by Tom McNeal
And then there was Judith’s actual work, which each day stretched longer and longer even as the editing fell further and further behind. She hated her cuts, she hated the actors, she hated the show, she hated the fact that she had to work weekends (especially when Lucy was making an early Friday getaway for a reunion in Montecito with old college chums). Malcolm had in fact bought the black dress in a size six and made dinner reservations, but when Saturday night came, Judith begged off. She had a headache, she said, not one of the bad ones like she’d been getting, but a headache all the same.
Malcolm said he understood; a rain check was perfectly fine. He made them pork, pickle, and cheese sandwiches on a yummy ciabatta bread—nicely adaptive behavior, in Judith’s opinion—but then he turned on a meaningless preseason football game and she went upstairs to watch Treasure of the Sierra Madre on DVD.
She awakened early Sunday morning and left a note saying she was going to the studio and would be back in an hour or two, but the editing quickly ran aground. She became stuck in a series of frames that ran too long but when made shorter bounced off the screen. It would give her a headache—already she felt the first hint of the aura, the tiny pinpoint of pain in her right eye. No, the best thing was to leave, grab something to eat, and come back to it later, but when she got to the parking lot, she sat with the engine running and the transmission locked in park. Oh, for God’s sake, she thought finally, and did what she wanted to do. She drove to Red Roof and signed in as Edie Winks.
She swung the padlock open and raised the door on 17C. Everything was as she, Señor Rocha, and his nephew had left it, and she went right to work. She slipped the bird’s-eye maple siderails into the headboard, then the footboard. She set the support slats into their notches. It felt good, completing one little task after another. She felt good. The beginnings of the headache started to recede. The east-facing storage room had the dim coolness of a basement; in spite of the summer heat, she hardly sweated as she dragged over the box spring and mattress. She found sheets and tugged smooth the Young Man’s Fancy quilt. She set up a floor lamp and plugged it into the unit’s one electrical outlet. She stacked the sections of her glass-fronted bookcase and had the idea of filling them with favorite books, arranging them by author or perhaps in the order she meant to reread them, but she felt suddenly and overwhelmingly… what? Not tired so much as satisfied, and newly comfortable. Like a cat in winter who’d found the sunroom. She rolled the door down, wondered vaguely about asphyxiation, raised it a few inches from the floor, turned off the lamp. She plumped the pillow. She lay on the bed, held the quilt close to her nose, and took in its ancient scent. She fell deeply asleep.
When she awakened, she supposed her nap had been relatively short—she felt cleansed and refreshed, with none of the logy internal dishevelment she associated with longer naps. Yet when she raised the door of the storage unit, she was surprised to look east and see Jaklops Trusses already in shadow, and by the time she crossed town and turned her Audi into the driveway, it was fully dark. Inside, Malcolm and Camille were eating In-and-Out hamburgers in the den and watching The Princess Bride, a movie they’d watched together so many times that most of their enjoyment now lay in reciting the lines a half-second before the actors did. They barely looked up when Judith entered, although Malcolm did ask how the work had gone.
“Okay,” Judith said.
On the screen, Andre the Giant was carrying Wallace Shawn, Mandy Patinkin, and the princess bride up the Cliff of Insanity.
Malcolm said, “We bought you a hamburger and a strawberry shake—it’s on the counter.”
Judith was standing over the kitchen sink eating her hamburger when Camille and Malcolm recited loudly, and as one, “Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”
Edith Winks’s sham identification cards—one from Sutton University in England, the other from the state of Oregon—looked surprisingly authentic. With these, plus her new address and Social Security card, all tucked into an old purse, Judith walked into an independent bank not far from the studio with the idea of opening a checking account. She had prepared a story about using cash all of her life and finally growing tired of it, and how she’d liked this bank when she’d come in with her friend, but none of that was necessary. The girl in New Accounts simply asked how much money she would like to deposit, and Judith counted out five hundred dollars. She explained that she didn’t want to give her work number and she was switching cell phones. “No problem,” the girl said, typing something into the computer. “We’ll just need your new number as soon as you get it.” There was an uneasy moment when the girl asked for a picture ID and Judith explained that she didn’t drive and she’d never bothered with anything else, but oh, she did have her ID from studying abroad—would that help? While the girl was looking at the card from Sutton University, Judith said, “It’s part of the University of Nottingham,” and the girl said, “Like the sheriff?”
“I’ve also got the state ID card they gave me when I was working in Oregon,” Judith said, but the girl, after glancing at it, waved it off. “It’s okay,” she said. “If we don’t have all the right stuff, I can personally attest.” Judith watched her making a notation on the form, and then she passed Judith the signature card. When the girl asked if she would also like to apply for a MasterCard, Judith considered it for a moment or two before saying yes. According to the application, Edith W. Winks was unmarried, self-employed, and three years younger than Judith.
Malcolm and Judith’s bedroom was capacious enough for one alcove of it to be given over to a private study with bookcases, armchair, and small desk. This was where Malcolm was sitting Tuesday night when his cell phone rang. Judith was at the opposite end of the room, in the walk-in closet, looking for a nightgown light enough to be comfortable but prim enough to be discouraging, should Malcolm have any ideas. She stilled herself to listen but could not make out his words. Then he rang off and was calling to Judith that he had to run down to the bank to retrieve something from a secure computer; it shouldn’t take long.
“I’ll go with you,” Judith said, to her own surprise. She popped her head out of the closet. “Would that be okay? I need to pick up a prescription and mail some letters.”
“Of course,” Malcolm said, but there was something fallen in his expression, she was almost sure of it. “If it’s just mail and a prescription, I can handle it for you, no problem.”
“I feel like going for a ride.” She brightened her smile. “Throw in Baskin-Robbins, and maybe Milla will come, too.”
Malcolm shrugged.
Judith went to Camille’s room and threw in Baskin-Robbins, but Camille demurred. “Eeyew, errands,” she said, squinching her nose. “Besides, I’m on a diet.”
Malcolm was downstairs, getting his keys. Was there murmuring? Was he making a quick phone call? The bastard.
“Ready!” Judith sang out as she went down the stairs, carrying her bag and her letters.
They were actually bill payments, including one written from Edith Winks’s account for a charge on Edith Winks’s card for a pair of stiletto heels at Neiman Marcus (Manolo Blahniks! She had never imagined buying Manolo Blahniks). The shoes were still wrapped in tissue within their box in the Red Roof storage unit. The prescription was for Imitrex, to relieve the cluster migraines she’d been getting recently, or at least that’s what the doctor said they sounded like.
At the post office drive-through, she handed the envelopes to Malcolm, who slipped them into the mail drop without even glancing at them.
Judith closed her eyes for a moment and saw the black dot behind her eyelid, growing slowly within a fuzzy edge of light.
“Can we go by Rite Aid next?” she said as they were exiting from the parking lot, and Malcolm’s right turn, instead of the left he’d intended, was abrupt. He said nothing, but she knew he liked running errands according to the most efficient route. He’d always loved playing Park & Shop with Camille. Zigzagging was discouraged. Backtrac
king, as they were doing now, was forbidden. He turned on the Dodgers game—since when did Malcolm care about the Dodgers?—and waited in the car while she went in to pick up her prescription.
When they reached the bank, Malcolm asked if she wanted to wait in the car or come in.
“Come in,” Judith said. “I need to pop a pill.”
He seemed slightly surprised. “You didn’t say you had a headache.”
“You didn’t ask.”
He entered a code and used two keys to get through the door. He flipped on lights, opened a wall-mounted metal box, and punched in another code. He gave her a chilled bottle of Evian water from a small refrigerator in the conference room and offered fruit or crackers, which she declined. She gulped the pill. “I’ll just be a few minutes,” he said, and headed for his office, the only one in the building that was enclosed.
Judith said, “I’ll just nose around out here for money to steal.”
Malcolm gave a small laugh and advised her not to do it when the security cameras were pointed her way.
Judith drifted. She liked the quiet tidiness of an empty bank. It smelled clean, faintly woodsy—one of those Mrs. Meyer’s cleaning products was her bet. Already the calendar on the check-writing counter had been turned to Wednesday’s date. Next to the counter, a stand-alone cardboard cutout said, Your Business Is Our Business. Her head was throbbing now. Why for Christ’s sake pay fifteen dollars for a pill if it took six hours to work? It should just say it on the cover—overpriced and slow-acting! For a second or two, she closed her eyes and touched her fingertips to her eyelids.
She seated herself at the nearest desk and stared for some moments at a photograph of a twentysomething woman and two grammar-school boys before realizing that the pictured woman was a younger version of Francine Metcalf. Judith was sitting at Miss Metcalf’s desk. She froze for a moment, started to bolt up, then checked herself. She glanced toward Malcolm’s office; he’d left the door open, but she couldn’t see him. She leaned back and eased open the desk’s top drawer. Everything was neat. Coiled stamps, blue pens with blue pens, black with black, several sizes of Post-it notes, sorted gradations of clips, separate packages of bright self-stick arrows saying Sign Here and Notarize and Initial, and there, just beyond the edge of the wooden organizer, as startling as a small live reptile, lay the Red Roof keys. Judith stared at them. She told herself she shouldn’t be bothered. Malcolm had freely told her that Miss Metcalf might use the room, and she had used the room, and while using the room had evidently found the keys and taken them with her, probably with good intentions. What was so terrible about that? But what was so innocent about it, either? Why not turn them in? Or give them to Malcolm? Judith touched the keys, picked them up, turned them over in her hand. Red Roof. Your Safe Under the Red Roof. And then, in smaller letters, Postage Prepaid. Mail to Red Roof Storage.
Judith looked up at the security camera. For a moment it seemed pointed right at her; then it continued its slow scanning arc.
“Two-minute warning!” Malcolm called out from his office.
Judith sat very still. Her skull was filling with thickening fluid. The pill—was it the pill?—was making her feel funny. She wanted the keys; the keys were hers, useless, but hers. She watched the security camera slowly swing back, forth, back again. She turned around. There was another camera there, too.
A scraping sound from Malcolm’s office. He was getting up, coming out.
Think.
She couldn’t think.
She set the keys back in their exact place inside Miss Metcalf’s drawer. Then—why she thought of this she had no idea—she reached into her handbag and, down at the cluttered bottom of things, found the lock with the cut shackle. She pushed it into the deepest corner of Miss Metcalf’s drawer and slid the drawer closed. At Malcolm’s approach, she swiveled the chair around and stood. She nodded at the photograph on the desk. “Who’re the boys?” she said. To her surprise, her voice sounded normal.
Malcolm regarded the photograph. “Miss Metcalf’s nephews. A long time ago. I think they’re both in college now.” He had a folder under his arm. “Ready?”
As they crossed the parking lot, Judith’s purse felt lighter.
“How’s your head?” Malcolm said.
“Better,” Judith said, and it was. Her headache was lifting, rising, leaving in its place a feeling deeply serene. “Imitrex,” she said, forgetting her earlier resentment of the product. “One small step forward for mankind.”
Malcolm laughed courteously and started the Jaguar, its motor a solid thrum. Judith closed her eyes. The car was moving, reverse, then forward, going somewhere. Home. Going home. Where was the receipt, the one written to Edie Winks for 17C? Where had that gone? And that nosy freaking camera. She should’ve winked. Should’ve put the broken lock into the drawer, slid it closed, looked up smiling at that camera, and winked.
10
Judith’s father had ordered the dwarf lime tree from Four Winds Nursery in California with the intention of sheltering the tree in the sunroom during the winter months and wheeling it every spring into the backyard, where its fruit could be picked for use in the gin and tonics that were his preferred summer drink. All the plan lacked was a terra-cotta pot to put the tree in and a castered dolly to make it movable.
Judith was privately skeptical of the project—who, she wanted to know, grew citrus in Nebraska?—but happy to be set loose in the Bonneville for any errand, even a foolish one, if it afforded her the pleasure of being out on her own, sunglasses on and windows down. Her route, then, was unsurprisingly roundabout, and took her first by the brick buildings of the state college and then up and down Main Street before heading west to Gibson’s Building Supply.
In the store’s garden department, she slid a heavy pot from the shelf to a flatbed cart she’d shoved alongside it, then set the castered dolly inside the pot. She paid with the twenty-dollar bill her father had given her and folded the change to separate it in her wallet from the three one-dollar bills that were her own. She wheeled the cart down the sloping parking lot to the Bonneville, which is where things began to go wrong.
The pot was heavy. To lift it, she needed to stabilize the cart with her foot, but when she did that, she couldn’t lift the pot.
An orange pickup—the one with flames and fancy chrome wheels she’d seen before in town—pulled into the lot and parked a few spaces down. There were two men in the cab. The pink-faced driver wore a cowboy hat; his taller passenger wore a seed cap. She’d forgotten what Deena said the driver’s name was, but she remembered her calling him a troglodyte.
Judith steadied her cart against the Bonneville’s bumper, leaned over, and rolled the pot to the edge of the cart’s flat bed. Then—there was nothing else to do—she squatted, wrapped her arms around the clay pot, and jerked it up.
The cart slid free and, as she watched, began coasting downhill.
Judith banged the pot back down and ran to catch up to the cart before it crashed into the front end of somebody’s new Oldsmobile. The temperature was only in the low seventies, but she was sweating. She was also peevish. She rolled the cart to an enclosure marked Cart Corral and shoved it roughly inside.
When she turned around, the pink-faced man was standing next to her father’s car. Out of his truck, he was stout and bowlegged. “Looks like you’re in need of a little help,” he called out.
He wore a royal blue snap-button shirt, and his cowboy hat was clean and white. His hands and face were mottled pink, as if, Judith thought, he’d been left too long in boiling water.
When she drew close, he said, “Are you a damsel in distress?” and added a puggish grin.
“Not really,” Judith said and glanced over at the man’s orange pickup. His passenger was still in the cab, his head tipped far back as he drank the last from a can.
“Where to?” the pinkish man said, drawing Judith’s attention back. “Into the trunk?” He’d bent to pick up the pot. Up close, his cheeks were crazed with fi
ne blue veins.
“I can get it,” Judith said with as much chill as she could manage.
“It’s no trouble, miss. It’ll just take a minute and the clock ain’t runnin’.”
Judith had no idea what this meant and wasn’t going to ask. She put her hand on the pot. “No, I’ll get it. Next time you might not be here.”
The man stepped back, shrugging amiably. “Well, you got a point there, to be truthful. You oughtn’t to shoot what you can’t carry out.”
Judith was wearing the short suede skirt her mother had given her and suddenly wished she wasn’t. She was also wearing an oversized nubby sweater that she tugged down before she squatted, hugged the pot, and, careful not to express even a minimal grunt, lifted it to the lip of the trunk, then skidded it in.
“Kudos,” the pinkish man said.
The other man stepped out of the orange truck then and set his empty beer can in the back, adding to a collection of discards. Judith didn’t look at him but was aware of him circling the truck and unhurriedly pulling a clean dress shirt over a sleeveless undershirt. It created the impression of someone late for an appointment he wasn’t sure he wanted to keep.
She tried not to bend very much forward as she tossed a blanket over the pot and more or less secured the trunk with twine. When she straightened and turned, both men stood watching. The second man was tall, with a loose smile that seemed authentically friendly, but still, he stood with his hands in his back pockets, as unhelpful as the pink man. Judith hadn’t wanted their assistance, but their standing and watching and doing nothing whatsoever was annoying, too.
She said, “Maybe for your next highlight, you buckaroos will want to go over to the Safeway and watch a produce truck unload.”
The pink man’s face stiffened, but the other man let out a soft laugh of amusement. He seemed familiar in a slippery kind of way, and she looked at him longer than she meant to. She started slightly when the pink man said, “We’ve met before, haven’t we?”