by Rodney Jones
“I’m a friend of the owner’s.”
He again looked his way. “A friend, huh?”
Roland nodded. “Yeah.”
The store appeared in the distance, about a mile and a half farther. The driver said nothing more until he pulled into the parking lot and turned the truck’s engine off. “Here you go.”
After thanking the man, Roland climbed down from the truck, then, forgetting about the dysfunctional latch, slammed the door. It bounced open. “Oh.” He adjusted the catch, gave the door another slam, then gave the driver a quick smile and a nod. As he climbed the porch steps he heard the other door open, then—thump! He glanced back over his shoulder. The driver was coming around to the front of his truck.
Ignoring the clip-clopping of boots on the steps behind him, Roland stepped across the porch to the store’s entrance and went inside. Anna stood behind the checkout counter chatting with a customer. Their eyes turned his way as he entered.
“Roland? You walked here?”
“Part way. I got a ride.” The door behind him opened and the driver stepped in. “This gentleman gave me a lift the last few miles.” Roland gestured toward the man.
Anna said, “You shouldn’t be picking up hitchhikers, Rick.”
“You know this guy, huh?” the man said.
“Roland, this is my cousin Rick Booker.”
Roland offered his hand. In return he got a firm, competitive handshake.
“So, how is it you know Anna?”
“Uh… actually we just met,” Roland said, “at… I guess your uncle’s place.”
Rick gave him a lopsided look—his left eyebrow higher than the right.
“He’s been staying with Dad for the last few days,” Anna said.
He nodded, though he appeared as if he expected more.
“Rick, can we just not worry about it for a change?”
“Worry about what?” He produced a quick smile.
The customer, who had been standing there watching throughout the exchange—a woman, who apparently was not there to shop—dismissed herself, claiming she had someone waiting for her. As she walked past Roland on her way out she studied him through a series of peripheral glances.
Anna looked at Roland. “What’s up?”
“I have another favor to ask of you.”
“Okay.”
“Your phone… May I use it?”
Anna’s cousin jumped back in. “You came all this way just to use her phone?”
“Don’t you have somewhere you need to be, Rick?”
“No, I just thought, being I was here, I might as well come in, say hi.” He looked from Anna to Roland, then back to her. “Guess I’ll be seeing ya.”
“Say hi to Sarah for me,” Anna said, as her cousin turned for the door.
“Yeah.” He pulled the door shut behind him.
Anna turned to Roland and quietly said, “The man’s a lug. He thinks all us frail, little squaws need his protection.”
Roland glanced toward the door. “I wasn’t sure what to make of him. But I’m not really in much of a position to make anything of anybody.”
“You want to use the phone upstairs. You’ll have more privacy there.” She nodded. “Go ahead, the door’s unlocked. It’s just inside, to the left.”
Roland sat at Anna’s kitchen table, gazing down at a light-brown coffee ring on the white tabletop, the receiver pressed to his ear.
His niece answered. “Hello?”
“Molly?”
“Uh… yeah?”
And just like that, something shifted, as though his fractured world had begun to coalesce into something less alien.
“How ya doing?” he said.
“Fine.”
He pictured his fifteen-year-old niece holding the phone to her ear. A familiar face—still, though, there was something off about her manner, like a degree of reluctance or uncertainty.
“Is your dad home?”
He heard her call her father. The phone clinked and rattled on a hard surface. He waited. The memory of his neighbor, Howard Brown, standing at his front door, passed before his mind’s eye. His brother’s voice came over the phone.
“Roland?”
Chapter thirty-six – connections
After a quick shower, Dana put on a pot of coffee, then stepped over to the phone and lifted the receiver to her ear—a dial tone. She located her address book, found Beth and Brian’s number, and punched it into the handset. It rang and rang; it rang a third and fourth time, then, “Hello.”
“Brian?”
“Oh… hey,” he said.
“My phone… my service was cut while you were trying to leave a message last night. I didn’t get it… the message.”
“I kind of suspected that. I tried back later, but kept getting busy signals.”
“Yeah, we had a fire down the street last night. I’m guessing that had something to do with it. Did you know Kate’s here?”
“Uh huh, she’d told me she was going.”
“Oh. So…”
“I… I was calling because Roland… he called yesterday.”
His words felt like a warm, damp blanket being wrapped around her. “What?” He called you? Why not me? Warm, though she shivered at an anticipated chill. “Where is he?”
“Phoenix… an Indian reservation.”
Moscow or Beijing would not have seemed any less unlikely. “But—”
“He called around seven,” Brian said.
“What’s he doing in Arizona?”
A sigh came over the phone. “Uh, well… he told me—”
“That’s where he’s been all this time?”
“It appears so.”
“Bullshit. He wouldn’t have just run off to Arizona, and left me that stupid ‘went for a walk’ note.” She shook her head. “This is bullshit.” She waited for a response, but it didn’t come quick enough. “He’s okay?”
“Well…”
The chill arrived. Her shoulders quaked with a migrating shiver. “What’s going on, Brian?” She lowered herself into a chair at the table.
“You’re going to think this is crazy, but… well…”
Her chest tightened. She closed her eyes—the fear, right there, selfish and ruthless and intimidating.
“Dana?” Kate’s voice came from behind her.
She turned. “Brian? Hold on a second.”
“What is it? What happened?” Kate said.
“It’s Brian. Roland called.”
“Oh?”
“Pick up the other phone.” She shook a finger toward the adjoining room behind Kate, then waited until she lifted the receiver.
“Brian?” Dana said, struggling to suppress a quiver in her voice. “Okay, so Roland called from Phoenix.”
“Arizona?” Kate said.
“An Indian reservation in Phoenix,” Dana said.
“Well, he gave me this story about being lost in the desert and meeting some man… or the man found him. He—”
“But what’s he doing there?” Dana said.
“I’m getting to that. I asked him—”
“What night? Last night?” Dana said. The coffee maker sputtered and gurgled.
“Uh, no, Saturday. Saturday night. Um… anyway, he told me his house disappeared. That’s what he said.”
“What? The man’s?” Kate said.
“No, his.”
“What do you mean?” Dana rose from her chair.
“Just that. His house disappeared. I thought he was kidding, at first. But he wasn’t.”
Dana stepped into the kitchen and poured two cups of coffee while holding the phone to her ear.
Brian continued, “He said he’d never been to New York… ever. Dead serious. Said he’s spent the last five years in Phoenix and has a house there… or rather, had one.” There was a brief pause over the phone, then, “Dana, he’s totally convinced this is real, that his house vanished. He believes it.”
“But… what happened?” Kate said. “How�
��d he get there?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Except for this story, he seems okay.”
Dana handed a cup to Kate, then returned to her seat in the breakfast nook.
“Except for being out of his freakin’ mind?” Kate said.
“Well… yeah, but—”
“Not good,” Kate said.
“What else did he say?” Dana said.
“Um… he told me he’d spent the night in the desert and then found some house… a trailer. The guy’s like a shaman or something. That’s where he is now… with him.”
Dana let out a sigh. “This is crazy.”
“Not good,” Kate repeated. “What’s he doing in…? Did he say why he was there? I mean, why he went there in the first place?”
“Living there. The house that—”
“Right, the house.” Dana gazed blankly toward the curls of steam rising from her coffee. “You’re sure it was Roland?”
“Yeah.”
“Why hasn’t he called me?” She lifted the cup to her lips and took a sip.
“Hmm… I don’t know. He’s… I don’t think he knows what he’s doing.”
“Something had to have caused this,” Kate said. “What? Something happened to him.”
“Well, yeah, something, but I don’t think he has a clue.”
“Did you get a phone number,” Dana said, “or an address?”
“He’s staying with the old guy, the old man he met, Fred Pinetree. Apparently he doesn’t have a phone. He called from a nearby store. I have that number.” Brian read the number over the phone. “The owner of the store… I forget her name. She’s the old guy’s daughter. Anyway, I’m trying to arrange a flight for him to Indianapolis. Ann. That’s her name.”
“Why Indianapolis?”
“Dana”—Brian coughed, then cleared his throat—“he’s convinced that he’s married, and she… his wife, this other woman, vanished. Same as his house.”
Silence stretched across the five hundred miles of phone line. It seemed everything she’d ever taken for granted had been thrown into flux. It was crazy, Saturday evening, arriving home from her mom’s, though she didn’t see it then… the craziness; she had assumed it was something else. “Other woman? Who?”
“I don’t know,” Brian said.
It seemed like one of those wild dreams where everything is so matter-of-fact, but nothing stands up to logic. “Brian, hold up on the plane tickets,” she said, “Maybe if I could talk to him. I should call… the store there.”
“I don’t think he’ll be there.”
“Well, how can I get in touch with him?”
“He said he’d call back. How about I call you once I know he’s there?”
She suppressed an urge to strike, to cuss, to say, “Fuck you, Brian!” Instead, she said, “Look”—then took a breath, and let out a huff—“I’m… I’ve been worried sick about him. I just want him to come home.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll get him home.”
She glanced around the room, searching for anything obviously out of place, paying particular attention to the clock above the stove.
“Will you be all right, Dana?”
Again the urge to snap was there. “I’m a little scared, I guess.”
“I’m sorry. I wish I could—”
“I have to talk to him, Brian.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
After hanging up, she sat there at the table staring toward the wall. Kate came in and took the seat next to her.
“He doesn’t know anyone in Phoenix.” Dana shook her head. “He said he went for a walk. I would’ve never suspected him of… Jesus, I was gone the whole day. He knew I’d be gone all day. Why didn’t he take anything? He didn’t pack clothes… nothing, not even a tooth brush.”
“I don’t know, Dana. I wouldn’t be too quick with conclusions. It’s weird… totally weird. He can’t expect us to believe this stuff he told Brian. His house disappearing? No, he doesn’t expect Brian to believe that… or you, or anybody. Surely not.”
“Well, what’s he doing then?”
“It’s not an affair. This is something else.”
“Phoenix… that is like so…” Dana shrugged. “How’d he even get there? I mean really. If he flew, he would have had to have planned everything in advance. And he’d have a return ticket, wouldn’t he? I mean, what the hell? Why call Brian for help? And that crazy story.” She turned toward the window overlooking the backyard. The grass was wet. Water dripped from the edge of the garage roof. It looked like the beginning of another long day.
Chapter thirty-seven – a better reality
For the longest time it seemed that money, security, and the career Dana had dreamed of would forever be an arm’s length away. But then, by the late nineties, these issues were only memories; she’d finally arrived. She had a job, which was better than she had ever imagined. She had her health and a healthy measure of goals, ambitions, and desires to keep her moving forward. For the first time in her life she felt she was in control. And then this thing—there was a name for it, a word—What is it?—Roland’s sudden reckless and inexplicable behavior. It had jerked the rug from under her. It had taken sixteen years to create what they together had created, and now it was dissolving like a sandcasle in the surf.
She sat at the kitchen table holding the phone to her ear, listening to the other end ringing.
“Trading Post.” A woman’s voice.
“I’m looking for Roland Bax.”
“Uh… just a minute.”
She heard a brief exchange between a man, sounding very much like her husband, and the woman she had just spoken to. She waited. A minute passed. The rattle of a receiver being lifted from its cradle came over the line.
“Hello.” He sounded short of breath.
“Roland?” There was another click.
“Diane?”
She first assumed she’d misheard, but then wasn’t sure of what she’d heard.
“Hello?” he said.
She could feel her pulse beating.
“Hello?” he again said.
“Diane? You’re expecting a call from Diane?”
She waited through a pause. “I was expecting a call from you,” he said.
“You said Diane. If you think that’s in any way funny, then you are grossly mistaken.”
Another pause. “Uh… I think I missed something.”
“Maybe you miss Diane?”
“Diana?”
“Stop.” She was at the edge of jumping on him, her verbal fists ready to fly. She attempted to move her attention to her breath—fuck. “Why are you doing this?”
“Uh… I didn’t realize I was doing anything other than—”
“A Freudian slip? How convenient… because it definitely wasn’t funny.” Her right foot tapped the floor in time with her impatience.
“What?”
“Jesus, Roland.” She huffed. “Diane… that’s what.”
She waited, listening to his breathing—a breath, a breath, a breath, then a sigh.
“I’m sorry, I forgot your name.”
“Oh… I guess it’s been a while, huh?”
“I’m sorry.”
Pacing herself with slow, deliberate breaths, she imagined an opening in her chest, a way out, a way to escape the pain and the fear. “I have no idea what this is about. And I don’t want to fight.” Dana pictured Roland at the other end of the line, sitting at a small wooden table in a dimly lit room with shadows on the walls and vague, dark figures shifting about. “I just want to know.” She closed her eyes and pulled up a memory from the night before he’d left. They were in bed; she was reading—her book propped against his back. He’d seemed content—no less than usual. It was only four days from the “usual” to this. How? How can this happen? She wrestled throughout the day with the story Brian had given her, unable to convince herself that it actually came from Roland. It frightened her, confused her, angered her, and it hurt. “Help me
understand this, Roland.”
Another sigh came over the phone. “Didn’t Brian explain?”
“My god, Roland! What? I know you don’t expect anyone to believe that crap. It’s ridiculous… and it… it’s cruel.” She choked on the word, swallowed, then added, “It’s unfair.” She waited, hoping for the right response, praying for sincerity and maybe a dash of remorse. “Damn it, Roland, just… just come home.” Dana reached up and massaged her brow with her fingertips. “We’ll sort it out. Whatever needs sorted. We always do, don’t we? I want you to come home.” She heard a buzz in her head, like the buzz of an insect, blending with the hum of electricity.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I need time to think… about all this—”
“All this? All this… what?”
“Can I call you back?”
“Roland, this? Think about this? What is it? What the fuck are you doing?”
“I’ll call you back, okay?”
“No! You can’t call me back. I’ve been running around here for four days in a panic. Damn it, Roland! Don’t you have a clue? You don’t give a fuck what I feel? You’ve had enough time to think about it. Went for a walk… be back soon. I mean, what is that? I thought you’d been killed or something.” She pictured him sitting before her with that dumb look on his face, the one he’d sometimes put on when confronted—annoyingly clueless. “God damn it, Roland, you lied to me. I think I deserve more than that. I think I deserve more than ‘I need to think about it.’ Jesus, if you need to think about it, then don’t even bother coming home. I don’t really want you to.” She pressed the off button.
A sound like a swarm of insects filled her head. She stared at the receiver in her hand, huffing through flared nostrils, her chin quivering, hot tears in her eyes, her fingernails tapping the Formica tabletop with cat’s tail agitation.
Kate walked in and took a seat next to her. Dana shook her head. The lump in her throat was close to breaking, close to betraying her, so she stood, walked the length of the house, paced the living room floor, back and forth, then went off to her bedroom and pushed the door shut behind her.
She collapsed on the bed, burying her face in a pillow. The urge she’d suppressed just moments before was now a boiling cauldron of emotion—a barely controllable quiver, building to something more. She turned to her side. A sliver of light, passing beneath the window shade, left a thin, bright line on the bare oak floor. Minute particles of drifting dust glowed like tiny stars in the stream of light. Watching the dust settling, she thought about Roland’s old house in Kempton and the seemingly endless parade of issues arising between them during their first year. “It’s one thing after another with you, Roland.” She recalled the words leaving her lips, as if it was yesterday. She tried to isolate particular incidents as though wishing to add them to her brew—intensify its potency… one thing after another… The words were still there, but time had erased his offenses.