by Elaine Viets
Helen didn’t want to hear that lecture. She turned restlessly in her bed and punched her pillow.
Why didn’t she quit?
Helen knew telemarketing was a terrible job. But for some weird reason, she was good at selling septic-tank cleaner. Sometimes, she was ashamed of talking lonely people into buying a product they didn’t need. She knew she should get a decent job.
But Helen was stubborn. It was her greatest virtue and her biggest fault. The more her friends urged her to quit, the more she clung to the job out of perverse pride. Besides, the money was better than any dead-end job she’d ever had.
She shut her eyes and saw Debbie again. She hadn’t liked the greedy little tease. But no one deserved to die like that. Helen flopped onto her stomach. The sheets were hopelessly twisted. The pillows were squashed into comfortless lumps.
At three thirty, she gave up on sleep and fixed herself a pot of coffee. She drank the whole thing. She’d have to get by on caffeine instead of sleep. At least she was working the survey room. She couldn’t take the boiler room’s insults tonight.
As soon as the elevator doors opened on Girdner Surveys’ luxurious office, Helen felt calmer. Her feet were cushioned by the deep carpets. Her eyes rested on the expensive paneling. She was soothed by the sight of her coworkers: Nellie, the big butterscotch blonde with the creamy voice. Berletta, thin and efficient, with her beautiful Bahamian accent. There was no sign of Penelope, her prissy boss. That was good.
“Tonight’s survey is for a disposable-razor company,” Nellie said. “Respondents must answer question five and the answer must be yes.”
Question five. Helen skimmed the survey. Ah, there it was: “Do you shave your armpits?”
“I actually have to ask women that? That question is the pits,” Helen said.
“So to speak,” Berletta said.
“Yes, you must ask it,” Nellie said. “And remember, we don’t want the hairy ones.”
“Sweet Gloria Steinem,” Helen said. “Women won’t answer that question.”
Helen sure wouldn’t. For her, there was only one correct answer: “Get off my phone, you pervert.”
But she forgot she was in Florida. Helen made her first survey call to Nancy, age thirty-three, in suburban Weston. Nancy lived in a mini-mansion on the edge of the mosquito-ridden Everglades. She sounded awfully chirpy. Maybe she wouldn’t slam down the phone when she heard question five. Helen took a deep breath, then asked, “Do you shave your armpits?”
She waited for Nancy to yell, or scream or hang up on her.
“Oh, yes,” she said proudly.
Five more women responded with equal enthusiasm, as if they were reporting to the pit police.
The sixth was shocked and angry. “Of course I shave,” she said. “Do you think I’m European?”
America: land of the free and home of the shaved.
Helen was working on her seventh questionnaire when her pencil broke again. Surveys had to be filled out in pencil, and the phone-room staff was given cheap orange ones that often cracked under the strain.
“Third time tonight this pencil broke. I hate these things.” Helen ground it into the electric sharpener. “I need a break.”
“Just like your pencil,” Nellie said.
Helen peeked out the phone-room door. No clients. Good. Survey riffraff weren’t supposed to be seen by the sacred suits. She tiptoed down the hall to the employee lunchroom for a soda. Maybe she could scrounge a cupcake from a day-shift birthday party. There was always leftover food.
Tonight she found something much tastier on a counter-top: a whole box of shiny black pencils. They were fat and sturdy-looking, a higher grade than the cheap orange ones. They wrote thick and black, not scratchy pale gray like the cheap pencils. They even fit her hand better.
Helen took one pencil. Finally, she could complete a survey in comfort.
She was carrying her prize back to her desk when she ran into Penelope, stiff as a department-store dummy. Her boss’s tight mouth was crimped in disapproval. “What are you doing with that?”
“With what?” Helen said.
“That black pencil.”
“There’s a whole box in the lunchroom,” Helen said.
“You obviously didn’t know, so I will excuse you this time,” Penelope said, clipping each word. “But you are not allowed to use a full-size black pencil. Those are for clients and management only. You may use the black pencil stubs or the orange pencils provided for you.”
Penelope held out her small white hand and Helen surrendered the black pencil. How far she’d fallen. In her old job, Helen had once received a four-hundred-dollar Montblanc pen as a gift. Now she was reprimanded for taking a pencil.
“Everything OK?” Nellie asked, when she returned.
“Penelope caught me with a black pencil. She acted like I was stealing the copy machine.”
“Oh, hell, honey, that’s my fault. I should have told you. Penelope has a bug up her ass about those pencils.”
Somehow, those words in Nellie’s come-hither voice sounded elegant. Helen laughed out loud and went back to asking strange women strange questions about their underarm hair.
She was on her tenth survey when Nellie said, “Phone call for you, Helen.”
“I’m swamped. Can you or Berletta take it?”
“She says she’ll only speak to you.” Helen heard a slight curdle of disapproval in Nellie’s whipped-cream voice. Personal calls were forbidden. Helen quickly finished her survey and picked up the call, her heart beating faster in alarm. Something was wrong. She never got calls at work.
“Helen?” said a distraught voice. “It’s Savannah.”
“Are you OK?” Helen could tell this was no social call.
“Helen, I know I shouldn’t call you at work, but they got my trailer. I got home from my office job about five-thirty and found the door open. Someone jimmied it and trashed my home. They got . . .” She stopped. Helen could hear her swallowing tears.
“Savannah. What happened?”
“They tore up everything in Laredo’s room. Slashed the bedcovers. Ripped her Shakespeare book. Smashed a china ballerina she’s had since she was eight. Now I don’t have anything to remember her by. It’s all broken.” Savannah wept the hot, harsh sobs of someone unused to crying.
“Savannah, please don’t cry. Talk to me. Who did this? Do you think it’s the same people who killed Debbie?”
“Definitely. Laredo’s room was hit the hardest, but they got my whole place. They slashed the couch cushions and the mattress. They dumped everything out of the drawers and cabinets. Five pounds of coffee were dumped in the sink. There’s sugar on the kitchen counter and raw hamburger stinking up the floor.”
“Sounds familiar,” Helen said.
“It’s just like Debbie’s apartment. Except they also kicked in my TV. Put their foot right through the screen. Somebody was real mad.”
“Savannah, I’m so sorry. Did you call the police?”
“Didn’t have to. They hit another mobile home in the same park. The Sunnysea cops were already here when I got home, talking to my neighbor, Randy. He had ten dollars on the dresser and nobody touched it. They didn’t even take his camcorder. The police say it was kids tearing things up.”
“Do you think it was kid vandals?”
“No. They would have taken the cash. These bustards were looking for something that belonged to Laredo. Her room is slashed to pieces. That other trailer was window dressing to distract the police. Randy’s home didn’t have near the damage mine did. They broke in his door and overturned a few things.”
“Savannah, I get off work in half an hour. I’ll catch a bus and come right over.”
“No, don’t. That’s not why I’m calling. I’m warning you to be careful. They’re after us. Both of us. They got me. You’re next. Watch your back.”
Helen had a jumpy walk home from work. Why would Hank Asporth—or whoever it was—trash Savannah’s trailer? What was he looking
for? The killer won’t bother my place, she told herself. It made sense to search Laredo’s home. But Helen didn’t have anything of interest.
Besides, Margery was more eagle-eyed than any security service. She knew every alley cat that crossed the yard. No human would slip by unnoticed. Still, Helen was glad when she reached the Coronado. She was even happier to hear Cal the Canadian having a disapproval derby with Fred and Ethel by the pool.
“It would never happen in Canada,” Cal said.
“You’re right,” Fred said. “America is a violent society. Rapes and murders are rampant and nobody gets punished. Why, just the other day . . .”
Three people were within deploring distance. They’d come running if Helen called for help. It would give them more to deplore. She felt safe—until she saw that her front door was slightly ajar. Helen saw the telltale jimmy marks on the door frame. She slowly opened the door. Something white floated out.
A feather.
She saw the smashed lamp first. The boomerang coffee table was overturned. The couch pillows were slashed. Her money was gone. Her secret stash. She’d had almost twenty-three hundred dollars stuffed in those pillows.
She ran to the bedroom. The sheets and spread had been dragged off the mattress. Her feather pillows had been ripped open. The room had snowdrifts of white feathers.
“Thumbs?” Helen said. “Thumbs, where are you? Are you OK?”
The toylike cat with the huge paws crawled out from under the bed and said, “Mrrrw.”
“Good boy,” Helen said. She picked him up and scratched his soft gray ears until he purred. “At least you’re safe.”
She was slowly taking in the damage. She ran to the kitchen, remembering Savannah’s sugar on the counter and rotting meat on the floor. Thank goodness I don’t have to deal with that, she thought. They didn’t trash my TV, either.
But in the bedroom, her dresser drawers were open. Her bras were twisted together on the floor. Her panties were spread out on the bare mattress. The creeps had had their hands on her underwear. That violation seemed worse than Savannah’s torn books and smashed china.
Underwear. She had seven thousand dollars stashed in the Samsonite suitcase, guarded by a mass of snagged stockings and old lady underwear. What if they got that?
She tore open the utility-closet door. The suitcase was still there. She yanked it open. The money was safe under the pile of elderly intimate garments.
Suddenly, Helen couldn’t stay in her home another second. She ran across the lawn and pounded on Margery’s door. Her landlady opened it wearing a purple leopard-print shorts set—if there were purple leopards—and kitten-heeled sandals.
“What’s that racket? It’s ten thirty.”
“Someone broke into my apartment,” Helen said. “They wrecked it and took about thirty-two hundred dollars in cash.”
“Not at my Coronado,” Margery said. “We’ve never had anything like that.” The break-in was a personal attack on the integrity of her apartment complex. She crossed the lawn in long, feline strides. A tiger was in those kitten heels.
Margery surveyed the damage to Helen’s home. “The miserable buggers broke my lamp. Don’t worry. I have another one just like it.”
“They had their hands on my underwear,” Helen said.
“We’ll fix that.” Margery stuffed the mauled bras and panties into a shopping bag, then added the sheets and spread. The pillow cases were totaled, but she took them, too.
“Let’s go back to my place. I’ll throw these in my washer. Damn. The one night I go visit my friend Shirley and this happens. Do you want to sleep on my couch tonight?”
“No, they’re not chasing me out of my place. Besides, there are plenty of people around.”
“Fine. Let’s call the police.”
“No!” Helen said. “How would I explain twenty-two hundred dollars stuffed in the couch pillows?”
“You don’t have to. They’re not the IRS.”
“I don’t want the police wondering why I have all that cash,” Helen said. “They’ll never find my money. I can’t point to a pile of bills and say, Those are mine. I recognize George Washington’s picture.’”
“We can at least ask Cal, Fred and Ethel if they saw anything. Peggy’s not home yet.”
As they pushed through the poolside palm fronds, Helen heard Fred say, “The government should make those welfare bums work.”
“Excuse me,” Margery said. “While you were settling the fate of the nation tonight, did you see anyone hanging around Helen’s apartment? Someone broke in.”
“That’s terrible,” Ethel said. She was wearing an ASK ME ABOUT MY GRANDBABY T-shirt. Helen would cut out her tongue before she did.
“They get anything?” Fred said.
“Just messed the place up,” Helen said. She wasn’t going to tell them she’d lost over two grand.
“Kids,” Ethel said. Her chins wobbled judicially. “They should be in school, but they’re roaming about, not working, everything handed to them. When I was their age—”
“Canada would never—” Cal interrupted.
“Did anyone see anything?” Margery interrupted. “Any strangers on the property or the parking lot? I left about six tonight.”
“I didn’t get home until a-boot half an hour ago,” Cal said. A year ago, Helen would have found that “a-boot” sexy, along with the rest of Cal. Now it was as thrilling as his boiled-broccoli dinners.
“What about you and Fred?” Margery asked Ethel.
“We were otherwise occupied,” she said primly.
“What’s that mean?” Margery’s purple leopard spots quivered impatiently.
“We were getting a little afternoon delight.” Fred grinned and stuck out his gourdlike gut proudly. Helen wondered if another body part stuck out further.
Ethel simpered.
Margery looked disgusted. “Thanks for that information. I better take Helen back to my place and feed her some dinner.”
When they were safely in Margery’s kitchen, she said, “I was afraid lover boy would start pounding his chest like a gorilla. Let me fix you a drink. I don’t know which is worse—Fred and Ethel in the throes of connubial bliss, or your place tossed and robbed.”
“How about having my underwear pawed by thieving pervs?”
Margery filled a water glass with about six ounces of gin, then added a shot of orange juice. “Drink that.”
She did. Helen felt a pleasant buzz. Three gulps and the Fred and Ethel X-rated movie vanished. The Debbie horror show still played in her head, but it was safely in the background.
Margery handed her a big glass of water next. “Now, drink this. It’s a chaser to clear the palate.” She pulled a brown box from the freezer.
“Dove Bars,” Helen said. “Dark chocolate. Yum.”
The bar was richly rotund. Helen ate it in greedy bites, cracking the thick chocolate coat.
“Have you had dinner?” Margery said.
“No.” Helen deftly caught a chunk of cracked-off chocolate with her tongue.
“I’ll get you a sandwich,” Margery said.
This struck Helen as funny. After six ounces of gin, lots of things were funny. “You gave me dessert first.”
“Of course. Life is short. Turkey OK?”
“For life?” Helen was confused.
“For dinner. I can fix you turkey on whole wheat and salt-and-vinegar chips.”
“Hold the chips,” Helen said virtuously, then hiccupped. She’d already held four bags that week—and eaten them all.
About halfway through her sandwich, Helen’s eyelids began to droop. “Let’s get you home. You’ve had a bad day,” Margery said.
“You have no idea.” But Helen wasn’t drunk enough to tell Margery exactly how bad.
Her landlady disappeared down the hall. While she was gone, Helen pawed through her purse until she found her pay envelope. Finally, something good happened today. She hadn’t had time to put it with her stash, thank goodness. She
quickly counted her money. Four hundred fifty dollars. Vito had stiffed her an extra fifty. She was too tired to care.
Margery came back with an armload of lavender sheets, a purple blanket and two white pillows. “Ready? Let’s fix up your place,” she said.
As they passed Phil’s apartment, Helen breathed in the sticky perfume of burning weed. “Do you think Phil saw anything?”
“Phil probably saw lots of things, but nothing that can help you,” Margery said.
“I don’t believe he exists,” Helen said.
“Of course he does. I see him when he pays his rent every month, and he’s never been late.” This was Margery’s highest character reference.
“Is he married or single?”
“Don’t you have enough problems?” Margery snapped. She examined Helen’s jimmied door. “I’ll get you a new door and lock tomorrow.”
It took almost an hour to put the place in order. They righted the coffee table. Helen swept up the broken lamp and carried the pieces out to the Dumpster. She put her things back in the dresser drawers while Margery vacuumed up the feathers and Thumbs chased them around the room.
Then they made the bed while Thumbs tunneled under the covers.
“He’s having a good time,” Helen said.
Margery patted the new pillows into place and shooed Thumbs off the bed. She was not a cat lover. “I’ll get you a couple of couch pillows. Sorry I can’t replace your stuffing.”
Helen examined the reconstructed room. “Something’s missing.”
“That broken lamp leaves a big hole,” Margery said.
“No, it’s in here.” Helen stared hard at the bed. “It’s Chocolate.”
“I can get you more chocolate. I have some Godiva.”
“Chocolate, my bear. My stuffed bear is gone.”
Helen checked under the bed, but she knew he wasn’t there. “He had almost a thousand dollars in him. They could have just taken the money, but they didn’t.
“They got my teddy bear,” Helen said. “Now it’s personal.”
