No Footprints (6 page)

It was. Crosstown traffic was light and, miracle of all miracles, I found a parking spot on Filbert. Better yet, the address was not one of those apartment buildings set up to keep out strangers, but a duplex with doors at the top of the stairs and L Young's name big as life on the mail slot. I hesitated a moment, trying to tamp down my hopes, to ignore the fear that
she'd be gone, on her way to carry out her threat, then braced myself and pushed the bell. It wasn't just a question of whether she was home. After all, L Young could be a man—a single initial in the listing often meant that—or—

But she wasn't. Louise Young was a middle-aged African American woman in her bathrobe, a woman who eyed me, realized I was not the UPS driver, and was disappointed.

Nowhere near as crushed as I was. Before she could close the door I said, ‟Do you have a roommate? I'm looking for a white woman about my height, dark hair, chin-length, thin. She bikes. She—”

‟I wish I had time for friends.”

‟She had your phone number. Are you a therapist or—”

‟I've got a one-year-old and a three-year-old. They
are
my work.” A screech came from inside. She shot a glance back. ‟Your friend could be next door and I wouldn't notice her. Sorry.” She shut the door.

I walked back to the Jeep, got in, and slammed the door. A full hour wasted and I was no closer to my jumper. I—

‟Don't complain!” Leo once told me that, not as a chide but as an instruction. His intention hadn't been merely to save my companion from a rant or a whine—he'd meant: Don't complain in your mind. Don't underwrite illusion.

So, I focused on getting the vehicle back to Nellen before he finished with the Honda I'd be taking to Berkeley.

But the Honda wasn't ready.

This was turning into one helluva day—a day that made not complaining a challenge.

Without much hope I headed on foot for the resale shop.

The Women's Building is a hundred-year-old Mission Revival–style former gymnasium, built by German exercise enthusiasts. It boasts rounded
windows, great, colorful murals on the exterior walls, and rental space inside. Women Re-entering was on the ground floor.

Inside two women were sorting clothes. Me, I love secondhand shops. Each one has its own style. My preference is vintage, theatrical, or just weird. But this one looked more conservative—good clothes, the kind worn by the steadily employed.

‟We're closed. Unless you're donating.” A large blond woman in a sweatshirt she couldn't have given away even here nodded toward a table.

Women Re-entering!
Now I remembered hearing about this place. ‟So you help women prepare for job interviews?”

‟And jobs. Gotta wear something to work before the first check, you know. No one thinks of that.”

‟Looks like you did.”

‟Times like these, it's tough. Thought we might . . . but no. That's a nice jacket.”

My standby black jacket. I laughed. ‟Lucky, huh? What do you do—guilt people on the street?”

‟We get the word out. You don't work in this neighborhood or you'd know. You'd be planning to give us that jacket. You're wearing it with jeans—worn jeans. It's not your only jacket, like it will be to the woman who gets it. Other people've given a lot more.”

‟Really? Recently? Like this week? Did a woman about my size give you a lot this week?” My jumper went to the trouble of writing down their phone number! Why else would she do that?

The blond woman looked at me quizzically.

‟I'm taking that as a yes.”

‟Okay. A big honking yes. See that table, one woman gave us the whole lot.”

I started toward it.

‟Hey, what d'you think you're doing?” She all but tackled me.

‟I'm not trying to take it. I just need to find her.”

‟You can't root through her stuff. There's a reason women want to give us their clothes and it's not because we let strangers go through their pockets. You ever give us anything? Would you if you thought someone off the street would be pawing through it to see if you'd forgotten a credit card receipt, a note from a lover who's maybe not your husband, a—”

‟Whoa! I get your point. But look, I'm not nosing into her private life; I'm trying to find her.”

‟I don't—”

‟It could be a matter of life and death.”

‟Could be? Is it?”

I hesitated. ‟I can't take the chance of it not being.” For the first time she seemed unsure. I said, ‟Tell me her name.”

Still, she didn't commit.

I unbuttoned my jacket.

She grinned, put out a hand for it, and said, ‟Tessa.”

‟Tessa what?”

‟We don't require last names here. She didn't care about the tax receipt, so no need. Anyway, you're not going to find her. She gave us the clothes because she was leaving town.”

I eyed the pile. ‟Looks like her whole closet.”

‟That's what she said; said she had nothing but the clothes on her back.”

‟Which were?”

‟I don't know. Nothing that stood out.”

‟White T-shirt and black slacks?”

‟Don't remember.”

‟Red jacket?”

‟Not a chance.”

I slipped off my own jacket. ‟Tell whoever gets this that it may not look like much but it's my good luck garment. I got my first job back in town wearing it.”

The woman smiled. ‟You know, most people come in here with a bag or two. They're concerned about a tax write-off or they're not. They're happy to help, or just glad to dump. But she looked at that brown dress over there, like she was dropping a puppy at the pound. She held on to it so long I said—and this isn't like me—I said, ‛We'll still be here next week. You've got time to think it over.' She said no, she didn't. But she was still holding it. Then she said, ‛I was wearing it at the happiest moment of my life.'”

‟Surely you asked . . . ”

‟I make it my business not to pry.”

‟But this time?”

‟Well, yeah, okay. I could tell she wanted to tell me or I wouldn't have pried, you understand.”

Thank God!
‟And?”

‟What she said didn't make sense. Except to her. I mean, that dress, it's nothing special, right? It's a wear-to-work-on-Wednesday kind of dress, right? But something happened that Wednesday—”

‟When?”

‟Last week, maybe the week before? Meaning, recently. Something happened in that dress. What she said was that up till the call she never really believed it would happen. Then she smiled the way you do walking down the aisle, put down the dress, and left.”

‟Do you have any idea—”

‟None. Look, I hear so many hard stories, I'm just happy to have a moment like that. More power to her wherever she is.”

‟Which is where?”

‟Dunno.”

‟Didn't she give you some clue? Mention the street she lived on? Her job? Something?”

‟No. Like I said, I don't pry. Don't want to know.”

‟It's important. Life and death, really. She had your phone number in her pocket. Do you remember a call?”

She shook her head. ‟The phone's just for giving out information. We keep the phone ringer off. Don't take messages. You call here, you get our address, our hours, if we need one type of garment, like winter coats. That's it. But listen, I hope you find her. I really do.”

I gave her my card. ‟If you see her, call me.” That was all I could do.

I walked out onto the sidewalk, so distracted, so frustrated I nearly smacked into a guy pushing a cart. She was gone, my jumper. My only ‟clue” and it'd turned out to be nothing. Now I was never going to find her. A first name is nothing. Tracking down this phone number was nothing. Why did she even write it down, much less fold up the paper to almost a toothpick and make the number halfway impossible to read?

I turned west on 18th Street, back toward the set. I'd had a temp job a block over a couple months ago.

Did she actually use it as a sort of toothpick? A wedge, maybe? Because the paper was stiffer than normal.

The paper!

I grabbed my phone. ‟Mike, the paper!” I wished I had it in my hand now. But I could see it in my mind: white with pale blue lines, stiffer than normal but not thicker. ‟You know what it could be? It's a pay slip—the part you tear off from your check. Like the ones from PayRite.”

‟What makes you think—”

‟Stunt gigs don't pop up every day. Temp work does, or mostly. I've answered phones, typed, filed, clerked, and occasionally even waited tables.
A lot of businesses contract out their payroll, even if it's only one or two people on staff. Gary does it for his law office. They don't want to spend time thinking about tax deductions, much less worry about IRS forms.”

‟So? Where does that get us?”

‟Is there any number on it? Employee number?”

‟Two eight seven one five.”

‟Too long. No small company has that many workers. It'd have to be the employer number. Thanks. Later.” I hung up, pulled up a number for PayRite, and called. I'd taken a lot of no's for answers this morning but I wasn't about to now.

‟PayRite.”

‟Customer records, please.” When I got a woman there, I said, ‟I'm customer number two eight seven one five. I think you've got our address wrong. We're having a problem—Well, just tell me what address you're using for us.”

She put me on hold before coming back with: ‟Forty Cunningham.”

‟Thanks, you've been a big help,” I said. A big, but not total help. Now the question was, where was Cunningham? But that's what smartphones are for.

Hoping Nellen would have the Honda ready to go, I headed back to Dolores, where the crew would be packing away the last of our props and markers, the detritus of all our wasted work on the set.

I was a block away when a horn honked.

Macomber Dale, in a black Mercedes convertible, pulled to the curb.

Waves break, roll to shore. Cold, so cold. Is this what it is to be dead?

But she's not dead. She remembers, now, the night: peddling, coasting, riding till she was too tired to go on, ending up out here beyond the Great Highway at the edge of the Pacific. Trying to dig a cave in the dune. Too tired. Sleeping against the front wheel. Cold then, but so very tired. And yet, alive! Her skin tingles. Alive!

The thick layers of fog are less dark—morning.

It's different from last night. No euphoria now. Cold. Shivering cold.

What to do? She reaches into her pocket, pulls out a torn tissue. No money.

Nothing's changed. She should ride back to the bridge now, before—but it's already too late to beat the morning joggers. She'd climb over the rail and just get pulled back every hour like one of those bobbing birds on a cocktail glass. She starts to laugh, picturing it.

Hungry. Her stomach pushes in on itself and she sits, feeling that emptiness, feeling the cold,
feeling
.

Tonight she'll go back to the bridge. But not now. Not yet. She'll go back if she can make herself.

She has to. If there were any other way . . .

There isn't. She's been through it a hundred times. She made her choice. This is how it has to be.

She could have jumped last night. Then, it was just leaving the bike and climbing over the railing. But now everything on the ride back there will be linked to the rail. The whole trip across the bridge will be part of it. Tonight, it'll be so much harder. If there were just another way—

She can't go home. She can't even buy food. She can ride in the fog, or ride inland in the sun.

But, she sits. She watches the waves ease in, break into lace, to froth. Whoops! They're yanked back out. The process is so much more intricate, fascinating than she'd ever noticed. She doesn't mind the cold or the hunger, she is so grateful to be here. To sit here, like a clump of beach grass. To be.

Maybe she really is beyond the Great Highway. The world thinks she's dead. The only person on earth who knows she didn't is that woman, and she has no idea of her name. She
could
be dead. Everything's set up for it. Tessa Jurovik could be no more.

Death has been described as stepping through a door. The door closed on Tessa Jurovik, and now, it's opening to the new room, the new life, a new woman. A free woman. No food, no money, no place to stay. Free!

She feels the lump in her pocket, pulls out a slim cell phone, and laughs. The last connection.
Bad connection.
But this is one connection that'll be easy to break. It wasn't even her phone, not till the last couple days anyway. She walks toward the water. The water arcs and crashes, not in big waves here, but hard, so much harder than it seemed when she looked down from the bridge. She remembers the chocolate-colored water, how warm and soft it looked from up there. A shiver shoots through her. She could never face that again.

But she doesn't have to. She shifts the phone in her hand, ready to throw it into the water and be free for good.

There's a message.

Here she is at the pivotal moment in her life, her new life, and there's a phone message!

Bye, bye, message! She arcs her arm back.

It's not even her phone.

She inhales the briny air and readjusts her arm.

It's stupid, irresponsible, not to check the message. But she can't bear to undercut her freedom. She's afraid—

She's afraid.

Afraid to read it, afraid to throw the phone away. She hates it for robbing her of the wonder of just being. But she can't bring herself to toss it into the water. She's not that brave. She shoves it back in her pocket and plunks down on the sand.