Authors: Lisa Lutz
T
here are few places besides one’s home where flannel pajamas and bare feet are appropriate attire. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any, but I’m certain that a holding cell on Bryant and Third Street is not one of those places.
I replayed the last hour of my night as I contemplated my options for posting bail. I had turned to my father when the officer cuffed me and shouted his name.
“Dad! What are you doing?”
Dad couldn’t make eye contact. He returned to his vehicle, shouting over his shoulder, “Not your car!”
All things considered I opted against phoning Mom or Dad for bail. I would have tried Morty had it been a more reasonable hour, but a phone ringing in the early hours of the morning in the home of an eighty-something-year-old man who likes his pastrami didn’t sound wise. David was at the yoga retreat. And Petra, she was still AWOL, as far as I knew. Not that she was returning any of my calls. My life would have been so much easier those past few weeks if she had been around.
I waited until early morning and phoned the only person I could think of. Forty-five minutes later, I was sitting in his car in awkward silence.
“That’s an unfortunate outfit for a holding cell,” Henry said plainly. Unlike members of my family, Henry seemed to derive no thrill from mockery.
“I know,” I replied.
“Where am I taking you?” Henry asked.
“There’s a bag at my parents’ house. Some clothes, shoes, my wallet, car keys. I have to get that first.”
Ten minutes later, Henry pulled into the Spellman driveway.
“I can’t go in there,” I said.
“Wait here,” Henry replied, as he got out of the car.
While Henry was presumably gathering my belongings and firmly suggesting to my father that he drop the felony auto theft charge, Subject peered down at me from his window. It was a stare fraught with hostility. Perhaps he spotted me earlier that night and was saved only by my father’s careful manipulation. Or maybe his glance was fear shrouded in hostility. Maybe I was close to something. Maybe he was afraid of me. But sitting there, with three recent arrests under my belt, I couldn’t consider Subject’s crimes. I had my own to worry about.
As I returned my attention to the front door of 1799 Clay Street, I spotted Rae exiting the house, carrying a paper lunch bag and a commuter mug of coffee. She got in the driver’s side of the car and sat down next to me, handing over her offerings.
“I thought you might be hungry,” she said.
My sister’s gesture was so precisely what I needed (minus the Pop-Tarts inside the paper bag) that I wanted to kiss her. Instead I patted her on the head and drank my coffee, trying not to let tears whose source I couldn’t identify fall down my face.
“I’ll keep an eye on him for you,” Rae said.
“Don’t do anything, Rae.”
“I won’t. I’m just going to keep my eyes open. That’s all.”
Henry opened the car door and swapped places with Rae.
“I got an A on my geometry test,” Rae said to Henry.
“An A?” Henry questioned suspiciously.
Rae sighed. “An A-minus. It’s still an A.”
“Good job,” Henry replied.
“I need to tell you something private,” Rae then said, and leaned in and whispered something in Henry’s ear. He nodded in apparent agreement and then Rae shut the car door and waved good-bye.
Henry double-parked next to my car.
“If you need a place to stay, I have a guest room,” Henry said.
I was surprised by the offer. But pride ordered my response.
“Thanks, but I think I’ll just go back to Bernie’s. He’ll sleep on the couch if I ask nicely.”
As it turned out, I didn’t have to ask nicely. Bernie was nowhere to be found. I settled onto the couch and watched television all evening. At eleven
P.M
., bracing for Bernie’s return, I phoned his cell to gather his ETA.
“Hey, roomie,” Bernie said when he picked up the call. The background noise was the unmistakable chaos of a casino.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“Tahoe,” Bernie replied, as if it were obvious.
“When are you coming back?”
“Why, do you miss me?”
“Not even a little,” I replied.
“Such a kidder,” Bernie said. “I’ll be here for a while. My luck is looking good. You back at the apartment?”
“Yes,” I replied. “Do me a favor and give me a call before you plan on returning.”
“What? I didn’t get that.”
“Nothing,” I replied, and hung up the phone.
That night I changed the sheets, took a shower without locking the door, and slept eight hours in what used to be my own bed.
For the next three days I barely left “my” apartment, knowing that this brief window of privacy would not last. I caught up on much-needed rest, decontaminated the apartment, and researched “John Brown”s on the internet, hoping to find the one I was looking for.
But all good things must come to an end. Thursday afternoon, without providing the previously-requested advance notice, Bernie arrived at the apartment with his overnight bag and groceries.
“Roomie,” he said pleasantly upon entering our home.
“Bernie,” I replied, trying not to cry. “I thought you’d still be in Tahoe.”
“I decided it was time to take a breather. Stay, Izz. Like I said, Me casa is su casa.”
“Stop saying that,” I replied, snapping just a bit.
“Izz, this place is big enough for the two of us.”
“It’s a one-bedroom.”
“In some countries families of eight share a one-bedroom apartment.”
I chose to discontinue this line of conversation. Instead I grabbed a bag of potato chips and a beer out of Bernie’s grocery bag.
“What’s with all the snack food, Bernie?”
“Poker game tonight. Are you in?”
Four hours later I was down two hundred dollars and a watch, which I’d thought I could parlay into motel money for the week. Bernie had apparently figured out my “tells” and shared them with his buddies.
1
“I’m out,” I said after my fourth straight loss. “It stinks in here.” I got up and cracked a window.
I sniffed my own shirt. “I smell like a cigar.”
Bernie’s friend Mac pulled a bottle of cologne from his satchel and sprayed me.
“Hey!”
“It covers up the cigar smell. You’ll thank me later,” he said.
2
“So, how long do you think this game will last?” I asked.
“Now that you’re out?” Bernie replied. “Until morning, probably.”
It wasn’t just the cigar smoke and the cologne and the wasted potato chips on the table and the volumes of empty beer bottles invading the apartment, but I looked around and knew that I couldn’t spend one more night under the same roof as Bernie.
“I got to get out of here,” I said, repacking my suitcase.
“See you later, kid,” Bernie replied, and then he went all in.
I didn’t stick around long enough to see whether Bernie won the hand or lost everything.
PART-II
Thursday, March 30
2300 hrs
“Is the offer still good?” I asked, standing in the foyer—looking humbled and forlorn, I’m sure.
Henry Stone nodded his head and opened the door for my entry. I brushed past him into his immaculate home.
“You smell like a cigar,” he said.
“And cheap cologne,” I added.
Henry showed me the guest room, emphasizing the shower. The guest room, like everything else in Henry’s apartment, had that five-star-hotel spotlessness. After Bernie’s place, there was something oddly satisfying about being in an uncontaminated environment. I showered and went straight to bed. I awoke eight hours later as Henry was leaving for work.
He poured me a cup of coffee when I entered the kitchen.
“Make yourself at home,” Henry said, although judging by appearances he didn’t make
himself
at home.
“Thank you.”
“I have just one rule—”
“Are you sure it’s just one? Because it looks like you have many,” I said.
“If you get arrested again, I’m kicking you out.”
“Fair enough,” I replied.
“And I have a few requests: Stay away from my neighbors—they’re clean, law-abiding citizens—and, uh, try to keep your snooping to a minimum. I don’t have any dark secrets, but I don’t like people going through my stuff.”
“When will you be home?” I asked.
Stone smiled. The question was not so innocent.
“I’ll surprise you,” he said, and left.
I couldn’t resist a tour of Stone’s house in his absence; I can rarely resist unsupervised tours. My previous visits to his residence included a break-in almost two years ago. I had assumed (for reasons I won’t get into) that he was involved in my sister’s “vacation,” and so I was searching for evidence. The remainder of my visits, approximately half a dozen, had been for Rae extractions, which occasionally included a beverage, but never had I actually had the chance for a leisurely search of the premises.
After three hours of uncovering well-folded linen, suits hung professionally in litmus-test order, a refrigerator devoid of any mold (other than the cheese variety), a collection of books that appeared to have been read, an assortment of CDs and vinyl that ranged from the Ramones to John Coltrane to Outkast,
1
an office with one locked file cabinet that presumably held seven years of financial data, and a computer that, on careful scrutiny, had never visited a porn site, I made lunch. I even washed the dishes and put them in the dish rack.
I read the newspaper for the next hour and filed through Stone’s limited cable selection for two hours after that. As you might have concluded already, I have problems with activities beyond investigation, drinking, and participating in bizarre and doomed courtships. I routinely ignore my own character flaws, because usually there’s some suspicious behavior diverting my attention. But when everything is suspicious and I’m expected to fill my days the way a normal unemployed person might, there lies the problem.
Friday, March 31
1630 hrs
At three-thirty
P.M
. there was a knock at the door.
“Rae, what are you doing here?”
Rae pushed me aside and said, “We don’t have much time.”
She then walked right up to the television and opened a drawer beneath it that I had somehow missed in my earlier combing of the premises.
“Sit down,” Rae ordered me, and since I had nothing else to do, I obliged.
She popped a disc into the DVD player and sat down on the couch next to me.
“What are we watching?” I asked.
“Doctor Who.”
“Weren’t you watching that the other night?”
“I was watching an old one. It’s the new ones I want to watch.”
“What’s the hurry?”
“Henry will be home soon and he doesn’t let me watch it.”
“Why not?”
“I already told you. Because he says I can’t watch the new
Dr. Who
series until I watch
all
the classic ones.”
“That kind of makes sense,” I said, thinking that I wouldn’t start watching the fifth (and sadly final) season of
Get Smart
unless I had watched the previous four.
“No, it’s just cruel. Do you realize that the first
Doctor Who
was on the air in 1963? They’ve gone through ten doctors to date and there are over seven hundred episodes, most of which are super old. The ‘classic’”—Rae used sarcastic finger quotes—“series is so outdated. The special effects are a complete joke. You can’t take it seriously.”
“What’s the premise of the show?” I asked.
“There’s a doctor—”
“What kind of doctor?”
“He’s just
the doctor.
”
“But he has to be some kind of doctor.”
“If he is, they don’t say. Anyway, so the doctor travels through time saving the world from destruction.”
“And it’s the special effects you can’t take seriously?”
“It’s a really good show. At least the new one is.”
“Why do you have to watch it at Henry’s house? Why don’t you just rent the DVDs and watch at home?”
“I tried that, but then as soon as Dad hears the music, he comes into the room and watches with me. And you know how that goes.”
“I hear you.”
1
“Besides, only the first season is available on DVD for the new series, but Henry has bootlegs of the second season.”
We simultaneously heard a key in the front door. Rae promptly pressed Play and handed me the remote control. She stared straight at the television, ignoring Henry’s entrance.
The theme music had an oddly familiar refrain, but I was distracted by the sidelong look Henry gave my sister. It was as if he was deciding whether to reprimand her. I thought few things could make a better peace offering to my mother than the Stone and Spellman show, so I grabbed my digital recorder and slipped it into my pocket.
Rae and I watched the first forty-five-minute episode of
Doctor Who
in complete silence, while Henry presumably cleaned up whatever invisible mess I had made. When the episode ended, Rae pressed the Stop button and I slipped my hand into my pocket and pressed Record.