Ransom X

by I.B. Holder

  Chapter 34 Carry Out

  The door swung open inappropriately fast, revealing Kelly. He could only focus on her briefly, however, because the door slipped out of his sweaty palm and he nearly fell over chasing the knob with the slapstick air of an old silent movie. The moment stopped with the squeal of the hinges locking and pressing the door into retrograde motion, luckily Tyke’s face was there to stop it. He smiled brightly because he’d long ago determined that weeping was a conversation killer. His eyes however did gleam. What Tyke saw through his eyes made the moment worthwhile, however.

  Kelly truly lived up to Tyke’s billing standing in the hallway in knee-high socks, jet-black hair tied back and held in place with a set of black lacquer chopsticks. An ornately colored tattoo on her pale shoulder dove beneath a form fitting cropped black tank top. Kelly, in fact, was the primary reason that form fitting clothes were designed, with her chest trimming down into a flat muscular stomach that the bottom of the shirt cut across just above the belly button. Kelly had a light complexion and an elitist sneer that might have made her appear hostile if it were not in balance with sly, playful dark brown eyes. Tyke knew that if she was his “first D”, he was a good man indeed.

  Tyke steadied himself in the doorway. “Just a second.”

  He darted out of the room back to the phone.

  “What do I do next?” Tyke’s voice poured out pure liquid insecurity; Legacy spoke in a logical, steadying fashion.

  “Describe the background of your relationship.” Legacy said.

  “I’ve seen her fifteen times a month for the last two years.”

  “Are you stalking her?”

  “She’s the delivery girl for the Chinese restaurant downstairs, she’s completing her master’s degree in sociology at U. Penn and she graduates in three days, I’ve read all of her papers- she’s got the cutest disenchantment with the collective character of modern suburban communities-”

  “Focus, do you still live spread out across that ugly, unfinished warehouse floor?”

  Tyke was about to defend the visible substructure steel; open wire conduits and lack of drywall divisions that served as his open plan décor, when Legacy reminded him of the immediate objective.

  “When you answered the door.” He continued, “and immediately turned your back on her you didn’t give a very good excuse so you’re going to have to speak. Tell her your wallet is in the kitchen.”

  Tyke’s speech sputtered out.

  “I’m near – kitchen.” The battle between cool and speed made his motions jerky and robotic. “My wallet.” He reminded Kelly in an overly loud voice.

  Legacy poured exact instructions into Tyke’s ear. Tyke was used to programming where probability is replaced with binary certainty. He didn’t want to hear that one piece of input could lead to a thousand different streams of output depending on how Kelly was feeling standing in the hallway with his lunch in one hand and a receipt in the other.

  “The instant you get off the phone, tell her you were on a call with your family and they always drive you crazy.”

  Legacy continued, “You need to explain yourself as a natural progression – when you walk up to her, say this: “It’s funny”. Just that, “it’s funny”.

  “What’s funny?” Tyke shot back.

  Tyke perceived a slight a romantic streak buried in Legacy because his voice punctuated the speeches for Kelly with an involving emotional tone -”That’s the point, you’re preoccupied by the call and you haven’t filled in all the blanks. Now if she wants to simply get out of there, she’ll say yes, not ask for an explanation and reach for the money. If there’s even a spark of interest she’ll ask you what’s funny. Brush it off with your most charming, least serial killer smile and say: “this place, I know it must look strange,” Legacy corrected himself “no check that, “odd”, don’t use the word strange. Then continue: “I inherited it and I just don’t know what to do with it yet.”

  Tyke spoke the words under his breath like a mantra.

  Legacy burst in to his religious moment “Now I assume you tip her well so she remembers you.”

  Tyke was totally thrown off. “The tip isn’t included in the price of delivery food?”

  There was silence on the line, Tyke imagined Legacy pouring over the variables, looking for some way to salvage this situation. There was no way to predict the human heart, but there must be a way to find out if there was a heartbeat for this relationship. Legacy said, “Get an envelope.”

  In the twenty steps from his desk to the entryway, Tyke had to be transformed from a cheapskate oddball into a thoughtful imperfect soul. “Remember, first name only on the envelope. It’s important.” Tyke hung up the phone knowing that the moment he disconnected Legacy had brushed most of the contents of the conversation aside, remembering only Tyke’s promise of continued help on the case.

  Now, Tyke’s mind was fully immersed in the rise and flow of the tide that was Kelly breathing in and out waiting for him. The hallway seemed unnaturally long as he walked up to her with an envelope in one hand and a carefully counted out zip lock bag filled with the exact change. When Kelly saw the bag she smiled like she knew what to expect from Tyke, or so she thought.

  “It’s really quite funny.” He tried to sound nonchalant – except people who are nonchalant are not trying.

  “Yeah.” She said distractedly taking the bag of money and handing over the cartons of food. She was about to leave when her eye caught the sight of the envelope in his hand. “What’s that? Do you want me to drop it in the mailbox for you on the way out?”

  She flashed him a glimpse of bright white teeth through the veneered doors of a deep plum color, opened and shut along the curve of her lips. Tyke was impressed by the kind gesture. Kelly was incapable of not offering help, even to the exact change guy.

  “I heard you’re graduating soon, and so I saved up all your tips and put them in here.” He handed over the envelope, and she pulled out a check for 200 dollars. The amount was just adequate to be heartfelt without seeming unearned. She’d been to the door almost two hundred times after all.

  Tyke saw her doing the math in her mind and decided to emphasize one of Legacy’s important points. “I just put Kelly on the check, I didn’t know your last name.” It diverted her attention for the amount of the check. “I didn’t know if you were like me – I spend all of my cash. I thought you might appreciate having it in a lump sum.”

  The smile from her lips had spread up into her eyes and bloomed, Tyke could have cried right there and then, if he were able to blink. He stood in tableau waiting for the breath bringing Kelly’s thoughts into perfect lyrical accompaniment to the music of his soul.

  “You’re a nut.” She said leaning down and tucking it into her sock. She looked him up and down “What were you saying earlier about something being funny.”

  The conversation started, and to Tyke’s great delight it continued well past the point of being thankful. At one point she laughed and brushed back her hair tucking it around her ear and Tyke was almost certain that she found him interesting. As it turned out, part of her interest in sociology centered around the human interface with computers and how group personality could be traced online through chat sessions and messages. It was one of her research projects. Tyke swooned thinking that he could be of any use at all to Kelly.

  After she left, and for many hours into the future, the smell of Chinese food was like perfume to Tyke.