by Marie Turner
However, Robert doesn’t shoot me. Instead, I watch his naked face as he slips inside the black town car. And then it spits through a river of water toward the courthouse.
All I can think is that I’m so glad he’s going instead of coming. Going instead of coming. Still, I know I’ll have to face him today. I know I’ll be the executioner meeting her executionee, or perhaps the other way around. And I wonder if he’s going to kill me or just want to kill me so very badly that his fingers will ache to clasp my neck.
But all happiness must come at a price, right? Nothing is for free. Nothing worthwhile anyway.
Chapter 4
“Cada cual hace con su vida un papalote y lo echa a volar.”
We each make a kite of life and fly it as we will.
When I arrive at my desk that morning, I’m swimming in unadulterated joy that Robert is nowhere in sight. I’m feeling like the cream without the bland Oreo cookie, the cherry on top of the banana split, the German Chocolate frosting without the doughy chocolate cake—until I see a clutch of documents sitting on my chair.
On top is an envelope affixed with a yellow post-it note that reads:
Caroline,
Make four copies of these documents and messenger them to Judge Schwarzer. Then hand-deliver the envelope to the address on the label. Afterwards, you’ll have to accompany me to the client meeting at noon. Bring the Rowland file and extra lined paper to take notes. I’ll pick you up in the town car at 11:30.
-Robert
Two things are very wrong with this note. First, Robert never leaves documents on my chair, always on my desk, right in front of my computer. So why change his usual procedure now, after two years? Second, Robert has never—not even once—signed his name on the instructions he gives me. I work only for him, so who else would leave me post-it instructions? I’m quite familiar with his handwriting, so it’s not as if signing is name is necessary. And why the little dash before his name? What is that about?
I hold the post-it in my hand and examine it as if I’m reading hieroglyphics and expect the note to provide the translation.
Next, I strike out toward the copy room, where I stand in front of the copier, a solitary madwoman. Thinking about the note, I gaze at the white wall in front of me while the copy machine zigzags and flashes light like a dying star. After shoving the documents in an envelope, I phone a bicycle messenger. He soon arrives dripping at my desk, and I hand him the package. While he sprints off toward the elevator, Todd glides in wearing a smart-looking trench coat. His wet hair appears purposefully slicked back and drippy, like Elvis’s hair on a rainy day. He glances both ways and then crosses over to my desk.
Leaning over my cubicle wall, he says, “What the hell happened to you last night? One minute you’re sitting at the table looking bored as a shed in a field and the next you and Robert are gone. Did you seduce him with those little man boobs of yours?” he teases.
“Shut up!” I quietly thunder. “Someone will hear you.” I notice that the darkened offices are now firing to life. “You’re going to have to wait for the long version. I’ve got to deliver something for Robert and then he’s picking me up for a client meeting at 11:30. I won’t even be able to go to lunch with you guys today. But Cory can fill you in. He’s got the basic details. Just make sure nobody hears you all chatting at the food court. You’re like a bunch of middle school girls sometimes, I swear.”
“Oh, goodie. Details!” He quietly claps his hands. “And remind me to tell you later about that intern on the 27th floor. You know the blond one who wears the nice hair gel?” Todd whispers wide-eyed to me.
“Yeah?”
“Well, I found out very specifically which brand of hair gel he wears,” Todd says, giving me a knowing look.
“You didn’t!”
“Oh, but I did. I so very did. It was a good hair gel too.”
I smile at Todd for scoring yet another cute intern. I wouldn’t be surprised if Todd somehow wrangled a straight intern into crossing over to the light side. He has that androgynous supermodel way about him that both gay and straight men find attractive.
“See you later then,” I say, giving him a congratulatory nod. “You look good in that trench coat by the way.”
He tosses a bluffing smile while I don my raincoat and trundle toward the elevator to make my delivery.
The address is located only five blocks away, but it’s still five blocks in torrential rain. All I can think is that I hope what’s in this envelope is important. Secret government documents explaining how to end world hunger. Plans to stop global warming. An immunization to protect people from the zombie lawyer apocalypse. Unfortunately, the contents feel fat and soft, unlike any of those things.
Outside the wind is howling and the rain so dense that twenty feet away the buildings look adrift. In front of me a woman holds a yellow umbrella that collapses from the wind and becomes an octopus turned inside out. She tries to right it while I burn past her. Since I know my general direction, I clop onward, steering around the puddles forming in indentations in the sidewalk and using the tall buildings to shield me from the rain.
By the time I arrive, my flat shoes are squeaking and the lower half of my pants dripping. My destination is a red brick building that sits across from the bay. It looks like an old factory that’s been converted into lofts. The four stories have ignited-eyes for windows, their brightness sitting back inside their sockets. I take the elevator to the top floor and step off. It smells strongly of antiseptic and mildly of public toilets inside. At the front reception, I approach an elderly woman who sits like a solitary pilgrim at her desk.
“I have a delivery,” I say, looking down at the envelope in my hand and adding, “For John Spencer from Robert Carver.”
“This way,” the woman replies, as if her only job is guiding people away from her desk. She stands and deserts her post to escort me around the faux plant and down the white-tiled hallway. On the walls hang oil paintings of different flower bouquets. One is a fake of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. We pass a glass-walled room where several senior citizens sit around a television watching a game show, the kind where people gamble on letters that spell out words. I can’t remember what it’s called. Before turning the corner, we walk past a hunched elderly man in a wheelchair. He smells of poo and looks at me as if he’s hiding a madman inside his jacket.
At the door numbered 42, the woman knocks. “Mr. Spencer?” she says. “There’s a visitor for you.”
I’m hardly a visitor, but I don’t protest. It takes too long for the door to open. When it finally does, a white-haired man appears wearing a wrinkly yellow dress shirt and blue slacks. His bare feet look icy on the tiled floor, a vast contrast to his rosy-cheeked face with pronounced jowls. His room is no bigger than a parking space. A red-quilted bed sits up against the left wall, a wooden nightstand nearby, and a solitary chair by the window. The television holds vigil in the corner on top of a tiny table.
“I hope you have my package,” the man faintly breathes.
“Yes,” I reply, handing it over.
“Come in, come in. I don’t want the smell of Mr. Poop-pants in here, so close the door, sit down,” he commands me.
“Oh, I just came to drop off—“
“Sit, sit.” He points to the chair.
I close the door and hear the receptionist’s footsteps tinkling down the hallway. Doing as I’m told, I sit on the lone chair by the window. Outside are the bay and several tall brick buildings. The rain has settled down to a steamy mist. Next to me, the clock on the man’s nightstand says 9:40 a.m., so I know I have plenty of time to get back to the office. Still I feel the need to keep moving.
Setting himself down on his bed, the man hisses and rips open the package. Inside is a pair of fuzzy blue slippers. He holds the slippers up, inspecting them in the light from the window. Then he turns them over to inspect the soles. I sit there realizing that delivering slippers to an old man is worth walking five blocks through torrential rain.
“These are exactly what I wanted. Tell Robert ‘Thank you’ for me, will you?” With flared nostrils and heavy breathing, the man puts the slippers on his feet. I consider helping, but he slides his feet in fairly well.
“You must be Caroline?” he says, observing his new footwear.
“Yes.” I want to ask who he is, but I already know his name. I wonder if he’s Robert’s dad. The man clearly looks old enough to be Robert’s father, but wouldn’t he have the same surname as Robert? Wouldn’t his last name also be Carver? Still, I wouldn’t be surprised if Robert disowned his own father, changed his name, and threw the poor old man into this retirement home. Seems like something Robert would do.
“I should probably get going back to the office before the rain picks up again,” I say. “It was nice to meet you, though, and I’ll pass along the message to Robert.”
“I don’t get that many visitors,” the man offers, twisting his new slippers in tiny circles. “It’s always nice to have company.”
I sit back down.
“Robert comes when he can, but he’s quite busy.”
“Are you his dad?” I blurt. It’s none of my business, but I can’t help myself. Instantly, I hear yapping in the hallway, the trampling of feet, and then an old man yelling, “No!”
Mr. Spencer swats his hand at the door. “Old Mr. Poop-pants hates having his diaper changed. He goes through the same commotion every morning, gets the nurses all riled up. They should just turn his wheelchair into a toilet, save us all a lot of trouble and stink.”
Mr. Spencer opens his drawer and pulls out a bag of throat lozenges, unwraps a red one, and pops it in his mouth. While he sucks, he shakes his head.
“No, I’m not Robert’s father. Not in the traditional sense. But for all intents and purposes, you could say that I’m his dad.”
So Robert does throw his father into an old age home. Relief swings into my gut. Although, as far as old-age homes go, I’ve imagined worse. This one isn’t too bad.
“How long have you lived here?” I ask, hoping to keep the conversation from growing cold.
“Four years, ever since Robert took the job at the firm and moved to the city. He wanted me to be close by, where he could keep an eye on me. He didn’t want me starting anymore fires in the kitchen while he was away.” He sucks on the lozenge and crosses his arms in front of him.
“Fires?”
“You know how you’re reading a newspaper, and then you want to make some tea, but you put the newspaper on the stove. Then you turn the stove on and walk away to wait for your tea to boil?”
“Yes,” I say, but I’m thinking No.
“That happened one too many times. Nearly burnt the apartment down. Robert yelled at me. I know I’m not supposed to put the newspaper on the stove while I’m making tea. I just did it. Can’t explain why now. Doesn’t make sense, does it? Something’s not working right upstairs.” He taps on his temple. “Comes and goes though. Most days I’m quite fine.”
Of course Robert yelled at him. Makes my teeth clench. Poor Mr. Spencer. I notice instantly that my squishy shoes have left a trail of small puddles on the tile floor.
“Oh no, I’ve made a wet mess of your floor. I’m so sorry.” I contemplate seeking a towel from the receptionist.
“Nothing to worry about. It’ll dry.” He smiles at me, a mouth full of perfectly white, straight dentures. “Must be hard working for Robert.” I notice he’s looking at my wet pants now.
You have no idea, I want to say, but I just grin back at him as if we’re talking about the weather rather than the bane of my existence, the knife in my side, the chokehold around my neck.
Mr. Spencer smiles as if his thoughts are pleasing to him alone. “He’s a bit of a hellfire, that one. I took in four foster kids after my wife died. Robert was the first, the youngest. He was only ten at the time. Surly little bastard, that one. Took me a good five years to even become friends with him, let alone develop any kind of father-son bond.” Mr. Spencer plucks a piece of lint off his pant leg and tosses it. “Bet you didn’t know he was in the foster care system, did you?”
I shake my head and look at him. He’s just transformed from a clueless old man into the Oracle from the Matrix. I listen with growing ears.
“Robert’s mother was a meth-addict. What is it nowadays with the meth? Everyone is on meth it seems. You read about it all the time, like they sell meth at the grocery store and gas stations. Nowadays you can just buy it along with your melons and toilet paper. Where do these people get meth? It makes no sense. When I was a kid, you couldn’t find drugs if you tried. You were lucky to find someone with an aspirin in their pockets when you had a headache. And your parents wouldn’t even let you drink coffee for fear you’d become addicted to caffeine. The world has changed too much. Don’t even get me started.” He swats at nothing.
I don’t say a word.
He continues. “Anyway, his mother couldn’t take care of him, seeing that she was far too busy scratching invisible bugs on her skin, selling herself in alleys, and going to jail. She couldn’t be bothered to take care of her kid. So Robert ended up with me and then three of my other foster kids. We did the best we could, I suppose, but we were more of a bruised, weather-beaten version of a family—all pretty messed up, myself included. Had more dark spells than good ones, but Robert turned out okay, didn’t he?” he asks me, his shoulders slumped, his eyes weakened.
“Yes, I think so.”
He pokes out his lips slightly. “I mean you gotta turn out all right to get into Stanford,” he grunts. I sense he’s talking to himself more than me at this point. “Robert was the only one of my foster kids who went to college, and the only one who visits me now. The others are off with their real families, living their own lives.”
Mr. Spencer pauses to scratch his head and suck on his lozenge. It smells of medicine.
“You know Robert took extra classes in high school and skipped a grade?”
“No.”
“That helped get him into Stanford. Plus he wrote a college essay about his life. Wouldn’t let me read it, of course, but the admissions lady from Stanford called our house afterwards, personally, and left a message on the answering machine, in tears no less. Said she’d never heard a story like his before. Said she didn’t know how someone could go through so much in life and not be outright crazy.” Mr. Spencer chuckles. “Huh, looking back, I don’t know how I got this lucky. I’m just a plumber by trade, but look at me now.” He gestures around the small room and then at me. “I got a pretty secretary delivering me slippers, and I get to live in one of the nicest senior homes in San Francisco, with a view of the bay. We get trips to museums and Golden Gate Park and Union Square at Christmas time. Aside from living alongside Mr. Poop-his-pants, I’d say I’m doing alright.”
Mr. Spencer opens the drawer and pulls out another lozenge.
“I’m talking your ear off, aren’t I?” he asks. “My medicine makes me blabber. Robert says I need to let other people talk. Tell me about yourself.”
I can hardly speak. Thoughts trail through my head like cold, dark mountains. The quarters of my brain that believed Robert came from a rich family with connections that got him into Stanford are being crowded out, run over, and squished. They’re being replaced with alien images of a motherless boy living with a makeshift family, a child hiding dark secrets he never talks about, and a young man who writes an essay that makes strangers cry.
“You look shocked,” Mr. Spencer says. “Most people are. Robert doesn’t like me talking about him, which is why I never get invited to any of the firm functions. I don’t want to go anyway. Lawyers are dull as soup. But I’m proud of him. He’s not my boy, but he is, you see. He’s the closest I’ll ever have to a son and better than most, I think. He’d make any father proud. I’m sure he doesn’t sound like the Robert you know. Doesn’t surprise me though. Robert is a cruel mule on the outside. He’ll kick you faster than he’ll be nice to you, but if you grab a handf
ul of that mane and look hard into those eyes, you’d see a different person. You’d see the boy I see.”
He waves a cautionary hand out in front of him. “You alright there? You look a little off. I’m sorry, what is your name again? I can’t even remember if you told me your name.”
“Caroline,” I say. “My name is Caroline.”
“Robert talks about you sometimes. Not very often, but he says things.”
“What does he say?” I blurt, a barren feeling growing in my stomach.
“Oh, I can’t remember. Can’t remember at all right now. Ask me six hours from now and I’ll remember. My medicines kick in in the morning and I can’t remember anything until mealtime. I knew you who you were though because of the red hair. He’s talked about your red hair before.” Mr. Spencer leans back into his bed and pulls out a power cord. On the end of a cord are buttons. He presses the green one and the bed transforms into a kind of mammoth chair. Mr. Spencer leans back and takes a book off his nightstand. On the cover is a man holding a gun.
“But you don’t remember what he said?” I ask.
“No, no. Have you ever read John Grillan? Great author, writes the best mysteries. I like to try and solve it before the end. I never get it right though. I’m just not conniving enough to think like a bad guy which is why I can’t figure out who did it. Robert says it’s good for my memory to keep trying. This one is about a man who’s married to a woman he thinks is a normal housewife. I suspect she might be a killer though. We’ll soon find out, won’t we?” he asks the book more than me. With thumbs that look like misshapen little clubs, he finds his spot in the book and opens it.