by Susan Dunlap
I gave her my card. "If you see her, call me.” That was all I could do.
I walked out onto the sidewalk, so distracted, so frustrated I nearly smacked into a guy pushing a cart. She was gone, my jumper. My only "clue” and it’d turned out to be nothing. Now I was never going to find her. A first name is nothing. Tracking down this phone number was nothing. Why did she even write it down, much less fold up the paper to almost a toothpick and make the number halfway impossible to read?
I turned west on 18th Street, back toward the set. I’d had a temp job a block over a couple months ago.
Did she actually use it as a sort of toothpick? A wedge, maybe? Because the paper was stiffer than normal.
The paper!
I grabbed my phone. "Mike, the paper!” I wished I had it in my hand now. But I could see it in my mind: white with pale blue lines, stiffer than normal but not thicker. "You know what it could be? It’s a pay slip—the part you tear off from your check. Like the ones from PayRite.”
"What makes you think—”
"Stunt gigs don’t pop up every day. Temp work does, or mostly. I’ve answered phones, typed, filed, clerked, and occasionally even waited tables. A lot of businesses contract out their payroll, even if it’s only one or two people on staff. Gary does it for his law office. They don’t want to spend time thinking about tax deductions, much less worry about IRS forms.”
"So? Where does that get us?”
"Is there any number on it? Employee number?”
"Two eight seven one five.”
"Too long. No small company has that many workers. It’d have to be the employer number. Thanks. Later.” I hung up, pulled up a number for PayRite, and called. I’d taken a lot of no’s for answers this morning but I wasn’t about to now.
"PayRite.”
"Customer records, please.” When I got a woman there, I said, "I’m customer number two eight seven one five. I think you’ve got our address wrong. We’re having a problem—Well, just tell me what address you’re using for us.”
She put me on hold before coming back with: "Forty Cunningham.”
"Thanks, you’ve been a big help,” I said. A big, but not total help. Now the question was, where was Cunningham? But that’s what smartphones are for.
Hoping Nellen would have the Honda ready to go, I headed back to Dolores, where the crew would be packing away the last of our props and markers, the detritus of all our wasted work on the set.
I was a block away when a horn honked.
Macomber Dale, in a black Mercedes convertible, pulled to the curb.
8
Waves break, roll to shore. Cold, so cold. Is this what it is to be dead?
But she’s not dead. She remembers, now, the night: peddling, coasting, riding till she was too tired to go on, ending up out here beyond the Great Highway at the edge of the Pacific. Trying to dig a cave in the dune. Too tired. Sleeping against the front wheel. Cold then, but so very tired. And yet, alive! Her skin tingles. Alive!
The thick layers of fog are less dark—morning.
It’s different from last night. No euphoria now. Cold. Shivering cold.
What to do? She reaches into her pocket, pulls out a torn tissue. No money.
Nothing’s changed. She should ride back to the bridge now, before—but it’s already too late to beat the morning joggers. She’d climb over the rail and just get pulled back every hour like one of those bobbing birds on a cocktail glass. She starts to laugh, picturing it.
Hungry. Her stomach pushes in on itself and she sits, feeling that emptiness, feeling the cold, feeling.
Tonight she’ll go back to the bridge. But not now. Not yet. She’ll go back if she can make herself.
She has to. If there were any other way . . .
There isn’t. She’s been through it a hundred times. She made her choice. This is how it has to be.
She could have jumped last night. Then, it was just leaving the bike and climbing over the railing. But now everything on the ride back there will be linked to the rail. The whole trip across the bridge will be part of it. Tonight, it’ll be so much harder. If there were just another way—
She can’t go home. She can’t even buy food. She can ride in the fog, or ride inland in the sun.
But, she sits. She watches the waves ease in, break into lace, to froth. Whoops! They’re yanked back out. The process is so much more intricate, fascinating than she’d ever noticed. She doesn’t mind the cold or the hunger, she is so grateful to be here. To sit here, like a clump of beach grass. To be.
Maybe she really is beyond the Great Highway. The world thinks she’s dead. The only person on earth who knows she didn’t is that woman, and she has no idea of her name. She could be dead. Everything’s set up for it. Tessa Jurovik could be no more.
Death has been described as stepping through a door. The door closed on Tessa Jurovik, and now, it’s opening to the new room, the new life, a new woman. A free woman. No food, no money, no place to stay. Free!
She feels the lump in her pocket, pulls out a slim cell phone, and laughs. The last connection. Bad connection. But this is one connection that’ll be easy to break. It wasn’t even her phone, not till the last couple days anyway. She walks toward the water. The water arcs and crashes, not in big waves here, but hard, so much harder than it seemed when she looked down from the bridge. She remembers the chocolate-colored water, how warm and soft it looked from up there. A shiver shoots through her. She could never face that again.
But she doesn’t have to. She shifts the phone in her hand, ready to throw it into the water and be free for good.
There’s a message.
Here she is at the pivotal moment in her life, her new life, and there’s a phone message!
Bye, bye, message! She arcs her arm back.
It’s not even her phone.
She inhales the briny air and readjusts her arm.
It’s stupid, irresponsible, not to check the message. But she can’t bear to undercut her freedom. She’s afraid—
She’s afraid.
Afraid to read it, afraid to throw the phone away. She hates it for robbing her of the wonder of just being. But she can’t bring herself to toss it into the water. She’s not that brave. She shoves it back in her pocket and plunks down on the sand.
But the magic’s gone and in a minute she’s pushing the bike toward the street, thinking about where to find food.
9
In a place known for wind and fog, what were the odds of being shadowed by two open convertibles two days in a row?
Dale leaned across a passenger seat and opened the door. The man was fighting to hide a gotcha grin. What was with this guy? He’d wrecked the entire shoot! Fine if he wanted to apologize to me, but Jed was the one he ought to be falling all over himself mea culping to. Did I want to waste any more time on him? Not likely.
"Hey,” he called out, "I want to make you a proposition.”
"Excuse me?”
"I want you to teach me to stunt drive.”
"What?”
"You’re good enough.”
"Are you out of your mind? You got us booted off the site!”
"Me?”
I propped my hand on the passenger door and leaned in toward him, so he wouldn’t miss a word. "Because of you the whole neighborhood was up on the horn to the cops! You cost us all the time I spent searching for the site, plus this morning, plus the time it’s going to take me to scope out the Berkeley Marina and deal with the city there. Plus—”
"I’ll pay you three times what you get—”
"Don’t you hear—”
"Okay, twenty.”
I just stared. Money guys sure live in a different world. Me, I work for six hundred dollars a day flat, plus adjustment for the specific gag. Hell, say a thou. "You’re offering me twenty thousand dollars a day to teach you to drive?”
"To stunt drive.”
"By which you mean?”
"Teach me to do the stunt we just set up.�
��
"You want to do it in the final shot? So your name’s in the credit roll?” The credits of the production you’ve already sabotaged! "That what you mean?”
He shrugged.
In Zen, the three poisons are greed, hate, and delusion. I didn’t hate my current situation, but I wasn’t deluding myself that one day soon I might not start to. With twenty thou, though, I wouldn’t be taking the bus or cadging wheels from my brother. With twenty thou, I wouldn’t be dressing myself out of consignment shops. With twenty thou, Mom and Mike and I would be in Waikiki in January. No wonder greed has maintained its popularity.
On the other hand, Dale was part of our production not due to his own merit but because of his money connection. This offer could be big-time delusion. "Much as I’m tempted, there’s no way a novice could be ready to take over this gag by tomorrow. And even if you were the best wheelman in the city, Jed would never take the chance.”
"I’m the producer.”
"But you’re not God.” I paused, in case he needed time to process that. It’s a distinction some money guys miss. "This isn’t the only production Jed’s ever going to work on. He’s got a reputation to maintain in this city, and not as good a one today as he had yesterday. He won’t endanger the crew, bystanders, property, not to mention his relationship with the director—”
"But I—”
"Let’s say you graze a fire hydrant. Say it breaks. It gushes all over the street, causes a mega traffic tie up, is the lead story on the nightly news. The city film commission takes a hit, the mayor gets flack, they chew out Declan Serrano, and Jed Elliot’ll be lucky to be directing the second unit in a high school play in Hollister. If there was such a gig.”
"But—”
"Mac, I can tell you’re not a guy used to taking no for an answer, but—I’m sorry—no way.” I wasn’t sorry, but come the cold rains of January I might well be.
He went still. Then, suddenly, he burst back to life with a fury. "I’ll work it out with Jed. Then, you’ll be on board, right?”
"Sure. Whatever Jed okays, I’ll go along with it.” Like that was going to happen. Jed was nothing if not cautious.
"I’ll call you. Keep your time free.”
"I’ll sit by the phone. In the meantime, let’s see how you drive. Drop me at Cunningham Alley. Follow my directions.” That’d be a first for him!
How he drove surprised me. He looked both ways before exiting the alley onto 21st Street, checked for pedestrians before turning left onto Valencia, and hung a U two blocks later where it was legal. He pulled into the alley and parked.
Definitely not what I’d expected.
"Thanks.” I got out.
He reached for his door.
I put a hand on his arm. "Bye.”
"I’ve got time.”
"I don’t. Bye.” And I was out.
Twenty thousand dollars had appeared and vanished and it still wasn’t ten in the morning.
On one side of the street was a playground, on the other five cottages, four kept up and the last—number 40—only escaped being neglected because there was nothing to neglect. All decorative trim had been removed and the siding modernized past any individuality. The paint was the kind of beige they use on public park buildings and the stoop held not so much as a doormat. Even the "40” had been painted beige. But it was there and I rang the bell.
10
It’s an abandoned breakfast burrito. Before—before—she’d have felt queasy just picking up the half-gobbled glob to toss it in the trash. Now she doesn’t even bother eating from the other end. The pinto beans are still warm, the cheese still gooey, and the salsa not gringo pale. Yesterday she’d have quipped that it looked like this was going to be its second trip through a digestive tract. Now she doesn’t even pause to smile at that, nor to savor every bite. She’s too hungry to stop wolfing.
She’s in a wide alley that passes for a courtyard between a Mom-and-Pop store and an electronic repair shop. Minutes ago bike messengers lounged against the grocery wall, next to their wheels, eating, grumbling, laughing. She used all her patience hanging out a block away till she saw the whole gang of messengers take off, flying downtown to circle around, ready to swoop in on the first emergency pick-up. They’re an odd, splinter group, choosing to start out this far away from most of their business. But it means when they go, they’re gone for the day, and now the place is hers. She’s just lucky the guy with the burrito didn’t beg his buddies for another two minutes to finish. The phone is virtually burning a hole in her pocket, but the wind is blowing free and she’s still high from the ride up here.
The block’s empty now. Wind would be whipping leaves if there were any trees. In the repair shop window a TV flickers. It’s turned to Channel 4, the local station that lost its network affiliation and is now heavy on news, reruns, and infomercials. She watches a piece about a neighborhood garden somewhere in the East Bay, without sound, which doesn’t matter because she neither cares about gardening nor the East Bay. What she cares about is putting off dealing with the phone.
Sighing, she pulls it out. How bad can the message be? It’s not even her phone. Maybe it’s been there for days. In any case, no one’s going to be calling her.
She glances back at the screen, as if for comfort from a friend, but the anchor’s now interviewing a man in front of an official-looking building somewhere.
Before she can come up with another excuse she clicks the phone. Text:
From: United Airlines
Dear Tessa Jurovik: We regret UAL#212, SFO to Miami canceled. We will hold a seat on UAL#422, Oak to Miami lv. 5:04; 1 passenger, pls confirm by 4:04.
Yesterday at 5:04 pm! She remembers a digital weather/time sign outside a bank announcing 5:05, telling her she was too early for the bridge, that she had to kill a quarter of an hour. She—that woman yesterday—was annoyed, like her bus was late. She had an important appointment. She wanted to go deal.
She laughs. "No wonder I didn’t jump; I was flying to Miami!”
Life, it gets stranger and stranger. She slides her back down the wall, squat-sitting there opposite the repair shop window. The anchor—
Suddenly she connects this day to the flow of days that stopped for her last night. It’s the day of the award ceremony, the one she never expected to see. It’ll be at ten o’clock, and the video will be on Channel 4, at the end of the hour, the feel-good story time. She can’t believe she’s actually going to see it, sitting here watching the clip. She’s smiling so widely she can feel the wind on her teeth. She could float off into the clouds.
Life is indeed strange.
11
Dale had to back-and-forth three times before he could drive out of the alley. I gave him points for resisting the temptation to back out into traffic. The whole process was long enough and loud enough that it took me only one light knock to bring a woman to the door of the converted house that was number 40.
She was maybe twenty, bone thin, with long dark hair knotted at the nape and a tattoo of a dancing Shiva rising from her chest and reaching some of his many arms across her shoulders. Several more arms shot up the sides of her neck in a way that was at once stunning and frightening. A needle that close to the carotid!
"Tessa—” I began after introductions.
But a screeching kettle grabbed Kristi’s attention. She nodded me in, raced across the room, and doused a teabag. The concoction smelled like cardamom and manure.
The place itself was not an office but a workroom with a smattering of papers, the kind that might be used in collages, two copy machines, each on a long fake wood table, a tiny fridge, and an industrial sink that suggested this room had originally been a basement. The only decoration was, in fact, a collage, one that looked much better than this space deserved. In contrast were the windows. They might have looked out over the basketball courts across the street to the south or the jungle gym to the west, except that they’d been painted white six feet high. "So they don’t look in, or you don’t
look out?”
She took that as a comment rather than a question.
"What is this place?”
She was plugging in the space heater. "Skilled Copy.”
"You duplicate skills?”
She shot a look that acknowledged the joke without appreciating it. "We make copies, skillfully. Like for lawyers when they’ve got eight things to send to twenty people but some of those people only get the first and third thing, some the last two, some get the cover letter, and one gets the originals and all the copies plus copies of all the cover letters. And the client wants a copy of everything everyone got. And it’s all got to be in the mail by five, with those little green 'certified’ slips.”
"Got it.” I glanced around. "What’re you copying now?”
"Nada. We never have orders waiting. It’s all last minute. If a client’s prepared days ahead, they can handle it in their own office. If they’re calling here, it’s a crisis. There’ve been times we had to work like crazy till the last second and then just about kill ourselves to make it to the late mail drop before midnight, with both of us still writing the certified labels in the back of the cab.” She pointed to a sign on the wall that said Lack of planning on your part does not necessarily mean an emergency on my part. "Tessa put it up. She liked the irony.”
That made me like her. "I’m looking for her.”
"How come?”
"I just want to make sure she’s okay.”
"She’s fine,” she said, "on vacation.”
Ah, so Kristi was here alone, with nothing to do and no one to talk to but me. "Better than boredom” is a great position for a questioner to be in. "On vacation? Really?” I said, as if I knew her better than Kristi did, and found that conclusion contrary to any hint I’d gotten in our long friendship. Tessa and I were, after all, closer in age. Recalling how hopefully she’d looked over when Mike blew the horn, I said, "New boyfriend?”
She hesitated.
I knew that kind of look. "Oh, God, not that same . . . what’s his name?”
"Shit. She takes one vacation in three years and the asshole chooses the Friday before she leaves to break up with her.”
