Grace (14 page)

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Authors: T. Greenwood

BOOK: Grace
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And so she went to Zappos next, found a pair of flip-flops with fake turquoise along the straps. She went to Old Navy for some new shorts, Target for four brand-new beach towels. She calculated the total in her head, but the numbers felt abstract; and really, weren't they? Numbers, just numbers. One hundred, two hundred. Three hundred. By the time she got to the Disney website and started looking at travel packages, she realized she'd been holding her breath. And when Carly came in, Elsbeth almost swooned as she stood up from her seat.
“Morning!” Carly said. Carly had just graduated from high school but was taking a year off to save money for college. Elsbeth liked to listen to her talk about her plans.
“Morning.” Elsbeth smiled. “I was just doing some shopping.”
Carly threw her purse underneath the reception desk and sighed. “Oh, I never buy anything online. I don't trust the Internet. Identity theft. All that.”
“Really?” Elsbeth said. This wasn't anything she'd ever thought about before. “You mean like somebody stealing your credit card number?”
“No, I mean like stealing your whole life. My cousin in Rutland got her identity stolen. Screwed up her credit. She can't even get a car loan now. Somebody in Idaho got a hold of her numbers and went crazy.”
“That's awful,” Elsbeth said. “But that doesn't really happen very often, does it?”
“She says it happens all the time.”
All day long, while she cut and colored hair, while she shampooed and blew-dry and swept up all that discarded hair, Elsbeth thought about somebody stealing her life. About somebody slipping in through the cracks in cyberspace and taking her identity. Stealing her name, her money, her credit. Then she pictured that poor sucker, thinking they were stealing something good and winding up with this. Her debt, her bad credit, her worries, her life.
Go on and take it,
she thought.
I dare you.
Then she thought about the life she might steal, as if it were something that might just be hanging on a rack at Walgreens. She pictured herself browsing the shelves, choosing from the shiny selections in their glossy packages. She felt the tug and thrill as she slipped the new life in her pocket, as she carried its weight next to her hip. She felt it shift and wriggle inside as she made her way through the security detector, across the threshold and out into the world outside.
When she got back from her lunch break, she was surprised to see a man sitting in her chair. Most of her clients were women, and most of her clients knew enough to wait in the plastic chairs by the front door.
She raised her eyebrow at Carly. “What's he want?” she whispered.
“I'm guessing a haircut,” she said, not looking up from her magazine.
Elsbeth took a deep breath and put on a smile as she made her way to her station. “Hi there,” she said, and the man spun himself around. “Can I help you?”
“I hope so,” he said. He had cocoa-colored skin, probably mixed, Elsbeth thought; he reminded her of a guy Twig dated once who had a white mother and a Jamaican daddy. But this man's eyes were bright, bright blue. It was startling, that combination of dark and light. He looked to be about her age or so. His legs were long, and his fingers were also long when he reached out his hand to shake hers.
“My name's Wilder,” he said.
“That your first name or your last name?” Elsbeth asked, going to the sink and setting down her soda that she'd brought back from lunch.
“First. Montgomery's my last.”
“You're not from Two Rivers,” Elsbeth said. Of this she was certain.
“Well, technically, I am,” he said, his slow mouth creeping to a smile.
Elsbeth scowled. “Two Rivers is a small town. I think I know pretty much everybody from around here.”
The man spun around to face the mirror and studied his reflection. Elsbeth stood behind him doing the same. He was good-looking.
Really
good-looking. She felt herself blush and then a hot rush of guilt.
“You cut black hair before?” he asked.
“Sure,” she said, though this was a lie. But really, how hard could it be? His hair was only about a quarter inch long all around. She pulled her clippers out.
“You want a shampoo too?” she asked.
“Why don't you give me the whole treatment,” he said, his reflection smiling at hers.
“Sure thing,” she said and was grateful to get to work.
After she was finished and she'd removed the bib from around his neck, he stood up and reached in his pocket for his wallet. “You can just pay the receptionist,” Elsbeth said.
“Well, I'd like to tip you,” he said, handing her a five. “And this is my card. I'm hoping I might take you out for coffee and ask you some questions.”
Elsbeth opened her eyes wide. She didn't wear her wedding band to work because she was so afraid of losing it in one of the sinks, but she was also pretty sure she hadn't done anything to give this guy any ideas. She could feel her skin grow hot, the tips of her ears burning. She self-consciously pulled her hair over her hot ears. “Some questions about what?” she asked.
“About Two Rivers, actually. I was born here.”
“So?” she said. “Lots of people were born here and don't ask to take me out to coffee to talk about it.”
“I mean
here,
” he said, gesturing across the street. “My father lived upstairs in that building. And his wife's father owned this shop. I think that might be her right there,” he said, walking to the photo of the girl, Betsy Parker, on the wall.
“No kidding! But you don't look ...” She felt herself blush again.
“I'm kind of adopted,” he said. “I'm a journalist, but I'm working on a memoir. I'm here doing some research. It's a long story, but pretty great actually. I'll tell it to you if you meet me for coffee.”
She glanced at the card in her hand: W
ILDER
M
ONTGOMERY,
R
EPORTER,
T
HE
T
AMPA
T
RIBUNE.
Her hands trembled.
“You're the owner, right? Babette?” He gestured to the glowing neon sign.
She felt herself nodding despite herself. “Babette,” she said. Babette, the real Babette, was on her annual trip to visit her brother in Colorado.
“I'm staying over at the Econo Lodge,” he said. “The one near the interstate?”
She looked at the business card again. “You live in Florida,” she said, her heart beating hard in her chest.
He smiled again, his eyes blue, blue, blue. “That's right. The Sunshine State.”
O
n Tuesday afternoon, Kurt stared at the stack of bills on his desk in the shop. When he first took over the shop for Pop, he'd been on top of everything. He paid the business's bills as they came in, actually feeling a sense of accomplishment each time he signed his name to one of the long business checks in the ledger he kept in the bottom drawer. Now his throat grew thick and his legs itched whenever he pulled the monstrous book out. The custom checks that had once seemed official and professional now just struck him as oversized and pretentious.
Kurt's phone buzzed in his pocket. The shock of it was like a Taser. He'd just hung up with Elsbeth and wasn't expecting a call.
“Pop?” he said.
“I need you to come by.”
“Jesus, what for, Pop?”
“Now don't get your tit in a wringer,” he said. “I just need some help making sense of these papers.”
“What papers, Pop?”
“Love letters from some lady at the county.”
“Oh shit, Pop.”
From what he could gather, Irene Killjoy, the lady from the county, had come at the crack of dawn that morning with papers. Not a condemnation sign, yet, thank God, but a letter signed by every neighbor within a mile radius of Jude's house, except for Maury Vorhies, who had apparently refused to sign. Theresa Bouchard had spearheaded the campaign and gone to the county, letters in hand. The cleaned-up yard and porch had apparently gone unnoticed, but the raccoons under the porch and the possible rat infestation had not. Neither had the three inoperable, unregistered vehicles in the yard nor the exposed electrical panel where the siding had rotted away. And as a result of the complaints, the county had sent out inspectors, who had quickly come up with a list of thirty-five health and fire code violations.
Kurt dialed the number Pop had read to him and listened as Miss Killjoy primly answered the phone.
“It's uninhabitable,” she said to Kurt. “It poses a serious danger to public safety.”
“It's a private residence,” Kurt said. “It's not a danger to anyone except for my father.”
“Then you certainly must at least be concerned about his health and welfare.”
Kurt felt like he'd been kicked in the stomach. “Of course I am
concerned
. Jesus Christ,” he said.
“
Mr. Kennedy, please
. The reality is your father's home is in violation of multiple building codes, including the presence of numerous fire hazards,” she said. “At this point, it's become a risk not only to your father but to the public as well.”
“We'll get it cleaned up, but I need some time. I'm trying to run a business,” Kurt said. He looked around at the sad shop, at that awful checkbook ledger.
“Listen, I understand your plight, Mr. Kennedy. And we only want what is best for your father. We can certainly send in some of the residents at the detention center, if you'd like. We frequently use opportunities like this for the inmates to fulfill their community service requirements.”
The hair on Kurt's arms bristled. “You're going to send
prisoners
into my father's home? What kind of harebrained plan is that?”
There was silence at the other end of the line.
“Sir, we'll be sending the inspectors out again in thirty days. If these violations are not corrected, the county is going to take matters into its own hands. I would really consider this as an option.”
Kurt considered the list of violations Pop had read off to him. He closed his eyes and imagined the inside of his father's house. It would take an army to get the place emptied out, cleaned up, and brought up to code in thirty days. He wondered if there were any legal loopholes they might find. Like he had money for a lawyer, and calling Billy again would just about kill him.
He tried to think about who he could ask for help. There were Nick and Marty; they'd practically been like brothers to Kurt when he was growing up. They'd both lay down their lives for him if he asked them to. But neither of them knew about Pop, about how bad things had gotten. He'd be so ashamed for them to see the kind of squalor Pop was living in. There were a couple of guys Pop went hunting with, a few men from his old bowling league, but cleaning up some old man's crap was hardly on the list of favors Kurt felt comfortable asking for. He didn't want to involve Elsbeth, so that left him and Trevor. And, hopefully, Maury, who, at least, had been a contractor before he retired. If Beal could watch the shop for a bit, they could get in there and clean. He could get a Dumpster in, though the rental alone would set him back $500 or more. And never mind the problem of what to do with Pop. They would never get that shit hole cleaned out with Pop monitoring their every move. He'd practically thrown a tantrum over a box of his mother's old
Ladies' Home Journals
that were rotting out on the porch.
They had thirty days.
Thirty days
.
He thought about the piles and piles of papers and trash, the mountains of debris teetering on all the flat surfaces of his father's house, and wondered if he was fooling himself. What he needed to do was to call Billy. There had to be a way to get an extension on the county's deadline, and Billy was the only lawyer he knew. But asking Billy to help with Pop would be like asking the pope to perform an abortion. Billy had left Two Rivers and never looked back. And the last time Billy and Pop had been in the same room, Pop had nearly killed him.
Kurt crouched down under the counter and opened the safe. After he spun the knob, listening to the tick, tick of the lock, he leaned his forehead against the cool metal. The thin envelope marked
Emergency
seemed to mock him. He'd been saving cash, just a bit here and there for years now, since Trevor was born. Five dollars here and there, every now and then a ten spot. He never counted it; vowed never to dip into it. It was his entire life savings. It was not to be touched. The currents in his legs were angry, but he stayed crouching, clutching the envelope, allowing the pain to travel up his legs, across his stomach, and into his shoulders. He held the envelope in his hands, shook his head, and shoved it back in the safe. By the time he finally stood up again, he felt like the wind had been knocked out of him.

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