Night Swimming

by Robin Schwarz

  Her thick, dark ponytail flew back, and facts floated in and out of her head as she wound her way to her final stop.

  She and MaryAnn had studied game shows religiously. No one was better at Jeopardy or Wheel of Fortune than they were. No one could guess as accurately the cost of a dinette set or a Maytag washer or an RV equipped with all the modern conveniences on The Price Is Right. And Hollywood Squares ? Forget it. Both MaryAnn and Charlotte were unstoppable. This, after all, was how they were going to make their first fortunes, as game-show contestants.

  “Charlotte, it’s your turn.”

  “Famous Hollywood insults for four hundred, Alex.”

  “Ding, ding, ding. Charlotte, it’s the Daily Double. Are you ready for this?” “Yes, Alex.” “How much are you willing to wager?” “Everything, Alex. Thirty thousand dollars.” “Did you hear that? Thirty thousand dollars. Okay, Charlotte...

  Who said, ‘Not since Attila the Hun swept across Europe, leaving five hundred years of total blackness, has there been a man like Lee Marvin’?”

  “Who is Josh Logan? He directed Lee Marvin in Paint Your Wagon in 1969.”

  “You are right. And you walk away a very rich lady once again.”

  Charlotte imagined the prizes she’d win as she sped down the highway toward her new life. But her fantasies ended abruptly with the realization that she couldn’t risk being recognized on TV now. To her surprise, she wasn’t really disappointed. Come to think of it, she didn’t even want to watch game shows anymore. Or soaps. Just overhearing the TV from another room drained her and made her feel lonely, like a light left on in the afternoon. There were just some things, she decided, she would never do again.

  She drove as night settled over the lifeless landscape until she eventually found herself at the King of Hearts Motel. It looked like an oasis blinking on the distant right. It struck Charlotte as somewhat odd that in the middle of a red-dirt road, beneath a flat, starless sky, stood this tacky tribute to neon. There was a naked woman curled up inside a martini glass, her legs wrapped around a flashing cherry. And lastly, there was the king of hearts himself, rocking back and forth in a light southern wind. Except for one other car, Charlotte seemed to be the only guest.

  “Got a room?” she asked. A middle-aged man with teeth like a broken fence, and tattoos climbing out of his blue collar, studied his log. Every room was empty. What the hell was there to figure out? Yet he studied his book as if he were stuck on a word in a crossword puzzle.

  “We got room thirteen available,” he finally said as if he remembered that Charlotte was still standing there waiting for an answer.

  “Thirteen? There’s no twelve or eleven or nine or six ... just thirteen?”

  “What’s wrong with thirteen?”

  “Well, it’s not the luckiest number in the world, is it? I mean, it doesn’t look like anyone else is here.... I’d think you could give me another room.”

  “Superstitious?” the manager asked, scanning his book again with a grin that was so tightly locked it was as if a key had been turned one too many times and thrown away. He waited a minute or two before looking up.

  “Nope, thirteen’s the only room we got available, lady.”

  “Well, shit,” Charlotte said, “just give me the damn keys.” And then she began to laugh, and laughed louder.

  “What?” the manager asked, and at that moment the power in the room shifted. “What?” he asked again. Whatever control he’d had seconds before was lost in her laughter, lost in a flurry of giggles so effervescent that bubbles might burst right out of her mouth. Why was she laughing? What did she know? Was she laughing at him? He could not know that she was laughing at herself—because for the first time in her life she had said the word “shit” out loud, and for the first time in her life she was beginning to feel good.

  This simple expletive made her feel giddy. Oddly, as if by saying it, she had located a little undiscovered pleasure center inside herself that had gone untapped for a very long time. Charlotte turned and headed out the door.

  “Hey, lady,” the manager yelled to Charlotte as the screen door slammed behind her, “I gotta sign you in. What’s your name?”

  Charlotte paused. “Blossom,” she said, “Blossom McBeal.”

  And so Blossom McBeal was reborn and Charlotte Clapp was officially laid to rest. The new Blossom knew she had a lot to grow into. The dead Blossom was spirited, unsinkable, and most of all, a survivor. Yes, the new Blossom would do everything to live up to the dead Blossom. Now there was even more reason to live, and there was something to live up to. Charlotte had a legacy. It wasn’t exactly her legacy, but it was something nonetheless. She may be dying, but she had been given a year to live, and live she would. This Blossom was about to bloom.

  The open highway and the flat plains made it seem as if 120 miles per hour were a leisurely stroll. Tony Bennett sang out “The Best Is Yet to Come.” Perfect traveling music. She thought, If I could ever get my behind on the back of a horse, I’d gallop to this song.

  Blossom laughed out loud. That was twice in two days. In fact, her whole body had been smiling for miles, as if some sweet elixir had a slow drip into her entire being. Had she been fake-laughing all those years in Gorham? The kind of “yuk, yuk, yuk” you’re forced to produce when your boss bores you with a bad joke or MaryAnn Barzini tells you something adorable about her only daughter? Yuk, yuk, yuk—awful. Blossom resolved then and there never to fake-laugh again. If it wasn’t funny, screw it.

  Up through the northern panhandle to Amarillo, where the soil burned yellow and you could smell the dark, rich perfume of mesquite in places named Sweetwater and Rosebud. Blossom breathed deeply. As she passed the dusty hills rumored to be jammed with turquoise and tales, she felt the wind play against her cheeks like butterfly kisses. Layers were beginning to peel back. Her senses were returning.

  She blew through towns like a tumbleweed, crossing the rest of Texas into the muted tones of the New Mexican desert. She drove past ghost towns and mining towns, where so many lost dreams wandered in search of the gold that never was. But Blossom would find her gold, for Hollywood glittered like a promise somewhere just beyond the horizon.

  CHAPTER 14

  THE CHARLOTTE CLAPP CASE had become big news in Gorham. Everyone knew about it, including the doctor who had made the grievious error in sealing Charlotte’s fate. Makley ordered Jennings down to the station upon learning this new and shocking information.

  The trail to Jennings was paved by Happy Turner, who was to have had lunch with Charlotte the day before she quit the bank. Charlotte had canceled because she had an appointment with Dr. Jennings, and Happy remembered Charlotte coming back to work “a bit out of sorts. Then two hours later, she up and quit.”

  Happy was sorry she hadn’t remembered this sooner, but in going through her own calendar, it came back to her. That’s when she called Makley. She didn’t know if it was important, but everyone was told to come forward with any and all information they had. So she did. And that’s when Jennings was invited down to the precinct to tell all—“all” being the bizarre confession that felled not only Charlotte’s fate with an axe, but Dr. Jennings’s as well.

  “You told her she was dying?” Makley asked Jennings incredulously.

  “Yes. It was an innocent enough mistake, though. She had the same exact name as the other woman who had come in on the same day,” Dr. Jennings explained.

  “Jesus,” Makley said, scratching his head: “What happened to the other woman? You tell her she was fine?”

  “At the time.”

  “And then?”

  “Well, it seems she didn’t have a year left, after all.”

  “Jesus H. Christ,” Makley said again.

  “Short of amputating the wrong leg, it doesn’t get much worse than this,” Hobbs chimed in. “Maybe taking out the wrong organ or—”

  “All right, all right,” Jennings interrupted indignantly. Clearly, this wouldn’t be good for his career. He sat t
here pondering a new practice in Guantanamo Bay.

  “So if Charlotte Clapp is indeed alive, then she thinks she’s dying? Is that it?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s if she’s not in the river,” Hobbs said. “But face it, this kind of news could make anyone jump in the river.”

  Everyone just stared at each other, and Makley said “Jesus H. Christ” one or two more times.

  At this point it was decided the divers would continue to comb the river, but both Makley and the FBI knew it was time to pursue that uncertain tip that would take one or all of them down south to Louisiana. All eyes were on Makley.

  “Jesus H. Christ,” he said one last time, and was on his way by morning.

  Makley, a small-town cop from a small-time town, was not of any particular consequence to the New Orleans police. Upon arrival at the local precinct, he was essentially ignored for hours. He was like a flounder in catfish waters. He sat alone in the back room of the department, looking at a wall of wanted posters. Same culprits, different zip code.

  Because Makley was not in his own jurisdiction, all he could do was show the New Orleans police photographs and offer hunches. A cop finally came in and sat down to hear the story, but a missing person with alleged felony charges was not a big deal in Louisiana— it was your kin. But to the Gorham police (who thought it was a big enough story to follow all the way down to Louisiana), it was as big as big got, and Makley had no intention of just shaking it off.

  Meanwhile, back in Gorham, the president of the First Savings and Loan was behaving as if he were as confused as everyone else. He claimed that the records he had regarding the money had been stolen with the cash. He acted concerned, worried. He should have been—it was clear he had fallen into quicksand, and the harder he tried to get out, the faster he sank.

  However, his complicity was swiftly revealed when an anonymous employee called Hobbs and said he urgently needed to talk to someone in charge. Hobbs was thrilled Makley was out of town—he was so rarely in charge. The employee came in that very afternoon and revealed his considerable suspicions regarding his boss. He said in no uncertain terms that Kelly was “full of bullshit.” The place to look was with the brother-in-law, who stored large sums of money in the vault from time to time and then moved it out of there. The employee said he’d been doing it for years.

  “Kelly’s brother-in-law?” Hobbs asked.

  “Yeah,” said the disgruntled employee, “it’s a close-knit family like the Sopranos, except with Izod shirts. The Yankee version.”

  “Why are you telling me all this?”

  “Why? You want to know why? I’ll tell you why. Because Kelly is so goddamn cheap, and whatever happens, well, it serves him right. You know what we got for Christmas? He wouldn’t put his hand in his pocket for Tiny Tim. Oh, but he makes sure to give himself a big bonus every year. The rest of us? We get hams. Honeyed hams. I’ve worked for this bank for twenty-two years, broke my back for this bank, and you know what it got me? A goddamn honeyed ham. And I don’t even like ham. In fact, I hate ham. So there’s your answer. The ham did him in.”

  Hobbs took the ham story very seriously. He promised the weary worker that as soon as he spoke to his chief (who, in the end, was always in charge), he would check out the president and the brother-in-law thoroughly. Hobbs was a ham hater, too.

  Back in New Orleans, Makley sat with the old sergeant, who stared at his northern counterpart as if he were some alien import. “We’ll have our boys post these pictures,” he said in a slow southern drawl.

  “That’s it?” Makley asked.

  “It is for now,” the sergeant added, annoyed that this interloper was questioning his tactics. Makley wondered if he was still holding a grudge about the War Between the States. The Confederate flag hung in the sergeant’s office.

  Makley got up. “Let me know if you get a lead on anything. I’m staying at the Howard Johnson’s just out of town.”

  “No problem, friend,” the sergeant said, gathering up Charlotte’s photos as if the next place he was about to put them was the garbage.

  Makley left, but he wasn’t finished. He decided to hang around the quarter himself for a while and do a little investigating on his own, jurisdiction or not. The sergeant really ticked him off and he damn sure wouldn’t take the word of a cop who looked like the poster boy for kickbacks. Makley kept a few copies of Charlotte’s picture and headed out to take in some of the local color. There was a lot to see in New Orleans. And maybe, just maybe, someone in this strange and carnival-like place had seen Charlotte. A bartender, hotel clerk, a tarot card reader.

  CHAPTER 15

  BLOSSOM DROVE RELENTLESSLY on toward Arizona while thoughts of her past life moved like shadow dancers at the edge of her memory. This was the trip that she and MaryAnn were supposed to take together. This was their shared dream, and even though events had made them go their separate ways, Blossom still felt a twinge of loss in making this trip without her.

  What had happened to their friendship, a friendship that was supposed to stand the test of time and turmoil? What happened to those days of laughing on seesaws that would rocket them up into the blue air and bring them gently back to earth? And those rainy days when the two girls would arrive at school together in their wet hats and coats and pull off their rubber boots while Mrs. Kleem hovered over them, exuding an overwhelming sweet-and-sour smell that was always mixed with some form of admonishment. Who could ever forget the potent wave of perfume that caught the girls in its undertow every morning. My Sin. An aroma that always confirmed Mrs. Kleem was still in the building, albeit lost in a cloud, somewhere in the 1950s.

  That perfume was the impetus for Charlotte and MaryAnn’s first and most memorable prank: stealing Mrs. Kleem’s treasured bottle of My Sin and replacing it with a clear cleaning fluid. How were Charlotte and MaryAnn supposed to know that this cleaning liquid could lift the stripes off linoleum? (It only left the slightest rash on Mrs. Kleem’s neck—she really didn’t have to make that big a deal out of it.) It was only one tiny dab. It was as if she had drunk the stuff, the way she carried on. Did she really have to have their parents come in for a parent-teacher conference?

  They had to stay after school for the rest of the year, clapping erasers, washing blackboards, and writing, I know what I did was wrong and I am very, very sorry, until their fingers ached.

  Charlotte and MaryAnn stuck it out together surviving the wrath of Mrs. Kleem through first, second, and third grade. In other words, an eternity. How could a friendship like that falter or, worse, end?

  And now what had that once unbreakable bond become? MaryAnn always tried to make Charlotte’s life a little more boring than it already was. She had worked at the bank a week longer than Charlotte, and in MaryAnn’s mind this seemed to give her seniority. If Charlotte wanted to have the Christmas party at Church Hills, the only fine dining establishment anywhere near Gorham, MaryAnn would make sure it was where it had always been. Bickfords. If Charlotte wanted to bring someone into the bank to talk about new packages they could offer their customers, MaryAnn would nix it, claiming the First Savings and Loan didn’t need strangers peddling newfangled ideas. When Charlotte wanted to do a trick grab bag on April Fool’s Day for the bank employees, MaryAnn vetoed the idea, saying gag presents were in bad taste. Charlotte remembered how fond MaryAnn was of saying, “Why do people waste their time dreaming? Dreams very rarely come true. And then they’ve wasted all that time just pissing up a rope.” Pissing up a rope. MaryAnn actually said the word “piss.” But how could MaryAnn feel this way? She got what she wanted. She got Tom.

  At that moment she felt enormous relief being gone from Gorham. Gone from MaryAnn, who was probably saying “no” to someone at that very moment. Gone from the memory of Charlotte. Blossom shivered. The old weight of her past life was still upon her, heavy as a wool shawl hanging over her shoulders on a hot day. She wondered if she would ever be completely free of her past, or would she feel that shawl becoming hea
vier, holding her in the heat of unhappiness while she tirelessly tried to shed it?

  CHAPTER 16

  BLOSSOM’S FIRST CALIFORNIA palm trees were an epiphany. They waved above her like graceful Japanese fans offered only to royalty on the highest of holy days. They flattened out against the blue sky like exotic umbrellas, rocking slowly on their tall, narrow stalks. Palm trees. She had only seen pictures of them, and here hundreds lined the streets like sacred icons, welcoming her to a place where all was possible. She got out of her car immediately and took her first roll of pictures.

  Somewhere Tom Selleck was sitting with a martini, discussing a big upcoming project with some big Hollywood mogul. Maybe even Sydney Pollack. God, Sydney Pollack. Imagine! Somewhere Sydney Pollack and Tom Selleck were sipping Asti Spumante at an outdoor café while other stars were rushing into their waiting limousines.

  But as she got closer to her destination, all she saw were low-slung stucco buildings, car washes, Fat Burgers, and advertisements. Where was that grand threshold she would have to cross, making her feel she had entered Hollywood, the Land of Dreams? Oh, calm down. Stop acting all upset. You’ve just arrived. Remember, it’s all about good stuff now. Positive thoughts. But, God, why does this look so much like Queens with palm trees?

  She pulled into a gas station and bought a new Los Angeles guide. Her first guide book had gotten lost somewhere in her travels, but she couldn’t for the life of her remember where. She fanned the pages, searching for a place to stay. Blossom hadn’t heard of any of the hotels. The Beverly Hills Hotel was the same as the Sunset Vista, complete with kitchen efficiency units and color TVs. The Four Seasons Hotel sounded the most glamorous in its description, so she headed over there.

  “Checking in?”