Past Perfect (39 page)

Oh, that’ll be great, running down her endless cobblestone driveway in a pair of sandals in the blackest part of night. And if Maria comes chasing after me with her flashlight with its eternal-life battery or, worse, in her car with the headlights on high beam, I’m as good as dead. No, just dead. But maybe her battery has died after all. I haven’t seen its arcing light in … How should I know? It’s too dark to see my watch.

I’ve got to get to her car. When I first heard her get out of it and start calling for me as she moved around the house to the back … Did I hear the door actually shut? I can’t remember. Now, still crouched down, I rush from my car to hers. I probably look like Groucho Marx. The driver’s door is open a few inches, as if she’d already been running and didn’t wait to see if it closed. I grope along the dashboard, past the steering wheel. The key. Oh my God, it’s in the ignition! But the inside light isn’t on, so maybe the battery had died. But I’m getting in. I don’t care. I’ll lock all the doors. What if the car won’t start? She’ll come out with a shotgun, blast me, and tell the police she caught me trying to steal the car. Wait, I know, I’ll —

Dear God, she’s here! Right behind me, grabbing hold of my hair with both her hands, nails slicing into my scalp just before she clenches her fists. I’m screaming like I’m the crazy one. She’s not making a sound. What’s she going to do? I grab her wrists but her arms are so drenched with sweat I can’t get a grip. “Please, Maria, please just listen. Please.” Amazingly, she eases up but my hair is still in her clutches, so much so that my head is pulled back at a horrible, throat-baring angle. I try to remember all the research I did on hand-to-hand combat for Spy Guys, all the martial arts people who came to coach Dani and Javiero, but my mind is too overcome by terror to do any remembering. “Listen to me,” I plead, “I have information — ”

“Shut up!” All my life, I’ve seen movies with evil characters or crazy characters, but I’ve never heard a voice so harsh, so filled with hate. “Give me Ben’s home address,” she orders, “and don’t tell me you don’t know it!”

I don’t. Yet before I can even say a word, she’s pushing my head forward. I’m almost doubled over. What’s she— She’s trying to smash my head against the car. I shout, “Thirty-seven Lincoln Street,” praying that sounds Washingtonian enough to satisfy her. Maybe. For now, she seems to have stopped trying to crack open my skull, but that doesn’t seem cause enough for optimism.

“Corner?” She demands. Corner? I think stupidly. “What’s the cross street?”

Does she think I’m fucking MapQuest? “I don’t know,” I cry. “It’s in Georgetown.”

And now she’s at it again. My head bangs against the driver’s window. Not too hard, but now she’s doing it again and— She stops. A horrible coughing fit. I crash my elbow backward into her ribs, except her ribs aren’t there because that second she lets go, she’s coughing so hard— What kind of person doesn’t cover her mouth when she coughs? I pull open the door of her car some more. If I can get in fast enough and lock it, at least I’ll have some temporary protection.

She’s moving again, and grabs me, but this time all she’s got is the front of my shirt. Either it’s close to dawn or my eyes are getting used to the darkness, but I can see her now. Her face shines with sweat, her breathing is labored. The heat from her hand grasping my shirt burns into my chest. “Maria, just listen for a second. Did Lisa inject you with anything? Or maybe give you something to eat or drink? Because if she did, it might be what she gave Manfred, and I can tell you — ”

“Shut up!” She’s shaking me, and the strength of that one arm is incredible. My head is bubbling back and forth. She shrieks, “You’re all so stupid it makes me sick!”

I would think, Great, I’ve engaged her in conversation. That’s what you’re supposed to do in hostage situations to remind the crazy person of your humanity, but the crazy person has let go of my shirt only to reach for my throat with both hands. A prayer, I have to say a prayer before—

Wait, that martial arts guy, Bob, Bob Wyatt, who taught Dani how to land a punch. He kept after her about… What? Aligning the hand, wrist, and arm so the force gets transmitted up the entire arm into the body, some law of physics. Except her hands are around my neck and her thumbs are pressing into my —

I raise my knee and kick her with all my might where I’d kick a guy in the balls and she’s so surprised, maybe hurt, that for a second she drops her hands and— align, align — I punch. And it’s like something on Spy Guys: She drops to the ground. Except not slowly like on the show, just klonk! she’s down. The side of her head hits the cobblestone and actually makes a sound and I feel sick. I realize it’s not a knockout punch because she’s moaning, but I’m in her car.

Turn key, engine starts. I put it in drive and I’m careening down the cobblestones, trying to close the door at the same time. I don’t care, I will not stop and put on my seat belt. I will not look in the rearview mirror. I don’t want to see her picking herself up, rubbing her head, then running to get the keys to my rented car.

There could be a car chase. I grew up in the city. I’m not the world’s greatest driver. Did they have an autobahn in East Germany? I’m off her driveway now, onto Plantation Way, and I floor it. Her pink tote bag is on the passenger seat, but I will not check if her cell phone is in it so I can call Adam. I will not put on the headlights or step on the brake unless it’s absolutely necessary. All I can do is drive.

I DID NOT FLY HOME into Adam’s arms. That was because as I turned off Plantation Way and resumed going seventy-five miles per hour, two thoughts hit me. Number one was that I was driving a stolen car. I slowed to fifty-five and began checking the rearview mirror every ten or twenty seconds. Number two was that there was no point heading for the Tallahassee airport because my only photo ID — my driver’s license — was in my wallet, which was in my handbag, which was probably in Maria Schneider’s house. There was no point going to the Delta Airlines counter and sobbing out an elaborately crafted tale about a stolen handbag. At that very moment, Maria could be on the phone with the police filing a complaint that I committed God knows what crime. Unlikely, but I couldn’t risk it.

Her gas tank was nearly empty. I pulled into a vacant lot behind a lumberyard and picked up her tote bag. Lots of used tissues, so I pulled down the sleeve of my shirt to go through it. Orange stuff, what appeared to be many smashed-up Cheez Doodles. Six dollars and change in a purse. Visa and American Express cards, which I didn’t dare use. Her cell phone was there, but when I turned it on, it signaled “low battery” and died.

Somehow I found my way to a service station near the main highway and asked a truck driver which was closer, Miami or Atlanta. He looked like a guy who would have chuckled under normal circumstances. But I noticed he was checking out my scratches. I realized how awful I must look when he asked, with a gentleness I hadn’t previously associated with vast numbers of tattoos, “Do you need any help?”

“I’m all right. Thanks, though.”

“If you’re in trouble, I can give you some money to tide you over.”

He wore a dark green uniform with short sleeves. Right above his shirt pocket was an embroidered logo, BOSTON STREET ICED TEA, in block letters, each letter a different color, deliberately friendly. The name tag on the pocket said Andrew William Turner. I thanked him profusely and told him I’d been camping and stumbled into some brambles — a scenario that would surprise no one who knew me. Still, I didn’t think Andrew Turner bought it.

“Do you need money?” he asked. I wouldn’t have even thought about my seventy dollars and credit cards currently residing at Maria’s until I was faced with paying for gas. “I think … I need money for gas. That’s all.” He reached into the pocket of his green cotton slacks and pulled out a wallet, its leather cracked with age. He opened it and pulled out three twenties. As an afterthought, he handed me another ten.

“I don’t have words enough to thank you,” I told him. I began to cry, but added, “If you give me your address, Mr. Turner, I’ll get the money back to you right away.”

“No need.”

“Really, I—”

“Do unto others …” he said. Then he added: “I bet you any amount of money that you’re the kind of girl who would do this for someone.”

“Yes, I would.” I wiped my eyes with the points of my shirt collar. “Sorry. It was a rough night.”

“I figured. Now Atlanta is closer than Miami by a lot. You basically want to go 1-75 north.” Before I could ask for his address again, he said, “You take care now,” and got into his truck. “God bless.” Then waved good-bye.

Even with the flickering, yellowish light in the gas station’s ladies’ room, I could see the wreck he’d pitied. Besides looking as if I’d gotten into a literal catfight, with long scratches all over my face, hands, and feet—some of them more like gouges—my cheek was swollen and discolored. Noting that my shirt was several degrees beyond filthy, I changed breakfast plans from a Burger King feast to a couple of granola bars and Diet Cokes I bought when I paid for the gas. Then, my hands shaking, I used the pay phone and called home. Adam was not only there, he was as beside himself as I’d ever known him. “Hi.”

“Katie!”

“I’m okay. I’m sure you called, and I know you must have been worried, but—”

“Where were you all night? Katie, for Christ’s sake, I had the hotel manager go into your room to see if you were all right!” His voice was thin, as if he couldn’t get enough air into his chest. Raspy, too. He was exhausted. “I looked up that Tallahassee woman on your Outlook, that Maria whatever, but she wasn’t answering. I left message after message.”

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. It was terrible. She turned out to be crazy and —I’m sorry. She took my handbag, so I don’t have any driver’s license or credit cards or anything. I don’t have my cell. I don’t know how I’m going to get home. I want to come home.”

I broke down again, and he said, “Don’t worry. Calm down, sweetheart. Give me a minute to think.”

“You have a perfect right to — ”

“Take it easy, okay?”

“You can hold this against me for the rest of your life and I wouldn’t blame you.”

“I don’t operate that way.”

“I know. Sorry, Adam. I look scary. I’m scratched all over. I have a shiner, and the side of my face is swollen.”

“You’ll be fine. Where are you now?”

“In a gas station somewhere in Tallahassee. But I can’t stay here.” I cupped the mouthpiece of the phone and whispered, “ I stole her car.”

I heard something that sounded suspiciously like a laugh, but quickly Adam said, “Okay, the biggest city near there is probably — ”

“Atlanta. I asked a truck driver.”

“Good. We should head to a good-size city so I won’t have to wait all day on a layover between flights. We want to be together as soon as possible.”

“Oh yes.”

“This is what I’ll do. I’ll get the first direct flight to Atlanta and bring your passport. Are you okay to drive there? It’s probably a couple of hundred miles. That could take about five hours.”

“If I get tired, I’ll pull over and nap,” I told him. “But I’ll call and let you know. Oh, could you bring me some clean clothes? And sneakers and a pair of my tennis socks.”

In Atlanta, I parked Maria’s tank of a car in a long-term parking lot at the airport. After a three-second debate, I decided to leave the keys in it and give some stranger the chance to steal it. For good measure, I threw in her pink straw tote bag. As I was getting out, though, I had another debate. Should I look in the trunk? What if I’d been wrong and I hadn’t tripped over Lisa’s grave? What if she was in the trunk—along with my fingerprints all over the car?

The words “God forbid!” burst out of me, just the way my father’s mother, Grandma Rosie, would have blared them, at full volume, in case God was hard of hearing. If Lisa was in the trunk, I didn’t want to see her. The only thing I wanted in the world was Adam. He wouldn’t have any trouble looking in the trunk; in his whole life, only two things had grossed him out—an African millipede and anything crawling with maggots. My list was probably a thousand items, and included the slimy edges of overripe honeydew.

I compromised by taking the keys and opening the trunk about an inch. Tentatively, I sniffed. Trunk odor, not dead person odor. I opened it a little more. Nothing, just a pair of black flats in a paper shopping bag and a bunch of maps in a small brown grocery store carton. Unlike her kitchen, this at least showed a capacity for organization. I opened the trunk lid all the way. A lantern flashlight. A stack of manila envelopes, the size to hold regular typing paper, held together by a thick rubber band —probably one envelope per client. I said to myself, Don’t. Then I dumped her black flats, stuck the envelopes into her shopping bag, and put her keys back into the ignition.

Adam was already there, waiting in front of a Cinnabon on Concourse A. I made a major “Don’t hug me, I’m filthy” protest, which I knew he would ignore. I was too wiped to refuse when he bought me two Cinnabons and a container of milk—whole milk. While I was eating, he checked out my scratches so gently that I could understand why orangutans gazed at him with eyes filled with love.

He pronounced I was a mess, unfit to travel. He made a call and got a room at a hotel five minutes from the airport, one of those places with an atrium where corporate travelers who hate their jobs stay. After I took both a bath and a shower, Adam dressed all my scrapes and scratches with some ointment he’d brought along. Then, because I’d fallen at least once or twice, he gave me a tetanus shot. “Get some sleep now,” he said.

“You brought down a syringe?”

“Yes. From what you said, it sounded like you must have gotten some soil in the scratches.”

“Is the tetanus stuff for people or—”

“I’m not sure if it’s tetanus immune globulin. Some guy was about to throw it onto the subway tracks, but I bought it from him for two bucks.”

“So it’s for people.”

“Of course it’s for people.”

“Let me tell you about Maria. I got to her place and she wasn’t there yet—” My thoughts were so jumbled I couldn’t arrange them in order. All that seemed to come up clearly was random sounds, like Maria’s car bumping up the stone driveway and the clatter of metal against metal when she fell over the outdoor furniture. The only image I could conjure was one of the absolute blackness of the moonless night.