by G. M. Ford
“Okay now,” she said. “Gonna turn you round here and we’ll see how your hair came out.”
She swung the chair in a one-eighty, then pumped one of the chair’s handles several times, lowering the chair until Paul’s neck slid into the indentation in the sink.
“Your neck was any bigger we’d have to wash your hair in the back room, like we do with some of the real big girls.” She pulled his hair out from beneath his head. “You’re gonna need to slide down a little.”
Paul grabbed the arms of the chair and pushed. When he opened his eyes she was looking down at him. “You’re not much of a talker, now, are you?” She smiled and turned on the water in the sink.
“Depends,” Paul said.
“On what?”
“On who I’m talking to, I guess.”
“I’m Brittany.”
Paul closed his eyes. The silence rose above the rush of water. She put her hand on her hip, waited a moment, and then leaned in close. “This is the part in the conversation where you tell me your name,” she whispered in his ear. His eyes popped open.
“Hi, Brittany,” he said. “I’m…” He hesitated. “I’m Paul, I guess.”
“You guess?” She started to laugh, but caught herself.
“It’s a long story.”
“You don’t know who you are?”
“Not exactly.”
She began to run his hair under the rushing water. “How’s the temp?” she asked.
He said it was fine. She began to rinse the excess dye from his hair, separating the strands and holding them under the running water, keeping at it until all traces of dye disappeared and the rinse water ran clear.
She wrapped a pink towel around his hair and sat him up. “I used to think I was adopted,” she said. “I just couldn’t believe I was part of that family of mine. I thought I was like a princess or something, got sent down the river and got lost, got picked up by this crazy bunch of farmers.”
She spun the chair again. This time she left him facing the mirror. She rubbed the towel around his head and then pulled it away. “Whoever you are…” she began. “Whatever your name is…you sure don’t look anything like the mountain-man type who walked into the shop an hour ago, I can sure tell you that.”
She was right. The clean-shaven young man in the mirror was a complete stranger to him. She’d cut most of his hair off and dyed what was left black…jet black…raven’s-wing black. She ran a comb through it, working out the tangles.
As she moved around to his right side, she felt him stiffen.
“You don’t like it?” She sounded hurt. She put a hand on his shoulder. “We could do something else.”
He didn’t answer. Beneath her hand, he was trembling. When she looked down, his eyes were fixed on the mirror. She turned and looked over her shoulder. The impending dinner hour had thinned the mall traffic. Coming down the central aisle were a pair of official-looking types in black overcoats, each working one side of the aisle, shouldering people out of the way as they moved from shop to shop, looking around inside for something and then popping back out.
“Coupla Nazis,” she said as they moved closer.
For a second it felt as if he was going to rise from the chair, but it was too late. One of them poked his head in the door. He took in the scene, walked over and stared at Paul, and then checked the back room. “Hey, hey!” Brittany shouted. “No customers back there. That’s off-limits to…”
If he heard her, he didn’t let on. A single smirk and he was gone. They watched in silence as the pair made their way out of sight. The trembling beneath her hand began to subside.
“You know those guys?” she asked.
“No,” he said.
She eyed him sideways.
11
Fact of life number one: sooner or later, they all walked out. Men of all sizes and shapes, races, creeds, and political persuasions…no matter…next thing she knew, they were packing their things and heading for the door. Some took longer than others; some left angry; some left sad. Whatever…they left.
The only constant…the only commonality among that collection of dismal departures was the parting salvo…that final self-justifying line in the awkward seconds before the slam of the door. It was like they’d all gotten together and written the damn thing down. Like it was in some index somewhere where you could look it up under P. “Parting shot for Kirsten Kane.” Always include the word control.
Maybe that guy Artie Gold said it best…not surprising since Artie made a living writing speeches for the mayor. Artie’d lasted less than a week and was the only relationship Kirsten could recall that remained unconsummated. Not that they hadn’t tried, mind you. Problem was, they got off to such a bad start and never recovered. Partway through their first physical liaison, just about the time they’d moved from the couch to the bedroom, right about the place where most couples began to confuse love and lust, Kirsten and Artie’d gotten into a spirited screaming match, an unfortunate digression which had quickly wilted the ardor of the occasion. On his way out, Artie had opined to the effect that a few days living with Kirsten was like being swallowed by a beast.
Everybody knew it, too…the whole damn county building. Kirsten Kane sheds suitors the way lizards shed scales. What in hell is wrong with that girl anyway? Wasn’t like she was fat or ugly or anything. Matter of fact she was tall and seriously put together and altogether a dish of the first order, which probably explained why every new male hire felt a need to make a run at her prior to unpacking. What remained unexplained, however, was the rapidity with which they were expended.
Wasn’t like it was something new either. She’d been that way in high school. That’s how a beautiful woman got to be thirty-seven years old without ever having been married, a state that, if one were to judge from the attitude of her parents, friends, and coworkers, constituted a statistical anomaly of such rarity as to rival winning lottery tickets and two-headed calves.
Back in the day, she’d attributed the phenomenon to callow youth and her own overly developed sense of self. She’d told herself she just wasn’t needy enough for men her age and had consoled her wounded pride with the notion that she’d find her soul mate somewhere down the line, that Prince Charming was still out there somewhere, and all she had to do was go about her business and sooner or later their star-crossed paths would intersect.
Twenty years later was a whole different deal. The older she got and the further up the office ladder she climbed, the less appropriate her state seemed to be. By now, nearly everyone in her life had reached out and tried his or her hand at matchmaking only to pull back a bloody stump. Predictably, whispered allegations of dyke-dom still circulated. Women wondered if perhaps Kirsten’s affairs were not invariably unsuccessful because they were merely a ruse to throw observers from the real scent of her desires, a notion that, not coincidentally, provided both an easy answer to the whys of Kirsten’s curtailed love life and also, in some left-handed way, validated many of their own most oft-regretted and painful choices.
Men…for some of them anyway, it was easy. It was an “ergo.” Any woman who was crazy enough to reject their amorous intentions must surely be a lesbian. What other answer could there be? For others, the image of Kirsten and another similarly endowed woman rolling around naked and sweaty in the throes of passion was simply more than their repressed libidos could manage to encapsulate.
For her part, Kirsten had decided to give the whole thing a rest. She was telling her friends she was “in remission” from men, making it sound as if the breed were a carcinogen from which she had, by extreme measures, temporarily been cured of men, all of which probably explained why she got the call…a call that normally would have fallen to a junior member of the staff, somebody fresh faced and eager to please on Sunday. But, face it, everybody knew she wasn’t going anywhere these days. Everybody from the custodians to the D.A. himself knew she’d be home watching the Nature Channel and not primping in the bathroom, readying herself f
or some big date.
The first ring of the phone startled her, reminding her how seldom it rang lately.
She picked it up. “Kane,” she said into the mouthpiece.
“You free?” The voice pulled her feet from the coffee table and sat her up straight. Although they dealt with each other on a daily basis, both face-to-face and over the phone, District Attorney Bruce Gill rarely called her at home. Rarely…like in somebody must have died…like in she was fired or something.
“I’m here,” she answered.
“I need you over at the North Precinct ASAP.”
There it was. No request about it. Get your ass over there.
“What’s up?” she asked.
He told her everything he knew. Right away, she could tell he was peeved. The more annoyed he got, the higher the pitch of his voice. This time on a Sunday night in the spring, Bruce and Katrina Gill were invariably headed out and the Honorable Bruce Gill didn’t like business interfering with his social life.
She held the phone away from her ear. He was squeaking about a meeting they’d had last week…like it was something she could forget. The day Gill made the front page by refusing to round up a bunch of Middle Eastern types just because the FBI wanted them rounded up. You had to give the guy credit; he recognized the knuckles of opportunity when they knocked. His one-liner about how he wasn’t arresting anybody “just because his middle name is bin” had gotten him above the fold from coast to coast, and made him the darling of every wild-eyed liberal in the country, not to mention conveniently providing a pedestal whence he’d orated that the residents of his city should not and would not have their rights abridged in any way by any federal agency whatsoever.
She gazed out the window while Gill used the occasion to warm up his speech for next year’s gubernatorial campaign. Shards of sunset lit the tops of the clouds as they slid sideways across the sky; pulled long and thin by a following wind, they moved due north, resolute and arrowlike on their express flight to Canada. In the street below, yellow pulsing lights bounced frantically around the buildings. A crowd had gathered on the corner by the wine merchant. She pressed her face against the glass, but from nineteen stories up, she couldn’t make out what was going on. She hated the feeling of being left out. Hated it more than anything.
“I’m on it,” she said finally, cutting her boss off midplatitude.
“All right, then, take care of it,” he huffed, and hung up.
That he offered no instructions spoke to his faith in her professional ability. That he offered no apologies…well…whatever that spoke to was something she didn’t want to think about. She pushed herself to her feet, stretched, groaned long and loud, and then padded off toward the bedroom.
NIGHT ROLLED SILENTLY over the horizon, hunching shoulders and pulling chins down into collars in the minutes before the overhead lights hissed to life, one by one flickering for a moment before drooling their X-ray light onto the pavement below. A cold wind rode shotgun to the darkness, swirling the street debris into a trash tornado, flapping stiff awnings like flags, and ruffling the torn posters tacked to the telephone poles, where a million staples, old and new, bristled in the low orange light like iron quills.
Dinner was long over. Paul was on his third cup of cocoa, and the waiters were sweeping the floor. He checked his wrist as if he were wearing a watch, wondered where that habit came from, and then took another sip from the white mug curled in his elbow.
An hour ago, his pursuers had entered the restaurant for the second time, annoying the staff, walking among the tables and checking faces. Both times he’d calmly looked up from his plate and met their gaze. Both times they’d continued their search elsewhere. Second time around he’d mused as to how an inability to recognize oneself seemed to pretty much preclude the possibility of other people recognizing you also.
Jalisco was the only place on Landon Street he’d ever seen. Ms. Willis used to bring them all up here on Saturday afternoons for lunch. The staff would set up a long table back along the kitchen wall where they could all eat together without bothering other diners, the more delicate among whom sometimes objected to the bohemian table manners of certain housemates.
Without willing it so, he’d found himself ensconced at a familiar table near the back of the restaurant watching passersby on the sidewalk. Wasn’t so much he felt at home as it was he had no idea where else to go. He heaved a sigh, sat back in the chair, and looked around. The restaurant was nearly empty. He swiveled his head and checked the place out. Like everything else in his life, Paul remembered it in general terms but had never zoomed to the specifics.
For instance, he’d never noticed the walls before, never noticed the once-bright murals, festive and tropical but covered with an inch of grime now…the señoritas, the serapes, the bullfights, and the bougainvillea…and the beach scenes and the palm trees wavering in an imaginary breeze.
He closed his eyes and the recurring scene was waiting…right there on the inside of his eyelids…the beach, the green water, the two figures, and something gleaming white cutting back and forth across an azure sky. He could smell it now…the salt air…the oceanic odor of renewal and decay. He lowered his inner eyes, looked along the golden beach, past the distant figure where his vision had always stopped before, and then…in the distance, nearly obscured by the haze, he could see a line…a needle wavering in the rising heat rays…but a line nonetheless. He strained for perspective. Something rode on top of the line like a head on a pin. He narrowed his inner eyes. A tower. The wavering apparition was a tower of some sort. Like the kind of thing you saw at an…
“We’re closing up.” The waiter stood by his side. His face said he was sad but the rest of him said he wasn’t. Paul dug in his pants pocket and came out with a twenty. The waiter snapped up the cash and the check and hurried over to the register. In less than a minute he was back, carrying the change on a small wooden tray. Behind them the lights in the kitchen went out. Out on the sidewalk, another one of the waiters was readying the steel security gate.
Paul left the change on the table and got to his feet. His legs were stiff from sitting as he shuffled out onto the sidewalk. The steel security gate accordioned its way across the front of the space. He watched as the waiter locked it in place, pulled down the overhead windows, and locked the door.
The swirling wind sent icy fingers down his collar. He shuddered, hugged himself hard, and then rubbed his hands up and down his bare arms in a vain attempt to create a little warmth. Landon Street was nearly empty. Across the road, above the arcade, the lights of a tattoo parlor threw bright squares onto the sidewalk below, illuminating the half-dozen people waiting at the bus stop. SLAVE TO THE NEEDLE, the sign in the window said. Something in the air spoke of rain.
Paul started left, then changed his mind and went the other way, up toward the far end of the street, where, behind a temporary chain-link fence, the construction crews were building yet another set of condos. He stuffed his hands in his pants pockets as he crossed Harrison Street and walked along the front of the Presbyterian church occupying the corner of the block. He could hear singing coming from inside. He kept walking.
12
He made her skin crawl. She wasn’t sure why, but something in his manner raised goose bumps all over her body. She rubbed her hands together, took a deep breath, and made a point of modulating her tone of voice. “Mr….” she began.
“Van Dusen,” he filled in.
She suppressed her gag reflex. “Mr. Van Dusen…my boss, Mr. Bruce Gill, the district attorney of Queen Anne County…Mr. Gill has made his position on matters of this nature quite clear.” She felt herself slipping into her courtroom oratory mode and tried again to relax, but her revulsion for the little man kept her throat tight and her spine stiff as steel. “This county…” she began again, “insists that any law enforcement actions taken within the confines of the county be…” She held up her index finger. “One…coordinated ahead of time with the local PD.” The little
man opened his mouth to protest, but she silenced him with a second finger. “And two…must be accompanied by all the paperwork necessary for the actions required.”
“This is a matter of national security.” He practically whispered it. Every hair on her body stood on end.
She shuddered. “How would that be?”
“I’m not at liberty to discuss that,” he said with that smarmy reptilian smile that made her want to punch him in the mouth.
She pulled out her notebook and flipped to the back. “Wesley Allen Howard,” she read. When she looked up, his face had taken on some color.
“I’d be very careful with that if I were you,” he hissed.
“And why is that, Mr. Van Dusen?”
He rolled his eyes to the ceiling in disgust. “I’m not at liberty to say.”
Kirsten Kane snapped her notebook shut and got to her feet. “According to Ms. Willis, all she did to become a threat to the American way of life was to run a people search on that name and the next thing she knew you and your little band of thugs appeared on her doorstep.” She held up a restraining hand. “I know…you’re not at liberty.”
He got to his feet, shaking his head as if disappointed at a child. “We’ve wasted far too much time on this silliness,” he announced. “If you would be so kind as to return the prisoners to our custody, we’ll make other arrangements.”
She couldn’t help herself. A short dry laugh escaped her throat. Apparently, the little man’s arrogance knew no bounds. “You really don’t get it, do you?” she snapped. Before he could answer, she went on, “Since this seems to be so difficult for you to process, let me make this county’s position clear. Ms. Willis and Mr. Suzuki are tax-paying citizens of this county, well-known people in our community, and as such are going absolutely nowhere with you unless and until you provide us with a federal warrant for their arrest, at which point, our office will review the charges and in the event we find the accusations warranted we will instruct the appropriate local law enforcement agency to make the arrest. Until such time…”—she paused for effect—“I think you and your merry band should consider yourselves fortunate not to be cooling your collective heels in a cell…”