On Turpentine Lane(18)

There was a roiling and heating inside my head, which I took to be a spike in blood pressure. “Joel’s there, too?” I asked in no one’s ear as the phone passed between collaborators.

“Hey,” my brother said, sounding wary in a single syllable.

“You let them visit Mrs. Hepworth?”

“I wasn’t consulted. They asked me to meet them there. I figured someone needed a tow. I waited in the truck. Well, for most of it.”

“Then you went in?”

“You’re not going to like this . . .”

“Just say it.”

“Look. It’s what Mom does. She asked the old lady if she had a contract with anyone to plow her driveway. She didn’t know and then remembered that the kid across the street shoveled it. So of course Mom said, ‘Well, from now on Frankel Towing and Plowing is taking care of all that!’?”

“And you just rolled over?”

“Oh, please. The woman’s like ninety. I gave her my business card and she said she’d cherish it. I kid you not, that exact word.”

“You’re doing it for free, you realize.”

“It’s no big deal. She doesn’t drive, so I can do it any old time—as opposed to every other client who wants me there at the crack of dawn.”

“Joel,” I started, but didn’t go on.

“You’re not crying, are you?”

“Maybe.”

“Where are you? Want me to come over?”

That made it worse. Mostly it was mortification and anxiety over Team Frankel’s interference. But on the other hand, who wouldn’t choke up, witnessing how much her infuriating family loved her?





14





Still Here


STUART MIGHT AS WELL have been missing. He hadn’t called me back, nor had he added a word to his blog, nor posted on Facebook, nor bared his soul on any other social medium I am acquainted with. His voice-mail box was full, so I couldn’t even leave another needy, irritated message. I confided this to no one, since it would be interpreted less as MIA and more as laughably indifferent fiancé. I considered calling the police but then asked myself, Which police? Indiana can be a very big state.



Monday, nine-ish, I was at my desk, facing an undecorated wall. Nick noticed immediately. “You took it down?” he asked.

“Who else would’ve?”

“No one,” he said too quickly.

“Were you thinking it could have been HR?”

“Only a fleeting thought.”

I told him I hadn’t heard one word, official or unofficial, about probation, which was why I was back at work. I waved three addressed envelopes containing notes already written this morning. His “well done” still sounded worried.

“I tore down the stupid map. It didn’t even have roads on it, so how did I know where to stick the pin?”

He unwound a long bumpy brown scarf that I hadn’t seen before and hung up his parka on our communal coatrack. “?‘Tore it down’ sounds a little hostile.”

I confessed that it was a little hostile.

He sat down, busied himself turning on his computer. “Hostile toward what’s-his-name, the hiker?”

“Stuart.”

“Something happen?”

“Only that he’s not picking up and he’s not calling me.”

“Is that so unusual?”

“It’s unusual in a crisis! I left him a message using that exact word—crisis!”

“And you know it’s unusual because you’ve had other crises since he left?”

Just doubts, I thought, crises of confidence. “Not really,” I said. “And I’m trying to keep a level head because there’s always the possibility he’s getting no bars on his phone. Or he’s dead.”

Nick’s answer was delayed; he was working his cell phone, thumbing it with authority, frowning over whatever new compelling images it rendered.

“What?” I asked, after long enough.

“Your boyfriend’s not dead. He’s in Illinois.”

I asked, “Are you on Facebook?”

“Instagram. He loves it.”

“You follow him?”

“You don’t have to follow people to see their posts. But I do now. Don’t you?”

“I thought I did. He must have a new user name for the trip. I thought he’d stopped posting.”

“It’s ‘At Fund Stuart Levine.’ That’s what I’m seeing.”

“Do I want to see it?” I asked.

“Maybe you should.”

I knew what that meant. Even if it was a knife to the heart, I should see the evidence for my own enlightenment. He walked the phone over to my desk.

“There are three new ones,” Nick instructed. “All since yesterday.”

This is what I saw: Stuart looking too happy at a bar. His companion was a man who appeared to be a Native American, with a long black braid, ethnicky headband, and oppressed frown. The next, taken an hour earlier, was minus Stuart, just the architecturally interesting Wild West saloon doors of Wiffy’s Place. And minutes earlier: Stuart getting out of a compact car, saluting its occupants. This one had a caption. “Thanks for the lift, Ashley, Katelin (sp?) and Kristy!!!”