“If you know where it is, why don’t you just—?”
“Are you fucking listening to me? I don’t know where it is. It was supposed to be like I said: Grace for me; Rena for Albie. But when Rena called me, not one single word about that book. Never said, ‘Come down and get it.’ Or even just FedEx’ed it. So either she doesn’t know where it is, or she’s got it and she wants to turn it into cash. That’s why I never sent her Albie’s will.”
“So Albie never trusted her with that book—which means you can’t trust her, either?”
“That’s it,” Solly said. He looked real old then. Like he could see the end of things. “Jessop, he’s not a big deal, okay? But I’ve got to have that book. Me and Albie …”
I waited a long time, but Solly didn’t say anything more. He just looked at me.
“I said I’d do it,” I told him. I hoped I said it just like Ken would have.
“This is a lot of money,” the woman who wanted me to call her Margo said.
“It’s just three months’ rent. I’ll be away for a while. It could be just a couple of weeks, but it could just as easy be a couple of months. You know how those things are.”
I said that last thing because people never want to admit they don’t know how things are.
“So I guess, if I wanted to start … training, like we talked about, I’d have to wait until you come back, huh?”
“I’m sorry. This came up real sudden. If I had even a week or two, I could show you enough to keep you going until I got back. But, the way things are—”
“Oh, I know. Especially today. Nobody seems to have any money. You can’t pass up a chance like this.”
“Thanks for understanding,” I told her.
I spent the night getting ready. I didn’t like some parts of this bus thing. They don’t let you take much luggage on board; they just check it for you. And this bus ride, it was like a day and a half long. The girl I spoke to at Greyhound looked it up for me, and said I’d have to change buses a couple of times.
The train would have been better, but the lady at Amtrak said it didn’t stop in Tallahassee. Not even close.
Everything in the refrigerator I either finished off or poured out. A lot of my dry stuff, I could take with me.
It was pretty easy, stripping the place. All I left behind was some stuff in the closet. Way before my rent advance ran out, Margo would find some excuse to stick her nose in.
The weather report said tomorrow was going to be in the nineties. Swell time to be going to Florida.
I waited until the husband’s car pulled off. He drove a big white Lexus, and he was real careful with it, always checking when he backed out of the driveway. I didn’t want him to look up one day and see the shades move, so I just poked a tiny hole in one of them with an ice pick. I could see out fine.
When I was sure, I packed the trunk of my car like I was going away for a long time.
She came outside while I was stowing away the last of my stuff. Leaned over the rail and looked down, putting on a show.
“I think I’ll start working out anyway. You think that’s a good idea?”
“Like I said, the way you can tell, if it makes you feel better.”
“And, like I said before, all that matters is that you look better, Stan. It’s all right to call you that, isn’t it? I mean, you don’t look like a ‘Stanley,’ somehow.”
“You don’t look like a Mary Margaret,” I said.
“Margo, remember?”
“Sure, I do. I was just saying … it’s like we have something in common.”
“Oh, I’m sure of that. Well, you have a good time, okay?”
“It’s work.”
“Some things are hard work and fun, too, aren’t they?”
“I … I think that’s right.”
She turned and walked back inside.
I had already asked the guy who ran the gas station a few blocks from the railroad if I could rent a space for my car.
He was surprised at first. “You could just leave it over in the commuter lot. It’s pretty safe around here.”
“No, I mean for a couple, three months. You know how people are. They see a car sitting alone for more than a few days, they come back at night.”
“Yeah, that’s true,” he said, like it made him sad. “So why don’t you just leave it at home?”
“I don’t have a house. Just an apartment. I have to park on the street. That’s okay for overnight, but …”
“I get it. But I couldn’t guarantee you indoor space. It just depends on whatever comes in, you know? I mean, I could park it out back; there’s the chain-link, and the dogs, too. Anybody would have to want your car pretty bad to risk that.”
I knew what he was saying: who’d want my car that bad?
“That sounds good enough. This way, I can catch the train, jump off in Queens, and I’ll be at JFK pretty quick. You got any idea what those long-term lots at the airport are getting now?”
“Yeah. Everything in the city’s gone through the goddamn roof. How about a hundred a month?”
“That’s fair. For both of us, I think.”
I gave him three months in front. Took my suitcases and the shoulder duffel out of the trunk, and gave him the keys—I had another set.
“I’d give you a lift to the station, but …”
“That’s okay. I only need to catch the ten-fifty-five.”
That’s the train I caught. It didn’t matter where I switched—I think every subway line stops somewhere near the Port Authority. Forty-second Street, Times Square, Grand Central—they’re all close enough to walk.
There were a lot of kids on the subway for that time of day. All different kinds; I guess with summer vacation, they didn’t have anything to do. A couple of times, I wished I hadn’t been hauling all that baggage around. It made me uneasy, no matter what I did. If I put down the suitcases, one of them could be snatched. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have my hands free.
A seat would be better, but I never saw an open one.
When the train finally stopped, I told myself I’d been worrying about nothing.
I made it over to Port Authority with more than two hours to spare. After I paid, I asked the tired-looking black girl on the other side of the counter what platform my bus would be leaving from. She pointed up at this huge monitor. Not real friendly, but I could see it wasn’t anything personal.
They told me I had to check the suitcases. One of the bus people said something about my duffel, too, but another one said the bus was going to be half empty, so what was the big deal?
I was glad about that. You make a fuss, you draw attention to yourself.
The guy in the uniform was right—there couldn’t have been more than a dozen people on the bus when we pulled out. I found a pair of seats all the way at the back. Nobody would want those seats if they had any other choice; the bathroom was just across from them.
I put the duffel on the seat next to me, all the outside pockets facing me, with the strap looped around my wrist. Just habit—who’s going to snatch a bag on a bus?
Probably everybody on that bus had a different reason for going wherever they were headed. I never try and figure out stuff like that—there’s no way to ever find out if I’d guessed right.
It was easier after it got dark. A few people put their lights on—to read, I guess.
The bus smelled a lot like prison. People smells, I mean. Closed in. That kind of smell, it gets into everything—you couldn’t get it out with a barrelful of bleach and a power-washer. The seat was a lot better than anything you could get in prison, but, even cranked way back, you still had to sleep kind of sitting up, so it was a push between that seat and a cell bunk.
When we stopped to change buses, some people bought stuff to eat or a book to read. A couple of them tried to smoke a whole pack of cigarettes while we were waiting.
They changed drivers, too. The bus filled up a little more, but it was still about half empty. Nobody even g
ot close to sitting near me.
I heard people talking to each other. A real skinny girl walked past me to use the toilet. She saw me, ran her tongue around her mouth. I looked out the window.
She was in there a long time. I hoped she wasn’t still poking herself, trying to find a vein. Or nodding out.
A guy walked back toward me. I could see him coming in the reflection from the window. He wanted the toilet, but he was out of luck. He shrugged, like he was used to it.
The skinny girl finally came out. She had to put her hand on the top of the seats to get down the aisle, but she made it.
I felt sorry for the next person to go in there.
Then I must have fallen asleep.
It was bright outside when I opened my eyes. The toilet was what I expected. When I came out, I poured some of this clear stuff over my hands, and rubbed until they were dry. Then I took out one of those tubes for keeping your lips from cracking and used it on each nostril.
I had two of the power bars and a whole bottle of water. I made them last a long time.
It was still light when the bus pulled into the last stop. There were a couple of cabs waiting, but I moved in the opposite direction.
One thing for sure, I didn’t want to hang around the bus station. Places like that, they get bad at night, no matter where you are. And I knew I didn’t look too good—a day and a half on a bus, nobody would. Solly should have told me more about this, I was saying to myself when a horn beeped. A little beep, like, polite, almost. A dark-blue car was at the curb. The window nearest me slid down. I didn’t think that had anything to do with me, so I moved away a little bit … but the car followed along.
I looked in the open window. It was a woman—her face was shadowed, but I could see her legs.
“Get in,” she said. “I’ll take you where you’re going.”
I knew she had to be Rena. No woman goes to a bus station to pick up guys.
“You are a big boy.”
“I’m not any kind of boy.”
She blew smoke at the windshield. “See, that’s one of the differences between us.”
“You and me?”
“Men and women. Call a man a boy, he’s all insulted. Call a woman a girl, she’s all happy and sweet.”
“I never thought about it.”
“Men don’t,” she said, like she was done answering a lot of questions I never asked.
I didn’t look at her real close, either—you don’t do that. The windows of the big car were tinted, so you could look outside without sunglasses or anything. There wasn’t all that much to see.
The car was like a room with the curtains pulled. Every time the woman finished with a cigarette, she pushed a button and her window went down so she could snap the butt out into the street. Like opening the curtains for a second.
All I could really tell about her was she had long hair. Some dark color, but not black. I couldn’t see much of her upper body—she was wearing a light jacket and a dark blouse—but her right leg had a lot of definition around the calf. Dark nail polish, big flashy stone in a ring on her left hand—I saw it every time she made a right turn.
I didn’t see how she could drive with such high heels. White ones, with red soles. I remembered what this one girl I stayed with for a while was always telling me about the tricks women used to look thinner. White made you look bigger, she always said. So either this girl had small feet or she didn’t give a damn.
No way this one doesn’t give a damn, I thought.
“You’re Albie’s niece, right?” I said, just to make certain-sure I was in the right car.
“His what?”
“Solly said—”
“Uh-huh,” she half-laughed. Sounded like sandpaper on soft wood.
I just shut up.
The longer we drove, the less the place looked like a city … and it hadn’t looked much like one when we started. It took about forty-five minutes before we came up on a pair of big stone piles, with a space between them just wide enough to let a car through. As we turned in, the girl reached into her purse. Her hand stayed there for a couple of seconds, came out empty.
We went down a long road. It was paved, but no wider than a driveway. Ran pretty straight, but sometimes it curved around a giant tree or some swampy-looking water.
She reached in her purse again just before we took a sharp right and then an even sharper left, like a zigzag. That’s when I saw the house.
It was more like a warehouse than a place people lived. Not that it was a dump—you could see it cost a lot of money. But it was only one story, and everything around it was cement, like a parking lot.
A garage door lifted. She pulled the car inside. I got out and waited for her to pop the trunk. That’s when I saw the car was one of those Lincoln Town Cars the limo companies buy.
“That one’s mine,” she said. I looked in the next bay. A little turquoise convertible, two-seater. “I thought you might have too much stuff to fit in it.”
Yeah, that’s why, all right, I thought to myself. The Lincoln was something you wouldn’t look at twice—but a long-haired girl in a little convertible …
“Follow me,” she said.
We went down a corridor. The carpet was so thick we didn’t make a sound.
“Yours is there,” she told me. I figured she meant where I was supposed to stay, so I dropped my bags.
It looked like a hotel suite. Not just a bedroom, but a living room, too. Lots of closets. A big chest of drawers, with the bottom drawer opened. No kitchen.
I wondered if that had been Albie’s idea of a joke: every decent burglar knows you start with the bottom drawer, saves you a few seconds on each one, because you don’t have to close it before you move up to the next.
“You can take off those glasses now.” I did it. One glance at my eyes was all she needed.
“You need to unpack?”
“I guess so.”
“So …?”
She stood right there, watching me put the stuff from the suitcases in the closet and the drawers. I didn’t open the duffel.
“Come on,” she told me, turning around and moving off.
I followed her again. It wasn’t just the heels that gave her the height—I put her at around five nine. I could see muscle flex all the way up to her lower thighs. From the way that little jacket bounced, I guessed the muscles didn’t stop at her legs.
We ended up in a white room. Not just the paint; it had all white furniture, too. The floor was white glass tile—her heels started clicking as soon as she stepped on it—and even the walls looked like they were made of some kind of white stone.
She knew exactly where she wanted to sit. A white leather chair with padded arms. She crossed her legs, opened both hands, and made a “pick your own” gesture.
I did that. One whole wall looked like a monster fireplace. Who would build a fire in weather like this? But it looked like it had been used plenty.
A flat-panel TV was on the opposite wall—it kept showing different pictures of flowers, one after another. Pyramid speakers al most as tall as me in two far corners. I couldn’t hear any hum, but I could feel the A/C.
No windows. None at all. But two doors. Besides the door we came through, there was one behind where she was sitting.
“You want anything?”
“Water would be great.”
“Go through the door behind me. The kitchen’s to the right.”
Making sure I got the message: she wasn’t the maid; she was the owner.
The kitchen was all stainless steel. I could see a side-by-side refrigerator-freezer, an oven, even a chrome microwave, but no stove. There was a long strip of something laid into the top of what had to be a fifteen-foot slab of ash-gray granite—maybe that’s where they cooked.
The refrigerator had all kinds of drinks. I didn’t want to go poking through all those stainless-steel cabinets looking for a glass, so I just took the biggest bottle of water I could find and went back inside.
/> “That’s Containe,” she told me, pointing at the bottle I was holding.
“Not water?”
“It’s fortified water.”
I uncapped the bottle and took a big swig. Tasted like water to me.
“You can’t taste the difference,” she said, like she was cutting me off before I could say it myself.
“It’s fine the way it is.”
“What it is, is enhanced,” she said, shaking her head a little when she said that last word—her hair kind of breezed before it settled down. A dark shade of red, easy to see against all that white.
Her blouse was almost the same color as her hair. A couple of buttons were opened. I could see that what she meant by “enhanced” covered more than a dye job on her hair.
“I’m Rena.”
“Stanley,” I said. “Stanley Wilson.”
“I like ‘Wilson’ better. You look like a guy who should have that one.”
“I don’t—”
“For your first name. So I’ll do that. Call you ‘Wilson,’ if you don’t mind.”
“Me? No.”
“It’s not like it’s your real name anyway,” she said. Not asking a question; just saying it.
“Is ‘Rena’ yours?”
“It’s what Albie liked.”
“You’re his … widow?”
“That’s a sweet way to put it.”
“Solly said—”
“Now, Solly, I am his niece.”
“For real?”
“What’s real? To me, he’s Uncle Solly. To him, I’m Rena. That’s the way I was introduced to him, understand?”
“Not really.”
She took a deep breath. She was either getting annoyed or showing off.
“Albie and Solly were brothers. And do not ask ‘For real?’ again, okay? Solly comes down here, oh, maybe seven, eight years ago. Albie meets him at the airport. They walk in, and here I am. Albie says, ‘Rena, this is your uncle Solly.’ And that’s the way it’s been ever since.”
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