Freak City
by Tom Lichtenberg
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2010 Tom Lichtenberg
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Chapter One
It's hard to control your destiny while you're waiting for the bus. It's especially hard when it's a Monday and it's way too early in the morning and it's cold and gray and windy out there on the commuter-ridden sidewalks.
Twenty two year old Argus Kirkham was lining up to get on board along with all the rest of them. He was trying his best to notice nothing and no one. Who were all those people anyway? A lot of them wearing suits or nice enough clothes, likely taking their professions all seriously with their cell phones at the ready, their critical path decisions to make, their lofty goals to set and achieve. Chances were those people weren't working at some Pay'n'Pay like Argus was. Crappy job. Crappy life.
Waiting for the bus. Thoughts were swirling around in his head like the cold fog out there on the avenues. At least the pack of passengers crowding together now the bus was visible down the street was providing some kind of warmth or at least the illusion. Feet were shuffling, papers folding up as they all congealed into a heap of anticipation.
The bus came rumbling up the road, it's wheezing and lurching and grinding making pretty much the only kind of noise out in the world at that time of the morning. Argus found himself in the middle of the pack, right behind a clutch of overly perfumed ladies and right in front of a recent smoker; the combination of odious odors might have been enough to sedate a wild cat.
As the bus reached the gaggle the jostling began, although everyone knew there was plenty of room and really no hurry at all. The bus wasn't going to rush off without everyone there getting on it first. Argus felt himself tilted from the left to the right, from the back to the front, and then suddenly elbowed in the side by a stubbly old man in a pea green overcoat who pushed his face right into Argus' neck and muttered something that sounded like 'Sorry, Charlie'.
The old man pushed something into Argus' hands and then he was gone and the procession continued and Argus was two steps up and reaching for his bus pass when he realized he was holding a small cardboard box. He tried to look over his shoulder to see if he could spot the old man but there was only the smoker behind him, and a couple of large guys behind that one, and no sign of anyone outside on the sidewalk who wasn't in the boarding pack.
Argus shrugged, shifted the package to one hand and fumbled around finding his pass and flashing it at the driver, a scowling young woman who was paying no attention at all. He stuffed the bus pass back in his pocket along with the other junk he carried around in there; a few forgotten keys, an old silver ring, a tiny compass and a black plastic toy ninja for luck. He followed the seatmongers towards the rear, figuring he would probably have to be standing all the way downtown. He made it to the back door where all at once a little old lady who'd been sitting there calmly jumped up and pushed her way down the steps and outside. Argus took her seat before anyone else even noticed. The window seat was occupied by a snoring office worker, a young fellow in his early twenties also, dressed up nice in suit and tie but had forgot to comb his hair and was drooling down his chin in his sleep while his head bounced off the glass at every stop and start. The bus driver seemed to be in training. Passengers were holding on tight and Argus had to keep pushing the drooler off his shoulder as they slowly crawled down the road. In between pushes he examined the little box.
It was maybe six inches by nine and a couple inches thick, not much bigger than a paperback book. The box showed the residue of multiple usages, bits of packing tape and labels and addresses heavily blacked out with thick marker, but nothing legible remained written on any surface. The box was barely sealed with tape on either end. "It isn't mine,” he thought. "I shouldn't open it,” but naturally he was curious. He held it up to his ear and shook it a little just to make sure that nothing was ticking inside. He heard some tiny rattling noises inside and made some haphazard guesses like a kid on Christmas morning. Couldn't be money, he thought with a sigh. No one goes around handing out boxes of money. Or boxes of anything, for that matter.
He tried to remember the man who had shoved it at him but only came up with the pea green of the coat and the stubble and the age. No other details remained in his mind.
"I might as well open it,” Argus decided. It was easy to do. The tape was old and pulled off easily. Inside were several small objects each wrapped in its own page of aged and weatherbeaten newsprint. As he carefully unfolded the items, he tried to keep them all straight on his lap, but the heaving of the bus and the jostling by his neighbor made it bothersome. After revealing a few items he decided to leave the rest for later, and put them all back together as they had been before.
He sat back in his seat and closed his eyes, shaking his head. The little he'd seen had not given him much to go on. There was a typical looking brass house key, a couple of little toy men and a couple of old cereal box tops. The remaining items were probably just as random and as meaningless. It might have been all that was left in the world that belonged to some sad homeless man. Maybe he was just passing them on, his own kind of tragic ceremonial event. Lost in the world, Argus thought, and he felt that he knew what that was like.
Chapter Two
"That's just some crazy stuff,” Mikael commented when he heard the story. "And believe me I know my crazy"
"I believe you,” Argus replied.
They were taking a break from their shipping and receiving duties in the back room at the Pay'n'Save convenience store. Surrounded by an endless mountain of incoming and outgoing boxes, the two men huddled around a snot green card table where Argus had laid out the full contents of the mystery package. He had only barely saved it from the mischievous hands of the little neighborhood brats Karly and Kansas, who seemed to think it was their job to greet Argus with some petty thievery and make him chase them around the building practically every morning. Argus had made it a habit to carry something he didn't mind losing, some random object off the street for instance, as a decoy to protect anything else more valuable. It was Kansas who had snatched the box and pulled the usual disappearing act around the corner.
Argus could never guess where the kids would get to. They seemed to have a new vanishing act every day. This time it was Karly who reappeared just as Argus was starting to get steamed. The child was suddenly at his side in the back parking lot, holding out the box with a blank expression in her big brown eyes. As soon as he touched it, she lifted herself on her toes and dashed away. He'd stashed the package in his cubby and spent the rest of the morning opening other boxes, counting items, checking off invoices, typing and filing away records of the items as they arrived: candy bars, Kotex, chips, frozen burritos, laundry detergent, anything and everything that filled the shelves of the local branch of the national chain of mom and pop replacement shops.
It was a stupid job. Not the thing he had in mind exactly when he'd ditched his home and family and left to start a new and different life. It was different all right, sharing a small house with five other people, none of whom he'd known when he'd moved in, working away for peanuts, coming home dead tired just to drag his ass to the bus again in the morning. What really got him was the lack of a future. Here he was only twenty two years old and he couldn't see a day beyond tomorrow.
"I like the little robots,” Mikael said, picking up one of the red and black plastic toys and examining it closely. The robot was all one piece and had a smooth head, a grimace for a mouth, and peculiar round spectacles for eyes.
"It looks like a bad guy,” he declared.
"No way,” Argus said, "he's totally harmless"
"Bad guy,” Mikael repeated, putting that one down and picking up the other, nearly identical to the first except for its yellow and blue coloring, and square spectacles instead of round.
"Good guy,” Mikael pronounced.
"It's just the colors you like,” Argus told him and Mikael beamed.
"Why not? What could be more natural? You see a thing you like you call it good. You see a think you don't you call it bad. So what? Who cares? You could change your mind tomorrow, call the good thing bad and the bad thing good. You could like the Lakers all of a sudden."
"I don't know about that,” Argus murmured, "really, the Lakers?"
"Anything,” Mikael continued. "What is like and not like? It's just made up stuff. You see something, you decide what you think of it. This is all"
"So what do you think of these?,” Argus asked, holding up a couple of Bite Size Shredded Wheat cereal box box-tops. At that moment, Celestina walked by and practically shouted,
"That is not food!"
"Try it you'll like it,” Mikael dared her, turning to yell after her as she brushed past him on her way to the rest room.
"I like shredded wheat,” Argus said.
"So what? Who cares?,” replied Mikael. "I'm sorry, did you say something?"
"What is all this?,” Argus asked himself again.
Each of the items from the box were now before him. Seven old photographs, a handwritten note that was barely legible and made no sense, two toy robots, the box tops, a house key, and the newspaper wrappings themselves, which once he looked closely at noticed they were clippings, complete articles from different newspapers from different cities, different dates.
"It's either garbage or clues,” Mikael suggested, picking up the photos and flipping through them briefly before tossing them back on the table.
"I would say it's most likely garbage"
"What's all this?" somebody said, and Argus and Mikael looked up to see their boss, Ahmed Atta, towering over them.
"A long story,” Argus said.
"Curious,” Ahmed, leaning his tall slender body over the table to get a closer look. "I'd like to hear about it"
"Some old man stuck a box in my hands while I was getting on the bus this morning,” Argus told him. "This is what was in it?"
"Where is the box now?" Ahmed asked, and Argus gestured towards the carton which was still sitting in his cubby.
"You will want to save every bit of it,” Ahmed told him. "Such things do not occur in the normal flow of events"
"Tell me about it,” Mikael scoffed, shaking his head. He was used to his boss's superstitious ways. Mikael had been working for Ahmed for several years by now, always sticking with his back room job and evading every possible promotion. Mikael was probably in his mid to late thirties but was very guarded about his personal life. No one at the store could tell if he was married, had a family, or even where he came from, although they all assumed it was Russia and he didn't bother to correct them. He as from the Ukraine, actually. He liked his situation now, and didn't mind putting up with nonsense like this from Ahmed. He even enjoyed it.
"You will want to see Madam Sylvia,” Ahmed continued. "You will want to take her the contents exactly as they were as far as possible. Madam Sylvia will have something interesting to say about all this, I am sure"
"Madam Sylvia,” Mikael laughed, "will tell you anything you want to hear as long as money is green and there is some of it to give her."
"Don't be like that, Mikael,” Ahmed scolded, wagging his finger in the air. "This is something here. This isn't every day."
"Okay,” Argus agreed. "I will take it to Madam Sylvia"
"Go now,” Ahmed said, "or any time this afternoon. I don't mind."
"Thanks, boss,” said Argus, but as Ahmed walked back into the main store room, he and Mikael exchanged glances and tried not to laugh too loudly.
"Oh Madam Sylvia,” Mikael joked, imitating the boss, "look at all this crap I have. I am so very full of it am I not?"
"You don't even know,” Argus snorted.
Celestina came wading back and with her wide and swinging hips again managed to nearly topple Mikael from his rickety chair and not by accident. She tossed her hair, gestured with her hand at the mountain of work surrounding them, and taunted,
"Tell me when you're all done processing these boxes"
"One of these days I will process your big fat ass,” Mikael called after her but not too loudly as the door was swinging open again, and Mr. Fontanel himself could be seen just outside it.
"Oops,” Mikael muttered and hastily got up and busied himself with a box cutter. Argus wrapped the strange assorted items back up in their newspaper bundles, and stashed them away in their package, and then also got back to work. There was another hour and a half until lunch time. The trip to Madam Sylvia would have to wait. With Fontanel lurking around, it was all heads down and fingers moving.
Chapter Three
Argus didn't go see Madam Sylvia that day. Instead, he plodded through the afternoon, ripping through one box after another in a more and more mindless daze as the hours went by. Finally, without another word to anyone, he collected the package and slipped out the back door. He was not feeling especially sociable, as usual. He never had been the outgoing type. Only recently had he come to recognize how awkward that could be. He floated through the crowds in a shell of his own, barely looking outward, barely seeing the world. He would arrive home and not really know where he had been along the way.
"Home,” he would think, "I guess you would have to call it that.”
It was a typical house in the gloom, its three bedrooms and "utility" room not nearly enough space for the six young people who lived there. Argus wasn't even sure how he'd ended up in that place. He'd answered some ads and visited some places, ending up there. Sometimes he wondered what they thought of him. He was the largest one there, at six foot two, two hundred and twenty five pounds, with shaggy long light brown hair and the faintest beginnings of growth on his chin, large brown eyes often displaying an expression like ocean-worn glass.
The others included two nearly interchangeable frat boys, Todd and Brian, and Seth, apparently a stoner, and two of their unlikely girlfriends, Todd's Maribel and Seth's Jolene. The first two of the men were in the earliest stages of promising careers. The women were entrepreneurs, and it was really their house, from which they had started and still ran their catering business. They were determined to succeed but in the meantime required some help with the rent. Argus was certain he would not be there long. He felt completely out of place, even more there than at the store. His whole new lifestlye adventure was coming to seem like a giant mistake, but he had no other ideas. He had always lived there, in the same Spring Hill Lake, a city without any character. He was born there, grew up there, went to college there too, all that time living in the same house with his largely invisible parents and his older brother, Alex.
Five years older, Alex had moved along a long time before, leaving Argus alone, really alone in that house. He almost never saw his parents, almost never talked to them. They were there, all that time, but each one going his own way, minding his own business, never really a family. His mother and father hardly spoke to each other so it was hardly surprising they had even less to do with their son, who was never much of a talker, anyway. He had a been a bright child, quiet but perceptive, but all along the way, through school after school, through phases of youth, adolescence, into adulthood, he'd become more and more distant, more and more silent, more and more deadened and dulled. Depression. He knew that's what it was. It seemed normal, however, not something to change or to expect to be changed. He had become adjusted and accustomed to what he called 'his way'.
Arriving home, he slipped into his room, which was conveniently just inside the front door, to the left. His roommates often didn't know whether he was home or not, and most of them didn't even care. Jolene, however, who considered herself the founder and therefore the head of the household, was always on the alert. From her post in the kitchen, way in the back of the house, she could sense his arrival, and had lately decided to make an effort to penetrate his stillness. Her friend Maribel was offended by Argus' aloofness and was simply hoping that he'd go away. She preferred the liveliness of Brian and Todd, or even the simple friendliness of Seth, who at least had the common courtesy to say 'hey' and 'goodbye' and 'how are you'.
"I don't know why you bother,” she called after Jolene, who was heading up the hall with a chocolate cupcake.
"Everybody needs somebody,” Jolene replied to herself.
She thought of Argus as like a little brother, even though he towered over her. She gently pushed his door open and saw him seated at the little table he used for a desk. He had opened the package and once again arrayed its contents, but he was looking out the window at the quiet side street they faced.
"I thought you might like this,” Jolene said quietly, and approached with the cupcake. Argus turned and looked up at her with a failed attempt at a smile. His arm felt heavy as if he could hardly lift it to accept the offering. He didn't. Jolene came closer and placed it on the table.
"That's quite a collection,” she said. "From your childhood?"
"What?" Argus murmured, "Oh, this stuff. No. It isn't mine, or it wasn't, or maybe it still isn't. Somebody gave it to me. I don't know why"
"Somebody you know?" she asked
"No, no,” it felt like effort to say, "A stranger. At the bus stop. It's strange"
"Wow,” Jolene was impressed. "That's so unusual. I wonder what it means. Do you have any idea?"
"No,” he said, "I really haven't thought about it much. I've just been carrying it around as if I was doing something I'm supposed to. I should've just thrown it in the garbage"
"Oh no,” Jolene said. "You couldn't do that. Not without trying, at least"
"Trying what? It's just some random old junk some crazy old guy pushed into my hands."
"What if it's not?,” she said. She was still standing beside the table, and now she was leaning over, trying to get a better look at the scraps of paper and the pile of photos and the toys. "What if he meant it for you, for a reason?"
"I never saw him before.”
"He might have seen you. Or somebody else might have put him up to it."
"I hadn't thought about that,” Argus said. They were silent for a few moments. Jolene began to feel like the intruder she was.
"Well, don't throw it away,” she said, backing out towards the door. "And I'd be glad to help,” she continued, "if you want, that is. It's none of my business I know but, I like puzzles, and sometimes I'm even good at them."
"Okay,” Argus said. He was just waiting for her to leave, although he didn't want her to. "Oh, and thanks for the cupcake"
"You're welcome,” she said, as she made her way out of the room, and gently closed the door behind her.
"Did he say anything?" Maribel quizzed her upon her return to the kitchen.
"Uh-huh,” said Jolene. "He even said thanks"
"Well, you never see that every day,” Maribel shrugged, but she was ready to get back to business. They'd had a call from a customer that morning and there was plenty of work to be done.
Chapter Four
Three of the household were in the kitchen. Maribel Lewis was the public face, big hair, and booming voice of Mari-Jo Incorporated, Food Services. Her boyfriend, Todd, and his buddy Brian, were out, as usual, at the local sports bar, drinking beers and pretending to be Irish. Jolene was busying herself with food preparation. She had been to the culinary academy and spent most of her waking hours dreaming up confectionery concoctions. The two women complemented and contrasted each other completely; the silence and the roar, the taste for sweets and the nose for money. They would certainly be successful together someday and they knew it.
Seth liked to say he was in real estate. In fact he was the handyman for his parents' property management enterprise. He was too embarrassed to admit this to anyone, but the job actually suited him nicely. He was a tinkerer and a dawdler by nature, exactly what people expected from someone in his position. He was also a homebody, which is why, in the evenings, his long frame was often slung across the sofa just outside the kitchen, in the utility slash living room by the back steps while the women conducted their business. He looked up with his goofy smile as Argus, appeared in the doorway.
"Hey man, what's shakin'?" he asked with his customary greeting. Argus hadn't even noticed him there. He'd been looking for Jolene.
"Oh,” he stammered, "Not much, I guess. Just wanted to say. I mean, just wanted to ask. I mean, tell"
"What's up?" Jolene looked up from her mixing bowls and baking sheets.
"It's just that I wanted to say,” Argus was having trouble getting the words out. "Like you were saying before. Look, I don't know what to make of that stuff, so if you really meant, if you wanted to check it out. Anyway, I'd be glad if you wanted to."
Seth and Maribel switched both their puzzled stares from Argus to Jolene, who was nodding and said to Argus,
"Thanks, I will. Do you want to bring it out here? Or leave it where it is? Either way. As soon as I get a chance I'll take another look"
"I guess somebody knows what they're talking about,” Maribel put in.
"Beats the hell out of me" Seth shrugged in response.
"It's a mystery,” Jolene explained as Argus still stood in the doorway, not sure what he should do next. He was halfway to turning around and walking away but the other half knew that wouldn't be right, and so he remained, awkwardly rooted to the spot.
"Some old guy came out of nowhere and gave Argus this little box, and inside it were a bunch of random things wrapped up in newspaper articles. Argus has no idea what it's all about, is that right?"
"Not a clue,” Argus agreed.
"I had an old street guy come up to me one time,” Seth said. "He started quoting Bible verses at me, then stuff out of the Qu'ran, and finally something out of Buddha. I was just standing there minding my own business."
"That's crazy,” Maribel said.
"Yeah, I thought so too,” said Seth, "but then he handed me a slip of paper, and on it was written a book and chapter and verse out of the Bible, and he told me to look it up when I got to my job."
"Did you?" Jolene asked, although she already knew the answer. He had told her this story a bunch of times before. She liked to check to see if he was going to change it. So far, he never had.
"Yeah,” he continued. "I mean, I was working at the bookstore so there was a Bible. Most jobs don't have Bibles hanging around so I thought it was even weird he said to look it up when I got to work. Anyway, I did, and it was out of Ecclesiastes and it said, 'of the making of many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh'.”
"Wow,” said Maribel, "you were working in a bookstore and it was a quote about books? How did he happen to have that written down on a piece of paper anyway?"
"Maybe he had a bunch of pieces of paper saved up,” Argus suggested, "and picked the one that fit."
"But how did he know?" Seth asked. "Unless, I mean, I always wondered if maybe he'd seen me working at the store, but it wasn't even in that neighborhood.”
"Homeless people get around,” Jolene said.
"I guess so,” Seth said. "It's kind of creepy if you think about it. There's people out there who could know about you, see where you go. You don't know them but they know you."
"Maybe your old guy was like that,” Jolene suggested to Argus.
"Maybe,” he said. "I didn't even think of that"
"I don't want to think about things like that,” Maribel declared, and with her bossiest voice reminded Jolene they had work to do and that the work had to get done pretty soon. Jolene promised Argus she would come around in the morning if he didn't mind, and that gave him the excuse he needed to get away from the kitchen and get back to his room. Once he was back there, he was not happy with himself. He had actually enjoyed the little conversation. He told himself that Seth seemed like a perfectly nice and even interesting guy, and that he liked Jolene even if he didn't like Maribel, and what harm would it do to come out and stay out and get to know them all better? And since when had he become such a loner?
He couldn't answer that question. Looking back at his life it seemed he had always been like that, choosing to remain alone in his room, not even doing much except thinking and not even about anything in particular. Growing up he had shared a room with his brother. He had the bottom bunk and would stay there, under the blankets, while Alex had friends over or was just doing his stuff. Argus would peek out now and then, but never was much of a talker. Everyone thought he was smart because he was quiet, when really he had nothing to say. And then there were the long still years after Alex had left home to start his new life, and Argus was left behind to face the family that wasn't really a family, in the house that was merely there.
He was almost paralyzed by routine, dragging himself through a college degree in architecture of all things, as if he cared anything about that. He couldn't explain to himself or to anyone else the choices he'd made, the shape his life had taken. He only knew he didn't like it and he wanted it to change. He didn't know how that was going to happen. As he'd said to Jolene, he had no idea. No ideas, really, he said to himself. He knew the blankness he felt had another name, and he knew it had held him in its grip as far back as he could recall. But to make the change happen, this was why he'd chosen to move, chosen to live with strangers, to work at some job, any job. His only notion was that any change in any way, any move in any direction, would lead to somewhere in the end, and he didn't need to know where that would be, or how that would happen. It just would. It had to.
Chapter Five
Jolene Marsh had stayed up late, baking way past midnight, so she slept in in the morning, not waking up until ten. At that time she had the house to herself. Seth had mosied off to one or another of his parents' apartment buildings, Maribel had loaded up the car with the goods and headed out to make deliveries. Todd and Brian, hungover and grumpy, made their way downtown to their junior white collar gigs. Argus had been the earliest to rise and leave, huddled in the fog at the bus stop wondering if any more strangers were out there watching him.
The house was divided by a long narrow hallway which ran all the way down the middle. You walked up the front steps and entering could select from bedrooms on the right (Seth and Jolene's) and left (Argus's), then another on the left (Maribel and Todd) across from the bathroom on the right, and then finally the kitchen on the left, utility slash living room on the right. Behind those were the pantry, enclosed sun room slash porch slash Brian's pad, and finally the back yard down the back steps. Jolene had lived there first, with an entirely different set of roommates, and had accumulated the current set beginning with Maribel. She was more or less satisfied with the current situation, although if she was pressed she would admit that she'd rather that Brian in particular was not there, and that they had no financial need for Argus' presence either.
Brian was the official slob of the house, and otherwise was practically Todd's shadow, following him everywhere, liking everything he liked and doing everything he did. Jolene didn't have much patience for people she called 'clones'. On the other hand, he paid the rent and was rarely actually in the house, so it was not intolerable. Seth thought the pair were 'entertaining' but she knew he was easily amused. He would talk to them as if they were one person, directing the conversation first to one and then to the other no matter which one responded, and they never caught on, which drove Maribel crazy.
With everyone out of the house, Jolene enjoyed the peace. She wandered up and down the hall, from bathroom to coffee to bedroom to porch, until finally remembering her plan to look at Argus' collection. She entered his room with a little nostalgia - it had been her room on two separate prior occasions. It still contained her old furniture - the bed, the dresser, even the table and chair had been hers. The articles were still spread out on the table as Argus had left them. Sitting down and looking them over, she was struck first by how neatly he'd arranged them. After that, she could make nothing of it. The photographs were from different cameras, from different eras, and pictured either people or buildings, or people in front of buildings. If Argus didn't know what they were about, she certainly knew even less. If they had been people he knew, wouldn't he have said so? But he hadn't really said anything either way.
The newspaper articles also seemed completely random, and were from different newspapers at different times. Some of the stories themselves also concerned buildings, but others did not. What a mess, she thought, and she wished she had more to go on, that she'd asked Argus more questions about it, that he was there now to ask. She knew he had studied architecture, so there might be some sense in the pictures and articles about buildings. Two of the articles were about buildings that were destroyed. She remembered one of the stories, about the Sea Dragons football stadium, and how it had to be torn down even though it was almost brand new. There had been some odd rumors about it but the newspaper article was only reporting the fact of it, that the stadium had come down on schedule and without incident. There was nothing else about football or stadiums in any of the other stories or photographs.
She was determined to find a link, or at least a clue. The two toy robots meant nothing to her, and didn't seem in any way related to anything else. The handwritten note was nonsense and nearly impossible to read. She could only make out a few words: elevator, paddle, foreign, averted, quicksand. Nonsense. She set the note aside. The only item she hadn't looked at yet were the two box tops from Bite Size Shredded Wheat. Those were the first genuine clue, for it said on the backs that they could be redeemed for a magic secret decoder ring. Jolene nearly jumped up with excitement and relief, but she looked again and saw that the offer had expired nearly a decade ago.
"Oh my God,” she said to herself. "I've got nothing. Nothing at all. Back to the newspapers, I guess."
Besides the two demolition stories there was a book review, an obituary notice, something about some rich kid's birthday party, a story about someone who was kidnapped and held hostage in a secret room in a house, and, lastly, a piece about a corrupt politician going to jail. There was nothing about any one story that seemed to have anything to do with any other story, and nothing that seemed to connect to the photographs either. She had thought at first that maybe the buildings in the stories were matched by buildings in the photos but they clearly weren't. The people in the photos also seemed to have no relation to the stories or each other. There must be something, she thought, something that ties at least two of these things together. Probably the house key. But she knew she was only guessing wildly.
She was as stumped as she had ever been, more so even. She was someone who could do those word jumbles in record times, someone who could do jigsaw puzzles almost blindfolded. She thought she could see the patterns in anything, but here she was drawing a blank. Among the photos was one of an old woman all dressed in black, walking through a garden. Another was of two young boys playing on a seesaw in a park. There was an old photo of a young family - husband, wife, young boy and girl - posing in front of a rundown ramshackle cottage surrounded by a high cyclone fence. Another photo was of a brand new office building, but the name on the sign in the front, 'Spring River', did not match the one in the newspaper story, a building called 'Fulsom Towers' which had collapsed and was described as being much taller than the one in the photo. Another photo was of an anonymous one story building in an office park somewhere, with two identical red cars parked in front but no indication of where it was. The last were a photo of a crowded corner produce market in the city, and two old men in a park who appeared to be playing cards.
Still nothing. No matter how hard she looked, she didn't see anything. Dejected, she left the items as they were, and left the room. Several times during the day she returned, but she didn't get any further. She even went as far as to call the cereal company to ask about the secret decoder rings, but that was a conversation that didn't get far. The startled customer service representative could only reply that he didn't know what to tell her. Promotions that old were completely forgotten.
Chapter Six
As he tooled home down the boulevard, Seth McDuffie thought again about how his little yellow Carmen Ghia convertible had won him Jolene's heart. She had been standing on a downtown sidewalk getting ready to cross the street when she saw him pull up to the stop sign and actually come to a complete stop to let her cross. She came right over to him and he'd thought it was to thank him for stopping, or then maybe secondarily she'd thought he was cute but no, she wanted to ask about the car, what kind it was, how old it was, where he'd gotten it, how much it cost. She had so many questions all at once, so he just said "why don't you get in and we'll go somewhere and talk about it,” and amazingly enough, she did.
They drove over to the Seal Rock Cafe and he told her everything she could possibly want to know about the car. By the end of that date the car was practically hers, seeing as he was going to be her new boyfriend and was probably going to move in to her place and he would probably let her drive it, which was really at the bottom of it all. A pretty good deal, he told himself. After all, he'd found it in a junkyard and gotten it almost for free, put it back together himself on evenings and weekends as he scraped together the money for parts and paint and wheels. Took him two years almost, and ever since then that car had been his baby, like a baby even with all the care and maintenance and attention it required. And he did let Jolene drive it. Hell, if that was the price of admission it was worth it, well worth it. The way he saw it, he'd never before even met what he called 'a woman of quality'. He couldn't pin down what that meant, only that he knew it when he saw it and Jolene was definitely it.
The garage at their house was unusual in that it was actually used for parking a car inside. It might have been the only garage on the block that wasn't a bedroom or den or storage bin inside. And the automatic door opener even worked, and Seth used it and drove the tiny car right in. Getting out, he walked around the car twice, inspecting the coat and the chrome to make sure it was still in perfect shape. Sometimes he almost hated taking it out into the wide and dirty world. You deserve better, he said to the car, a world where there is no traffic and there is no smog, not even your own, where you can drive a million miles on nothing but the good sweet air. He was still dreaming of inventing a combustion engine that combusted nothing at all. Upstairs he heard the sound of voices coming from the front of the house. He recognized Jolene's and headed toward the sound like a moth to fire.
Coming into the front bedroom he saw her pacing the floor, while new roomie Argus sat on the only chair in front of the little table and seemed to be staring out the window.
"Hey man, what's shakin'?" Seth said.
"Hi honey,” Jolene skipped over and stood on her toes to give him a light hug and a peck on the cheek before tripping off.
"We're stumped,” she announced as if that were a victory.
"Oh yeah, the mystery,” he remembered and he walked over to where Argus was now looking up at him.
"So, this is the famous pile of junk,” he said, looking down at the table.
"Seems that's exactly what it is,” Argus replied.
"Funny,” Seth said. "Someone sure went to some trouble to put that all together. Did you say everything was wrapped up in those newspaper articles?"
"Yeah,” Argus told him.
"A couple of those articles have the dates written on them in pen,” Seth said, thinking aloud. He had a habit of doing that.
"I guess so,” Argus said. "Think that means something?"
"You'd have to go with the idea that everything means something here."
"You're right,” Jolene declared. She stood next to Seth with her arm around his waist. "I've just been looking at the big picture trying to see a general pattern."
"You might want to take it piece by piece,” Seth suggested. He picked up one of the photos, the one with the two boys in the playground. Turning it over he muttered,
"Someone wrote the date on this one too"
Argus turned over all the rest of the photos and pointed at them. The others nodded. Dates were written on the backs of each photo, not with the same pen, and not by the same hand, but each one was dated.
"All the articles have dates too,” Seth said. "I only noticed the one that was written in ink; the others have their date from the paper itself."
"It doesn't look like any of the dates are the same,” Jolene said, now studying that item.
"That might be your pattern,” Seth suggested.
"I'll re-arrange them,” Argus said. "We need more space,” and Jolene said,
"Let's take them out to the kitchen.”
Argus picked up the pile and the three moved off as she'd indicated. Seth decided to make some tea so he was getting that together while Argus and Jolene spread out the photos and articles again and started putting them in chronological order. Seth's guess proved interesting and soon they had formed two lines of seven items each. Jolene decided to make a list that she could walk around with. She wrote down the following:
August 6, 1986 - story, Harold Miner III's 23rd birthday party
March 28, 1988 - photo, two old men in park playing cards
November 11, 1989 - story, book review of 'The Witchcraft of Positive Thinking"
July 11, 1991 - photo, neighborhood produce market
March 2, 1993 - story, death of a woman named Cyrilla Pak
October 23, 1994 - photo, two boys on seesaw at playground
June 14, 1996 - story, city mayor convicted of bribery charges
February 4, 1998 - story, collapse of Fulsom Towers office building
September 27, 1999 - photo, family in front of fence and house
May 19, 2001 - photo, two red cars in an office park
January 9, 2003 - story, Sea Dragons Stadium demolished
August 31, 2004 - photo, Spring River office building
April 23, 2006 - photo, old woman in black in a garden
December 14, 2007 - story, kidnapping and secret room in house.
"Well, that's different at least,” Seth said, arriving at the kitchen table with a pot and three cups.
"Different and yet the same,” Argus shrugged.
"Is there anything about any of those dates that mean anything to you?" Seth asked.
"Just the first one,” Argus replied. "That was the day I was born. August 6, 1986"
"No way!,” Jolene nearly shouted. "That's got to mean something!"
"Yup,” Seth agreed. "Maybe we can say that this thing was definitely intended for you."
"Maybe,” Argus said. "It would be a hell of a coincidence otherwise."
"It's a start,” Jolene said. "Now we're getting somewhere."
Chapter Seven
Jolene made meticulous copies of her list and ceremoniously handed them to Argus and Seth with instructions to carry them around in case inspiration struck. They had made no further progress that night, and Argus had packed up the contents and put them away in his room to avoid any problems from Brian or Todd or Maribel. That was Jolene's idea. She didn't really trust the others to treat this as anything other than a joke. She had visions of tearage, tramplage and crumplage and other unkind treatment of the relics at the hands of the two in particular she referred to as 'the beasts'.
"Better safe than sorry,” she said as she helped Argus arrange the items in their package and stow them away in a drawer.
Throughout the following day, after she once again had the house to herself, having dispatched Maribel to a customer site visit and shuffled Seth off to do something, anything, anywhere, she periodically stopped into Argus' room for a visual inspection of the package. In between those episodes she studied her copy of the list, and by the end of the day she had reached some very interesting conclusions. She found herself shelling peanuts out of restlessness and impatience for the men to return so that she could share her discoveries.
Seth, meanwhile, was investigating nothing at all. He loped from one building to the next, checking in and checking up. As usual, he had a lot of long, friendly conversations with various tenants, most of whom were in love with him to some degree. He was just one of those people. Whatever it was that he had, agreeableness, kindness, confidence, casualness, all of that together with a goofy grin and a seeming empathy that may have been more apparent than real, he was never at a loss for company. It could be a problem sometimes, when certain tenants would phone in faux problems just so Seth would come around and visit. He never seemed to mind or even catch on. The plumbing somehow fixed itself by the time he arrived, but sure, a lemonade sounded fine. That hole in the wall that needed patching seemed to have been delicately placed there to ensure not only his presence but also that he wouldn't be put out too much. And so his days were filled with friends and acquaintances and hows-it-shakins and hows-it-hangins and a nod and a smile and a bit of tinkering here and there.
Mr and Mrs McDuffie, his parents, were also his biggest fans. They were a well-suited pair of near-sighted balding and bright orange pants suits that had somehow managed to manage a collection of decent little buildings in decent little neighborhoods, averaging six to ten units apiece. They owned only one, along with their house. The rest they just ran for others. Mister, the father, had some of Seth's traits, the social ease and gregariousness. From the mom he inherited the others, the seeming lack of self-awareness and tendency to drift through life. It was cool. Everything was always cool. And once in awhile a thought crossed his mind, like the thought that he had driving home through the city, the thought that made him pull over and pull out the list and nod and smile and think to himself that won't Jolene be surprised that he figured this out by himself.
For his part, Argus was more concerned about who might be watching him walk to the bus stop, wait at the bus stop, and get on the bus. There was no one as far as he saw. Maybe they took the day off, he said to himself. Just my luck. The one time I'm looking there's nobody there. The whole thing was making him nervous. That the sequence of items began on the day he was born. What could it possibly mean? As badly as he wanted the thing to be random and pointless, the harmless obsession of a crazy old coot, it was harder now to think that it could be. So he tried not to think about it at all. Nothing doing.
Ahmed at work kept annoying him about Madam Sylvia. Mikael kept bringing it up too. Argus tried to say as little as possible, but he did spill the thing about the day he was born, and he mentioned the list, and then Mikael had to see it. Mikael practically tore it out of his hands and made off with it into the bathroom. He stayed in there for awhile. Argus was at least glad that he'd left the originals at home. God only knew what Mikael was doing in there. When he came out, the first thing he said was
"How old are you now, twenty two is that right?" and when Argus said "yes,” Mikael shouted
"I knew it. I knew it"
"This, my friend,” he said, waving the list around in the air, "is a very most interesting puzzle. What is most intriguing of all is the date that is NOT on the list. Do you know what I mean?"
Argus shook his head "no.”
"What is not on this list is the very last day, the finality of the sequence. Look, my dear Argus, just look,” and he pulled Argus over to him and held the list in front of his face.
"Day one, we know that, is the day you were born. The significance of the photographs or other news items with dates, of this I know nothing. I do not know if there is any meaning at all in those things. Probably yes. I would say yes most certainly likely. But what that inference would be, again I can't say. The next date on the list, do you see? Exactly six hundred days from the first. And the one after that? Six hundred more days."
"Six hundred days?" Argus wasn't sure he was hearing correctly. "What's so important about six hundred days."
"I have no idea,” Mikael replied, "but six hundred days and exactly is the interval between each and every date on this list. I did all the math. Six hundred days and precisely. Now, do you follow?"
"I guess so,” Argus said. He was trying to look at the dates and do the math by himself in his head, but six hundred days is a hard one to figure. It's more than a year, but less than two. It doesn't make sense in terms of any typical sequence. There was nothing about six hundred days that seemed special. Mikael seemed to be reading his thoughts.
"What's special,” he declared, "about the six hundred days is that if you take six hundred days, and you add it up fourteen times, and it just happens to be that fourteen is the number of objects with dates on your list ... that the very last day on the calendar will be the same as the very first day. In short, your next birthday, when you will turn twenty three."
"Twenty three?" Argus was feeling light-headed. Wasn't the first article, dated on the day he was born, a story about somebody's twenty third birthday? And now Mikael's telling him that the date in the sequence after the last date on the list would fall on his own twenty-third? The likelihood of a random act of wildness was less and less all the time. It kind of spoiled the surprise when he finally got home, that Seth and Jolene had both arrived at the same discovery. Each of them wanted to get all the glory and credit but instead all three of them now had the same set of facts.
"It's still pretty cool,” Seth pronounced.
"We're definitely on the trail now,” said Jolene, but wherever that trail might be leading was still just as much a mystery as ever.
Chapter Eight
Argus had promised Ahmed that he would indeed take the package to Madam Sylvia, and since Ahmed had given him the morning off - with pay - to do just that, he did just that the next morning. First he armed himself with a worthless paperback book called 'What To Worry About And How', just in case the treacherous Karly and Kansas were lying in wait for him at the corner. They were, and they took the bait, sneaking up from behind him and snatching the book right out of his hand, then shooting off around the corner, where they hid for who knows how long because he didn't chase after them at all. Instead, he crossed the street, took the package out from under his jacket where he'd been hiding it, and entered Madam Sylvia's psychic storefront.
Sylvia had been in business at that very location for many, many years, and yet it seemed she never aged. She could hardly have been more than thirty. Old-timers were convinced she was actually over a hundred, but kept her youthful appearance due to some very evil magic. They were convinced that babies' blood had been involved at some point. Sylvia herself chalked it up to genetics. After all, her mother had lived to be ninety and even until the end never looked any older than sixty, sixty one. In fact, she had inherited the business from her mother, who was also named Madam Sylvia, so it was natural for people to think she had been there forever.
The little shop was exactly as you imagine it to be, for precisely that reason. When you go to a psychic, you expect certain things. Crystal balls, tarot cards, incense, red velvet drapes, and so on. The Madams Sylvia lair was not lacking in any of these finishing touches. Sylvia herself would have preferred something more like a psychiatrist's office, with prints of famous paintings and understated wallpaper, but she understood her market and her clientele. If it's hokey they want, it's hokey they'll get, she sighed.
Business was never slow, another fact that continually surprised her. It was understandable that people are afraid of the unknown, and the future is by definition - or at least by our common experience - unknown, although she understood that from the vantage point of the general theory of relativity, the future might be perceived to be simultaneous with all other points in time depending on your location and velocity within the space time continuum. Science, and especially quantum mechanics, had helped her understand her own particular talents.
She even had a master's degree in astrophysics from the University of Leeds. The truth of the matter was that she was indeed psychic. The future was not an unknown to her eyes. It was instead a rather dreadful bore. Just as you or I can predict the destination of one ant moving along in a trail of ants, even though the ant itself might have no idea where it's going, so it was with Sylvia and the vast majority of her customers. They presented their futures to her as plainly as the noses on their faces. She had never been married. She had considered it once.
She had let herself feel that she had fallen in love with a cashier from a neighborhood bookstore. He had visions of a soft and gentle future, settling down as the owner of a cozy little store in a small touristy town, living on postcards, trinkets and mysteries, while she had her own little office in a little back room if only to keep her occupied and content. She had to admit that she almost went through with it, but there was always the problem of her mom.
Dead as she was, the old Madam Sylvia would not go away, appearing to her daughter practically daily, butting right into her business. She was liable to show up any time, day or night, and start right in with complaining. There was way too much noise. It was too quiet. Too cold or too hot. The dead are never comfy it seemed. She always wore that old blue dress. The one she was married in. The one she was buried in too. She would stand in the corner by the potted palm, and talk louder and louder until she was sure she was heard.
Mama Sylvia made such a fuss over the quiet cashier, pestering her daughter about his dirty little habits, describing the horrible children they would certainly have, and generally making such a nuisance of herself that the only way the younger one could get her to stop bothering her was to make a deal. For her part she promised she would not marry the boy. In return her mother was only allowed to badger her on weekends, Saturdays between seven and nine in the morning, to be precise. Sylvia never regretted the deal, and she didn't bother to tell her mother that she was never going to go through with it anyway. She also never told her that the dead are lousy fortune tellers.
Argus didn't have to wait long in the gaudy and predictable waiting room. Sylvia had been expecting him, and soon ushered him into the main chamber. She had him sit down across the small round black-draped table and studied his face for a few moments in silence. Argus was holding the package in his lap but was waiting for her to speak first.
"Something happened to you,” she finally said. Argus looked puzzled and didn't reply.
"When you were a small child,” Sylvia said. "Something unusual happened to you, but you don't know what it was, do you?" Argus shook his head.
"No,” she nodded, "you don't even remember.” She paused and was silent again for awhile. "Listen to me,” she continued. "You have been touched by the infinite. Do you know what that means?"
Again, he was at a loss for words. He had no idea what she was talking about.
"Try to remember,” she went on. "It was ... well, I cannot say exactly what it was, but you have been marked."
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