Traveling Light

by Thalasinos, Andrea

  “Perfect spot for Fotis.” She was impressed Alex remembered the name. “We have many other good SUV model.” He gestured for her to climb out and follow him.

  Paula didn’t budge. “If it’s okay,” she said, “I think I’ll just take this one.”

  “Wouldn’t you like to take Escape out for test-drive?”

  “Thanks, but that won’t be necessary; I’ll take it.”

  Then he shrugged. “You don’t want to look at other models for comparison?”

  She shook her head.

  “Escape is great car. There are other great cars, too.”

  “I want this one. I like the color.” Black was always her color.

  “Oh, so you like color, eh?” He leaned over as if letting her in on a secret. “Tuxedo black—new color.”

  She wasn’t aware she’d been gripping Fotis’ leash so tightly. She ran her hand along the top of the dashboard; it felt good behind the wheel. Safe.

  She smiled. “Can I buy this one?” She gripped the steering wheel for emphasis.

  Alex raised his eyebrows. “Let me check if car is reserved. It was delivered yesterday. Escapes are going fast. Nice, compact size for city street parking.” He raised his eyebrows.

  She hadn’t thought about parking; Roger had only one space. She’d figure it out when the time came.

  She watched Alex scurry around to the front and look at the windshield. “No tag under wipers. Good sign.” He raised his eyebrows. He peered at the dashboard and began writing down a number on a piece of paper from his shirt pocket. “Cross your fingers.” He motioned for her to wait. “Paula, enjoy car; I’ll go check inventory.”

  She watched him walk over and sit down at what she presumed was his desk. Paula had a good view of his face as he typed into a laptop computer, and she tried to read the set of his brows as his expression changed. Finally, he stood up, the chair moving out slightly. Her stomach jumped.

  Fotis studied her sitting behind the wheel. He sniffed at the door.

  “Ti skeptisai?” she asked what he thought. Fotis’ tail swished once. “Eh, you’re so easy,” she said in English, chuckling. “You like everything.” He smiled and started panting.

  She watched Alex walking back with an orange ticket. He held it up like a magician and then brushed it with his other hand. The ticket disappeared. Then he approached and reached behind her neck where she was sitting and pulled the ticket from next to her collar.

  Paula gasped.

  “Escape now reserved for you.” Teeth like tiny white pearls shone as he smiled broadly.

  She clapped and squealed, embarrassed by the noise she’d made but delighted at not caring. She wondered what Roger would say when he saw the car. She wouldn’t tell him she’d bought it right off the floor. She’d heard of people looking for months—trolling about from borough to borough, bickering here, there—sometimes even making a pilgrimage out to New Jersey for the sake of five hundred dollars.

  “Okeydokey,” Alex said, and climbed into the passenger seat beside her. “Let me tell you about your car.” He began summarizing the car’s features, cubic inches and drive trains; she nodded as if she understood.

  She loved the smell, the feel of the seats. As Alex kept explaining she reached up to touch the ceiling. Even the roof felt plush.

  “Ready for paperwork?”

  She nodded.

  “Let’s move to my desk,” he said. “Will you be applying for financing?” he asked as he climbed out of the car.

  “I’ll give you my debit card.” She slipped out of the car.

  “Even better, you get cash discount.” He led her to his desk. “Please have seat.”

  On his desk she noted two glass jars, one filled with dog biscuits and the other with M&M’s.

  They were quiet as he typed in her name, details, and finally began printing out all the purchase forms and agreements.

  “Can I take it today?” She gave a slightly embarrassed smile and bunched up her shoulders. Her cheeks burned like an embarrassed twelve-year-old’s.

  “The car?” He gave a hearty laugh. “Oh no—soonest is tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Okay,” she conceded.

  He looked up from the screen. “You look like early bird, right? Maybe you can get it before eight. After that it gets crazy busy. You need car delivered?”

  “You deliver?”

  “Of course, no problem.” He lifted his hands.

  Alex’s printer churned and Paula signed each form while on hold with her insurance agent, who’d been a neighbor in her old building. Roger had switched to him after they got married. She kept glancing over to admire the car, still not believing it was hers. After the agent put the new insurance policy in force, she handed Alex the phone to fax over the certificate of insurance. Paula stood and walked over to the car.

  “It’s ours, Fotis.” She felt as if she’d squeal.

  Fotis lifted his leg and peed on the tire.

  “Okeydokey, now I need a valid driver’s license.” He held out his hand without looking up. The transaction cleared except for the vehicle registration. For that she needed to produce a valid New York State driver’s license.

  Providing Alex with an abbreviated version of yesterday’s events, she explained how her driver’s license had come to be in Queens.

  He thought for a moment, playing with his upper lip. “Okay.” He looked around the showroom floor and back at her. “Tell you what. How ’bout we take Fotis for ride in your new car to Queens Hospital and get driver’s license?”

  “Now?”

  Alex smiled as he nodded.

  “I drive to hospital,” he qualified. “You get license; then you drive back. Give Tommy fifteen minutes to pull car out.” Alex walked away carrying the paperwork.

  He turned back. “Help yourself to coffee, donut,” he said. “Give Big Guy donut, too.” He leaned over exaggeratedly, talking to Fotis. “Make her give you coconut.” It sounded like “cuckoo-nut.” “They are best.”

  She took out her phone to call Celeste.

  * * *

  The moment they pulled up to the circular patient drop-off Celeste stepped out of the hospital’s revolving door to greet them. Fotis took over the backseat, his face sticking out the driver’s side window. For the first few blocks out of the dealer garage Fotis had looked a bit queasy, his eyes slightly unfocused—but as soon as he stuck his face out the window and felt the wind he was fine.

  “Hi, Fotis,” Celeste called his name.

  The dog looked straight at her.

  “Paula, he’s adorable!” Heavenly was petting him before they’d come to a complete stop.

  Paula stepped out and the two friends hugged each other.

  “I’m so glad you’re doing this,” Celeste said into Paula’s hair. “To anyone else it might look crazy,” she said, and then let Paula go. “But I have a good feeling.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You look good, miksa mou,” Heavenly said.

  “Shut up; I look like shit and you know it.”

  “You look beautiful. Happy.” Celeste smiled in a proud way, like the day she and Tony had flown out to Berkeley with Eleni to see her graduate.

  “What does Tony think?”

  “It doesn’t matter what Tony thinks.”

  She could tell Celeste was making an attempt to stay neutral about Roger, but from the way Heavenly was smiling Paula guessed that Tony approved. “He gives you his best.”

  Tony had never cared for Roger and Paula knew it. She was one of the few who could read Tony, maybe because she’d known him since high school.

  Celeste stepped back and looked at the Escape. “What a gorgeous car,” Heavenly said, running her hand along the hood. “Ah shit—wait till Tony sees it. He’s gonna want one.”

  Paula introduced Alex. He hopped out and walked over to shake Heavenly’s hand, palming a business card like another magic trick, flipping it, making it disappear and reappear just behind Celeste’s ear.

  “How
did you do that?” Heavenly demanded in astonishment.

  “Secret.” He winked.

  “They deliver, too,” Paula added, a member of the team.

  “I always discount car for good friend.” Alex winked and then got into the passenger side of the Escape.

  Celeste began to pet Fotis through the window.

  “My gosh, he’s huge, Paula, but so sweet.”

  “Yeah, he is.”

  Celeste looked at Paula. “Roger called earlier.”

  “Shit.”

  “Several times.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Nothing to be sorry about,” Heavenly said, “though he grilled me for almost a half hour.”

  Roger was no match for Celeste.

  “He’s convinced you’ve met someone.”

  Paula looked at the dog. “Yeah. We slept together last night.”

  “So how was he?” Celeste asked with the precise inflection she had used when they were younger.

  “Big and furry,” Paula said.

  They both cackled.

  “What should I do with your papers?” Celeste asked.

  “Dump them,” Paula said. “The bag’s a piece of shit anyway. Guillermo’s already got the articles.”

  “Wow. Guess we gotta give the little fucker credit for something,” Celeste said.

  “No, we don’t.”

  Celeste chuckled. “Yeah—you’re right.”

  Paula took the hospital ID tag out of her purse and handed it over as Celeste handed her back her license.

  “Promise me you’ll call,” Celeste said.

  “Always.”

  CHAPTER 5

  The car was delivered at 7:00 am just as Alex had promised. Paula and Fotis had finished breakfast via room service at 5:00 am, a fruit cup for her, a plate of ham, eggs and sausage for him. It was nice to share meals. They’d sat on the coverlet of the bed, from City services to room service over the span of a few days.

  After a trip to the dog run they were packed, checked out and waiting curbside. A robocall from the dealership confirmed the Escape was on its way.

  Paula’s black skirt had become as comfortable as a pair of well-worn jeans. After a good washing in the bathroom sink the skirt had finally yielded to her form.

  The previous day a voice had hounded her, Go pop by the brownstone and give Roger an obligatory good-bye kiss. No hard feelings for refusing his offer to come to France, and, Go get the suitcase; pack some clothes and things for the trip. Yet her clothes, shoes, even her jewelry felt polluted. Roger would try to talk her out of both Fotis and the trip. He was good at that. And while buying new clothes seemed like a waste of money, it was better than facing Roger and the brownstone.

  After a hippie head shop burned down near NYU earlier that year, she began having dreams about fire. Not nightmares, just dreams. Such dreams weren’t far-fetched. The floorboards in Roger’s bedroom seemed to groan for liberation under the weight of his stuff. She’d heard of instances where firefighters would give up and let the house fire burn in a controlled way. As it would be with Roger’s staircase, three-quarters blocked with piles of Financial Times newspapers, it wasn’t worth losing valuable personnel to a hopeless pile of paper.

  Then the widow fantasies started. In America widows are seen as noble; in Greece they’re considered bad luck. But there’d be no graceful exit. She couldn’t help Roger, but maybe she could save herself. She suspected that even firefighters with their sharpened axes couldn’t hack through to Roger’s common sense.

  So instead of going back to the brownstone, she bought new clothes from a Burmese vendor staked out on a street corner. “Genuine” ladies’ Calvin Klein merchandise was stacked neatly by color and size on aluminum card tables. She’d picked up enough knockoff underwear, tops and jeans for a week, enough to get her to Bernie and Jeannine’s, plus a pair of sunglasses for the drive.

  The vendor was pushing a “genuine” Louis Vuitton duffel bag—which upon closer inspection Paula swore was used, though it looked surprisingly authentic. Celeste’s sister-in-law had given them tips during a drunken birthday party about how to spot real Vuitton by examining the lining and balance of the logo print.

  “This is not new,” Paula alleged with her you’ve gotta be kidding look. She pointed inside the bag to traces of white powder. Talc? Cocaine? Heroin? The man took the bag and inspected the lining. He looked genuinely annoyed and turned it over, spanking its bottom to rid the bag of whatever substance had dusted the lining.

  “See?” he’d said, and smiled. “Only dust. New, not used.” He handed the bag back for Paula to inspect. “Dusty from transport.”

  “Don’t you have another?” She bent down as Fotis sniffed her hair, and perused the merchandise beneath the aluminum card tables.

  “No,” the man answered quickly. “Only one.” He held up a finger for emphasis. “Is new, not used,” he’d insisted testily. “My lip to God ear, lady.” The man touched his mouth, then pointed up.

  Paula pulled out her wallet and paid. What the hell, she’d give it to Celeste for her sister-in-law when she got back. As far as she knew, drug-sniffing dogs weren’t manning America’s tollbooths.

  * * *

  Eleni believed that the instant a person is born their Tihi, or destiny, is written down in a book kept by the Moirai, or the three goddesses of Fate. After Vassili died, Paula imagined the cunning old hags dreaming up all sorts of miserable scenarios for Eleni. Paula’s marriage to Roger had always seemed more like a factory error than cursed. But Eleni had gotten a different version of the same raw deal—a young widow with no other marriage prospects. Maybe it was bad luck. Bad luck men, bad luck dishes, bad luck pots and pans, forks, spoons and knives. But then you see people like Celeste and Tony, happily married for more than twenty-five years, weathering every crisis together.

  Paula didn’t believe in luck. Perhaps the Moirai had put blinders on her, laughing at her evaluation of Roger as husband material. He’d passed every suitor test as she stumbled headfirst onto the biggest land mine of her life. She never would have predicted that, weeks after the wedding, Roger would stop sleeping and eating. She had to walk him up and down the street at night to calm him. Trembling, he’d cling to her arm as she told him, “It’ll all be fine; it’s just a rough patch; you really should go see someone.” She’d become his best friend, his comforter, and she shut up about the sleeping arrangement, the squalor in the house. It would have been like beating up a puppy. “For better or for worse,” maybe she’d gotten the worse part up front, she’d reasoned. Soon their sleeping arrangement became institutionalized. Divorce was never a thought, so she’d backed off, squelched her desires, shut down and turned her attention to the Center, accepting whatever hand the Moirai had dealt.

  The first sign of trouble materialized on moving day the week of their wedding. Before leaving for France earlier that summer, Roger had neglected to give her a key.

  “I’d like to start moving some things in,” she’d said a month before his departure.

  “Well, I’ll need to do some rearranging.” It sounded perfectly reasonable. “I’m reorganizing.” He’d smiled sheepishly. “I have a lot of stuff, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  “Why don’t you let me help?” she’d offered, scooting up to the edge of her seat. “If you give me a key I can work on it this summer.”

  He’d looked at her in a way she couldn’t read. “Uhhh—I’ll clear out as much as I can, but some things’ll have to wait till I’m back.”

  “I can help clear it out.”

  “It’s not the sort of thing you can do for me.” He flushed. He wouldn’t look at her. He’d looked embarrassed or ashamed. “I need to sort through things,” he’d reiterated. “My parents’ things.”

  “But you won’t be back until the week of the wedding,” she’d protested. “My lease is up. I have to move.”

  “Sweetie,” he’d crooned. “I’ll be back in time. I’ll do what I can before I leave, but it can wait ti
ll then.”

  She couldn’t stop worrying about it. “Hey—if you changed your mind, Roger, that’s okay,” she’d offered her get-out-of-jail-free card. But Roger laughed the whole thing off. She’d even phoned overseas, afraid he’d met somebody else. “No, of course not,” he’d say. “You’re my dream girl,” he’d reassure her. “What’s a summer when we have our whole lives?” True. Sensible as always.

  “You worry too much, Paula,” he’d said from France. “You gotta have faith in life. Trust the future, our future.”

  Move-in day finally came after he’d airmailed a key from France days before the wedding. “Oh thank God,” she’d muttered, and laughed nervously.

  The three movers (cousins of a Malaysian graduate) had stood with their work gloves on, sizing up the ornately carved front door.

  She depressed the thumb latch and pushed. It budged a sixteenth of an inch. With her shoulder she gave it a hefty shove. It opened a full inch, just enough to register the smell of musty paper and the briny sting of mildew.

  “Phew, it stinks,” she admitted, thinking it might lessen the embarrassment. The door opened finally. “He’s been gone all summer,” she’d offered. “Give me a minute—I’ll air the place out.”

  It would take longer than a minute. The movers shot glances at each other; one of them looked at his watch and then out to the moving van, double-parked on the narrow street. He said something in Malaysian to his partner.

  “Lady, we got three more stop,” he said.

  “Oh,” was all she said. She stood there, stunned. Roger had sworn that he’d cleared it out. Decorators were scheduled for tomorrow. Her eyes watered. What was she getting herself into? Why would Roger lie? She thought of hijacking Eleni’s car to speed out to Montauk, stand at the end of New York and smell the salt air, dilute her terror. She felt twisted. Her apartment was rented, the dress bought, tux rented, invitations out.

  “He’s been gone all summer.” She began climbing over debris and boxes, searching for windows, coughing. She unlatched the ones she could reach.

  The movers listened politely, having seen it all before. Two or three times a week they’d worked on contract with the Department of Health to evict hoarders.