Traverse, Inc.

by Sells, W. G.

  “What time is it?” I asked.

  “Six-thirty,” said Cracker.

  “Yeah, Cheese, I guess I’m still going to jail,” I said.

  “Yes, you are,” said Scooter who went to pick up my box of books and pamphlets from the floor by the door. “But I still need to brief you.”

  “You can brief me after someone tells me about any other members of the team,” I said.

  “Sorry, Julie,” Scooter said. “You’re too new to the team and you don’t have a need to know.”

  “Then it’s not a team and you don’t need me.” I grabbed my purse and headed out the door.

  She gave me water

  [Previously in Traverse, Inc. – Julie Peters and members of the Cons on Call team have all gathered at Queen and Scooter’s home. Julie has tried to figure out which one is the traitor and also learns there are possibly more members to the team she doesn’t know about. The rest of the team seemed reluctant to tell her so she leaves.]

  I sat in the front seat of Cheese’s car rehearsing my cover story for my new identity as Peggy Lipton. Cheese seemed to get a kick out of it.

  “Tell me again,” he said.

  “Okay, I’m 24, born on July 7th and I’m from Bonita Springs, Florida.”

  “And where is Bonita Springs?” he asked.

  “How should I know?’

  “It’s between Naples and Fort Meyers on the gulf coast – west side – of Florida. It’s way south almost parallel to Miami on the east coast.” He was sounding like an encyclopedia and wouldn’t stop. “Actually, Naples is exactly parallel to Miami and not far from there is the Everglades. There are lots of…”

  “Stop! Cheese!” I yelled. “I don’t care and neither will she.”

  “Well, you have to know…” he started.

  “I’m from Florida! Palm trees…beach…no work – I left – end of story. I drank myself out of the state looking for a geographical cure. I ran from my problems and my problems were me and I took me with me. But I got sober, and here I am. Done. Geesh.”

  “Well, I’m just say’n…”

  “Shut up, Cheese or I’ll break your camera.”

  He didn’t say another word and it gave me a chance to play back in my head everything I had seen and heard at Queen’s house. When they wouldn’t tell me what I wanted to know, I had grabbed my purse, headed out the door, and down the sidewalk. I didn't know where I was going and didn’t care. I had barely enough money to rent a room for the night and then get to the bus station the next morning and head to Anywhere USA. And if it wasn’t safe to be Julie Peters, I’d start over again as Peggy Lipton or Jane Fonda or Mama Cass for all I cared.

  I was wallowing in self-pity and the ‘Poor ME’s’: poor me - poor me - pour me another drink were kicking into high gear. They didn’t want to play the way I wanted to play so I was benching the star player, kicking the ball over the neighbor’s fence and pulling down the goal posts on top of them all. Screw ‘em. I’ve had enough! Let the little Russian mail-order-bride suck it up and scurry back home to Stalinvodka. She can make another kid and…oh, crap.

  Right down the sidewalk in front of me was a young mother and her little daughter walking hand in hand. Reality check! That bastard took her daughter, Julie, rang through my brain like Quasimodo’s sobering voice yelling, “She gave me water!” Tears of frustration poured from me quicker than a leaky carton of cheap boxed wine. I didn’t want to see a mother and her little girl, but there she was and I…I could help her….but I don’t want to…I want…oh, damn it!

  I ran back to Queen’s, told Scooter to shut up about whatever he was ranting about and brief me quickly. I needed to help this girl get her daughter back.

  Cheese pulled up in front of the jail and parked.

  “You want me to give you a hand with the box?” he asked.

  “No, I got it, but thanks, Cheese. Sorry I blew up at you.”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “Pick you up in an hour or so?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “It’s hasn’t always been like this, you know.”

  “Been like what?”

  “’Suspicion City’ - with everyone being on edge and suspecting everyone else. We are usually pretty tight.”

  “Me too.”

  I walked into the guard room and showed them my ID. They signed me in and I waited till the escort took me down a corridor and out a door that led me into the open-air center of the facility. We crossed a sidewalk and all I could see were gates, barbed wire, lights, and windowless buildings. We entered another door on the far side of the complex, went down a hallway and into a small room big enough for fifteen or twenty people. The escort said she’d be right back and within minutes the room began to fill up with women inmates.

  My first impression was sobering. Their faces were ashen gray and brown – depending on whether they were white or black, only they weren’t white or black. These were the faces of women who don’t get sunlight; who only see the light of fluorescent bulbs, their skin wrinkled, not by age, but by worry and inactivity, their flabby eyes, cheeks, necks, arms and legs shook when they talked, but they weren’t fat.

  They got that way by years of shuffling from their cells to general population and back to their cells. Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle. They reminded me of the people I’d seen in casinos and racetracks – ghosts haunted by lucky numbers and chained to their chairs by whispering voices chanting ‘one more time’ into their sunken ears.

  The women shuffled in and though they looked cold as death, I could tell that each one was genuinely glad to see me. I was bringing to them a moment of sanity – a warm handshake touch to their icy skin – a sincere smile – a friendly word – a reminder of the outside reality that awaited them once they had done their time. Besides being locked up, the AA program was the one thing that melded them together if only for an hour a month. An hour a month?

  I looked them over and it all felt so right to be here. I needed this break too. The only thing missing was my mark, Annette. As the final attendees took their seats, and the guard left the room, I picked up the readings and handed them out so the ladies could begin their meeting.

  “Hi, ladies. I’m Julie, and I’m an alcoholic.”

  “Hi, Julie!”

  “Excuse me,” the guard said as she popped her head around the doorway. “There’s one more coming.”

  I waited calmly. Annette or no Annette, I was coming back next week anyway.

  Hypocrites

  [Previously in Traverse, Inc. – Julie Peters resigns herself to helping the Russian mail-order bride find her child by leading an AA meeting in the jail. She begins the meeting despite the absence of her mark, Annette, the new girlfriend of the man who took the child. A guard tells her to wait for one more inmate coming to the meeting.]

  I held my breath as the guard held the door open for the straggler, and sure enough it was Annette, or at least, what was left of Annette. There were bruises on her cheeks and jaw, scrapes on her arms and elbows, a seeping bandage over one eye, a cut under the other, and lacerations around her neck. It looked as if Annette had gone ten rounds with either a seasoned golden-gloves champ or a deluxe ten-speed blender.

  As she entered and took a seat, the other women murmured, and moved their chairs away from hers as if she were a bloated tick with Lyme disease. Oh, dear.

  “Well, ladies, like I said….I’m Julie, and I’m an alcoholic.”

  “Hi, Julie!”

  Their exuberance returned, but though they seemed bonded by their program allegiance, they shared little tolerance for Annette. She didn’t appear to mind. She sat still and kept her eyes fixed on me or on the floor. The only emotion she showed during the hour was to grin a few times at the funnier points of my story – the things we all did – like hide bottles in the house even though we lived alone; borrow money from our parents for unexpected parking tickets or dental bills when all we really wanted it for was to go clubbing, and the making of a million excuses to employers fo
r why we were late for work or didn’t go in at all – “I thought you said your dog Casey was hit by a car last April?” “Um, ah, no, that was her brother, Kelsey, and he was hit by a truck.”

  When I called on someone to speak and told her to pick someone else for a round-robin, they all got to share, but not one of the women called on Annette. So, I did.

  “Would you like to share?” I asked her. She pointed at herself. “Yes, you.”

  “Um,” she started hesitantly, and looked around the room. No one returned her gaze. She closed her eyes and forced out the words. “My name is Annette, and I’m, ah, I’m…..ah, alcoholic.” She burst into tears and then sobbed uncontrollably. The women didn’t move, didn’t offer a tissue or a consoling word. What the hell?

  I reached into my pocket, pulled out a slightly used tissue and walked over to hand it to her. I touched her on the shoulder and she nearly jumped out of her skin until she saw my concern and the tissue. She took it and wiped her eyes and nose.

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. Do you want to talk about it?”

  She shook her head as if she had something to say, but as she looked around the room, I could tell she was getting the silent message to keep her mouth shut. She did.

  “Never mind,” she said in a whisper.

  I started to barge into the group’s conscience with a barrage of condemnation for their attitudes and controlling natures, and a plea for Annette to feel free to share, but the guard opened the door signaling that time was up.

  We stood and took hands to say The Lord’s Prayer, but no one took Annette’s hand. Hypocrites, I thought, and then remembered my mission, and that I was probably the worst offending fraud in the jail. I moved beside her and grabbed her hand. She squeezed back tightly.

  “I’ll be here next week,” I whispered. “And here’s my number if you get a chance to use a phone.”

  She froze and looked at me skeptically.

  “Why are you being so nice?” she asked.

  I want you to like me so we can nail your sleezeball boyfriend. I hesitated. The myriad of possible lies bounded around my brain like gnats on a hot August afternoon. Every time I went to grab one, they retreated just out of reach. I sucked in the air of my duplicity and almost choked on a gnat as it rode the inhale and smacked me in the back of the throat. Instead of lying, I smiled, and put my hand on her shoulder. It was probably the best thing I could do.

  “Thanks,” she said and took my phone number.

  As I exited the jail, I thought about Annette and tried to figure out what had happened to her. Not enough info, I thought. She could have sneezed in someone’s creamed corn, refused the approaches of the resident bull-dyke or even arrived to the jail with the bruises and cuts as a result of an argument with the sleezeball. Who knew?

  I saw Cheese’s car parked across from the main door of the jail and headed towards it. As I reached to open the door, I saw a reflection in the window behind me. Just as the hairs were standing up on the back of my neck, a strong hand grabbed my shoulder from behind and roughly turned me to move toward the back door of Cheese’s car.

  It was dark outside, and the lights from the jail compound were behind him and shining right into my eyes as I turned to look into his face. I couldn’t tell who he was, but he was big, strong, forceful, and smelled like garlic. He opened the door, pushed me inside and sat down next to me. He was so large, he took up two seats.

  “Sorry, Julie,” Cheese said from the front driver’s seat. “I wasn’t planning for it to be like this.”

  “Shut up,” said big garlic man. “You and me ain’t got plans, we just follow orders. Now, drive.”

  See the man about a thing

  [Previously in Traverse, Inc. – Julie Peters finally meets Annette, and sees that someone has beaten her. She treats Annette kindly, in spite of the disdain the other inmates seem to feel for the woman. As she is leaving the jail she is accosted by a large man and thrown into the back of Cheese’s car.]

  So, the traitor is Cheese. He probably sold us out for a new Minolta.

  “Yeah, buddy, it’s a camera, scanner, printer, fax, phone, video editing suite, and e-book reader all in one! Just do what we tell you and it’s yours!”

  “Gee, can I have the carry case and the tripod TOO???”

  Jackass. I couldn’t believe this past week – hired, abused, fired, destroyed, rescued, hired, abducted, fooled, freed, friends dying trying to help me, hiding out, working an assignment in jail, betrayed, and finally, abducted again. Who would believe this?

  Garlic man was staring out the window and trying to pull his under-sized suit jacket out from under his large backside with his right arm. He was obviously oblivious to my thoughts, and, so it seemed, oblivious to any sense of personal hygiene. He had his left arm draped behind me along the top of the back seat and I couldn’t tell which was worse, the garlic vapors coming out of his mouth and pores or the perspiration fumes emanating from his underarms. I gagged loudly and got his attention.

  “Could you put your arm down, please?” I asked.

  “No,” he grunted.

  Could you stop breathing then? “I’m gonna puke in your lap, bud. You stink!”

  “So, crack the window.”

  Okay, just breathe on it, it’ll crack. “Fine, thanks a lot,” I said, and lowered the window six inches and edged over to stick my nose into the clean air.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “You’re gonna see the man about a thing.”

  “What thing?” I said. “I don’t have anything and I don’t know anything. What could he possibly want with me?”

  “He don’t tell me that,” he said, and turned back to gaze out his window.

  Have you ever known when you were done with something, someone, or some situation? It’s like a wall of emotion washes over you, the weight falls off of your shoulders, and fresh blood flows into your innermost being. You don’t care what comes next, but you want it to be your own call and not the result of someone else’s imposed will. Well, I was done. No more pleasant Patty; no more play thing, puppet, patsy or punk.

  With my face in the breeze, I was close enough to the door to be far enough away from the big man to be able to reach me. I guessed that as big as he was, and in his nice tight suit, and leaning back in his seat, he was much like his deodorant – slow to react. I grasped the door latch - Oh, hey, this must be my stop – waited for the car to slow around a bend - and there’s Marge! I’ll be right back - and was in mid-air before garlic man could say, “Pass the Parmesan.”

  It always looked so un-scathing in the movies when they jumped out of a moving car. A thud and a few rolls and they were up and running, but holy crap it hurt. I laid there trying to get my breath back from the jolting landing, and to see straight from the rolling. My head was spinning and then like in the elevator a few days back, I hurled right in the center of the dividing line of the road. My eyes blurred and with the spinning I saw six headlights coming my way. I couldn’t move my body so I ducked my head, as if maybe the car would miss my forehead while it turned my body into instant roadkill.

  The car braked and swerved; the tire clipping my Gucci heel and sending it across the pavement. If you had asked me a few days before if I would be okay with my Gucci getting crushed, I would have fought you tooth and nail (well, maybe only tooth. I had just had my nails done), but now I was totally relieved. I looked back at Cheese’s car that had braked down the road and it was beginning to back up toward me.

  Whoever was in the car that missed me got out and was running my way. Headlights were shining all around as other cars were getting closer. Garlic man was getting out of Cheese’s car and still I couldn’t will myself to move. Suddenly, arms were underneath me and dragging me toward the car that missed me. I could still see garlic man, but he had stopped, a look of panic in his eyes, and then three shots rang out from the car that missed me and garlic man was down. Another two shots and two tires on Cheese’s car were
flattened. I tried to look back to see who was dragging me and who was shooting, but they teamed up and threw me into the car face down. I was half on the back seat and half off – my face on the carpeted floor mats that smelled like beer.

  “You okay, Julie?” A familiar woman’s voice said.

  Oh, yeah, never better. “Uh, huh,” was all I could manage. My head was spinning. Concussion maybe and my body ached from the fall, the bounce and the roll. I couldn’t place her voice…

  “Good. We got you out of there just in time,” she said. It was coming to me….the voice….the beer….oh good, got it.

  “Ruth?” I said.

  “Yes, dear,” she sounded surprised. “You didn’t know it was me?”