A Room with a Pew

by Peg Cochran

  She grabbed a dark blue jacket off the coat tree by the front door and tossed it to Mario.

  “Hold this.” He handed the gun to Carol while he slipped into the jacket. “Now we’re going to take a walk outside.” He motioned toward the front door with the gun.

  “Fine, fine.” Lucille and Flo began moving in that direction.

  They walked in single file toward Mario’s car, which was parked in the driveway. He was taking them somewhere, Lucille realized. Maybe the Watchung Reservation. She shuddered and came to a halt.

  Mario prodded her with the barrel of the gun, and Lucille obediently moved forward. She got to the car and began to reach for the door handle.

  “Not in there,” Mario barked.

  Was he going to shoot them here? Lucille’s knees began to give out and she grabbed for Flo.

  Mario kept his gun trained on them as he opened the trunk of his car. “In here.” He motioned toward the dark cavern. “Get in.”

  Lucille took a step backward. “Get in where? In there?”

  Mario didn’t say anything. He merely motioned toward the trunk again with the gun.

  Lucille could tell he meant business. She hitched a leg over the rim of the trunk. Her leg was stiff—this wasn’t going to be no picnic. Her pant leg caught on the lock, and she tried to wrench it free.

  “You’re kidding, right?” She looked over at Mario. “I’m too old to get in there. Can’t we sit in the backseat?”

  “I don’t want no one to see you.” Mario made a threatening motion with the gun.

  “All right, all right, keep your shirt on,” Lucille said as she yanked her leg free. There was a ripping sound and she looked down at her trousers. “Now look what you made me do—I’ve torn my pants.”

  “I don’t think this is the time to worry about that,” Flo hissed.

  “Come on.” Mario motioned toward the trunk again. “I haven’t got all day.”

  Lucille got her leg over the rim this time and managed to hoist the rest of her body into the trunk. She hit the floor with a loud thud.

  Flo stood over her. “Come on. Move over a little, would you? Give me some room.”

  “I’m trying.” Lucille scooted along the floor of the trunk.

  “There’s not much room in here,” Flo grumbled as she settled down next to Lucille.

  “You’re telling me?”

  There was a thunk as Mario closed the trunk.

  Lucille gasped. “It’s awful dark in here.”

  She felt Flo grab her hand. “I’m scared of the dark. I sleep with a nightlight on.”

  “There’s nothing to be scared of,” Lucille said soothingly, as if she was talking to a child.

  “Nothing to be scared of? Are you out of your mind? We’re being kidnapped by a man with a gun, possibly being taken somewhere where he can shoot us without nobody knowing, and you’re saying there’s nothing to be scared of?”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  The car began to move.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” Lucille said. “We need to kick out the taillights.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “No. I saw it on TV. They also showed you what to do if someone attacked you from behind.”

  “Well, we’re not being attacked from behind, thank goodness.”

  “Let’s try it. What have we got to lose?”

  Lucille felt around with her foot until she found what she thought must be the interior of the taillight. She slammed her foot against it.

  “Owwww,” she yelled.

  “Try again,” Flo said.

  “You try.”

  “Okay, I will.”

  Flo gave a hard kick, and they were rewarded with the sound of breaking glass.

  “Look, we can see out.” Lucille pointed toward the flash of light.

  “What do we do now?” Flo asked.

  “Stick something out the hole.”

  “Like what? Our head?”

  “No. Your foot, your hand, whatever.”

  “Why don’t you do it?”

  “You’re closer.”

  “Fine.” Flo maneuvered her foot through the hole. “What’s supposed to happen now?”

  “Someone sees your foot and calls the cops.”

  A few minutes went by as they were bounced and jostled and flung from one side of the trunk to the other.

  “Do you hear any sirens?”

  “No,” Lucille admitted.

  Flo gave a loud sob. “We’re never getting out of this, Lucille.”

  “Sure we are, Flo. I’ll think of something.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  “Have some faith, would you?”

  “That’s what we need—a prayer. Who should we pray to?”

  “Well, there ain’t no patron saint of people locked in a car trunk. Let me think. How about St. Jude?”

  “What’s he the patron saint of?”

  “Desperate situations.”

  “I think you’ve nailed it.”

  A few more minutes went by and then they were bouncing down a rutted road.

  “Sheesh,” Lucille said. “Don’t they fix the roads no more?”

  “Who knows where we are. It might not even be a road.”

  Lucille had a sudden picture of the Watchung Reservation and Mario driving them deep into the woods. How long would it be before their bodies were found? Frankie would be worried sick.

  Suddenly they came to a stop.

  Lucille sniffed. “Do you smell something?”

  “Yeah. It smells like garbage.”

  “Guess we’re not in the reservation then.”

  Suddenly the trunk opened.

  Chapter 19

  Lucille and Flo blinked in the sudden light.

  “Where are we?” Lucille looked around, rubbing her eyes.

  “Looks like the town dump.” Flo pointed to a yawning black hole filled with junk.

  “Looks like we’re being dumped,” Lucille said, trying to laugh.

  Mario had his gun trained on them. He motioned toward the pit. “You two is going in there.”

  “Where?” Lucille took a few steps back from the edge.

  Once again Mario stuck his gun in her back and pushed her forward until she was standing on the very rim, her toes curling over the edge.

  “Watch it there,” she yelled. “I’m going to fall in.”

  “No, you’re going to jump in.”

  “In there? Are you crazy? Who knows what kind of germs I’d pick up in there.”

  “Move.” Mario dug the gun deeper into Lucille’s back.

  She stared into the depths of the garbage pit. She couldn’t do it. That stuff looked nasty.

  Suddenly the pressure of Mario’s gun against her back eased, and Lucille breathed a sigh of relief. Too soon.

  Mario fired two shots into the air.

  Lucille jumped. Her arms flailed as she tried to grab on to the air, but down she went into the trash-filled hole.

  She barely had time to catch her breath before Flo landed next to her. Their fall was cushioned by a bunch of cardboard boxes spilling pellets of Styrofoam.

  Flo was crying. “This is disgusting.” She held up a hand dripping with the remains of some rotting vegetables.

  “He’s leaving.” Lucille pointed toward the retreating taillights of Mario’s car.

  “He can’t leave us here,” Flo wailed.

  “At least he didn’t shoot us.”

  “Trust you to always look on the bright side, Lucille.”

  “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

  “How? We can’t reach the edge.” Flo stretched out an arm to demonstrate.

  “We gotta pile a bunch of this crap up and climb onto it. We can do it.” Lucille started pulling cardboard boxes out of the trash. “Good thing some people don’t recycle or we wouldn’t find no boxes in here.”

  “I’m overjoyed to hear it.”

  “Give me a hand here, would you?” Lucille
stared at Flo with her hands on her hips.

  Flo started to reach for a box when she stopped abruptly. “What’s that noise?”

  “What noise? I don’t hear nothing.”

  “I do. A grinding noise.”

  “Grinding? I think you’re imagining things.”

  “No, I’m not. It’s getting louder. Listen.”

  Lucille stopped what she was doing and listened. “I hear it. What is it?”

  “I don’t know . . .” Flo groaned. “Lucille!” she screamed.

  “What?”

  “The walls are moving!”

  “Are you crazy? How can the walls—” This time Lucille groaned. “Oh, no. This here ain’t just a garbage dump. It’s one of them things that squashes the garbage like they have on the back of them sanitation trucks.”

  “You mean compactors?”

  “Yeah, that’s it. That’s what I mean.”

  “I don’t believe you. It’s our imagination.” Flo looked around. “Oh, God, you’re right.” She pointed at a chair that was upside down in the heap, its bottom rungs missing. “That chair used to be further away, and now it’s coming closer to us.”

  “We’ve got to get out of here. Grab some more cartons and let’s start piling them up.”

  Lucille tried not to cry as she searched through the trash for some boxes they could use. She pulled on the edge of one—it smelled better than the others. As a matter of fact, it smelled like a pepperoni pizza. Lucille finally freed it—it was a pizza box—still slightly warm. And inside was a completely untouched pizza topped with pepperoni, mushrooms and green peppers.

  Lucille looked at it—she really shouldn’t, she knew the green pepper would be repeating on her later. But she needed something to cheer herself up. And besides, pizza was on the Mediterranean diet. She grabbed a slice and took a big bite.

  She waved the box toward Flo. “You want a piece?”

  “What’s that?” Flo frowned. “Pizza? Are you crazy, Lucille? How do you know where that’s been?”

  “It’s fine. Tastes delicious—like Sal used to make, may he rest in peace.”

  “That’s great, but you need to put that down and help. We’ve got to get out of here.” Flo pointed to the far wall, which was now a lot closer to where they were embedded nearly waste-deep in garbage.

  Lucille reluctantly dropped the box of pizza and went back to scouring the dump for sturdy boxes. It must be panic, she thought, making her stomach churn. It couldn’t have been the pizza—not so soon. What if it was bad? Or poisoned?

  “Flo! I think something was wrong with that pizza I ate.”

  “Wrong? You think? It was sitting in a dump, Lucille, for chrissakes. Of course there was something wrong with it.”

  “No, I mean like wrong wrong. Like maybe it was poison or something.” Lucille put a hand on her belly. “My stomach don’t feel too good.”

  “You know that always happens when you eat green pepper. Stop thinking about it and get back to work.”

  By now the compactor had pushed the sea of garbage toward them so that it was no longer waist height but approaching their chests. Lucille twisted this way and that looking for things they could pile up and stand on.

  “When we get out of here, I’m going to soak in a hot tub filled with flower-scented bath oil until my skin shrivels and the water gets cold,” Flo said as she unearthed another box.

  “We’d better hurry,” Lucille said, pointing toward the advancing wall, “or we’re going to be squished like dough going through one of them pasta machines.”

  They’d managed to find a handful of relatively undamaged cartons and waded with them to the side farthest away from the advancing wall.

  “Let’s arrange them so they’re like stairs,” Lucille said as Flo handed her a box.

  “You want to try them out?” Flo asked, patting the top box.

  “Sure.”

  Lucille pulled her leg out of the swamp of garbage that was beginning to feel like quicksand and lost her shoe in the process. She got a knee onto one of the boxes and clawed her way up until she was perched on it.

  “Can you reach now?”

  Lucille stretched out an arm. Her fingertips grazed the lip of the garbage pit.

  “Not quite.”

  She got a knee onto the next box and wriggled her way up. By now the compactor was only feet away.

  “Hurry, Lucille. The pressure is getting worse.”

  “I’m doing the best I can.”

  Lucille reached up and this time she was able to get her hands flat on the ground. She pulled herself out of the hole, brushing vegetable peelings and egg shells from her pant legs.

  “Don’t worry about that, help me out of here.”

  Flo was teetering on the top box, which was threatening to topple over at any minute. She grabbed at the edge of the hole just as the tower of cartons gave way.

  Lucille glanced toward the advancing wall. “Hang on, Flo. Hang on.”

  “Damn it, I broke a nail.”

  “Don’t worry about that now, for chrissakes. We got to get you out of there.”

  Lucille knelt down and her knees gave a crack like a rifle shot. Sheesh, all her body parts were wearing out. Soon she’d need to carry around an oil can to grease her joints.

  By now the compacting wall was even closer, but it had the effect of pushing the garbage together and raising the level inside the hole. Flo was able to get a toehold on top of a pile of wadded-up papers, and with Lucille pulling on her wrists, she managed to get a knee onto solid ground.

  She pulled herself up the rest of the way and collapsed, sprawled out on the frozen turf.

  “I smell,” Flo whined. “I’m disgusting.”

  “I do, too, and no, you’re not,” Lucille reassured her. “A hot bath and you’ll be as good as new.”

  “I’m never listening to you again, Lucille,” Flo said, giving a loud sniff.

  Lucille didn’t pay no attention. She’d heard plenty of the same thing from Bernadette over the years, and they’d both survived. It would be the same with Flo.

  “What do we do now?” Flo asked.

  “Do you have your cell?”

  “No. My purse was in the car.”

  Lucille grunted. “Guess we’d better start walking. Only I’m missing a shoe.”

  “Well, don’t complain to me. I’m wearing stilettos.”

  They limped down the path that led out of the dump and eventually made it out to Passaic Avenue.

  “What now?” Flo asked. She had her arms crossed over her chest and was shivering.

  “Let’s head down West End Avenue. We can look for a house with the lights on and ring the bell. I’m sure they’ll let us use their phone. We can call Frankie to come get us.”

  Flo grunted as she followed behind Lucille. It was dark, with only a handful of stars. The moon was playing peek-a-boo with the clouds that floated across the sky.

  They turned right down West End Avenue and stopped at the first house they came to. The lights were on, and Lucille peered into the living room. It looked warm and cozy. All of a sudden she was desperate to be back home sitting in her recliner, wrapped in the afghan her mother had knitted for her, watching TV with Frankie. She felt her eyes grow moist and dashed a hand across them impatiently.

  They walked down the path bordered with shriveling mums and rang the bell.

  The television inside the house was turned down and the door flung open.

  The woman standing on the threshold recoiled, her upper lip curling in distaste. Before Lucille or Flo could say anything, she slammed the door.

  “Bitch,” Flo yelled at the closed door.

  “Come on.” Lucille took Flo by the arm. “Let’s try another house.”

  They walked down the street peering in the lit windows. “Here,” Lucille said suddenly.

  The living room visible through the bay window was filled with overstuffed furniture and family photographs stood three deep on the coffee tables and end tables.r />
  “Look at all the pictures of her kids.” Lucille pointed at the photos. “She’s bound to be a nice person.”

  “Because she has photos of her kids out? Lucille, you’re even more naïve than I thought.”

  “Well, do you have any other ideas?”

  “No.” Flo marched toward the door and stabbed the bell.

  Moments later the door popped open. The woman standing there was wearing a red sweater with a Christmas tree on the front. Tiny crocheted ornaments hung from the branches.

  She recoiled as Lucille and Flo approached, but Lucille had to give her credit, she didn’t slam the door on them.

  “Can I . . . help you?”

  Lucille opened her mouth and then realized she didn’t even know where to begin. How to explain to this nice lady what had happened to them? “We need some help,” she finally said.

  “I’m sure you do. If you’ll just wait here.”

  She closed the door but didn’t slam it. Lucille figured that was a good sign.

  “Tell her we need to use her phone when she comes back,” Flo hissed at Lucille.

  “I will. I will.”

  The minutes went by and Lucille began to wonder if the lady was coming back at all. Maybe she’d blown them off? She was getting ready to suggest to Flo that they move on when the door opened again.

  “Here you are,” the woman said sweetly, handing them each a paper bag.

  Before Lucille could say anything, she had closed the door again.

  “What the . . . ?” Flo looked at Lucille.

  Lucille opened the bag and pulled out the contents—a sandwich wrapped in plastic, an apple and a small bottle of water.

  Flo looked in her bag and found the same thing. She let out a wail. “She thinks we’re bag ladies!”

  “Sssh,” Lucille said. “Let’s try the next house.”

  They walked out to the sidewalk and headed down the hill toward the warm lights visible in the distance.

  “Never mind,” Lucille said, glancing at the house’s façade. “It don’t look like anyone’s home.”

  “What about over there?” Flo pointed across the street.

  “Say a prayer,” Lucille said. “St. Benedict Joseph Labre—patron saint of the homeless.”

  “We’re not homeless, Lucille.”

  “No, but right now we smell like we are.”