NaNo, Part 8
And oh, there's still so much to share. It won't end people. Okay, yeah, it probably will, but it's not doing it NOW.
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven
Fast Dance, Cold Dinner
Marla put on music as soon as we walked in the door. She smiled over her shoulder, plucked the tinfoil swans from my hands, and stuck them in her icebox. “How do you foxtrot?” she asked.
“You should be leading,” I told her.
She kicked off her shoes, took down the parts of her hair she’d pinned up. The jeweled pins were dropped on her coffee table amongst a collection of books and notepads. “I’m slightly less taller thank you now,” she told me.
“Come here,” I said, and I put my right arm around her, slide it up her back until it was tucked under her arm. “Put your left arm over my right,” I instructed, and her fingers were chilly when she pressed them to my shoulder. I held out my left hand. She fit her palm against mine. I could feel the vibration of the mechanisms in her hand.
“Which way do I start?” I asked.
“Left foot back,” I told her. I stepped forward with my right; she stepped back with her left. “Now right foot back,” I instructed, and I stepped forward with my left, and she stepped back with her right. “Now quick step to your right side,” I said, and we moved together to the side, bringing our heels together.
“That’s it?” she asked, looking down at her feet as I led her again.
“That’s the basic step,” I said. “Don’t watch your feet.”
She looked up, smiled at me, curled her fingers tighter on my shoulder. “I might step on your toes.”
“It’s all right,” I said, and we moved again. Step. Step. Quick step. Step. Step. Her toes on my toes.
“Sorry,” she said, and she gave a laugh that sounded nervous.
“You’re pretty lucky,” I told her, “I almost asked you to foxtrot at Martha’s.”
“I would have done it,” she said, and the way her smile went shy told me she was serious. “It would have been terrible.”
“Maybe a little,” I replied, and I chuckled when she poked my shoulder. “Lead me,” I told her, and we switched positions, my hand on her shoulder, my left foot going back first. Step. Step. Quick Step. Step. I stepped on her toes in my heels. She winced. “Sorry,” I said. I stepped away from her, kicked off my heels and flexed my toes. When I stepped back up to her, she stepped away, changed the record to a waltz, tucked me against her and led me around the room. Her skirt caught on the edge of the coffee table and scattered her bobby pins.
“Leave it,” she murmured, and she twirled me.
“I like those pins,” I said. I was pressed back against her, hip to knee. I let go of her hand, touched the necklace at her throat. “What is that?” I asked.
“Tanzanite,” she told me. “It’s from the Caribbean. My parents brought it back as a gift.”
“I like it,” I said, and pressed my fingertip against the stone.
“It’s what’s in the pins, too,” Marla said. She twirled me again and pulled me back to her as the record stopped. “You’re in love with me, right?” She asked suddenly.
I looked at her for a moment. “I said I was,” I reminded her. “I don’t say things like that for fun.”
“So, you’re in love with me,” she said.
“Yes,” I answered. I couldn’t figure out why she looked so uncertain. “Why?”
“Do you want to be in love with me?”
“No.” It was out before I could think. I pressed a hand to my mouth, watched her take a step away. “It’s not you,” I said quickly, too loudly. My voice bounced off her ceiling. “It’s me. I don’t want...” I shook my head, gathered my hair at the nape. “When I said it wasn’t a great thing, it wasn’t because of you.”
“You think you shouldn’t be in love,” Marla said. She pressed her back against the wall, tucked her arms behind her. “You think something bad will happen again.”
I shrugged, let go of my hair. “Yes.” I said. I watched Marla’s face, the way her nose wrinkled, the way she looked ready to argue. “I know it’s idiotic,” I told her. “Just like I know part of me appreciating Billie’s gesture is idiotic, but it’s there, and it’s based on a really terrible moment in my life, and I can’t shake it off. I can’t just peel it away.”
“What could happen?” Marla asked. The challenge in her tone was met by the angle of her chin. “You’re not in the underground now, Julie. Everything you’re doing is legitimate.”
“There are a dozen states that still think being gay is illegal,” I said. “Maybe more.”
“We’re not in one of those,” Marla said. “You’re still legit.”
I opened my mouth to explain, to map out my fear. All that came out was air. I walked around her couch, sat down, put my foot down on one of Marla’s jeweled pins. “My head’s messed up,” I told her, picking up the jeweled pin from the floor, picking up three others near it. “I love you, and I could list all the reasons why, but at the end of the day, when you wave goodbye, part of me is relieved. You’re not coming home with me, you see. You’re not close enough to protect.”
Marla sat on the other end of the couch, tucked her legs under her, fanned out her skirt like a flower. “Protect me?” she asked. “From what?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Nothing. Everything. The idea that you have to protect me to the point of danger.”
“We just had this conversation,” Marla told me. “At the restaurant.”
“That’s how my brain works,” I told her. I looked at her. I wanted to reach over and touch her hair. “A relationship comes up, a possibility drops out of the air, and in my head, all I can see is this little windowless room, and all I can hear is a man telling me that Billie said I was slightly delusional. I can’t do it again, Marla. I can’t sit there in that room and listen to someone tell me I’m crazy.”
“Why would I do that?” Marla asked. “The circumstances around that, around the way you and Billie ended, that’s not going to happen again. The Supreme Court-”
“They’ve overruled themselves before,” I interrupted. “They’ve gone back on their word.”
“I remember when comics made it there,” Marla told me. “There was no opposition. Everyone wanted them legalized to reduce the strain. It was a stupid law that got them banned in the first place. It was a scare tactic. All it did was overwork the police and the courts, and everyone knew it, everyone still knows it.” Marla leaned across the length of the couch, looked at me until I would look at her. “You’re not a revolutionary, Julie. The battle’s over. You won. You’re just a writer now, just a woman locked in a office eight hours a day.”
“Something could-”
“I could walk outside and get hit by a bus tomorrow,” Marla cut me off. “I could get mugged and stabbed. I could slip and get run down by the Monorail.” She grabbed my arm when I tried to cover my ears. “You’re being ridiculous,” she said in a stern tone. “You’re pushing me away for no damned reason.”
“It could all be gone tomorrow,” I retorted. “The APA could say we’re crazy. The Supreme Court could say comics are evil.”
“So you should avoid me, then? You should run away from right now?” Marla scooted across the couch, skirt bunching against her knees. She held my face in her hands, traced my brows with her fingers. “Come on, Julie, you know you’re being foolish.”
I looked at her from the space of six inches, tried to memorize the slightly heart-shaped lines of her face. She looked back at me, dropped her hands from my face, leaned in a little closer until her head as on my shoulder.
“Maybe I’m young and foolish,” she said, “but I always figured the underground happened because people wanted to fight for something good, something fun, something that didn’t harm anyone.”
Sally’s words from earlier in the day rang in my ears. About forgetting what you were fighting for once you had it. What happened, I wondered, if you didn’t have to fight for it and lost it anyway, lost it to circumstances that you agreed to play by? I saw Wendy’s face in my mind’s eye, the fierce pride she had for all of us, her determined tone when I’d broken down in my room, when she’d told me Billie had been taken in the raid. “Look at me,” she’d ordered. “Look at me, Julia Schwartz.”
Look at me, I said to myself. Look at her, I thought and looked at Marla, head on my shoulder, eyes half-closed, one thumb pushing the velvet of my dress in the opposite direction of the grain. “I want this,” I said into Marla’s hair. “But I don’t know that I’ll be good at it.”
“I’ll keep tabs on you,” she promised. “I’ll give you a scorecard at the end of the night.”
“Great,” I said. I smiled a little. “I suppose we can take it from there.”
She lifted her head, looked into my eyes. “Don’t be scared,” she told me.
“Yeah,” I said. I leaned in, pressed her back until she was prone on the couch, until my legs were tucked between hers, until our noses were nearly touching. “I’ll try.”
“You’re Julia Schwartz,” she told me, hand at my waist. She kissed me with a closed mouth. “You’ve got no reason to be scared.”
I’ve got every reason, I thought. I’ve seen this go horribly wrong. I kissed her instead, smiled when she arched up a little. She kissed back, matched my pressure, slid one hand under the strap of my dress and used it as an anchor. I shivered, let some of my weight settle on her. “Tell me it’s okay,” I said.
“It’s okay,” she told me. “Everything’s great.”
I slumped against her suddenly. I pressed my face against her shoulder, her hair tickling my nose. I sobbed before I could stop myself, heard a sound like an injured cat and realized it’d come from me.
“Oh, Julie,” Marla said, and her arms worked around me. She turned us so we were on our sides. She let go with one arm to pull the blanket over us. “Oh, Julie.”
“What about-” I sobbed again, harder than before, my fingers dug into her sides a little, but she didn’t flinch away. “What about ‘Jules’?”
“Who cares about Jules,” Marla said. She wiped my tears with her thumbs. “Billie Fraction can have Jules. I’ll take you, Julie.” She turned so she was on her back, pulled me against her chest, hummed songs I didn’t recognize into my hair and didn’t try to calm me down.
I cried for nearly an hour, the sobs tapering off into silent tears, the tears tapering off into nothing. Marla maneuvered away at one point, close enough I could still touch her arm. She grabbed tissues and brought them back to me. She got me to let go of her so she could get me water. As soon as she was in reach, I grabbed for her again, pulled her to me, ruined the satin of her dress because I pressed my wet face against it over and over.
“I didn’t cry when it happened,” I told her once I’d calmed down. My voice was a rasp like old paper. She made me tea with lemon and honey, propped me on the couch with pillows, and left the blanket over me like a cape. “I couldn’t. It was…” I shook my head. “It didn’t seem like enough to cry at it,” I said. “So I didn’t. I cried when I found out they had Billie straight up and down, but after that, there was just…nothing. The trial, the reports, the fight she and I had, the swing I took.” I sipped my tea. Marla was sitting next to me, arm around my shoulders, face pressed into my hair. “I just couldn’t.”
“It’s been eight years,” Marla whispered. “You’re telling me you haven’t cried for any of it in eight years?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I tried a few times. Visited Wendy’s grave, thought about how much it hurt to know Billie had done that, and it never worked. I read Billie’s old letters, found Wendy’s old notes scrawled in the margins of my scripts, and there was nothing. It wouldn’t happen.”
“Why?” Marla asked.
I thought about it, took another sip of tea, rubbed my thumb and forefinger along the bridge of my nose and then rubbed the back of my hand against my eyes. “Anger, I suppose. I was so mad. Furious. At Billie. At the law. At the idiocy of everything surrounding everything. God. I’ve probably been angry the whole time. I’m probably completely different than I was before. Maybe it’s burned away, that other person. I don’t know.”
“You’re still Julie,” Marla said. “I fell in love with you like you are.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Maybe that other person died when Wendy did. Maybe Billie killed her too.” I finished my tea, put the mug on the coffee table, let Marla wrap the blanket more snugly around me.
“Do you want your dinner?” she asked.
I realized I was ravenous. “Yes.” I answered, and I gave her a shaky smile. “Please.”
We ate it straight out of the icebox, Marla untwisting the necks on the swans like she was getting the twist tie off a bag of bread. We ate side-by-side, shoulders bumping as we picked at our vegetables and ate our entrees with our fingers. Marla crumpled the tin foil, put the uneven lumps of it on the coffee table, and pushed my hair off my face.
“Better?” she asked.
“A little.” I breathed deep, felt it shake a little in my chest. “I should go,” I said as Marla stroked my hair.
“Tomorrow’s Saturday,” she said, “you could stay here.”
“And wear this out tomorrow?” I asked, plucking at my dress. I brushed a few crumbs off my lap.
“We’ll figure out something.”
I looked at her. She was smiling at me, elbow pressed against the back of the couch, her head in her hand. She’d gathered all her hair into one bundle and draped it over her shoulder. I looked at the line of her neck.
“Stay the night,” she offered softly.
I opened my mouth to agree. “I can’t,” I said instead. “It wouldn’t…” I shook my head. “There are a lot of ghosts in my head,” I told her. “I need to get them out of the way.”
Marla opened her mouth. Closed it. Turned her hand into a fist and pressed it against her temple. “You’re absolutely sure?” she asked, but there was resignation in her eyes.
Say yes, something deep in my pressed. Just say yes. “The offer is wonderful,” I said. “Really.”
“It’s a kind letdown,” Marla said as she stood. Her skirt was creased from the waist to the hemline. She didn’t seem to notice, reaching out to lift me off the couch. The blanket fell off my shoulders, and I shivered a little.
“I can drive you home,” she offered.
“No,” I said, “that’ll just put us in a similar situation a half an hour from now.”
She smiled a little. “You’ve seen through my dastardly plan.”
“Well, I do write comic books.” I smiled when she chuckled. “I’ll get home all right.”
“Cab fare,” she pronounced as I bent to grab my shoes. “I won’t press you to let me get you home, but you have to let me send you with cab fare.”
“I’m not 1967 Aston Martin loaded, but I can handle cab fare,” I told her, pressing my hand against the arm of the couch for balance as I slipped on my heels.
“I’m giving you cab fare anyway,” Marla told me and before I could argue, she’d walked out of the room.
I considered arguing, but I grabbed my coat instead. I searched for my purse, found it on top of a stack of books. I lifted my purse, and three books fell off the stack. I crouched to pick them up, and my hand froze over one.
Black cover. Silver letters. Red page edges.
My stomach recoiled. I swallowed hard, grabbed the book more roughly than I needed, put it on top of another stack of books.
“Cab fare!” Marla crowed as she walked back into the room. She stopped a foot from me, looked me over. “You cried off your make up,” she told me, “but you look pretty good otherwise.”
“Thanks,” I said. I took the cab fare, stuck it in the pocket of my coat, titled my head back when she leaned in to kiss me.
“Call me if you want,” she said. “Over the weekend, I mean. If you’re bored.”
“I will,” I promised. “Can’t promise I’ll want to be around anyone.”
“That’s okay,” Marla said. “I’ll see you Monday no matter.”
I smiled a little, bone-deep tiredness suddenly settling into my body. “I suppose you will.”
Marla put a hand on my back, led me to the door. “I could see you to the lobby,” she said.
“I’ve got it,” I said, pushing my shoulders back. “I’ll see you Monday, if not before,” I told her and felt, suddenly, like I was leaving a business meeting.
Marla’s grin told me she’d caught my tone. “Goodnight, Miss Schwartz,” she said with a smirk.
“Goodnight, Miss Tinkerton,” I replied and walked out her front door.
The elevator took a small eternity to arrive. I considered turning around, knocking on Marla’s door until she answered, pushing myself against her and finding my way to her bedroom by her dragging me by the straps of my dress. And I thought of the other times I’d pulled something similar, sometimes with someone I cared about, sometimes with someone I didn’t. It always ended the same way: I woke up, felt like an idiot, and was awkward as hell until the other person finally threw up her hands and left me be.
I got on the elevator, pressed the button for the lobby and watched the little orange light glow at me until the doors opened on the ground floor. The doorman swung out the door as I was reaching for it.
“Cab, Miss?” he offered.
I considered taking the Monorail, just to spite the cab fare in my pocket. “Please,” I said, and I stayed under the awning as he stepped to the curb and looked around. It took three minutes, by my internal count, to flag down a cab. I spent it considering going back upstairs.
The cabbie was wearing a bright red stocking cap. The slightly uneven seam on the back told me it’d been hand made. “Where can I take you, Miss?” he asked.
I gave him my address, leaned back into the seat, tucked my coat firmly around me, and stared as the city went by in a string of street lights and Monorail stops. I gave the cabbie all the money in my pocket, not even checking to see how much it was, and I took the stairs to my apartment, feeling so tired I was certain I would fall asleep in the elevator.
I shed my coat, dress, and shoes in a pile next to my front door. My underthings I dropped at the door of my bedroom. I threw the comforter over my head, crawled up the bed from the foot, and dropped face-first into my pillow. I considered reviewing the evening, finding every place it had gone wrong, but I was asleep before I could get started.
1963 -- The Aftermath of the Sixth Raid
I didn’t go home for two days. I had cash in my pocket, enough to rent out a questionable motel room, and I stared there, television always on, waiting to hear some news. There was nothing. The local news gave no information about the search and arrest at the house. There were car accidents, a fire, someone’s missing dog, and nothing about Billie or I or her arrest by Agent Starling and Officer Gardner.
The comforter smelled of smoke and cheap detergent. I wrapped it around my shoulders like a cape, wore it at all times when I was in the motel room, leaving it draped over the rickety chair under the lamp in the corner when I had to leave for food.
I went home because I ran out of cash, and my wallet was, the last I’d seen it, on the desk in the office. I had enough change for the bus, swayed along with its rocking until it stopped three blocks from the house. I walked those blocks slowly, watching my feet on the sidewalk, stepping over the cracks. I only looked up when I heard someone else coming towards me, not wanting to have to talk to someone because I’d accidentally bumped their arm. When I turned onto our block, I looked up, staring at each house for a second before working the way down the line to ours.
It was still there, shell pink with dark green shutters. The mums I’d planted the spring before were bright orange against the slightly sickly-green of the lawn. The newspapers were still on the sidewalk; the neighbors were nowhere to be seen. It struck me as odd. They’d shown up for the big reveal, I thought, why weren’t they checking back for another show?
The front door was unlocked; it opened when I twisted the knob. I kept my eyes to the ground, stepped over the papers, and watched the latch slide into place before I turned around.
The house was clean. Slightly neater than before the police had shown up. I blinked, wondered if I was hallucinating. I spotted a piece of cream colored paper on the coffee table, walked over, picked it up. Sally’s looping ‘S’ and ‘L’ were the only text. I wondered if Wendy had helped her. Wondered how they’d known. It hadn’t been in the news; we hadn’t had plans to get together over the last two days. Had she just dropped by, I wondered, figured it out because she knew what the aftermath looked like.
The phone rang, the trill so loud in the house that I jumped. I ran for the kitchen, grabbed the receiver off the wall, wondered if, maybe, it was Billie. “Schwartz and Fraction residence,” I answered on automatic.
“Oh, thank god,” Sally’s voice sounded slightly hysterical. “I’ve been calling since I stopped by and saw the aftermath.”
“How did you-” I started to ask, but Sally talked over me.
“You’re okay, right? You and Billie?”
My throat closed. I swallowed hard, nearly choked myself trying to breathe. On the other end of the line, Sally cursed.
“Oh, honey,” she said. “Oh, Jules, stay put, okay? I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
I opened my mouth to tell her I was okay, that I’d cope, but she hung up in my ear. I put the receiver back on the cradle, and I looked around the kitchen, looked into the living room. I’d come home planning to use the cleaning to keep my mind occupied, and now I had twenty minutes with nothing to do. I considered writing, but I couldn’t remember anything that I’d been working on. The police probably had all my notes anyway, I thought. Probably thought it was all Billie.
When Sally showed up, I was sitting at the dining table, hands flat on the tabletop. I hadn’t thought of anything to do, so I’d sat down to wait. “Have you eaten?” she asked, and before I could answer she was in the kitchen, rattling around the icebox and coming out thirty seconds later with a cold sandwich and a glass of milk. “Eat it,” she ordered, the brisk note in her voice stolen from Wendy.
I ate. It was ham and cheese. It tasted like nothing. Sally watched me with sharp eyes, pushed the milk to me when the sandwich was finished, didn’t speak until I’d drunk it down in a dozen measured sips.
“What happened?” she asked quietly.
“They showed up,” I said. “They just…they showed up.” I thought about them knocking on the door, about the warrant. About Billie’s smile when she’d introduced herself. “They had her name on a warrant, knew where things were. I don’t know who did it. I don’t know who goes in the book.”
“That’s okay,” Sally said, her hand pressing against my arm. “We’ll figure that out later.”
“They got everything, I think,” I said. “Scripts and sketches and everything. They might come find you.”
“Don’t worry about me,” Sally brushed me off. “Where’s Billie, Jules?”
“They.” I stared at my milk glass. Stared at my plate. It had a cornflower pattern on the edge. Billie had bought me a full set for our first Christmas in the house, called me her Kansas flower and pecked me on the cheek. “They took her, Sally. I don’t.” I looked at her then, saw the hard determination in her face to make things right. “I don’t think she’s coming back.” Saying it out loud made it hurt. I balled up my hands, pressed them against my chest. “I think this is it.”
“Don’t say that,” Sally snapped. “You know better than to say that.” She stood, walked to the kitchen, lifted up the phone. “I’m calling Wendy,” she said. “I’m getting her over here to talk some sense into you.”
I watched her dial, watched her wait for the phone to get answered, watched her wrap the cord around her finger. She blanched suddenly, the cord unwound from her finger. “Excuse me?” she said into the phone. She looked at me, looked away. “I’m selling Bibles, Sir,” she said, her voice almost too low to hear. “I’m afraid I have no information, but I pray the Lord helps you and that woman.” She put the phone down like too much pressure would shatter it. She looked at me, her hand pressed against her throat. “That was a man named Agent Starling.”
“Oh, god,” I muttered. We stared at each other. I wanted to get up and comfort Sally, tell her it was all right. “Get out,” I told her. She stared at me. I stood up, and my chair clattered backward. “Get out, Sally. Run. That’s him. He’s the one-” My voice caught in my throat. Sally turned deathly white. “Go!” I yelled, and she jumped.
“But you-”
“They don’t know about me,” I said in a rush. “Billie did something. Lied somehow. They don’t know I’m involved.”
Sally went completely still. “What?” she asked. She was still pale. Her face wiped clean of color like she’d washed everything off of it with harsh soap. “What do you mean?”
“I mean they took me in, they asked me questions, and then they let me go. I don’t exist to them, Sally. But…” I shook my head, walked to her, grabbed her shoulders, gave her a hard shake. “They’re at Wendy’s,” I said as clear and sharp as I could. “And if they’re at Wendy’s, they’re probably heading towards you.” I tucked my arm under her elbow, dragged her with me to the bedroom. “Come on,” I said.
“What?” Sally asked. She blinked at me like an owl I’d once seen in the daylight. “What are you-”
“You’re about Billie’s size,” I explained. “And you’re about her color,” I added. “You can’t go back to your place.” I pushed Sally onto the bed, opened the closet, started grabbing Billie’s sweater sets. “There’s a suitcase under the bed,” I told her. “Get it.”
She blinked. “What?”
“Suitcase,” I barked. “Bed.” I turned away again, opened the dresser, heard Sally pull the suitcase from under the bed. When I turned back around, she was holding its handle, looking confused. The color was starting to come back to her face. “On the bed,” I told her, and she tossed the suitcase. It bounced slightly, and Sally immediately smoothed the wrinkles in the duvet.
I piled in Billie’s sweater sets, added her skirts, threw in a couple pairs of her shoes and even thought to grab a nightgown. I walked into the living room, plucked the keys to my car off the wall, walked back into the bedroom, and Sally was standing where I’d left her, staring at the open suitcase.
“I’m leaving, aren’t I?” She asked quietly.
“Yes,” I said. I pushed my keys into her hand, walked into the kitchen, reached to the back of the cupboard under the sink for a container of cleanser. I twisted off the bottom of the can and a stack of bills fell into my hand. I counted out four hundred, tucked back the rest, and walked back to the bedroom. Sally had snapped into action, closing the suitcase and pocketing my car keys. I handed her the money, forced her to curl her fingers around it when she tried to push it back at me. “You need it,” I insisted. I walked over, picked up the suitcase. “Take one of the hats,” I told her. “They’re on the top shelf. Get your hair under it. I’ll put the suitcase in the car in the garage, and I’ll get rid of your car later.”
“How?”
I didn’t know. “I’ll take care of it.” I turned to leave the room, and Sally put a hand on my arm.
“Jules, honey, this is too dangerous-”
“I’m evac,” I said before she could finish, before she could convince me not to help her so that I could have someone to wait with as everything fell apart. “You need to get out of here. It’s what I do.”
Sally shook her head. “Come with me,” she offered. “We’ll get out of here together.”
I thought about it, us driving down the highway with the top down on my car. Wind tangling my hair into one large knot. Sally twisting the radio knob as we cut across Kansas, static and the farm reports the only thing keeping us entertained, making up songs to the droning voices of the wizened men reading wheat prices. “I can’t,” I said after a moment that felt like a year. “If I leave town now, everything’s shit. They think I’m clear. I’ve got to keep that image up.”
Sally looked ready to argue. She bit the tip of her tongue between her teeth carefully. “All right,” she said. “Okay.” She turned to open the closet door. “I wonder what she did,” she said mostly to herself. “I wonder how she kept your name out of it.”
I didn’t answer, just hefted the suitcase and walked out the bedroom, through the living, through the kitchen, and out to the attached garage. I popped the glove box, tapped the button for the trunk, walked around the passenger side of the car and lifted in the suitcase. I pressed my hands against the trunk when I closed it, thought of Billie’s smile when she’d walked in one day and tossed me the keys.
“What the hell?” I’d asked, hands damp and soapy from doing dishes.
“It’s our anniversary,” she’d said. She’d leaned over, kissed me, laughed when I’d slid my wet fingers under the hem of her shirt. “I got you a present.”
I’d tried to fight her on it. “These are car keys.”
“Gee, I think they go to a car,” she’d teased. “No fighting,” she’d ordered. “I promise not to be so extravagant next year.”
I’d let her kiss my argument away, grabbed her hand, dragged her outside to let her watch my reaction to the cherry red Cadillac she’d bought me.
“Jules?” Sally was standing in the doorway of the garage, a wide-brimmed peach hat tied on her head. It had been one of Billie’s favorites, brought out the peaches in her complexion. “This one all right?”
I wanted to take it off her head. “It’s fine,” I said instead. I walked around the trunk to the driver’s side of the car. “Milady,” I said with an exaggerated bow. “Drive like you’re not being chased,” I said as Sally slipped into the driver’s seat, adjusted the position so she could fit comfortably. “Watch your speed. Drive a little bit fast, but no more than four or five miles over, okay?”
“Okay,” she said. She shut the door. The dull clang echoed in the garage. We looked at each other for a long moment. “I’m sorry, Jules,” Sally said in a whisper. It carried in the quiet of the garage. “I’m really sorry.”
I hugged her, brief and awkward, and then I stepped away. “Wait until I’m back in the house,” I ordered. “Count to thirty. The button on the dash will open the garage door. Back out towards the left and head right. Aim for the state line. Don’t call.”
“I’ll send a note,” she said. “Something bland.”
“Only when you’re over the line,” I said. “And keep heading over lines.”
Sally grinned, pained and sad. “I’ll try to hit Canada.”
“Stay in passable hotels,” I added because I didn’t want her to go. “If you stay somewhere broken down or busted, it’s going to look weird. The clothes and car are too nice.”
“Okay,” she said.
“Wait,” I told her, my palm facing her, nearly blocking her face in my vision. “Wait just a second.” I walked back into the kitchen, got the fake cleanser can again, dumped the rest of the money into my hand. I walked back out, leaned over the car to hand her the rest of the money.
“Jules, this is-”
“Get to Canada,” I said. “Don’t try. Just get there. They don’t have extradition for commies up there. I’ll give you a week, ten days on the outside.”
Sally put the money in her pocketbook, tilted her head so I could see her under the brim of Billie’s hat. “What’s my story?” she asked. “I need a story.”
Tears prickled the corners of my eyes. I wiped them away with a hard swipe to both cheeks. “You’re a lovely young woman,” I said. “Smart and beautiful, and you’re straight out of college, taking some time to see the country before you settle into a marriage or into a job. You’ve never seen the Northwest. You’ve heard it’s beautiful.”
“Rows and rows of trees,” Sally said. “Driving down a highway with a river flowing fast and gray along my side.”
“Like a loyal dog,” I added. “You want to see the mountains.”
“Fog on top in the early morning, burning off as the sun gets higher.” Sally turned away from me; I watched her wipe her eyes. “What’s the mountain outside Portland, Oregon?” she asked.
“Mount Hood,” I answered. “I want a postcard from Mount Hood.”
“Okay,” she said. She looked at me again, full in the face, eyes bright with tears she refused to cry. “You’re vapor, Julie Schwartz. Don’t let them catch you.”
“Do my damnnedest,” I promised. I took a step towards the kitchen. “It was great to work with you, Salvatora La Rocca.”
“You too, Julia Schwartz.”
I took the final step into the kitchen, lifted my right hand in a half-hearted wave. “I’ll save every postcard,” I swore. “Everywhere you stop, even for gas. You’ve got a best friend back home, a college pal.”
“Of course I do,” she said, and then she turned away from me, started the car.
I closed the kitchen door, leaned against it, listened to the garage door clack its way up, and then I listened to my car back out, Sally disguised as Billie, listened to the car purr it’s way down the street until it turned at the corner. I waited five minutes to glance out my front windows. There were no neighbors out. I stepped outside, locked the door behind me, unlocked Sally’s car and slid into the driver’s seat. I adjusted the seat so I could reach the pedals, slid the key into the ignition, and listened to the engine roll over smoothly. I put the car into gear, but before I could go forward, one of the neighbors popped out of her front door and waved me down like their was an emergency. I rolled down the window, put the car in park. Ignoring her and driving past would only garner attention. Her name was Mrs. Liefeld, she was the neighborhood gossip and hippie. She hadn’t seemed to ever put together that Billie and I were a couple, but she’d bugged us nevertheless, offering to “cleanse” the house of “bad energies” and wondering if we needed mirrors to let the bad chi bounce from our house.
“Oh, there you are. Did I just see Billie leave?” she asked me.
“Helllo, Mrs. Liefeld,” I greeted, injecting something like cheer into my voice. “Yes, you saw Billie leave.”
“I saw her get taken away by the police just the other day,” she said in the coy tone of neighborhood hedge chatterers around the world. “I just wanted to check that everything was all right.”
“Confusion,” I said and made myself chuckle. “There’s a William Fraction who was wanted by authorities for some sort of problem-I didn’t ask, obviously-and the person who wrote the warrant misspelled the name.”
Mrs. Liefeld gasped, hand to her mouth in a show of drama that almost made me rev the engine. “Oh, dear. She must have been terrified.”
“She was,” I told her. “She’s taking it as a sign to take a few weeks off.”
“Oh, that’s good,” Mrs. Liefeld told me. “It’s very important to pay attention to signs. Sometimes the universe shakes you up to get you to take some time to take care of yourself.” Mrs. Liefeld gave the sage nod of a hundred snake oil salesmen before her. “I wish you girls had stopped by and let me know; I’d have sent her away with some herbs to help soothe her. Or at least burned a bit of sage around her car to wave away the bad spirits.”
“I’ll let her know of your kindness when you write,” I promised her. “She’ll be wonderfully pleased.”
Mrs. Liefeld patted my arm. “You two are just the dearest girls.” She took a step backward from the car. “I’ll let you get about your errands.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I’ve got to get it to the shop before they close. There’s a terrible scratch on the other side, so I’m getting it painted.” I waited for her to ask whose car it was, who it was that had come into the house and if I’d left a guest alone, but she simply nodded, smiled, and walked back to her house.
“The thing that woman misses,” Billie had observed at one point, “Could fill a stack of a kids’ picture books.”
I pulled away from the curb, drove to a body shop across town, and told a story about the car being a gift from my husband, how he didn’t know the colors I liked and, honestly, how hard was it to get a man to understand the sentence, “Peach clashes with my hair.” The mechanics flipped between bored at my story and feeling sorry for my pretend husband. They promised to repaint it a respectable shade of blue and have it back to me within two days. I grabbed the title papers and registration from the glove box before I left, giving them a suspicious look, centering my gaze on their dirty hands. I’d be just another yelling housewife to them. If anyone asked, they could remember my tone, my shrill voice, but not who I was or how I looked.
Two days later, I picked up my newly power blue car and found a postcard waiting for me in the mailbox.
They’ve harvested everything in Kansas except the almost dead grass. Very boring drive.
--S
The ache in my chest, a twinge when I breathed too hard, lessened slightly. That was something, I thought.
I spent the rest of the week sitting in my house, looking at pictures and straightening things that had already been straightened. I tried to write something-letters, notes, grocery lists-when that didn’t work, I tried copying other writing. Virginia Woolf, Joyce Carol Oates, Dorothy Parker. I’d start at the first page, write three words, and then put down the pen, walk away, lay on the bed and force myself not to cry. It was no good, I thought. Waste of energy I might need for later.
Officer Gardner stopped by at the end of the week, knocking on the door like a travelling salesman. He was in his regular clothes, but he could have almost been in his uniform. The suit was dark blue, his shirt bright white, his tie a thin, dark red stripe, and his hat a gray wool fedora, clutched in his hands, the brim getting slightly wrinkled.
“Miss Schwartz,” he greeted me with a nod when I opened the door. “I wanted to see how you are.”
I looked at him, not quite understanding what I was seeing. “Mr. Gardner,” I said. His name was strange on my tongue, like eating the last pretzel in the bag, the extra salt making my tongue curl up like a dead slug before righting itself again. “Would you like to come in?” I asked automatically, stepped out of the frame of the door to let him in.
“Thank you,” he said, and he took the three steps to be over the threshold and away from the door so I could close it. He watched me close it. Watched me lock it. Looked around living room and dining area, and then he nodded like he’d made a decision. “I could get fired,” he said, looking at me again. “But you should know.”
I raised my eyebrows, crossed my arms. My week alone redusting knickknacks and washing my single plate, cup, and fork made me wary of anyone showing up to tell me anything. “Oh?” I asked.
Officer Gardner sat on the couch, rested his hat on my knee. “Pardon my lack of manners,” He said. “But it’s important.”
I sat across form him in the red leather chair that Billie always used to proofread scripts. I put my hands in my lap, crossed my ankles, tried to calm myself because he seemed to be on my couch to truly be helpful. “What is it?” I asked.
“Wendy Ellis has gotten grabbed,” he said. He looked down at his hat. He smoothed the brim with his fingers like smoothing the crust of a pie before pinching it. “She’s not coming back from it.”
I looked at him, the earnest lines of his face, the disappointment in his eyes. At what, I wondered. The law for taking Billie and Wendy, or the fact that he came and told me, violating at least the rule about talking about an open investigation. I watched him watch me for a moment, wanting to make him say more. “Why?” I asked finally. “Why isn’t she coming back from it?”
He looked at me, and his eyes got very, very sad, the edges of his mouth turning down to match the way he squinted, the way men always did when they didn’t want you to know they were about to cry. “Billie.” He stopped. Cleared his throat. Rubbed his hand over the back of his mouth. “Billie gave her up,” he pushed out. He looked down at his hat. “Billie threw her to the wolves,” he said to his hat.
I sat very, very still. Thought moving might break apart the last of my reserve. I looked at Guy, staring at his hat. I looked at the thin red stripe of his tie. “Gave her up?” I asked. My voice was hoarse like I’d just finished screaming. “What do you mean?”
Guy looked at me, eyes sliding from sadness to pity. “You know,” he said. “You know what I mean.”
“Tell me,” I demanded. “Tell me.”
“Billie told Agent Starling that Wendy was the mastermind behind your series of speaks. She told him all the locations, and she made it clear that Wendy was the one who organized it all.”
The shock landed in my stomach as lightly as a feather. I could feel it tickling my insides, waiting for me to respond, waiting for me to do something. “Why?” I finally asked. “Why would she do that?”
“I could only speculate,” Guy said, but his eyes said he had a solid, proven answer.
“So speculate,” I snapped, the shock wearing off for a moment to let some bite in my tone. “Why would she do that?”
“Agent Starling threatened to bring you back in,” Guy said quietly. “He said he was going to drag you back in, make Billie watch as he charged you with aiding and abedding, prove that you’ve been doing it for years, make the sentence stick so hard you’d be locked up for at least a couple of years.”
I blinked, breathed in, watched Guy look away from my face again, pick invisible lint from the knee of his trousers. “What about the rest?” I asked. “What about my scripts, my involvement?”
“He can’t do anything with it,” Guy said, looking at me again. “Believe me, Miss Schwartz, Agent Starling would love to get you for writing the books, but he can’t prove anything. It’s all Billie on the books. Billie and the other one. Sally.”
I looked him straight in the eyes. “Sally who?”
He smirked a little. “Come on, now,” he said. “You know Sally La Rocca, and you know I’m not out to get any of you locked away.”
“Yeah,” I said. I deflated, let my shoulders slump forward. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he said with sincerity. “But where is she?” he asked, and I could tell it was curiosity, not him trying to get a lead. “We served the warrant on her house, and there’s no one there. Her car’s gone.”
“I don’t know where she is,” I told him, and it was enough honesty I didn’t feel bad. “Haven’t heard from her in nearly a week.”
“She must have known it was getting hot,” Guy said. “Must have sensed it coming.”
“Maybe,” I agreed. I felt tired suddenly. The whole week I’d been waiting, trying to write, and I was waiting for this, I knew, this bad news. I stood up, fought back a yawn, looked out the front window. People were out and walking around, children playing kickball in the cul de sac, mothers chatting as they pushed strollers, men mowing their lawns and trimming their hedges. They had no idea a world was ending, I thought. They didn’t see the explosion. I was all that was left, I thought. The only one to save everything, tucked into a capsule with a blanket. “I need to be alone,” I told Guy. “I need to…”
He stood up before I could figure out what I needed to do. He gave me a tight smile, the sadness coming back to his yes. “I’m sorry I had to tell you,” he said, “but I thought you should know before it shows up in the papers.”
“Thank you,” I said with as much genuine appreciation as I could dig up. I was appreciative. The way he’d treated me, his kindness on the day of the arrest, I knew he was a genuine person. “You’re a good man, Officer Gardner,” I told him. “I want you to know I think so.”
“Thank you,” he said with a nod. “I’m sorry, Miss Schwartz,” he said again, and he let himself out.
I sank onto the couch, put my head in my hands, wondered how. How could Billie give up Wendy? It was inconceivable. She knew what happened when you ratted.
But who would write her name in the book, I wondered. Wendy was going to prison, no doubt, and Sally was out of town. The only person left to write anything was me. I stared across the room, at the portraits of Billie and I. I looked at the dining table, where I had a pen and paper laid out. I walked over to them, picked up the pen and weighed it in my palm. It was a fountain pen, dove grey, a gift from my mother when I graduated college.
“You’ll write the great American novel, honey,” she’d told me. “You should have a pen worthy of it.”
“Or grade papers with it,” my father had added.
I had watched my mother shush him, amazed. She’d never shushed him. She had always apologized for him, or laughed him off. I had looked at her again, paying closer attention than I had in years, and I had realized that my mother, quiet and mousy and very 1950s, held onto hope that I wouldn’t be her. I had wondered when that had happened.
I pressed the pen to the paper, watched a small blotch of ink get bigger and bigger. I dropped the pen, let it clatter on the table top, roll onto the floor and rest against the baseboard.
I'm gonna break 70k today. Um...wow.
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven
Fast Dance, Cold Dinner
Marla put on music as soon as we walked in the door. She smiled over her shoulder, plucked the tinfoil swans from my hands, and stuck them in her icebox. “How do you foxtrot?” she asked.
“You should be leading,” I told her.
She kicked off her shoes, took down the parts of her hair she’d pinned up. The jeweled pins were dropped on her coffee table amongst a collection of books and notepads. “I’m slightly less taller thank you now,” she told me.
“Come here,” I said, and I put my right arm around her, slide it up her back until it was tucked under her arm. “Put your left arm over my right,” I instructed, and her fingers were chilly when she pressed them to my shoulder. I held out my left hand. She fit her palm against mine. I could feel the vibration of the mechanisms in her hand.
“Which way do I start?” I asked.
“Left foot back,” I told her. I stepped forward with my right; she stepped back with her left. “Now right foot back,” I instructed, and I stepped forward with my left, and she stepped back with her right. “Now quick step to your right side,” I said, and we moved together to the side, bringing our heels together.
“That’s it?” she asked, looking down at her feet as I led her again.
“That’s the basic step,” I said. “Don’t watch your feet.”
She looked up, smiled at me, curled her fingers tighter on my shoulder. “I might step on your toes.”
“It’s all right,” I said, and we moved again. Step. Step. Quick step. Step. Step. Her toes on my toes.
“Sorry,” she said, and she gave a laugh that sounded nervous.
“You’re pretty lucky,” I told her, “I almost asked you to foxtrot at Martha’s.”
“I would have done it,” she said, and the way her smile went shy told me she was serious. “It would have been terrible.”
“Maybe a little,” I replied, and I chuckled when she poked my shoulder. “Lead me,” I told her, and we switched positions, my hand on her shoulder, my left foot going back first. Step. Step. Quick Step. Step. I stepped on her toes in my heels. She winced. “Sorry,” I said. I stepped away from her, kicked off my heels and flexed my toes. When I stepped back up to her, she stepped away, changed the record to a waltz, tucked me against her and led me around the room. Her skirt caught on the edge of the coffee table and scattered her bobby pins.
“Leave it,” she murmured, and she twirled me.
“I like those pins,” I said. I was pressed back against her, hip to knee. I let go of her hand, touched the necklace at her throat. “What is that?” I asked.
“Tanzanite,” she told me. “It’s from the Caribbean. My parents brought it back as a gift.”
“I like it,” I said, and pressed my fingertip against the stone.
“It’s what’s in the pins, too,” Marla said. She twirled me again and pulled me back to her as the record stopped. “You’re in love with me, right?” She asked suddenly.
I looked at her for a moment. “I said I was,” I reminded her. “I don’t say things like that for fun.”
“So, you’re in love with me,” she said.
“Yes,” I answered. I couldn’t figure out why she looked so uncertain. “Why?”
“Do you want to be in love with me?”
“No.” It was out before I could think. I pressed a hand to my mouth, watched her take a step away. “It’s not you,” I said quickly, too loudly. My voice bounced off her ceiling. “It’s me. I don’t want...” I shook my head, gathered my hair at the nape. “When I said it wasn’t a great thing, it wasn’t because of you.”
“You think you shouldn’t be in love,” Marla said. She pressed her back against the wall, tucked her arms behind her. “You think something bad will happen again.”
I shrugged, let go of my hair. “Yes.” I said. I watched Marla’s face, the way her nose wrinkled, the way she looked ready to argue. “I know it’s idiotic,” I told her. “Just like I know part of me appreciating Billie’s gesture is idiotic, but it’s there, and it’s based on a really terrible moment in my life, and I can’t shake it off. I can’t just peel it away.”
“What could happen?” Marla asked. The challenge in her tone was met by the angle of her chin. “You’re not in the underground now, Julie. Everything you’re doing is legitimate.”
“There are a dozen states that still think being gay is illegal,” I said. “Maybe more.”
“We’re not in one of those,” Marla said. “You’re still legit.”
I opened my mouth to explain, to map out my fear. All that came out was air. I walked around her couch, sat down, put my foot down on one of Marla’s jeweled pins. “My head’s messed up,” I told her, picking up the jeweled pin from the floor, picking up three others near it. “I love you, and I could list all the reasons why, but at the end of the day, when you wave goodbye, part of me is relieved. You’re not coming home with me, you see. You’re not close enough to protect.”
Marla sat on the other end of the couch, tucked her legs under her, fanned out her skirt like a flower. “Protect me?” she asked. “From what?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Nothing. Everything. The idea that you have to protect me to the point of danger.”
“We just had this conversation,” Marla told me. “At the restaurant.”
“That’s how my brain works,” I told her. I looked at her. I wanted to reach over and touch her hair. “A relationship comes up, a possibility drops out of the air, and in my head, all I can see is this little windowless room, and all I can hear is a man telling me that Billie said I was slightly delusional. I can’t do it again, Marla. I can’t sit there in that room and listen to someone tell me I’m crazy.”
“Why would I do that?” Marla asked. “The circumstances around that, around the way you and Billie ended, that’s not going to happen again. The Supreme Court-”
“They’ve overruled themselves before,” I interrupted. “They’ve gone back on their word.”
“I remember when comics made it there,” Marla told me. “There was no opposition. Everyone wanted them legalized to reduce the strain. It was a stupid law that got them banned in the first place. It was a scare tactic. All it did was overwork the police and the courts, and everyone knew it, everyone still knows it.” Marla leaned across the length of the couch, looked at me until I would look at her. “You’re not a revolutionary, Julie. The battle’s over. You won. You’re just a writer now, just a woman locked in a office eight hours a day.”
“Something could-”
“I could walk outside and get hit by a bus tomorrow,” Marla cut me off. “I could get mugged and stabbed. I could slip and get run down by the Monorail.” She grabbed my arm when I tried to cover my ears. “You’re being ridiculous,” she said in a stern tone. “You’re pushing me away for no damned reason.”
“It could all be gone tomorrow,” I retorted. “The APA could say we’re crazy. The Supreme Court could say comics are evil.”
“So you should avoid me, then? You should run away from right now?” Marla scooted across the couch, skirt bunching against her knees. She held my face in her hands, traced my brows with her fingers. “Come on, Julie, you know you’re being foolish.”
I looked at her from the space of six inches, tried to memorize the slightly heart-shaped lines of her face. She looked back at me, dropped her hands from my face, leaned in a little closer until her head as on my shoulder.
“Maybe I’m young and foolish,” she said, “but I always figured the underground happened because people wanted to fight for something good, something fun, something that didn’t harm anyone.”
Sally’s words from earlier in the day rang in my ears. About forgetting what you were fighting for once you had it. What happened, I wondered, if you didn’t have to fight for it and lost it anyway, lost it to circumstances that you agreed to play by? I saw Wendy’s face in my mind’s eye, the fierce pride she had for all of us, her determined tone when I’d broken down in my room, when she’d told me Billie had been taken in the raid. “Look at me,” she’d ordered. “Look at me, Julia Schwartz.”
Look at me, I said to myself. Look at her, I thought and looked at Marla, head on my shoulder, eyes half-closed, one thumb pushing the velvet of my dress in the opposite direction of the grain. “I want this,” I said into Marla’s hair. “But I don’t know that I’ll be good at it.”
“I’ll keep tabs on you,” she promised. “I’ll give you a scorecard at the end of the night.”
“Great,” I said. I smiled a little. “I suppose we can take it from there.”
She lifted her head, looked into my eyes. “Don’t be scared,” she told me.
“Yeah,” I said. I leaned in, pressed her back until she was prone on the couch, until my legs were tucked between hers, until our noses were nearly touching. “I’ll try.”
“You’re Julia Schwartz,” she told me, hand at my waist. She kissed me with a closed mouth. “You’ve got no reason to be scared.”
I’ve got every reason, I thought. I’ve seen this go horribly wrong. I kissed her instead, smiled when she arched up a little. She kissed back, matched my pressure, slid one hand under the strap of my dress and used it as an anchor. I shivered, let some of my weight settle on her. “Tell me it’s okay,” I said.
“It’s okay,” she told me. “Everything’s great.”
I slumped against her suddenly. I pressed my face against her shoulder, her hair tickling my nose. I sobbed before I could stop myself, heard a sound like an injured cat and realized it’d come from me.
“Oh, Julie,” Marla said, and her arms worked around me. She turned us so we were on our sides. She let go with one arm to pull the blanket over us. “Oh, Julie.”
“What about-” I sobbed again, harder than before, my fingers dug into her sides a little, but she didn’t flinch away. “What about ‘Jules’?”
“Who cares about Jules,” Marla said. She wiped my tears with her thumbs. “Billie Fraction can have Jules. I’ll take you, Julie.” She turned so she was on her back, pulled me against her chest, hummed songs I didn’t recognize into my hair and didn’t try to calm me down.
I cried for nearly an hour, the sobs tapering off into silent tears, the tears tapering off into nothing. Marla maneuvered away at one point, close enough I could still touch her arm. She grabbed tissues and brought them back to me. She got me to let go of her so she could get me water. As soon as she was in reach, I grabbed for her again, pulled her to me, ruined the satin of her dress because I pressed my wet face against it over and over.
“I didn’t cry when it happened,” I told her once I’d calmed down. My voice was a rasp like old paper. She made me tea with lemon and honey, propped me on the couch with pillows, and left the blanket over me like a cape. “I couldn’t. It was…” I shook my head. “It didn’t seem like enough to cry at it,” I said. “So I didn’t. I cried when I found out they had Billie straight up and down, but after that, there was just…nothing. The trial, the reports, the fight she and I had, the swing I took.” I sipped my tea. Marla was sitting next to me, arm around my shoulders, face pressed into my hair. “I just couldn’t.”
“It’s been eight years,” Marla whispered. “You’re telling me you haven’t cried for any of it in eight years?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I tried a few times. Visited Wendy’s grave, thought about how much it hurt to know Billie had done that, and it never worked. I read Billie’s old letters, found Wendy’s old notes scrawled in the margins of my scripts, and there was nothing. It wouldn’t happen.”
“Why?” Marla asked.
I thought about it, took another sip of tea, rubbed my thumb and forefinger along the bridge of my nose and then rubbed the back of my hand against my eyes. “Anger, I suppose. I was so mad. Furious. At Billie. At the law. At the idiocy of everything surrounding everything. God. I’ve probably been angry the whole time. I’m probably completely different than I was before. Maybe it’s burned away, that other person. I don’t know.”
“You’re still Julie,” Marla said. “I fell in love with you like you are.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Maybe that other person died when Wendy did. Maybe Billie killed her too.” I finished my tea, put the mug on the coffee table, let Marla wrap the blanket more snugly around me.
“Do you want your dinner?” she asked.
I realized I was ravenous. “Yes.” I answered, and I gave her a shaky smile. “Please.”
We ate it straight out of the icebox, Marla untwisting the necks on the swans like she was getting the twist tie off a bag of bread. We ate side-by-side, shoulders bumping as we picked at our vegetables and ate our entrees with our fingers. Marla crumpled the tin foil, put the uneven lumps of it on the coffee table, and pushed my hair off my face.
“Better?” she asked.
“A little.” I breathed deep, felt it shake a little in my chest. “I should go,” I said as Marla stroked my hair.
“Tomorrow’s Saturday,” she said, “you could stay here.”
“And wear this out tomorrow?” I asked, plucking at my dress. I brushed a few crumbs off my lap.
“We’ll figure out something.”
I looked at her. She was smiling at me, elbow pressed against the back of the couch, her head in her hand. She’d gathered all her hair into one bundle and draped it over her shoulder. I looked at the line of her neck.
“Stay the night,” she offered softly.
I opened my mouth to agree. “I can’t,” I said instead. “It wouldn’t…” I shook my head. “There are a lot of ghosts in my head,” I told her. “I need to get them out of the way.”
Marla opened her mouth. Closed it. Turned her hand into a fist and pressed it against her temple. “You’re absolutely sure?” she asked, but there was resignation in her eyes.
Say yes, something deep in my pressed. Just say yes. “The offer is wonderful,” I said. “Really.”
“It’s a kind letdown,” Marla said as she stood. Her skirt was creased from the waist to the hemline. She didn’t seem to notice, reaching out to lift me off the couch. The blanket fell off my shoulders, and I shivered a little.
“I can drive you home,” she offered.
“No,” I said, “that’ll just put us in a similar situation a half an hour from now.”
She smiled a little. “You’ve seen through my dastardly plan.”
“Well, I do write comic books.” I smiled when she chuckled. “I’ll get home all right.”
“Cab fare,” she pronounced as I bent to grab my shoes. “I won’t press you to let me get you home, but you have to let me send you with cab fare.”
“I’m not 1967 Aston Martin loaded, but I can handle cab fare,” I told her, pressing my hand against the arm of the couch for balance as I slipped on my heels.
“I’m giving you cab fare anyway,” Marla told me and before I could argue, she’d walked out of the room.
I considered arguing, but I grabbed my coat instead. I searched for my purse, found it on top of a stack of books. I lifted my purse, and three books fell off the stack. I crouched to pick them up, and my hand froze over one.
Black cover. Silver letters. Red page edges.
My stomach recoiled. I swallowed hard, grabbed the book more roughly than I needed, put it on top of another stack of books.
“Cab fare!” Marla crowed as she walked back into the room. She stopped a foot from me, looked me over. “You cried off your make up,” she told me, “but you look pretty good otherwise.”
“Thanks,” I said. I took the cab fare, stuck it in the pocket of my coat, titled my head back when she leaned in to kiss me.
“Call me if you want,” she said. “Over the weekend, I mean. If you’re bored.”
“I will,” I promised. “Can’t promise I’ll want to be around anyone.”
“That’s okay,” Marla said. “I’ll see you Monday no matter.”
I smiled a little, bone-deep tiredness suddenly settling into my body. “I suppose you will.”
Marla put a hand on my back, led me to the door. “I could see you to the lobby,” she said.
“I’ve got it,” I said, pushing my shoulders back. “I’ll see you Monday, if not before,” I told her and felt, suddenly, like I was leaving a business meeting.
Marla’s grin told me she’d caught my tone. “Goodnight, Miss Schwartz,” she said with a smirk.
“Goodnight, Miss Tinkerton,” I replied and walked out her front door.
The elevator took a small eternity to arrive. I considered turning around, knocking on Marla’s door until she answered, pushing myself against her and finding my way to her bedroom by her dragging me by the straps of my dress. And I thought of the other times I’d pulled something similar, sometimes with someone I cared about, sometimes with someone I didn’t. It always ended the same way: I woke up, felt like an idiot, and was awkward as hell until the other person finally threw up her hands and left me be.
I got on the elevator, pressed the button for the lobby and watched the little orange light glow at me until the doors opened on the ground floor. The doorman swung out the door as I was reaching for it.
“Cab, Miss?” he offered.
I considered taking the Monorail, just to spite the cab fare in my pocket. “Please,” I said, and I stayed under the awning as he stepped to the curb and looked around. It took three minutes, by my internal count, to flag down a cab. I spent it considering going back upstairs.
The cabbie was wearing a bright red stocking cap. The slightly uneven seam on the back told me it’d been hand made. “Where can I take you, Miss?” he asked.
I gave him my address, leaned back into the seat, tucked my coat firmly around me, and stared as the city went by in a string of street lights and Monorail stops. I gave the cabbie all the money in my pocket, not even checking to see how much it was, and I took the stairs to my apartment, feeling so tired I was certain I would fall asleep in the elevator.
I shed my coat, dress, and shoes in a pile next to my front door. My underthings I dropped at the door of my bedroom. I threw the comforter over my head, crawled up the bed from the foot, and dropped face-first into my pillow. I considered reviewing the evening, finding every place it had gone wrong, but I was asleep before I could get started.
1963 -- The Aftermath of the Sixth Raid
I didn’t go home for two days. I had cash in my pocket, enough to rent out a questionable motel room, and I stared there, television always on, waiting to hear some news. There was nothing. The local news gave no information about the search and arrest at the house. There were car accidents, a fire, someone’s missing dog, and nothing about Billie or I or her arrest by Agent Starling and Officer Gardner.
The comforter smelled of smoke and cheap detergent. I wrapped it around my shoulders like a cape, wore it at all times when I was in the motel room, leaving it draped over the rickety chair under the lamp in the corner when I had to leave for food.
I went home because I ran out of cash, and my wallet was, the last I’d seen it, on the desk in the office. I had enough change for the bus, swayed along with its rocking until it stopped three blocks from the house. I walked those blocks slowly, watching my feet on the sidewalk, stepping over the cracks. I only looked up when I heard someone else coming towards me, not wanting to have to talk to someone because I’d accidentally bumped their arm. When I turned onto our block, I looked up, staring at each house for a second before working the way down the line to ours.
It was still there, shell pink with dark green shutters. The mums I’d planted the spring before were bright orange against the slightly sickly-green of the lawn. The newspapers were still on the sidewalk; the neighbors were nowhere to be seen. It struck me as odd. They’d shown up for the big reveal, I thought, why weren’t they checking back for another show?
The front door was unlocked; it opened when I twisted the knob. I kept my eyes to the ground, stepped over the papers, and watched the latch slide into place before I turned around.
The house was clean. Slightly neater than before the police had shown up. I blinked, wondered if I was hallucinating. I spotted a piece of cream colored paper on the coffee table, walked over, picked it up. Sally’s looping ‘S’ and ‘L’ were the only text. I wondered if Wendy had helped her. Wondered how they’d known. It hadn’t been in the news; we hadn’t had plans to get together over the last two days. Had she just dropped by, I wondered, figured it out because she knew what the aftermath looked like.
The phone rang, the trill so loud in the house that I jumped. I ran for the kitchen, grabbed the receiver off the wall, wondered if, maybe, it was Billie. “Schwartz and Fraction residence,” I answered on automatic.
“Oh, thank god,” Sally’s voice sounded slightly hysterical. “I’ve been calling since I stopped by and saw the aftermath.”
“How did you-” I started to ask, but Sally talked over me.
“You’re okay, right? You and Billie?”
My throat closed. I swallowed hard, nearly choked myself trying to breathe. On the other end of the line, Sally cursed.
“Oh, honey,” she said. “Oh, Jules, stay put, okay? I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
I opened my mouth to tell her I was okay, that I’d cope, but she hung up in my ear. I put the receiver back on the cradle, and I looked around the kitchen, looked into the living room. I’d come home planning to use the cleaning to keep my mind occupied, and now I had twenty minutes with nothing to do. I considered writing, but I couldn’t remember anything that I’d been working on. The police probably had all my notes anyway, I thought. Probably thought it was all Billie.
When Sally showed up, I was sitting at the dining table, hands flat on the tabletop. I hadn’t thought of anything to do, so I’d sat down to wait. “Have you eaten?” she asked, and before I could answer she was in the kitchen, rattling around the icebox and coming out thirty seconds later with a cold sandwich and a glass of milk. “Eat it,” she ordered, the brisk note in her voice stolen from Wendy.
I ate. It was ham and cheese. It tasted like nothing. Sally watched me with sharp eyes, pushed the milk to me when the sandwich was finished, didn’t speak until I’d drunk it down in a dozen measured sips.
“What happened?” she asked quietly.
“They showed up,” I said. “They just…they showed up.” I thought about them knocking on the door, about the warrant. About Billie’s smile when she’d introduced herself. “They had her name on a warrant, knew where things were. I don’t know who did it. I don’t know who goes in the book.”
“That’s okay,” Sally said, her hand pressing against my arm. “We’ll figure that out later.”
“They got everything, I think,” I said. “Scripts and sketches and everything. They might come find you.”
“Don’t worry about me,” Sally brushed me off. “Where’s Billie, Jules?”
“They.” I stared at my milk glass. Stared at my plate. It had a cornflower pattern on the edge. Billie had bought me a full set for our first Christmas in the house, called me her Kansas flower and pecked me on the cheek. “They took her, Sally. I don’t.” I looked at her then, saw the hard determination in her face to make things right. “I don’t think she’s coming back.” Saying it out loud made it hurt. I balled up my hands, pressed them against my chest. “I think this is it.”
“Don’t say that,” Sally snapped. “You know better than to say that.” She stood, walked to the kitchen, lifted up the phone. “I’m calling Wendy,” she said. “I’m getting her over here to talk some sense into you.”
I watched her dial, watched her wait for the phone to get answered, watched her wrap the cord around her finger. She blanched suddenly, the cord unwound from her finger. “Excuse me?” she said into the phone. She looked at me, looked away. “I’m selling Bibles, Sir,” she said, her voice almost too low to hear. “I’m afraid I have no information, but I pray the Lord helps you and that woman.” She put the phone down like too much pressure would shatter it. She looked at me, her hand pressed against her throat. “That was a man named Agent Starling.”
“Oh, god,” I muttered. We stared at each other. I wanted to get up and comfort Sally, tell her it was all right. “Get out,” I told her. She stared at me. I stood up, and my chair clattered backward. “Get out, Sally. Run. That’s him. He’s the one-” My voice caught in my throat. Sally turned deathly white. “Go!” I yelled, and she jumped.
“But you-”
“They don’t know about me,” I said in a rush. “Billie did something. Lied somehow. They don’t know I’m involved.”
Sally went completely still. “What?” she asked. She was still pale. Her face wiped clean of color like she’d washed everything off of it with harsh soap. “What do you mean?”
“I mean they took me in, they asked me questions, and then they let me go. I don’t exist to them, Sally. But…” I shook my head, walked to her, grabbed her shoulders, gave her a hard shake. “They’re at Wendy’s,” I said as clear and sharp as I could. “And if they’re at Wendy’s, they’re probably heading towards you.” I tucked my arm under her elbow, dragged her with me to the bedroom. “Come on,” I said.
“What?” Sally asked. She blinked at me like an owl I’d once seen in the daylight. “What are you-”
“You’re about Billie’s size,” I explained. “And you’re about her color,” I added. “You can’t go back to your place.” I pushed Sally onto the bed, opened the closet, started grabbing Billie’s sweater sets. “There’s a suitcase under the bed,” I told her. “Get it.”
She blinked. “What?”
“Suitcase,” I barked. “Bed.” I turned away again, opened the dresser, heard Sally pull the suitcase from under the bed. When I turned back around, she was holding its handle, looking confused. The color was starting to come back to her face. “On the bed,” I told her, and she tossed the suitcase. It bounced slightly, and Sally immediately smoothed the wrinkles in the duvet.
I piled in Billie’s sweater sets, added her skirts, threw in a couple pairs of her shoes and even thought to grab a nightgown. I walked into the living room, plucked the keys to my car off the wall, walked back into the bedroom, and Sally was standing where I’d left her, staring at the open suitcase.
“I’m leaving, aren’t I?” She asked quietly.
“Yes,” I said. I pushed my keys into her hand, walked into the kitchen, reached to the back of the cupboard under the sink for a container of cleanser. I twisted off the bottom of the can and a stack of bills fell into my hand. I counted out four hundred, tucked back the rest, and walked back to the bedroom. Sally had snapped into action, closing the suitcase and pocketing my car keys. I handed her the money, forced her to curl her fingers around it when she tried to push it back at me. “You need it,” I insisted. I walked over, picked up the suitcase. “Take one of the hats,” I told her. “They’re on the top shelf. Get your hair under it. I’ll put the suitcase in the car in the garage, and I’ll get rid of your car later.”
“How?”
I didn’t know. “I’ll take care of it.” I turned to leave the room, and Sally put a hand on my arm.
“Jules, honey, this is too dangerous-”
“I’m evac,” I said before she could finish, before she could convince me not to help her so that I could have someone to wait with as everything fell apart. “You need to get out of here. It’s what I do.”
Sally shook her head. “Come with me,” she offered. “We’ll get out of here together.”
I thought about it, us driving down the highway with the top down on my car. Wind tangling my hair into one large knot. Sally twisting the radio knob as we cut across Kansas, static and the farm reports the only thing keeping us entertained, making up songs to the droning voices of the wizened men reading wheat prices. “I can’t,” I said after a moment that felt like a year. “If I leave town now, everything’s shit. They think I’m clear. I’ve got to keep that image up.”
Sally looked ready to argue. She bit the tip of her tongue between her teeth carefully. “All right,” she said. “Okay.” She turned to open the closet door. “I wonder what she did,” she said mostly to herself. “I wonder how she kept your name out of it.”
I didn’t answer, just hefted the suitcase and walked out the bedroom, through the living, through the kitchen, and out to the attached garage. I popped the glove box, tapped the button for the trunk, walked around the passenger side of the car and lifted in the suitcase. I pressed my hands against the trunk when I closed it, thought of Billie’s smile when she’d walked in one day and tossed me the keys.
“What the hell?” I’d asked, hands damp and soapy from doing dishes.
“It’s our anniversary,” she’d said. She’d leaned over, kissed me, laughed when I’d slid my wet fingers under the hem of her shirt. “I got you a present.”
I’d tried to fight her on it. “These are car keys.”
“Gee, I think they go to a car,” she’d teased. “No fighting,” she’d ordered. “I promise not to be so extravagant next year.”
I’d let her kiss my argument away, grabbed her hand, dragged her outside to let her watch my reaction to the cherry red Cadillac she’d bought me.
“Jules?” Sally was standing in the doorway of the garage, a wide-brimmed peach hat tied on her head. It had been one of Billie’s favorites, brought out the peaches in her complexion. “This one all right?”
I wanted to take it off her head. “It’s fine,” I said instead. I walked around the trunk to the driver’s side of the car. “Milady,” I said with an exaggerated bow. “Drive like you’re not being chased,” I said as Sally slipped into the driver’s seat, adjusted the position so she could fit comfortably. “Watch your speed. Drive a little bit fast, but no more than four or five miles over, okay?”
“Okay,” she said. She shut the door. The dull clang echoed in the garage. We looked at each other for a long moment. “I’m sorry, Jules,” Sally said in a whisper. It carried in the quiet of the garage. “I’m really sorry.”
I hugged her, brief and awkward, and then I stepped away. “Wait until I’m back in the house,” I ordered. “Count to thirty. The button on the dash will open the garage door. Back out towards the left and head right. Aim for the state line. Don’t call.”
“I’ll send a note,” she said. “Something bland.”
“Only when you’re over the line,” I said. “And keep heading over lines.”
Sally grinned, pained and sad. “I’ll try to hit Canada.”
“Stay in passable hotels,” I added because I didn’t want her to go. “If you stay somewhere broken down or busted, it’s going to look weird. The clothes and car are too nice.”
“Okay,” she said.
“Wait,” I told her, my palm facing her, nearly blocking her face in my vision. “Wait just a second.” I walked back into the kitchen, got the fake cleanser can again, dumped the rest of the money into my hand. I walked back out, leaned over the car to hand her the rest of the money.
“Jules, this is-”
“Get to Canada,” I said. “Don’t try. Just get there. They don’t have extradition for commies up there. I’ll give you a week, ten days on the outside.”
Sally put the money in her pocketbook, tilted her head so I could see her under the brim of Billie’s hat. “What’s my story?” she asked. “I need a story.”
Tears prickled the corners of my eyes. I wiped them away with a hard swipe to both cheeks. “You’re a lovely young woman,” I said. “Smart and beautiful, and you’re straight out of college, taking some time to see the country before you settle into a marriage or into a job. You’ve never seen the Northwest. You’ve heard it’s beautiful.”
“Rows and rows of trees,” Sally said. “Driving down a highway with a river flowing fast and gray along my side.”
“Like a loyal dog,” I added. “You want to see the mountains.”
“Fog on top in the early morning, burning off as the sun gets higher.” Sally turned away from me; I watched her wipe her eyes. “What’s the mountain outside Portland, Oregon?” she asked.
“Mount Hood,” I answered. “I want a postcard from Mount Hood.”
“Okay,” she said. She looked at me again, full in the face, eyes bright with tears she refused to cry. “You’re vapor, Julie Schwartz. Don’t let them catch you.”
“Do my damnnedest,” I promised. I took a step towards the kitchen. “It was great to work with you, Salvatora La Rocca.”
“You too, Julia Schwartz.”
I took the final step into the kitchen, lifted my right hand in a half-hearted wave. “I’ll save every postcard,” I swore. “Everywhere you stop, even for gas. You’ve got a best friend back home, a college pal.”
“Of course I do,” she said, and then she turned away from me, started the car.
I closed the kitchen door, leaned against it, listened to the garage door clack its way up, and then I listened to my car back out, Sally disguised as Billie, listened to the car purr it’s way down the street until it turned at the corner. I waited five minutes to glance out my front windows. There were no neighbors out. I stepped outside, locked the door behind me, unlocked Sally’s car and slid into the driver’s seat. I adjusted the seat so I could reach the pedals, slid the key into the ignition, and listened to the engine roll over smoothly. I put the car into gear, but before I could go forward, one of the neighbors popped out of her front door and waved me down like their was an emergency. I rolled down the window, put the car in park. Ignoring her and driving past would only garner attention. Her name was Mrs. Liefeld, she was the neighborhood gossip and hippie. She hadn’t seemed to ever put together that Billie and I were a couple, but she’d bugged us nevertheless, offering to “cleanse” the house of “bad energies” and wondering if we needed mirrors to let the bad chi bounce from our house.
“Oh, there you are. Did I just see Billie leave?” she asked me.
“Helllo, Mrs. Liefeld,” I greeted, injecting something like cheer into my voice. “Yes, you saw Billie leave.”
“I saw her get taken away by the police just the other day,” she said in the coy tone of neighborhood hedge chatterers around the world. “I just wanted to check that everything was all right.”
“Confusion,” I said and made myself chuckle. “There’s a William Fraction who was wanted by authorities for some sort of problem-I didn’t ask, obviously-and the person who wrote the warrant misspelled the name.”
Mrs. Liefeld gasped, hand to her mouth in a show of drama that almost made me rev the engine. “Oh, dear. She must have been terrified.”
“She was,” I told her. “She’s taking it as a sign to take a few weeks off.”
“Oh, that’s good,” Mrs. Liefeld told me. “It’s very important to pay attention to signs. Sometimes the universe shakes you up to get you to take some time to take care of yourself.” Mrs. Liefeld gave the sage nod of a hundred snake oil salesmen before her. “I wish you girls had stopped by and let me know; I’d have sent her away with some herbs to help soothe her. Or at least burned a bit of sage around her car to wave away the bad spirits.”
“I’ll let her know of your kindness when you write,” I promised her. “She’ll be wonderfully pleased.”
Mrs. Liefeld patted my arm. “You two are just the dearest girls.” She took a step backward from the car. “I’ll let you get about your errands.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I’ve got to get it to the shop before they close. There’s a terrible scratch on the other side, so I’m getting it painted.” I waited for her to ask whose car it was, who it was that had come into the house and if I’d left a guest alone, but she simply nodded, smiled, and walked back to her house.
“The thing that woman misses,” Billie had observed at one point, “Could fill a stack of a kids’ picture books.”
I pulled away from the curb, drove to a body shop across town, and told a story about the car being a gift from my husband, how he didn’t know the colors I liked and, honestly, how hard was it to get a man to understand the sentence, “Peach clashes with my hair.” The mechanics flipped between bored at my story and feeling sorry for my pretend husband. They promised to repaint it a respectable shade of blue and have it back to me within two days. I grabbed the title papers and registration from the glove box before I left, giving them a suspicious look, centering my gaze on their dirty hands. I’d be just another yelling housewife to them. If anyone asked, they could remember my tone, my shrill voice, but not who I was or how I looked.
Two days later, I picked up my newly power blue car and found a postcard waiting for me in the mailbox.
They’ve harvested everything in Kansas except the almost dead grass. Very boring drive.
--S
The ache in my chest, a twinge when I breathed too hard, lessened slightly. That was something, I thought.
I spent the rest of the week sitting in my house, looking at pictures and straightening things that had already been straightened. I tried to write something-letters, notes, grocery lists-when that didn’t work, I tried copying other writing. Virginia Woolf, Joyce Carol Oates, Dorothy Parker. I’d start at the first page, write three words, and then put down the pen, walk away, lay on the bed and force myself not to cry. It was no good, I thought. Waste of energy I might need for later.
Officer Gardner stopped by at the end of the week, knocking on the door like a travelling salesman. He was in his regular clothes, but he could have almost been in his uniform. The suit was dark blue, his shirt bright white, his tie a thin, dark red stripe, and his hat a gray wool fedora, clutched in his hands, the brim getting slightly wrinkled.
“Miss Schwartz,” he greeted me with a nod when I opened the door. “I wanted to see how you are.”
I looked at him, not quite understanding what I was seeing. “Mr. Gardner,” I said. His name was strange on my tongue, like eating the last pretzel in the bag, the extra salt making my tongue curl up like a dead slug before righting itself again. “Would you like to come in?” I asked automatically, stepped out of the frame of the door to let him in.
“Thank you,” he said, and he took the three steps to be over the threshold and away from the door so I could close it. He watched me close it. Watched me lock it. Looked around living room and dining area, and then he nodded like he’d made a decision. “I could get fired,” he said, looking at me again. “But you should know.”
I raised my eyebrows, crossed my arms. My week alone redusting knickknacks and washing my single plate, cup, and fork made me wary of anyone showing up to tell me anything. “Oh?” I asked.
Officer Gardner sat on the couch, rested his hat on my knee. “Pardon my lack of manners,” He said. “But it’s important.”
I sat across form him in the red leather chair that Billie always used to proofread scripts. I put my hands in my lap, crossed my ankles, tried to calm myself because he seemed to be on my couch to truly be helpful. “What is it?” I asked.
“Wendy Ellis has gotten grabbed,” he said. He looked down at his hat. He smoothed the brim with his fingers like smoothing the crust of a pie before pinching it. “She’s not coming back from it.”
I looked at him, the earnest lines of his face, the disappointment in his eyes. At what, I wondered. The law for taking Billie and Wendy, or the fact that he came and told me, violating at least the rule about talking about an open investigation. I watched him watch me for a moment, wanting to make him say more. “Why?” I asked finally. “Why isn’t she coming back from it?”
He looked at me, and his eyes got very, very sad, the edges of his mouth turning down to match the way he squinted, the way men always did when they didn’t want you to know they were about to cry. “Billie.” He stopped. Cleared his throat. Rubbed his hand over the back of his mouth. “Billie gave her up,” he pushed out. He looked down at his hat. “Billie threw her to the wolves,” he said to his hat.
I sat very, very still. Thought moving might break apart the last of my reserve. I looked at Guy, staring at his hat. I looked at the thin red stripe of his tie. “Gave her up?” I asked. My voice was hoarse like I’d just finished screaming. “What do you mean?”
Guy looked at me, eyes sliding from sadness to pity. “You know,” he said. “You know what I mean.”
“Tell me,” I demanded. “Tell me.”
“Billie told Agent Starling that Wendy was the mastermind behind your series of speaks. She told him all the locations, and she made it clear that Wendy was the one who organized it all.”
The shock landed in my stomach as lightly as a feather. I could feel it tickling my insides, waiting for me to respond, waiting for me to do something. “Why?” I finally asked. “Why would she do that?”
“I could only speculate,” Guy said, but his eyes said he had a solid, proven answer.
“So speculate,” I snapped, the shock wearing off for a moment to let some bite in my tone. “Why would she do that?”
“Agent Starling threatened to bring you back in,” Guy said quietly. “He said he was going to drag you back in, make Billie watch as he charged you with aiding and abedding, prove that you’ve been doing it for years, make the sentence stick so hard you’d be locked up for at least a couple of years.”
I blinked, breathed in, watched Guy look away from my face again, pick invisible lint from the knee of his trousers. “What about the rest?” I asked. “What about my scripts, my involvement?”
“He can’t do anything with it,” Guy said, looking at me again. “Believe me, Miss Schwartz, Agent Starling would love to get you for writing the books, but he can’t prove anything. It’s all Billie on the books. Billie and the other one. Sally.”
I looked him straight in the eyes. “Sally who?”
He smirked a little. “Come on, now,” he said. “You know Sally La Rocca, and you know I’m not out to get any of you locked away.”
“Yeah,” I said. I deflated, let my shoulders slump forward. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he said with sincerity. “But where is she?” he asked, and I could tell it was curiosity, not him trying to get a lead. “We served the warrant on her house, and there’s no one there. Her car’s gone.”
“I don’t know where she is,” I told him, and it was enough honesty I didn’t feel bad. “Haven’t heard from her in nearly a week.”
“She must have known it was getting hot,” Guy said. “Must have sensed it coming.”
“Maybe,” I agreed. I felt tired suddenly. The whole week I’d been waiting, trying to write, and I was waiting for this, I knew, this bad news. I stood up, fought back a yawn, looked out the front window. People were out and walking around, children playing kickball in the cul de sac, mothers chatting as they pushed strollers, men mowing their lawns and trimming their hedges. They had no idea a world was ending, I thought. They didn’t see the explosion. I was all that was left, I thought. The only one to save everything, tucked into a capsule with a blanket. “I need to be alone,” I told Guy. “I need to…”
He stood up before I could figure out what I needed to do. He gave me a tight smile, the sadness coming back to his yes. “I’m sorry I had to tell you,” he said, “but I thought you should know before it shows up in the papers.”
“Thank you,” I said with as much genuine appreciation as I could dig up. I was appreciative. The way he’d treated me, his kindness on the day of the arrest, I knew he was a genuine person. “You’re a good man, Officer Gardner,” I told him. “I want you to know I think so.”
“Thank you,” he said with a nod. “I’m sorry, Miss Schwartz,” he said again, and he let himself out.
I sank onto the couch, put my head in my hands, wondered how. How could Billie give up Wendy? It was inconceivable. She knew what happened when you ratted.
But who would write her name in the book, I wondered. Wendy was going to prison, no doubt, and Sally was out of town. The only person left to write anything was me. I stared across the room, at the portraits of Billie and I. I looked at the dining table, where I had a pen and paper laid out. I walked over to them, picked up the pen and weighed it in my palm. It was a fountain pen, dove grey, a gift from my mother when I graduated college.
“You’ll write the great American novel, honey,” she’d told me. “You should have a pen worthy of it.”
“Or grade papers with it,” my father had added.
I had watched my mother shush him, amazed. She’d never shushed him. She had always apologized for him, or laughed him off. I had looked at her again, paying closer attention than I had in years, and I had realized that my mother, quiet and mousy and very 1950s, held onto hope that I wouldn’t be her. I had wondered when that had happened.
I pressed the pen to the paper, watched a small blotch of ink get bigger and bigger. I dropped the pen, let it clatter on the table top, roll onto the floor and rest against the baseboard.
I'm gonna break 70k today. Um...wow.