107 – Boston
Judy Katz ran up the stairs to her third-floor apartment, searching through her bag for her keys. She’d left her laptop and the DVD in Portland, afraid it emitted a guilty radiation the government would be able to detect. The backpack she’d borrowed from Debra was heavy. She was breathing hard by the time she reached her door.
Some clothes, not much, and my passport, she thought. Where the hell did I leave my passport?
The passport from her teenage years, the one filled with stamps from an eight week If-Its-Tuesday-This-Must-Be Belgium American Youth Hostels summer vacation, was long expired. Her rapid fire legal career did not leave time for vacations. She’d obtained a new passport a few years back, though, after she and a boyfriend-of-the-moment talked about how much fun it would be to take off on a last minute weekend to Paris. She’d realized that her ability to be spontaneous would take advance planning, the first action being getting a current passport. The boyfriend went south before the two of them flew east. She was ashamed the passport was as pristine as the day she’d received it.
Where did I hide that thing?
She turned the key and slowly opened the door, half expecting to see a crowd of the FBI agents she used to direct, but the apartment was empty, as quiet and lonely as it had been when she’d fled to Maine after discovering the DVD in her laptop.
She pulled clothes from drawers as if she were conducting a search, which, she realized, she was. Who knew what the weather was like where she was going. Warm, for sure. Hot? She didn’t know.
All she knew for certain was that she had to leave, had to get out of the country, soon, today if possible. Before tomorrow for sure. Everything would change tomorrow.
The passport.
She looked in a cardboard box carefully marked in her own print “Important Papers.” College diploma. Law school diploma. State Supreme Court, Federal District Court and First Circuit Court of Appeals admission certificates, still in the envelopes in which she’d received them, intending to have them framed, but never finding the time, or the need, to do it.
A creased eight-by-ten black and white photograph. She choked. I haven’t looked at that in years, she thought. A stab of guilt tightened her stomach. I haven’t even thought about them in so long. She carefully slid the photo of a young man in a tuxedo standing stiffly next to a short woman with dark hair wearing a shiny long white dress, a wedding dress, neither of them appearing very happy, not quite touching one another. Mommy and Daddy, she thought.
Mom looks younger than I am now.
Shit, she thought, this is taking too long. She lifted the box and dumped its content on the bed, searching for her passport. Not there.
Where else? She got up and started to scan the apartment, then turned back and looked at the scattered papers. Her whole life was there. After a moment of indecision, she shoved the papers into a rough pile, lifted it and slid everything back into a large manila envelope, then tossed the envelope onto her bed, next to an empty suitcase, at the far end of her one-room apartment.
I don’t know when I’ll be back. I’ll bring it all.
The passport. She glanced at her watch, imagining the black Chevrolet Blazers favored by the FBI racing toward her street.
She went to the kitchen, or what passed for a kitchen, a counter with a sink at one end and a built-in two-burner stove and oven at the other.
The junk drawer? She pulled at the lowest of the four drawers, beneath the silverware, the potholders, the spices she couldn’t find another place for. The drawer stuck, something inside jamming against the cabinet front.
Damn. That always happened, she thought, dropping to her knees and reaching one hand in through the opening at the top of the drawer. A flashlight was stuck against the inside of the cabinet face, stopping the drawer from opening. She knew to a one-hundred percent certainty the flashlight batteries would have been dead for two years.
Fuck. She reached to the sides of the drawer slides and lifted the little levers that kept the drawer from being removed. She’d had to do that before, always meaning to clean out the junk drawer rather than stuffing more useless items into it, items she knew she should toss out but kept just in case.
The drawer slid free. Katz lifted it, out of habit being careful not to spill the bulging contents on the floor, and deposited it on the kitchen counter. She pawed through the drawer, then, frustrated, lifted it and dumped it on the counter, pieces of lint and assorted dust globules that had established a sedimentary layer at the bottom of the drawer falling on top of the assorted spare batteries, CD player headsets, playing cards, screws, appliance instruction booklets and warranty documents.
At the top of the heap was a small blue booklet with the familiar seal of the United States on the cover, her passport.
She grinned, grabbed it and raced across the room to her bed. The passport went into her pocketbook. The clothes, and the manila folder, were stuffed into a nylon suitcase. With a final glance around the room, she walked out the door and down the steps, taking them two at a time despite the weight of the suitcase in one hand and the heavy backpack over her other shoulder.
Her car was parked halfway down the block in a Residents Only parking zone. She hesitated before walking to the car. Shouldn’t use my own car, she thought. Call a cab? Shouldn’t use my cell phone.
Fuck it. She raced to the car as quickly as the heavy bags allowed her to run. Fumbling with her car keys, she unlocked the trunk and tossed her suitcase in. The backpack went on the passenger seat.
Now where? Abram would know. Wish I could have asked him.
Downtown. There’s got to be a place downtown.
She drove quickly, following the Boston traffic rule of “green light means go, yellow means go faster.” Passing Boston Common, she turned down a side street and pulled to the curb next to a Loading Zone No Parking sign.
So I get a ticket, she thought, as if that’s the worst that could happen to me.
Locking the car, leaving the suitcase behind, she hefted the backpack over one shoulder and walked to the corner. Washington Street. Where the hell is that building. Left? Right? She looked both ways to orient herself. Left, maybe.
She walked down the crowded sidewalk, so distracted she couldn’t deal with people walking toward her, doing a dance with a man in a blue suit, carrying a briefcase, cell phone to his ear, walking directly toward her, she moved right, he moved the same way, she moved left, he moved the same way. They smiled at one another in embarrassed annoyance and passed.
Her eyes were on the old brick buildings lining the street. Which one is it? A doorway with a sign over the top brought her a sigh of relief. Boston Jewelers Building.
She’d been there once before, a Friday afternoon she’d left work early after turning down an invitation to join “the guys” at a bar in Southie to “tie one on.” Where is my life going, she’d thought, wallowing in self pity at approaching what she considered to be middle age with no husband, no family, no prospects of a husband or family. Nana was so right, she’d thought.
So she’d gone to the Jewelers Building and shopped, shopped for engagement rings, spending two hours in a fantasy world in which her “fiancé Evan” told her to pick out whatever she wanted. She sucked up lectures about the three-Cees - clarity, color and cut - from men in black suits and hats, men who glanced at the clock as Friday afternoon wore on and the Sabbath approached.
This time I’m in no fantasy, she thought. I’m up to my armpits in reality.
She took the elevator to the third floor. She didn’t remember the name of the shop but she did recall the sign on the front door. Beneath the word Diamonds. Gold, it said, Bought and Sold.
She tried the door handle. Locked. Looking through the glass door she saw a man behind the counter. He looked up as she pressed the button next to the door handle. She smiled. He smiled and nodded. A buzz. She turned the handle and the door opened.
“Ready for that diamond now, Sweetie?” the man asked. Seeing the startled look on her face, he smiled broadly. “My father taught me. Never forget a customer. Especially such a pretty one. If this man doesn’t work out, there’ll be another, I knew it all along. So, sheyna velle, bright eyes, are you ready for your diamond?”
Katz lifted her backpack onto the glass counter, plunking it down with such a thunk she was afraid she’d break the glass. The man raised his eyebrows quizzically.
She reached down to the bottom of the bag with both hands and deposited a mound of glistening gold coins on the glass.
“I want to sell these,” she said, hiding, hopefully, the nervousness in her voice.
The man picked one coin up and glanced at it quickly.
“Krugerrands,” he said, spitting the word out as if it were an obscenity.
“I want cash for these. How much are they worth,” Katz asked.
Without saying a word, the man began counting the coins, sliding them one at a time across the counter as he did so. “Twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four.”
“I have more,” Katz said quietly. “But I’m going to take some with me. How much can I get for these?”
The man walked to the far end of the counter where a computer that looked as if it had been purchased during the Eisenhower administration sat, orange characters appearing on a black screen. He pecked at the keys with one extended figure. Rows of numbers filled the screen.
He walked back to Katz, a look of sadness, almost of despondency on his face.
“Gold is down,” he said. “Keep them. Sell them some other time.” He saw the shocked expression on her face.
“You know I’ll just take them someplace else,” she said, hoping to hide the desperation she felt. “I need the money today, right now.”
“No, tottala, no,” he said softly. “Whatever is troubling you, it will get better. Trust me. I’ve seen bad in my life. It gets better.”
His eyes focused on a distant memory. He quickly returned to the moment, staring at the young woman across the counter and the fear and desperation in her eyes. He made a decision.
“So, sometimes getting better takes some help. All right then. They have a face value of $724. I’ll give you ...” he paused, his eyes turned to the ceiling, going distant for a moment, then returning. “I’ll give you $700 each. Nobody else will give that much. They’d steal them from you, the gonifs, thieves.”
“I’ll take it,” Katz blurted. “Thank you so much, so much.” She pushed the coins toward the man.
“Can I have large bills, please.”
“Oh no, sweetie. I don’t keep that kind of cash here. They’d beat me over the head.”
He opened a drawer and removed a large leather binder. Inside was a spiral bound check register.
“I have to have cash,” she said flatly, sadly.
The man calculated rapidly in his head and began writing a check.
“You can take this across the street . . .” He pointed out the window. A sign said Bank of America. “They’ll give you cash for this. I need your name dear.”
“Judith Katz.”
“Katz?” he smiled. “A Katz. Not related to Hyman and Myrna are you? No. Of course not. They had no children.” He signed the check as carefully as if he were stitching a wound. He waved it in the air to dry the ink, then handed the check to Katz.
“Things will get better. Trust me.”
She looked at the man kindly, sighed deeply, relieved by the prospect of completing the first step of her mission.
“But first,” she said. “First it is going to get much, much worse.”
She left the building with the check clutched in her hand, afraid that if it went into her bag some thief’s radar would be alerted and the bag would be snatched.
Across the street, the bank teller looked at the check Judith handed him, then at the drivers license presented with it, punched keys on a keyboard, looked at a screen and asked, with no hint that anything unusual was taking place, “How would you like this?”
She knew better than to walk down the street waving hundred dollar bills. With the money in her backpack, clutched to her chest, she walked two blocks to the American Express travel office, next to her dry cleaner. The office was empty except for two bored looking employees sitting at separate desks. The Internet was quickly making the travel agent business as necessary as buggy whips. Katz went up to the first agent, who stashed a paperback in a drawer.
“I want to book a flight,” Katz said.
The travel agent looked more like a bicycle messenger, both of her ear lobes riddled with rings, both nostrils pierced, as was one eyebrow.
When she spoke, a glint of gold showed in the middle of her tongue.
She looked surprised. No one Katz’s age used travel agents. Most of her customers looked more like her grandparents, and even her grandmother booked her flights back and forth from Florida on Travelocity.
“That’s what I’m here for,” the woman said cheerily. “Vacation? Got some good packages in the islands.”
“Africa,” Katz said, no hint of excitement in her voice at uttering such an exotic destination. “I want to go to Africa, eastern Africa.”
She saw the surprised expression on the agent’s face.
“Is there a flight today?”