I watched a couple of uniformed deputies walk into the Hall of Justice. One was big like my brother Frank. I thought again how much I’d like to see him, just him and me sitting at a restaurant table in the North End of Boston for lunch somewhere like we used to. He’d be dressed in one of his polo shirts, turquoise or mango orange, and whether I was talking to him about money I owed or somebody I was seeing, he always gave me the same advice which pissed me off, but sometimes made me feel better too.
“It’s easy, K. On one side of the page you got your Costs and on the other side your Benefits. All you do is mark which one is which, then you weigh one side against the other and you get your decision just like that. That’s all you ever have to do. I live by this.”
Sometimes it was comforting to be around someone who looked at life like this. And I would’ve told my brother months ago about Nick if I’d known he wouldn’t tell his wife who I knew would tell my mother. “But what if you don’t know the difference between a benefit and a cost?” I would always ask him. “What if you’ve never been very good at telling a plus from a minus?”
It was lunchtime and small groups of men and women were leaving the building for food. I kept smoking and watched three women in business skirts and blouses sit at a concrete bench not far from my car. They were eating from small plastic yogurt containers. One of them laughed, finished her yogurt, and bit into a cookie. I knew I didn’t want the office life they were living—I knew that—but from where I sat watching them eat and chat in the sunshine, I felt like I’d been apart from groups of normal people and their nice conversations my whole life. On another day I might’ve let myself feel homeless and husbandless and with no friends, but now I felt almost better than them, tougher, like I knew more about life from having really lived it out here on the rim.
I inhaled the last of my cigarette to the filter and stubbed it out in the ashtray. I was getting ready to leave, forcing myself to think about finding a safe place to park my car for tonight’s sleep, when someone tapped on the window glass at my head and I jerked back. Lester Burdon was standing there in the sunshine in his uniform, holding a sheaf of papers. I lowered the window all the way and the heat from outside hit my face. My mouth was dry and I wished I had something for the cigarette breath.
“This is a surprise.” Lester said, glancing at the empty passenger seat like he was trying to see who brought me here.
“A good surprise? Or a bad one?”
He smiled, his crooked mustache straightening a little. “Good. It’s good.”
“My lawyer thinks she can get me back into my house. I thought you’d like to know.”
“I’m glad to hear this.”
“You had lunch yet?”
“I’m due in court.” He pointed his thumb over his shoulder at the domed courthouse building behind him. “I’m usually out on patrol right now. I’m surprised you found me.”
“Hey, you found me.”I smiled and started the car but I felt like a woman caught peeing behind a shrub, her butt sticking out. “Well, gotta go.”
“Wait, I’ll be up near you this afternoon.” He rolled up the papers in his hands, wringing them a little. “Coffee?”
“Depends on what time,” I hoped I didn’t sound as see-through as I felt.
“Four o’clock? I’ll swing by your motel?” There was a line of sweat right above his eyebrows.
I thought of last Sunday night, seeing his car pull away from the El Rancho when I got back from the store. “I’m not there anymore. I’m staying at the Bonneville.”
“I don’t know it.”
“You’re looking at it, Lester.” I put the car in gear and rolled the window up halfway. “I’ll meet you at the Carl Jr.’s in San Bruno. Have fun in court.” And I pulled into the street without hardly looking, but no one honked at me and there was plenty of road ahead and behind, and I felt my luck might really be changing after all.
I MADE SURE I wasn’t at the restaurant first, but when I drove into the parking lot in San Bruno at five past four the sun was in my eyes and I didn’t see his Toyota station wagon or even a cruiser. I waited in my car till a quarter past, then hop-walked into the restaurant, keeping the weight off my wrapped foot, and I scanned the people at the counter, in the booths and sitting at the tables, but he wasn’t there and I didn’t want to be standing near the door when he came, so I made it back to my car and sat behind the wheel another twenty minutes, eyeing everything that drove into the lot. But no Lester. At quarter to five I drove away, though I had no idea where I was going or what I would do once I got there.
I felt more than disappointed. I drove around San Bruno, past short stucco houses and small dried-up yards, vaguely hoping I’d see Lester’s car and follow him back to our late coffee date. My throat felt thick, my eyes burning a little. I hadn’t felt this lonely in weeks, and I knew it was because I’d gotten my hopes up and I guess I just hadn’t pictured kind Deputy Sheriff Lester Burdon standing me up. At a traffic light, a bald man in an open jeep winked at me and my eyes filled and I pulled away without waiting for the light to change.
I was so sick of being in my car, sick of even the idea of driving around to find a place to stow it and me for the night. But at least it was familiar, though the rest of me was in a storage shed across from the El Rancho Motel. After almost an hour of wasting gas I drove back there, parked the car beside my shed, and sat looking out the windshield at cars going by, thinking how I should really break down and rent another room at the El Rancho across the street, one with a TV that worked, just lie on the bed in front of it and watch hour after hour of whatever trash came on. When I got hungry I’d pick up the phone and have something delivered. I’d write checks I couldn’t afford to write; I wouldn’t go to work; I wouldn’t leave that bed and that room until Connie Walsh called me to move back into my house.
That’s how I felt. But back into whatreally? Cleaning people’s houses and offices? Chain-watching movies on the VCR? Waiting for my husband to come back? Lying to my family?
I lit a cigarette and blew the smoke out the window. In the program, they’d tell you at these times in life to HALT. If you’re Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired—any of these—you should slow down and watch your step. I happened to be all four, I knew it, and the last thing I felt like doing was facing the B.E.A.S.T. in the air and recognizing the enemy voice in my head so I could start accusing it of fucking malice.
My foot throbbed. I leaned back against the door and propped it on the passenger’s seat. The Arabic woman had done a good job wrapping it up, I had to admit that, but how come I didn’t explain the situation to her when I was back in the house? This is what I was wondering just as a San Mateo County Sheriff’s Department car pulled off the street into the lot, its long radio antenna swaying, Lester Burdon lifting his hand off the steering wheel to wave hello.
He left his engine running and walked over to my window and I swung my leg off the seat and sat up. There were sweat stains under his arms, and his gold star hung away from his shirt. “I’m sorry about the coffee, Kathy, I got a call on a domestic. Did you wait long?”
“Just an hour or two.”
“I am sorry, I—”
“I’m kidding. Forget it, I drove around.” I hoped I didn’t sound as happy as I felt seeing him now. “Still want coffee?”
“Yes.” He had both hands on the door, looking right at me with that dark look again, a wanting, I thought, definitely a wanting. I glanced down at my hands on the steering wheel.
“You mind riding in a patrol car?”
“Only if you’re not busting me.”
He smiled and I parked the Bonneville behind the truck stop between two eighteen-wheelers. I hop-walked to Lester’s cruiser and when I slid in and pulled the door shut he asked about my foot, his face hard and soft at the same time. I told him about waking up this morning on Bisgrove Street, about the carpenters and the piece of roof in my yard. Lester started to shake his head and get that long-eyed look for me I didn’t want, so I told him again how Connie Walsh promised to have me back home by the weekend and now I had someone I could celebrate with. I felt a little too naked putting it that way, and Lester didn’t say anything back, just put his cruiser into gear and pulled out of the truck lot heading west.