Providence

by Caroline Kepnes

  “As a matter of fact I did not,” she says. “Unless your people stole it.”

  Jackpot.

  I go to the next house, a couple of guys, one tall, one short. One of them’s bouncing a baby. Their Pro Jo box is empty and I point at the box. “No paper today?”

  The short one glances at the box. “I guess not,” he says. “I just can’t believe it about Florie.”

  I stop to be there, to be good. “I hear you. She seems like a good kid.”

  “She was the best,” he says. “She’s the reason we got the paper in the first place. A year ago we had her over for dinner and she got us all worked up about the importance of local news and newspapers and paper and…”

  The tall one wraps his arm around the short one and the baby drools happily, oblivious. I smile at the little nipper. “Gorgeous kid you got there,” I say, and your gut is real. That’s a thing you can live your life by, that you’ll do what you know is right even when people shake their heads at you, even when they think you need sleep and aspirin. I had a hunch. I followed it. And now I have a lead, a real one.

  The last paper delivered went to Florie. The paperboy stopped after he hit her house. Something went on in there. She knew the paperboy. And I’ll bet he had a beard.

  I’ll find out soon because now all I have to do is find him.

  CHLOE

  I never knew I could be this girl in a robe, slithering around a penthouse, opening French doors that lead out onto the terrace. And then closing the door behind me, as if this is my home, as if this is me, biting my lip, as if it’s wrong to smile, wrong to savor this view. I was a shed girl back in the day. I sat on the ground with Jon. I agreed that it was nice to be so close to the earth, that it was nice to be snug, contained.

  Now I walk to the edge and I look down at New York, I never saw it like this, not from someone’s home, not in a nightie.

  I think of that stupid hashtag Carrig came up with the other night. #TriBeChloe. How he made me post it, how he makes me cringe that way, his dorky sense of humor, his puns. But it is nice to be held. Known. To wake up in silk sheets, to splash water on my face in a bathroom with two sinks. This is pretty much my first boyfriend since, well, Carrig.

  I mean, I still love Jon, I do, but there’s alchemy. Now I have this place, my boyfriend’s place. It’s the penthouse. It wouldn’t be possible for Jon to get up here. There’s the security, the doorman. It’s the first time in my life that I’m out of reach, genuinely, except for those times I was in an airplane, but then every flight I’ve ever been on, I walked the corridor at least twice, checking every seat, looking for him.

  And now I’m fucking the paint out of myself. Literally. I’ve never had this much sex and it cuts away the need to paint. Already I got a yeast infection like some girl in a rom-com, already I’ve flaked on two commissions, I feel like one of those girls you overhear in Bloomingdale’s in SoHo, a girl living for dresses.

  I feel like I’m coming into my own, and it turns out my own is this new relationship, this view. Not Jon after all.

  It’s the little things that seal the cracks in your heart. On our first real date, Carrig ordered tuna tartare and he pronounced it tuna tartar and I told him he was doing it wrong and he blushed and said he’s always had a feeling he was doing it wrong but he thought it was a choice, like the way you can say tomato or too-mah-toe.

  I told him he was being stupid. “Do you ever hear anyone say too-mah-toe?”

  He blushed so hard. “Yes,” he said. “Frank Sinatra.”

  Suddenly Carrig was an adult to me, someone who knew about Frank Sinatra, someone who went to college, who had changed, someone who had experiences about which I knew nothing. I wanted to learn. He told me about BU, about stocks and bonds. He wanted to know everything about me and he was unable to control himself from gazing into my eyes, lifting me up on the street outside the restaurant, telling me directly, I want you so much it hurts.

  I know he’ll give me a key soon. And maybe someday a ring. A baby. It’s weird, to think of yourself as this whole other person, this girl who doesn’t have intimacy issues, this girl who really can have it all, the art, the boyfriend, the love. I think that’s why it’s working so well. I didn’t know until that first night just how badly I wanted to love someone. I always used to flinch so easily. I said it was my nerves, my artistic temperament, this ancient twitch from waiting for Jon to come back, but I’m calmer now. Sturdier. Like a table in a restaurant that shakes until you get down on your knees and wedge a napkin between the floor and the leg.

  And of course it’s normal that I come out here and cry when I’m alone. Of course it’s sad to know that it’s not turning out how I thought, how I wanted, me and Jon. Change hurts.

  And Care gets it. We only have one rule, and it’s unspoken: we don’t talk about Jon.

  I hear the front door open. My boyfriend is home, tossing the mail on the counter, calling out for me—Babe, you here? I got Chinese—and I’m drying my eyes. All the sadness dissipates. It really does. It blows my mind, it fills my soul, the smell of garlic sauce, a boyfriend’s kiss, hot food I didn’t have to order myself.

  This is why I had to make all my social media private. I don’t want Jon to know how good I feel up here, where missing him is easier because he can’t find me, because the sauce is so good, the sex, the view, the aftermath of the meal, flopping into the bed, silk sheets, twisted, laughing, togetherness. I need this. I think in the gallery that night, I didn’t know it, but I think I was so lonely, so Jon-sick, I think I was about to die.

  EGGS

  Back at the station, I listen to a voicemail that came in while I was on the road, the doctor’s office, all over me to reschedule my annual physical. Yeah, yeah, yeah, growing old is not for the weary, aches and pains in your gut, that’s par for the course, are you taking your Zantac? Are you cutting back on spicy foods? I get a text from Lo, just a picture, a picture of a letter from the doctor following up on my cancellation. No words, just a purple devil emoji. I write back: Sorry, I know.

  She writes back: RESCHEDULE NOW.

  But I can’t do that because I have a lead. A lead! I start with a phone call to the circulation department at the Providence Journal. They farm out the delivery to a company based elsewhere. So now I’m on the horn to them, pushing the buttons, trying to get a human. I finally do get a human, and she’s responsive and smart, things are going my way. She emails me a list of their contracted delivery people and whammo I have a name. I have the name of the man who delivers newspapers to Florie Susan Crane’s street. He lives in a house less than ten minutes away. And yes, he has a beard.

  I tell Stacey that I have to go, Doctor’s appointment, Lo will have my head if I don’t get a physical. She gives me the thumbs-up, says she’s happy to see me taking care of myself. It’s all I can do to stop myself from whistling, making promises to the world, how the sun is brighter outside than it was yesterday, the new world, the good world, I promise to go see Chuckie, I promise to go get my annual physical and I promise to pick up flowers for my wife for no reason. I’m a new man. A good man. I found the Beard.

  And now I’m gonna go get him.

  * * *

  —

  When I get to the run-down house in East Providence, I take a minute to sit and stare. By the looks of it, a few kids live here, three, maybe four, the amount of old toys in the yard, if you can call it that, the crabgrass, two dead cars with the hoods open.

  I step out of the car and slam the door. I’m walking through the busted gate and there is trash on the lawn and there is trash in the trash, cigarette butts in plastic cups, cups crumbled, stuffed into Wonder Bread bags, empty packs of cigarettes, crushed. Everything here is crushed or crumbled and I hesitate at the front of the house because if I step onto the front porch it might fall in.

  I press the buzzer but of course that doesn’t work. I knoc
k on the door and a woman moans. “We don’t want any!”

  I knock again. She groans. She’s coming. And when she opens the door, the inside of the house is a perfect match to the exterior, crushed, crumbled. She is smaller than I expected. Almost elfin. Short hair and pointy ears and teeth that have been whittled down by crack, genes, something.

  “You know you can’t just show up,” she says. “Even the website that never works says you gotta ask permission and give me notice. I know my rights. You don’t got any right coming into my fucking home.”

  It’s an unfair world for a woman like this, no doubt born to shitty people, then chastised. She’s defensive. I can practically hear her crowing at some dive bar, If there were jobs that pay better than welfare I’d get one. I know this woman, I respect where she’s coming from and I speak her language.

  The first decision with a woman like this is whether she’s Ma’am or Miss.

  “Miss,” I say, because there’s no ring on her finger, because I’m sure she’s much younger than she looks. “I’m not Social Services.”

  “Thank Christ.”

  “I’m a cop.” I say cop because that’s what a girl like her would call a guy like me. “And I’m not here to harass you about what goes on in your home, hell no.”

  “Well, good,” she says. “Because I haven’t done anything wrong, but my piece of shit neighbor on the other hand—”

  I cut her off, hard. “I’m looking for Vernon Tully.”

  She rolls her eyes. “Well come on in,” she says. “We can wait together.”

  “He does live here, yes?”

  “Fuck if I know.” She shrugs. “You could call it that. Or you could call it dis-a-fucking-pears for six months and leaves me with his kid that isn’t even mine.”

  “But he’s still supporting you? You’re cashing his checks, no problem.”

  She flares up. Nostrils out. “That’s not fair.” Her jaw shakes. “Don’t you start with me. I get the job done. The money should be mine. You think he delivers those papers. I deliver those papers. Only thing that motherfucker delivers is disafuckingpointment.”

  My gut freezes up. “You personally deliver those papers?”

  She straightens. “My crew,” she says. “My guys.”

  Relief. “You got names of these guys? W-2s?”

  Inside, a baby cries. She is rattled. “I pay them all under the table, but I suppose you don’t care. I suppose you’re gonna arrest me for trying to feed my fucking kids.”

  The best part of being a cop is when you don’t arrest the woman for feeding her kids, when you get to tell her that you get it, that you know about the pain of being a parent. “Thank you,” she says. “I got names, hang on.” She’s in the living room, finding notepads, tossing notepads. “The list is somewhere,” she says. “It didn’t grow feet and walk out of here like Mister Shit for Brains.”

  “Take your time.” Hurry up.

  She looks at me. “My guys all seem good,” she says. “What is this even?”

  You have to love someone for loving others. I groan, play along. “We got an old biddy, she’s not getting her papers, she’s worked up, it’s nothing.”

  She huffs. “And this is my tax dollars at work,” she says. “Nice.”

  “She’s over on Power Street. You know how they are.”

  “Why didn’t you just say when you got here?” she asks. “That’s Theo’s run.”

  Theo. Florie’s emails. Theo Ward. My heart might exit my chest.

  “Fucking Theo,” she says. “Pain in my ass, always mopey and quiet and shit. Gives me a fucking headache, that kid. Literally.”

  “That’s Theo Ward, right?”

  She rolls her eyes, nods. “Yeah,” she says. “Fucking Theo.”

  Theo Ward. It’s all worth it for the feeling when you’re about to get what you want, when the waitress is headed your way, when your gut was right, yes. “This Theo, does he have a beard?”

  She nods, groaning. “And you should tell him to trim the fucking thing every once in a while. It’s like he’s got bugs growing in there.”

  “He got a phone number?”

  She writes it in her notepad. The Beard. The Beard.

  I push on. More. More. “Do you have an address for him?”

  “He’s out in North Providence,” she says. “Off Benjamin. On Spicer. Fifty-two. I remember because I gave him so much shit about living on a street called Spicer. He didn’t laugh. The kid has no sense of humor. Glum.”

  “Anything else I should know?”

  “I don’t know his sign, Officer.”

  “Anything physical?”

  Say it. Say it. “He always wears this stupid hat,” she says. “ ‘I am Providence.’ I mean, we all live here, right? Get the fuck over it.”

  * * *

  —

  In my car, I’m putting Spicer into the GPS and all I can I think of is that Dr. Seuss book, Oh, the Places You’ll Go! I’ll get that book for Chuckie and I’ll go to Bradley and read it to him, even if he can’t follow it.

  I did it. I found the Beard.

  Theo Ward. That’s a fake name if I ever heard one. And I did my homework and I read some Lovecraft, read about the guy. The stories are nonsense, you can’t follow these made-up creatures. But the stuff they wrote about him, now that’s not bad. Lo was right about him being complicated. That’s one word for it. The man was nutty, depressed, bad at taking care of his own. A complete racist. He used fake names. Pen names. But it stinks of someone trying to weasel their away around the basic laws of life.

  The GPS lady says Start. I kick the car into gear. I start.

  The reason I know I found the Beard is that I know where Theo Ward comes from. It comes from H. P. Lovecraft, literally. Two of his numerous fake names were Lewis Theobald and Ward Phillips. I memorized all the fake names for no reason, for gut reasons, as if I sensed that I would be here, on my way to Spicer Street, on my way to get him, to figure out what he does.

  What is it Springsteen says in that song? Pulling out of here to win. Yeah. Yeah.

  I’m careening down the highway, the same stretch I’ve been down a million times, only today it’s different. Today is good. I can already see myself on a podium. Well, it started with an instinct, a gut feeling. You hear that kids? Listen to your gut. Today I take the exit where you hit all the lights because I want to expand this moment, the moment before the moment. I don’t speed. I don’t rush. I feel my heart pump faster and faster. I build the suspense. I bang a right before I’m there so I can circle the block, come around through the back.

  I have my wits about me. I’m alive. Never been so alive. I park on the street, there’s a spot for me. It’s a sign, another sign.

  I go east on foot, toward the back of the building, your standard run-down clunker, a Dumpster out back, stuffed to the gills, coming apart at the seams. There’s a couple of banged-up old cars. I pass one of the cars, see the marks of a young person on the passenger seat, an iPod left out in plain sight, a hoodie. The Beard’s iPod? The Beard’s hoodie? The air is sweet and someone in there must be baking a cake. There’s a back door open, a screen door. A girl comes walking toward the door, a pretty girl, looking at me as I’m looking in the car.

  “Hey, I see you,” she says.

  She’s wearing a uniform. A Tenley’s uniform. I want to think that she’s on her way to work but the realization sinks in hard and fast. She’s not on her way. She’s at work. That’s what I smell. Tenley’s. Waffle cones. Fuck.

  “Didn’t mean to sneak up on you, honey.”

  “Sorry,” she says. “You don’t seem bad, but we have a lot of scum around here.”

  She’s walking outside, lighting a butt. This is her cigarette break. This is her workplace. That other car, that person is inside, also working. And in my gut I know the Beard doesn
’t work in a goddamn Tenley’s. He doesn’t scoop ice cream, doesn’t wear a white apron. He gave Tully’s wife a fake address. Of course he did. She yawns and unlocks her car with the remote.

  “You look lost,” she says.

  My phone buzzes. Lo. She wants to know when I’ll be home.

  I flash my badge and motion to the girl in the apron, one minute.

  I write back to Lo: Soonish. One or two more hours, sorry.

  “Hey, listen,” I say. “Are there apartments above your shop here?”

  She shakes her head. No. No there aren’t apartments above the shop. “Why?” she says. “Are you looking for someone?”

  I wouldn’t normally be this free, but my gut is humming and my phone is buzzing, mad Lo, scared gut. So I just blow my wad. “You have any regulars, maybe a guy, a taller guy, got a big beard, a hat that says ‘I am Providence’?”

  She shakes her head. In the way where she’s sure. She doesn’t even need to think about it. “No,” she says. “Why? Is there a creeper around? I saw some girl got raped a few miles away a couple weeks ago. Is it that?”

  “Nothing like that,” I say. I’m dizzy. I’m dead inside. Dead end. I tell the girl I have to make a phone call and I dial the number that’s supposed to be the Beard’s number but what do I get? I get nothing. I get the sounds of the end. That hollow, anonymous leave-a-message voice that means nothing to anyone. The sun’s pounding on me and the girl’s cigarette is stronger than it should be, or maybe it’s the air back here, the lack of air.

  “You got a bathroom in there I can use?”

  She nods. “Just don’t let Ricky give you any trouble.” Ricky. The Beard? It’s a pathetic thing, hope, hard to kill. “She’s really weird when it comes to cops.”

  She. Inside the little hallway, the scent of it all overwhelms me, the sweetness. The sound of a woman up front. You can do a birthday cake same day, yeah? An ice cream cake? And do you have those candles where they’re made out of numbers? I lean against the wall, hot in my head, in my gut. The sign across from me is bright, primary colors: FRAPPE OF THE DAY! FLUFFERNUTTER! It should be a colon, not an exclamation point.