"What is it?" I said.
"Rolling Stones, late 1960s."
"Really?" I almost forgot how fussy I was. It was an outdoor venue in sort of jungle-ish surroundings and the vantage point was onstage, far to the right. Only Keith Richards and Mick Jagger are in the photo. Keith Richards was still pretty rather than craggy, with the wide-eyed look of someone whose reality is exceeding his dreams, not the sneer of an old-timer who's seen it all. Mick Jagger was singing and pointing at a bunch of screaming girls. One had hoisted herself up on the others and seemed about to climb onto the stage in the hope of touching His Satanic Majesty.
"Where'd you get this?" I said. If it hadn't been for the folding and the fingerprints, the photo could have been taken the day before rather than forty-odd years ago. Heavy on the odd.
"My boss's desk," she said.
I was stunned. Suzette never stole from anyone, no matter how much they might have deserved it.
"He showed it around this morning. Said his uncle took the picture when he was a stringer for some music magazine back in the day."
I looked from the photo to her and back again, frowning. "And that made you, uh . . . kleptomaniacal?"
She tapped the photo hard again, her finger on the faces of the screaming girls. "See this woman? That's my Aunt Lillian. And the one trying to climb up on the stage?" She moved the photo so it was directly under one of the bright ceiling lights and pointed. "That's my mother."
"Are you sure?" I tried not to laugh and failed.
Suzette tossed her dreads, offended. "What, you think I don't know my own mother when I see her?"
"OK, so it's your mother. Why does that upset you?"
"Dammit, you're not looking!"
"Jeez, just tell me already." I drew back a little. "And then let me know if my head's still there or did you bite the whole thing off."
"Sorry," she said and managed to look it for all of a second. "But that's not my mother back in the day. That's her now."
"Oh?" I picked the photo up and angled it under the light. None of the people with her were very young. They were really cutting loose and that made them seem youthful but they hadn't been girls for some time.
"Or rather, it's how she would look now," she added.
I frowned, not understanding.
"She died when I was sixteen."
"Oh," I said. "Well, then, it can't be her."
"It is."
"OK, have it your way. It's her. Photoshopped. Do you know when your boss met your aunt? And did you know they were such tasteless practical jokers?"
Suzette grimaced impatiently. "I tried calling my Aunt Lillian. Some guy answered, said he's her house-sitter while she's on vacation. She's been gone two weeks and he's not sure exactly when she's coming back."
"Did he say where she went?"
Suzette's dark eyes seem to get even darker. "Where this picture was taken." Tap-tap-tap with her finger again. "Madagascar."
(I know what I said. Don't interrupt.)
Now, this next part is kind of a blur. It's not that I don't remember what happened, it's that I don't have a reasonable explanation for it.
It certainly seemed reasonable at the time—well, after listening to Suzette for a while—to go downstairs, toss my apron in The GDT's face, and walk out the front door with her.
First stop after I went home to pack a bag and grab my passport was Suzette's aunt's house in Chicago, to meet this alleged house-sitter and see, as Suzette put it, just what his shit was made of. That was an eight-hour drive in my ancient Geo, a subcompact car which a lot of my friends have described as being only just too large to hang on a charm bracelet. Taller people grumbled, then stopped when they found out what kind of gas mileage I could still get out of it. I'd have bought a hybrid a long time ago except that being virtuously green has always been the domain of the extremely wealthy, who probably weren't so virtuous while they were getting that way. Suzette and I discussed that on the road; by the time we hit the Loop, we had an airtight argument for why all the hideously rich had to help all the rest of us get virtuously green by buying us hybrids and solar panels and shit. If I ever remember it, there'll be one hell of a revolution.
Suzette's aunt's place was a condo halfway up a high-rise with a nice view of Lake Michigan. I was surprised but no more than Suzette was herself.
"You've never been here?" I asked as we got into the elevator.
"She moved here last year. Or maybe the year before, I can't remember."
"Haven't seen her for a while?"
"She's always busy," she said, sounding defensive. "You want to see her, you gotta make an appointment."
I started to tell her that I hadn't meant anything by that question but we were already at the right floor and heading down the hall, which smelled like a mix of potpourri and carpet shampoo. Suzette stopped at a door decorated with a wreath of artfully woven twigs and pussy willows, hesitated, then rapped on it hard, squarely in the middle of the wreath.
The guy who answered was better-looking than anyone calling himself a house-sitter had any right to be, tall, bearded and golden-skinned. We'd have stared even if he hadn't been wearing a turban.
"Ah, Suzette," he said. "I recognize you from your pictures." He stood back to let us in, giving me a polite little nod as if to say that I was welcome, too, even though there were no pictures to recognize me from.
His name was Jamail, he told us over coffee, and he was a student at Northwestern. One of his professors lived down the hall and when Suzette's aunt was looking for a house-sitter, he had introduced them. "I'm what you call a mature student," he said. "I believe learning is for life. Your aunt feels the same, obviously."
"How do you figure?" Suzette asked.
"I chose to go to university, she to Madagascar." He lowered his voice ever so slightly on the last word.
"Is that where you're from?" Suzette stared pointedly at his turban.
"No. I'm from Scottsdale."
"Scottsdale?" Suzette was openly skeptical.
He shrugged. "My grandparents were from India. I'm a Sikh." The only contact information he had for Suzette's aunt was an email address on Google Mail; there was no hotel or cell phone that he knew of, or so he claimed. Both Suzette and I found that hard to believe. Jamail took our suspicion graciously. He was really quite a sweet guy; I found myself wondering if Sikhs ever dated outside the church, so to speak.
Finally, he played the I-really-must-study-now card and started clearing away the coffee cups. As he turned toward the kitchen with his hands full, Suzette stopped him. "Thanks for letting me know my aunt's in Madagascar."
He smiled faintly. "Don't mention it."
"Did she take her wheelchair?"
Wheelchair? I looked around. Nothing suggested a wheelchair user had ever lived here.
"I'm sure she took everything she needed. Now, if you'll exc—"
Suzette shoved the photograph in his face. "And she never said anything about this?"
He dropped everything with a godawful crash. "Where did you get that?" He reached for the photo.
Suzette whipped it behind her back. "A friend."
"I see." Jamail hesitated, then went into the kitchen and came back with a small business card. "If anyone asks, you just found this somewhere," he told Suzette firmly, looking unhappy as he handed it over.
"OK. Thanks," Suzette replied.
I started to bend down. "Here, let me help y—"
"Don't." He didn't snap or even raise his voice but the command was so forceful that we backed off immediately, and kept backing off, out the door and down the hall to the elevator.
"'Miles 2 Go,'" Suzette read from the card as the elevator descended. "'We'll Get You On Your Way. Jinx Gottmunsdottir, Senior Agent.'"
"Hey, does your aunt really use a wheelchair, or was that a trick question?" I asked.
She flicked a glance at me. "She's been in a wheelchair for ten years. I told you. What kind of a name is that?"
"No, you didn'
t and it's Icelandic, like Björk." I was only half listening. The elevator we'd gone up in had not had mirrored panels.
"I mean 'Jinx.'" Suzette was impatient again. "A travel agent named Jinx? Seriously? There's pushing your luck, there's tempting fate, and then there's teasing fate unmercifully till it bites you in the ass and gives you rabies."
"Is it rabies if this isn't the same elevator?" My reflections and I watched each other with wary solemnity on infinite repeat.
"What are you talking about?" Suzette glanced around quickly, then made a face. "So it's a different elevator. There're two. We went up in one and now we're coming down in the other." She studied the card again. "Address and phone number but no website. What kind of business doesn't have a website?"
I was busy trying not to feel spooked at my endless duplication. "This is not the same elevator. And when there are two, they're usually identical."
"So? I don't think there's a federal elevator law about it."
We went all the way to the ground floor without stopping and for a split second, I had the crazy idea that the doors would open onto a different lobby. If so, what should I do—go back up to Suzette's aunt's apartment and ask the Sikh's advice? Or just get off and take my chances with whatever was coming up next?
But it was the same lobby, of course, and there were, indeed, two elevators. The other one, however, was blocked off by a ladder with a sign taped to it that said OUT OF ORDER. I stared, sure that hadn't been there when we'd come in. Then something else occurred to me.
"Hey, Suzette, if your aunt's in a wheelchair—"
But she was already halfway across the lobby, muttering about bad names for travel agents.
Jinx Gottmunsdottir was a pink-cheeked strawberry blonde somewhere between fifty and sixty-five, with sapphire blue contact lenses and generous proportions made to look even more so by her cabbage rose print dress. She did business in an indoor market between a sports souvenirs stall and a place selling Russian nesting dolls custom-printed with your own face (X-tra Faces = X-tra $—Ask 4 quote!). Her "office" was an ancient desk with an even older typist's chair, and two other chairs for clients: a molded white plastic thing and a vinyl beanbag that was a lot more bag than bean. Overlooking all of this was a poster stapled to a heavy dark blue drape, a generic landscape of rolling dark green hills with a glimpse of ocean in the background; flowery script at the bottom said, Bulgaria . . . Let It HAPPEN . . . To YOU.
She looked up without much interest from the motocross racing magazine on her desk. "If you want cut-rate fares to London or Paris, you're in the wrong place. I specialize in roads not taken." Suzette slapped the photograph down on her desk. Immediately, Jinx Gottmunsdottir swept the magazine into the center drawer. "Have a seat."
I let Suzette have the white plastic chair. The beanbag was hopeless so I just sat cross-legged on the floor.
"Normally, I have a spiel I go through," the woman said in an important, business-like tone. "However, you're obviously familiar with the caveats so I can save my breath."
Warning bells went off in my head. I got up on my knees to suggest she go through her spiel anyway and suddenly found myself rolling around on the floor; Suzette had pushed me over.
I pulled myself up on her chair. Suzette gave me a warning glare and mouthed Shut up.
"But I will remind you that you have to follow the itinerary exactly," Jinx Gottmunsdottir was saying as she took two ticket folders out of her right hand desk drawer. "Miss a connection and it's immediate cancellation. No refunds." She checked the contents of each folder, nodded, and smiled at Suzette expectantly. "We take all of the usual credit cards."
"Is there a discount for cash?" Suzette asked.
The woman blinked in mild surprise. "Do you have some?"
"No. I was just wondering."
"Ah. Well, no, it's the same price regardless. We don't do bulk, either. I'm sure you can see why."
Suzette, still bluffing, nodded; I decided to assert myself. "I don't."
Jinx Gottmunsdottir's professional smile disappeared, replaced by an expression of cold irritation with an undertone of revulsion.
"Don't mind her," Suzette said brightly. She produced a credit card and pushed it across the desk.
Jinx Gottmunsdottir produced a wireless electronic credit card machine and spent a lot more time tapping the keypad than seemed usual. When she offered it to Suzette, I saw that below the tiny screen there were two separate sets of keys, one with standard numbers and one with symbols that I mostly didn't recognize, although some of them seemed vaguely Greek or Cyrillic.
Suzette barely hesitated before entering a PIN. The woman pulled the machine back before we saw anything on the screen. Seconds crawled by while she stared at the device and we stared at her and I wondered if Suzette's bluff had failed. I actually hoped it had. Bluffing isn't anything I think you should do outside of poker and, truth be told, I'm not that wild about poker, either.
But then a slip of paper came out of a slot at the top of the machine and Jinx Gottmunsdottir beamed as she tore it off and handed it to Suzette along with the folders. "Enjoy your trip."
"Will do," Suzette replied briskly and helped me to my feet. "Bye now."
Jinx Gottmunsdottir gave us a distracted wave. The racing magazine was already back on the desk in front of her.
Since our flight was at four-thirty the next morning, we found a hotel near the airport and didn't so much spend the night as take a nap. Normally, that alone would have been enough for me to bail—early morning is not my natural habitat. But Suzette and that damned picture seemed to have me under a spell.
Of course, the alternative was just another barista job, or temping in an office. Or cleaning it. Or trying to survive on unemployment until something else opened up in the great minimum-wage wasteland. Go to college, get a degree, they said. Yeah, because nothing impresses the civil servants at the unemployment office like someone reading Proust in the waiting room. Flying to Madagascar definitely seemed like the better option.
Suzette was also paying for everything at this point. She didn't even ask me for change. Any time I offered, she'd wave that credit card. Finally, over breakfast in the airport—coffee and limp croissants at one of those tall round tables where you have to stand up and eat (which I would like to go on record as saying is adding insult to the dual injury of the price and quality of the food, thank you so much), I said, "Haven't you maxed that thing out yet?"
She shook her head. "I couldn't find anything about a limit."
"What is it, platinum Amex?"
Suzette pulled it out of the back pocket of her jeans and studied it. "Actually, I don't know what it is."
"What?" I snatched it away from her. The bright colors seemed to be a mix of Visa, Master Card, and Sears; I had just enough time to see there was no name on the front and no signature strip on the reverse before she snatched it back. "Where'd you get it?"
"My aunt's place. I helped myself to some of her mail while What's-His-Name was making coffee."
"Really getting into this stealing thing, aren't you?" I said, mildly creeped out. "You sure it's hers? Maybe it's his—a special Sikh membership card."
Suzette frowned. "If there is such a thing, I doubt it would work like a credit card."
A new thought occurred to me. "How did you know the PIN number?"
"It was with the card."
"Credit card companies don't do that."
Suzette shrugged. "This one did."
"Did you take anything else?" I asked.
"A couple of bank statements. Nothing crucial."
"You think bank statements and a credit card with no limit are 'nothing crucial'?"
The sleepy-eyed man behind the counter perked up a bit. Suzette glared at me. "Keep it down, Ms Accessory-Before-and-After-the-Fact."
"Unwitting," I said emphatically.
"I was kidding, Pearl. This is my aunt's. She's family. My family wouldn't prosecute me. Would yours?"
I winced. "I've nev
er told you about my family, have I?"
"Tell me later." Suzette finished her coffee in a gulp. "We'd better check in."
There was no line at the desk. Suzette handed over our tickets and then both she and the man behind the counter waited while I dug around for my passport.
When people take a long time checking in at the airport, I always wonder why. Everything's on the computer. Even if you don't have a seat assignment, how long can that take? If most of the flights I've been on are typical, the only ones left are middle seats in the last two rows.
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