Something in her tone made me think she had snooped through Darla’s stuff when she wasn’t here, to see if there had been any dope.
“No dope at all, huh?” I asked.
“Yee-ah,” Lucy said as if that were the dumbest question I could ask. “If she was dealing, we could’ve all been arrested, and my dad wouldn’t’ve believed me if I said I wasn’t involved. That was, like, something we all had to agree to. And no smoking weed in the apartment. Because Dad said when he bought the place, he said he could just as easily rent to some other students as us, and we didn’t dare forget it.”
Obviously she hadn’t.
“You think she disappeared because of drugs?” I asked quietly.
“No.” Lucy’s answer was firm. “She was getting straight As. You don’t do that and toke up, you know?”
Straight As. Came into money. Stopped talking to her friends. None of this added up.
“Have you talked to anyone else about her disappearing?” I asked.
“Just the other two girls,” Lucy said. “I thought maybe she was visiting them or something. She wasn’t.”
We reached the living room. It no longer looked like a slobby mess to me. It looked like one girl’s cry for help. Lucy, who felt all alone.
I could empathize.
“I don’t know if I should move in here,” I said. “I don’t want to take her room away.”
“We’d just move her to the other room,” Lucy said.
“And then what when the others come back? I mean, it seems too up in the air to me.”
Lucy bit her lower lip. “I don’t think she’s—oh, I don’t know. I get it, but I’d like company, you know?”
I nodded. “I can’t move in, though, thinking I might have to move again. Sorry.”
I extended my hand. Lucy looked at it like it was covered in mud. My “decision” not to take the apartment had made her angry. Which was ironic, considering she hadn’t even thought about the possibility of a sublet before I came here.
“She’s just screwing us,” Lucy said. “Jeez.”
“I think something’s wrong,” I said. “I think you should do something.”
“You figure out what I should do, you tell me,” Lucy said. “Because I sure have no fucking idea.”
She yanked the door open and stood beside it, waiting for me to leave.
“Thanks,” I said as I walked out.
“For nothing,” she said, and slammed the door so hard that the wall shook.
I stood there for a moment. I would have thought that Darla moved because Lucy was so volatile if it weren’t for that stuffed dog.
If Darla had hated it in this apartment, she would have taken the stuffed dog, just like she had brought it to college with her.
A straight-A student, who had come into money, who was not political, and who was missing.
I liked this less than I had when I arrived.
And I had no idea what to do with the information I’d gotten.
I had no idea at all.
24
Val
I hovered in the entry of the apartment building longer than I should have. I was deeply disturbed by my conversation with Lucy. Finally, I had taken a piece of paper from my purse, and I had written my phone number on it, along with a note.
If you hear from Darla, call me.
I hadn’t signed it, because I couldn’t bring myself to do that, not with the false name. I slid the note under Lucy’s door, and then I left.
I meandered my way home. I thought of going back to the gym, but I had no idea if the others would be there. Pammy probably would, but she would be teaching. Eagle was supposed to be visiting hospitals.
And honestly, I was exhausted. My muscles ached, and I had dealt with more emotions than I had in a long time. Not just other people’s but my own as well.
Lucy had presented me with a conundrum.
Darla had come into money. Darla wasn’t involved in any movement. Darla wasn’t selling drugs.
Darla had disappeared, and no one knew how to find her.
I had disappeared as well, and no one knew how to find me. I had disappeared just like Darla had: Everyone thought I was doing one thing—traveling—when I was really doing something else.
I had left home for good.
The streets were filled with college kids and professors, all moving with some kind of purpose. The occasional businessman would weave his way through them, probably heading to his parking space.
I walked, and didn’t weave as much as kept to the curb.
Even if the cops were interested in Darla’s disappearance, they probably wouldn’t investigate. They knew that most missing persons—if those persons weren’t children—had either disappeared on purpose or they had no idea that others thought they were missing. It wasn’t worth the manpower or the resources to search for someone who either wanted to get away or would return on their own.
I knew exactly how Truman would have handled this investigation, because once he learned how interested I was in procedure, he would tell me the unusual ways he would get information from someone unwilling to give it.
With missing persons, he would say, the questions most cops asked weren’t the right ones. Questions like Where did you last see the missing person? only told you where the person and the reporting party had last been at the same time. Questions like that told you as much about the person reporting as the person missing.
The same with Did she say she was leaving town? and other questions of that ilk. Because all they did was reveal more about the relationship between the missing person and the reporting party.
If cops actually had the time to do lots of legwork, and managed to talk with everyone, then maybe they would get the information they wanted with those questions. Otherwise, the questions were useless.
Because, if someone were investigating my “disappearance” from Chicago, they would get different stories depending on who they asked. They would get a hundred answers from people who had “no idea” that Val was gone, let alone missing. Those same people wouldn’t tell the police about my reasons for leaving, either, with all the losses that I suffered, because I had only told two people.
If the cops failed to talk to Marvella or Paulette, then they would never be able to figure out that I had left deliberately. And they certainly wouldn’t be able to check with me, because neither Marvella or Paulette knew where I had ended up.
If Marvella or Paulette had guessed, they would still have been wrong, because I hadn’t had any idea where I was going when I left Chicago. I only knew I was going west.
Based on past conversations, Marvella and Paulette might have told the police that I probably ended up in Madison, since I had some friends there, or that I was thinking about Boston, which I had a few years ago. I had vowed I would never go south. It frightened me down there, so they might mention that.
But I had never mentioned California—at least not as a place to disappear to—and they wouldn’t consider it, any more than I initially had.
They were probably so worried about me. And they had no way to find me.
I veered into a deli I hadn’t seen before to pick up dinner. It looked like they were getting ready to close. Most of the meat was out of the glass cabinets, and only one person stood behind the cash register.
I ordered a roast beef and cheddar with horseradish on rye. As the man behind the counter took the last of the roast beef out of the glass cabinet, I glanced around the deli.
Small, spotless tables. A refrigeration unit with bottles of soda. Some scattered newspapers. And a rack of postcards.
The postcards made me let out a small breath. I didn’t want to call Marvella or Paulette. I couldn’t talk to them—not yet.
But a postcard would solve it all. I could tell them I ended up here, send them my address, and let them know I would be in touch.
I wandered over to the rack and found a cheery Greetings From Berkeley! postcard. It had a jaunty hand-drawn map wit
h the bay, the parks, and the campus. I grabbed two, and paid for them along with my sandwich.
Then I walked the rest of the way home, still uncertain about what to do about Darla. But at least I had rejoined the land of the living—as far as what was left of my family was concerned.
25
Pammy
The last class ended at 8:30. The women filed into the locker room like it could fit all of them. Some emerged quickly, holding purses, car keys, an extra pair of shoes. Others lined up for the shower.
Pammy hoped Stella wouldn’t show up early. In theory, Stella was going to bring a woman and her daughter to the door off the alley, but theories didn’t always work as planned.
Pammy stood near the counter and glanced at the plate-glass window. The street was in shadow, but it still had some late-summer evening light. A group of her students stood just outside, talking and laughing. The laughter in particular filtered through the glass. The sound of the shower continued behind Pammy.
She should have ended the class earlier. She wanted to, and then she got involved explaining how to properly make a fist, and there were questions, and the next thing she knew, it was 8:25. Wrapping everything up took an extra five minutes, no matter how hard she tried to speed it up.
She looked at the wristwatch she almost never wore. It was a girl’s Timex with a brown leather band. Her father had given it to her when she graduated from high school, telling her that being on time was as important as being honest and trustworthy.
She had stopped wearing the watch when she opened the gym, but she kept the watch here. She still used it to keep track of the time—the last thing she wanted was a clock overhead so that the students would watch it—but she was afraid the watch would get damaged because she forgot she had it on.
Tonight, she had put it on to remember to pay attention to the time. It had worked. The band felt tight against her skin. Tight and uncomfortable. The leather had hardened since she stopped wearing it regularly.
It was 8:40. The showers were still running, but no women had threaded their way out of the locker room in the last five minutes.
At quarter to, she’d go in and remind them that she had to close up shop at 9:00.
The front door opened, letting in the laughter from the group of women still congregated out front. Pammy glanced over, expecting one of them to have returned.
Instead, Strawberry walked in, wearing a gauzy white dress without a bra underneath it. Pammy winced. She hated the braless trend among some young women, particularly when they made no effort to hide their nipples.
She liked to think her response was a protective one, but she suspected her age was showing, just a bit. The few times she’d mentioned the braless thing to some of her students, they had laughed at her and called her old-fashioned.
Men can go without shirts, they would often say. Why can’t we?
She never answered them. But she wanted to argue: In a perfect world, women can do anything. But this world isn’t perfect and women have to live in it, dealing with the men around them and the realities on the ground.
That was one reason why she taught women how to defend themselves—the realities of the world they all lived in.
She realized suddenly that she was staring at Strawberry’s torso, and flushed.
Strawberry didn’t seem to notice. She walked up to the counter, and plunked her backpack on top. The backpack clanked.
“I got two lists, like you asked, and baby food,” she said, sounding cheerful, as if the tensions from the afternoon had never happened.
“Baby food?” Pammy asked, heart sinking.
“Oh, yeah, didn’t I tell you? Stella asked for baby food too, but the store I went to on Telegraph this afternoon didn’t have any, so I had to go to Safeway tonight. There wasn’t a lot of choice.”
Pammy let out a small sigh. “I didn’t realize that Stella was bringing a baby.”
“She didn’t say exactly what she was doing,” Strawberry said, “so I have no idea what’s going on except that it sounds bad. I feel like we’ve become a way station in the Underground Railroad or something. The woman’s only going to spend one night before she moves on somewhere else.”
Pammy sighed. She felt out of control. She should have known about the baby. And she didn’t like the way that Strawberry talked. The gym was for the women who came here, yes, but it wasn’t a “we.” It was Pammy’s gym.
Maybe she would have to remind everyone about that. A lot of rules had gotten lost since the riots in the spring.
“Take the food to the kitchen,” she said, “and leave me the lists.”
“Yes, sir!” Strawberry saluted. Apparently Pammy’s tone was crisper than she had intended it to be.
Strawberry pushed the papers she had brought with her toward Pammy, and picked up the backpack. It clanked again. Pammy hoped that the baby food was well packed, because from the sound of that clanking, the glass jars might have cracked inside the pack.
She pulled the papers Strawberry had left toward her. Strawberry had brought two piles, both yellow legal paper with the sheets stapled together.
Strawberry walked around the counter, and said hi to someone behind her, then headed toward the kitchen, sandals squeaking.
Two women, hair wet from the shower, passed Pammy and said their goodnights. The showers still hummed behind her, though, which meant that someone was still in the locker room.
Pammy turned the papers around. One list was titled Truck List, and the other was titled Vanished! Both were covered in big loopy handwriting.
Pammy didn’t care about the truck list, at least not at this moment. Where Strawberry and her friends had heard about the truck really didn’t matter right now, not as much as the list of people who had disappeared.
Pammy moved the handwritten list next to the list that the students from the earlier class had given her.
Strawberry’s list did not have organizations marked beside the names. Pammy couldn’t exactly remember what Strawberry’s instructions were. Had they known at that moment to add the organizations to the list or had Pammy just done that on her own, after the prolonged discussion with Strawberry?
“Hey, Pammy! See you next week!”
She looked up. Two more women were walking out, leaving the scent of soap and perfume behind them. Neither of them looked back at her as they left.
She glanced at the wristwatch again. It was quarter to. She sighed, wanting to go through the names, not police her gym, hustling everyone out so that Stella’s friend could show up.
Pammy turned the papers over and placed two mostly empty cups on top of them. The cups had just a few drops of water in them, not enough to damage the papers if the cups fell over. But the cups’ presence should be just enough deterrent for anyone who wanted to see exactly what Pammy was up to.
She went to the locker room and opened the door. A wall of fragrant steam hit her. Four women, all in different stages of undress, looked up at her. Only one grabbed a towel and placed it over her mostly-clad body, as if Pammy had offended her modesty.
One shower remained on, the dark shower curtain pulled. The other shower dripped onto the tile that she had laid herself. Water pooled slightly on the drain, something she was going to have to fix.
The room felt crowded. It was barely big enough for all four women and for Pammy. She had no idea how more women had managed to squeeze inside.
“I’m getting ready to close up,” she said. “I have an appointment at nine. Would you let her know?”
She nodded toward the shower, since she had no idea who was in there.
“Sure,” said the woman wearing the towel. She was new-ish. This was her second week of class. She had been doing pretty well, too, as if she already had some athletic experience.
“Thanks,” Pammy said, and pulled the door closed. She rubbed her hand over her face, removing the beads of water that the steam had left behind.
She wiped her wet hand on the side of her shorts, and glanced
at the kitchen door. She had forgotten to eat dinner. She did that sometimes, and she always paid for it later.
But she wasn’t going in there right now, not with Strawberry setting everything up for Stella. If Stella and her friend arrived early, Pammy was counting on Strawberry to keep them out of the main room until the remaining women left.
Pammy went back to the counter and took the cups off the lists. She looked at the first name on the large list again—Britt Stevens. She assumed that was a girl’s name, but she couldn’t be sure. The writing was unclear in both cases. It might have been Brett Stevens.
She sighed, then ran her hand down Strawberry’s list. Pammy didn’t see a Britt or a Brett. There was a Steven Klepple, but that name was significantly different from Brett or Britt Stevens so that Pammy didn’t think they were the same person.
Why couldn’t this project be easy? With her thumb and forefinger, she rubbed the bridge of her nose, willing the tension away.
“Almost everyone’s dressed.”
She jumped and turned, not realizing that someone stood behind her. The new woman had a towel rolled up under one arm and a purse in the other. She was wearing a yellow sundress and sandals. She looked like someone who was heading to dinner, not someone who had just exercised.
“I think they’ll be out in a minute or two,” she added.
“Thanks,” Pammy said, and resisted the urge to look at her watch.
The woman waved and went out the front door. Pammy frowned. The shower wasn’t running any longer, which was a good sign.
She resisted the urge to go back to the locker room and demand that everyone leave.
Instead, she went over the lists again. No Britt/Brett Stevens on Strawberry’s list. Steven Klepple on Strawberry’s list, but not on the large list.
Although how could Pammy know that for certain? For all she knew, Steven Klepple was Janus (Nickname) as one person was listed, or maybe he was Soapy (m) as someone had listed someone else. (Who let himself be called “Soapy?” and why?)
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