by Marge Piercy
“I wish I could” she said, never having heard of it. “It’s expensive for me” She hoped she was guessing right. “I’ve looked at it in bookstores.”
“Well, at seven hundred pages, no way it can be cheap. Because we use it as a text, I can get extra copies. I’ll pass one along to you. The other books, of course, I merely had the standard number of author’s copies, and they’re long gone to my mother and uncles …”
“The other thing—I’d love a copy of the book, I really would . . “ They were approaching the corner where he’d get his bus. “If you have any cash? I’ve had the flu for two weeks and we’re broke”
“That’s why you look pale.”
He didn’t realize her hair was different. He simply thought she looked washed out. He plucked his wallet from the hip pocket of his tweed pants and peeled off a twenty. “Here you go” Then he was running for his bus.
“What can we do with this?” she asked Joel.
“I’m going to have to steal a battery. And we’re going to have to use the Honda for the operation. No argument, Vida: we’ve had it. Either let me run the show or let me swipe a battery. We can’t hang around here waiting for it to rain money.”
“It’s not fair to Pelican and Jan to use their car.”
“Tell them to report it stolen if anything goes wrong”
“Joel, I’ll get money from Leigh, I swear it.”
“No! I’ll get the battery in the very early morning” He slid into the driver’s seat. “Stay away from that shithead announcer. He’s liable to turn you in.”
“He’d never do that,” she said, furious. “Don’t be ugly.”
“You just want an excuse to see him.”
“Believe me, I don’t!” She lay back against the seat, weary. “That’s the last thing I feel like. Would you control your jealousy?” She had trouble believing in it; at times she was convinced it was all a show he put on. There was always an element of self-parody in it, as if he were acting out an old vaudeville routine.
They did not alert Jan or Pelican to their plans, but went out together into Brooklyn Heights in the predawn, taking the Honda, until they found a new Chevy that Joel said would have the right kind of battery. It took him ten minutes to get it out. A man came by walking a German shepherd, glanced at him working on the car, nodded, kept going. Either he thought Joel was trying to get his car started or he did not care. At seven they were back on 3rd Street. Someone had taken their parking place. She hopped out to grab the note left on the kitchen table telling Jan to call the police and report the car as stolen if they weren’t back by seven thirty. Joel remained in the Honda going round and round the block looking for parking space. He installed the new battery before he came inside for breakfast.
She did not bother going out to a pay phone to try Leigh again. He would not be there. He had never failed her before, but she did not guess he was in jail, or laid up with a broken leg. She did call Oscar.
“Sure, old pal,” he said, almost audibly putting quotes around the phrase. “I’ll keep on it. Sure. No, nothing yet” She couldn’t tell if he had in fact asked anybody for leads.
“I’ll call again tomorrow,” she said ominously, hoping to budge him.
“Um, yes” he said. “Well, I’ll ask around. Hmmm”
She spent that day back on the couch, her fever up to 101. But she did not withdraw from fact this time. She contemplated Natalie in jail. Down to Centre Street. It was vivid to her. Then the Women’s House of detention, she assumed—not the old one in the Village where she had been locked up, but out on an island now. How the women used to scream from the windows, yelling happily at demonstrators below. For her Natalie was inside; yes, but also for herself. Natalie was a political woman. She did what she had to. She followed her own conscience and her own judgment.
The next morning her fever went down to 99.2 and she called Oscar again. Let him find her a pest. But he was brisk and cheery.
“Well, old bean, I do in fact have something for you, could be.”
”Maybe we shouldn’t do this over the phone. Can I come to meet you?”
“No, just go see the lawyer of a friend of mine. In fact, the lawyer will meet you in a bar on Third Avenue tomorrow at two, if you can make it”
“Third Avenue in Manhattan?”
“Well, perhaps there are others, but isn’t that generally what one means by Third Avenue?”
She hesitated. Dangerous. “What kind of job?”
“Clean and nice, but a little risky. She’ll tell you.”
She did not want to go into Manhattan; but they could not move on without money, and she was sick and tired of begging from old friends. In short while she would give in to the cocaine running if she could not a provide a better alternative. If she insisted on meeting outside Manhattan, the lawyer might object. People who lived in Manhattan always acted as if you were asking them to visit Toledo if you suggested they come to Brooklyn or the Bronx. To hang around Park Slope longer was risky too. Every day increased the chances of someone’s recognizing her.
“I’ll meet her. Where’s the bar?”
Joel had a lot of work to do on the car; it would eat up Oscar’s twenty and his whole day. “We got to be ready to roll” he said, and she agreed. Pelican needed the Honda, and Vida was left to take the subway into Manhattan. The day was bleak and overcast. Wearing dark glasses would make her look too conspicuous. Every time she saw anyone from their mid-twenties up to forty coming toward her she tried not to look into their face, but stole glances, fearful of accident, fearful of acquaintance, old friend, cop, passerby with a good memory for a photo that had been in the papers again not long ago. Twice she thought she was being followed and took elaborate cutbacks and detours, but each time it proved a fantasy of her special New York paranoia.
On the corner of Union and Eighth Avenue two women were chatting, each pushing a stroller in a different direction, coming and going from the park, a block to her right. One woman was standing hand on hip, gesturing with the other and using her knee to block the stroller in a way that made her think, with a pang, of Natalie. But the woman’s hair was straight, shingled, black … Natalie, yes, that was the connection. The woman had been in Natalie and Jan’s consciousness-raising group—one of that circle of women who met in Natalie’s apartment and had made Vida jealous and resentful all through her last year in the free world. What was her name? Glenda? Gloria? Gail? She had been the youngest, their college sophomore at Barnard. Something about the woman whose back was turned to Vida was also familiar, but she could not dawdle to find out. Turning on her heel, she retreated a block, then resumed her march toward the subway down President and along Prospect Park West.
She bought a Times and folded it in the conventional subway manner to block her face as she skimmed. Fortunately, she got a seat. Partly stole quick eye reconnaissance of the car; partly she went through the paper methodically looking for news of Kevin, of Randy Superpig, of Natalie. Nothing. Not a damned thing. All the news they saw fit to print. Nevertheless, she kept the newspaper as she changed at Nevins for the East Side IRT. Who knew how long she might have to wait for this lawyer?
The bar was well occupied but not crowded at two. Her description of the lawyer was that she would be wearing a gray pin-striped suit and raccoon coat, that she was tall and, to quote Oscar, “Oh, pretty in a sort of rawboned way. In fact, she looks, I hate to say it, a little like Kevin” With that description she stared at every woman in the bar, but nothing matched. Damn Oscar’s comparisons. He would rather be witty than right. Nervously she paced from front to back of the bar, used the women’s room and returned.
While she had been feverishly ill she had missed her phone call to the Network. They must be worried. She must check her mail drop and make the next phone call to give reassurance. But now they ought to have picked the day for the Board to meet. Eva should be East. She felt a rush of tenderness and that tinge of acid worry that always colored her thinking about any fugitive of whom s
he had not had recent word. Let Eva be safe.
She was just trying to decide whether she should leave the bar, take a walk, bolt and run or wait it out when a tall blond woman in a raccoon coat sauntered in. The lawyer did not look at all like Kevin, she thought in annoyance; she was a fine-boned Scandinavian type with flaxen hair. She was obviously looking for someone. Vida kept back, let her look awhile, then select an empty table and face the door. Vida went on watching to see who else might enter. Finally, after several minutes, Vida walked over and sat down.
“I think you’re expecting me?”
“A woman? Well, Oscar didn’t tell me” She laughed. “I’m Johnson”
“I’m a woman and a man. We can handle whatever you have in mind. If we choose”
Johnson laughed again—as before, a brief coughing laugh that crinkled her face but left her eyes watching Vida appraisingly. Her voice was low and theatrical. She lit a cigarette, coughed and asked, “What would you like to drink?”
”Ginger ale.”
Johnson laughed again. “Come on. I’m buying.”
“Ginger ale with coffee on the side, then. Do they have anything to she eat here?”
“I haven’t the faintest. We can ask the waiter.”
With her finger she summoned him. They had cheese and crackers for an outrageous price, but then, Vida was not paying. “All right, a tequila sunrise” she said, to get them off her back.
The lawyer drank Chivas Regal. “It’s a domestic problem” she explained, her voice brisker. “The week after my client started divorce proceedings, her husband took the children. A little boy and a slightly a older girl.”
“How old?”
Putting on glasses for a moment, she consulted a card in her snakeskin purse. “The girl is nine, the boy, six. The problem is that the abduction is legal. He has taken the children out of state, where we believe he’s planning to secure custody. Frankly, he has more money than my client. He’s the owner of a chain of fast-food shops called Dog Houses”
“You want the kids back?”
“Have you done this sort of job before?”
“Sure,” she lied happily. “What’re the special problems in this case?”
“What makes you suppose there are any?”
“Otherwise, if you know where they are, she’d just go get them herself. Right? Or the detectives you have watching him would have done it.”
“They won’t” the lawyer said bluntly. “He has used physical force against my client numerous times. That’s one of the reasons for the divorce.” She motioned to the waiter. “Another. For you too?”
“Another cheese and crackers, actually. The drink is fine” She sipped at it for effect and to keep it from slopping over the top as the ice melted. She had no intention of ever drinking it. “Where are the kids? Is he armed? What will you pay?”
“We don’t believe he’s armed, except with a hunting rifle. That’s legal where he is.”
“Except for a rifle. That’s great. Maybe a shotgun too?”
“Perhaps” the lawyer said noncommittally. “But he certainly has no handguns.”
“Or howitzers. Or airplanes.”
“Actually, he has a light plane,” the lawyer said with a moue of amusement. “That’s how he transported the children out there. But the plane is at an airstrip fifteen miles away. It’s not a serious problem”
”Any helicopters? And how much?”
“The standard fee is fifteen hundred. My client is prepared to pay that”
“Fifteen hundred plus expenses” she said quickly, before she had a chance to react to the sum. That would save them; that would set them up high and fine for a winter of comfort. Even with the tithing to the Network, they would do just fine. Images of little houses in Vermont jogged through her head. Joel would be delighted.
“What kind of expenses did you have in mind?” The lawyer raised her eyebrow, knocking off the Scotch.
“Where is this … hunting cabin? The Arctic Circle?”
“A good guess—the hunting cabin. No, it’s in Michigan. Standard mileage or air fare plus car rental?”
“Plus twenty-five a day for each of us to cover expenses while we’re in Michigan. We could have to hang around for a week, and you know it. In the dead of winter? It won’t be easy. Twenty-five a day for two plus ten days’ car rental.”
“I’ll have to discuss your offer with my client”
“Take it or leave it. We can get the kids back for her. Tell her that.”
“I have to make a phone call.” The lawyer rose.
She sat at the table sweating. It could be a setup. She was angled to keep an eye on the door, but she swung to watch the room too. A man was looking at her, and as she caught his eye, he smiled. She looked quickly away. In her nervousness she sipped the tequila sunrise again, but was careful to stop. She could not be fuzzy. She envisioned a log hunting cabin standing on a vast snowy plain with a maniac inside stalking from window to window with a hunting rifle and a shotgun. Oh, just hooray! They had to be crazy to do it.
As the lawyer came toward her, surreptitiously she wiped her forehead. She was still a little feverish. Stay calm but wary. “What did your client say?”
“She wants a meeting set up.”
“Why?”
The lawyer elegantly raised a bony shoulder. “They’re her kids. She can’t accept the idea of somebody carrying them off who might abuse them the way she thinks he’s doing. She insists on meeting you before she gives her okay.”
“Where is she?”
“Roslyn Heights.”
I might as well move to Long Island; I’m sure economically dependent on its problems lately. “How soon can she get here?”
”She can’t. She’s at work. She would like us to come there.”
“When? It has to be settled today.”
“Why are you in such a hurry?”
“I have another project that I have to fly to the West Coast for”
“She was thinking of the weekend”
“Ask her to think again. We can meet her for supper tonight.”
“You like to eat food over decisions.”
“Right. Break bread together.” I like to be fed; that would never occur to you, would it?
The lawyer sighed. “I don’t know if I can make it … I’ll have to get her back and make a few other calls.”
Johnson was gone for twenty minutes. The bar was filling up, and the waiter asked twice if either of them was wanting another drink, even though she had her tequila sunrise barely touched before her. She sipped it, watered down with the melting ice, and ordered more cheese and crackers.
The lawyer came back, motioned to the waiter. “The bill, please. I’m running late. All right, we meet at eight in a restaurant on the North Hempstead Turnpike. That’s 25A, just after you cross Glen Cove Road, on the left. I won’t be eating with you, but I’ll be there long enough to close the negotiations or end them.” She sighed. “Now I’m in a rush.”
She paid, still standing.
“How about an advance?”
The lawyer laughed. “Advance for what? Eating crackers? You be there at eight with your partner. We agree, we’ll talk money then.”
Joel had better have the car fixed. Money, money. Desperate, she glared at her watch. Leigh left the studio every day at four unless he really was out of town, laid up, hospitalized. On his honeymoon in the Dry Tortugas. If she walked at top speed she could get there in time to catch him. Or should she wait near the apartment? No, that was even more dangerous. Midtown was marginally safer.
She strode uptown. Normally the mild walk would not have bother her, but she was weak. The strains of the day etched into her, acid eroding her strength. She did not want to force herself to this confrontation, but he was her last chance. After this, petty crime. Running coke was not what she had bent her life to do. Survival is not enough. I could die now she thought, of fatigue, of weariness, of vexation. I’m sure many have died of vexation. It breeds t
he carelessness that makes you step on a mine, walk into an ambush, miss surveillance. I must look where I am going.
Would Joel be able to fix the car? She saw him bending over her, carrying juice to her, sponging her face with a washcloth, rubbing her sore back. Last night they had made love, the first time she had felt well enough. She could feel his hands on her thighs … Forswear sexual reveries on Manhattan streets!
The studio was on the 50th floor of an office building and the lobby, the only reasonable place to wait, on the side where elevators from 31 to 50 came down. Let’s hope Miss Susannah isn’t meeting him. She did not dare loiter in the lobby too long. Building security men were always about in Manhattan. She stood at the candy counter skimming the magazines, trying to position herself where she could appear to look for a periodical and keep an eye on the bank of elevators. She realized she still had her Times crammed under her arm and discarded its mangled mass in a wastebasket. When she turned again he was exiting from the elevator, chatting to a younger man who bounced at his elbow nodding. She kept her face turned from him and then fell into step a little behind. Leigh and the younger man walked out through the double doors. She moved up behind them. She had never seen the other, and neither of them had any reason to look back.
“Well, take care, Stan. I’ll see you on Saturday.”
“Yeah, Leigh. My best to Susannah. We’ll be over at seven.”
Behind him she walked a block, keeping close but not too close. He was whistling a rock song whose words she recalled as “skin full of trouble, head like a bubble …” Slowly she moved into step beside him. “Greetings. You’ve been too busy to make our appointments.”
He jumped, flinching, and whitened over his beard. “What in hell are you doing here?”
“Hitting you for money. I need it. I’m in some trouble”
“I’d guess so. With Kevin . . He censored himself. “Your sister’s locked up tight, you know.”
