“They’re tearing down the theater?” Mary Jean frantically looked at everyone in the room. “I just got back into town. What’s this all about?”
“Not the whole theater, dearie, just the pyramid,” Maggie said. “Hoyt Bringham’s latest young wife got the theater as part of their divorce settlement, and she’s decided the pyramid is too unsightly for her taste. Just because that man’s dick has gotten him into trouble his whole life doesn’t mean we’re going to let him screw us.” Maggie grinned showing two rows of short teeth below her thick glasses. “We’ve got to draw the line right here and put a stop to all of this. If they take away this cherished landmark what’s next, the whole Pyramid District turned into a giant shopping mall?”
“A horrible thought,” said Mary Jean.
“Thoroughly disgusting,” said Dr. Dennis Christian.
“Maggie, we need the key to the garage,” said Nadine, bringing the conversation to an unceremonious halt.
“Well, I must be going anyway.” Dennis Christian rose from his chair. “Ladies.” He bowed to Mary Jean and Nadine. “Maggie, I’ll have my people there Friday.” He shook her hand. “Friday we will create legend and change history. No more noble purpose can there be for living,” he said just before he turned and ran out the front door like someone had just set his ass on fire.
Maggie, standing before Nadine and Mary Jean, was a tall bulky woman dressed in black pants, which were too short, and a drab brown blouse, an outfit seemingly of thrift shop fashion convenient enough to fit. She nodded in the direction of the departed filmmaker. “A strange sort, but just the type we need to get a good protest off the ground.”
“I used to see him walking around campus shouting at the sky or the ground or at trees or bushes, and I just thought he was some homeless schizophrenic that got on the wrong bus,” Mary Jean said.
“Nope. Just a tenured professor with two Masters and a PhD.” Maggie flashed another toothy grin for just a second. “The academic life suits him well. He is rather full of himself I suppose, but for the most part he means well which is more than I can say for most college teachers.” She paused. “Oh, dearie, the stories I could tell you about my college days, which were about a century ago.” She shook her head. “I’ve never figured out if the academic life breeds insecure deviates or just attracts them.” She smiled. “Well, universal conundrums aside, let’s get that key.”
MJ and Nadine followed Maggie back down the L-shaped hall and into the kitchen where Maggie stopped to stare at a rack on the wall that must have held two-dozen full key rings. “Most of these don’t fit anything anymore.” She took a set from the rack. “But all of them are so full of memories I just can’t bear the thought of throwing them out. Isn’t that silly?”
The three went out to the garage where Maggie unlocked and slid open the heavy door, then turned on the light to unveil a room packed wall-to-wall with furniture, strange accessories and cardboard boxes. Several eight-foot, white, Roman columns stood freely in the middle of the room.
“I think most of your stuff is in that corner over there,” Maggie said, pointing to MJ’s canopied bed in pieces stacked against a far wall.
Mary Jean negotiated a thin path through the clutter. On the way she noticed a frail wooden chair that forced her to stop. “Wow! Am I crazy, or is that a real Chippendale?”
“You’ve got a good eye.”
“And didn’t I see another one in your living room and a Steuban vase on your mantel?”
“Correct again.”
“If you don’t mind me asking, where did you get all this stuff?”
“Oh, me and my late husband Carl were in the junk business for more years than I like to admit. Spent a lot of time in Mexico buying stuff we’d sell for unbelievable prices to gringos in L.A., and when the novelty of that wore off we ended up in San Francisco working estate sales for over ten years. Carl didn’t put much stock in all of this type of stuff, but he did develop a keen eye and was the second best haggler I’ve ever seen.”
“The first?”
“Well, myself dearie. Who’d you expect?”
“If you don’t mind me saying so, this isn’t the best area to have a house full of antiques. I mean just across Broadway it’s junkie city.”
“Oh, the drug addicts know better than to bother me, dearie, and anyway this stuff is just furniture to them. They couldn’t care less. What they’re looking for is money, guns and jewelry. I’ve got all of that stuff hidden away so well I doubt I could find it all,” Maggie said from the doorway. She handed the padlock to Nadine. “Ladies, please don’t forget to turn off the light and lock up. I’ve got to start my phone calls. Friday is less than a week away. When it comes to civil disobedience there are never enough hours in the day.”
After Maggie left Nadine crept a few steps into the garage to watch Mary Jean maneuver through the clutter. Nadine looked around the room. “Geez, look at all this stuff. When Eddie—I mean when we brought your stuff over here I guess I was too, uh, tired to notice what a tight fit it was.”
“U-huh.” MJ was lifting some of her clothes from a cardboard box, sorting them out on her large oak coffee table.
“Uh, Mary Jean, would you mind if I help you later? Judge Judy is on in five minutes. I saw the previews yesterday, and it really looked good.”
“No, go ahead, I really have to go through this stuff myself,” Mary Jean said, actually glad Nadine had found a reason to disappear.
She picked out an outfit to wear downtown to talk to Gene or whoever was managing the club that week, and some of the short skirts she wore as a uniform, just in case he wanted her to go back to work right away. Most of her clothes were either still folded and sitting in the drawers of her two dressers or still attached to the hangers stacked in a pile on the box spring of her queen-sized bed. She sorted through, pulling out socks, underwear and winter things. She found and set aside a large box crammed full of shoes, and a wooden apple crate holding her Elvis, Billie Holiday, Edith Piaf, and reggae albums. She then paused and shook her head while she thought of how pitiful it was that she was surveying most of her net worth sprawled on the cement floor of an old damp garage. She continued the inventory, happy she had had the foresight to store her jewelry box over at her sister’s, but as she looked here and there and picked through this and that, she began to worry that something important was missing.
After her first trip up the stairs, Mary Jean dumped the big box of shoes down right next to Nadine on the couch, trying but failing to snatch her out of her TV hypnosis.
She snapped her fingers twice in front of Nadine’s face. “Earth to Nadine, earth to Nadine. Come in Nadine.”
“What?”
“Have you seen my four-sided clock?”
“What?”
“My clock that’s shaped like this.” MJ pointed her forearms at forty-five degree angles with her fingertips touching, forming a steeple.
Nadine thought for a moment. “That ugly thing? It’s not in the garage?”
“I didn’t see it. It’s not up here?”
“No, I’d know if I brought it up here. It doesn’t even work, does it?”
Mary Jean didn’t take the time to respond. Instead she turned and rushed down the stairs and back into the garage where she began to get frantic, tearing through things, opening boxes and drawers, tossing things in random directions unmindful of the mess. She continued, fully focused and engulfed in chaos until she had gone through everything, whereupon she flopped her skinny little ass down on top of an old trunk.
“Fuck,” she said as she attempted to catch her breath, but her break was very brief. Within minutes she was back upstairs and right into Nadine’s face.
Nadine, annoyed to be missing some very meaningful moments of The Jerry Springer Show, tried to get through the confrontation as swiftly as possible. “Why is this thing so important?”
“Well, …ah, it was a gift from my grandmother McElroy. It’s like an heirloom. It’s probably not valuable to a
nyone else, but it’s very valuable to me.”
“I don’t even really remember what the thing looks like.”
“It’s tall and pointy at the top. It’s shaped like a narrow triangle, like a tall, skinny pyramid with a clock face on one side.” Mary Jean opened the drawer of a small end table, pulled out a packet of pictures, and sorted through them until she came up with a picture of the living room of her recently vacated apartment. “Here. There it is on the mantel.”
Nadine briefly studied the photo, “Haven’t seen it.”
“Damn it, Nadine! Don’t be so flip. This is important to me.”
“Knock, knock.” Maggie’s ample figure was positioned in the open doorway. “I thought you ladies might want to join me for lunch, I’ve got a pot of stew ”
“I’m too upset to eat.” Mary Jean stomped across the room and flopped down in her large stuffed chair.
“About what, dearie?”
“She’s missing her pyramid.”
“Well, menopause isn’t the end of the world, in fact ”
“No, no, not period, her pyramid.”
“Well, it’s not gone yet, dearie, and they won’t take it from us if we all ”
“Not that pyramid, I’m talking about a clock shaped like a pyramid, a family heirloom. Here.” Mary Jean handed the photo to Maggie. “See that thing on the mantel?”
Maggie held on a stem of her glasses as she positioned the picture nearer then farther away from her face until she could finally bring it into focus. “That thing is a clock?”
“Right.”
“Geez, that thing is ugly. What’s it made of some sort of plastic paneling?”
“Nooo.” MJ snatched back the photo. “But what it looks like isn’t the point. It was given to me by my...my great aunt for my seventeenth birthday. It holds great sentimental value.”
“I see.” Maggie slowly shook her head. “So where did we lose it?”
“Somehow it got misplaced between my apartment and here.”
“Well, that’s where we start then. Lunch can wait. Come on, dearie, I’ll drive.”
“Mary Jean grabbed her change purse and tucked the photograph inside. “You coming?” she said to Nadine still on the couch.
“You don’t need me to come do you?” Nadine seemed pained and worried. “Cuz All My Children is on in ten minutes, and I can’t really afford to miss it after what they left hanging last week.”
Mary Jean shook her head but did not say a word. She walked down the stairs and found Maggie in the driveway already behind the wheel of a big, beat-up, 1960-something, GMC truck with its engine rumbling. MJ used both hands to pull open the heavy door before pulling herself up to a spot on the stiff bench seat.
“Man, this thing is built like a tank.”
“People do tend to get out of my way.” Maggie smiled at Mary Jean. “I like that.”
With Mary Jean providing directions, they were at her former apartment banging on the door within a few minutes. Eddie answered the door, but didn’t invite them inside. Mary Jean rattled off an explanation which only seemed to annoy Eddie.
“Look, I’m sorry, but I have to go to work, and I don’t have time for this. All I can tell you is that some of your stuff was sitting out in the alley for a day, maybe two. Anybody could have come by and taken your thing if it was out there, sorry.” He closed the door and locked the deadbolt for good measure.
“There’s something I don’t like about that boy,” Maggie said as she started her truck.
“The fact that he’s gay?”
“Oh, dearie, there couldn’t be anything further from the truth.” She pulled down hard on the steering wheel to guide her ponderous vehicle away from the curb. “Between here, Berkeley, and the City I’ve got enough gay friends to probably qualify me for the Fag Hag Hall of Fame. No, gay or straight, that boy is a little shit.”
With her chances of a happy ending melting away faster than an ice sculpture at a June wedding in Puerto Rico, the question of Eddie’s character failed to post even the faintest blip on Mary Jean’s mental radar screen. Feeling as depressed and gloomy as the cold gray sky above her, she slumped against the door of Maggie’s truck.
“You know, very few people walk the alleys around here without a purpose, and most of the street people stake out and guard their turf like pit bulls guarding a bone. Just for the heck of it, let’s check with the Monk to see what’s what. He’s never too hard to find.”
“The monk?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, dearie. He’s a homeless guy who likens his plight to the monastic life. He considers his life on the street as a religious pursuit. Rationalization can be a useful tool, don’t you think?” Maggie grinned at Mary Jean then looked back at the road. “He usually hangs around Broadway and H Street, never strays too far, and always seems to keep up on what’s going on.”
They had driven just a few blocks when Maggie pointed to her left. “There he is.” She made a left and drove into a parking lot. “Let me have that picture, dear.” Maggie took possession of the photo as she pulled up close to a scruffy-looking guy sitting Indian fashion on the pavement with his back against a building.
“Hola, my friend, que paso?” Maggie killed the engine. The character in a dirty army jacket and dark blue knit cap slowly stood and walked towards Maggie’s pickup until he was within arm’s reach of the driver’s door. “How are you doing today, my friend?”
“Very fine, very fine, Maggie. It’s days like this when I can really feel the presence of the Lord. Anyone can pick a bright sunny day to feel the joy and splendor of God, but we must suffer to be rewarded.”
“Good, good. Well what I stopped for, dearie was to ask you a question.” She held the picture directly in front of his face. “You see that clock on the mantel piece there? It seems it may have been left outside in an alley near Rogers and Olive, and someone might have mistakenly thought it was being thrown away. We’re trying to find it.”
The Monk stared closely at the photo. “Ah, a pyramid. You know the Sleeping Prophet predicted the secret to life would one day be found in the great Pyramids of Egypt. He was right about so many things. I don’t suppose we should automatically doubt him about that.”
“I suppose not.”
“Precise heights, precise angles, the great monuments in Egypt were used as a tomb, but they might have also been landmarks for beings of another planet or another dimension.” He studied the picture for several more seconds. “That shape sure doesn’t make a very good looking clock though. Damn that thing is ugly.”
“We were just curious if you might know who might have picked it up.”
“Let’s see, Rogers and Olive? That would probably be Dirty Frank, Renegade, or Red Hat Patty.” He rubbed his scruffy beard with his dirty hand. “Now Frank and Renegade go almost exclusively for direct recyclables, so Red Hat Patty would be my guess.”
“Do you know where we can find her?”
“She’s normally at Uncle Tom’s at six a.m. for an eye opener, and she’ll be there at happy hour if she has a good day. She’s easy to spot. She’s a tiny woman always wearing some type of red hat. She’s been busted so many times she doesn’t like drinking on the street, but I don’t mind. She drinks beer.” He smiled. “So do I.”
Maggie nodded, and turned to Mary Jean. “Do you have a couple of bucks?” MJ checked her coin purse. She had exactly a couple of bucks that she handed to Maggie who passed them on to the Monk. “Well, thank you, dearie. I hope your information proves fruitful.” She started her truck. “Thanks again, dearie. You take care.”
“Maggie,” the Monk said as he grabbed Maggie’s door. “Every evening with the darkness of night I fear a change. I feel I might be possessed by demons.”
“Oh, that’s okay, dearie, we all feel Satan’s hand every so often. Just try real hard to behave yourself.” She patted him on the forearm. “Now you take care and stay warm.” She put the truck in gear, and pulled away.
“I guess hooking
up with this Red Hat Patty is our next move,” Maggie said after they had driven a few blocks.
“Kind of a shot in the dark don’t you think?”
“If you got nothing better, you got to go with what you got, dearie.”
“ I’ll go by Uncle Tom’s later. Right now I’ve got to go change and get my job back. What a homecoming. Well, at least things can’t get any worse.”
“That’s where you are wrong, dear. Things can always be worse.”
Mary Jean showered and washed her hair. Earlier she had narrowed it down to a few outfits, finally settling on a long black slip-dress with a short matching jacket. The black highlighting her tan but not setting it off so much that she looked like a total freak around all the pasty-faced white people who had been stuck in this town all winter. She didn’t feel the need to go all out just to let it be known she was back and needed to get on the schedule at work but felt it wouldn’t hurt to dazzle a little, and it actually felt good to dress up a bit after three months of either shorts and T-shirts or bathing suits. The inch-hell pumps, the only shoes that matched her dress, pinched after months of wearing only sandals, but civilization was all about pain, and since she had no alternative, she was once again ready to fulfill her obligation and take on her share of the load.
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