(I know what I said. Don't interrupt.)
Now, this next part is kind of a blur. It's not that I don't remember what happened, it's that I don't have a reasonable explanation for it.
It certainly seemed reasonable at the time-well, after listening to Suzette for a while-to go downstairs, toss my apron in The GDT's face, and walk out the front door with her.
First stop after I went home to pack a bag and grab my passport was Suzette's aunt's house in Chicago, to meet this alleged house-sitter and see, as Suzette put it, just what his shit was made of. That was an eight-hour drive in my ancient Geo, a subcompact car which a lot of my friends have described as being only just too large to hang on a charm bracelet. Taller people grumbled, then stopped when they found out what kind of gas mileage I could still get out of it. I'd have bought a hybrid a long time ago except that being virtuously green has always been the domain of the extremely wealthy, who probably weren't so virtuous while they were getting that way. Suzette and I discussed that on the road; by the time we hit the Loop, we had an airtight argument for why all the hideously rich had to help all the rest of us get virtuously green by buying us hybrids and solar panels and shit. If I ever remember it, there'll be one hell of a revolution.
Suzette's aunt's place was a condo halfway up a high-rise with a nice view of Lake Michigan. I was surprised but no more than Suzette was herself.
"You've never been here?" I asked as we got into the elevator.
"She moved here last year. Or maybe the year before, I can't remember."
"Haven't seen her for a while?"
"She's always busy," she said, sounding defensive. "You want to see her, you gotta make an appointment."
I started to tell her that I hadn't meant anything by that question but we were already at the right floor and heading down the hall, which smelled like a mix of potpourri and carpet shampoo. Suzette stopped at a door decorated with a wreath of artfully woven twigs and pussy willows, hesitated, then rapped on it hard, squarely in the middle of the wreath.
The guy who answered was better-looking than anyone calling himself a house-sitter had any right to be, tall, bearded and golden-skinned. We'd have stared even if he hadn't been wearing a turban.
"Ah, Suzette," he said. "I recognize you from your pictures." He stood back to let us in, giving me a polite little nod as if to say that I was welcome, too, even though there were no pictures to recognize me from.
His name was Jamail, he told us over coffee, and he was a student at Northwestern. One of his professors lived down the hall and when Suzette's aunt was looking for a house-sitter, he had introduced them. "I'm what you call a mature student," he said. "I believe learning is for life. Your aunt feels the same, obviously."
"How do you figure?" Suzette asked.
"I chose to go to university, she to Madagascar." He lowered his voice ever so slightly on the last word.
"Is that where you're from?" Suzette stared pointedly at his turban.
"No. I'm from Scottsdale."
" Scottsdale?" Suzette was openly skeptical.
He shrugged. "My grandparents were from India. I'm a Sikh." The only contact information he had for Suzette's aunt was an email address on Google Mail; there was no hotel or cell phone that he knew of, or so he claimed. Both Suzette and I found that hard to believe. Jamail took our suspicion graciously. He was really quite a sweet guy; I found myself wondering if Sikhs ever dated outside the church, so to speak.
Finally, he played the I-really-must-study-now card and started clearing away the coffee cups. As he turned toward the kitchen with his hands full, Suzette stopped him. "Thanks for letting me know my aunt's in Madagascar."
He smiled faintly. "Don't mention it."
"Did she take her wheelchair?"
Wheelchair? I looked around. Nothing suggested a wheelchair user had ever lived here.
"I'm sure she took everything she needed. Now, if you'll exc-"
Suzette shoved the photograph in his face. "And she never said anything about this?"
He dropped everything with a godawful crash. "Where did you get that?" He reached for the photo.
Suzette whipped it behind her back. "A friend."
"I see." Jamail hesitated, then went into the kitchen and came back with a small business card. "If anyone asks, you just found this somewhere," he told Suzette firmly, looking unhappy as he handed it over.
"OK. Thanks," Suzette replied.
I started to bend down. "Here, let me help y-"
"Don't." He didn't snap or even raise his voice but the command was so forceful that we backed off immediately, and kept backing off, out the door and down the hall to the elevator.
"'Miles 2 Go,'" Suzette read from the card as the elevator descended. "'We'll Get You On Your Way. Jinx Gottmunsdottir, Senior Agent.'"
"Hey, does your aunt really use a wheelchair, or was that a trick question?" I asked.
She flicked a glance at me. "She's been in a wheelchair for ten years. I told you. What kind of a name is that?"
"No, you didn't and it's Icelandic, like Björk." I was only half listening. The elevator we'd gone up in had not had mirrored panels.
"I mean 'Jinx.'" Suzette was impatient again. "A travel agent named Jinx? Seriously? There's pushing your luck, there's tempting fate, and then there's teasing fate unmercifully till it bites you in the ass and gives you rabies."
"Is it rabies if this isn't the same elevator?" My reflections and I watched each other with wary solemnity on infinite repeat.
"What are you talking about?" Suzette glanced around quickly, then made a face. "So it's a different elevator. There're two. We went up in one and now we're coming down in the other." She studied the card again. "Address and phone number but no website. What kind of business doesn't have a website?"
I was busy trying not to feel spooked at my endless duplication. "This is not the same elevator. And when there are two, they're usually identical."
"So? I don't think there's a federal elevator law about it."
We went all the way to the ground floor without stopping and for a split second, I had the crazy idea that the doors would open onto a different lobby. If so, what should I do-go back up to Suzette's aunt's apartment and ask the Sikh's advice? Or just get off and take my chances with whatever was coming up next?
But it was the same lobby, of course, and there were, indeed, two elevators. The other one, however, was blocked off by a ladder with a sign taped to it that said OUT OF ORDER. I stared, sure that hadn't been there when we'd come in. Then something else occurred to me.
"Hey, Suzette, if your aunt's in a wheelchair-"
But she was already halfway across the lobby, muttering about bad names for travel agents.
Jinx Gottmunsdottir was a pink-cheeked strawberry blonde somewhere between fifty and sixty-five, with sapphire blue contact lenses and generous proportions made to look even more so by her cabbage rose print dress. She did business in an indoor market between a sports souvenirs stall and a place selling Russian nesting dolls custom-printed with your own face (X-tra Faces = X-tra $-Ask 4 quote!). Her "office" was an ancient desk with an even older typist's chair, and two other chairs for clients: a molded white plastic thing and a vinyl beanbag that was a lot more bag than bean. Overlooking all of this was a poster stapled to a heavy dark blue drape, a generic landscape of rolling dark green hills with a glimpse of ocean in the background; flowery script at the bottom said, Bulgaria… Let It HAPPEN… To YOU.
She looked up without much interest from the motocross racing magazine on her desk. "If you want cut-rate fares to London or Paris, you're in the wrong place. I specialize in roads not taken." Suzette slapped the photograph down on her desk. Immediately, Jinx Gottmunsdottir swept the magazine into the center drawer. "Have a seat."
I let Suzette have the white plastic chair. The beanbag was hopeless so I just sat cross-legged on the floor.