It seemed as though everyone had one of these gizmos with them wherever they went—that no one could so much as go shopping at the BuyMart without keeping their eyes glued to the things.
After an hour or more of staring, Bea needed to use the restroom. She let herself out of the van, careful that Phyllis didn’t dart out the open door, and walked stiffly into the store.
She used the ladies’ room and washed her hands, then stared at her own face in the mirror. She looked tired. Ragged and unkempt. Lost.
In her third moment of abject panic, it struck Bea that soon people might know she was homeless just by looking at her.
No.
It wasn’t going to be like that. She could take washcloth baths anytime the bathroom was private—not multistalled. She could wash her hair in the sink, and keep it nicely combed. She had that little kit she’d made up . . . but, she realized, she’d left it in the van.
No matter. She would get better at this as time went by.
She let herself out of the ladies’ room. At an angle across the crowded store Bea saw an electronics counter. In its glass case she could see dozens of those computer phones.
They drew her in their direction.
She didn’t want one. Not at all. In fact, she found the idea of walking down the street staring at those little devices repugnant. But she wanted to know what they did for their owners. Even more than that, she wanted to know what they cost.
She expected a salesperson to come along and try to talk her into buying one. But there was no one behind the counter. Bea felt invisible. She walked up and down in front of the glass case, eyeing the baffling devices. They were packaged in boxes that sported colorful photos of the phones at work. On their screens Bea saw weather reports, and sports images. She saw them playing videos, like a small TV set hooked up to nothing.
They cost as much as $700!
These people walking back and forth by her van were paying almost as much for these ridiculous little toys as the Social Security Administration expected her to live on every month of her life.
Bea walked back to her van in the bracing ocean breeze, but forgot to enjoy it. Something was changing inside her, and changing fast. Bea would not have been able to quantify the feeling, or wrap words around it. But there was a definite sense that all bets were off now. The line she had so carefully toed all her life was just a smudge in the dirt behind her. Bea did not feel inclined to look back.
Life was new. Not good. Just new.
Chapter Seven
How Do You Wipe This Thing Clean?
Bea lay on her side on the asphalt of the parking lot, half raised on one arm, waiting for someone to come by. It was dark, but only just barely, and the van was close by if she needed it. She was also close enough to the van that it blocked her view of the BuyMart security camera—and its view of her, which was key.
Her arm was getting a bit tired of holding her up, and still no one had been by. Just her luck to choose a lull in shopper traffic.
To pass the time, she sank more deeply into her role. She had taken a real fall once—well, truth be told, more than once, but she didn’t like to admit it—and she summoned back that feeling. The sense of being physically rattled and mentally disoriented. The way everything that came before the fall is suddenly gone.
“Ma’am? Are you okay?”
A man’s voice. She levered herself up a bit more and looked feebly over her shoulder.
He was a man in his late thirties with a shopping bag in each arm and a young blonde girl on either side of him holding the belt loops of his jeans for parking lot safety.
“He took my purse,” Bea said. “He knocked me over and then before I even knew what was happening I saw him running off with my purse.”
She tossed her head in the general direction of the bushes between parking lot and street.
The man jogged to her, his little girls running to keep up.
“Are you okay? Did he hurt you?”
“Yes, I’m all right. I’m not injured. It just surprised me and I hadn’t quite managed to get back on my feet yet.”
He set his bags on the tarmac and reached his arm out to her, and she took hold of it, and he helped her to her feet.
“I can call the police,” he said, fishing one of those maddening devices out of his shirt pocket. “I have a cell phone.”
Of course you have a cell phone, she thought. With the exception of me, who doesn’t these days?
“Oh, I don’t even know if that will help.” She brushed off the seat of her slacks as she spoke. “You know they’ll never find him. I didn’t get a look at him at all. There’s not one thing I can tell them to help them solve the crime. And I’m not injured. I’ll have to get a new driver’s license is all. And I’ll have to cancel that credit card. And . . . Oh. Uh-oh. I just thought. I’m almost out of gas, and I was going to use my card to fill up my tank so I can go home. I live all the way up in Santa Maria and I’m almost out of gas.”
The man pointed at a gas station sign that rose up between the BuyMart parking lot and the ocean.
“We’ll meet you right over there, okay? And we’ll use my card and we’ll fill you up.”
“That’s awfully kind of you. Are you sure you can afford it?”
“Of course I can. Don’t even worry about it. You have to get home. Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m sure. Thank you. A little shaken up is all.”
“You can drive over there?”
“Absolutely. I’ll see you there in just a few minutes.”
“You don’t have to wash my windshield,” she told him. “That seems like too much to ask.”
“I don’t mind,” he said.
He had parked his SUV close, right at the other side of the pump, so he could keep an eye on his two blonde girls in the backseat. He looked over every few seconds. Meanwhile the pump ran without him, filling her tank.
“I hope you don’t mind, though,” he said. “I did call the police. While I was driving over. They’ll meet us back at the spot where it happened. I just thought it was important. You know? What if he does this to somebody else? And maybe somebody gets hurt next time? Besides, maybe you don’t need to’ve seen him. They have security cameras.”
“Unfortunately my van was blocking the spot where it happened. I’ll bet anything he did that on purpose.”
“But maybe one of the other cameras picked it up.”
Oh, Bea thought. Right. Maybe so. Maybe one of the other, farther-off cameras had a view of the scene. That could be a problem.
She looked into his eyes, and he looked back. He seemed curious, as if unsure what he would find there, or what he was looking for. Then he smiled in a way that looked reassuring. Bea felt bad because he was being so kind. But, she reminded herself, it’s not like he would suddenly wake up in the middle of the night and know he’d been scammed. He felt good about what he was doing. He was helping an old woman mugging victim—he thought—and that was a good thing for him. And he could afford the gas. He’d said so himself.
Still, Bea made a decision while looking into those eyes. Just in that split second. She would have to think of a different scheme. No more helpless old woman pretending to be hurt, because that only brought out the best in people. And who wants to take someone for money while they’re showing you their better nature?
No, she would just have to take people who deserved taking. She didn’t figure they would be hard to find.
“I guess I see your point about the police,” she said. “But one thing I insist on. You’ve done enough. You and your girls go home now. I can wait in the parking lot in my van with the doors locked. I’ll be fine. I refuse to impose on you for one more thing.”
“I guess that would be okay. If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure,” she said.
He topped off her tank and replaced the pump nozzle, and waved. She thanked him, and waved in return. And he drove away. And she drove away.
And Bea kept d
riving until she got all the way to Santa Barbara.
Bea woke in the morning, struggled out of her easy chair, and pulled back the curtains. She was parked on the street at the Santa Barbara waterfront. On her right, waves washed up onto a white sandy beach. Between her van and the ocean ran a strip of narrow park with a bike lane. Now and then joggers or roller skaters breezed by, usually in pairs.
Bea had stopped here because it was a close walk to the pier, and she knew from ancient prior experience that there were public restrooms.
She climbed down from the van and onto the street. As she made her way to the sidewalk, she had to step over a storm drain at the curb.
That was the moment a big idea was born.
Bea stalled there for a minute or two, standing right over the storm drain. Waiting. Waiting for a person to come by with one of those absurdly expensive phones. She couldn’t imagine it would take long.
It’s interesting, she thought. The same brain that couldn’t grasp the concept of outstanding checks just had a clever idea. She didn’t think it out expressly, in words, but the pattern—the fact that her brain grasped what it wanted and dropped what it didn’t want—was hard to miss.
While she waited, she noticed how different everything felt. The sun was strong on her shoulders and scalp, and the breeze seemed to blow right through her and leave her feeling clean. She did not feel at the mercy of the world. She did not feel afraid. Or small. Or out of options. She tried to remember if she had ever felt this way before, but nothing came to mind.
Two young mothers came jogging down the bike lane together, pushing strollers. The taller of the two was staring at one of those infernal devices. Not looking where she was going at all.
“Excuse me,” Bea called.
They stopped.
“Excuse me. May I ask a favor of you? My van is broken down and I need to call the repair shop. My usual man. You know. He’ll come out and give me a tow.”
The woman just stood there for a few seconds. Both women just stood.
“It’ll only take a second. It’s a local call.”
The woman with the phone looked down at it. Stared at it almost longingly. As if that were her child in her hand, and the passenger in the stroller only an afterthought. As if it pained her to think of parting with it for a few seconds.
Then she walked closer and held the phone out to Bea.
Bea had no idea how to use such a contraption, of course. But it hardly mattered. She looked down at it, then turned away, shading her eyes, as if to find a direction that would produce less glare on the screen. She slipped the phone into the inside pocket of her jacket. Then she reached down suddenly as if trying to catch a falling object.
“Oh no!” she cried, turning back. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to drop it.”
She held up her hands to show how empty they were.
“Did it break?” the woman asked, running back to Bea now, her voice shrieky.
“Well, I don’t know. I can’t even see it. It went down there.”
Bea pointed. Down. She and the woman stood a moment, staring into the seemingly endless dark abyss of the storm drain.
“That was a seven-hundred-dollar iPhone 6!” the woman squeaked. “That was almost brand new!”
Bea thanked the woman, silently, in the privacy of her head, for being someone she didn’t mind taking.
“I’m so sorry. I feel just awful. I’d pay you for it if I could. But I don’t have that kind of money. I don’t know what to do.”
Bea watched the woman’s face in the intervening silence. It was reddening. To an alarming degree. And still nothing was being said. And yes, Bea was afraid. Of course she was. Who wouldn’t be? But the fear made her feel exhilarated. It made her feel alive.
All her life Bea had felt fear, especially fear of the lack that seemed to hide around every corner, and all her life she’d been ruled by it. But now she had a new secret weapon: nothing to lose. And that was a freedom the likes of which Bea had never known.
A few seconds later the woman’s friend came, took her by the shoulder, and led her back to the bike path, while they shared clipped words together.
“But she—”
“There’s nothing you can do, Bev. It was an accident.”
“But it was my brand-new—”
“She doesn’t have money. She can’t pay you for it. Come on. Let’s just go.”
The aggrieved woman looked over her shoulder once at Bea. As if there might be some remote chance of having her losses restored. Then she turned away.
Bea waited and watched until they were gone.
She began the slow, longish walk to the pier and its public restrooms.
“Excuse me,” she said to the attendant of a parking lot as she passed by. “Is there a pawnshop in this town?”
“There are a couple,” he called back. “How well do you know the city?”
It was ironic, when Bea thought about it. Based on what she’d seen in the BuyMart display case, the phone in her pocket could probably have located a pawnshop for her. If only Bea knew how to use it, or even cared enough to learn.
“It was a present from my granddaughter,” Bea told the man behind the counter. “It’s really important that I not hurt her feelings. She can’t know I’m selling it. But I’ll never use it. So I just need you to tell me how to make sure she won’t find out. She’d be crushed.”
Bea honestly didn’t know if these gadgets stored identifying information. But she knew she’d had a log of numbers and a call history on her home phone, and that it would be best if the new owner of this device received no calls intended for the jogger.
“Oh, that’s easy. Assuming it’s not locked, or if you have the password, we can erase everything in one go,” the man said. He had big muttonchop sideburns, which Bea thought had gone out of style years ago, and wore a denim vest over a short-sleeved T-shirt. “Just go to ‘Settings’ . . .”
“I have no idea how to go to ‘Settings.’ I never got the hang of the thing at all.”
“Here. Want me to?”
“Please.”
She handed it to him, and took her own emotional temperature. She couldn’t help it. It was such a daring thing to do. She knew she should be afraid. But, oddly . . . not so much. She was just a little old lady, after all. Who would suspect her? And the phone had not been reported stolen. It would never be reported stolen.
Bea felt . . . well, it was a hard thing to admit, even inwardly, but she felt proud of herself for figuring out how to steal a phone in such a way that no one would ever report it stolen.
“You sure you want everything deleted?”
“Yes, everything.”
“Okay.”
While she waited, Bea looked around. She saw a saxophone in a glass display case. Two rifles hanging on the wall behind the counter. Several amplifiers on the floor, the kind musicians use. An electric guitar.
She thought about her lamps and kitchen utensils at home and wondered if the people who pawned these items had felt the same panicky sense of loss—the kind that almost feels like an erasure of one’s identity—and whether any of them would see their precious belongings again.
“Okay,” the man said. “Done.”
“That was fast. What will you give me for it? Maybe I should have asked that first.”
“Depends on whether you want to pawn it or sell it outright.”
“Oh, sell it outright. I’ll never want it back.”
“Did you bring the power cord to recharge it?”
“No, I didn’t think of it. Is that a problem?”
“I could offer more if you had it. But this is a nice new model. I can go seventy-five.”
“I’ll take it.”
He counted the cash into her hand.
She walked out into the street and blinked in the bright sunlight. The air was temperate and warm, the breeze cool. She had a full tank of gas. She had enough money in her pocket for another tank of gas when that one was gone. She co
uld even stop for a hamburger if she wanted, at that fast-food grill she could see from here.
But she wouldn’t stay in Santa Barbara long. She decided that almost instantly. Because she didn’t need to. She would cruise on up the coast. Sitting in one place is for people who can’t afford gas money.
When she returned to her van, she found Phyllis sunning on the dashboard.
We’re both getting used to things, Bea thought.
Imagine thinking this new life would be boring, with endless hours to kill and nothing to do. The world was full of places she’d never seen, and people and cell phones to get her there.
“Where to next?” she asked the cat.
Then she started the engine. Phyllis half jumped, half fell into the litter box below, then scrambled under the passenger seat to hide.
It should have been an omen to Bea. A warning not to get too confident. But in that moment she was too busy feeling good for a change.
That night, with Phyllis snoring on her lap, Bea lay awake in her easy chair for a long time, wishing she had that phone back.
If she still had it, she’d figure out how to use the darn thing. Then she’d call Opal. Even though she really wouldn’t have, not at that hour, because it wasn’t Opal’s house and she wouldn’t want to make trouble by calling late. But an ache inside her wanted to hear a familiar voice.
She had to settle for Phyllis’s snoring.
PART TWO
ALLIE
Chapter Eight
Carmen Miranda’s Outlaw Sister
For Allie, it began like this: She knew and she didn’t know. She watched her parents and knew something was wrong. Anybody can do that. Any idiot knows when something is wrong. What kind of something—that’s a brass-ring prize, and Allie had not managed to reach out and grab it.
For weeks she’d walked into the professionally decorated rooms of their Pacific Palisades home and noted how quickly her parents went silent. How their whispering heads jerked farther apart.
Allie and Bea : A Novel Page 4