rock, honey. Kristen’s here, so I have to go.”
“Go catch your train. We’ll talk tonight.”
“Love you.” I hung up as Kristen stepped in the door, shaking out her muffler.
“I am so sorry! Some of the students from my sociology class got together at Starbucks for a finals-over thing, and I lost track of time.”
“No problem.” I threw on my coat, grabbing an umbrella when I noticed the wet shoulders of her coat. “Dylan’s asleep. He’s had his meds. His ears again.”
“Oh, poor baby.” She slipped off her Diesels, which seemed amazingly white and clean for a New York winter, and padded to the stairs. Turning toward the door, I flashed back to those twentysomething years, a time when I had some fashion sense, a budget to support a style and a lifestyle to maintain a wardrobe minus drool stains and spills. “I’ll go check on him,” she said. “Good luck at your meeting.”
“Thanks!” I called over my shoulder, ducking into the rain and fumbling to balance my leather satchel fat with manuscript as I opened the umbrella. The sky was stained a deep pewter gray and raindrops bounced on the wet pavement. I headed to the corner where I’d parked the car, pausing at the sidewalk as a big American car thundered by. Its front tires plunged into a pothole filled with water, which sprayed up in my direction.
With a squeal I jumped back, too late. My pants and coat were streaked with muddy water. Great, just great. Thank God I was meeting Morgan and not some stiff publishing mucky-muck.
The toes of my designer boots grew dark with cold saturation as I crossed the street to the corner. Fumbling for my keys, an unsettled feeling came over me as my heel crunched on the crumbling ledge of curb. The Volkswagen Bug on the corner belonged to one of my neighbors, as did the aging Impala behind it. I traipsed on through the rain, disconcerted.
Wait. Where was my car?
I swung around, checking the corner, the cross street.
No sign of my Honda.
The car had vanished…But my heels crunched on a spray of glass clotted with mud by the bumper of the VW Beetle.
Someone had stolen my car.
I hitched my bag onto my shoulder and cradled the umbrella as I slid out my cell phone and speed-dialed Jack.
“It’s raining in New York, I’m going to miss my meeting, my car’s been stolen, and Portland is looking better by the minute,” I said in a voice so calm it surprised even me. “Let’s get the hell out of here. How soon can you start in Portland?”
7
One Shrimp, Two Shrimp…
My second call from that rainy street corner was to the NYPD, whose dispatcher told me to return to my home and they’d send a car over to take a report. “But the last time I had a car stolen, I had to come into the precinct to make a report,” I said. Having had two other cars stolen, I knew the gig, and I didn’t want this anonymous phone voice to screw things up.
She assured me that the system had changed, which made sense. I mean, you lose your car, and now you’ve got to take the bus into the police station? Is that not the ultimate indignity? I headed back toward the house and called Morgan.
“Your car was stolen!” Morgan gasped. “What kind of Scrooge goes around stealing cars three days before Christmas?”
“An agnostic car thief? Let’s face it, in that profession you don’t get holidays off.”
She let out a raucous laugh. “You seem to be taking this well.”
I stepped around a puddle on the sidewalk. “I figured grace under pressure was preferable to throwing a tantrum in the street, especially with the pavement being so wet and this being the first time I’ve worn this Yves St. Laurent scarf. But I don’t think I’m going to make it in today.” Jack’s car was parked at the airport, and although I could take a cab to the train station I needed to stick around to fill out that useless police report.
“No worries!” Morgan proclaimed. “You just take care of what you need to do with the car and the baby and all.”
“But what about your notes? I mean, if I’m going to get this all done by the first of the year, I need to get going, and you’re flying out tomorrow.”
“Can you do it over the phone?” she suggested. “I can imagine you’re having a terrible day and I hate to push, but I’d love to have a juicy manuscript to send round in the new year.”
“You’ll have it,” I said, stopping short of saying: “Can Do!” I didn’t want Morgan to see me for the total suck-up that I am.
Inside the house, I told Kristen about the car as I pulled off my boots. Upstairs, I reconnected with Morgan on the land line, settled in at the laptop and dove into her notes, blocking out all distractions. I didn’t tell Morgan about moving to Oregon, knowing that it would waylay our conversation for quite awhile, and that it would make it all seem real, which I wasn’t quite ready for yet. Right now it was sort of a fantasy of vengeance, as if to say: “You can’t steal my car, because I’m taking it away—clear across the country! So there! Nanny, nanny foo-foo!”
That night Jack called to let me know that everyone in Dallas was thrilled for him. Of course, he had yet to face the wrath of Numero Uno Laguno and the rest of his team at the New York station, but whatever their reaction, he was outta there, leaving them in his dust.
“You okay?” I asked. He sounded like a kid who’d lost his favorite teddy bear.
“Are you sure about this move? I mean, it’s a big one.”
“And the farthest you’ve ever gone is across the East River,” I teased him. In truth, I wasn’t sure at all, but the thought of moving felt like a leap—some sort of movement—even if that leap was off a cliff.
“I’ll always be a Queens boy at heart.”
“You can take your Queens heart with you, but it’s time to take some chances and shake things up, don’t you think? You don’t want to spend your whole life living in two houses in Queens.”
“I don’t know why not. It’s New York. What’s not to love?”
Car thieves and traffic, pollution and overpopulation… I could have gone on all night but I didn’t want to bash Jack’s homeland. I leaned into the glow of the computer, drawn to photos of towering green Douglas fir trees and royal blue lakes. I’d been researching Oregon, excitedly nesting. “Your roots are showing,” I said. “Besides, this is the path to promotion. You’re going to be a GM someday, and you’ll look back and say that it all really started with this move, the fact that you were willing to go out and take some chances.”
“You’re right. Management is thrilled with me right now.”
I could hear the little zing of pleasure in his voice. Workplace kudos always gave Jack a shot to the libido, turning the power trip into a pleasure trip, and I was happy to come along for the ride.
“I wish you were here,” he said. “We could order room service and fuck all night. This bed is the size of the playground at P.S. 188.”
The thought of a giant-sized bed made me think only of the sleep I could enjoy there—days of sleep—but I didn’t want to burst Jack’s bubble. “Ah, those were the days,” I said, scrolling down a website that showed me average standardized test scores of school districts in the Portland area. “Have you ever heard of Lake Saranac? Or West Green? They’re both south of Portland, commuting distance to the city but good schools.”
“It just seems so random. Like some giant thumbed the globe and jabbed a finger at Oregon.”
“We should go check it out,” I said, thinking aloud. “That will make it real. Eyeball the towns, the traffic patterns, the locals…”