Authors: Lisa Lutz
F
our days later, still not wanting to bunk with Bernie, I returned to my parents’ home to retire for the night. I found my mother and father packing for their disappearance. The next morning they were departing at 8
A.M
. sharp on their road trip to the Grand Canyon. Mom was packing with an attention to detail usually reserved for brain surgery. The last time my parents had taken a disappearance was fifteen years earlier, and the only traveling they had done since was to weekend PI conferences—on subjects as far-ranging as “A PI’s Best Friend: The Latest in Gadgetry” and “The Post-Pellicano PI”—where one never leaves the hotel.
In the morning, Mom, Dad, Rae, and I had breakfast together. My parents’ edginess regarding an activity most people look forward to was cause for concern. As my dad and Rae loaded the car with their suitcases, Mom hugged me good-bye.
“I’m glad we don’t have to experiment with leaving Rae alone just yet,” she whispered to me, and smiled just as Rae walked by carrying a piece of luggage.
“I’m almost sixteen,” Rae said. “I can stay home alone without a responsible adult keeping tabs on me.”
“Dear, Isabel’s not that responsible,” was my mother’s reply.
“Whatever,” Rae said, and continued on to the car.
I ignored their previous exchange and focused my attention on the more serious matter at hand: “Disappearances are supposed to be fun, Mom. Why do you look so nervous?”
“Your father and I haven’t had this much quality time since our honeymoon.”
“So?” I replied.
“What if we can’t stand each other?”
CHAPTER-1
Saturday, January 21
My parents departed without incident. As Rae and I cleared up the breakfast dishes, I asked her what her plans were for the day.
“I’m going to see if I can talk Henry into giving me another driving lesson,” she replied, and that is when I gave my sister the Space Talk.
I kept it simple because Rae prefers bullet points to essays, especially when the lesson is in the form of a lecture.
I played the expert on this subject even though everyone in my family knows I’m not an expert. Rae asked for a specific timeline for how long she should leave Henry Stone alone. I suggested six months. We negotiated down to one. We’d cross that bridge when we came to it. In the meantime I gave Rae driving lessons to distract her from her absent best friend. My parents had made it clear a while back that they didn’t want me instructing Rae on the rules of the road, but they were gone and I had to sidetrack her somehow.
An hour later, as Rae practiced backing the car into the driveway, Subject exited his apartment carrying two bags of topsoil. After he placed them on the truck bed, he approached our car.
“Not bad,” he said to Rae, impressed with her reverse driving skills.
As Rae exited the vehicle, she said, “My best friend taught me.”
“The one that was in the hospital?”
“Yes,” Rae replied. Behind her back I was trying to signal Subject to get off the subject, but he simply eyed me quizzically and continued on.
“How is he?” Subject asked.
“He’s fine, I guess. I’m trying to give him his space.”
I sliced my finger across my throat and mouthed to our neighbor to change the subject. Subject did, quickly.
“So I ran into your parents this morning. They said they’re going on a road trip, although they called it something strange.”
“A disappearance,” Rae said.
“That was it.”
“I have to pee. Good-bye,” Rae said, apparently giving our neighbor some space.
I stood in the front yard awkwardly, hoping that perhaps he’d ask me out again, but as you will soon discover I’m extremely impatient.
“So, uh, thanks for breakfast the other day.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Maybe you’d like to cook me another kind of meal just so I can see where your true talent lies.”
“Maybe I would.”
“When do you think you would like to do that?”
“Maybe at 6
P.M
. tonight. You can bring your sister.”
“Maybe not.”
As I made Rae a sandwich for dinner (not because she can’t make her own sandwich, but because I thought if I made it she’d be more likely to eat that than a bowl of Froot Loops for dinner) she quizzed me about my upcoming date.
“Do you like this guy?”
“I don’t know him, but I think he’s cute.”
“I think he’s too young for you,” Rae said.
“He’s about my age.”
“But Mom says you should go out with someone more mature so that you grow up.”
“I’m grown up enough,” I replied.
“That’s not what Mom says.”
“Subject”
When I arrived at Subject’s residence, he put on his coat and said we had to go for a ride to pick up a few extra ingredients for dinner. Instead of driving to the store, Subject took me to a community garden in the Mission District. There was a padlock securing the fence, which Subject had the key for. We entered the garden and Subject found a four-by-six-foot patch of soil that was growing an assortment of winter vegetables. Subject grabbed some carrots, kale, and squash and placed them in a paper bag.
On the way back to Clay Street, Subject explained that the plot in the garden was his friend’s. Subject was taking care of it while he was out of town and was therefore entitled to its crop.
While I found the garden side of Subject interesting, I had a few more practical questions up my sleeve. I tackled these interrogations while Subject was cooking. I’ve discovered that people are often more forthright when they are double-tasking.
“Where are you from?” I asked.
“St. Louis,” he replied.
“Were you born there?”
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Pause. “Yes.”
“Why’d you move here?”
“Change of pace. So do you like your job?” Subject asked, trying to steer the topic away from him.
“Eh,” I replied, trying to avoid any follow-up questions.
“Still don’t want to talk about work?” Subject asked.
“Nope,” I replied.
“I’m going to serve dinner now.”
“Excellent idea.”
Subject could certainly cook and drink, two things in a man I am quite fond of. We touched on many subjects over the ninety-minute meal, but none of them provided any real personal information, which, for the time being, was fine with me. But Subject was still fishing, even after we finished our meal.
“Got any hobbies?” he asked.
“Not that I’m aware of,” I replied.
“How about special skills?”
As it turns out, I am something of an expert on the classic sitcom
Get Smart,
which aired between 1965 and 1970, plus a few unremarkable TV movies some years later. I decided to mention my encyclopedic knowledge of the show’s 138 episodes. Subject claimed to have never seen an episode of
Get Smart.
I, of course, asked him if he had been raised by wolves. Subject then explained that he simply didn’t watch much television growing up. I gave Subject the appropriate amount of sympathy and then excused myself to grab my DVD collection from my parents’ house (a bootlegged
2
set “borrowed” from Ex-boyfriend #9). Over the next two hours I forced Subject to watch what I firmly believe are the top three episodes of this classic TV series.
“The Not-So-Great Escape”
CONTROL
3
agents start vanishing from the airport. Max
4
and the chief go to the airport to investigate and the chief disappears as well. Eventually Max discovers that all the CONTROL agents are being held at a KAOS
5
prisoner-of-war camp, somewhere in New Jersey. Max returns to the airport to get himself kidnapped and is also sent to the prison camp. After several failed attempts at escaping, the CONTROL prisoners decide to dig their way out. Max loses his sense of direction underground and ends up digging back into the prisoners’ barracks. Fortuitously he cuts a power line in the process, which sends the fire and police departments to the camp. KAOS agents flee for fear of being caught, freeing the CONTROL agents. I am of the opinion that any
Get Smart
episode that features Ludwig Von Siegfried (charmingly over-acted by Bernie Kopell
6
) is a classic.
“Ship of Spies”
Max and Agent 99
7
board a ship carrying only four other passengers (five if you count the unstable Agent 44;
8
six if you count Agent 44 and the murdered passenger they discover). They’re looking for the plans for the Nuclear Amphibian Battleship. Their only clue is that the “plans are not plans” and they’re searching for someone who makes a clip-clop noise when he/she walks. Unfortunately all their fellow passengers make clip-clop noises.
“The Little Black Book”
Max’s old army buddy, Sid (played by the borderline-psychotic Don Rickles), comes for a visit. Sid borrows what he thinks is Max’s little black book but is in fact a list of KAOS agents, left to Max by an agent trying to defect.
9
Sid inadvertently returns the book to KAOS. When Max tries to explain to Sid that he’s a spy, Sid thinks he’s crazy and sabotages Max’s attempts to get the book back. Finally Max convinces Sid that he’s a secret government agent and they work together to find the book, only to get arrested for playing patty-cake. I’m completely serious. Max and Sid just shot three guys, but get arrested for “the old patty-cake trick,”
10
(which originated, I believe, during the Bob Hope/Bing Crosby
Road
pictures). This two-part episode of
Get Smart
defies logic more than usual for this show, but the Adams/Rickles chemistry is priceless.
After two hours of
Get Smart
and 1.5 bottles of wine, Subject still had not offered to give me a tour of his apartment. I decided to give myself a tour.
“Where’s your bathroom?” I asked while Subject was doing the dishes.
11
“At the end of the hall on the right.”
It’s easy to forget the descriptive words in directions. Plus, I’d had at least
3
/4 of a bottle of wine, so I opened all four doors that I came upon.
Door #1
The bedroom: Spare and uncluttered. Not the clean lines and empty corners of a neat freak, but the unclutteredness that comes with simply not having that many belongings.
Door #2
Hall closet: Contained coats and shoes. Nothing suspicious to speak of, unless you find the wearing of Hush Puppies suspicious.
Door #3
The bathroom: Clean enough. Passes my inspection. Although it probably wouldn’t pass everyone’s inspection.
Door #4
Locked. Highly suspicious.
So suspicious, in fact, that I didn’t notice that the water had stopped running and Subject was watching from the other end of the hall as I tried to open Door #4.
“It’s the other door,” Subject said, growing some suspicion of his own. You see, the bathroom door was open and in plain sight.
“Oh, right,” I said, playing drunk, although it would have taken at least another full bottle of wine to get me to the point where I couldn’t recognize a bathroom in plain sight.
When I returned to the kitchen, I internally debated whether I should ask Subject about the door. I’ll let you figure out which side won.
“More wine or coffee?” Subject asked.
“Wine, please.”
“Good.”
“So what’s up with the door?” I asked.
“What door?”
“The locked door.”
“It’s my office.”
“Why do you lock the door?”
“It’s messy.”
“Normally people just close a door to a messy room, they don’t usually lock it.”
“I have important files in there.”
“Did you think I might steal them?” I asked, and as soon as I finished the sentence, I knew I had gone too far.
“Why don’t you forget about the door?” Subject said with a note of finality.
I let the topic drop for now. But I did not by any means forget about it.
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