The Escape Diaries (6 page)

           
My
stomach was doing a pole dance against my backbone. I gazed longingly at a
package of corn chips, suppressing the urge to bite into it wrapper and all.
But I lacked Vicki’s blithe self-confidence; my guilt rays would draw store
security like a magnet attracting steel filings.

           
Mrs.
Cellphone and her tribe barged around a corner. Still gabbling away on her
phone, the woman began scooping enormous bags of Doritos and Tostitos and other
snacks from the
ito
food group into her cart, which already contained a
dozen packages of marshmallow Peeps in jack-o-lantern shapes. When I’d gone to
prison, Peeps only came out at Easter, in the shape of yellow chickies. Now,
apparently, they were a sweet for all seasons. The girls had already been into
the Peeps—their mouths and hands were smeared with marshmallow goo. The
toddler, propped up in the cart, was slobbering over a Peep and waving his
stubby legs through the cart slots. Crammed in next to his aromatic rear was
Mrs. Cellphone’s handbag, her key ring jutting from its outside pocket.

           
The
woman ended her call, angrily jabbed in new numbers, then began another
conversation. Cellphones seemed to have multiplied a hundredfold while I’d been
in the can. Every shopper in the store seemed to be on her cell. It was alarming
to hear someone say hello, whirl around, and discover that the person was
babbling into her phone. It wouldn’t have surprised me to see the toddler whip
a phone out of his diaper to set up a play date. Didn’t anyone ever talk
face-to-face anymore?
 

           
The
girls were wrestling on the floor, fighting over a package of Bratz
accessories, the woman was arguing with whoever was on the other end of her phone,
and the toddler was smushing marshmallow goo onto the handles of the shopping
cart.

           
Maneuvering
my shopping cart next to their cart, I casually reached out and closed my
fingers around the Peeps-smeared car keys.

Vicki Jean would
have been proud of me.

Escape
tip #5:

So it’s stale and lint-covered—

it’s still food.

           
Wanda
Kronenwetter’s van smelled like French fries and jelly beans.

           
I’d
discovered my victim’s real identity while rummaging through the registration
papers in her glove compartment, hoping to find money or food. Not a red cent,
but I found half a soggy waffle stuck to a state map, a sucker glued to the
upholstery, a handful of honey-roasted peanuts beneath the seat cushions, and a
rainbow of jelly beans melted to the dashboard. I pried off the jelly beans one
by one and gobbled them as I drove.

           
I
intended to drive north, figuring that my pursuers would expect me to head
west,

toward my family’s home. But my
driving skills were rusty. I got flustered in the fast-moving traffic and ended
up driving east instead. I tried again, but kept getting shunted onto eastbound
streets. After my third attempt I gave in. Fate or karma or God obviously
intended that I go east.

I’ve always
pictured God as Gregory Peck in
To Kill a Mockingbird.
The ship’s-prow
jaw, the thick black eyebrows, the deep voice—if Man is not made in
Atticus Finch’s image, then God needs an image makeover. When I was eleven
years old, I foolishly expressed this belief to my Sunday school teacher, who
sentenced me to the Satan chair for the rest of the morning. God was not to be
mocked; God had a long white beard and a see-through body and lived up in the
clouds. Everyone but me knew that.

           
But
it was the Atticus Finch God I prayed to as I cautiously motored east,
crunching stale jelly beans, eyeing the police car creeping up my bumper, and
hoping that Wanda Kronenwetter’s brood had settled down to lunch in the snack
bar instead of returning to the parking lot.

           
The
police car passed, its driver not even glancing at me. I breathed a sigh of
relief, thanked the Atticus-God, and fiddled with Wanda’s radio dial until I
found a news program.
“
. . .
still at large,”
the announcer was
saying
. “U.S. Marshal Irving Katz, head of the federal fugitive apprehension
team, said in a news conference that he is following up several leads and is
confident that Maguire, who escaped during last night’s storm, will be
apprehended today.”

What leads? Did
they have a clue or were they just
woofin’
—prison parlance for
putting up a big front when you got
nuttin’
?

The car behind me
honked and I realized with a jolt that I was lollygagging along in the fast
lane. For four years I hadn’t moved faster than a slow jog. Now, going forty
miles an hour felt like racing across the Bonneville Salt Flats. Eventually I
managed to pick up the pace to highway speed and unclench my death grip on the
steering wheel.

The countryside
was green and gorgeous, the sky was filled with wispy white clouds, and the sun
was hot and bright. The van’s air conditioner was cranky, so I opened the
windows and let the breeze whuff through, cooling my sweaty face and whirling
around the fast-food wrappers in the backseat. The van was big and clunky, but
still responsive enough to be a fun drive.

           
I
had a thing for vans, nostalgia arising from my days as a poverty-stricken
single girl. I’d bought a secondhand Ford Econoline my first year out of
college. I needed a roomy vehicle for my curbside scavenging. People were
constantly throwing out perfectly decent tables and chairs that needed only a
fresh coat of paint or a couple of nails to restore them to good health. I was
able to furnish my entire apartment with castoffs, since I couldn’t afford new
furniture on a teacher’s salary.

Against the
advice of well-meaning family members who’d urged me to go into accounting
because people always needed their taxes done, I’d majored in music education.
This gave me an employability quotient of virtually zero and I accepted the
only job offered: teaching music at a Milwaukee public high school. Long hours,
low salary, unmotivated kids: what wasn’t to like about teaching?

           
I
paid off the van by the end of my second year of teaching, the summer my best
friend, Gloria, got married. I was Gloria’s maid of honor. I wore a frothy pink
gown that made me look like cotton candy at the county fair, drank too much at
the reception, and in a moment of champagne-induced insanity, agreed to babysit
Gloria’s dog, Gigi, while the newlyweds flew off to Jamaica.

           
There
are moments that are turning points in your life, although you don’t realize it
at the time. How would my life have turned out if Gigi had been a cat instead
of a dog, a fat, lazy tabby who demanded nothing more than being worshipped?
Unfortunately, Gigi was all dog, a sleek, slinky Afghan with attention deficit
disorder and a shoe fetish. After she’d chewed up my bedroom slippers and two
pairs of sneakers, I decided to take Gigi out for some fresh air and exercise.
I manhandled her out to my van and we drove to one of the north shore beaches,
where Gigi could work off her pent-up energy and get in some pooping at the
same time.

           
It
was a warm, sunny June day and I was happy to have an excuse to be on the beach.
Steep wooded bluffs rose above, Lake Michigan shimmered below, and sandwiched
between were miles of sand, spoiled only by the occasional washed-up alewife.

           
I
looked Gigi sternly in the eye. “Heel,” I said.

Gigi looked
steadily back at me. Then she corkscrewed her skinny head out of the leash and
galloped joyfully on ahead, stopping occasionally to wee-wee or snuffle a
stinking dead fish, always slyly keeping a length or two ahead of me. We
carried on with this wonderful game for a while, Gigi lolloping along the beach
and me chasing her, yelling at her to get back here, dammit! Gigi demolished a
sand castle, snatched an ice-cream cone from a toddler, and ran up to a jogger
for a friendly sniff. She stuck her long, narrow nose in the man’s crotch.

           
The
jogger turned out to be Kip Vonnerjohn, and if I’d known at the time how much
he enjoyed having strange females poke their snouts in his crotch, I would
probably have run away to join a convent and left Gigi to fend for herself.
But, since I lacked a crystal ball, I staggered up to the happy twosome,
slipped the leash back onto Gigi’s elegant but empty head, and gasped, “Sorry.
She has the manners of a pig.”

           
“No
problem.” He laughed, revealing a dazzling array of white teeth.

           
My
heart did a little rumba. I kept sneaking sideways peeks at the guy. Gorgeous!
Wavy hair flopping around in the breeze, wide shoulders, square jaw, clear
hazel eyes. A tan he hadn’t gotten in Milwaukee’s sub-Arctic climate.

           
“She’s
a beauty,” he said, and for one egocentric instant I thought he meant me. Then
I noticed him ruffling Gigi’s long silky ears. He read her dog tag.
“Gigi?”

           
“She’s
not mine, thank God. I’m just dog-sitting.”

           
“Looked
more like dog-running, but what do I know?”

           
Looks
and charm, too. I wished I wasn’t wearing clothes that looked pulled out of the
St. Vinny’s donations bin. I wished I’d remembered to put on deodorant that
morning. I wished I wasn’t holding a pooper-scooper and a Piggly-Wiggly bag. In
fact, I knew I looked so awful that no male with twenty-twenty eyesight would
be interested in me anyway, so it didn’t matter what I said or did and I could
just relax.
         

“I had a golden
retriever the same color as Gigi when I was a kid,” the guy said, reversing
direction so he could stroll along with me and the now perfectly behaved Gigi,
the hypocritical little bitch.

           
“Oh.
Do you have a dog now?”

           
He
shook his head. “I got turned off dogs when my mom bought the shih tzu-bichon
frises.”

           
I
wasn’t familiar with the breed; it sounded to me like he said
shit-bitches.
Which, as it turned out, was remarkably apt. He told me how they never stopped
barking, how they attacked clothes flapping on the clothesline, tried to bite
the TV when a cat commercial came on, rolled in their food, terrorized
repairmen, and had once, attacking as a pack, ripped apart a vacuum cleaner.

           
I
told him about Sam, our farm dog, who was bullied by our rooster, peed on car
tires, and was so horny he attempted to hump our lawn tractor. We walked on the
beach and told bad-dog stories and flirted. He walked me to the parking lot and
we exchanged names and phone numbers. I wasn’t very hopeful. I was certain he’d
toss away my number as soon as I was out of sight. Guys always said they’d call
and then they never did.

As it turned out,
Kip didn’t call me. Instead, he showed up on my doorstep. He was waiting at the
curb in front of my building when Gigi and I pulled up half an hour later.

“I got your
address off my BlackBerry,” he said sheepishly. “I didn’t want our date to
end.”

“That was a
date?”

He smiled.
“Technically, I guess not. So let’s have our first one. One of my friends is
throwing a volleyball party and you’re coming with me. I bet you’re terrific at
volleyball.”

He had a lot of
nerve, I thought, assuming I would simply drop everything and waltz off with
him. Maybe I had a dozen other guys waiting to go out with me.

Sure, in an
alternate universe. “I’m lousy at volleyball. Everyone’s elbows are always
exactly at my nose level. Besides—” I gestured at Gigi. “I can’t leave
Miss Piggy alone or she’ll eat all my shoes.”

Kip Vonnerjohn
had the remarkable ability to combine puppy eyes with wolfish grin. It was
devastating. Women should be inoculated against guys who can pull off that
look. “Bring her along,” he said.

Of course in the
end I said yes, which was pretty much what I said to Kip Vonnerjohn for the
next two months. The party was being held at the lakeside pad of one of Kip’s
buddies, and it was my first taste of the lifestyles of the rich and fatuous.
The guys were good-looking and athletic, the women were skinny as paper dolls
and wore skimpy designer bikinis, and everyone had perfect teeth. I was used to
parties where you grabbed a fistful of chips and a can of beer out of a plastic
cooler, but in Kip’s circle you quenched your thirst with chilled champagne and
munched on smoked salmon and lobster salad. Gigi turned out to be Miss Party
Dog, winkling canapés from guests and then horking them up on their shoes. I
finally got her to sit down and we watched Kip play volleyball. He was amazing,
practically professional level. He looked even better with his shirt off than
on. Daily workouts, skiing, horseback riding, and crewing had given him thighs
of steel and abs of iron.

If only he’d
spent as much time developing his brain.