by N. M. Brown
‘What?’ Laurie manoeuvred her body half around, with a frown on her face.
‘Well, I don’t see a ring on your finger,’ the man said pointedly.
‘What the hell are you trying to say?’
‘No ring, so you’re not married or engaged, either – makes you open to offers.’
‘Look, mister, I'm not interested, okay? I just want to take a ride in peace.’
‘Okay, okay, Little Miss Grumpy. I was only trying to break the ice a little.’
Laurie stared out of the window, trying to pretend she was interested in the dry desolation. It was like staring into an abyss.
The man behind her finally leaned back in his seat, leaving Laurie to listen to the groaning of the engine and the murmur of chatter. Now, she decided, would be a good time to the use the bathroom.
Making her way along the aisle towards the small bathroom stall, Laurie made only polite glances at the other passengers. There was nothing outwardly peculiar, but, as she glanced at the faces of the twenty-six commuters, she felt momentarily disturbed. It was not a conscious awareness, rather an instinctive feeling that something was missing. Perhaps it was simply there was so little conversation for so many people, but then again, the afternoon heat on an intercity bus could easily stifle that.
When she reached the three steps descending to the toilet, Laurie paused. For an uncomfortable moment, she thought she was the only female aboard the vehicle, but she felt herself relax, as she looked to the back row of seats where a pretty blonde woman was sleeping on the shoulder of the fat man next to her. He was wearing a loud Hawaiian shirt and gently stroking her hair as she slept. They were sharing iPod headphones.
The toilet was nothing more than a small closet of polished steel. It smelled of antiseptic. Despite the apparent hygienic state, Laurie was a creature of habit, and she used three or four pieces of toilet tissue from the wall mounted dispenser to wipe the lid. Having checked the door was locked, she slid her jeans over her hips and knees, and sat down. As her bladder hissed empty, she stared ahead at metal door, and noticed it was dented in the centre, as if a bull had charged into it.
‘Somebody needed real bad,’ she muttered.
Laurie finished her business, and reached into the box on the wall to retrieve more tissue. It was then that her fingers met something unusual. Tucked inside the dispenser was a small, folded piece of paper. Laurie’s fingers unfurled the crushed note, and realised it had been ripped from a bus receipt, with part of the logo still visible in the bottom corner. The indistinct message on the paper was simple:
My name is Joanne Chapman. I know he’s going to kill me. Let anyone know it happened here. Tell Mark I love him, and he was right. 117-565-6315
The words had been written using a flesh coloured pencil – make-up most likely. The writing was oversized and clumsy but the final three numbers were more misshapen suggesting the author had rushed at the end.
Laurie felt her stomach flood with cold adrenaline. She stared intently at the shaky writing, trying to dismiss it. Maybe it was simply a stupid joke. Public bathroom stalls were often defaced with threats and messages. Yet, this message had not been scrawled on the wall; it been hidden, and the rest of the bathroom was clean. Despite the unsettling nature of the discovery, it seemed unlikely to think anyone was murdered in the toilet. Still, something about the note was sinister enough to unsettle her. The word “here” stood out the most.
Standing up, Laurie pulled up her jeans, and she inhaled deeply. As she buttoned her fly, she decided she would get off the bus at Victorville, twenty minutes down the interstate, and contact the police. Whatever had happened deserved to be investigated.
Closing the neat bathroom door behind her, Laurie returned quickly to her seat. Once she had ensured that her bag was untouched, she noticed the curtain had been pulled across the window blotting out the view and the light. She thought it was the creep sitting behind her, trying to get some kind of reaction out of her – or maybe he was a dumb enough to consider it humorous.
However, the elderly man with the book spoke softly. ‘I did that.’ He nodded to the curtain. ‘I hope you don’t mind, but the sun was shining on the pages.’
‘I’m fine,’ Laurie said. What did it matter now? She would be getting off in about ten minutes. This meant she would need to contact Vicki, and let her know. Laurie reached into her bag, and produced her phone. It was in that moment a dark line passed in front of her face so quickly it appeared as a momentary blur. She instinctively glanced down at her chest to see a loop of metal appear on her body like a long metal necklace. There was not enough time for her to register what it was, before the brake cable pulled suddenly upwards. Vicki gagged as the metal noose dug into her throat, and she grabbed crazily at the hands squeezing life from her, but they belonged to the man in the seat behind, who simply grunted as he twisted the cable tighter.
Her legs thrashed, and her body bucked, knocking her bag on to the aisle. Laurie’s panicky brain held on to the desperate hope the other passengers would stop her attacker, but in her final gasping moments, she saw something that made her thrash all the more. Around her, all of the passengers remained calmly seated. The people in front of her continued staring straight ahead, ignoring her struggle. Directly across from her, the elderly man had put his book upon his knees, and was now smiling at her.
As Laurie fought for her life at the front of the bus, in the back, the large man in the Hawaiian shirt sighed, recovered his earphone from the head of the blonde girl next to him, and let her dead body drop to the floor of the bus.
4
Vicki Reiner was running late, but that was nothing new. In her twenty-three years, it seemed to her that fate ensured she was consistently delayed in life – a fact which had placed her out of step with her fastidiously punctual parents. They would arrive at least half an hour early for any appointment or arrangement. Her mother, who seemed to consider herself above all mortals, liked to state arriving in plenty of time provided a window of additional planning to ensure she was maximising her impact on the world around her.
It was not like that for their daughter. No matter what the day or time, crawling motorhomes, mobile cranes, and flocks of kindergarten children desperate to cross the interstate all seemed to magically appear in front of her car. This happened regardless of the purpose of her journey – she had been tardy for classes, job interviews, and, more recently, therapy sessions. Whenever she complained to her father (who now asked her to call him Steve) in their weekly long-distance phone conversation, he would tell Vicki in an infuriatingly chilled out voice it was simply God’s way of keeping her safe. Vicki was not so charitable, and believed it was just God’s way of pissing her off.
Still, today she told herself, there was no point getting all stressed out now - after all, she would soon see Laurie, and that created the possibility things would be better again… like they had been before graduation, or, even better, before she had left college entirely.
The previous year had not been a good one for Vicki. She had never been naturally academic, and had slumped beneath the weighty expectations of two professional parents. Through most of her teenage years, she consistently felt her main function was to evoke a heavy air of disappointment in the Reiner household. At the end of each semester, her mother would scrutinize every report card, and interrogate every teacher to identify the cause of her daughter’s inexplicable mediocrity.
This was perhaps the reason why, towards the end of her course, she was not even sure that she would graduate. Four years earlier, she had left high school with good enough grades to attend college. This was not testament to her great intellect, but rather because she had always kept her head down and worked as hard as she could. Towards the end of June, she had been delighted to receive an acceptance letter from UC San Diego. The offer related to Computer Science, which appeased her mother mainly because the course had the word “science” in it. But, as graduation grew ever closer, Vicki’s dad had repeate
dly told her this degree might open doors for further avenues of study.
That was, until he got stuck in his mid-life adolescence.
In some superficial ways, college had been easier than high school. The fact most students were, for the most part, on the same intellectual page helped – there was no longer a cluster of hormonal rebels trying to undermine each lesson. But, campus life also seemed to move at a much faster pace than the long, indulgent days of school, and Vicki struggled to keep up. Most of her first year was punctuated by dinner table interrogations from both parents. During her final dinner as a resident of her parent’s home, the tension had swelled to a crescendo.
‘What did you learn today?’ her mother had asked, as she reached across the table for the glass bowl of green salad.
‘Mom,’ Vicki had laughed nervously. ‘I'm not middle school anymore.’
‘Honey, I'm only asking because I'm interested,’
‘Just looking for an update, Victoria,’ her dad had said, without looking up from his pasta.
‘Well,’ Vicki sighed. ‘Today, we were looking at file carving. Dad, can you pass the pepper, please.’
‘Now.’ Her mother had tilted her head, narrowing her eyes. ‘You know very well that means nothing to us.’
‘Yeah,’ her dad had nodded, ‘sounds like kind of furniture making to me.’
‘It’s just a way of finding lost data on a computer.’
‘Ah, computer forensics.’ Her dad had concluded.
‘Yeah, I guess.’ Vicki had taken a mouthful of linguine, in the hope of avoiding any further questions. However, her mother would not be derailed so easily.
‘So, how did you get on with this file carving business, top of the class?
‘It doesn’t really work like that,’ Vicki had tried to explain. ‘It’s more like, we all get a drive with hidden data on it, and we have to locate it. There’s no scoring against the other students.’
‘How do you know how you are doing in relation to the rest of the class?’
‘I don’t,’ Vicki had shrugged. ‘But, that’s not really relevant to how we work.’
‘Work? You see,’ her mother had turned her attention to her husband, ‘that’s what they call further education nowadays.’
‘Thanks very much.’ Vicki had laid her fork down.
‘Well, it’s hardly challenging, is it, if there’s no competition.’ Her mother had smiled wryly. ‘It’s more just a play session with computers.’
‘Could you do it?’ Vicki had raised her eyebrows at her mother, who paused for a moment, as if slapped before regaining her sense of composure.
‘I dare say I could.’ She had smiled purposefully. ‘But, I have more important things to do’
‘Important?’ Vicki’s voice had cracked with emotion, ‘like giving masculine jawlines to CEOs, and pouting mouths to bored, rich housewives?’
‘Well, those jaw lines and mouths paid for your education, or lack thereof.’
‘Come on,’ Her father, Steve, had held up a calming hand. ‘Let’s all just…’
‘Let’s what?’ her mother had screeched. ‘Pretend that after sixteen years in the education system, our daughter will have a decent career, outside of some grubby little internet café.’
‘What more do you want? I did my best at school, even if it wasn't up to your standards. I came with you to your golf club and shooting range. Okay, I'm done here,’ Vicki had said, as she pushed her almost full plate away and stood up.
‘Well, I’ll put it in the oven, and you can have some later,’ her dad had murmured, ‘when the dust settles.’
Vicki had shaken her head. ‘I mean, I’m done living here. I’ll speak to the campus accommodation officer in the morning.
‘Well, perhaps that’s best,’ her mother had said flatly, and turned her attention to cutting her own pasta into perfectly digestible pieces.
As a direct consequence of the final fight with her mother, Vicki had made the move to the campus accommodation at the start of her final year. It was there she found herself sharing a small student apartment with Laurie Ann Taylor. Laurie’s first flatmate, a seemingly quiet girl from Iowa, had fallen pregnant, and dropped out of college at the end of the fifth semester, leaving her at risk of eviction from the Mitre Court Halls of residence. In desperation, Laurie had hand written thirty-six posters and placed them all conspicuously around the campus.
While Vicki had stood waiting for the bus on the afternoon following the fight with her mother, she had spotted a sign tacked to a nearby door, which read:
Female roommate needed. N/S Compulsive cleaner preferred.
No slackers or psychos please.
The poster had been printed with a row of tear-off phone numbers along the bottom edge. Vicki had ripped one off, neatly folded it in half, and slotted into the card holder of her wallet.
Following a Java Script lecture the following afternoon, Vicki had called the number from a public telephone outside the Behavioural Sciences building. She was both pleased and apprehensive about being invited to view the apartment that afternoon.
As she stepped into the hallway of Mitre Court Hall that day, Vicki had found herself in a stark vestibule, with a row of square post boxes on one wall, and mounted telephones on the other. Directly ahead of her, was a formidable looking glass security door.
Vicki had wandered over to the telephone, picked up the handset, and dialled flat eighty-eight.
‘Hi,’ a cheery voice had answered. ‘Come right up.’
As Vicki replaced the phone, the security door had buzzed angrily. She pushed through it and took the shuddering elevator to the eighth floor.
When the steel door slid open, Vicki had stepped into a long, dimly lit corridor. The air was tinged with a student residency combination of antiseptic and fried garlic.
As she wandered along the hallway, a door up ahead opened, and Laurie had popped her head out.
‘Hey, come on in,’ Laurie beamed at her.
It was not an expression Vicki was familiar seeing.
Moving into Mitre Court with Laurie was the best decision Vicki had ever made. Spending a year in the company of someone who was so relaxed soothed Vicki’s numerous anxieties. Whenever she felt stressed or overwhelmed, Laurie would insist that they head to the beach. She would gleefully gather towels and paperbacks, insisting that they let any drama melt away beneath the heat of the sun.
After a day of leisure, once they were suitably relaxed, Laurie would lead Vicki home to sit on the floor eating takeout pizza and formulating a simple plan of action for whatever was concerning her. Compared to Vicki – who had grown up in a luxurious cocoon which left her paralyzed with uncertainty and doubts, Laurie’s own bleak upbringing had left her optimistic and proactive. She seemed to possess a knack of breaking any problem into manageable pieces.
As a result of this personal support, Vicki spent the final year of college gaining better results than she ever had previously. She secured a decent degree and felt certain she would finally get the parental approval which had previously eluded her. She was wrong.
On the first Friday after graduation, her parents had taken her out for dinner at a local Thai restaurant, arranged by her father, who fanatically believed Thai food was the healthiest stuff on the planet. This was mainly due to the fact that for his fiftieth birthday, he had attended some Holistic Dentistry retreat down in woods outside San Francisco. He was away for little over a week, during which he made no contact with home. When he had finally returned, Stephen Reiner had taken to wearing an ornate copper bracelet on his wrist, and would regularly bore anyone with his theory, “it’s not a theory,” he would say, that cumin was the new aspirin.
After they had ordered the food - yellow curry, Pad Thai and fried tofu - her mother had smiled in a disarming manner, before reaching appropriately for Vicki’s hand.
‘Your father and I are getting a divorce,’ she had said, in a deliberately calm manner.
‘A what?’ Vicki ha
d felt like she’d been punched.
‘It’s fine, honey.’ Her father smiled softly. ‘We've been planning it for years.’
Vicki’s mother shot him a bitter look.
‘What?’ He shrugged casually. ‘We agreed to tell her, so let’s be honest about the whole thing.’
‘We haven’t been happy for some time,’ her mother said, returning her attention to her daughter.
As they were speaking, Vicki had gotten the distinct impression the people sitting with her were pretending to be her parents. As it had transpired, that feeling was not too far from the truth.
Over the course of an uneaten lunch, it was revealed her parents had decided to divorce while their daughter was still in high school. They had also decided this shift in family stability would possibly have a detrimental effect on her education. After some discussion, they had taken the mature decision to remain together, if only superficially, until Vicki had graduated from college. The irony was they had taken this bizarre decision in the interest of their child, leaving her unable to criticise their madness, without appearing ungrateful. Their decision, however, had left Vicki utterly debased.
As the fragmented family had left the restaurant that day, Vicki felt all sense of reality melt away. The sun was too bright in the sky above the parking lot. Everything she had known as familiar now seemed untrustworthy and impermanent.
In the months that followed, Vicki had remained in the Oceanside beach house while her mother and father had hastily relocated to the security of their birthplaces in Vegas and San Francisco, respectively. Her parents had mutually agreed they would not sell the beach house on the basis either party would be allowed equal access to it. Two weeks after the arrangement was signed, Vicki’s mother had the locks changed.
Despite having a nice home in a beautiful part of the country, Vicki felt nothing – not sad or suicidal – just nothing. It was not even the reality of divorce that floored her; it was the simple fact her parents were equally conspicuous in their absence – as if after years of over-involvement in Vicki’s life, they had identified graduation as their cut-off point. They had freed themselves from the complication of being parents. Sometimes, Vicki thought perhaps each was assuming the other would take on the burden of main parent. At darker times, she believed she was too dissimilar to both parents to be a worthwhile investment of time, or energy.