There appeared to be buckwheat pancakes and blueberry syrup soaking into the shawl from the trash, if that mattered.
Quickly, Carol decided that in fact very little mattered, that there was probably wisdom in not checking whether Lionel himself was still connected to his shawl, and there was certainly brilliance in hauling her ass out of there before anyone happened to notice her around. This was not a good time to admit to any real or imagined acquaintanceship with the former Al and the current Lionel, both of whom had more than likely run afoul of someone else’s territorial imperative.
Yes, the heroin fix would have to wait and adrenaline would be the drug of choice for the next little while, although it remained to be seen how high its price might rise.
By the time Carol got home, on foot, well braced from the bracing walk in the crackling daybreak, she figured she was safe. No one had followed her, no one much cared that she might have had some tie to the drug-dealing fake Jamaicans who were probably pretty much now out of the business, dead for real and not faking much of anything anymore at all.
Carol gathered up all the mail that was piled in and around the mailbox—it had overflowed days ago apparently—and she went up the steps to her house. The key was in the flowerpot with the dead gerbera daisy by the front door.
She tossed the mail on the kitchen counter by the pizza carton, chanced a bite of the double-cheese double-pepperoni that was still left within, and reached into the bathroom to turn on the shower.
It got hot and steamy right away, proving to her that you really could ignore those pink-colored shut-off notices from the gas company for longer than they said, but, just the same, she stripped and hurried under the spray rather than push her luck.
Her skin got clean pretty quickly, her hair took some time, and her outlook took until the hot water started to get merely tepid. Then she decided that maybe things weren’t so bad after all and maybe she was doing a hell of a lot better than a hell of a lot of other people no matter what. Despite the drug, she still had a full, glowing figure, good skin tone, good strength, if not exactly pretty then nonetheless attractive and sensuous. Her mind was clear and her life was her own—no pimp, no husband, no outside obligations. She still had options.
Carol Lynn Miller wrapped her body in one towel, her hair in another, and she padded into the kitchen. She chucked the pizza carton and the pile of mail into the trash. Then she stared at the phone. Today could be the first day of the rest of her life, or the last day of an obsolete way of life she might finally have the nerve to discard. It was a simple choice, and yet momentarily confusing—didn’t she win either way? If so, then it was no choice at all. As long as she was determined to make the change, did it matter if it happened today, couldn’t it just as well be tomorrow?
Sure. It would be tomorrow. Then she’d be ready for it and she wouldn’t be headed off as she had in the past.
Carol dialed the phone, left a page. A few minutes later, the phone rang back. She’d been standing there, unmoving, waiting, counting the time. Nothing else mattered.
She answered the phone, gave several increasingly heated replies— “Yes” “Right” “ I’ll be there” “No, I’ll have the cash” “Listen, when I say I’ll have the cash, I’ll have the cash” “See you tonight”—and she hung up. Then she took a nap ’til mid-afternoon.
When she woke up, Carol Miller had the shakes, but she was unperturbed.
Across town, at the Riverside County Materials Procurement Warehouse—the place where the county and city stockpile every damn thing they need from paper clips to bullets, air filter masks for sanitation workers to climbing belts and shoe spikes for power pole repair people— Bill Suff was putting in a ho-hum routine day. Accordingly, it would have come as something of a surprise (but not a horror) to his supervisor were he to learn that Bill planned on working overtime tonight. There just wasn’t any overtime work that needed to be done, nothing that couldn’t wait until tomorrow, and besides, workwise, Bill was always ahead of himself anyway no matter that he took off so much time for allergy shots, recuperation from phantom aches and pains loosely attributed to that motorcycle wreck or to just sleeping wrong, and innumerable hypochondriacal daytime visits to every doctor around.
There was no question that Bill liked to be sick, liked to get attention for being sick, liked to play the martyr who did his duty despite his ills, but the first lesson a supervisor learns is not to question the motivation and habits of an employee who’s actually doing his job. As far as the supervisor was concerned, Bill could wear a dress, stand on his head, and fart “Nearer thy God to Thee” if that’s what inspired him. Live and let live, just don’t make the supervisor look bad on the bottom line of the monthly inventory reports.
And the thing of it was, this Bill Suff was one smart cookie when it came to inventory management. He was no “stock boy”. Bill could organize things in a way that bordered on genius, and he was methodical to the point of obsession. Dewey may have gained fame for his library decimal system, but Bill’s tweaking of the county’s computer program with respect to inventory—well, it was just plain inspired. The guy had a down-to-earth sense of how to file, pile, and place. It was a talent, a gift. Things didn’t get lost with Bill around, you always knew exactly what you had and where it was so you never overbought and never shipped late, and so the supervisor relied on Bill more and more. With Bill around, no one had any idea that the supervisor was virtually computer illiterate. Bill had added years to the supervisor’s own shelf life.
Of course, the supervisor wasn’t stupid. He’d worked his way up from Bill’s job, and he knew well that, at Bill’s pay level, the temptation was simply too great and the opportunity even greater to pocket the occasional item out of inventory and take it home to the missus or girlfriend or shady parts supply shop. A percentage of pilfering was just one of the perks of the profession. The key was not to get caught, and, on that score, the supervisor didn’t have to worry about Bill at all. No doubt Bill simply deleted the computerized existence of anything he stole, and you can hardly accuse someone of stealing something of yours that you can’t prove you ever even had.
Now this whole scenario might have given the supervisor pause for worried thought were it not for the fact that Bill Suff regularly gave gifts to his fellow workers, the supervisor included. Purses, clothing, cheap jewelry, personal knickknacks, stuff he said he’d picked up at swap meets— Bill Suff loved to be generous, with goods, with advice, with time and help. He even cooked pots of spicy chili and baked sweet desserts that he’d lay out on the lunch counter for everyone to feast on. Bill’s idea of sociability was being the hero, he sincerely wanted to do you a favor, any favor.
To the supervisor, this magnanimity of Bill’s reflected guilt, and that was good, because if the guy had a guilty conscience then he would never steal too much stuff. Everyone steals, everyone takes advantage, and then your conscience makes you stop before you go too far past the expected and allowable limits. That was the supervisor’s equation for how things worked. And that was why the supervisor appreciated Bill Suff rather than fretted over him.
And that was why the supervisor only questioned Bill’s putting in for overtime when the supervisor’s own supervisor questioned the supervisor about it.