by Lutz, Lisa
First I run a criminal check on the potential employee to be certain there are no felonies in his wake, then I make sure he is exactly who he says he is. If Potential Employee claims to reside at 12 Lombard Street, I run a credit header and cross-check the addresses. Most of my job is cut-and-dry. If a wife wants to know if her husband is cheating, I follow him for a week or two until he does or doesn’t. Usually, what we want to know about someone can be discovered quite easily, but the problem with my work is that I’ve grown accustomed to having answers at my fingertips. I expect a brief stab of curiosity to be sated by five minutes at a computer or five hours behind the wheel of my car.
My job requires me to be curious and insists that I be naturally suspicious. But there are many occasions when I simply cannot provide an explanation for the facts presented to me. On those occasions I may cross some ethical boundaries to reach my goal, simply to get answers to questions that won’t go away. I have many flaws, but I suppose the only one that truly damages my life is that I believe all questions have answers and I believe that I am entitled to those answers.
I say all this because I hope it will explain all the events that have transpired. If you have enough unanswered questions, you have a certifiable mystery, and those are impossible to resist.
MILFOS AND REAFOS
MILFO (‘mil-fe) n: 1. Acronym for mid-life freak-out; 2. Something resembling a mid-life crisis, but occurring more than once.
REAFO (‘re-fe) n: 1. Acronym for retirement-age freak-out; 2. Something resembling a mid-life crisis, but occurring more than once and later than it’s supposed to.
After breakfast with Subject, I returned to the Spellman offices to finish up a series of background checks for our biggest client, Xylor Corp. Since Mom and Dad took on the giant conglomerate, there have been no more cash flow problems, although the work has gotten decidedly duller. Backgrounds are almost exclusively desk work—database research with a couple phone calls thrown in. Any time I’m stuck in the office means more quality time with the family.
Since it was Saturday, Rae was home and bored. She strolled into the office to disrupt my already lagging work ethic, plopped down in an old vinyl chair, rolled herself over to me, and put her feet up on my desk.
“Dad’s definitely having a REAFO,” Rae said.
“One yoga class does not a REAFO make,” I replied.
“I’ve been watching him,” Rae said. “He’s taking showers outside of the house, which can only mean one thing.”
“Oh my god,” I replied, other factors weighing in on my response. “He’s going to the gym, isn’t he? I thought he’d lost some weight.”
“He goes at least three times a week and to that yoga class. But the part I don’t get,” Rae said, “is that he tries to keep it from Mom.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “She’s the one who’s been nagging him to do that for years.”
“He sneaks out when she’s not around. It’s really weird.”
“Maybe that’s just a coincidence.”
“I doubt it,” Rae replied. “But I’ll take this REAFO over MILFO number three any day,” Rae said, spinning around in the chair.
“Can’t argue with you there.”
“So this is REAFO number two, right?” she asked.
“According to my calculations.”
MILFO #1—“Mirror Man”
Dad’s first MILFO began in his forty-eighth1 year. At the time we referred to it as a mid-life crisis, since it so completely resembled one of those. In Dad’s case it took the form of vanity. He purchased sharper clothes, dyed his hair, and checked himself in the mirror with the regularity of a cuckoo clock. He would even solicit fashion advice and ask random family members to go shopping with him. He started wearing bracelets and using expensive moisturizers. Although the origin of this first MILFO was never scientifically proven, Rae and I surmised that it was a direct product of attending Mom’s twentieth high school reunion. My father is a large man—six foot three, in the mid-two-hundred-pound range, with slightly oafish features. The reunion reminded Dad that he married a woman both far better-looking and ten years younger than him, which we believe contributed to his insecurity. The MILFO lasted approximately a month. However, my father, not being a naturally vain man, soon lost interest in his looks when he realized my mother had not.
The MILFO acronym was coined when Dad had his next flip-out. Rae and I were under the impression that a mid-life crisis was supposed to happen once in a man’s life. We decided that if Dad wanted more than one, they needed a new name. MILFO #2 occurred approximately four years later. We would eventually discover that MILFOs and REAFOs recurred with the frequency of a leap year. Not on the dot, but close enough.
MILFO #2—“Space Detective”
Spellman Investigations was going through some financial difficulties at the time. Dad picked up the Datebook section of the San Francisco Chronicle one morning and read an article about a screenwriter who penned the latest Bruce Willis vehicle and earned two million dollars in the process. Dad then decided that he had a screenplay in him. Over the next two weeks he purchased Syd Field’s book on how to write a screenplay, worked on his pitch, and eventually concocted a story about a detective who accidentally2 ends up on the space shuttle and discovers the body of a murdered astronaut. In the strict confines of the gravity-free shuttle, Detective Jack Spaceman3 had to solve the crime before all the “real astronauts” were killed and there was no one left to bring the shuttle back to earth.
One of the major problems with Dad’s screenplay, other than the characters and plot, was that he didn’t actually want to write it, he just wanted to practice his pitch on family members. I was a teenager at the time and put up with it just once. David was a bit more patient and offered feedback maybe two or three times before he pled his too-much-homework case. Mom, after hearing the title, refused to listen to a single word. Uncle Ray had the best excuse of all: “Movies ain’t my thing,” he’d say, and run off to the bar.
Unfortunately, only one family member remained—Rae, who was eight at the time. Dad would tuck her into bed, night after night, reworking his screenplay pitch as a bedtime story. On day seven, Rae went screaming into Mom and Dad’s bedroom, crying hysterically to Mom, begging for a new bedtime story. Mom told Dad that making Rae listen to his screenplay pitch was tantamount to child abuse. She suggested Dad write the screenplay and stop talking about it, which brought MILFO #2 to an end.
MILFO #3—“The Learning Annex”
Three and a half years later, Dad decided his worldview was limited, and MILFO #3 began. Dad first took a class at the Learning Annex called “Two Thousand Years of World History in Two Days.” Then he moved on to “How to Speak to Anyone about Anything,” “Conversational Latin,” and then the bizarrely inappropriate “Knitting 101.” These classes would have been fine if Dad could have kept them to himself, but he felt the need to share, and Rae, as the youngest and least able to defend herself, usually got the brunt of Dad’s regurgitation of information.
Being a curious and intelligent child, Rae didn’t mind the condensed history lesson that Dad provided, although we would later learn that his grasp of the Civil War and the American Revolution was sketchy at best, with a number of commingling facts. However, Rae’s brief lesson on Latin greetings got the cold shoulder, since my eleven-year-old sister was already stuck in beginner’s Spanish.
What really got under Rae’s skin was the knitting lesson. She protested loudly for a full evening until my father left five spools of yarn in her bedroom and told her to think about it. Rae, realizing that you can’t knit yarn if it’s chopped up into a bunch of tiny little pieces, woke up early the next morning and began dicing the spools up in two-to-three-inch strands with a pair of scissors from her art supply box. My mother came upon the crime scene the next morning, finding my sister’s room carpeted in a motley assortment of yarn. They spent the next hour cleaning up the mess. When my father fina
lly got out of bed, Mom informed him that MILFO #3 was over.
By the time MILFO #4 rolled around, Rae pointed out that Dad was no longer middle-aged. We both concurred that the MILFOs needed to be renamed and came up with the greatly superior acronym REAFO. Which brings me to REAFO #1.
REAFO #1—“Wood Shop”
After building a flower box in class, Dad decided he was ready for a more ambitious project. Soon after his three-week class came to an end, he began construction on a loft bed in Rae’s room, with a study annex underneath. David was at college at the time, so Rae slept in his room for the two months Dad worked on this project. What I remember from those months was a great deal of swearing and yelps of pain coming from upstairs. I recall Dad’s fingers covered in makeshift bandages, blood seeping from an assortment of wounds. But my father’s dedication was tireless. When his project was completed, he placed a large sheet over the construction and invited the family into the room for a formal unveiling.
My mother eyed the primitive-looking structure with a great deal of skepticism. Rae ran for the ladder, eager to climb her new, exciting piece of furniture. But my mother pulled her off the bottom rung and turned to me.
“Isabel, would you mind testing this out first?”
“Oh, right. Sacrifice me,” I said, giving my mom a look of mock betrayal. “This is just like Sophie’s Choice.”
I approached the construction. The ladder creaked beneath my weight as I reached the top of the bed. I threw myself onto the mattress, expecting (and half hoping) that the structure would crumble beneath me.4 Sadly, the loft bed merely swayed back and forth, creaking like the stairs of an abandoned building after years of decay. There would never be any dramatic collapse. My mother instructed my father to disassemble the bed immediately. Rae cried all afternoon and REAFO #1 came to an end.
REAFO #2 OR SUSPICIOUS BEHAVIOR REPORT #3?
“Albert Spellman”
Rae departed after our MILFO/REAFO chat to make a phone call. As I ran a criminal check on Martha Baumgartner, executive assistant applicant, secretly hoping that she had been arrested at least one time in her forty-five years, Dad entered the office, hair still slightly damp—from his gym shower, I presume. Dad said hello, patted me on the head, and sat down behind his desk. Fifteen minutes passed in silence, until I noticed my father glancing in my direction more often than can be reasonably justified.
“Take a picture. It’ll last longer,” I said.
“With all that charm it’s a crime you’re not yet married,” Dad mumbled sarcastically, and returned to his work.
Five minutes later, I caught him looking at me again. I narrowed my eyes and stared back at him.
“Can I ask you a question?” Dad asked.
“I’d rather you didn’t,” I replied.
Long pause.
“Are you happy?” he asked sincerely.
“I’d be happier if you gave me a raise.”
“I’m not talking about money.”
“No, but I am.”
“Change. Of. Subject,” my father said in the tone of a demand.
“Fine,” I replied.
“Is this what you want to do with your life?” my dad asked. “Is this enough for you?”
“What are you getting at?”
“I’ve been thinking lately,” he replied.
“A by-product of the new REAFO, no doubt.”
“I’m a complicated man, Isabel.”
“So you say.”
“It’s not too late for you,” Dad said, a little too seriously.
“Oh, good.”
“I mean, it’s not too late to do something different.”
“Like what?”
“Anything. You’re still young. You could go to medical school—”
“Dad, if you’re gunning to have a doctor in the family, you better work on Rae. Or David. He could be one of those total high-achieving freaks who earn both an MD and a JD. You know, I think I’d have more in common with a career bank robber than a doctor-slash-lawyer.”
My dad picked up a stack of papers from his desk and gave me a disappointed stare.
“I know you’re very proud of your truly spectacular defense mechanisms, but I swear sometimes it’s impossible to have a simple conversation with you.”
Dad walked out of the room, in a moderate huff. REAFOs (and MILFOs) had never typically taken the form of hostility. This might have been something else entirely.
EX-BOYFRIEND #9
Monday, January 16
1300 hrs
Daniel Castillo, DDS, phoned the Spellman offices just as I began to tackle a two-foot stack of papers left on my desk to file.
“My three o’clock cancelled and you’re overdue for a cleaning. I’ll see you then,” he said, and then quickly hung up the phone. Daniel has learned that waiting for a response from me can only result in further conversation and negotiations. He discovered the wait-for-no-answer tactic sometime after our breakup and has been using it ever since. The key to his success is that once he hangs up, he won’t pick up his cell phone or accept any calls from me, rendering all communication impossible.
I like to reward innovation, and so I arrived at my appointment at 3 P.M. sharp.1
“You’re late,” Daniel said.
“You never asked if I could make it on time.”
“Sit down.”
I sat down in the chair. Daniel put the paper bib on me and said, “Open up.”
“That’s it? No small talk? Don’t you want to ask me ‘What’s new?’ first?”
“All right,” Daniel said, reluctantly, “what’s new?”
“Well, Rae almost vehicular-manslaughtered her best friend, and I briefly had a sixty-five-year-old roommate, but now have temporarily moved back in with my parents. I think my Dad might be having his second REAFO, provisionally titled ‘Gym REAFO.’ And something’s up with my mom, but I can’t put my finger on it.”
“Speaking of your mother,” Daniel said, unmoved by my headline news, “tell her she’s overdue for a cleaning.”
“She was just in here a few days ago.”
“No, she wasn’t. I assure you, I remember when your mother visits.”2
“Interesting. I’ll have to put that in my report.”
“Open up.”
“No. Now I say, ‘What’s new with you, Daniel?’”
“I’m engaged,” Daniel replied. “Open wide.”
Daniel mistook my gawk for acquiescence and promptly stuck the scaler and mirror in my mouth.
“Aat? En id at appen?”
“I proposed three weeks ago,” Daniel replied. He’s fluent in consonant-free cleaning speak.
“Onrayuashons.”
“Thank you.”
“Aaa oes eee ooo?”
“She’s a neurosurgeon. Rinse.”
I rinsed and said, “You’re kidding, right?”
“How is that funny?” Daniel replied, and stuck his fingers back in my mouth.
“Ard ooo splain.”
“Are you flossing regularly?”
“Uh huuhhh.”
“Was that a yes or no?”
“Esss!”
“Liar!” Daniel shouted, then modified his tone. “Rinse.”
I rinsed and said, “So what else can you tell me about her?”
“She’s a Latina, so my mother is thrilled. She’s an excellent tennis player, gourmet cook. What do you want to know?”
“Did she model to put herself through medical school?” I said sarcastically, which Daniel didn’t pick up on.
“Not that I’m aware of. Open up.”
“Ank odd.”
“But she was in the Olympics,” Daniel said, twisting the knife into my gut.
THE PHILOSOPHER’S CLUB
After my teeth cleaning and reminder of my all-around mediocrity, I needed a stiff drink. I knew my bartender (yes, my bartender) would lend a sympathetic ear, so I headed over
to the Philosopher’s Club.
“Do you want to be a neurosurgeon?” Milo asked, unsympathetically.
“No.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“Forget it.”
“You want to be in the Olympics, that’s it?”
“I said forget it.”
“Forgotten,” Milo replied, gladly. “Oh, your sister came back here the other day.”
“When?”
“A couple of weeks ago. Forgot to mention it.”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“She came in, ordered a drink, I told her to leave, and she phoned a cop to pick her up.”
“Henry?”
“I think that’s his name. Stiff-looking fellow. Doesn’t smile.”
“That’s the guy.”
“And then yesterday, he came into the bar by himself. He was asking about you. When you came in and stuff.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I said you weren’t on a schedule. I figured I better be cagey, a cop coming in here asking questions.”
“I appreciate your concern, but relax. I’m not in trouble with the law.”1
THE PETERSON PROBLEM
For the five days following Bernie’s reentry into my life, I remained in the Spellman house, but I did not give up hope that soon my apartment would be mine again. The most direct approach I considered was reuniting Bernie and Daisy. On day three of my Bernie eviction, I phoned Daisy and suggested a reconciliation, citing Bernie’s devastation. Daisy then told her side of the story, which involved her husband of eighteen months clocking in close to thirty hours a week at the local strip club. She hung up on me when I recommended marriage counseling.
Shortly after my drink at Milo’s, I drove back to my apartment, thinking I might try a night at the address on my phone bill as a change of pace. I cast aside the tie on the doorknob and unlocked the deadbolt. I opened the door to a vision that I still cannot erase from my memory no matter how many bourbons I drink: Bernie, half naked, chasing Letty, a fifty-something woman with a bouffant hairdo and blue-eye-shadowed raccoon eyes, also half-naked, around the apartment, which in the last week had turned into a disaster zone.