“I know where the streets go, Tate.”
“It doesn’t look like you do.”
Mollie pulled into the parking lot of the tall office building on the corner of Chester and Cornelius. Instead of turning around, she pulled into a spot facing the street and turned off the engine.
“Before we go any further,” she said, “we need to figure some things out.”
“I’m giving you directions. You’re not following them.”
“I’m talking about you, Tate. About us.” The sound of her displeasure was as familiar as the pleasure had been the night before. “I promised myself,” she said, “the first time I felt you were taking advantage of me, I would say something.”
“I’ll take a rain check on this discussion.” I opened the door.
“Don’t walk away. Please. I want us to be partners, Tate. A team. For that to happen, we need to lay down some basic ground rules about your independence.”
I stepped out of the car and closed the door.
Mollie rolled down the window. “Blind people take the bus, Tate. Why can’t you?”
Why she found it more independent to pay someone to drive you around than to get there on your own feet I never understood. Either way, no buses went to Norville Run. I walked around her car, noticing a pair of eights painted on the ground behind Mollie’s bumper. Why can’t all writing be so large? My eyes counted backward to the edge of the parking lot.
Behind me, an older man with a Mediterranean accent told Mollie she was in a reserved parking space.
“Hold on! Wait!” I couldn’t tell if she was talking to me or the parking attendant. Her footsteps moved in the opposite direction of mine. Her car door opened and closed.
The parking attendant was apologizing. I was approaching the corner of Chester and Cornelius. Seconds later, a breathless Mollie was doing the same.
Halfway across the street, Mollie stepped in front of me and pressed her cheek against mine. “I want you. That isn’t what I’m saying, okay?”
“If we don’t cross in six seconds, we can be together for all eternity.”
She held my hand the final fifteen feet, a gesture I tried to interpret as girlfriend rather than guide dog. She led me to a wooden bench and kissed me.
A middle-aged white woman carrying grocery bags said, “Well.”
Mollie whispered, “Let’s go somewhere and . . .” She searched her mind’s thesaurus for the best word. “Fuck.” The woman took her groceries to the curb.
“I’m not sure that would solve anything,” I said, though part of me liked the idea. That part tried its best to dissuade me from standing up.
The screech of hydraulic brakes came to a stop in front of our bench. The bus opened its doors. I followed the woman with groceries up the steps.
“Tate, where are you going?”
“I told you.”
I handed the driver a pair of ones. He pointed to the waist-high contraption between us. It was polite of buses not to have changed in the twenty-five years since I had last taken one. Perhaps I had been too hard on them.
I took a window seat next to the rear door. I hadn’t bothered asking the driver which bus I was on, or explaining my situation. Such is the advantage of not caring where you’re going.
Mollie raced us across the intersection, running with the awkward gait of a woman in dress shoes. Her headlights winked as she unlocked the doors. She laid on the horn. A car to the left of the bus responded in kind. I waited three blocks and a right turn and tugged the cable to say I wanted off.
“Got your money’s worth, didn’t you?” asked the ancient driver as I waited for the doors to open.
I let him have that one and smiled. The sidewalk wasn’t as witty. I had missed it all the same.
Chapter 32
IT WAS WITHIN TWO BLOCKS of the Gray Knight and stopped by my room to charge the cell phone. Totten’s Mercedes remained parked outside Room 22. His curtains were drawn and the lights were on. “You cannot park here. This is private property,” said Sundeep to the only other car on that side of the building.
It was a dark car. I got close enough to see the shield painted on the driver’s side door, the parts of it not blocked by the Gogeninis’ legs.
“I pay taxes. You work for me. I am telling you not to be here.”
“Sir, this isn’t my choice.” The black officer sounded beleaguered beyond his years, which I wouldn’t have guessed to be more than twenty-four.
“You are scaring away business,” Jaysaree said. “The mayor of Grayford stood over there in that office and asked what he could do to win our votes. We said stop harassing our customers. He shook our hands. We put his poster in the window.” Jaysaree noticed me and pulled me between her and her husband. “He lives here. He saw the poster.”
I extended my hand through the window. “You wouldn’t be keeping an eye on Room 22, would you?”
The uniformed officer was by himself in the car. “I’m not at liberty to say.”
“I think these folks just want to make sure that’s all you’re interested in. Maybe you could promise not to arrest anyone for what many consider victimless crimes.”
“How about all three of you leave me alone and I promise not to arrest you,” said the officer before rolling up his window.
I persuaded the Gogeninis to return to the office. They turned their heads as they walked, regarding the squad car as one regards a wild animal tethered to a tree by fraying rope. Once inside, I gave them the short version of why Jefferson Totten might be in danger. The short version kept getting longer.
Sundeep covered his wife’s ears with his hands and lowered his voice. “Fuck that man, Tate Cowlishaw. He is nothing but trouble.” Jaysaree pulled her husband’s hands away. “Fuck him hard. And I should have known that Bibb woman was up to no good when she gave me the shoulder treatment.”
“Cold shoulder,” said Sundeep. “Silent treatment.”
“I’m still coming up short in the evidence department,” I said. “Maybe Mrs. Thopsamoot would like to describe the state of those clothes when Delilah brought them in.”
“I will talk to her,” Jaysaree said.
Sundeep followed me outside. “What about you, Tate?” he asked in a low voice. “Are you still in danger?”
“I’ll be fine.”
“That does not answer my question.”
“Sure it does. You just don’t like the answer.”
Sundeep sighed. I started for my room, and he stepped in front of me. “A human being eats a pound of dirt over the course of his lifetime, Tate.”
“Are you inviting me to dinner?”
Sundeep put a hand on my shoulder. “Factories that put food in cans are allowed a certain number of rat parts in the food without any punishment. In India, we have cobras. If they bite you, it is deadly. If you leave them alone, they almost never bite.”
“I think you’ve maxed out your quota of metaphors.”
“People kill people, Tate. Is that literal enough for you? Some people pay other people for sex in many of these rooms. Some purchase drugs from individuals in this parking lot. What do I do? I look the other way. Since I learned how to do this, I have not been robbed one time.”
“Buying that handgun couldn’t have hurt.”
Sundeep let go of me and scratched the spot in his beard that used to grow in white. I assumed it still did. “You will let me know if you are in danger.”
“I’ll give you a call,” I said.
In my room, I plugged the phone into the wall. Edward lay at the foot of the bed, which hadn’t been made. Mollie’s scent clung weakly to the pillow. I gave it another sniff and couldn’t find her at all.
Edward yawned and stretched his legs. I brought my face an inch from his. He seemed always to be smiling, perhaps because he was always sleeping.
Light rain fell as I reached Battlefield Avenue. I had come too far to go back for my umbrella, which offered little protection from the rain. The same could be said of Gra
yford’s sidewalks, which collected puddles deep enough to drown mice.
Streets on the way were no more than four lanes. I crossed them without trepidation, able as I was to see traffic lights against the dark blue sky. I was making good time, as they say. So was the rain. I was five miles from my destination when the beads in my hair became streams down my cheeks and neck. My shoes got along well with the puddles, inviting them all inside for a nice long visit.
Making my final left onto Norville Run, five miles from the house of Sara Freyman, the puddles finally disappeared. They had no sidewalk to cling to. Neither did I. The side of the road alternated between a weedy ditch and a foot of crumbling hillside between asphalt and guardrail. I shielded my eyes from the high beams of oncoming traffic. The cars coming from behind me, the ones with whom I was competing for the edge of road, were the ones I worried about. I had six seconds from the first hum of engine to jump the guardrail and wait for the slipstream to chill my rain-soaked face.
Rental prices in the outskirts of town must have been more appealing to a frugal-minded trustee. Tweel’s estimate of her wealth, like that of his wife’s happiness, seemed to be greatly exaggerated. My view of potential dwellings on either side of the road was limited. The city had given up on illumination well before they had abandoned sidewalks. I checked my watch and did the math.
At fifteen minutes a mile, allowing for pauses, I should have come upon a house by now. I trusted my eyes to spot one from fifty feet away. I would at least know a driveway if I crossed one. My clothes were covered in mud from my various excursions to the hillside.
Shivering, I reconsidered the long-term memory of a ninety-eight- year-old man who believed in ghosts. For all I knew, Parshall might have given me the address of Sara’s mother or great grandmother.
It had been a mile since a car had passed. I crossed to the other side. The space for walking was more generous. For a small stretch, I had a bona fide shoulder sprinkled with little rocks.
The shoulder narrowed and widened again. It became an arm. Weeds were waist-high, but sparser and not as tall as the flora to my left and right. The taller plants leaned toward the ground. The sides of the clearing dipped lower than the center. I skirted a puddle as wide as I was tall. The edges where water didn’t quite reach were stippled with tire tracks.
The house sat half a mile from the road. “Sat” might have been too charitable a verb. In my obstructed view, it seemed to slouch in the direction of the half-moon to its right. It was three stories with large windows and a turret, possibly attractive in its younger days. In its current state, the house would be lucky to get stand-in work in made-for-cable haunted house flicks.
The bowed porch steps infringed on the trademarked dilapidation of Parshall College’s original architect. I pushed the rocking chair by the door and watched it rock. To the right of the door, where a mailbox might hang, there was a rectangle a few shades darker than the paint. In the upper half of the rectangle, a pair of small holes stared at me.
Black numbers on the door matched the address I was looking for. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem as though anyone had lived here this side of Nixon’s first term. Then again, passersby often said the same of Parshall College. I tried the doorknob. The last person to leave had seen fit to lock up on the way out. The knob was made of the cheap brass that corrodes easily, but every inch of it was smooth. Stepping back, I admired the way it caught the moon. Below it, centered on the door, a brass mail slot gave me a bright, flat smile. This, too, was free of blemishes. The hinged cover didn’t creak. Caught between it and the brass lip was a thin white envelope.
I got out my magnifier. Dark as it was, it took half a minute to read the name above the address. Readers with low vision are prone to mistakes not always related to poor eyesight. The mind can rush to judgment, see what it wants to see before all evidence has been gathered. For this reason, I took my time with each letter, making certain the name above the address, Sara J. Freyman, was, in fact, spelled with the H eschewed by the secretary on her name plate.
The envelope didn’t feel dusty or weathered. The return address held the logo for Carolina Energy. I knocked lightly, testing the thickness of the wood. My feet and shoulders weren’t as thick. They certainly weren’t as hard. I made my way to the back of the house, checking all eight windows on the way. None was open. The back door was another sturdy affair, also locked, but the top half was composed of glass. No welcome mat welcomed me with a hidden key, nor did I find one under the large stones in the immediate vicinity. I chose one the size of a softball and rapped it against the lowest of four panes on the door, the one closest to the doorknob. It broke as quietly as glass ever does.
“Ms. Freyman,” I called to the darkness. “I’m from the power company. I’ve got your bill.”
I unlocked the door and let myself in. Glass clinging to the door shattered near my feet when the door closed behind me.
“Ms. Freyman,” I said in a half-hearted, half-throated voice, “we can’t restore your power until this bill gets paid.”
According to my senses, I was alone in the house. Previously my gift had come in handy only for sparsely attended classes before the start of a holiday weekend. If teaching didn’t pan out, I could have a future in breaking and entering, although it’s probably better to know if anyone’s home before one does the entering.
There was the damp, earthy odor of undisturbed air. I found a light switch under the cabinet closest to the door. It worked. A tea kettle sat on the gas stove. The stove worked, as did the faucet. The dishwasher was empty. Inside a cabinet was a full set of china, pots and pans, drinking glasses. The P on the side of a chipped mug matched the one in the top center of Parshall stationery. The counters had a layer of dust. Items in the cabinets did not.
I outed the kitchen light and ventured down a long, narrow hallway. Moonlight showed me a pair of doorways across from each other. I took the one on the left. It smelled of faint lavender and must. The lights in this room worked, too. So did the adjustable bed. It was unmade, the top half at a forty-five-degree angle. Between the bed and a tall dresser sat a walker on its side. A water glass on the nightstand offered me a half-smile. The top half. The contents of a second glass completed the set of teeth. Beneath a 5X magnifying glass was a twice-folded magazine opened to the crossword. It was the kind of celebrity tabloid sold in check-out lanes. The headline was large enough to read with the weaker magnifier. The aging rock star had been seen canoodling with the co-host of the popular singing competition. The couple had since married and divorced.
I turned off the light and made my way down the hall. A stiff
white cylinder resembled a lampshade. Objects are what they resemble half to three-quarters of the time. Dim orange light revealed a furnished living room, a painting above the sofa larger than some rugs. Dust mushroomed when I bumped into an overstuffed recliner. On the mat by the front door sat four additional pieces of mail, all of it addressed to Sarah with an H. Someone wanted to know if she was happy with her car insurance. The linens store offered her 20 percent off her next purchase. The nature of the mail was less compelling than the small amount of it. The untarnished mail slot seemed to suggest a recent preference for mail where no one could see it.
I noticed steps in the corner. I switched off the lamp, letting moonlight and memory guide me around furniture. Halfway upstairs, I heard the hum of an engine much closer than the road. Somewhere in the distance, a door opened and closed. Quick footsteps seemed not to need a walker. A key crunched in the lock, and I took the rest of the stairs two at a time.
The front door opened with a protracted squeal. The high tide of light from the living room reached the second floor, helping me notice another set of stairs, this one spiral. A woman spoke quietly. I listened for a second voice, listened for words, but the words and footsteps faded down the long hallway.
The woman spent some time in the kitchen, studying the broken glass and the still-wet footprints of a size ten walking shoe. The
y led her back to the living room. I left more, albeit lighter prints on the spiral stairs as she started for the second floor. The spiral stairs were metal and not at all quiet. Nothing is when someone is listening. They ended in the center of a round room with a round window and a moonlit view of the woman’s car, half-obscured by trees. The car was not black. The woman was not using a wheelchair.
Ten paces completed a lap around the loft. On closer inspection, the walls were octagonal, allowing frames to hang. I noticed a pennant with a Parshall P and a smiling cartoon insect wearing a white top hat. The curve of its smile and wide-set eyes matched those on the stuffed animal that lived under the bed of F. Randolph Parshall. He had slept with it until the nurses labeled it a respiratory hazard. He introduced him to my grandmother and me as Armistead the Ant, “Army to his friends,” Parshall’s mascot in the years the school still fielded an equestrian team.
The lady caller might or might not have reached the second
floor. I heard nothing that couldn’t have been the walls sighing against a gentle breeze. Above a roll-away bed with a quilt and no mattress hung a framed newspaper, possibly just the front page. I stood on the edge of the bed and held my loupe against the glass. The header of The Chanticleer had not changed in the seventy-five years since the publication of this edition, save the replacement of ink with pixels. I read the headline a few letters at a time. “Granddaughter of Founder Becomes College’s First Woman Graduate.” Without my magnifier, I could see the silhouette of her mortarboard. Her hands were clasped demurely in front of the dark gown. The font of the article was too small and the moonlight too weak, but I managed to read the photo’s caption. “Sarah Freyman wants to make a difference in the world.” She seemed to be squinting at the camera, smiling with her mouth open as if in laughter. It was depressing in the way grainy, black-and-white smiles are, knowing as we do how the joy inevitably ends for every single one of us.
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