Man of Wax (Man of Wax Trilogy)

by Robert Swartwood

  INSIDE, I WENT to the bathroom first. At the sink, washing my hands, I realized I hadn’t yet showered. The men’s room door opened and an old guy walked in, his gray hair wiry, shuffling his way past the two hand dryers to one of the stalls. I waited until I heard the satisfying click of the lock before pinching the collar of my T-shirt and pulling it out, lowering my nose so I could take a whiff. Wasn’t any B.O., but it didn’t smell that good either, and I decided I wasn’t apt to get many strange stares while I waited in line along with the general public.

  I stared at myself for a moment in the mirror. I didn’t look like me, at least not the me I remembered. The glasses were what really threw me off. They just didn’t fit my face in the right way, and thinking of them, I became conscious of just how much they were pinching my nose.

  In the farthest stall, the old man was mumbling, telling himself he could do it, that he really could.

  • • •

  THERE WAS NO line at the counter, and the woman who waited on me had crooked teeth but somehow managed to pull off a nice smile. She pressed a button on her register screen and looked up, asked if this would be for here or to go. I glanced down at my arm, realized I wasn’t wearing my watch.

  “To go,” I said, and pulled the wallet that wasn’t mine from my pocket.

  Back in the Dodge a few minutes later, a large paper bag now on the passenger seat, containing two Big Macs, large fries, and the largest size Coke they had—which didn’t occur to me at the time how stupid that was considering I was on some kind of road trip with a deadline—my stomach had quieted down. It knew it was getting what it wanted and didn’t intend to rush me any further. Still I didn’t reach for the food just yet, thinking I had to make up for the time I’d lost on my little detour.

  The phone started vibrating in my pocket the moment I backed out of my parking space. I wasted no time pulling it out. The same INCOMING CALL was on the screen.

  Simon said, “Did I say stop at McDonald’s? Because, quite frankly, I don’t remember ever doing so.”

  I closed my eyes briefly, cursed myself. I thought of Jen, of Casey, and remembered I hadn’t yet looked in the trunk. Which one of them was crammed back there right now?

  “Ben? When I ask you a question, I expect an answer.”

  “I’m sorry.” For some reason it didn’t even occur to me then to ask just how the fuck he knew I’d made a pit stop.

  “You’re not forgiven. But that’s okay. I guess I’ll allow it, considering you’re no doubt hungry. Besides, you’re going to need all the strength you can get for what’s in store.”

  “What’s in store,” I said. I’d come to the parking lot exit, was just waiting there with my foot on the brake. “What does that mean? Where’re my wife and daughter? What have you done with them?”

  “Relax, Ben. They’re safe. And as long as you follow the rules, and do everything I tell you to do, they’ll remain that way. Now why don’t you do those nice people behind you a favor and quit sitting around? Head back onto the highway. Take 299 east.”

  I glanced up at the rearview mirror, saw the Buick there behind me. An older man (the one from the restroom?) and an older woman in the front, the man hunched over the wheel, the woman shaking her head and raising a frail hand, a wordless gesture expressing she had no idea what I was thinking.

  “How the fuck can you see them?”

  “Don’t worry about it, Ben. Just get going. Time’s a-wastin’.”

  “But what—” I started to say, but by then Simon had already disconnected. I cursed myself again. I realized I was trembling. I’d already begun to hate that voice, to loath it so much my mind had created a face for Simon just so I could imagine myself smashing it. This wasn’t fair. This wasn’t right. None of this made sense.

  Relax, that small internal voice of mine said. It’ll do neither you nor Jen or Casey any good getting pissed right now. You need to stay in control.

  Yes, that’s right. I needed to stay in control. But just how the fuck was I supposed to do that when I had the least control possible?

  The Buick’s horn sounded out behind me, a very high-pitched sound, and without hesitation I pulled out onto the road. Minutes later I was on 299. The phone was still in my hand. I knew better than to even fool with it again, but I had to know, needed to know, and so I dialed the house even though I’d already tried Jen’s cell, even though I knew there would be no answer.

  I placed the phone to my ear and listened to the rings. It rang four times before the answering machine picked up: Jen’s voice saying, “You’ve reached the Anderson’s, sorry we’re not home,” and then Casey’s voice, her soft and gentle voice, beaming in with, “Leave a message!” There was a beep and I started to say something but stopped. Instead I disconnected the call and placed the phone between my legs.

  “Think,” I muttered to myself. “Come on, think.”

  I was now a part of a sea of traffic heading in a new direction. At least I was pointed east this time, though I knew that changed nothing. Home was still thousands of miles away, and I grabbed the phone again, intended on trying the house one more time. Instead another number popped into my head and I dialed that one, waited three rings before Marshall Gibson, a friend and fellow painter, answered his cell.

  “Hello?” he said, hesitant and unsure like any person would be when a strange number appears on the screen of his cell phone.

  “Marshall, it’s Ben.”

  A slight release of breath on his end. “Oh my God, Ben, where—where are you? Where are you calling from?”

  “Listen,” I said, but at once the phone started beeping. I pulled it away from my ear to see the screen. I had another incoming call. Of course I had another incoming call. Had I really been that stupid?

  Marshall said, “Ben? Are you still there?”

  “Hold on a second,” I said, then switched over. Simon didn’t even wait for me to say hello or anything. He started right up, his voice angry and petulant.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing? Goddamn it, Ben, are you an idiot? What did I tell you before? You talk to nobody.”

  “Where’s my family?” My body was beginning to tremble again, though I managed to keep it hidden from my voice—or at least I hoped I did. Stay in control, I kept telling myself, stay in fucking control. “I want to talk to them.”

  “You don’t get shit, Ben.” Simon paused, took a calming breath. “Now switch back over and tell your friend Marshall that you’re away on vacation, or something to that effect. Make it good.”

  “How did you know I was using the phone?”

  “My God, you really are an idiot, aren’t you? I see everything you see. I hear everything you hear. I know everything you goddamn know. So quit screwing around or you can kiss your family goodbye.”

  “Okay, okay,” I said, a bit too quickly. My body was still trembling. My eyes kept darting from the highway and the cars to the glove compartment. While in McDonald’s I’d managed to forget what was inside, now it came back at me, slapping me across the face. “Hold on,” I told Simon, and switched over, said, “Marshall, you still there?”

  “Yeah, I’m here. So what’s up? I heard you canceled on the Johnsons today. You feeling sick or something?”

  And just like back in the motel room—room number six, with those four letters in blood on the bathroom door, which I doubted were advertised in the brochure—time stopped again. Of course, nothing actually stopped—the cars around me continued driving, the Dodge maintained its speed, and my body continued to shake, but that internal sense of time had stopped. I was to start on William and Cassandra Johnson’s Tudor house today. They were having the entire second floor remodeled, had commissioned me to do the walls and ceiling. And supposedly I’d canceled. Son of a bitch.

  Then, just as quickly, time started up again and I said, “Yeah, I actually am feeling sick. I probably won’t be around for the next couple days.”

  “Shit. Well start feeling better, man.”

&
nbsp; “Thanks, Marshall. I’ll talk to you later.”

  I switched back over to Simon.

  He said, “That’s going to cost you, you know. Otherwise how are you going to learn that rules are rules?”

  I was silent. I’d put my window back up when I left McDonald’s and the car now reeked of French fries and oil.

  Simon said, “Your wife or your daughter.”

  “What?”

  “Your wife or your daughter. Which one do you love more?”

  “You fucking son of a bitch.”

  “No, Ben, my name is Simon. I’d asked you to remember that. Because from now on, every time you call me something else, either Jennifer or young Casey will lose a body part. Do I make myself clear?”

  I felt a tear push itself from the corner of my eye, start rolling down my cheek. I blinked it away, tried to remain cool, calm, as if I was in control. What a fucking joke.

  “Now, Ben, answer the question. Between Jennifer and Casey, which one do you love more?”

  “I—” But I couldn’t go on. I couldn’t continue with what I wanted to say, which was that I wouldn’t tell him what he wanted to hear. I wasn’t going to choose between my wife and daughter like that.

  “I understand, Ben,” Simon said. “You need time to think about it. It’s a tough question. In the meantime though, it appears as if you’re getting quite low on gas.”

  My eyes, instead of darting from the highway to the glove compartment, now darted to the gas gauge. It was hovering right above E.

  “There’s a gas station coming up,” Simon said, “which means the first part of the game is very close.”

  “What ... what are you talking about?”

  “Shoplifting, Ben. Don’t tell me you’ve never stolen anything before. Please don’t tell me you’re that self-righteous.”

  “You want me to ... steal gas?”

  He said, “Why no, Ben, of course I don’t want you to steal gas. I want you to steal something else, something much simpler.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A Snickers bar.”

  8

  As per Simon’s instructions, I went inside the station to pre-pay. The place was like any ordinary highway gas station, well lit with white tiled floors and racks of potato chips and pretzels and other snacks. The one wall was lined with sodas and bottled water and milk and orange juice, all kept nice and cold behind glass, where static clings announced sales and specials on Pepsi and Coke and Gatorade.

  There was one person in line, a guy in jeans and a denim jacket telling the clerk which numbers he wanted to play for tonight’s lottery, so as I waited I made it a point to study the candy aisle. It was just one row over, positioned so the clerk had a good view. Shit. Not only that, there were cameras in every corner, all with small signs below them saying SMILE, but that didn’t really mean anything. The monitors for those cameras were probably in the back, where nobody was right now, and even if somebody did happen to be there, it wasn’t like they had their eyes on the screens all the time, right?

  The clerk was an old black man, his hair and mustache gray, who looked at me tiredly when I told him I’d like fifty bucks on pump three. He took my sixty dollars, handed me back ten, and then I was back outside. I was farther away from the ocean now, from the beach, so I no longer smelled the salt in the air. What I smelled instead was gasoline, oil, and that ubiquitous odor of exhaust, which can be found in every major city around the world.

  I walked to the Dodge and lifted the handle to the pump, unscrewed the gas cap and inserted the nozzle. Luckily there was a catch, which allowed me to keep the nozzle pumping on full so I could grab the McDonald’s bag off the passenger seat. Standing outside, watching the numbers cycling through on the pump, I had a couple of the fries, took a few bites into one of the Big Macs. All of it was cold so I tossed it in the garbage can beside the pump, and just waited.

  A woman was on the other side of the island, conversing with the use of the Bluetooth in her ear while she gassed up her SUV. She wore sunglasses and was shaking her head, saying, “No, that’s wrong, that’s wrong,” again and again, making me suspect that she didn’t quite agree with the party on the other end.

  Eventually the nozzle kicked, dislodging the catch. I replaced the nozzle on the pump, screwed back on the cap, and just stood there. The woman was still talking, waving her hand around now as if to prove a point, but I was barely listening. I’d been trying to think so far how I wanted to go about this. All I had to do was lift a Snickers bar, that was all, just one simple candy bar, place it in my pocket, and leave. Easy as cake. The only problem was I’d never stolen a thing in my life.

  I headed back inside, an electronic bell sounding as the door opened and closed. The clerk hadn’t moved from his spot behind the counter. He wasn’t waiting on anybody—in fact, I was the only customer in here—and he looked at me with his tired eyes, as if to ask what I wanted now.

  “Bathrooms?” I asked, and he lifted a hand, pointed a finger, and I started toward the back. I purposely went down the candy aisle, keeping my head straight while glancing at the candy at the same time. The Snickers bars were sandwiched between the Milky Ways and Butterfingers. Just waiting there for anybody to grab.

  It appeared the last person who’d used the toilet in the men’s room hadn’t flushed. The smell of shit was rank, and I had to put a hand to my mouth and nose to keep from retching. An idea came to me and I pushed open the stall door, peered inside. Yep, just as I’d thought.

  Back out in the store, the woman with the sunglasses who’d been very adamant about something being wrong was at the counter. She was purchasing two bottles of water. The Bluetooth was still in her ear but she wasn’t shaking her head or waving her hand around as much as before, which meant she was probably talking to someone else. I walked up right behind her, waited the few seconds before she collected her change and grabbed the bottles. As she turned away she was saying, “Yeah, see, and that’s just what I told her.” Then she was gone, the electronic bell dinging twice, and it was just me and the clerk. He was giving me that look again, the one that said he’d never planned on ending up in this gas station, standing behind this counter, but shit happens and that’s life, and what can I do for you now?

  I said, “The toilet’s clogged,” jerking my thumb back toward the bathrooms, as if I’d been talking about the toilet down aisle three instead.

  The clerk—his name tag announced him as Frank—gave a long, heavy sigh. “All right,” he said, nodding his thanks to me, and started to turn away.

  I was ready. I was set. Now was the time, and I could feel the blood pounding away in my ears, palpitating even louder than before. Once Frank headed back there, plunger in hand, I’d hurry over to the candy rack, grab a Snickers, and get the hell out. Screw the cameras. If they were going to hunt me down over a dollar-something snack, the world was a lot more fucked up than I cared to admit.

  At my sides my hands flexed in and out of fists, anticipating, waiting for the right moment, the moment when—

  “Elliot,” Frank shouted toward the backroom, staying where he was behind the counter, “check the men’s, will you?”

  He turned back to me, that same tired look in his eyes, and forced a small smile just as a young Mexican man emerged from the back. He had a plunger in his hand and started down the aisle, muttering to himself in Spanish.

  The electronic bell sounded again—ding, ding—and two middle-aged men, both dressed in slacks and shirts and ties, walked in. They were talking together, in the middle of a discussion that seemed to hinge on the importance of a particular golf course. They headed toward the wall of cold beverages.

  I caught Frank watching me again. That look of tiredness had changed, had become almost quizzical, and he said, “It should just be another minute or two. If you need to, use the women’s.”

  A moment’s thought, a simple nod, and then I was headed toward the back again. Shit, this really wasn’t turning out as I’d hoped. And now I wa
s angry. Just what the fuck was this all about anyhow? My wife and daughter were God knows where, held by God knows what, and the person who called himself Simon said that if I didn’t follow through with his instructions to the letter then they would be killed. And after all that, after all that build up, he wanted me to lift a fucking candy bar?

  There was no answer behind the women’s door when I knocked. I stepped inside, not because I needed to use the toilet but instead to keep up appearances. I stood there for a very long time, staring at myself in the mirror dotted with watermarks and trying to decide just what the hell I was going to do now.

  Eventually I ran the water, wet my hands, cranked the towel dispenser. Came out of the women’s room just as Elliot came out of the men’s. He gave me a brief curious stare but then seemed to decide I wasn’t worth the bother and started back toward the counter. The plunger at his side kept a constant trail as it dripped, dripped, dripped on the linoleum floor.

  “Fuck it,” I whispered.

  I walked over to one of the long glass refrigerated doors. I grabbed two bottles of water, the same size and brand as the SUV woman, then turned around, grabbed a bag of pretzels. Next was the candy aisle, and I glanced toward the counter, itching my chin on my shoulder so it wouldn’t look completely obvious. The two men who’d been discussing golf were there now. They were talking to each other still, barely even paying any attention to Frank as he began ringing them up on his register.

  I didn’t hesitate another second.

  I reached out and grabbed a Snickers bar and placed it in my pocket. One smooth motion, the candy going from place A to place B. Simple as that.

  I approached the counter like I would any other time, not feeling guilty at all. Because I knew that if I felt guilty, I’d look guilty, and something told me Frank had been behind that counter long enough to spot a guilty face among a hundred faces. He probably told stories about it at home, eating dinner with his wife. Telling her about the crazy customers, the asshole customers, then of course the kids who thought they were hot shit and sometimes tried lifting bags of snacks and bottles of soda. But Frank knew what they were up to, he could always tell, and my, let me tell you about this guy I caught today. Looked to be in his thirties, had on these glasses that didn’t seem to go right with his face, and he had a Snickers bar in his pocket. Can you believe that? A goddamn Snickers bar.