Tawny opens the door as I’m parking my bike at the back entrance.
“You’re thirty minutes late,” she says.
“My ride didn’t show.”
“Awww, that’s a shame.” She’s all pleased with herself and smirky, probably mostly because she’s the reason I’m late, but it’s possible that some of the smirk is about my hair. It is pretty windy.
She glances at the bike. “Maybe I’ll borrow that later without asking.”
“Go right ahead,” I say. “But the air whistling through all those holes in your face is going to make a damn racket.”
She makes a noise like an old man, “harrumph,” and then under her breath she calls me, and I couldn’t make this up if I tried, a twat waffle. Truly, this girl’s potty mouth is a work of art. Twat waffle. It’s amazing. Better than fartknocker and way better than dickbag. I hurry inside to find a pencil and paper to write this one down. It’s a keeper.
Fritter is nowhere in sight to witness my tardiness, so I act casual, grab the cart of books to be reshelved, and head out into the aisles as if I’ve been here all morning. Unfortunately, I haven’t ventured far before I once more detect an odor of poo. Since I have no interest in volunteering for another turd hunt, I ignore the smell and get to work.
A woman about my age, attractive in a well-put-together way—a look that I have never managed to achieve and therefore find highly irritating—approaches me as I wheel the book cart into the Biography section.
“Excuse me,” she whispers, “I don’t want to be rude but . . .”
I stop and wait for her to finish. Whatever she says next will be rude, of course, because anytime someone begins a sentence with “I don’t want to be rude but . . .” what comes next is invariably rude.
The woman knits her perfectly plucked brows and says, “Do you smell dookie?”
“No. Sorry,” I reply in my best adenoidal voice. “Allergies.”
My next stop is the Children’s section. By this time I’ve habituated a bit to the smell, but obviously it hasn’t gone anywhere. I see one young mother lift her squirming toddler’s diapered fanny to nose height and take a sniff. I quickly shelve the two books in my hand and continue on my rounds before this woman doesn’t want to be rude, but . . .
Once I finish with the books on the cart, I go to the Reference section; I want to take a look at some of the really old high school yearbooks. I have an idea. And of course, it is there, in the Reference section, that the dookie lurks. It’s on the small side, like the last one, and this time it’s balanced on a shelf rather than on the floor. In fact, this UFO isn’t just on any shelf; it is placed neatly in the gap left by the yearbooks I swiped Tuesday. Someone isn’t just shitting in the library, someone is messing with me.
To avoid alerting Fritter to the missing yearbooks, I grab some paper towels, disinfectant, gloves, and a plastic bag from the back room and clean it up myself. I notice as I’m picking up this firm, brown beauty that there is something embedded in the poo. Lifting it up as close to my face as I dare, I look closer. It’s a cigarette butt. Very interesting.
I toss the UFO in the Dumpster in the parking lot, and then while I’m out there I make a stop at Tawny’s truck, which is locked, of course. It’s certainly possible that this is merely a reaction to my liberal borrowing policy, but it could also be because of the bundle lying on the passenger-side floorboard. It’s well camouflaged by a mound of crumpled fast-food sacks; in fact, if I hadn’t been in the truck yesterday, I probably wouldn’t notice the mysterious addition. There’s a filthy towel covering the lump that just happens to be the size of, say, my mother’s camera bag and Nick’s guitar strap nestled snugly together. I go around to the passenger’s side and lean against the window, cupping my hands around my face to see inside. The towel is mostly tucked in on this side, too, but from here I can see the rounded tip of something brown leather outlined in stitching. It looks a little like the end of a belt, barely visible between a wadded-up Burger King sack and a Coke can. If I were a bettin’ man like Mr. Nester, I’d bet that’s the tail end of a collector’s-item-near-mint-condition-brown-leather-guitar-strap-signed-by-Jimmy-Page-and-Jeff-Beck.
As tempted as I am to go grab one of the bricks lying by the Dumpster and smash the truck window to retrieve my possessions, I really want to know why Tawny took them in the first place—especially all those random photo negatives. She spent a long time riffling through my mother’s desk drawers to collect all those. Why would she bother? Not that the camera bag, cameras, and the guitar strap are necessarily valuable, but she could have just swiped those to piss me off. But all those negatives? They’re worthless. I think with a little finesse I can get my shit back and find out why she stole it all in the first place. In fact, a plan for dealing with this juvenile delinquent is starting to take shape, but it will have to wait. First I need to go back inside and look at those old yearbooks.
In the senior chapter of the 1958 book, I find my grandmother Matilda “Tilda” Thayer, Most Talented Girl. And there’s Fritter Jackson. Under her name it says, Our Little Firecracker. I suppose I can see someone describing Fritter as a firecracker if by firecracker they meant enormous pain in the ass.
I look in the index to find more photos of Tilda and Fritter, and I come across a picture of the two of them posing with their dates—the girls in taffeta, the boys in suits. The caption underneath reads, Tilda and Fritter bringing a couple of familiar faces to the prom. Welcome back, Gene and Dick! The boy with his arm around my grandmother is clearly the guy that Fritter identified as Eugene. The other boy, the one next to Fritter, I don’t recognize.
In the 1956 volume, I find Eugene Wallace in the senior section. The Lone Ranger it says beneath his name. It doesn’t take long for me to find Fritter’s date, Dick, in this book as well: Richard Hambly, also a senior. Tonto is written beneath his name.
Hmmmm . . . If Little Firecracker won’t tell me what happened to The Lone Ranger, maybe Tonto will.
Just a couple shelves above the yearbooks are the Gandy phone books for the past several years. I find Richard Hambly’s listing, and after looking around to make sure I’m unobserved, I rip out the page, stuff it in my pocket and then quickly replace the phone book and the yearbooks back on their shelves. Next, after making sure Fritter wasn’t lurking anywhere nearby, I wander back to the far corner set apart from the rest of the room with its beige cabinets and little row of microfiche readers. Once I figure out how to use the filing system it doesn’t take me long to find the correct microfilm reels and suss out how to run the projector.
I get lucky; news of Eugene Wallace’s death appears about halfway through the second reel. I’d been checking the obituaries, so when that turned up, beloved son, dear friend, leaving behind parents, Burneel and Carter Wallace, fiancée Tilda Thayer etc. . . . I went backward looking for the report of the initial accident or whatever it was that caused his death.
And I find nothing. Not a mention of an accident, not a mention of an illness. Nothing. I zip forward and backward through the dates surrounding the obituary, but don’t see the name Eugene Wallace anywhere.
I’m still sitting there in front of the monitor, defeated, when Tawny wanders over.
She grabs the chair next to me, turns it around backward and straddles it. “Whatcha looking at?”
“Old newspapers.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure,” I reply, still turning the wheel, watching page after page sliding by. “Either I’m making a big deal out of nothing, or I’m trying to uncover a well-hidden secret.”
“Cool.”
“Cool?”
“Secrets are awesome.”
I turn to look at Tawny. She’s wearing a wide grin.
“My secrets aren’t awesome,” I tell her, and it’s the truth.
“Not to you, because you already know them,” she replies. “But they’d be awesome to me.”
From the sparkle in her eyes, I can see that the girl believes what s
he’s just said. She would love to have a secret of mine—my worst one, in fact. She wants to hold it in her hand and weigh my pain against her own. I wonder how long it’s been since I was young enough to think that was a contest worth winning.
I shake my head. “Most people’s secrets are just sad. Some are terrible.”
“They’re still irresistible,” she insists, “like a scab you can’t help but pick.”
I turn back to the microfiche reader.
Tawny watches me read for a second or two and then says, “Somebody named Karleen called for you. She sounded pissed.”
I pull out my phone and check the time: one thirty. Shit!
“Is she still on the phone?”
“Nah, it was like an hour ago. When I told her you’d gone to lunch, she just hung up.”
“But I didn’t go to lunch. I was here!”
“How was I supposed to know that?”
“You could have looked around for me.”
“I could have, I guess,” Tawny says, and then she shrugs. “Oh well.”
I feel myself swell with rededication to my plan to mess with this most irritating teenager. Revenge may be a dish best served cold, but when you’re really hungry, the temperature isn’t all that important.
“I was actually just about to come talk to you,” I say, wearing my most disappointed face. “I’m afraid that tonight isn’t going to work well for developing pictures either.”
“Is that right?” Tawny’s smirk from earlier this morning is back. She’s waiting for me to talk about last night’s break-in and how there aren’t any negatives left to develop.
“Yeah, I’ve got another date. We’ll need to put off the darkroom lesson until tomorrow. Okay?”
She’s confused but trying not to show it. I imagine that she’s thinking it’s possible I haven’t yet noticed the missing negatives, guitar strap, and camera bag, although she’s got to be wondering how I could have missed the dogs’ absence.
“So . . .” she draws out the word, buying herself a little time to decide how to play this scene. I don’t interrupt her; I’m enjoying it too much. Finally she says, “So, everything else is okay? You just need another rain check?”
“Yup. Everything’s great, thanks. And last night I found a bunch of hidden negatives. We’ll print those tomorrow. No telling what’s on them.”
If I had even the slightest doubt that Tawny was the burglar, it is put to rest when I see her startled reaction and how quickly she tries to hide her surprise.
“So are we on for tomorrow night?” I say.
“No problem.” She’s careful to keep her face neutral, but her cheeks are flushed, and in her eyes is just the tiniest glint of mischief. She’s not a terrible liar, but she’s not as good as I am. She’ll get better though, if she keeps working this hard at it.
“I really am sorry to cancel, but if we did it tonight I’m afraid we’d have to rush. I’ll be at the house until eight o’clock, but then I’ll be gone until midnight at least.” I’m laying the time specifics on a little thick, but I don’t feel like I have a choice. If things go my way, I’ll be making a quick excursion this afternoon right after work, and I need the girl’s upcoming criminal caper to happen when I’m back at home waiting.
Tawny stands up, stretching like a cat. Her T-shirt lifts enough to show a thick metal barbell through the skin above her navel. “So, are you going to take your lunch break now?” she asks.
“In a minute,” I say, turning back to the microfiche reader. Eugene Wallace, beloved son, dear friend, leaving behind parents, Burneel and Carter Wallace, fiancée Tilda Thayer . . .
Tawny stands behind me, reading over my shoulder. I’m ready for her to leave, and I can tell she senses that, which is why she lingers.
She leans down and whispers, “Like I said, irresistible.”
“I don’t pick scabs,” I reply.
Tawny laughs. “Don’t be stupid. Of course you do.”
I open my mouth to argue, but I’m too late. She’s already walking away. Before I turn off the projector and put away the film, I read the obituary once more. In fact, I read it several more times. I’m glad Tawny isn’t here to watch me do it.
CHAPTER 36
The sky is a mixed bag this afternoon, almost too blue to look at in spots, but there are also some scattered clouds, gray and swollen, chugging past. I step from sunlight to shade to sunlight again as I walk down the hill toward Luke’s office. It’s refreshing right now, but I imagine it’s not much fun when a real storm hits here, adding heavy rain to this ceaseless wind.
Since I have only a half-hour lunch break, it’s time to get started, so I set my phone to private caller and dial Richard Hambly’s number. An old man answers, and once I verify that the voice is that of Mr. Hambly, I feed him a line of bullshit about me being from the gas company and that we need to work on his gas line. He’s a good citizen so he agrees to be home this afternoon between five and seven, so I thank him and quickly hang up before he could start wondering why the gas company would have its phone set as a private caller. Now all I need is a ride.
Pushing open the door of Barber, Smith, and Franklin, I find myself momentarily disheartened. The gloom of the outer office, the sight of perky Patty sitting behind her desk exactly where she was the last time I came in—for a second it feels like I’m starting this craptastic adventure all over again.
I head straight to Luke’s office, tossing a “He’s expecting me” over my shoulder.
I stop at his door and tap my knuckles on his doorjamb.
He glances up from his computer and laughs. “Look at you!”
I make a quick clothing inspection, but nothing seems to be hanging out anywhere. “What?”
“Your hair . . . it’s um . . .”
“Yeah, well, it’s windy in case you haven’t noticed.”
“I like it.”
“Really?” I put up a hand to pat at the fluffy mess that is, to be honest, a bit more out of control than I’d realized.
He grins. “I’ve always been a Bon Jovi fan.”
I tell him to fuck off—in the nicest possible way, of course. He laughs, and I’m laughing, too, although I’m also trying to get my fingers through my hair to calm it down a little. I’m not overly vain, but . . . Jon Bon Jovi?
“I’m glad you stopped by,” Luke says. “I asked Patty about the keys to your grandmother’s house, and you don’t have anything to worry about. We had the locks changed right after your grandmother passed, so there are no keys floating around. You have one, and we have the other.”
“Uh . . . okay . . .” I’m momentarily dumbfounded. All the doors and windows were locked last night when I got home; unless perky Patty is Tawny’s partner in crime—which seems highly unlikely—somehow Tawny does have a key.
“What wrong?” he asks.
I consider explaining to Luke how I know that he’s wrong about the keys, but then he’d probably call Fritter and there would be a thing with Fritter and Tawny. And although I’d probably get all my stuff back, I might never find out what all the sneaking around was about. Plus, the alternate scenario, the one in which I catch Tawny in the act, wrestle her to the ground, and sit on her head until she talks, is simply too tempting to relinquish.
“Nothing,” I reply.
“What is it?”
I laugh and shake my head. “Everything is fine. Trust me.” This is always bad advice coming from me, but surprisingly enough, Luke seems to take it.
“All right, then. Oh, and Patty watered the plants last week, but it’s probably time to water them again.”
I nod. “It’s already done.”
“Thanks,” he replies.
“It was no trouble,” I say which is absolutely true since I wasn’t the one who did it. “But I do have a favor to ask.”
I pull the phone book page from my back pocket, and set it in front of Luke. He frowns at the crumpled paper on his desk and it occurs to me that tearing a page out of a phone book is
probably not the sort of thing he would do. Furthermore, as he tentatively begins to unfold the page, I see that I have somehow also passed along another slip of paper that was certainly not meant for him. Now, not only does my casual phone book vandalism make me look like an asshole, I look like a crazy asshole.
“I should have written the address down instead of tearing the page out,” I admit. “Sorry.”
He nods, but his attention is on the other piece of paper. There’s an awkward pause while both of us try to come up with what to say about a piece of paper upon which is written only the words twat waffle.
“I’m trying to decide on my rapper name,” I tell him.
Luke grins up at me with an expression of bemused wonder, but he hands the slip of paper back to me without further comment.
“You mentioned needing a favor?” he says.
“I need to go someplace after work, but I still don’t have a car . . .”
“Where?”
I flatten out the crumpled phone book page and point to Hambly’s address. Luke deliberately picks up a pen and writes the address on a Post-it note.
“I’ll pick you up at five,” he tells me.
“I’ll also need a ride home after.”
“Naturally.”
“Sorry.”
“No trouble,” he replies, but I don’t think either of us believes that.
He passes back the phone book page and then watches without comment while I carefully fold it up and slide it back into my pocket. I’m not sure why I bother—it’s not like I can untear it out of the book.
“When we’re finished this afternoon,” he says, “do you want to go get some dinner?”
The invitation catches me off guard. In every single interaction with this man I have come across as nothing but a big hot mess. What is he thinking?
“Sorry, I have plans for later tonight.” This is true, assuming Tawny takes the bait I so elaborately dangled before her, but I worry that my reply sounds like a blow off, so I quickly counter with, “How about tomorrow?”
The Art of Crash Landing Page 20