With Friends Like These...

by Gillian Roberts

  Do what? Where?

  I wasn’t about to lead the crazed pickup home. Certainly couldn’t go to my parking lot. There was no attendant at this hour, and I wasn’t walking the few blocks home from it. The streets had turned more than mean.

  And apparently I couldn’t even get myself arrested for speeding tonight. Wherever everybody was on this foul night, the traffic cops were among them.

  I was afraid the pickup was going to bump my car, push it around, force me off the road, but it didn’t. My pursuer seemed only to want to harass and frighten me. He was succeeding, too. He stayed inches away, blaring his horn into the night.

  If we were going to play cat and mouse, I would much rather play the cat. I hated this—hated being alone, vulnerable, pursued. I was in a burgundy ’65 Mustang in Center City Philadelphia, but in my mind I wore a cloak, and all around me were desolate moors and howling wind. A woman alone. A victim.

  And my epitaph would read: this was Mackenzie’s fault. he should have been there.

  Damn! I was so shocked by my own thoughts, I stomped so hard on the gas pedal the car nearly broke the sound barrier.

  It nonetheless did not lose the pickup.

  But all the same—what had provoked that thought? That woman on the moors? Had I become an urbanized damsel in distress, waving my arms, calling for Mackenzie, ripping my bodice and fleeing up the stairs into the haunted house? A whining, puling girlie girl?

  The horror of it made my brain kick back in. I made a plan.

  “Okay!” I shouted, presumably to the pickup, more honestly to myself. Loud felt good. Much better than the tears that otherwise threatened. “Follow me, if you want to so much!” I accelerated again—over across the Chestnut Street Transitway, which, luckily, was empty of pedestrians. I saw a very startled street person jump back.

  “Sorry,” I shouted. And the next time it was possible, after Walnut, I made a sharp left and floored it.

  The pickup had figured it out and didn’t hesitate.

  I saw an arm, a gloved hand come out of its window—but the wrong one. The passenger side.

  There was more than one of them. I took deep breaths, one for each of my pursuers, two for each. Three. Do not panic.

  I looked around for an open store or restaurant. I could fling open the door, leap out, run, but the ground-level shops were all closed, and brownstone homes and medical offices gave no clue as to whether anyone was in them. An East Coast ghost town.

  The street numbers bisecting us dropped. Faster, faster I drove, praying frantically at each intersection. Oncoming cars squealed to a halt, swerved. At least if they hit me, they’d become involved, have to notice what was going on—but they were amazingly fine drivers and they didn’t.

  And every inch of the way the pickup stayed on my tail.

  Cars followed our procession for brief stints, falling back as they observed the speed laws. If they thought anything was odd about the two cars joined at the fender, they kept their opinions and questions to themselves.

  I didn’t care. I’d be there soon. I’d be safe.

  Time for me and my shadow to turn left. It didn’t bother me this time. We were on the road to the slaughterhouse—I was leading them to police headquarters. “Tailgate all you want, sucker!” I screamed.

  I came to a screeching halt. For once there were cars. Lots of them, all stopped. Somewhere ahead, a red light. A very long red light, it began to feel. I changed my diagnosis. There was an accident or other inconvenience ahead. I had come to a stop in the middle of the block. Again there were no all-night diners or other refuges on the street, only a shuttered children’s boutique to my left. To my right, a photogenic and silent old Philadelphia street remarkably like, but unfortunately not, mine, one block long and narrow as a back alley, split the block. It made me acutely homesick.

  This waiting wasn’t good. The point was to get to headquarters, to snare my pursuers, but now I was the one who felt trapped in a metal cage.

  There was nobody on the sidewalks, no gapers nearby. Perhaps they were all ahead, watching whatever was blocking progress. But there was nobody to call to, nobody to answer a cry for help.

  Not good, not good. The pickup honked, but so did the whole line of irritated drivers. I was a sitting target. Any moment now the men behind me could decide not to wait for their game to play through. I double-checked that my doors were locked, my windows all the way up, although of course a rock, a gun, any number of things would make those precautions worthless.

  Do not panic! I told myself over and over and over. I sounded remarkably panicked as I thought it, however.

  My tormentors lost patience. Perhaps they had figured out why I was retracing my path, heading north. Who cared why? The point was: the passenger door of the pickup opened. A long black-jeaned leg emerged.

  I wasn’t going to lead them anywhere. This was coming to a bad end now. Here.

  My girlie-girl impulses kicked in again—my breath grew raggedy and I wanted to scream and I made me so mad I twisted the steering wheel until I thought it would rip off, switched into gear, and pressed on the accelerator as hard as I knew how.

  The car shot right, in a wide arc into the alley-thin street, miraculously missing the corner house. Saved, I thought. Safe! The pickup, bigger and clumsier and slower, was still on the cross street, its passenger not yet back inside.

  The moment was indescribably sweet. I was away, I was safe, I was free. Face it, I was a genius!

  Maybe not. The moment was interrupted by a sickening crunch of metal. Think of fingernails on a blackboard, then make the nails iron spikes and the board my beloved auto. The effect on the spine and small neck hairs was intense. The effect on the frame and paint and trim of my car was undoubtedly worse.

  I had missed the bricks and front steps, but not the wrought-iron fence surrounding a curbside tree.

  I drove on, turning furiously again at the end of the street, then again one more block down. Only after four similar maneuvers was I convinced that nobody was behind me any longer.

  There was no point heading for the police station now. I had lost the pickup—in every way. I hadn’t even ever seen the license plate. I had nothing to report but terror.

  And only then, on what felt the very long way home, did I give in to an attack of the girlies and do some serious crying, so in a rather perverse manner I got my wish. After the cry, the tension was almost dissipated.

  As they say, be careful what you ask for.

  * * *

  I slept fitfully, waking from a variety of nightmares to check and recheck the locks. By the time I reached school Thursday, I was beyond exhaustion, and at the sight of the school, intensely anxious. What did the pickup driver/lurker—because I had to believe they were one and the same and that there weren’t hordes of people wanting to rid the world of me—have in mind next?

  I stood at my mailbox, gingerly extracting what turned out to be innocuous notices. Next to me Harvey Porter snorted and sighed like a proper Type A. “It’s one thing if kids forget assignments,” he said, almost visibly fuming, “or turn them in late, but it’s a whole other issue when they lie. Swear they gave it to me and that I must have lost it.” He had a new tic, an involuntary pull at one end of his mouth. During any given academic year, the staff develops enough nervous habits to keep the city’s neurologists solvent.

  Poor Harvey, teaching all day and running rats at night. “Maybe you should do a unit on the psychology of revenge when lied to?” I suggested. “Kind of a gentle, academic warning.”

  “I don’t know what to do about her.”

  “Don’t cave in,” I said as we left the room. Other people’s problems were fun. So tidy, so open to solutions, unlike mine. “It’s a very familiar ploy. Make her write a new paper.”

  “It’s not a paper that’s missing, it’s clippings.”

  I stopped in my tracks. “Newspaper clippings?”

  “Do you think I ask students for their toenail clippings?”

&nb
sp; Perhaps his rats found his wit entertaining. I didn’t. “What kind of news stories?” I held my breath.

  “That’s the point: I’ve never seen them!”

  “Harvey!” He looked startled. I worked to lower my voice, make it less obviously anxious. “There must have been a topic. What was it?”

  “I should have assigned her psychological abuse, because she’s a champion at it. Look how she’s trying to manipulate me. Bad enough the essay was late—kid said she had the flu—but where’s the evidence? Can’t do research without data. She promised it’d be in my box Monday morning, but here we are at Thursday and there’s still nothing, and I am, frankly, furious.”

  “Teacher violence, am I right?” I could hardly breathe.

  “No matter how furious I say I am, I am not out of control.” He sounded huffy.

  “The report, not you. That’s what it was about, am I right?”

  “How’d you know?”

  I felt light-headed. Giddy. “If kids would only write their names on their work,” I said. “I tell them, all the time, but do they remember?”

  “Mandy?”

  “Your student did hand it in on Monday, but her hand went into my mailbox. Easy mistake. Pepper, Porter…”

  He looked annoyed that this was a case of stupidity, clumsiness, or poor alphabetizing skills, not of malicious intent. Here was another person who wanted to be angry. I, on the other hand, felt a four-day unintentionally aerobic heartbeat slow down. Almost. There was still the issue of the pickup.

  “Could I have it, then?” Harvey said.

  “Actually, it’s with… I, um, took it home by mistake. Tomorrow I’ll bring it.”

  He looked suspicious, as if I perhaps had lied to protect his student, or had not lied but had stolen the clippings. Then he nodded and wandered off toward his homeroom. I climbed the stairs, wishing I could enjoy the moment, experience real relief. After all, nobody had wanted to write my name on that gravestone with the apple for the teacher on it. The articles were only articles. A rose was a rose was a rose, and Wilde was once again proven right. The things one felt absolutely certain about were never true.

  Except for the pickup. That had been true, not a case of the wrong mailbox, mistaken identity. The pickup had terrorized me, not Harvey Porter.

  Maybe they’d been my statistical terrorists. The ones I had a better chance of being killed by than of getting married. And why didn’t that cheer me along with the idea that I might never know what drugged-out stranger had decided to have some malevolent fun with me and my car last night?

  I trudged toward my classroom, bothered even by the question of whether I could get the police to release the students’ clippings without going through eons of red tape and delay and mortifying confessions to Harvey, Mackenzie, and the entire force.

  “Yo, Miss Pepper!” Raffi galumphed up the stairs two at a time and entered the classroom with me. I found myself casing the room, checking for lurking bodies. Pickup trucks. But nobody else was there.

  “We booked that place, The Scene?” He smiled excessively. Ah, yes. We had to deal with that, too, in some delicate ego-saving fashion. “It’s great, so thanks for finding it. The guy who owns it’s weird, though. Like a citified hermit.”

  Yes. Just so. I could see unsociable Quinn with a long beard, hiding inside the restaurant office.

  Raffi looked up at the ceiling. It wasn’t all that much above his head and there was no need, except to avoid me. Then he looked down, uncomfortably. If he’d had a cap, he’d have been clutching it in his hands. His expression was suddenly solemn.

  Dear God, a confession of undying crushhood. I wasn’t up to this. Not today.

  “Miss Pepper,” he said, in a voice that lacked all his usual buoyancy and charm. “This is really hard to say, but, um, there’s something I…” He shook his head. “Oh, God,” he whispered. “I don’t know how to… I’m so…”

  “No need,” I assured him. “Besides, the other students will be here any minute. It will keep, won’t it?” I thought that had the proper brisk and oblivious quality to it.

  Maybe so, but it didn’t stop him. “I couldn’t sleep all last night,” he said. “I kept thinking about you, about—”

  “Raffi, I really…so much to do. This isn’t a…” I busied myself erasing already clean boards. I could not face an early morning declaration of love from a boy who was made mostly of knees. I didn’t have the psychic energy to coddle his ego, protect him, the way I knew I would have to. Should do. I couldn’t spare time to save his face while I was still trying to save my life.

  Some other time, please, I silently begged.

  “Couldn’t stop thinking of what we’d done,” he said.

  “Come again?” I stopped erasing. “We? You and I?” This was no longer innocent, was it? What fantasies was he entertaining?

  He shook his head. “Me and Bart and Les.”

  I didn’t correct his pronoun placement. I was too busy trying to follow what he’d said and where he was leading.

  “Last night. On our way back from The Scene, we saw you. Honestly, we were trying to say hello, that was all.”

  “You?” My formerly clenched bottom jaw went slack. “You?”

  “Bart really. He was driving. He has a pickup.”

  “You?”

  “Bart. We thought you’d turn around, see us. I waved a few times, too, Miss Pepper.” He rubbed at his forehead and looked as if he might faint. “And then, well, I don’t like to say this—it’s not that I’m criticizing you or anything, but your driving is kind of…you’re lucky you’re not a teenager, or the cops would be on your case. We thought maybe you were, well, maybe you’d been out and had one too many, or…so we followed. Thought to stop you. Help.”

  I could only shake my head.

  “So anyway, then I thought maybe Bart was scaring you with the honking and all, and I kept saying it, but he didn’t stop. So when we were stopped, I got out of the car, so I could tell you, and, well, we saw. That was pretty fast to take a corner, and no offense, but it was a one-way street. The other way. You’re really lucky no cop was around.” He bit at his bottom lip. “Well, anyway, me and Bart and Les, we want to help pay for the repairs because we think maybe we scared you. Accidentally, of course.”

  “Scared me?” I hoped the squeak in my voice would be mistaken for incredulity. This was going to cost me, but all of a sudden it wasn’t Raffi’s face that needed saving. “I’m just a horrible driver, that’s all. You had nothing to do with it.”

  He rewarded me with the goofy smile. It was all I could do to refrain from hugging him and dancing him around the room in a waltz to blissful relief, but the one thing I didn’t need at the moment was a further complication.

  Nineteen

  Mackenzie had found himself with two free hours and was at my door like a minor miracle when I arrived home. “I am so glad to be alive!” I said. “So glad to see you!”

  He seemed startled, but only mildly so. Perhaps it was the norm for females to greet him with hysterical glee. We sat in my living room sipping cinnamon-spiked tea, and I blathered about the student, the psychology project, and my pursuers last night.

  He shook his head and had to be talked out of finding some obscure crime—unintentional terrorism was his suggestion—Raffi et al could be charged with. As for the packet of clippings, “That manila envelope is goin’ through maybe every known test on earth,” he said. “An’ if not, then it’s already been filed as potential evidence.”

  I envisioned the poor child’s homework entombed in a warehouse amongst thousands of crates, right next to Indiana Jones’s Ark of the Covenant.

  The doorbell rang. “Tell whoever to go away,” Mackenzie muttered. “We need time. Alone.”

  I agreed. “One sec.” But I’d forgotten the invitation I’d issued. “Lizzie!” I said when I opened the door. “Ah, Lizzie.”

  “You said I should come over.” Her red hair was too curly and full of life to seriously sag, bu
t it looked as if it were wilting, and her face resembled inadequately baked puff pastry.

  “I thought that once I knew, the fear, the pictures, would stop, or clear up,” she responded when I asked how she felt. “Instead, it’s like an itch, an almost thing in my brain, a bad, hurting tickle, but when I try to see, it goes to fog. I nearly, nearly remember—and even that scares me.”

  “Well, then”—Mackenzie slowly extracted himself from the sofa—“sounds like we could all use some fresh air. Nothin’s as scary in daylight, is it? Let’s find a place and have an ice cream soda, maybe.”

  “No ice cream for me!” she said. I was amazed. She could do TV spots, become the guru, the idol, of the waist watchers. Make a fortune. “Hi, my name is Lizzie and I’m a dieter. Last night I found out I murdered my mother when I was a preschooler, and I’m having headaches and confusion about the past, and problems about the present, too—a man died Sunday of food that came out of my kitchen. The police suspect me of murder (again!) and business, need I say, is distinctly off. But friends, none of this stops me from dieting.”

  On second thought, nobody would believe it. Neither did I. I felt myself mentally back off from her before I spoke. “Then coffee, maybe. And a change of scene, definitely. A brisk walk.” She still looked fuddled. “Or are you tired? Did you walk all the way here?”

  She shook her head. “Took the bus. Two buses. I hate to drive in town.”

  The three of us ambled out. Talk about ambivalence. I honestly wanted to ease this young woman’s discomfort, but I had gotten the distinct feeling last night in the restaurant that the finalists in the Great Culprit Search were the Pepper team and the Beecher team. Them or us. My mother, possibly acting on the behest of my father, vs. Roy, on behalf of or with Lizzie. And when you got right down to Mackenzie’s beloved triad—method, opportunity, and motive—they spelled, literally and figuratively, MOM.

  So most of me wanted to comfort Lizzie, but some of me simultaneously hoped that en route she would have a revelation and acknowledge that even without knowing the facts of her life, she had been so upset by the sight of Lyle Zacharias that she had taken poisonous seeds her father brought home from Vietnam and put them in his tarts. It would provide such an efficient finality to this unhappy string of events.