The White Van

by Patrick Hoffman

  “That’s not mine,” said Emily.

  “Come,” said the woman. Emily stepped toward the table. The woman, her face made ugly with anger, stuck her fingers into the brown gravy, held them up for Emily to see, and then smeared the gravy across the table. “Clean it,” she said, holding a bathroom towel out for her.

  Emily stepped forward and cleaned the gravy with the towel. The woman lifted the container and dumped the remaining food onto the table. “Clean it,” she said.

  Emily began wiping at it with the towel, but the woman, her eyebrows raised, interrupted her by pointing at a trash can. Emily, feeling a strange disassociation with her own body, brought the trash can to the table, put the Styrofoam container into it, and then, with the towel, pushed in the mess of gravy and food off the table and into the trash. She then wiped up the remaining mess.

  “See, good, not too hard, right?” said the woman. “A little work never killed anyone.”

  They fed her candy as a reward. They gave her Starbursts. The three of them, Emily and the woman and the Russian, would sit at the table and eat candy, piling wrappers in the center. They made her drink soup and eat slices of bread. The sore under Emily’s mouth had healed. She was being taken care of. She slept.

  The woman would stand over Emily’s bed and—in a voice that was meant to sound comforting—sing Sinatra songs. She would sing It had to be you, her accent pronounced and her voice flat. It had to be you.

  It was 11 a.m. The woman brought in another blue bag of clothes.

  “Time to get dressed,” she said, holding up a navy blue sweater. “Turtleneck—no, bra first, in the bathroom—bra, turtleneck, then sweater,” said the woman, pushing Emily into the bathroom. The Russian sat at the table.

  Emily, after what seemed like a long time, stepped out of the bathroom. She looked different in the new clothes. “How do I look?” she slurred.

  “You look like an honest person,” said the woman, taking Emily’s shoulders in her hands and turning her side to side. “Drink this,” said the woman, holding out a glass filled with cloudy water. “Medicine.”

  Emily drank it; bitterness spread from her tongue to her shoulders and ears. She tried to push it back but the woman forced the glass to her mouth and tipped it back. Emily drank.

  The woman helped Emily pull on her shoes.

  “How do you feel?”

  “I’m feeling like a . . .” She searched her head, but there was nothing. She didn’t know how she was feeling.

  “Well, you look like a beautiful actress,” said the woman. “And today is the day. No more waiting around. It’s money time.” She sang into Emily’s ear, matching the words to the tune of the Sinatra song, “It’s time to make money.” Then she kissed Emily on both cheeks and clapped her hands at the Russian.

  “Wake up, everyone,” said the woman. “Emily, you need to smoke your little pipe, you need to wake up—today is the day—give her the pipe!” she yelled at the man. He brought the pipe and the woman held it up to Emily’s mouth and lit it for her.

  “Smoke it!”

  Emily smoked it. She leaned her head sideways and held on to the woman’s arms for balance. The woman put the pipe to her own mouth and pretended to smoke it herself. Then she handed it to the Russian, who after making a little show of shrugging his shoulders, smoked it in earnest. The woman held it back up to Emily’s mouth and she smoked again.

  They left the hotel. It was the first time Emily had been outside in a week. The light from the sun was white and Emily had to hold her left hand over her eyes. She walked arm and arm with the Russian, as though she were being helped across ice, back through the courtyard and out to the parking lot.

  The woman went ahead of them and walked to a large, windowless white van. She pulled open the sliding door and waited for them. Her eyes and hair sparkled. When Emily and the Russian reached her, the woman stepped into the van, and then turned around and helped Emily climb in. She guided her down onto the bench seat just behind the driver’s seat.

  “I don’t know if I’m ready for all this,” said Emily.

  “It’s no problem, a withdrawal, walk in, walk out—voilà,” said the woman, patting Emily’s head and buckling her in.

  Walk in, walk out? This lady tripping, thought Emily.

  The woman showed Emily a pair of black leather gloves.

  “I’m gonna wear your things?” asked Emily. Her mind was warped; she felt one step behind, she felt tangled up.

  “Today you can do whatever you want,” said the woman.

  The Russian got into the driver’s seat and started the van.

  The woman took out a small flashlight and examined both of Emily’s eyes, then touched her on the tip of her nose and buckled herself in. Emily sat with her chin resting against her chest. The van floated out of the parking lot. The hotel disappeared. “My whip float hard,” said Emily.

  They joined the other traffic on the 101 and started out for the city. Georgy, the younger, ugly man that Emily had noticed on the first night, followed behind in a gray sedan.

  “Emily, listen to me,” said the woman, “listen, listen—you can do anything in this entire world, you hear me. You are a beautiful, gifted, sweet thing. You are talented, and you will listen to me, and you will do just like I tell you. Okay?” The woman’s perfume and lipstick were overpowering.

  “Okay,” said Emily.

  They drove in silence for a bit and then, as though remembering something, the woman said, “Emily, we have a slight change in plan.” The Russian adjusted the rearview mirror and watched them through it.

  “No problem,” said Emily, bumping up and down with the road. She felt perfectly high. “No problemo.”

  “It will be so much easier now,” said the woman. “You don’t even need to talk to them—barely—you just go in and give the manager—she’s a redhead—give her this phone.” She held up a silver cell phone. “Give her the phone and we will talk with her. She’s in it, too, Emily, she’s a—a team member.”

  “She gets a third, too?” asked Emily.

  “No,” said the woman. “She gets a flat fee.”

  “What about the cameras?” asked Emily.

  “We have it all worked out, your clothes, a disguise.” The woman held up a black wig. “We have glasses, too. Everything is perfectly arranged—besides, please, it’s a misdemeanor. Misdemeanor identity theft. You’ve done worse. We’ve done worse. We’ve all done worse.”

  The woman took Emily’s hand in her own and rubbed it like she was checking to see if it was clammy or not. Then she checked Emily’s forehead. Emily wanted to close her eyes and float.

  “Shit is fucked-up,” said Emily.

  The Russian tilted his head to see.

  “That’s right,” said the woman.

  Emily relaxed her mouth and let her tongue hang out. She looked at the woman: black tracksuit; makeup. The whole thing seemed like a costume.

  They were on the straight part of 101, passing the bay on the right and Brisbane on the left. A thick fog was coming in over the hills. Candlestick Park was coming up on one side. Emily thought about Pierre. He was a 49ers fan. She closed her eyes and a floating four-sided head, each side made of Pierre’s face, appeared in her mind’s eye, and said: “Like I always told you, the mouse plays the cat, and the cat watches in the crowd.” She opened her eyes and turned to look at the woman next to her. She was looking at Emily in a concerned way. “I didn’t say that,” said Emily.

  A small warning signal worked its way through the high into Emily’s mind: for a moment it became clear to her that she was riding in a van next to a Russian woman on her way to withdraw a million dollars from a bank. Something didn’t seem right about it. The moment of realization rose up like the bow of a ship and then disappeared.

  They were back in the city now. Houses were packed in tight gray rows on all sides of the freeway. It felt, to Emily, like the van might fall on its side. She put her hand on the seat in front of her, opened her mouth like
she was yawning, and tried to twist her head straight. They drove past the Alemany projects. Pierre’s other girlfriend, La La, lived there. “Keep going,” said Emily.

  “Shh,” said the woman, patting Emily on the hand and reaching for a black backpack on the floor. She pulled out a plastic water bottle, guided Emily’s head back, and poured water into her mouth.

  “Mmm,” said Emily, smacking her lips. The water tasted like Kool-Aid.

  What was she on? Whatever it was, it felt good. It didn’t feel like anything she had felt before. She felt nauseous, but even that was okay; it grounded her. Otherwise she might just nod out. She tried to calculate the intensity of the high, but she couldn’t. She was simply blasted.

  They drove through the Sunset. A memory passed through Emily’s mind: twelve years earlier, when she had first moved to the city, she used to take the train out to the beach with her friend Meagan. There was a boy named Salvador, who would sit at the bus stop in front of the hotel at Forty-Eighth and Judah and sell crystal meth, ten dollars for a tenth of a gram. He wore baggy jeans like a raver. He’d make them whisper how much they wanted, then they’d put the money into the coin slot of a pay phone, and he’d deposit the drugs and take the money. Then they’d walk up two blocks to the next shelter and sniff the bag. Then they’d walk all the way downtown from there. Years later, Meagan got cleaned up and found God. She got married to a man who strangled her in Stockton.

  The van entered Golden Gate Park. The Russian said something to the woman; everything confused Emily, but she couldn’t ask for clarification. She tried to imitate the woman’s face. The Russian was speaking, but Emily couldn’t understand what he was saying. He sounded concerned. He kept raising his hand.

  “What the fuck is he saying?” asked Emily. Nobody answered her.

  They drove into the Richmond District. Schools of cars passed here and there. The woman was directing the Russian on how to drive: “Turn right, turn right.” The van drifted through the streets.

  The Russian pulled the van over at Masonic and Euclid and turned the engine off. He and the woman were both speaking in Russian at the same time. They seemed angry. Emily, in an effort to calm them down, raised both of her hands up and dropped her chin, but they ignored her.

  After a minute the Russian put on a white painter’s hat and black sunglasses. He didn’t seem happy. Emily had never seen him upset. The woman checked Emily’s eyes again. She straightened out Emily’s hair and made little clucking noises. Then she grabbed Emily’s face with her hands and kissed her dryly on the lips.

  The woman put on a white hat of her own and big black sunglasses. She pulled Emily’s gloves tighter onto her hands.

  “Okay, dear,” said the woman, as she fit some kind of device into Emily’s ear. She took out two cell phones and pressed buttons on both. “Testing, testing, one, two, three,” she said into one of the phones, with the other one lifted to her ear. Emily watched as the woman plugged something into one of the phones and then placed it into Emily’s sweater pocket. She noticed the woman’s hands shaking as she buttoned the pocket closed.

  “But I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” said Emily.

  “Just like I said,” the woman answered.

  The Russian was still talking. He looked in the rearview mirror and then looked at the one on the passenger side. Emily tried to roll her head back to look, too, but she couldn’t. The van was moving again.

  The woman produced a black doctor’s bag from somewhere and set it down in front of Emily. The Russian would not stop talking.

  The van continued up Masonic. Emily looked out her window toward downtown and felt some kind of recognition. She opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue in an effort to gain control of her face.

  The van turned right onto Geary. Emily looked at the Lucky Penny diner. It looked like a circus.

  “Safe, baby,” said the woman again, reaching over Emily’s head and turning the earpiece on. “Testing, you hear me?”

  “Yep,” said Emily. She could hear the woman in the earpiece.

  The van pulled up a half a block east of the Palm-Geary branch of US Bank. The woman grabbed Emily’s hands and said, “Emily, the time has come. Don’t worry about anything. Much easier now. Just walk in and go to the manager’s desk. As I told you, she is a redheaded woman—in fact she is Russian. She will be sitting out on the main floor. She’s waiting for you. The redhead—remember, it’s nothing. Very safe. They are waiting. You’ll see her there. Just walk up and give her this phone—hand it to her.” She handed Emily another silver cell phone and continued.

  “Hold it in your hand. We will be monitoring you, and we will be talking to you on your earpiece. No problems.” The words came at Emily like tires rolling down a hill; they were grouped, and moving in the same direction, but she couldn’t put them together into something that made sense. Emily looked at the woman and saw sweat on her forehead.

  The woman put a necklace with some kind of pendant over Emily’s head and then put a black wig over her hair. I already got black hair, thought Emily. The woman was straightening out the wig and putting a pair of sunglasses onto Emily’s face.

  “There you go, honey. Just for show.”

  “You want me to rob them?” Emily managed to ask.

  “Please, Emily, don’t be silly,” said the woman. “She is our business partner, this redhead—an associate. Just do this and you get your money and we drop you off back home free. You can start a new life. You know, bingo.”

  Then the woman lifted the black doctor’s bag and handcuffed it to Emily’s right hand. The bag was closed. Emily didn’t understand its purpose.

  “You want me to rob a bank?” said Emily. The words came out slow and stretched and floated around the van. She was looking down at the bag. It almost seemed funny.

  “That’s enough,” said the woman, not loud, but directly into Emily’s ear. She reached for Emily’s seat belt and unfastened it. Then she grabbed both of Emily’s wrists and pulled her up out of the seat.

  “Now go,” she said, with a little push to the small of Emily’s back.

  “Walk to the bank, Emily,” said the voice in Emily’s earpiece. The words swung her forward. She took a few steps toward the door.

  The bank was a cube-shaped building decorated with flagstone and corrugated metal. Everything confused Emily. Her head, under the wig, led the way.

  “The door, Emily, easy,” said the woman’s voice in her ear. Emily squinted at the entrance like a drunk. Her earpiece was silent. She opened the door of the bank and dragged herself in.

  Customers slouched in a line. Behind the windows women worked quietly, their heads shaking in unison. Nobody appeared to notice Emily as she stepped into the room.

  “Walk to the redhead.”

  Emily squinted through her sunglasses. There was a row of desks set off on the opposite side of the room from the tellers; two of the desks were empty, but at the third a redheaded woman sat typing at a computer. Emily lifted her hand toward the woman and then staggered forward. The woman’s hair was a bright red beacon.

  “Give her the phone,” said the voice in Emily’s ear.

  Emily stopped at the desk and stared down at the redhead, who looked up nervously.

  “Give her the phone from your hand!”

  Emily had forgotten the phone. She had forgotten the bag attached to her arm, had forgotten her clothes, her wig, everything. Her attention was on the room and how it was expanding and contracting with every breath she took.

  “Tell her to listen to it.”

  “Here,” said Emily. She held out the phone.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t understand?” said the redhead. Her face was constricted.

  Emily was in a cloud. Sweat appeared on her face like she was pulling moisture from the air.

  A phone on the redhead’s desk rang. The redhead ignored it. Emily was confused. She didn’t know what to do. She opened the phone she was holding for the redhead and spoke into it.
/>   “Hello?”

  “Emily, kindly give her the phone!” said the voice on the other end. Emily heard it on the phone and a split second later in her earpiece, which only added to her confusion. She was becoming flustered. She held out the phone and stared at it.

  “The phone!”

  She held it out again and finally the redhead took it from her, put it to her ear, and said something into it.

  “Emily, take the black bag you have on your wrist and show it to her, dear. She is fine—good, just open it and show it to her.”

  Emily looked down at the doctor’s bag attached to her wrist. She raised it up and struggled to open it. She looked at the redhead. The redhead was staring at Emily and listening to the silver cell phone. She looked scared; her mouth was open. Her face looked insulted. She was speaking into the phone.

  “Emily, show her the bag!”

  “Show me the bag!” hissed the redhead without moving her lips.

  Was this the identity theft? With her right hand Emily unclipped the doctor’s bag and held it open: there were wires coming out of a big square of gray clay. An electronic face at the top of the contraption blinked, red-green, red-green. Even in her state, Emily could tell what it was.

  She looked to the redhead for advice. The redhead’s face had blanched white; pink blotches were appearing on her neck and chest. Emily’s earpiece was silent.

  “I don’t know,” said Emily to nobody in particular. The room seemed to darken.

  “Emily, sit down at the desk.”

  Emily slumped down into a chair. She tried to pull the bag off her wrist, but she couldn’t. She turned the bag over and tried to shake the bomb out of it, but it was attached to the bag. She thought about pulling the wires out, but she became scared it would explode. She turned and looked at the door. She wanted to run. She hadn’t noticed the security guard standing by the entrance, right where she had come in. He was an old Chinese man, rocking on his feet. He looked at Emily for a moment, then looked away. He seemed to be whistling.

  The redhead was speaking heatedly into the phone. Emily leaned on the desk in front of her; she wanted to put her head down and sleep, throw up, anything. She could hear yelling coming from the cell phone.