Over the telephone, Ben’s elderly mother had been open and friendly, “pleased to talk to a friend of Ben’s.” When asked, she assured him that the insurance was paid on the car. Mrs. Carver had further explained to John that her Mr. Propson was taking her to a church social over in Warm Springs on Sunday, but could he please remember to return the car with a full tank of gas. John had agreed to everything, but she had kept him on the phone for another fifteen minutes to tell him about her sciatica. Both sets of John’s grandparents had died while he was in prison, none of them ever bothering to visit. He had listened intently to her woes, making the right noises at the right times until the pedophile from across the hallway had glared at him and demanded to use the phone.
John had found the dark blue Ford Fairlane parked in the carport as promised. The key was tucked into the visor along with the title and insurance card. What mattered to John most at that moment was that it cranked on the first try. He put the car in gear and rolled into the street, his foot stuttering between the gas and the brake as he practiced up and down the one-lane road running outside Mrs. Carver’s house. Praise Jesus it wasn’t a manual transmission or he would have left the car where he found it. John had spent most of the afternoon figuring out how to drive the Fairlane and by the time he pulled out onto the two-lane highway his hands were hurting from clutching the wheel.
He could do it, he kept saying, teeth gritted as he drove down 1-20 back toward Atlanta. All he needed to do was make sure he looked like he knew what he was doing. Not too slow, not too fast, confidence high, arm out the window. That’s all the cops ever looked for: somebody who looked guilty. Their little cop radar went up and they could feel indecision coming off you like a pulse.
John had told himself that he was getting in some more practice when he got into the Fairlane around midnight last night. He couldn’t fool himself for long when the car ended up parked across the street from the liquor store on Cheshire Bridge Road. He waited for thirty minutes, but Robin obviously wasn’t working. Driving back home, he figured if he’d had a tail it would’ve been hanging between his legs.
Since gas was another luxury he couldn’t afford, John left the car wash on foot, walking up Piedmont, crossing the intersection to Cheshire Bridge. He pretended he was going for a stroll at first, but then decided self-delusion was as stupid as what he had planned for later that night. Ben had finally come through. John had gotten two postcards in the mail this week-the only mail he’d ever gotten at the boardinghouse. The first one was postmarked in Alabama and listed a series of numbers: 185430032. The second card was from Florida and read, On our way to Piney Grove. See you when we get back!!!
John hated puzzles, but he knew enough to go to the library and sit down with the atlas again. After a couple of hours of staring aimlessly out the window, he got it. 30032 was the zip code for Avondale Estates. 1854 Piney Grove Circle bordered Memorial Drive on the edge of Decatur.
“Hey, baby!”
The hookers were out at the liquor store, including the older woman John had rescued at the car wash. He should probably learn her name, but he knew it would only make him sad if he did. Giving her a name meant she had a family somewhere. She had been a kid at some point, gone to school, had hopes and dreams. And now… nothing.
One of the women asked, “You wanna date?”
He shook his head, keeping his distance. “I’m looking for Robin.”
“She’s at the theater,” the hooker said, jerking her chin toward the road. “Star Wars is playing. She figures the last time any’a them guys saw a pussy was when they was being born out of one.”
The girls laughed good-naturedly at the joke.
“Thanks,” John said, tossing them a wave before they could offer him more of their wares.
The theater was a pretty good distance from the liquor store, but John had time. He let himself concentrate on breathing the air, even the exhaust from the cars. You couldn’t do this in prison. You had to find other ways to get lung cancer.
His hamstrings were aching by the time he reached the movie theater. Star Wars. He had seen that when he was a kid, probably six or seven times. Every weekend his mother had driven him and his friends to the theater, dropping them off and coming back a few hours later. This was before the drugs, before John was cool. He had loved that movie, relished the escape.
In prison, Ben had been in charge of everything they did and even as he grew older, John had kept it that way because it was easy. The bad part was that all of John’s cultural knowledge was that of a man over thirty years his senior. He didn’t know many movies or television shows from the last two decades. No one on his wing visited the main hall on movie night because they weren’t stupid enough to mix with the general population. Doris Day, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin-these were the singers always playing on the small transistor radio Emily had brought John his first Christmas inside. Music had been so important to him as a kid, the sound track to his disaffected life. Now, he couldn’t have named a current popular song if someone had put a gun to his head.
John had already convinced himself that Robin wouldn’t be at the theater so he was surprised when he nearly bumped into her turning the corner.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, looking pleased, he thought, then nervous.
“The girls told me you were here,” he explained. He could see a line of young men snaking around the building. “Busy light?”
“Nah.” She waved it off. “Stupid fuckers want to see the movie first. I guess I’ll come back later.”
“How long’s the movie?”
“Jesus, I don’t know.” She started walking back toward the liquor store and he followed her. She turned around, demanding, “What are you doing?”
“I thought I’d walk you back.”
“Lookit,” she said. “This ain’t no Pretty Woman.” She added, “And you sure as shit ain’t Richard Gere.”
John had no idea what she was talking about. The only Richard Gere movie they’d watched in prison was Sommersby, and that was only because it had a kid in it.
She clarified, “We’re not going to fall in love and get married and have babies, okay?”
John hadn’t thought about it, but maybe that had been his plan.
He told her, “I just wanted to let you know that I’m not going to see you anymore.”
“You’ve only seen me once, you stupid fuck.”
“I know,” he said. When she started to walk away again, he followed her. “Please stop,” he said. “Listen to me.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “All right. Go.”
“I’ve just…” God, now that she was listening, he didn’t know what to say. “I’ve been thinking about you,” he said. “Not in a sexual way.” His face must have shown otherwise because she rolled her eyes. “Okay, maybe sex,” he admitted.
“Unless you’re here to pay me for your happy junior-jerk, I gotta get back to my drag.”
“It’s not like that,” he said. “Please.”
She started walking again and John got in front of her, walking backward because he knew she wouldn’t stop.
“I’m mixed up in something,” he said.
“Color me shocked.”
“I was in prison.”
“Am I supposed to be surprised?”
“Please,” John said. He stopped walking and she did, too. “I don’t want to be mixed up in this, but I am. I have to do something about it. I don’t want to go back to prison.”