“I go part-time at the U. And I work at County Market.”
“Oh, what are you studying?”
“Advertising. I figure it’s creative and you can still earn a living. Is your daughter in college?”
“She still has a year of high school.” Elaine wondered what Josie wanted to study, or do, or be. She had no real idea.
“Actually I’m in general business right now. Later you get to sign up for the advanced courses. I’m taking marketing, finance, your basic money-grubbing.”
“I’m in retail myself. It’s not the easiest way to earn a living.”
“Neither is cleaning other people’s houses.”
“Of course. I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to be sorry. It’s just the way it is. My grandmother had eight children. My mother had five. I don’t have any yet. I guess that’s progress.”
Elaine opened her mouth to ask some other question and kept it open. Rosa, who had been standing right next to them, was now across the street. She passed over the neighbor’s lawn, not running, but moving with purpose. She still carried her embroidered purse, and in the other hand, the bullhorn.
No one seemed to see her until that very moment. The police were shouting at her, and at one another, and while they were trying to decide what to do, run after her or open fire, Harvey’s front door was opened by someone invisible. Rosa stepped inside, and the door closed again.
Lorena said, “Oh my God. Tell me she didn’t do that.”
Frank was trying to get Elaine’s attention from down the street, mouthing something she was sure she would rather not understand. She turned away hastily. “I hope they have another one of those bullhorn things.”
Now the waiting had a different, more uncertain quality. The police appeared to be stalled. No one was talking about hostage exchanges or anything else. One of the local television stations had dispatched a camera crew, which set up its equipment and busied itself with filming all the things that weren’t happening. Some of the crowd drifted away. Elaine wondered if it might be possible for her to leave and find a bathroom, and maybe a cup of coffee. Lorena had already gone to call her mother. Was it good or bad fortune that Rosa was now inside? A portent, an answered prayer? A wrench in the works? Or just another permutation in the infinite sequence of repeating combinations, resulting in the formation of a new, previously unimaginable but mathematically predictable snowflake?
Harvey’s front door opened a crack. Look, the first ones to notice it said. Look, and all the permutations of Look, until the air was full of them. The police walkie-talkies crackled. In a panic, Elaine craned her neck, trying to see if they were ordering some sort of charge, or worse. She caught sight of the young, absurdly handsome policeman standing off by himself, his gaze, like everyone else’s, forming a plumb line to the front door, his expression … It was so strange. She knew the name for it. Sick with love. No way. Her brain was trying very hard to shut out what her eyes were telling her. No way in the—
At that moment Harvey took half a step through the open door, blinking in the strong sun, his tufts of white hair as untidy as molting feathers, half of him still in shadows. He turned as if to talk with someone behind him, unseen in the dim passageway. Then he raised the bullhorn to his mouth.
“DADDY HAD HIS PECKER OUT!”
No one was certain they had heard it. Then they were certain they had.
Their voices rushed to fill the silence like water finding a hole dug in beach sand.
Josie Becomes Famous
There was a frying pan in her hand, and the hand was fisted around it. Now wasn’t that totally stupid. Oh, what had she done? Gone and opened her big mouth. Out on the front porch there was the sound of feet shifting uncertainly. Nothing to do but follow through. Josie screamed again. She was getting good at it. “He says beat it, go away, or somebody’s going to get hurt!”
They beat it. Got in their car and pulled out, fast. But they stopped at the end of the block. Josie watched them through the chink in the window shade, her small flare of courage sputtering out. She had a bad feeling that things were only just beginning.
Harvey was still hanging on to the gun by its barrel, puzzling over it. “Here, you better let me have that.” It felt heavy in her hand, slick and cold and heavy. The man on the floor coughed and moaned. She wondered if there were any bullets left. She wondered if she could shoot him if she had to. Yes, she decided. She could shoot anybody if they were going to hurt Harvey.
“We should tie him up,” Josie whispered. Why was she whispering? She shook her head and tried to get her numb self in gear. The frying pan had a clot of red-brown hair stuck to its bottom edge; she dropped it hastily. “I’ll take care of him, why don’t you go lie down? I bet you’re exhausted.”
“He sure is a noisy noise.”
“Well, he’s quiet now.”
“I whupped him.”
“You sure did. You did great.”
“I can whup the whole army.”
“Who put a nickel in you? Go lie down, try to sleep.” She watched him shuffle off. They wanted to take him off to some kind of Happy Home.
They might as well be sending a dogcatcher out after a stray.
Like it was supposed to be so easy to tie somebody up. There wasn’t any rope, but Josie found a belt on Harvey’s bathrobe and an extension cord. She was squeamish about touching him. He smelled like an empty chicken package left too long in the garbage. And what if he was only pretending to be knocked out, then he jumped up and grabbed her, like in a horror movie where nobody was ever really dead? She nudged him with her toe. His chest felt hollow, his ribs like twigs. Once, when she was younger, they’d had a cat who killed birds in the yard. Sometimes Josie had to pick them up and put them in the trash. It was the same fluttery-sick feeling of touching something smashed and unclean. Plus she had no idea about the knots, how to do anything fancy. But she got his hands tied behind his back and trussed his hideous feet together.
He groaned again. He was coming around. Josie scrambled to put the couch between them. Raspy phlegm sounds, breath fighting its way through slag. She hadn’t tied him up so he’d choke, had she? His eyes opened and he squinted at her upside-down.
“Who …” His tongue seemed swollen. “Who are you?”
“Me? That’s a good one. Who the hell are you?”
He wriggled against the cords; she was pleased to see that they held. “Shit, why you tie me up?”
“Duh! Because you were trying to kill us!”
“I never did nothing to you, turn me loose, you crazy?”
Josie waved the gun at him and he squawked and flopped. “See? You don’t like it much when people do it to you.” She heard something outside and crossed to the window. Two police cars converged and the officers, neither of whom was Mitchell Crook, got out and hitched up their pants and rubbed their chins, talking. She wished she could just roll this guy out onto the front porch. Here, take him, will he do?
He managed to raise his head so he could look at her right-side-up. “I swear, I never seen you before in my life.”
“Oh, right, who was that running around here, your evil twin?”
“Run around where, where am I?”
“This is my uncle’s house, he lives here. He’s trying to sleep, so keep it down.”
He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, in a smaller voice, “Yeah, but where? This place have a name?”
“Springfield, Illinois. United States of America. Planet Earth. Ring a bell?”
“You’re shittin me.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Is Illi … noy near Detroit, Chicago, one of those places?”
“Chicago’s in Illinois, but Springfield’s the capital.” Like he would care. She watched him narrowly. He was a lot calmer. They were even having a conversation, sort of, something that had not happened before now. Was it some kind of trick? “Where did you think you were, huh?”
“Din’t know where I am.”
/>
“Well why not?” Josie asked reasonably. “Where did you come from?”
He muttered something. “I can’t hear you.”
“L.A.”
“L.A., California?”
“Ya.”
“You weren’t watching the road signs?”
“Don remember.” Very small.
She was getting a creepy rush. The hairs on the back of her neck were rising as if she’d gotten a charge of static electricity. “Why don’t you remember stuff?”
“I don feel so hot.”
“Well you don’t look so hot. You don’t remember busting in here and screaming and shooting things and trying to rob us?”
Even wedged on his side as he was, he managed to shake his head.
“Bull, you don’t.”
“My head’s killing me.”
“Yeah, we hit you pretty hard.”
“You hit me?” He was outraged. Then he began sniveling. “Tie me up … beat on me …”
Josie looked at him, disgusted. He was such a wimp all of a sudden. It was so weird. “Hey, really, tell me what you remember.”
“I gotta scratch my nose.”
“Later.” There were more noises from outside. Josie went to the window. One more police car. And, as she watched, her father arrived, brakes tearing up the pavement and the car’s tires all mashed against the curb. Her father got out and started waving his arms. The police didn’t seem nearly as excited. They let him stomp around and carry on and give orders and they probably said Absolutely, Mr. Sloan, they’d get right on it, or some other polite way of ignoring him. Her poor old clueless Dad. Always trying to be the most important person in the room. Even when, as now, there was no room. Because he took himself so seriously, no one else did. Because he made so much noise, he never heard anything else. And he’d never figure it out, his whole life was like some trick mirror that didn’t reflect anything straight on. She felt sorry for him, mostly since he was the last person in the world who would think anyone should feel sorry for him. And because that was sad and awful, and because she knew that, in his own dorky way, he was worried about her, Josie pulled the window shade aside and waved to him. Hi, Dad! Dad, hi! He saw her and his arm shot up right away. Then, more cautiously, his fingers uncurled in a wave.
The tied-up bundle at her feet was bumping and thrashing around. “Just let me out of here, OK?”
“Unh-unh.”
“Maybe I was drunk or sick, something. I’m all right now, I don hurt you.”
“And what if I let you loose and the next minute you’re Mr. Screaming Maniac again? Besides, you can’t leave, the police are watching the house.”
“You called the police on me?” Something in Spanish, curse words, probably.
“Not exactly. It’s complicated.” Oh boy was it. Everything about to crash and burn. Her parents, Mitch, Harvey, school, the rest of her life. Not one thing that wasn’t bad and going to get worse. “Look, what’s your name?”
“Rolando Gottschalk.”
Josie couldn’t help it, she busted out laughing. “That’s a name?”
“Shut up.” He struggled against the ties. His clothes were so ragged, Josie was afraid they’d shred from the friction. Then he stopped, tilting his head from one side to the other. “Whad you do to my hair?”
“Your hair? Nothing, I wouldn’t touch that nasty mess.” Which reminded her, she needed a shower in the worst way.
He was quiet now, his face turned away. He was silent for so long that Josie said, “Hey, Rollo …”
“Rolando.”
“Don’t die on me over there.”
“Think I’m already dead.”
Josie waited, but he was curled up with his face turned away from her. “Well that’s different. Why do you think you’re dead?”
“Don remember my hair growing.”
She thought about this. “It’s not the kind of thing you really pay a lot of attention to.”
But he was done talking. Fine. She decided to take a shower before somebody broke down the door or shot her or both. If she kept the bathroom door open a crack, she could make sure he wasn’t gnawing himself loose. She peeked into Harvey’s room. He was asleep on his back, mouth open as if sleep had seized him in the middle of a surprise. A trail of wet silver at one corner. She wouldn’t be able to keep him safe forever, or even for very much longer. The police would come in, one way or another. No one would listen. They’d already made up their minds about Harvey, about her, and about her bad behavior, which had now crossed some unforgivable line.
Thank God for hot showers. They revived you, made you feel you weren’t whupped yet. Josie pulled her wet hair back with a rubber band, scrambled into clean underwear and jeans and a black T-shirt that she thought made her look tough. She picked up the gun from the back of the toilet and held it up to the mirror, pointed it this way and that and tried on some expressions that went along with that sort of thing. Recklessness had brought her this far, recklessness was all that remained to her. She had fallen in love in a desperate, impulsive way because she believed it was the only way to do such things. She had been—she leveled the gun straight ahead—trigger-happy. And maybe that meant you ended up in a blind alley with one shot left, like in the movies and songs, but what else was there besides an ordinary fucked-up life?
Even with all the horseplay she’d been quick, she’d hardly been in the bathroom five minutes. The gunman who no longer had his gun (she found it difficult to think of him by an actual name, let alone such a peculiar one) was still curled up on his side, looking like he’d invented bad moods. The Weather Channel, which she hoped she lived long enough to never watch again, was showing pictures of the retreating hurricane. It was finally moving up into New England and pooping out, leaving the state of North Carolina to the insurance companies. Everything in the world a giant disaster.
This time when she lifted the window shade she saw her mother and father standing toe to toe on the sidewalk, acting out a perfect pantomime of one of their arguments. You never. You always. Well you. No you. She dropped the shade and backed away. It was probably safer inside.
Behind her on the floor the gunman said, “Driving.”
“What?”
“I remember driving.”
“Well, I could have told you that. Your car’s right outside.”
He groaned. “What kinda car?”
“Red Camero with Kansas plates.”
“Kansas,” he said, like he wasn’t sure where that was either.
“You just couldn’t be more messed up, could you?”
“Leamme alone.”
“So you’re saying you have, what, amnesia? I didn’t think that was a real thing.”
Just when Josie thought he’d stopped talking again, he said, “It’s like when you know you seen a movie but you forget what it’s about.”
Josie looked at him, feeling curious in a repulsed sort of way. “You do a lot of drugs or something?”
“Maybe. I don know. Remember … somebody talking to me all the time, this stupid-ass mean stuff … except sometimes it was me talking … and things was happening …”
“What things?”
“Bad things.”
For the second time Josie felt that static electricity prickle of hair on her neck. “You did some bad things, huh?”
“I guess so. Or maybe, it wasn’t me. Like I was inside myself and outside too.”
Josie wished someone else was there, so they could trade significant looks. He was psycho. And she wished she could give his creepy self another knock on the head, but she wasn’t cold-blooded enough. Plus he actually seemed sorry about things, not that people always weren’t, once they got caught. At the end even Darth Vader had turned all sad and regretful about going over to the dark side, which she’d thought was just ridiculous.
Another peek through the window showed her how large the crowd had grown. In the kitchen she looked out the backdoor. She was pretty sure there was a squad car idling in
the alley, just a couple houses down. She felt light-headed, sweaty. She got a Coke from the refrigerator and carried it back in, the gun in her other hand. He hadn’t moved. “You want something to drink? Coke, water?” She thought the situation required her to be a hostess, sort of.
“Just tell me what day it is.”
“Friday. Oh, I bet … What do you need, month, day, year? It’s the seventeenth of September, 1999. That make a big difference to you?”
“I missed my birthday.”
“Yeah? When is it?”
“Ten August.”
“Well, Happy Birthday.” No response. “August, that makes you a Leo, right? I’m Aries. They’re both fire signs. If you’re into that stuff. I don’t take it very seriously, but I think it’s interesting.”
“Yeah. Fascinatin.”
“I bet your horoscope says, ‘Conditions are excellent for making new friends.’ Ha ha.”
“Go ahead an shoot me so I don hafta listen to this.”
“I wish horoscopes really worked. The ones in the newspaper are so lame, they never get it right.” The Coke had a metallic taste, or maybe that was just her mouth gone dry, from fear, from not being able to stop talking. “The old-time astrologers, the ones who set everything up, they had to go by the stars they could see. But now we have these telescopes and we know there’s a million million stars out there, and how do they figure in? Aren’t they all exerting some kind of influence of gravitational pull? Even from light-years away. How would you calculate that, what kind of horo—”
More commotion outside. Josie ran to the window. Of all the sights she didn’t expect to see on this day of freaky sights. She hollered for Harvey and had just enough time to reach the front door.
“Rosa! Rosa!” Josie couldn’t keep herself from jumping up on her like a puppy. Harvey was rubbing sleep out of his eyes and smiling his wacky blissed-out Rosa smile, Rosa happy to see him too, and it would have been a real nice reunion except for half of the Springfield police force out on the lawn and the psycho tied up on the living room floor.
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