by Eric Ellert
Faudron took a breath, feeling really foolish and dialed the number on the corpsmen's card, but she only got the annoying-voiced woman at the local exchange. Faudron got so mad, she pulled the phone's flip top all the way back until one of the hinges snapped and it wouldn't close. She pulled an elastic band from her hair and wrapped it around the phone.
Behind Faudron, people filed out of the clinic, some getting into the cars. Dusty fumes poured out of their tailpipes, wafting across her.
"Thank you Major dad," she mumbled.
The guy in the white pickup honked the horn and waived. He pulled up, blocking two cars in, leaned his head out the window and pointed at the cargo hatch. "In the back. In the back. We don't pick 'em up. You drop 'em you ain't got 'em. Got that?"
Faudron checked the list again after he sped off and she was alone. She'd feel better if she went home with it all mission accomplished. She saw the telescope class mentioned, a gift for dad. Mom must have been too nervous during her last phone call to her because she talked about nothing much but the class. Faudron hated that kind of thing. You had to talk to strangers. Someon always brought a coffee-cake. Who knew where their hands had been? She checked her watch, 10:15 and the address, One Community Hall Plaza and Yacht Club located on South Main Street, where else? Yachts in the mountains of Jersey, she kind of doubted that.
She passed Splinter's window and he forced it open. "Poncho Villa. They liked that. You want to get that coffee, I'm done. There's only one restaurant still open in town. It's bad, but that's ok."
Faudron held up the list. "Sorry. Maybe tomorrow."
"You ever go skating in Central Park?"
"Yes, yes I did," Faudron answered, surprised that he'd brought it up.
"So have I." He slowly shut the window.
"See I had to borrow a car, and my sister, she took the other one but I fixed that. We could go to the yacht club?"
But he was gone.
The main building behind the brass sign that read Welcome to the Plaza had that cheap, pock-marked granite and black glass outlined with bronze-colored aluminum look that had been so modern when they'd put it up but looked so faded now. She opened the door. There was lots of space inside beneath a black, glass atrium but just one or two people walking about. She passed a huge glass-walled cafeteria facing the reservoir. Yes, the little alcove beach was full of sunbathers, beached-whales in bikinis glistening in the sort-of-warm-for-this-time-of-year sun, under a partially clear sky. She'd lived all over and all over, every fenced-in community was the same, aspiring to yacht clubs full of whales in thongs, except this one seemed to have been built for many more people than she'd found as if the yachts really had been on their way once, but had never quite arrived.
She found the classroom, entered and found Rau sitting by a workbench assembling a telescope seven feet long with a lens a foot wide.
"ET call home, what are you doin' here?"
"It's my class and you're, it seems, my only student. Sorry to flat leave you but I had to make a call and when I came up from the basement you were gone."
"That all right. If it hadn't been an emergency."
"Wanna cancel?"
"No," Faudron said.
"No one in town will speak to me."
"What did you do?"
He pointed at his chest with his thumb as if his shirt had a nametag. "No one likes the dog catcher."
"No, really."
"No one likes the dog killer. I hunt wolves. Well, mostly those who manage to get off the island."
"There aren't any wolves in New Jersey," Faudron said. "I checked it out. I mean I saw it on cable."
"They reintroduced them. Natural to the mountain. The greening, you know."
"Greening means hunting 'em?"
"Culling. Careful with your choice of words. Only when they get off the island. Then you have a stink. So, you see, if you, well if you cull the oddball who gets off the island, people won't insist on euthanizing the pack. Darts don't work on them...for some reason. Don't look at me like that, I got a Parks' Department uniform at home, just like on cable."
"I don't want to talk about it. Not much for nature." She put her hand over her eyebrows and scanned the room, eyes wide. "They'll cancel it, your class?"
"So what? I do it for fun. No one pays me."
She slipped into a seat. "Well, what should I do? I have a gift certificate. Do I have to get it?"
Two hours later, Faudron had assembled her telescope. "Can I use it?"
Rau had his back to her, working with a soldering iron on an electronic part. "Ah, I burned the eyepiece out. It's electric." He got two new ones from the cabinet and laid them out on the table. "Left one's mine. Right one's yours," he said, pointing to the telescope she'd thought was her's when he meant the one that was his. She guessed she'd botched it and nodded thanks. She tried to think of something clever to say. "You talk funny."
"I've lived all over."
"So have I. You still talk funny."
Rau went on about places he'd lived; Faudron barely listened.
***
The last two hours they hadn't said much though their hands kept touching. She hadn't mean to but meant to. She had a wisecrack for everyone lately but every answer Rau gave to any question she asked was so disarming, so just off the mark with the slang. He brought up things he'd read in the newspaper that she'd read about last year and stared dumbly and changed the subject when she talked about anything that had just happened. "How'd you make it here so fast?"
"Know a shortcut."
"Doesn't make any sense," Faudron said.
"Moren all right?"
She checked her watch. "Yeah, yeah. I think it's a half day. Can I have the car?"
"Sure." He went to the door. "Class over. I'll bring your telescope out to the car, if you like. Just let me shut down the building."
"I think I saw people in the cafeteria."
Rau shrugged and smiled strangely. "They'll just have to sit in the dark...they don't mind. Sometimes they spend all night there, though I'm guessing they put the lights back on when I go. Like I said, they don't talk to me. Not ever."
He picked up the telescope then opened one of the drawers on the lab station with one hand, pulled out a bouquet of flowers and pushed them across at her.
"Thank you." Faudron shuffled back and forth, took two long steps, grabbed the flowers and took two steps back. "It must have taken you a heck of a lot of work to get them to do that; not talk to you. I woulda' talked to you without flowers. And I didn't see a florist."
"Have you met the poncho people?"
"Yeah about that," Faudron said.
"They're all poncho people. Bunch of dogs, if you ask me?"
That had been her impression, save Splinter. She got to the door, walked ten feet down the hallway, then tiptoed back, hoping it would look like she'd lingered, but her boots squeaked on the floor and Rau came to the door and caught her. "You want go to the mall?"
Rau laughed. "Sorry?"
"No, if you're not interested."
"It's just the flowers. I liked you the moment I saw you but they really weren't for you."
"No," she said, putting them behind her back, reaching for a gash in a skirt that was five miles away on her bedroom floor.
"Your mother wanted them with the telescope, for your dad I think, from you, one of them or both, she didn't say. She talked too fast."
"Hey."
"Sorry, but she did. Your mother talked a lot about you."
"Ah, hell." Faudron pictured soggy crumb-cake, Moren's foot nailed to the floor by mom's foot pressed against her's to keep her from leaving the table, mom listening to gossip about strangers, mom telling Rau every thing her daughters had ever done since they were born, all the foul-ups she thought amusing.
"Yes, I know every stupid thing you ever did as a kid."
"I'm calling your bluff," Faudron said.
"You stuck a candy corn up your nose because you thought Mickey Mouse told you to from
the tv screen and it didn't come out until you got to the hospital. Then it fell out in a snot river." He came close, balancing the telescope on one shoulder, reached behind her back and took the flowers back. "And you came here."
"Got me. We got a flooded basement, that why the house cost fifteen k?" She pulled at her t-shirt. "Why I'm wearing my sister's clothes."
Rau frowned. "You're not supposed to tell strangers things like that. Did you meet the Mayor yet? He thinks he's the Mayor. I'm the Mayor and I'm tellin' you, don't tell these people your business."
"Won't even say hello." She grabbed the flowers back, almost knocking the telescope out of Rau's hand. "Didn't think you were a stranger. Even with the dead guy flowers. That's what they look like, anyway."
He leaned forward. Faudron thought he'd kiss her but he whispered in her ear. "But I am a stranger, Faudron Falkirk, whose afraid of dark hallways and not afraid of mice."
"No one told you that. I know no one told you that."
"I can read your mind." He opened his eyes wide for a second as if he had magic powers.
She almost believed him. She kissed him. "I don't care."
***
It all happened so fast and he'd walked away really fast without looking back, his heels snapping on the concrete floors under a ceiling so high they sounded wet. He must have made it to the cafeteria because the lights blinked on and off and he shouted, "Out in five, building sealed. I can and will ticket you. Five minutes, no stay behind time, today. Out."
People hurried past the door and Faudron didn't want to put Rau on the spot. She'd meet him at the car and decided to drag along the telescope herself.
No one held the door for her on the way out. If she didn't know better, she'd have sworn that the woman ahead of her waited until the last minute and let it go, but she couldn't get too angry, a but that big in a thong over an orange and green mini-dress out of Laugh-In was its own punishment.
She waited twenty minutes for Rau but he never showed. Good luck to him. Faudron drove around, circling the general area of the school until she saw the Lincoln. She pulled up in the empty spot beside it, got the telescope out and laid it on the Lincoln's roof.
"You'll scratch it like that. I'm the freakin' Mayor and I like my automobiles shiny," the Mayor said from behind her.
Faudron hadn't heard his car pull up, but when she turned she noticed he'd blocked Rau's car in sort of cop car like.
Faudron didn't recognize him but he looked like a mayor, maybe a chief. "I'll paint it."
He smiled and leaned on the opposite side of the Lincoln, then pressed his belly against the mirror, knocking it off-center. "That sister of yours got some sweet ass on her."
Faudron opened the door, pulled out the tear gas gun from the glove compartment, forced the rear door open, slipped over the seat and sprayed him. When he put his hands up, she stepped on his feet. When he tried to cover his legs, she sprayed him in the face again.
He bounced on the hood on the way down, landed on the ground and when his glasses fell off, Faudron stepped on them. "My dad'll be back here -- two days. You're sued. You can't touch people."
He got up faster than he looked like he could and scrambled around the front end of the Lincoln, then squeezed between the Lincoln and the Ford.
Faudron got in the Lincoln, figuring genius Moren would be tempted to drive it. She wouldn't get out of that one. Maybe they could denia-lie about the other one, if they were lucky. She turned the ignition but nothing happened.
The Mayor laughed and pulled at the handle but Faudron managed to get the button down. He reached for the rear door; she got that one down. He kept laughing, even with the bloody nose from the fall and when he ran around to the other side, she got the front button down, tumbled over the passenger-side seat and pushed the rear one down.
He tapped on the window and pulled out one of those escape tools from his pocket. Faudron recognized the initials on it because it must have come from her glove compartment.
"I know all the tricks," he said. "All the freakin' tricks, you spoiled NASA brats pull when you first get here. But we break you of those particular traits fast. That we do."
He took the glass cutter end of the emg-escape tool and scored an x in the window then raised his arm, switching his grip on the escape tool until he had the hammer end ready.
He stopped.
Rau tapped on the opposite window and looked in on Faudron.
"Rau. What you doing in town?" the Mayor asked.
Rau heled up his hand, high over the top of the car. "I wasn't addressing you, Phil." He let the silence force the Mayor back a few steps then bent down to the car window. "You all right, Faudron?"
Faudron nodded before he finished speaking.
Rau stood tall and leaned on the top of the car, patting his hands on it, filing the cab with echoes. "Put the battery back in the car. Return the hammer thing and leave the young lady alone."
"People are gettin' a little tired of being pushed around by you."
Rau smiled and though he never raised his voice each time he spoke, the Mayor had taken a step back until he walked around the car and placed a hand on the hood of Rau's SUV, with a kind of let's all be reasonable here gesture.
"Ah-Ah. Please don't touch my car. Scratch the paint. Take your time with the battery. But have it back by 3 PM, and Dakison?"
"Yes, Rau."
"Stay away from Moren Falkirk."
"I'll do just that."
"Thank you."
"Hey, Rau," the Mayor said as friendly as if the conversation had just started. "They found a dead wolf last night. Up in the hills."
"Glad to hear it."
"You be careful. Wolves are smart, twice as smart as people in some ways. Very aware and they, they learn. They do learn. Even if it takes them a while."
"The day I'm not careful is the day you flood, ain't it?"
The Mayor scowled and waddled away looking back every few feet until he crossed the street and stood in front of a storefront office.
Rau whistled. "Please move the car, Phil."
He took his time coming back and wouldn't look directly at Rau, but Faudron figured half his weight must be burning off on the inside.
He spun the tires till he got to the end of the block, did a U-turn and parked the wrong way in front the office.
Faudron rolled down the window. She waited for Rau to say something, but he leaned against his car, probably scratching the paint. It had scratches all over the place. "Guess it does take a heck of a lot of work."
"I'm really sorry," Faudron said.
"Happens every couple of weeks, in one form or another. He's just mad he doesn't get to tell me what to do."
"Didn't think parks rangers scared people."
"Special ranger. It's a special park."
"You still interested in our mall?"
"Never said I wasn't. Sorry I got tied up. Got talked into letting some of the people stay the night at the school. I don't mind at all, really. It's just they got to sign a waver. You're not infected?"
She didn't know how to answer. Maybe Splinter had told tales out of school. "No. I won't be here that long."
"Coffee at the mall? You seen all the other sights."
"Was exciting. You really kill a wolf?" Faudron asked.
"Now that's a discussion for another day."
"Why's he afraid of you?"
"I guess because I frighten him."
"Really."
Rau paused as if he didn't want to trouble her with the answer but he was so like Splinter. You just had to wear them down with a question or two and they'd tell you what they wanted to tell you.
"Cause the day I die or the day I decide to leave town, they do flood this place. That's what the reservoir's for, didn't you know?"
He smiled. He shouldn't smile. He should be upset, but he owned the only new car she'd seen in town. That sort of made him normal.
"Come on, you're driving," Rau said.
"Not unless you
tell me what you just said."
He paused a moment after he got in. He held his hand palm up so she'd place it on his. He checked its wait, lifting her hand up and down, tapping the bottom of the worn-out pine-scenter hanging from the mirror. "Ok. They send people here to die. Rockaway Grove, near the ever-enchanting Eggbert's Lake."
"Just outside of Eggbert's lake. That was kind of my impression."
He let her hand go and put the car in reverse. "But not you."
"Why not me?"
"Cause I promised your mother. But it's gonna take just a few days."
"Happy birthday few days?"
"Guess so."
Chapter 4
The mall's parking lot was nearly empty, the building's facade made up of sections of brown and sections of white, enameled-brick running from the first to the third level, though Faudron had to guess, since it didn't have any windows. It felt right and wrong, as if she'd seen a building just like this but in another place or in another form. When she thought about it, it was true of everything, as if the builders had wanted to make a certain type of person comfortable here, but had gotten it just a bit wrong.
She opened the door and the hot smell of broken central-air filled her nose. For a second Faudron thought the place was out of business, but Rau gestured her in. Every mall was somewhat the same and she recognized the main hallway and approached the first set of escalators, but her steps echoed for the lack of people. Rau looked glum as if he'd like to be anywhere else but inside, our super mall, as he called it.
It was a bit of a sad-sack mall, with water stains on the ceiling, and stopped-up pools running down the center with cloudy water that leaked under the benches around the pools. Faudron recognized the usual choices of stores but not the very latest.
