While at work, I had been leaving my cell phone in my jacket pocket, the jacket hung on a peg hook on the wall in the break room. Sometimes I even went as far as to turn the phone off and leave it in my jacket pocket. I had devised a system where I was aware what automobile makes were friendly and which ones were potentially hostile. Anything General Motors, Chevy, Ford were the enemy. That much was obvious. While Subaru, Volkswagen, anything crafty and imported were friendly. Jeep? Chrysler Dodge Jeep were friendly too.
I had been up the whole night listening to the radio. I had deciphered the subliminal meanings of songs that were in heavy rotation. Florence + the Machine’s, “Different Kind of Danger” and “the Dog Days are Over” were signs of hostility. “Electric Love” meant check the internet or I was on the internet. The harbinger song was by Coldplay: “The Adventure of a Lifetime.” The lyrics and chorus were, “We are diamonds taking shape.” I was just starting the journey. It was going to be transformative.
It was another gray February day with oppressive thick clouds. The forecast called for snow storms. I walked into work and the Elvis Costello song, “Radio-radio,” played. The lyrics: “So you better do what you are told / Better listen to the radio.”
I crossed through the lobby and into the hotel laundry room. As I stood at the slop sink, all three washing machines completed their cycle at once. A trio of beeps, all piercing and high-pitched. That was my warning. The clock was ticking down to the inevitably unexpected of . . . of what?
I didn’t even know.
The armless snowman was still on the lid of the garbage bin. The white hitch trailer, the capped trucks, the old ambulance were all still parked in the same place they’d been sitting for days. I walked through the lobby, past the great room and to the breezeway that connected the indoor pool area to the rest of the hotel. What was most important was to pay attention to the music playing through the sound system. I could go to the fitness room, or the pool. In there, I could hear the music through the speakers but I’d be out of sight from the surveillance cameras.
I passed out of the breezeway, back down the hall past the great room and into the lobby. Everywhere the walls breathed in inches closer. The ceilings lowered centimeter by centimeter. I walked through the door into laundry and cut across to the break room. A housekeeper named Lindsey sat at the table, holding her phone in her hand.
“Hi,” she said.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m just sitting here.”
“You have your phone out.”
“Yeah. So?”
I left the break room.
“Are you alright?” Lindsey called after me.
Back out in the lobby, Karen sat behind the front desk. I walked at a fast pace to get past her and make it back to the breezeway.
“Shane is waiting for you,” she said.
“What?”
“Shane and Mary Anne.” Our assistant manager and manager, respectively. “They’re waiting for you over at the other hotel.”
“For what?”
“There’s lunch over there. They said for you to stop by. They would have asked you earlier, but you were busy.”
So, I cut down the side hall and back into the laundry room to grab my jacket. My jacket, with the cell phone turned off and in the jacket pocket, hung on the peg hook in the break room. No sooner had I grabbed my coat, than the washing machines again all completed their cycles at once in their trio of high-pitched piercing beeps.
I exited out the back double doors of the service entrance by the dumpsters and lit a cigarette to smoke during my walk across the parking lot, passed the Galaxy Restaurant and to the other hotel. Shane was the assistant manager, a decent enough guy, short, with his balding head shaved enough to show the patchwork stubble of his male pattern baldness. He fit the role of someone’s corny uncle, telling borderline inappropriate jokes at work.
The February wind blew a chilly reminder of the snow flurries about to roll in. The white hitch trailer was still parked in the back. Mercifully, the street sweeper was long gone. Mary Anne, the property manager, had a fried poof ball of platinum blonde hair, like a dandelion held under a blacklight. Her skin was splotchy from sunburns when she vacationed in Virginia Beach, and her scornful smile was all lower teeth. The Galaxy Restaurant parking lot crawled with General Motors automobiles. It was inevitable for things to come to a head. My heart raced and my skin beaded in goosebumps. I was in an adrenaline-fueled state of constant agitation and hyperawareness.
When I walked into the Holiday Inn Express, the young Brazilian lady was working at the front desk. She stared at her screen on her cell phone. No sooner had I walked in, than the phone rang at the desk.
For a minute, I feared I was walking into a trap; in some ways, I was. In my swirling thoughts of darkness and paranoia, I expected the Heir-Apparent, Brookerman, to be in there. He’d either torture me or deliver me into the hands of those who I feared would zip-tie my wrists, throw a burlap sack over my head, toss me in a windowless van and spirit me away. Or he’d fire me.
“Come on in.” Shane beckoned me with a circling arm.
I took a seat.
“Hi honey, how have you been?” Mary Anne asked.
I sat at a table in the otherwise empty continental breakfast area.
I grunted out a monosyllabic, “Good.” My tongue pushed the words out through my teeth. My lips didn’t move. Foil pans of fried chicken, rolls, and baked beans lined up on the breakfast bar.
Mary Anne sat with her legs crossed. Shane stood leaning against a decorative post, his arms folded over his chest. They stared at me like I had lobsters crawling out of my ears.
“So, umm, what’s up?” Mary Anne asked.
The phone rang at the front desk.
“Nuthin’.” Again, I grunted out monosyllabically, teeth clenched, lips barely moving.
Shane took his shoulder off the post and stood, as he dropped his hands at his sides. “Well, come up here and get yourself something to eat.”
I wasn’t hungry. I couldn’t remember the last time I had eaten. Still, I obliged him. My quaking legs carried me over to the breakfast bar where I grabbed two rolls, tore them in half, and shoveled baked beans into them like little baked beans sandwiches.
I took my food and sat down and began to eat. Shane and Mary Anne exchanged a sideways glance.
Then it all clicked. The phone rang again at the front desk. Shane and Mary Anne continued to stare at me. Their gazes gouged through my eye sockets into the back of my skull. This was no good cop, bad cop. They were both playing the good cop.
Shane had his phone out. He checked the screen and put it back in his pocket. Mary Anne leaned in towards me.
“You’re in school, right?” she asked.
They had me cornered. A case was being built against me. I was a martyr. I was a scapegoat. I was a patsy. I took a bite out of a dinner roll baked bean sandwich and mumbled out some words. “Kurhmph mm-hmmn-nmmn.”
Mary Anne shot Shane another sideways glance as I looked down at the baked bean juice that had pooled up along the rim of my paper plate.
The clock ticked. Shane checked his phone again. The phone rang again at the front desk. I had known it all along! The prosperous Brookermans were in on the conspiracy, and the Heir Apparent Brookerman had sent Shane and Mary Anne, as lackeys, with an olive branch.
I’d exposed myself as a major player when calling Barnes and Noble and asking about the book and movie, Inherent Vice. That had been a red flag. That had put an even bigger bullseye on my back. Stupid, stupid, I had been so stupid. Now the Brookermans knew I knew too much. It was clear the manager and assistant manager, doing the Brookermans’ bidding, had called me over for lunch to record my voice. Maybe they’d splice words together to set me up for an elaborately orchestrated attack. Maybe they’d use the vocal recognition software to prove I had asked about Inherent Vice, and therefore was a threat to the conspiracy afoot. Maybe, they would record a sample to manipulate it, and have recorded data of my saying words I didn’t say. I had to get out of there. The important thing was to not speak.
I had chewed and swallowed down half of the dinner roll baked beans sandwich and had quickly began gnawing through the second.
“So, how’s school been going?” Shane ventured.
“Kruphgmmmn mhnn-mhnn-mhnn.”
The phone rang at the front desk.
I swallowed and stood. “Thanks for the food,” I muttered. “I got to get back to work,” I muttered again with my back to them as I walked away. If that was a test, I was certain I had surely passed.
Back in the Comfort Hotel, I tried to clear my mind by mopping the floor. It was impossible to clear my mind. I was in the viper’s den. The Goo Goo Dolls played over the speakers: “And I don’t want the world to see me / Because I don’t think that they’d understand / When everything’s made to be broken / I just want you to know who I am.”
A Jeep pulled up at the back entrance by the drinking fountain. Jeeps. Jeeps were friendlies. A woman, a young woman, walked through the double glass doors. She had her head down and wore a pair of sunglasses.
I stopped mopping and let the mop handle rest against my shoulder. “Hello,” I said to her.
She didn’t look up. She kept her chin tucked tight to her chest, but smiled at me. She rushed into the bathroom. I mopped towards the back of the lobby, closer to the bathrooms. She came out of the bathroom.
“Goodbye,” I said.
She stopped, but she didn’t turn around to face me.
“Nice ride,” I said holding the mop handle cocked at an angle over my chest. “The car, the Jeep.”
She rushed out.
It was clear what I had to do. I hurried through mopping the floor, then went onto cleaning the bathrooms. The women’s room first, of course. As soon I threw open the door, I scanned the sinks and floors for any clues. Nothing. I pushed open the flap of the wastepaper basket and looked inside. There it was. The message I’d been searching for. Sitting on top of the crinkled-up paper towels was a receipt from the Walmart Pharmacy, just up the street on Smokerise Drive. I pulled the garbage bag loose from the wastepaper basket. I put the receipt in my pocket.
When I walked out of the bathroom, the theme from Fame was playing.
Not to arouse further suspicion, I stayed until the end of my shift, but spent most of the hour and a half walking the halls to the side exit, past the Ohio room, through the lobby and great room, and to the breezeway leading to the pool. When I was out of sight of the surveillance cameras, I lingered under the speakers to hear what songs were playing. “It doesn’t matter what they say / We’ll love each other any way / Hey-hey-hey! / My lips are sealed.”
I knew what I had to do. Make it to the pharmacy at the Walmart on Smokerise Drive. Simple enough. Things got a little more complicated and convoluted when I heard the song that played as I was heading to the back laundry room to clock out: “Roam where you want to / Roam around the world.”
As soon as I got into my 2009 Dodge Nitro, I tuned into 91.3, The Summit. A Sonnets Coffeehouse promotion broadcasted: “Hot music, loud food.” I was going to be followed, but I could shake them if I took a roaming route to temporary sanctuary in Sonnets Coffeehouse and then went on to the pharmacy in Walmart. I took 94 through all the lights into downtown Wadsworth.
It started snowing.
I followed 94 to where it dead-ended at Broad, took a left on Broad and followed it until I took another left on College. I’d go to Sonnets first. I’d get a coffee. In a disposable paper to-go cup from Sonnets, whoever it was that left the receipt in the trashcan, whoever it was that played the Sonnets radio sound byte I’d heard earlier, would recognize me and know I was an ally.
Sonnets was on the corner, next to a barber shop in a little strip of quaint storefronts. I pulled down the side street to park behind the building. It was a trap. They had known I was coming. One entrance to the parking lot was blocked off by the trailer of a beer delivery truck. A man hauled kegs on a hand truck into Longfellow’s Bar. If I pulled into the back parking lot, all the beer truck driver would have to do was pull up a couple more yards, and my 2009 Dodge Nitro would be completely boxed in. So, I parallel parked on the side street. When I got out of my car, the snow fell in wet, slushy flakes. It collected on my knit hat and the shoulders of my jacket.
The coffee shop was warm, its décor all crimson and beige. Booths ran along the side, and the barista bar was in the back corner. I felt a reprieve of safety now that I was off the street, but it only lasted so long. Just as I had feared. Sitting with their back facing the barista bar was someone typing on their laptop, its camera pointed toward the register. Not to mention the surveillance camera hanging from the front corner above the big store front windows.
I walked up to the register. The barista was a terribly beautiful young woman with an accent.
“Hello,” I said.
She smiled at me.
“I’d like a large latte, please.”
She placed an empty cup in front of me.
“That’s a lovely tattoo,” I said, pointing at her tattoo.
She leaned on the counter and smiled at me some more.
“You’re very pretty,” I said. The empty cup stood the counter.
I looked to the sidewall where the coffee pumps were lined up in a row.
“Thank you,” she replied.
This was another trap. She had an accent.
“Where are you from?” I asked.
“Spain.”
“Spain?” I smiled back at her. “What are you doing here?”
She shrugged her shoulders at me.
An awkward beat of silence passed.
Then she made me a latte. The machine hissed and sputtered as the espresso dripped and she streamed the milk. I looked to the side and the person on their laptop was typing away. Someone sat at the barista bar with another laptop. Its open screen pointed the camera at the row of coffee pumps. I paid for my drink – in cash, all my transactions had been in cash ever since I had e-mailed out my Integrative Essay – and left.
*
Outside the powdery snow came down heavy and wet. I got back into my 2009 Dodge Nitro and drove the side street, took a right on another side street and took a left back onto College. My windshield wipers went full blast, smearing the feathery snow that quickly melted over the glass.
My heart raced. Even in the cold weather, my hot sweaty hands gripped the steering wheel until my knuckles went white. My eyes scanned my rearview mirrors, paying special attention to any cars behind me to see if I had a tail; then paid attention, too, to the cars ahead to see if there was a potential lead. So many cars were out, but my mind was sharp and fast. All my muscles and senses worked together with agility and focus.
My radio, of course, was tuned into 91.3, The Summit. The instructive music was going to be invaluable as I went the final stretch to my deliverance and vindication. Something waited for me at the Walmart and whatever that something was would answer all my questions and crack my mind open and expose me to a new underworld of possibilities and experiences.
In case anybody followed me, I had to keep moving. I couldn’t go back the way I came. From College Street, I took a right onto High Street and followed it out of downtown Wadsworth, past the high school. “Oh, she don’t mess around,” sang Cage the Elephant on my radio. That meant whoever I was supposed to meet was probably female and was probably already there waiting for me.
I took a left on Hartman, at the corner by the Grizzly Mart and followed Hartman along the gentle curves until I came to Medina Line, where I took a left and followed that to Smokerise Drive. This was it. The Walmart parking lot was full. I felt heartened at the idea that I’d be able to blend into obscurity.
All the cars sent me into a panic. Obviously, both the enemies and the friendlies would recognize my car. I saw an open spot next to a GM truck, but I cruised past it. I thought it better to park near the back. Already, I was afraid it would be like shooting fish in a barrel if someone wanted to make a move on me, because all entrances and exits in the parking lot could easily be blocked. That didn’t matter. Soon, I would be delivered into the hands of my allies. I’d finally find safety and rest and could move onto what my true purpose would be after I’d cracked all the codes that had been continually cycling around me all my life.
The after-work rush of shoppers in Walmart was kinetic. Anyone of them could be an enemy or a friendly. People either smiled or scowled. Sounds sharpened. As I made my way past the front row of cash registers, the beeps and pings of the scanning machines echoed and reverberated. Swirling in there with them, through the curves of my ears, were the voices of all the other customers, and I swore I could make out individual words that came at me through the rushing of shopping carts and footsteps on the linoleum floors, the rustling of clothes, the wisp of hairs moving on all the passersby’s heads. With each step I took, the cocoon-like bulbs dimmed and, as I continued to move and picked up the pace to walk at a faster rate, the sodium bulbs became progressively brighter and brighter until they were so bright, flashes and lens flares sprouted up in the corner of my field of vision.
I couldn’t just go straight to the pharmacy. That would be too obvious. So, I ambled my way through the store. All the sounds fell to a hush as I zig-zagged through the clothing section where the noises landed deadened in the hanging fabrics. I strained to hear if any sounds played through overhead speakers, but there was nothing. Without ambient music, I felt like the rug had been pulled out from under me. I was on my own without instruction.
It also turned out I was on my own without instruction, deep within enemy territory. I looked over my shoulder. A man followed a few paces behind me. He wore a camouflage ball cap and a grey sweatshirt, both with militaristic symbols identifying him as either former U.S. Military or a veteran of a foreign war. I stopped dead and turned around. He stopped to admire a display. Maybe he wasn’t following me, but chances were he probably was. The veteran garb marked him as one of the Brookermans’ lackeys. I should have known.
I made my way to the back of the store. A lady with tanned skin and dark hair worked with a scan gun. “Hello,” I said.
She smiled. The man followed a few paces behind. Finally, at the back wall of the Walmart, past the electronics department, I saw a public bathroom. I ducked into it. The man followed behind me. I stood at the mirror. He walked to a urinal. Quick as I could, I dashed out and he didn’t follow.
I’d lost him. After breathing a sigh of relief, I walked along the back wall which was lined floor to ceiling with display TVs. They all played simultaneously. It was information overload. It was too much for me to process at once. The blues and whites from the screens were so bright they hurt my eyes and it almost felt like the highly saturated colors could knock me down.
I turned and cut back to the front when I noticed another shopper ambling along. He was younger than the first, with a beard, but also wearing a ballcap touting the symbol of an elite military force. I looked up at the rows and rows of surveillance cameras hanging from the ceiling. Both men who’d caught my attention in Walmart were undoubtedly Brookerman henchmen. One must have been the lead. The other one must have been the follow. They were on to me, but I’d shaken the first man. I turned around and said “Hello” to the second. He didn’t say anything. Maybe he hadn’t known I’d addressed him, or maybe he knew he’d been spotted. I kept walking through the office and stationary department and lost him.
Finally, I made it to the pharmacy where there were two benches back to back in front of the counter and pharmacy window. I sat down. I sat on a bench in front of the Walmart pharmacy counter for maybe twenty minutes or so.
A man in a flannel shirt pushed a cart with a squeaky wheel. He passed and doubled back. The wheel squeak-squeak-squeaked. He passed and doubled back again, and again, and again. This must have been who I was looking for. He passed a final time and headed toward the checkout lanes, so I followed. I stood behind him at the register. He placed his items on the conveyer belt. I took a sip from my latte in the paper cup from Sonnets coffeehouse. The cashier rang out his purchases. I grabbed a Payday candy bar. I paid for it with exact change. The man left. I followed and he quickened his pace.
It had been a dead end. A diversion. A decoy.
Crestfallen, I slumped my shoulders and shuffled back to my 2009 Dodge Nitro. That was it. Maybe it all was just some elaborate trick my mind was playing to make some meaning out of all the senseless coincidences, and embarrassing paranoia.
I got in my car. There was a break in the storm front. One side of the sky was all gray, while the other was a milky pink accenting early evening blue. I turned on the radio. Erratic lone snowflakes fell and spiraled down. I pulled out of the parking lot. I stopped at a light. Then this song by Bob Mould came on. The lyrics went like this: “I decide to listen to the voices in my head / Strange hallucinations I avoid / The people and the places, the living and the dead / Can I find some truth within the noise? / It gets cold and it gets lonely / Gets you down inside / When it’s evening and I wander off / It’s a long dark ride / Now I’m very conscious of the voices in my head / They multiply and amplify the fear / I can play the victim or get on with life instead / By finding resolution as they clear.” That was the clincher. Instead of going home, I took a left onto 94 and followed it through all the lights. At the on ramp, I took another left and headed East on 76 toward Akron.
After that, things got jumbled. I thought I was supposed to go to Sonnets, but that was a dead end. I thought I was supposed to go to Walmart. That turned out to be a dead end too. But the music still played. The instructive songs continued. But where to next?
A car cut in front of me.
A Third Eye Blind song played: “I need something else to get me through this / send me some kind of sigh, baby / I need something else / I’m not listening when you say / Goooooooodbye.”
I flashed my headlights off and on. The car that had cut in front of me switched lanes, and another car cut in front of me. The other car that cut in front of me was, interestingly enough, a Subaru. The clouds had rolled in again and a flurry of little flecks of snowflakes and sleet particles fell. I followed that car. I followed it all the way to 21 South. I followed it on 21 South down to 585. I kept following the Subaru until it pulled off the highway. By then, I didn’t know where I was anymore and the signal for the radio station started to cut out.
I followed the Subaru until it pulled up and parked at the curb in front of a school. Then what? I sat there for a few moments. Finally, the Subaru pulled away, but the odd thing was nobody had gotten in before it pulled away.
Another car passed me on the driver’s side, pulled a little way up and again stopped at the curb. I watched that car. Again, nobody got in, but, before too much longer, that car pulled away from the curb and back out into the street. That was my car. That was the one I was meant to follow, and I did. Cloud cover was still heavy, but the snow fall had, for the moment anyway, subsided. The landscape gave way to hills and trees and neighborhoods.
The car pulled into a housing subdivision. I followed it. It pulled into a driveway. I pulled into the driveway. The lady opened the garage door. She parked in front of the opening garage door and got out. I rolled down my window. I opened the driver’s side door and got out.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” I said.
She turned to me and smiled. “Yes?”
“Do you know, I don’t know how to say this, were you expecting me? Are you supposed to help me find something?”
“No,” she said. “I don’t think so.”
“Do you recognize me at all?”
The sun was setting.
“No, I –”
“Never mind,” I said. “Wrong house. I’m sorry to have bothered you.” I backed out and drove away.
The radio signal started to come in. The song, “Hey, No Pressure,” played. The lyrics went like this: “I hate to see you breaking down (hey, no pressure) / I hate to watch you fall apart (hey, no pressure) I want to help you through it all (hey, no pressure, hey, no pressure) / I want to lift you when you fall (hey, no pressure, hey, no pressure) / Anything you want your life to mean it can mean / Anything you want your life to mean it can mean.”
I drove aimlessly, knowing sooner or later another sign would come. I cranked my radio up as the signal became stronger. The song “Put a Flower in Your Pocket” played. The lyrics went like this: “The city street is hot / The heat is escalating. Every corner in the town, there’s a paycheck waiting / Put a flower in your pocket / If you see them boy you drop it and you run / Run / They may pretend to like you / But man’s best friend will bite you just for fun / Fun / If they’re gunning for you boy / You’ve already won.”
I passed a side street where a parked car sat on the shoulder of the road. I pulled in. I turned my radio off. A big banner arching over the road read, “Luna Lake.” On the post holding up the sign, off to the side, was another smaller sign that read, “Private Property. Residents Only.”
I drove slowly to the car parked on the shoulder. I rolled my window down. “Hello,” I said.
Inside the car was a middle-aged man in a ball cap and thick dark glasses. “Hey,” he grunted back.
“Is it okay if I drive back here?” I asked, pointing down the road beyond the sign.
“I don’t see why not. I was just parked here. I had to send out a text. You shouldn’t do that, you know? Text and drive.”
“Can you help me find something?” I asked. “Were you expecting me?”
He didn’t answer. He rolled up his window and drove away.
I drove slowly under the overarching Luna Lake sign. I cranked up my radio again. The song, “Smooth Sailin’,” was playing. “Over the horizon / She’s smooth sailin’ / These concrete seas / Now she’s headed / East down the boule – the vard / Sugar / Said I like the way (like the way) Said I like the way (like the way) / You sail your ship down / Let me be your cargo / I won’t wear you down / No honey I won’t / Wear you down.”
I turned my radio off. I parked at the banks of Luna Lake. Along the circumference were little beat-up ramshackle bungalows. I stepped out of my car to smoke a cigarette. I’d be lying if I said the word “Lunatic” didn’t come to mind. Not a single soul stirred. The clouds above became as heavy and wet as damp wash cloths. Just like that, in the blink of an eye, bundles of snowflakes fell.
I stomped out my cigarette in the asphalt and got back into my 2009 Dodge Nitro and drove. The snow had fallen fast and started to stick like confectionary sugar on everything. Passing cars left tire treads, quickly covered again with new fallen snow. I didn’t know where the hell I was. My phone had been off and in my jacket pocket the whole time I drove, so no one could track where I was. At a stop sign of a three-way intersection, a Pontiac made a left-hand turn. I followed it. It pulled into a branch bank parking lot. I pulled behind. It drove out of the bank parking lot, only this time going the opposite direction.
I followed the Pontiac until it pulled into a driveway. I pulled in behind him. A burly black man got out of the car. He popped the trunk of his Pontiac. Again, I rolled down my driver’s side window and stepped out to stand at the side of the car with the door open.
“Where you going, son?” He only had a few teeth in his mouth. The snow had slowed down and the setting sun burnt another milky pink hole through the gray clouds.
“I don’t even know anymore.”
He reached into his trunk. “You live around here?”
“I don’t know. Maybe you can help me?”
“Help you with what?” His opened trunk was full of shoe boxes.
“What’s with all those shoes?”
“I’m a door to door shoe salesman. So what? You live around here?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where you trying to go?”
I blinked. “Barberton, I guess.”
He held his arm outstretched and pointed off to the side. “You want to go that way.”
I drove home. I wish I could say I was done, but I wasn’t.
By the time I got home, the sun was minutes from setting. After I parked my car in the garage of the coach house, and walked up the stairs into my place, I finally turned on my phone. There was a voice message from my mom, and an e-mail from my mom. The e-mail said: “I can’t tell you how extremely distraught I am over your current mental health state, I just don’t know which way to turn or what to do to help you work your way through this state of psychotic, paranoid, episode. At this point & in hindsight, thinking of many of our past conversations I truly believe now this has been working itself into a head for a while & probably for the last several years. I feel somewhat at fault, the signs have always been there but I guess with you being away so much I never realized how serious your problem is.
Rega