her face was on and her hair was done.

  “How much time do I have?”

  “Till what?” I knew what she meant.

  “Till we go!”

  “Fifteen minutes,” I informed her.

  “I’ll need at least thirty, maybe more.”

  I looked at her with my most penetrating gaze. “Sorry, baby, but we’re on a tight schedule, no can do.”

  She shook her head. “Tough! I don’t do tight schedules.”

  I took a bite of my muffin and a sip of coffee. “Looks like we’ve hit an impasse.”

  She must have been hungry; she was wasting no time on breakfast. “Looks like.”

  Surprisingly, breakfast took another twenty minutes. Agnes finished off the last of the eggs and had a second muffin. After finishing the coffee, she let her robe slip open. I rose to pick up her dishes, and brushed up against her.

  “Mother may I?”

  She laughed. “Ok, that is a little creepy.”

  “You realize this will push back the schedule?”

  She got up and planted a big one right on my lips. “I sure hope so.”

  The blue sedan was still there when we got in the car. I didn’t say anything to Agnes as we pulled away. She was still reveling in the afterglow of glorious morning sex, but then so was I. Whatever problems we might potentially have, for now, sex wasn’t going to be one of them. I wondered how common that was. If there were hesitations about this road trip, they were salved by our morning romp and we were on our way. I didn’t look to see if the blue sedan had pulled out after we did. If it did, it did. I kept the top up, figuring there was plenty of time to be windblown later. It also obscured the view through the rear window. There was time and we had a ways to go. It was a pleasant day, minus the traffic, and before long we were off the interstate.

  Agnes said little preferring to look out the window. Occasionally she would remark
on the wonders of Mother Nature and how she loved going this way, but I could sense her anxiety picking up. I held back in saying anything. I thought it better to keep quiet. We made a few stops along the way after heading off on Highway 1 out of San Luis Obispo. At the first stop I pulled the top down and Agnes put on a scarf to keep her hair from blowing all over her face.

  We eased along the coast road enjoying the views of the ocean and the national forest before stopping in Carmel for lunch. We found a small park overlooking the cove. Agnes grabbed the basket, and I pulled a couple of drinks and fruit from the cooler. The wind kept us from using a placemat and we tucked our napkins under our drinks. More than once we went scrambling after we forgot about the napkins and the wind took them for a ride. I’d made sandwiches and we shared a bag of chips and the fruit. Once lunch was finished we put the basket away and wandered down along the ridge to the water. Agnes grabbed my hand and held onto my arm.

  “It’s so wonderful out here, isn’t it?”

  “It is.”

  “Maybe we should just stay here, forget about San Francisco.”

  “And Anna, should we forget about her? Is that what you really want to do?”

  “No.” She wrapped her arms around me as we walked the beach.

  “Then we weather the storms for the sun.”

  “Ok.” The woman held on tight. “Remember, you said we.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  We climbed our way back to the car, said a small prayer, and drove off. The blue sedan was waiting by a Subaru near the entrance to the park. The two goons were sitting there looking, but not looking, in our direction. If they thought I didn’t see them, they were idiots. If they wanted me to see them it worked, we all had things to do. Whatever their plans or motives, they were small potatoes compared to the ones burrowing inside Agnes and me. We had a thousand years of sad memories and bad vibes to deal with. A couple of goofs in monkey suits were the least of our problems.

  We headed north to sit in traffic

  Traffic in the bay area, like LA, like all of California, is its own disease infecting us all. We took our medicine and prayed for salvation, hoping, yet all the while knowing we were doomed to lose years of our lives wasted inside our mechanized sanitariums. The sick were anxiously packed on roads headed for home, or perhaps to a place of comfort, only to be struck again and again. The fevered jumped and swerved, desperate to shave those precious seconds off their journey whether they succeeded or not. The rest of us, bored and listless, followed the lunatics in front of us.

  At least the sun was out.

  We snaked along the western edge of the world, to the Golden Gate Park, and through San Francisco towards the hotel and Simon’s restaurant. All the while Agnes grew quiet and still, her head barely moving, her eyes looking out to a place I couldn’t see. Finding the hotel was its own adventure. It took a few trips around the block before I figured out the entrance to the garage. The hotel was one of those small boutique kinds of places, built out of an old office building long since repurposed. It reminded me of the buildings in the noir films I used to watch when I had nothing better to do. Films populated by shadows, dread, and the fatal consequences of poor or thoughtless decisions. I wondered if it was trying to tell me something.

  The lobby was neither light nor colorful, instead muted in grays and whites. The woman at the counter was affable and the journey to our room unremarkable. The room, like the lobby, was also a host of grays and whites. It was a small room, but there was only the two of us and our baggage. Agnes sat at the edge of the bed and watched as I made a place for our things. A small window looked out onto the alley below populated with trash and recycle bins. There were rays of sunlight here and there as the clouds passed unseen above us. Two photographs of the building’s previous incarnations adorned the wall by the door. The bathroom was small but fashionably tiled and papered. I gave the scented soaps a sniff before returning to the quiet woman sitting on the bed.

  I sat down next to her.

  She reached for my hand. “I can’t go, Monk.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because…” She was clearly upset, her eyes were moist and her hands were trembling.

  “Because why?”

  Agnes started crying. “I know she’s still mad at me.”

  “I’m missing something here, why are you crying? Why is she mad?” I tried to figure out what Agnes was talking about.

  “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t drag you into this.”

  “Into what?” There were tissues in her purse. I reached in and handed her one. “Agnes, what is it?”

  She wiped her eyes and blew her nose in a sad fitful burst. I put my arm around her. The crying had subsided, but the shaking continued.

  “Agnes!”

  “I…”

  “What?” I was finding this exasperating. Just talk!

  She balled her hands into fists and buried her head into my chest.

  “I’m a very angry person, Monk, and it’s made me do some terrible things.”

  “Like what?”

  She shook as she spoke. “I had a breakdown the last time I was here, right here in this very hotel, a year and a half ago. Anna had left to come up here and I wanted to talk to her, to talk to them, because I wanted her to come home, but I was mad and ugly and hateful. I said so many horrible things. I called them home-wreakers and faggots. I was screaming and yelling. They called the police and told me I had to leave. Anna was so angry she said she never wanted to speak to me again. I ended up screaming myself hoarse in my car. If I’d had a gun I’d have killed them. That’s how crazy I was. That’s how crazy I am. I’m not a good person, Monk. You’ll see. I’m angry and spiteful and stupid. You’ll see me for what I am and then you’ll be done with me too!” She put her hands to her face and sobbed.

  I didn’t know what to say. It was possible she was an ugly hateful woman, but I had a hard time believing that. I got the angry part, I’d walked that road many times, but I felt she was more broken than ugly, more lost than hateful.

  “I don’t think you’re a bad person. I can tell you’re angry, but you haven’t been hateful to me, so it’s unlikely I’d up and leave.”

  “You say that, but you don’t even know me, Monk, you’ll see. I’ll fuck it up somehow, I always do. You’ll see. They’ll tell you all the miserable crazy shit I’ve done, all the things I’ve said. I’m afraid of that too. Once you see them, once you hear them, you’ll know better. You’ll see what I am, a crazy stupid bitch, and that’ll be that, and I’ll be alone again.”

  I let go and turned to face her. I carefully framed her sad teary face with my hands and kissed her. I didn’t like this side of her.

  “Agnes, no one’s going to tell me what to think.” I could feel an old anger of my own welling up. “I don’t like it when you assume that I’ll take off just because you’ve had a hard time with your ex, or said some things that you’re are ashamed of. I know what it’s like, I had a hard time with my ex too, and I said some terrible things to her. I know it’s hard to have your dreams and watch them fall apart. I know it’s hard to love someone and have it fail. I know it’s hard to look back at all the time you’ve wasted, but that’s life. It’s hard and it wears you down, but Goddammit, I’m not someone who runs at the first sign of trouble and I’m tired of you telling yourself, and me, that I will.”

  My own life was weaving in and out of hers. I’d been here before, being told how I felt and what I would do. And I did run, didn’t I? My failures we’d deal with later.

  “You need to understand something.” I held her tighter.” We’re not here to get back at Simon, or Eric, or Anna, understand? We’re not here to scream and yell, or make a scene. We’re no
t here to find something we’ve lost or wallow in the past. We’re not going to do that. We’re here to move forward, to say we’re sorry, and to make amends for our mistakes, understand? The anger and the pity has to go. The past is past. It’s time to move on. You got that!”

  “Yes,” she said meekly.

  “Yes what?” Her eyes widened as she pondered this side of me. I didn’t like it, but the pity party was dragging me into a nasty pit of self-loathing. I wasn’t going to go there, not again, whether Agnes wanted to or not. I’d already spent too many years there.

  “I understand.” Tears rolled down her face, pooling around my hands. I softened my voice.

  “If you want me to stay, then you need to find a little faith, in yourself and in me. I spent more than twenty years waiting for a love that was never going to happen. I won’t do it again. I won’t wait for you to forgive the past, I won’t! And I won’t be a stand-in and I won’t let you be one either.”

  I kissed her, then let her go. Agnes tried to smile, but it didn’t work. She put her arms back around me and I wiped away the tears. She wasn’t the only crazy person in the room. I looked over at the window. There was still a hint of daylight. I didn’t like this anger welling up again. I needed to get out of this room, get out of this corner.

  “Why don’t we go for a walk? We have some time before we have to be there; some fresh air will do us good. We can check out the neighborhood. What do you say?”

  “Ok.”

  We sat up and wiped our faces. How old do you have to be before you get your shit together? I turned to her.

  “I do have one question, though.”

  “What?” Those big eyes!

  “If this place brings back such sad memories, why are we staying here?”

  “Johnny D knows the owner, so I get a really good rate. Normally it costs like two-fifty a night to stay here. We’re only paying a third of that.”