Chapter 6
The call came in on the landline. That was clue one she was going to leave her half of the duplex today.
Secondly, it was that dry, arid voice that always left her picturing chalk dust wafting.
"Got a call about a package coming from California. The package got lost."
Followed by recitation of a number Susan needed to call. A pay phone, north of Rainier Valley, if she remembered right.
Click.
End of message. Now it was in her lap. Last week, she’d received a message by mail. No return address. Inside the envelope an index card, and written on it, ‘Connor coming home next week. Graduated CIA. CA to WA.’ She found herself immobile, thinking about Connie, all the possible permutations of ‘lost’. Finally she shook it off.
One of these days they were going to have to rethink the entire communications channel. Pay phones were going to vanish. They were inconvenient as fuck. No one could convince the Old Man of this. Everyone has a wild hair up their ass. Cell phones were the hair up his. It made sense. There was cause.
Years ago, Connie had nearly died. His mom talking on her phone while crossing the street, not even holding little Connie's hand, totally mesmerized by her chat, and some jerk makes a wild turn, hits her, grazes Connie. Mom survived the collision, all the good it did her. Probably better off to have perished at the scene.
Depending on who told the tale, they gave her $25,000 to disappear for good, or it was one of those times the Old Man did something himself. Personally stabbed her to death out on the Olympic Peninsula and buried her near this one little cabin he used as a dojo. Susan pictured the worse possibility that they tucked twenty-five grand under the woman's armpit, and she left the Old Man's Lake Washington mansion eking out every forward motion on crutches, sobbing, wondering where oh where would she find a new sugar daddy now.
For a brief time, Susan had acted as Connie's de facto mom, but it wasn't a permanent gig. She was better off as like a really cool babysitter. Not mother material. Sorry. Of course it pissed off the Old Man. He'd plucked Susan up from the ashes of her attempt to be an actress. How did it go, throw a handful of quarters up in the air in any Los Angeles crowd, and 60% of the coinage would bounce off some wanna-be actor or screenwriter? At best she'd been eye candy in 'B' and 'C' pictures, and suddenly she'd turned 30, suddenly an old biddy, eking a living as a hostess and trying to crack the world of voice talent. If the Old Man's party hadn't gone to a certain Santa Monica restaurant on a certain night, who knows? that poor lady that ended up killed at Phil Spector's, that might've been Susan. If not Spector, some other degenerate, murder-bent millionaire, and depending on the point in Susan’s free fall, it might’ve registered as a mercy killing of sorts.
Her sisters told her how smart she'd been to move up to Seattle when she did. Kendra in Boston. The winters were killing her, the yoga studio always just barely getting by. The eldest sister, Bobbi, down in San Diego, and anytime Susan talked to her, Bobbi brought up the dreariness of the city clerk post, the pension that wasn't going to materialize, and the drought. Never anything really substantially new to those topics, but she was so comfortable revisiting either, it was ceremonial.
Getting ready to go out sadly wasn't such the costume change. Anymore Susan dressed like someone's idea of a widow or some aged virgin, a crazy cat lady probably. She didn't think about how she might look to other people anymore. Probably the normal end country for someone who once spent far too much time second-guessing every possible cosmetic effect.
Outside, she popped the car trunk, removed the two Hefty bags and set them in the backseat. Several random, empty boxes littered the backseat. They'd been there for months, post-garden sale. And how did Susan’s garden grow? Brown. Aphids-ridden. Lazy Susan. The couple in the other half of the duplex already at work. No stray encounter, no insubstantial chat to endure. She puttered through the Ravenna neighborhood, drove west and took the freeway on-ramp north at 72nd.
She exited at 130th, headed west, and turned into the library parking lot on Greenwood. Just opened, she had plenty of room to operate. She nestled one of the Hefty bags in the front passenger seat, then collected those empty boxes, shoved them up next to the rear windshield, leaving barely enough room to peer back, check traffic.
The whole time three dollars worth of quarters clinked inside her front pants pocket. She turned back out on 130th, turned left on Greenwood, going north, and made a right onto 145th. Arrived at her destination, standing outside the driver side door she scanned the post office parking lot. Plenty of people inside their cars, lost in their palms. Those ever present devices, the handy dandy rabbit holes. Were they waiting for someone inside the post office? Had they clean forgot they were here to get the mail, or task accomplished, spaced on the fact they could keep on with their day? All that mattered is if they spotted her, they'd think, bag lady, lady down on her luck, crazy town, stay the fuck away.
The jeans a size too big, cinched to her waist, stained brown like she played in mud puddles, or raised rabbits, goats, something that liberally sprayed shit. Layered tops, the outside layer a matronly sweater one size too small. The hair loose, knotted, matted courtesy of Crisco. Wearing glasses with these weird clear frames, big lenses, and her face looked scrubbed down, scoured. She'd used a dry wash cloth, but with strokes strenuous enough it could be mistaken for the effects of steel wool.
There was a pay phone about half the distance between this north Seattle post office and the duplex, the former go-to, but the last time she'd gone to use it the phone cord had been sliced in half. Pain in the ass. Typical for some public service directly on highway 99, the local way station for hookers and lost souls. The Bitter Lake post office was all of a 30-second walk from 99. Someday, she’d arrive and find this phone cord severed, but happily, not today.
The first number she dialed and she didn’t have to wait. Boog answered immediately. Same voice that had informed her the package was lost. After calling her from his store in Seattle’s Central District, Boog walked to a phone booth half a block away and waited. Susan wondered if this might not be one of the last times they went through the hoops. Developers were the drug of choice in Seattle. Condominiums, four to five story structures, apartments and businesses all-in-one. Zeke had mentioned Boog was all a flutter, his store sitting on ground zero for one of those knock ‘em down, kill the old, raise the new enterprises.
Used to be Boog would farm it out. One of the Old Man’s employees would call the store, Boog would tell one of the guys hanging out all day in front of his store to go down to the pay phone, provide Susan the info. Dangerous, if the Old Man had ever found out. The guys were sometimes drunk, high. One guys always eating. He’d paused now and then, get some words out around Cracker Jacks, the demolishing of an ice cream cone. The guy super-intent on slurping every last sweet morsel. All those regulars must have died off. Now Boog had to do it himself.
“Pacino’s,” answered Boog. Way he said it it sounded like the fish soup, cipino.
“You already call Zeke?” Susan asked. That was standard procedure. Foot soldier called Boog. Boog called Susan, Boog called Zeke. Zeke got the ball rolling on his end. Susan called Boog, back from another line, gathered information.
“Yeah, I did.”
“What’d he say?”
“’Shit.’ ‘Fuck.’ Made it sound like it was my fault.”
“That’d be Zeke. Give me the number.”
Boog said, “Hold on,” and coughed, spat, sliding paper out of his pocket. He recited an area code for Oregon.
“How did he sound?” asked Susan.
“Zeke?”
“No. Oregon.”
“’Oregon’? Oh. Right. Sounded like someone having a shitty day.”
“I imagine so. Have a good one.”
“You too, lady. Thanks for calling Pacino’s.”
r /> The second phone number punched in she listened to a good half-dozen rings. Starting to get antsy. All this effort for nothing, and getting Crisco out of the hair such a pain in the ass, too. Some acting teacher’s voice rattled in her memory, authenticity the key. The performer had to believe in the performance or the audience never would. Oregon. Susan couldn’t remember the last time she’d even been in Oregon.
"Yeah."
"This is Susan."
"Yeah."
For a couple of reasons, she didn't get called so much anymore. The more the Old Man tried to get legitimate - a clean empire his hoped for legacy to Connie - the problems didn't crop up and hop up into her lap so often. She couldn't place the face that belonged to the voice. Mr. Yeah. The loss of familiarity, a price she paid for distancing herself from the Old Man, turning down invitations to the Lake Washington residence, afraid the Old Man in his decline into senility might extend a marriage request. That would be patently uncomfortable, turning it down, wondering from under how much dust he’d exhumed the invitation.
“You ok?” asked Susan.
“Huh?”
“You sound out of breath.”
“Had to run to get the phone.”
"Where's the kid?" Oops. “The package.”
"No idea."
“And you’re in Oregon?”
“Yeah.”
“What happened?” She almost said ‘in brief’, but she was beginning to picture Mr. Yeah. If it was who she thought it was, being brief his standard protocol.
"He wanted to see this lady he knew. He got hold of her while we were en route, headed home. He insisted so I deviated. Off I-5, into east Oregon. So last night, we stop in a little out of the way place. Little Creek. They tell me Millie's car has some issue.”
“Millie?”
“Yeah. It’s what he calls her. So I'm looking at it, helping, next thing I know I get Tased, stun gunned, something. I'm on the ground, this Millie kicks me in the head, kicks me out."
"When's the last time you saw him?"
"Last night. 11 p.m., about that."
"Was it just the woman? No friends with her?"
"Just Millie. Just the kid. Me."
"Huh."
“The car's gone. My phone's gone."
“You got your pills?”
Mr. Yeah long, too long, in answering. Embarassed. His gun, his ‘pills’ taken, too.
"They send a closer?" he asked.
Stupid question. But she knew if she were this guy, this poor schmuck that'd let Connie fuck him over, that had lost his phone and gun, she'd want to hear something in the affirmative. Just so he knew what to expect.
"Yes."
"Who?" he asked.
"They don't tell me that. You know that."
She could ask. Zeke coordinated all that. Zeke would tell if she asked.
"What if I make it good?"
"Fix it?"
"Fix it."
"I don't know. You know. It depends. You fix it, maybe nothing happens. We all have a good laugh. Or. You fix it, but that original mistake is just too big and bad."
Down at the post office entrance a couple exiting were laying into one another. The woman flaying back more skin than the man. Both just shy of 60. The man stepped off the sidewalk, threw his hands in the air like he was done. The woman paused, kept laying into him as she looked at her phone. Her face transformed, from demonic to passive in a matter of moments. Christ. Machines already masters to millions if not billions of trained, waiting slaves.
Susan watched, hoping the man backed out and drove off without his ball and chain. He waited. The woman somehow managed to sever communion with her phone. For a moment, she made eye contact with Susan. Opportunity. Susan jammed her free hand into her crotch, dug it deep inside like there might be a prize somewhere notched deep within the itch.
The voice came on. Robot operator. She didn't know if Mr. Yeah could hear it, too. She told him she had to deposit more quarters.
For a few seconds she thought he'd hung up. She was about to ask if he was still there when he said, "I'm gonna try."
"Try what?" Grinning, she waved at the sedan. Susan could make out her new friend, gesturing out at the crazy crotch grabber - the new enemy supplanting the husband at least for a few minutes. Susan sniffed those crotch-digging fingers. Almost planted them in her mouth, but too late, the sedan rolling forward, rolling away.
"You know,” he said. “To make it right."
“Yeah?”
"Yeah."
Mr. Yeah hung up before she could say 'good luck'.
It left her feeling empty. It would've been a nice thing, let that guy out there in the middle of nowhere know that she cared at least enough to fling a wish even if it was one of those empty wishes, dissolving quick as butter in a pan, substantial as a drunken kiss in a crowded bar.
She felt for the guy. Sipe? Sipe. That terseness, had to be. Probably 20 years her senior. No big plans, not Sipe. Not like Zeke. More like Susan. Just making it from one day to the next. They tell you to go here. They tell you to go there. There was reward. There was penalty. The shit thing being you never knew when the penalty phase was going to kick in.
Connie must've had some reason for this. For trying to disappear. It'd been years since she'd seen him. Years since she’d been a regular at the Lake Washington house.
Before she got back on the freeway, she pulled off onto a side street, knocked the boxes out from the rear window, toted the Hefty bags back into the trunk. Someone's little dog, imprisoned in chain link, barked at her. She didn't buy it. The wiggly little tail betrayed the pooch's nature.
Driving south on I-5 she couldn't shed the image of Mr. Yeah, Sipe, a lot of gray in the fur, a waggling tail, genetic predisposition and all, following or tromping ahead of someone taking him out on his very last walk.