Where's Karen

by Greg Jolley

  “Love you.”

  “Good morning again, Paula. Love you, too.”

  Zack closed the movie. “Photos, right?”

  Paula nodded.

  Zack opened Photos and there at the end of a long stream of images was the white smooth rear in full frame.

  Paula studied the image for a few seconds.

  “When did you …?” she asked Uncle Tim.

  Zack double-clicked the mouse, and the snapshot doubled in size.

  “You were asleep. I was checking on you.” Uncle Tim said.

  “If so, you were checking very closely.”

  “No, no. It’s not there in the movie. When I saw you sleeping, that mark had a redness around it. It made the mark look bigger.”

  “Zack?” Israel asked, studying the close up.

  “I know. I don’t know. Wait. That’s a lopsided V. Why is there a lopsided V? Why is there a gold lopsided V on this darling’s ass?”

  Israel spoke to the image. “Could be a V, but I don’t think so.”

  “Okay ... so what is it?”

  “I think it’s a checkmark.”

  Zack turned to Paula and said, “I have the statement you gave. Do you have anything you’d like to add? We could go into a bedroom,” she looked to the short hall. “For privacy, if you’d prefer.”

  Uncle Tim extended a plate with a cinnamon bun to Paula. She took a bite and chewed. “Nothing to add. Don’t remember anything, anyway. Just landed in the ER with paint flecks in my hair.”

  “Okay. I’ve got other victims—abductees—to revisit and check out physically.”

  Israel and Zack left the bus with the laptop and the binder. Paula gestured to Uncle Tim to join her on the couch, where he ate two buns while Paula drank a second, larger cup of espresso.

  The driver climbed aboard and told Uncle Tim that they were leaving in four minutes. Weather followed him up the steps with a coat in her hand.

  “I don’t wanna go,” Paula said to Weather, setting her cup aside.

  Uncle Tim looked to Paula.

  “I mean, I don’t want to leave this bus,” Paula said. “Leave you,” she added, turning to Uncle Tim.

  Uncle Tim set his pastry on the plate.

  “You should say something,” she nudged.

  He didn’t speak. He stopped chewing, swallowed, and gently took her hand.

  THE RV’S AIR BRAKES let out a gasp, and the long vehicle began to roll.

  “I’m wired and fed,” Paula said to Uncle Tim. “Know what would be nice?”

  Uncle Tim watched the slow passing view in the opposite window.

  “No idea,” he answered.

  The bus made four slow tight turns, swaying slightly before it ran straight and smooth.

  “A nap. Come on. Join me?”

  She stood and he followed, her hand taking his. Inside Uncle Tim’s small room, Paula click-locked the door before lying down. Uncle Tim took off his boots and joined her on the narrow bed. He drew the blanket up over both of their bodies and rested his head on his hand. Paula whispered to herself and closed her eyes.

  The curtains were open and Uncle Tim watched hills and bluffs and treetops pass by.

  UNCLE TIM WOKE AT noon to the sound of click-locks. He rose slowly from the narrow bed, careful not to stir Paula who was facing the window and still asleep. Before he left the room, he reached over and closed the blinds.

  In the galley, he opened the refrigerator and removed a bowl of sliced fruit. Emma appeared from the short hall, her white and yellow hair blasted out in severe angles. She had clearly slept in her clothes; her black shirt and pants were twisted and rumpled. Without a word or a look, she padded to the galley table, digging her cell out of her pants pocket. She sat and slid over to the window leaving the curtain drawn. Uncle Tim set the fruit bowl on the table and went to slice bread and cheese. Emma placed the cell on the table, tapped it, and began clearing Karen’s voicemail.

  Karen appeared from the bathroom in an oversized white shirt.

  Uncle Tim watched her walk to the table.

  “Socks?” He grinned.

  Karen beamed a smile, hunched her shoulders, and slid in beside Emma, placing her back to Emma’s shoulder and raising her gray stockings up on the bench. The two women whispered to one another, pausing only when Emma tapped the cell and replied briefly to messages. Uncle Tim set a platter of sliced bread and cheese on the table before them. He added silverware, and Emma nudged Karen playfully when she began to eat with her pale fingers. Emma talked about new stage clothing and looks. Karen replied with frowns and smiles while she ate. At one point, the two rustled and began to giggle.

  Uncle Tim went up front and sat down beside the driver. The two watched the highway roll up under the dashboard—the road curving gently with the coastal terrain.

  “You’ll be home soon,” the driver said.

  “Yes, it’s been too long,” Uncle Tim agreed.

  An hour before dawn, the RV turned off the highway and began a slow decline on a winding two-lane road through sleepy rolling hills.

  At the end of the road, the RV stopped at the small town’s only stoplight. The driver turned right entering the town of Coyote. The headlights warmed through the coastal fog along the darkened storefronts of Main Street, which was only two blocks long. At the first intersection, a street lamp cast a white funnel of light. The RV continued on to the end of the second block where it turned left next to a three-story building, the tallest structure on Main. The driver idle-rolled the RV alongside the old brick building before turning into the parking lot at the rear. The RV did a wide half-circle and came to a stop beside the building’s cargo door.

  The air brakes gushed, and Uncle Tim woke, nearly spilling a paper plate with a half-eaten cheese sandwich. He yawned, stared, folded the plate in half, and climbed from the seat beside the driver. From the opposite end of the bus, from behind a closed door, Karen’s violin could be heard; she was playing a fugue, the first voice and then the second. The vibration underfoot ended as the driver shut the engine off. Uncle Tim turned around to him.

  “Nice job. And thank you.”

  “Most welcome. I’m going to unload and secure it, and then it’s motel sleep for a week.”

  “We have two weeks. Well, twelve days.”

  “Well deserved.” The driver unbuckled, opened the door, and stepped down into the dark and the fog.

  Uncle Tim listened to Karen play, looking to Paula’s door. The violin voices exchanged again. He stuffed the folder paper plate in a rubbish can and left the bus to help with the unloading.

  With the instrument cases and suitcases out in two rows alongside the bus, Uncle Tim climbed the wood stairs to the rear door and punched in the security code. The door unlocked, and he crossed the rough wooden landing and pushed the round green button on the facing wall. The metal cargo door rolled up and away, and he and the driver walked the luggage inside, each making two trips.

  “I’ll be back late afternoon to do the RV checklist,” the driver told Uncle Tim. “The cleaners will be here tomorrow. Got service booked next week.”

  “Thank you again.”

  The two men shook hands, and the driver walked away across the empty parking lot to his car. Uncle Tim closed the cargo door with a press on the big red button. He headed inside for his bedroom, climbing the wide, carpeted stairs to the foyer of the former opera house.

  PAULA WOKE WHEN THE last note of a song played on a violin ended. The little room was dark except for the amber light above the bedroom door. She rolled to her right and opened the blinds to the window. Gray light of a foggy mid-day came in.

  She stepped down from the RV and started for the stairs to the back door, paused, and walked away alongside the back of the building and out through the gate and up along the cracked and littered sidewalk to the front. Out on Main Street, she paralleled the tall front windows. The display cases inside suggested a gallery. Each had a backing curtain of white cloth behind tall easels. The easels held l
arge canvas-printed photographs of swimming pools. No two were alike except they were all like nothing she had ever seen before.

  There was a photo of an expansive backyard with a wave pool. A surfer was in mid-turn on the smooth clear face. The wave was breaking in an explosion of white on a small-scale cityscape of skyscrapers and high rises with lit windows.

  In the second window, there was a steaming pool in an endless snowfield with a floating cottage. There was neither a bridge nor walkway connecting the home to the shore. In the water, large dark shapes, perhaps barracuda, where swimming in schools.

  In the third display window was a photograph of a track home from the 1970s—shag carpet, dark walnut walls and tables, couch and chairs alternating between orange and avocado. The television and lamps were on, and there were the family touches of toys, magazines, and coffee cups. All under water.

  There were three more windows on the other side of the foyer. She decided to leave these for another time.

  The marbled foyer rose at a gentle angle to two tall glass and wood doors. Inside, warm and welcoming light glowed from up above.

  She tried the handle to the large left door, and it smoothly pulled outward. She didn’t enter. There was an old-fashioned snack bar across the gold carpet from her. Paula turned around and walked down to the sidewalk. The street was cobblestoned—a tourist treatment—and there were drifts of sand in the gutters. She looked across to the small row of shops across from her. They offered candy, t-shirts, trinkets and craft, a gallery of seascape painting, and a seafood walkup.

  She walked out to the middle of the street and turned around. Up above, an antique theatre marque extended out over the sidewalk. She read the display. Immersion, Inc.

  She went inside.

  Wide stairs curved upward from both sides of the lobby. Glass cases on the walls displayed swimming pools instead of performance advertisements. She walked to the snack bar. The glass cases offered candy and snacks in boxes. The popcorn maker light was on, and she smelled both salt and butter. The menu on the wall read, ‘Refreshments!’, and the prices said 1970s to her. She noted that swimming pool design prices were mixed in with those for popcorn, hot dogs, and pop. The pools were hideously expensive. She read ‘Espresso’ and smiled at the displayed price: free.

  Curtained doorways hemmed the snack bar. Paula started for the left side and paused. High above, there was an unlit chandelier of crystals. It was the size of an automobile. Water damage marked the ceiling and exposed lath, scantling, and hanging curls of wallpaper. Paula turned to the wide carpeted stairs.

  The second story landing was for business. Elegant velvet couches and chairs surrounded more pools on easels and, in the center, four glass casements held miniature displays of swimming pools and wave pool designs. The details were exacting and complete with tiny people. Paula circled all four displays slowly, admiring the modeling—so much like her own work, so similar to stage design. There was a gold curtain in the back wall, and she headed to it.

  She entered a theatre and descended down along the rows of seats to the balcony rail. She saw that the ceiling and walls were in even worse disrepair than downstairs. Sheets of plywood had been bolted up and over some of the worse damage, and the curved alcoves were water stained. She pressed her tummy against the bannister and looked down into the theatre.

  Her eyes were drawn to the stage. It was wood planked, very old, and scarred. The mid-stage curtain was drawn, under a gold bunting. She saw Uncle Tim sitting in the front row before the orchestra pit. He had a blue glowing tablet in his lap, and he was drawing on a watercolor pad set on a music stand.

  Paula left the balcony, crossed the office, and went downstairs. She chose the left curtain beside the snack bar, passed through the refreshments lobby, and swept through the left gold curtain. There was a brief dark hall to the next curtain, which she passed through, entering the mezzanine. She walked down the rows and quietly sat down in the chair beside his.

  Uncle Tim turned, smiled, and set his pen and pastel pencils on the music stand.

  “I like your office,” she said softly, hearing a tinge of echo in her words.

  “Thank you. So does Karen.”

  “Where is the marvel?”

  “Asleep somewhere? The bus? Her room upstairs?”

  Paula looked straight up to the damaged theatre ceiling. “Is there another story?”

  “A third story, yes.”

  “I like stories.”

  Uncle Tim looked from her to the ceiling.

  “Where’s your room?” Paula asked, “I’ll wanna steal it.”

  “That’s another story.”

  “Ha, what are you designing?”

  “A river.”

  They were both talking to the ceiling above.

  “Can I help?”

  “I—”

  “Good. Let’s get our hands dirty.”

  Their eyes lowered, in unison, to the glowing tablet. Uncle Tim tapped the CAD display twice, and the image rose up through layers of plumbing and ironwork up to a gunite riverbed that wove through green lawns and white sand beaches.

  “There’ll be a house on this. Over and through this.”

  “A home?”

  “Yes. A home. The client has approved the river. I’m struggling with the architect’s placement of the house itself.”

  Paula tapped the up arrow on the display, it raised one more level, and the water appeared. Her hand brushed Uncle Tim’s as she went down two levels and then back up.

  “The flow is through the rooms of the home, not under it?” she asked, and then answered her question with a tap on the display. Each time her fingers touched his hand, Uncle Tim looked at her.

  “My concern would be with the hill down to the wave pool,” she said. “Compression worries. I see a trabeated system. Not girders, not piers, but … arches.”

  Uncle Tim’s cell purred, and he answered by tapping the speaker icon. He spoke to a restaurant while Paula roamed through the 3D display.

  CATERERS ARRIVED A HALF-HOUR later—two young women in crisp black slacks and white dress blouses. They entered the opera house without knocking or ringing, familiar with the place, entering from backstage. One of the women welcomed Uncle Tim back home as she rolled a silver catering cart into the orchestra pit. The other woman pushed a dolly cart with a table and four chairs. Within minutes, the table was set with white linen cloth, crystal glassware, sterling, and china. Her final touch was an elegant vase with a single white lily. Both young ladies served the meal to all four plates and departed.

  Paula looked up to the stage to the sound of wobbly casters. An upright piano was being rolled out. She watched a young man wipe his forehead with his shirtsleeve and depart, only to reappear a moment later carrying a piano bench. He sat down, rolled the cover up, and began to play. To Paula, the melody was somewhat familiar; the pianist was only playing parts, leaving gaps of silence in the sparking song.

  “Morning,” Emma said, walking toward them. She set a tray on the corner of the table and placed two meals and silverware on it. She wore her usual black clothing and boots, both marked by streaks of white. Her white and yellow hair was haphazardly brushed, and her smile was sideways and sleepy. Paula watched her walk away as Uncle Tim stood, pulled a chair back, and gestured to Paula to join him.

  She sat as another person carried sections of a drum kit onto the stage and assembled it. Paula looked to her plate and began with the French toast, leaving the melon and berries for next.

  “They are local players,” Uncle Tim explained, “and Karen’s buddies.”

  More musicians appeared and set up—a bass player and a third young man pushing a rolling rack of different shaped guitars and instruments. Paula was pleasantly distracted; looking to Uncle Tim, the stage, and her plate.

  “Good morning,” Uncle Tim called up to the stage.

  Karen had a bread roll and a slice of Swiss cheese at her lips. She took a bite, smiled, and chewed. She held her violin in her free h
and and Emma followed carrying a silver dobro set in its stand. Emma set the instrument on the opposite side of the kitchen chair, removed a bottled water and a cigar box of glass and metal slides from a cloth shopping bag, and set them center on the planks.

  The young man with the instrument rack selected a twelve-string guitar. He joined the song coming from the piano, drums, and bass, standing with his back to the theatre and facing the musicians. Karen took up her bow and merged into the song, swaying and playing. The bass player and drummer laid out a shuffling rhythm while the other musicians interplayed the melody.

  Uncle Tim and Paula dined, watched, and listened, no longer talking amongst themselves.

  When the song ended, Karen and the band talked of progressions and keys. This went on for a couple of minutes before they started the next song.

  Paula spotted Emma off to stage right sitting with her knees drawn up and a wistful smile as she watched the musicians.

  Midway through their fourth song, Karen set her violin aside. She began to dance gracefully in her area between the drum kit and the piano. Her eyes closed, her lithe arms and hands were offering soothing sweeps and brushings. Paula watched her slowly circle, her hair drawing over her face and then swinging open like a curtain revealing her pleased smile. Karen danced through the musician to the edge of the stage. She slowly twirled once and extended her hand to Uncle Tim.

  He stood from the dining table and smiled to Paula. Karen pointed to Paula who set her napkin on her plate and rose. Uncle Tim and Paula walked side by side to the curtained entrance to backstage. Up on the stage, Paula moved hesitantly, taking Uncle Tim’s hand. They strolled past the bass player to center stage among the musicians. First Paula and then Uncle Tim began to dance, resting his hand on her hip.

  Karen was at their side, slow sweeping her arms and hair, her eyes closed.

  The acoustic music was resounding off the stage boards and warming the watermarked and damaged theatre.