Out of Nowhere

by Susan Dunlap

  She gave her head a shake. ‘Sorry. I know. I hoped you wouldn’t mind. The guys, you know? They started out serious into Boots’s app—’

  ‘Boots, the big guy.’

  ‘Yeah, the one from Jersey. So, like, both of the guys are talking program and production costs and scope of sale and, like, that’s fine. But then, you know, guys! The old guy who was already there, Wally, he had a bottle of something and Boots and Tom, they’re not drinkers, believe me. But they weren’t about to admit that. In no time flat the whole scene morphed into a bunch of high school boys whose parents are away for the weekend. It was gross. Like the Wikipedia illustration for gross.’ She’d pushed herself up to sitting, one self-shove per complaint. Now she pulled the blanket off and began folding it. ‘Anyway, I’m sorry about breaking in here.’

  ‘How’d you manage that?’

  ‘Wally got keys from whoever lives here. He gave one to the temporary tenant – your brother, right? – and kept the spare. I figured there might be one. I lucked out. I’m sorry. But listen, you can still hear them up there. If the key hadn’t worked here I would have crawled to the airport and sat in front of the boarding ramp till the next flight to … anywhere. You’re not going to call the police, are you?’

  ‘Did you touch anything?’

  ‘Uh-uh. Except the bathroom. I didn’t even go in the kitchen or the other room. I was so wiped I just fell on this sofa and didn’t move till now.’ She looked like she’d been embalmed.

  I did a quick scan of the room. She probably hadn’t touched anything. Who could tell? She could have filled the drawers with drugs and concealed a couple of AK-47s under the couch and left no clue.

  She pushed herself up to standing. I’d have guessed her to be about twenty-three, thin to too-thin and basement-white, in an unhealthy female version of Tom and Boots. If these three were any example, a stalk of celery or a carrot could survive a decade in the Geek Meet. Her tangle of brown hair looked much the same as last night, her T-shirt advertising a band I’d never heard of was scrunched up around her ribs and she had one sock off. She spotted the other, dropped to the floor and began pulling it on.

  She was, I noted, a woman in desperate need of coffee. I was one in need of her gone. I pulled out a ten. ‘How about getting us coffees and yourself a pastry, whatever this’ll buy?’

  ‘Hey,’ she snapped, ‘I’m not a poor relation. I’ve got money!’

  ‘Fine. Two pastries, then, and make my coffee a macchiato.’ A macchiato is a caffè latte with the shot added last. Renzo sneers at affectations like that. Like strawberry lattes. Like New Yorkers view blueberry bagels.

  Heather seemed to be having an internal struggle, but that was her problem.

  ‘What about your brother who lives here? Should I get him coffee, too?’

  It was such an ordinary question I smiled.

  ‘I mean, will he be back soon?’

  Fingers crossed! ‘You never know with brothers, right?’

  ‘Maybe. I grew up with asshole cousins. The difference is you care about your brother.’

  She was standing by the door. It took me a moment or two to realize she was waiting for a reply. ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Probably more than I should.’

  Before she could go on, I ushered her out. What I’d said was true. Another thing I didn’t want to think about.

  I stood, back to the door, closed my eyes and blocked out thoughts till my mind was clear, then I tried to put myself in the body of the hit-and-run driver, the would-be windshield smasher, the guy who turned the gas and left this whole place to blow up. I’d managed this maneuver in acting classes. But it was a technique more suitable for a class. There the subject is a given – a man asking for directions, a traffic cop, a ballerina missing a shoe. Here it was a question. Still, I closed my eyes and imagined I had just illegally entered. At night. My skin tingled, my gut was tight, teeth jammed together. My breaths came fast and shallow. The room was dark. There were, I recalled, no shades. I wouldn’t turn on the light. So, I’m trying to find ‘the thing’ by streetlight. I’m desperate to get it and get out. The floorboards upstairs are creaking.

  Or was that now?

  Or both? If it was then, the noise makes the me-intruder edgier. I’m dead still, listening, to the creak, to the cars outside, the burst of chat on the sidewalk. I’m holding … something … burglar tools?

  No. Those are for pros. I’m … a one-timer. I’m here for … something Mike brought with him when he came here temporarily to house-sit. Something he didn’t want to – didn’t dare – leave where he was. Because …

  … the attacks had already started. The attacker – I – know where he lives, what he drives.

  My eyes snapped open. Of course he knew what car Mike drove. That’s how he followed Mike to the pier, how he shifted to me, how he knew which windshield to smash.

  If he hadn’t already followed Mike here, he followed me.

  Whatever he – I – was looking for, if Mike brought it here, it had to be small enough to carry. Something he could bring in without drawing the kind of attention that it ended up drawing.

  I was desperate to start looking around. But I stayed put, shutting my eyes again, now imagining my intruder-self leaving the apartment. ‘Rewinding’ had been the next step in class.

  He – I – would have—

  Assumption upon assumption! Exactly what was called for in acting class. But here, now …?

  What is the price of rice in Luling? Don’t focus on what you can’t know. Maybe this koan wasn’t for Mike but for me!

  I opened my eyes. If Mike brought something with him for safe-keeping, he’d have concealed it. I’d learned my brother’s modus operandi after years of childhood conspiring, watching him hide the baggie of pot Mom never searched for, secrete a key in the turquoise vase of dried flowers in the upstairs hall that Mom had won at a school fundraiser, tape a pack of condoms on the top of a door no one ever shut. And there was the time he hid and forgot a pair of rock-climbing shoes he’d bought for my birthday so well I never did find them.

  If anyone could find a Mike Lott hiding spot, it was me.

  I strode into the kitchen, pulled out the drip pan from beneath the old refrigerator.

  Nothing.

  Checked the tops of the moldings. Scooted down to eye the underside of the table for papers. Too obvious, anyway.

  Just in case, I looked around for a rice canister. But this was not the kitchen of a from-scratch cook.

  In the bathroom I pulled the rubber mat up from the tub, unfolded the towels, checked the hem of the shower curtain.

  Damn! If I just knew the size of the thing!

  Footsteps banged on the stairs outside. I’d been too focused to note whether they were going up or down. Heather? She could wait. Sit on the steps and eat.

  I skipped the closet and scanned the rest of the bedroom. Ignored under the bed, bottoms of drawers, places Mike would have been embarrassed to use. I pulled off the smoke alarm. Hiding an item the size of a wad of cash in the battery slot? But no. I traced the top of the door jambs, lifted a floor lamp to check underneath. Ran my fingers around the inside of the shade.

  The floorboards were uneven but Mike wouldn’t be pulling up the floor in someone else’s apartment.

  A light fixture hung from the middle of the ceiling, shielded by a thick shade. He could have reached it from a chair. Me? No way. Still, I didn’t need to unscrew the shade; I just needed to see if anything was lying in it. I flipped the light switch. Nothing. At least nothing large. But a paper? Cash? Maybe.

  I climbed on a chest and from there hoisted myself onto the top of a bookcase next to the door. An insufficiently sturdy bookcase. It took me a full minute of concentration and tiny weight-shifts to steady it. Slowly I turned toward the light fixture, hands against the ceiling to brace myself.

  The front door banged open.

  How …? I had the key Heather had used. How did she—

  ‘Crowd-sourcing is crap. You know,
who needs nickels from strangers? Losers, that’s who.’

  Boots. Subhuti from New Jersey. Strolling into the living room like this was the downstairs annex. Which, apparently, it had morphed into.

  ‘The key is converting power’ – this from Tom. ‘If you can run the sun through the roof panels into your tank – what used to be your gas tank – you’re set. Look, you’re never going to use all that—’

  ‘You loco, hombre? You can run your whole house on internet.’

  ‘Your house, hell. Your life, man.’

  ‘Click on the net and watch a guy open his door, turn on the stove – he’s got a pot of soup or something there, text his woman to be there in ten minutes, and warm up the shower. His cars are powering up in the garage. Water outside, that’s a given, right—’

  ‘The way I see it, it’s boundless. Only limitations are small minds—’

  ‘Maybe he’s got a, you know, personal pleasure performer and he’s powering it up for a little pre-prandial—’

  ‘We have no way of knowing how vast …’

  If I hadn’t been perched on top of a bookcase, I would have laughed. How long had these two assumed they were having a conversation? I would have been more surprised at the parallel monologs if I hadn’t grown up with brothers. With Boots and Tom going at it, no wonder Heather needed to escape down here.

  I gave the light fixture a visual once-over and, spotting nothing in it but bulbs, lowered myself to the floor. The question was not whether the two in the next room would ask what I’d been doing, but whether they would notice the thump of my landing at all. Much less break verbal stride to ask about it.

  ‘Solar!’ Tom sounded like he was in the kitchen. ‘Storage! Storage is the bottleneck. Always. Did you read the piece in DT by the guy in Andalusia about chips that make micro look macro? That’s tomorrow …’

  I stood in the bedroom. There was nowhere else to search. I had zip. And nowhere to go from here. I sighed. Then, with the trudge of futility, I adopted the Sherlock Holmes dictum and considered the hiding places I was so sure Mike would have eschewed. I pulled open a dresser drawer for a cursory glance.

  And stopped dead.

  The underwear in the drawer was definitely not Mike’s.

  But the handgun nestled in the black lace bra could be.

  EIGHT

  I stared at the gun, a nine-millimeter Glock. Not the kind of thing a girl tucks in her bra, not unless she wants to fall flat on her face.

  I’d never seen Mike with it. Or any handgun. I couldn’t imagine him applying for a permit.

  I couldn’t imagine him keeping an illegal weapon in his apartment when he was being threatened and might have to call the cops.

  If it was Mike’s, why was the gun here in the drawer rather than in his pocket when he might need it?

  And who wore the lingerie?

  If I could find her name and track her down. I could go to her house …

  Which was just where I was now. This was her apartment. If I Googled her and found her address, that address would bring me here.

  But, right now, she had to be somewhere else.

  If you know you’re going away you leave a contact number with a friend or neighbor.

  ‘Wally, upstairs,’ I said to Boots and Tom, who were still bantering about business models in the living room, ‘is he home?’

  ‘Asleep,’ Boots said without looking over. ‘The guy in Phoenix already tried that. It bombed.’

  ‘His model differed in distinguishable ways,’ Tom insisted. ‘For instance—’

  ‘Give me your key.’

  He gave.

  I took the stairs two at a time, stuck the key in the door and pushed it open. ‘Wally!’

  A person on the floor wriggled down and pulled his sleeping bag over his head. All that escaped was a tail of blond hair. On the sofa, a bearded, bear-like man groaned and snuggled his face against the back cushions.

  If these two were the living room contingent, and Tom and Boots had taken bunks in the bedroom with, presumably, Wally, it was hard to see where Heather might have slept if she hadn’t escaped downstairs. How many spaces was Wally renting out? Beds + 1? Beds + 6?

  ‘Wally!’

  A man stumbled out of the bedroom, glared at me, and veered to the kitchen. I followed.

  I hadn’t paid much attention to him yesterday during the gas scare. But now I assessed him, unhindered by subtlety or good manners. The old guy. Probably in his late sixties, he was short, too thin, too bent, too pale. He had too little hair with too little hue to place it as graying brown or blond. The most notable thing about him was his cough. It shook him like a flag. I expected to see him pull out a pack of cigarettes, but he didn’t. He clicked on a coffee maker, opened a cabinet door, glared at the hooks hanging from the bottom of the middle shelf – all empty – and without altering his expression turned his head to the sink. It was crammed full, with dishes, stained cups, stainless cutlery, balanced like aerialists in a high-wire routine.

  ‘Gotta get paper,’ he said and coughed.

  ‘Plates?’

  ‘Yeah. Cups they’d spill all over.’ He picked up a white ceramic cup and began to scrub.

  ‘This is your apartment? You’re on the lease?’

  ‘My house. I’m on the deed.’

  I looked from the living room back to him. ‘I assumed … So these guys are here at your invitation?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And it’s OK with your tenant downstairs?’

  ‘Adrienne, no. She hates it. Threatened to call the city or whatever.’

  ‘Did she?’

  ‘Nah. City wouldn’t do shit. She knows that. I told her if she didn’t like it, she could move.’ He coughed. ‘Like she’s ever going to find another place this close to the park for less than an arm and a leg and all that’s between.’

  ‘So she has to put up with it?’

  ‘She can leave for the duration.’

  ‘Where does she go?’

  He turned to face me full on. ‘Who the hell are you?’

  ‘The one who warned you about the gas last night! Maybe saved your life and building.’

  He coughed, as if to demonstrate which of the two was least valuable.

  ‘Where can I find her?’

  ‘Not here.’

  I just waited.

  ‘Gone. I don’t care where. Gone is gone.’

  ‘You must have some idea. Her clothes are still here. If there was an emergency you have to have a way to contact her, just as a neighbor if not—’

  ‘We’re not buddies here. The best thing she’s done is leave.’

  ‘So you could have all these guys talking all night?’

  ‘Well, yeah,’ he said with honest surprise. ‘How do you think I make the payment on this place? On social security? On a pension that would have paid me a few hundred a month if the company hadn’t gone bust? But these tech kids, they come four times a year – not the same ones, I mean not the same names, but the same types; they’re like a litter of puppies stumbling over each other to get to the teat first. But come noon they’ll be gone to their meetings. Come Monday they’ll be gone, period, and they will have made my payment for months.’

  I thought of Boots and Tom, neither of whom looked like they owned an extra shirt. ‘How do they get that kind of money?’

  ‘Investors. Parents. Conferences are a big deal. Once they make it big, cash is like Monopoly money to them. Suddenly they’ve got wads and they’re looking to put hotels on Boardwalk.’

  ‘So your tenant is doing you a favor vacating her flat.’

  ‘She’s getting a deal.’

  ‘Look,’ I said, exasperated, ‘I was born in this city. My brother was a cop here; my other brother’s a lawyer here. My sister’s a doctor. I know this city. I walked past this place when I was a kid. Probably walked past you—’

  ‘Your point?’

  My hands knotted into fists. I took a deep breath and did not call him a hungover pain in
the ass. I tried for compassion, but compassion’s hard to stir up for the annoying. Still, the effort must have been some use, because my voice was a few notes lower when I said, ‘I know the city can’t sell out fast enough. Cafes – you used to overhear guys taking painting, reading poetry, women planning murals. Now you get grunts about tax deductions, square footage, bottom line. By end of this decade, your San Francisco will be a museum and Haight Street will become all facades.’

  It was hard to say which of us was more surprised: him to hear his take coming from a younger mouth, me to find it at home in my own. Complaint about the changing city was as much a part of local history as the Golden Gate Bridge or 1906 Earthquake. The latest wave was never as genuine as what it washed away. Old-timers on this very block must have bitched and whined 24/7 at the hippie influx in the Summer of Love, the tie-dyed explosion that changed the city and gave it its cachet. Each new wave was a tsunami threatening to drown the locals. Each overwhelmed incarnation glowed brighter in its absence. Repetitive, but true. And suddenly I felt compassion for him, and for me.

  I said simply, ‘I need to find her.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘My brother was house-sitting for her. You probably saw him. He looks like me—’

  ‘Taller.’

  ‘Right. He forgot to tell her about a change in plans.’ It sounded lame to me.

  And apparently to him. ‘Oh yeah?’

  ‘That’s what he told me.’ When you’re lying, keep it brief. That aphorism from John.

  But brief wasn’t doing the trick here. Wally stared at me with more focus than I would have guessed possible. He was eyeing me and he was considering. ‘How is it Mike knows her?’

  Keep it brief. I shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Mike had a change in plans? What plans?’

  Frantically I scoured my scraps of knowledge about the woman. Most of what I knew was her underwear. Maybe the zipper pull was hers. Or the abalone shell. Or the baseball ticket. ‘He got a call about a ticket switch from tomorrow to tonight. The Giants game.’ Were the Giants playing tonight? Were they here or at an away game? If they were in Denver and Wally knew it, I was totally and permanently screwed.