12 Bliss Street

by Martha Conway

  “They can go through clouds or glass or plastic, but nothing solid. Did you know that radio waves travel at the speed of light? I learned that just the other day.”

  “Oh shit,” Dave said.

  Davette looked up. “What now?”

  “There’s only, like, this much tape left.”

  Unreal. Could they do anything right?

  “Where’s the tape you just took off?” Davette asked.

  “Squished.”

  They decided not to worry about taping her mouth. Together they took Nicola down to the van, but this time Davette got into the driver’s seat.

  “Is there any more of that chocolate?” Nicola asked.

  “Our plan is to pretend you’re still gagged,” Dave said.

  “Because I did pay for it, you know.”

  Davette started up the van and immediately began quarreling with Dave about the best way to go.

  “You know the new stadium? It’s like a block away,” he said.

  Nicola guessed they were taking her to India Basin. For a while Davette drove south alongside the CalTrain tracks, but she kept having to back up when the roads ended in water. She was young, Nicola thought; she should not be driving, she should be lying in bed staring at a rock poster taped to the ceiling. It was hard to understand how the world could be so heavily populated by creatures such as the Daves with their grand ideas and their total lack of sense. Scooter, her ex-husband, included. And Guy. And half of her clients, middle-aged guys with lofty technical agendas who couldn’t program their way out of a speed-dial menu. Meanwhile, Nicola thought, where were the women like me? Tied up in a minivan no doubt, or roped to a desk chair.

  But at last they got to wherever it was they were trying to go, and Davette cut the engine. It was windy and dark out and they were only a block or two from the water. The Daves took Nicola out of the van. Just like before they removed her blindfold and took up their places behind her and like before they pulled down their cut-up watch caps even though there wasn’t a body in sight. But when Nicola saw that they were walking her to another ATM machine, she just could not believe it.

  “This is it?” she said. “This is your big crime?” She didn’t mean to say anything, but she was so hungry and annoyed and she so didn’t think the Daves could do anything meaningfully bad to her that she just couldn’t keep caring.

  “What do you mean?” Dave asked.

  “I mean, you’re doing all this for my daily limit? You’re going to starve me before you can get very much out,” Nicola told him.

  “Starve you how?”

  “The way you usually starve someone—lack of food.”

  She could not believe how insanely stupid they were, what a huge risk they were taking for this petty amount. Her fingers were cold. She blew on them, then punched in her code furiously.

  “I don’t know why you need me out here anyway,” she said. “You could have come alone; you have my code.”

  “Oh, yeah, I forgot; we were going to do that,” Dave said.

  Nicola gave him the money and curled her fingers into her closed hands. She was beginning to feel as though nothing would surprise her. “Here you are, go wild,” she told them.

  Dave became peevish. “You know, you’re really testing our limits,” he said in his high, raspy voice.

  “Oh, just take me back to the van. Let me guess, you’re supposed to keep me for another day, get out another wad, then tie me up somewhere on the beach just before dawn.”

  Dave and Dave looked at each other through their cut-up watch caps. This is absurd, Nicola thought.

  “So you do know the script,” Davette said. But her voice sounded a little uncertain.

  “I don’t know any script, Dave,” Nicola said. “I haven’t been playing any kind of game with anyone. Whoever told you that was lying in order to get you to…” Nicola paused for effect.

  “To get us to what?”

  “Commit a serious felony.”

  The Daves looked at each other again. Dave said, “Is she like improvising?”

  Davette laughed a short laugh in relief. “That’s it.”

  “Where’s the guy behind all this?” Nicola asked.

  “You mean the guy you work with?” Dave asked.

  “He told you I work with him?” A sudden gust whipped her hair into her face.

  “Come on. You all play this game together. Your company. Building trust or whatever.” He squinted his eyes at her now, but he was looking a little uncertain. It was really cold out, and he put his hands under his armpits.

  Nicola said, “This is what he told you?”

  “It … isn’t it true?”

  “No, it isn’t true. But let me guess: you’re giving him the money you get from me. Then he’s supposed to pay you, right? Well, I guarantee it he’ll disappear before you see a cent. Listen, use your heads; he’s using you to steal from me. You have kidnapped me and you have stolen my money and I will go to the police. But I’m guessing he plans to be gone before then. If anyone gets caught it will be you two.”

  “But he can’t run away, he’s like a cripple,” Davette said.

  Dave looked at her. “What?”

  “Yeah, remember he told us he had only one liver?”

  Nicola stared at her. She could hear a foghorn somewhere over the water. Her hands were even colder now and she wanted to get out of the wind. But she stayed where she was.

  “Only one liver? He told you that?”

  “He’s on dialysis, he said.”

  “Are you sure he didn’t say kidney?”

  “He said liver; he said it was from drinking grain alcohol when he was in grade school.”

  “I don’t think we should be saying all this,” Dave said.

  “It’s okay,” Nicola said. “But you know, Dave, everyone has only one liver.”

  She waited two beats. The Daves looked at her, not understanding.

  “Everyone is born with just one liver.”

  They stopped looking at her and looked at each other. The wind whipped their hair in unison and Nicola watched them get it. Suddenly she felt this was easy; she could play it by ear.

  “Is that true?” Davette asked. Her nose was running a little from the cold.

  “Let’s just go,” Nicola told her.

  She started walking back and in a moment the Daves followed her. The sidewalk was sandy and ripped up and the fog had thickened into something like suspended rain.

  “If he lied about the liver, he could have lied about the other thing, too,” Davette muttered to Dave. She sniffed, and her hands were crossed over her chest as she walked. Dave said nothing but his face was pale.

  At the door to the van Nicola stood still while Davette wrapped the scarf around her eyes again. Then she said, “It’s better to take Evans to Third. If you listen to me I’ll get us back quicker.”

  The Daves said nothing but they took her advice. They were in something like shock.

  “Get into the right-hand lane,” Nicola told Davette, who was driving. “At the first major light make a right.”

  “On Third?” Davette asked.

  “That’s it.”

  She waited for the boy to speak. At last he said, “You know where we’re taking you.”

  “Not really,” Nicola lied.

  “That complicates things,” he said.

  “Not really.”

  They skimmed along making green lights. Nicola could feel when they were on wide streets or narrow. Traffic was light since the muni trains had stopped and the buses were on their night schedules.

  “If you know where we’re taking you things will have to be different,” Dave said.

  “Tell the guy to come,” Nicola said.

  “Huh?”

  “The liver guy. Tell him to come to the warehouse.”

  “What for?” Dave asked.

  “So we can talk.”

  Davette sniffed again and wiped her nose on her sleeve. “We might as well, Dave. What if it’s true, wha
t if he lied? And now she knows where she’s been.”

  Dave thought for a minute. “You really fucked up,” he told Davette.

  “Fuck you,” she said calmly. “I did not.”

  “I knew we should have never untaped her mouth.”

  “We had to sometime. For water and stuff.”

  “He never said.”

  “He said it to me.”

  “When did he say?” Dave asked. His voice was like a cat’s, small and sleek. “Listen, I want to know this: when did he say so much to you when he didn’t to me?”

  “He called me last night. He told me I was the lead role.”

  “The lead role? I’m the lead role.”

  “No, you’re supporting.”

  “No way do I support!”

  “Take a left at Mariposa,” Nicola told Davette.

  Davette pulled at the blinker. “Do you want the blindfold off?” she asked.

  “Dave!” Dave said.

  “Well, what’s the point?”

  “Actually I’m enjoying the challenge,” Nicola told her.

  * * *

  The girl was dead.

  He stood over the body, looking at it. The camisole was in pieces. A bad taste filled his mouth. It had all worked out.

  The video camera was still running.

  “Shambhala,” he told her, “is a way of life.”

  He took a step back, thinking maybe his arm or hand had strayed into camera range. It was late, very late. Downstairs, Marlina at last was quiet. Asleep, probably. He himself was tired, but he had much more to do.

  “Shambhala is about waking up and bringing buddhism into your life. It’s a warrior’s buddhism, inspired by the ancient kingdom of Shambhala, an enlightened society based on wisdom and fearless action. Fearless action. It has a tradition of meditation and bravery combined. I myself went to a meditation center for eleven months and completed five levels of Shambhala training, beginning with the ‘Birth of the Warrior.’”

  Chorizo paused, and looked at the girl.

  “But you don’t care about any of this,” he said.

  * * *

  Later Nicola would realize that the smell on the street that was almost like urine was really yeast from the brewing factory across the street. She would realize how close they were to Potrero Hill—only a block away, with projects and a schoolyard in between. There were plants in plant boxes and small stunted trees lining the sidewalk and a few blocks up antique dealers showed their merchandise upon appointment.

  After Dave made the phone call they sat like before in the cold upstairs room, not so tired now although it was almost two in the morning. When at last they heard the garage door open, the boy got up and started downstairs. Nicola heard his footsteps going down and another pair coming up, then a pause as they met in the middle of the staircase. They spoke for a minute. The man with one liver said, “I’m not going in, then.”

  “She’s still got the blindfold.”

  “Is she taped up?”

  “Her hands are … are tied.”

  “Not her mouth? Why not her mouth?”

  Nicola held her breath to hear better.

  “Why did you call me?” the man asked. “Christ, you scared me. I thought she was dead or something.”

  “She wants to talk to you.”

  There was a pause.

  “Do you know how stupid you are?” the man asked.

  Nicola exhaled and waited. It would feel so good to get out of this chair.

  As they walked into the room a bird from next door screeched loudly, and for a second Nicola wasn’t sure who was where; it sounded like maybe the girl got up as the men came in and the different noises competed with each other. She thought she heard heavy footsteps cross the room.

  No one spoke for a moment. Nicola tried to guess where they were all standing so she could turn her face toward them.

  She said, “Scooter. I thought that was you.”

  The bird shrieked again. Nicola almost laughed—she could feel his surprise fill the room. Scooter, her ex-husband.

  “Come here,” she said. “Come on, Scooter; undo my hands now.”

  She could imagine him standing there weighing his choices. After a moment he came toward her. Even under Dave’s soft cotton shirt her skin was burning, the effect of so much tape coming on and off, and when Scooter untied her hands she reached up to her face and pulled hard at the blindfold. Jesus, thank God, Nicola thought. She was finished with all this. She was finished.

  “Nicola,” Scooter began weakly. “But how did you…?”

  “The liver story,” she said. “You’ve used that one before.”

  “You told her that?” Scooter asked the Daves.

  “Plus I know about the grain alcohol in kindergarten.”

  “That was first grade. My dad’s still telling the story.”

  “Your dad’s a sick man,” Nicola said. She looked around her. The room was larger than she had imagined. She glanced at the Daves, who were crouching by the dry wall staring at her. Dave looked a little surly. And there was Scooter, wearing the same brown overcoat she’d seen that morning—or was it yesterday by now?

  “I saw you this morning, you know,” Nicola told him, “at the muni station. What is that coat you’re wearing?”

  “I’m sort of in disguise.”

  “Well, like everything else that almost worked.”

  She felt sorry for him, a feeling she remembered better than anything else but not the feeling that ultimately made her leave him. Scooter felt for his wallet; the gesture was like a surrender. He was a small man, physically jumpy in a way that had been attractive in college.

  Dave and Davette were staring at them. Davette stood with her hands dangling at her sides, her spiky hair in a mass over one shoulder, while Dave little by little pasted himself to the one wall: first his heels, then his back, his elbows, his head. Each of his motions seemed designed to look casual.

  “Are we still gonna get paid?” he asked.

  Nicola felt a spurt of anger. “I don’t think so, Dave.”

  “Well, you can’t blame us for trying.”

  “I can blame you for failing,” Nicola answered. She didn’t know what annoyed her more: the fact that they kidnapped her or that they were so bad at it. Scooter was watching her with the expression of a man used to conceding the point. He looked even smaller in his large overcoat, and when he sat down his eyes narrowed as if he were ordering the events in his head, still trying to work out how it all had come to this.

  “So what’s the story this time?” she asked him.

  “It’s more or less more of the same,” Scooter said.

  “Money?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Well you could have just asked.”

  Scooter shrugged. “I thought you’d say no.”

  “That you were right about. But hold on—” Nicola turned to Davette. “Are you both really called Dave?”

  “Yeah,” Davette said.

  “That’s just much too confusing. From here on you’re Davette. Okay? Okay, good. Now listen, Davette, this is the most important thing you’ll do tonight. Get my black bag and take out the address book, which is in the inside pocket—I believe you found it before. Go to ‘P’ and look under ‘pizza’ and call the number I have there, then order the largest pizza you can with tomatoes and anchovies. Got that? Tomatoes and anchovies. And I want one of their cornmeal crusts.”

  Davette went off for the purse, her big black jacket making its usual puffy noises as she went, while Dave picked at his nails with his minitool. Meanwhile Nicola could feel Scooter watching her. Waiting for instructions.

  So now things were different. Scooter, in fact, was a game she knew how to play. Nicola felt as though sometime in the night she had finally figured out how to get what she wanted. Now she knew. It was not about the situation, any situation, it was who you were—and trusting that. It was knowing you could get what you want. And what she wanted was to be the one in charge
.

  She pulled off her shoes and stretched, making Scooter wait. Here she was, the one in charge. She was in charge now and it felt great. Tonight she’ll sleep in her own bed on the white silk sheets she bought the day the divorce became final. She will wash her face, she will put on her silk jammies, and she will sleep in her own bed. And tomorrow, Nicola thought, I’ll get on with everything else. Davette came back into the room and Nicola checked the purse over quickly but everything was still there: her money, her credit cards, her keys, her picture of Lester.

  “Okay,” Nicola said, and she turned back to Scooter. “Now tell me the whole story,” she said.

  Eight

  The story began in the usual way: Scooter got tired of what he was doing and wanted to make money faster. He’d been working as a partner in a door-to-door seafood-and-steak operation in L.A. when he met a guy who knew a guy with a dog kennel in Apache Junction, and when the guy he knew headed out that way (actually he was on his way to Tempe to buy or sell or do something with a car), Scooter decided to hitch a lift and check out some races he’d heard about.

  “Greyhounds pay better than horses,” Scooter told them. He was sitting in the desk chair, swiveling it slightly with his foot. “The trick is to stay out of the dog cage.”

  The Daves were sitting near him on the floor while Nicola stood against the doorframe, drinking a bottle of water she’d found in the half-finished kitchenette. She watched Scooter swivel his chair again, then use one of the levers to adjust the backrest back and forth, back and forth—probably, she thought, without even noticing. Scooter was small but his body was lit with a constant nervous energy that made him seem larger. He had thick, rough hair in a light shade that was not quite blond, and his nose was noticeably long. Still, there was something attractive about him: the way he held his body, his excited interest in each project du jour.

  She took a long sip of water. How long had it been, three years, since she’d seen him? Not counting this morning. As he spoke Nicola found herself thinking with no nostalgia about their old apartment above the bicycle shop (now an Asian fusion restaurant) near Golden Gate Park, which they decorated from catalogs—the Danish floor lamp, the futon couch, the mounted posters, a rough jute rug—when the only difference between them and their other coupley friends was that they were actually married. Married! Because that was another one of Scooter’s hot ideas: let’s get married!