Catharine Bramkamp - Real Estate Diva 02 - Time Is of the Essence

by Catharine Bramkamp

  I turned, jumped off the porch (there was no railing, of course) and ran for my car. I rounded the corner – he hadn’t moved it far and almost ran into Tiffany. I forgot my resolution to not breath. I sucked in a huge amount of air and smoke and had to stop.

  Tiffany was alive. Well that was good wasn’t it? But her expression was one I imagined lit up Boudicca before she slaughtered every Roman in her path. Tiffany made a much better ancient Briton than either Carrie or me. She was livid. Her face was a mass of purple, her skin mottled from anger and exertion. The dark patch on her head was bright red with blood. She did however, look much better than the last time I saw her, since the last time I saw her I thought she was dead.

  She did not even see me. She pushed me aside and headed towards Mathew, who had just divested himself of the computer. I paused, thinking. No, thinking is bad. I ran to the car, the car! The beautiful car!

  “You bastard!” I heard her shriek and a muffled thud as she apparently launched her skinny body at the offending Mathew who, I surmised, was the fellow who had left her for dead under his own deck. Cocky of him.

  The wind picked up stronger and hotter.

  I put my hand on the car door. Tiffany was family. I let go of the door handle and turned to the house. Around the corner I could hear the couple still struggling.

  “I loved you!” She yelled over and over, her voice carried off by the hot wind. “I loved you and you left me! No one leaves me!”

  I didn’t hear what Mathew said.

  “Tiffany!” I yelled. I took a step towards the sounds of the couple, but the hot wind whipped around the corner of the house and pushed me back. I could see the glow coming through the trees.

  “Tiffany!” I yelled one more time, but now both Tiffany and Mathew were yelling at each other.

  “I can’t love you, can’t you get that into your stupid head! You are too stupid to live!”

  A gentleman to the end. I stepped forward, then back. A tree branch popped and fell close by. That was it. I jumped into the car.

  There! Relief swept over me, as if the car was home and in it, I was safe. I was not safe, but I had my car. The keys were on the seat. Mathew hadn’t bothered to take them with him. A gesture of arrogance that I was happy to take advantage of.

  The wind whipped down my back. I heard nothing by my own breathing. Shallow, not to deep, didn’t want to get high from the pot smoke.

  I turned the motor, praying to whatever god was currently on duty. The engine kicked in. I smacked off the brake and roared down the drive. The beeper from the lack of seat belt angrily chastised me with every bounce. Shut up. I instructed with gritted teeth. I pushed the car more than I should and took the corner with a screech my uncles would be proud of. I didn’t even care.

  The phone buzzed. It was probably Carrie. I jammed the accelerator and like the idiot I am, I picked it up without looking at the incoming number.

  “I’m sorry, I’ll have to call you back!”

  “Oh, Allison. Patricia says you use to live in Novato, can you tell me where the county club is?”

  The abandoned cars were on my side of the road now, and the cars took up most of the road, I swerved back and forth around them, expecting to come grill to grill with a fire engine at every turn.

  “Get a GPS.” I clicked off.

  I pressed the accelerator and hoped I was the last woman out, I didn’t want to get jammed in traffic with a forest fire ranging down behind me. I glanced in the rear view mirror, smoke billowed out ahead of the flames. I pressed on, the road was clear, the speedometer hovered around sixty. Seventy.

  There was something on the road. I slammed the brakes and skidded sideways but righted the car. The apparition waved at me and bounded toward the car.

  Ben jerked open the passenger door and jumped in.

  “Drive.” he yelled.

  I blinked, was it the smoke? The pot?

  “What are you doing here?”

  He breathed in and gestured for me to drive. We rounded another corner, no traffic.

  “Your friends,” Ben said catching his breath. “Are clever, but not too bright.”

  “That would be yes.” I responded without thinking. “Which friends?”

  “Jimmy and,” he paused.

  “Danny? They got off the mountain.” I glanced at the clock on the dash. “Fifteen minutes ago.”

  I glanced at it again, only fifteen minutes? It seemed like hours.

  Ben dragged his hand across his forehead. It shook and he dropped it back down on his lap.

  “They knocked me out downtown. Took my phone and locked me some back room.”

  “That explains why you didn’t call.” I glanced in the rear view mirror but saw nothing, as if a person could out drive a forest fire. Even if that person was traveling too fast down hill. Ben said nothing about my speed and even less about the charred vehicles and scorched ground we passed by.

  “You removed the door didn’t you?” I said.

  “Well, you told me they hadn’t built to code. It wasn’t too difficult, but with no phone service, I could only run.”

  “I’m glad you ran, the wind shifted about ten minutes ago, you would have been caught.” I started to cough. “But you’re fine now.”

  “Thanks to you.” He said softly.

  Oh crap. I did not want to admit it wasn’t all about him. But I also didn’t want to slide into a relationship that while strong in the sex department, needed work, permitted or not, in the communications department.

  “I didn’t really.” I swerved around a broken down van spilling mattresses and a narrow table out the back doors.

  “I didn’t really come and look for you. I was really up there to get Mathew’s PC.”

  “You risked your life for a computer?”

  “No,” I shot back. “I risked my life in case there was something in the computer that would harm my grandmother. And there was, he stole plants from her.”

  “Blackmail?”

  “Maybe. I hope it doesn’t matter.”

  I spun around the abandoned cars weaving in and out on Red Dog road. Faster, I whispered to myself. Faster. I reached the base of the hill, the road turned into Marsh Avenue. More planes roared overhead. The first of the fire engines passed us at seventy miles per hour. Which wasn’t fast enough. My grandmother’s house loomed ahead. I took the turn too quickly and crashed into my grandmothers fence as I spun into her driveway.

  I didn’t care.

  Neither did Grandma. “Allison, Allison!” She shot out of the front door and ran straight for me. Pat, Mike, Raul and Brick trailed behind her. A couple followed behind them keeping their distance. I didn’t recognize them, but Grandma was always up for a party, even if it was a disaster party.

  “The fire.” I said.

  Ben slid out and helped me out of the car. “Come on.” As if his life hadn’t been more at risk than mine.

  “Did you get the computer?” Raul chanted.

  “I did. But I had to give it up.” I admitted, may as well get the worst admission over with.

  “That’s okay honey.” Grandma pulled me to her and hugged me. “You’re here. Nothing else matters to me.”

  I sagged against her, all my adrenaline leaking from my limbs. “The fire.” I repeated as if that was the only coherent word I knew.

  “They’re bombing the area, there’s no way to reach anything otherwise.” Pat reported.

  “There aren’t many homes in the area.” Mike said, “we saw it on CNN.”

  “Yes,” I said tiredly. “There are.” I looked up as the strange couple approached. I didn’t recognize them at all.

  “And who are these people?” I asked.

  “Tiffany’s parents.”

  Shit.

  9,

  I struggled to stand. Tiffany’s parents wavered like figures seen through old fashion glass. I couldn’t focus much more than that. I had seen their daughter dead, then alive, then surely dead again. I took a breath and stepped
forward, what did Rosemary say to do? Breath, count to one.

  One.

  Both Pat and Mike to supported and helped him into the house. I followed them into the parlor where they gently sat Ben onto the only comfortable chair in the room, a modern piece, circa 1956.

  “You don’t look very good,” Pat peered into Ben’s face. Ben tried to bat the other man away, but didn’t even raise his hand very high.

  “I’m, fine.” He closed his eyes.

  “No.” Mike leaned in and slapped Ben’s face. “No, stay awake. What did you take?”

  Ben shook his head. “I didn’t take anything. I’m just a little groggy from the smoke. I’m fine.” He insisted.

  “You’ve been listening to Prue, everything is fine unless a person is bleeding profusely and it’s on her antique rug. Other than that, everything is fine.” Pat scolded.

  “They must have slipped him something.” Mike agreed.

  Ben blinked and took a laborious breath. “Fine,” he repeated.

  “Come on. We’ll walk.” Pat and Mike hauled poor Ben back up and started to walk him to the back of the house.

  “I don’t understand, he was fine when I picked him up.” I watched his back with considerable misgiving.

  “That was probably all adrenaline, he’s finally feeling the effects of whatever he took. But I’m sure he’ll be fine.” Raul beamed at me.

  Adrenaline would make a great girl’s name.

  “All-is-son. Have you met Tiffany’s parents?” Raul danced away from me and dodged behind the couple who appeared again in the front room. Now they become clearer. I may remember them from when I was a little girl, or maybe not. There were so many artists from that time, they all ran together, one big modern art blur.

  The woman was as thin as Tiffany, that much they had in common. I did see Tiffany’s eyes in her, big blue and bewildered. Gary, the husband was a big man, burly as a blacksmith with a black beard that climbed randomly over his round cheeks.

  I looked at them and they looked at me.

  “Did you see her?” The mother said anxiously.

  I nodded. I couldn’t say I knew anything for sure. I had turned back to help, but couldn’t do anything in the end, and I was too tired to contemplate if that made me innocent or an accomplice to the murderous act.

  Mathew had clearly left Tiffany for dead, at least the first time.

  “I don’t know if she’s okay,” I finally said honestly. “But she wasn’t paying much attention to the new fire.”

  The woman sucked in her breath and turned to bury her head into her husband’s chest. He held her steady, as he must have done repeatedly over the years. Tiffany didn’t strike me as an easy child.

  Unlike perfect me.

  “Allison, we need some aspirin or something for the nice man.” Mike and Pat trudged back with Ben. He looked a little better, there was some color in his cheeks. But he still looked, well, bad, like someone had slipped him the wrong drugs, punched him repeatedly and locked him in a badly constructed house. I chewed my lower lip and just stared at him.

  “Allison?” Pat asked gently, “the aspirin.”

  The mother (Gretchen, that was her name, I finally remembered) sniffed and drew in a long breath.

  “Okay.” I turned away from the couple and walked slowly upstairs.

  I tossed about a few things in my room to find my own cache of meds, but my little bottle of Aleve was empty.

  “Grandma,” I called down the center of the banister to the first floor, “Can I get some medicine from your cabinet?”

  “Go ahead, I’ll be right up.”

  Helping me was certainly better that than comforting parents who may never be comforted.

  Grandma climbed up to the second floor as slowly as I had. We were both too tired to function and yet we had not choice.

  “It’s in the bathroom cabinet.” Prue called from the hallway. I walked down to the second floor, we met on the landing and walked through her room to the tiny bathroom with a pedestal sink and toilet tucked into a closet. Grandpa wanted his privacy even if his knees hit the door. I flung open the cabinet door and did a double take. Each bottle, the Aleve included, was topped with mauled and misshapen lid precariously balanced on the tops of each container. Indents, jab marks and stretched lids greeted me like victims of a recent nuclear meltdown.

  “Uh, Grandma?” I gingerly removed the small Aleve bottle. I held it around the label.

  Prue came around the corner and saw what I was doing.

  “Oh, yes, sorry about that, I should have warned you. Can you get that open?”

  “It’s already open.” I knocked off the lid with my thumb and dropped three blue pills into my hand and tossed the pills into my mouth and swallowed.

  “Good,” Prue said with satisfaction. “I hate childproof caps; can’t get them open.”

  I gazed at the collection. There were surprisingly few prescription bottles in the collection, just calcium pills, pain relievers, Metamucil, that kind of thing.

  “You used a knife.” I concluded. Well, at least this mystery wasn’t too difficult to solve.

  “Sometimes I use the big butcher knife.” She agreed.

  Sometimes your future confronts you at odd moments. I could just see myself in thirty years prying open my own childproof-capped bottles using one of Uncle Steve’s ornamental machetes. He has two.

  I picked up a yellow package of Tylenol sinus. It was just like the packages in the apartment.

  “Grandma.” I said, still holding the package. “Who is staying in the apartment?”

  “No one.” Grandma said too quickly. She adverted her eyes.

  I held my ground. “Who is staying there?”

  “No one anymore.”

  I waited her out, particularly because I already knew the answer, but it was better for the other person to state the obvious.

  Grandma gazed out the window to the driveway. It was empty.

  “Tiffany.” She said finally. “She’s been staying there on and off for years. I couldn’t very well turn her down, not when she knew.”

  I turned the package over and over in my hand. There was something I read on the internet about policing the allergy medicine Sudafed.

  “Was she on speed too?” I asked.

  Grandma nodded. “It’s so hard to get off that terrible stuff, not like pot, that’s just like having a drink. But the speed …” She dragged her hand through her curls and rubbed her face. Grandma does not wear make up so there was no residual damage from her gesture.

  “I’m sorry.” I put my hand on her arm and she reached over and pulled me into a hug.

  “I still have you.”

  “You’ll always have me.” I assured her.

  I brought down another handful of blue Aleve pills for Ben. I didn’t want to upset him with the sight of the mauled bottle top.

  He was sitting at the kitchen table, his head in his hands. I stopped in the kitchen door. For a second I thought my grandfather was home. That was his chair, his favorite place to sit because he could see outside and check the weather as he ate. And the posture was the same. Grandpa read his big hard cover books with his hand on his forehead, shading his eyes.

  I blinked. And couldn’t move forward.

  “Allison I’ll take it.” Pat put out his hand for the pills, then peered a little closer at me. I wasn’t even paying attention.

  He looked at me and then glanced back at where Ben was seated. He straightened his shoulders and sucked in a deep breath.

  “I’ll get a glass of water.”

  “Okay.” My voice sounded faint in my ears.

  He brought the glass to Ben and said something softly in Ben’s ear. Ben sat up straight and the illusion was shattered. It was just Ben.

  I heard the drone of the Borate Bombers.

  “Some fires are never out, just temporarily suppressed.” Prue drew up behind me and patted my shoulder.

  I involuntarily glanced over at Ben. He looked tired and not
a little ravaged. Maybe just drugging him wasn’t all that Jimmy and Danny had done. Wait until I get my hands on those two, I vowed. But I would never get the chance.

  Fire engines whined again up the street.

  “How are you now?” I asked Ben.

  “Fine.” He grunted.

  I moved to the kitchen table and sat down at a ninety-degree angle to him. Sometimes it’s easier for men to talk if you – the woman – are not sitting directly across from them, peering into their eyes and demanding that they not only verbalize how they feel, but sort the feelings into categories. And do it right now.

  “Fine is what we all have embroidered on pillows. How are you really?”

  “I have a horrible head ache. You almost got killed. I got myself kidnapped when all I wanted to do was save you, and I screwed up everything.” He wrapped his fingers around his features like a death mask imprint. He has beautiful hands with those long tapered fingers that always touched me in exactly the right spot.

  “No.” I assured him. “You did not screw anything up. You almost died too.” The thought clutched at my heart and made it swell so it pressed so hard against my chest that my ribs hurt too. Well who knew?

  I took a sip of Ben’s water.

  He shifted his fingers and shaded his eyes again. Just like grandpa. I almost couldn’t stand it.

  “Well, one good thing about sitting in the bar with Danny and Jimmy is that right before they knocked me out, they told me about your fiancé.”

  “Ex fiancé,” I corrected.

  “Exactly. It seems we have something in common.”

  “Like we’ve both been sporked.”

  “Something like that.” He raised his head and looked at me with those deep blue eyes. I love those eyes.

  “Maybe we need to fall back to a more tradition relationship. Starting with dinner at my house.” He suggested.

  “Are you sure you can trust me?”

  “Not at all,” he said cheerfully. “But considering the excitement you’ve brought to my life in a distressingly short amount of time, I’m willing to risk the pain and suffering.”

  “So being with me is all about pain and suffering?”

  “Well so far, yes.”