Alligators in the Trees (14 page)

“How about a last name, then,” Tobias said, not at all satisfied with the information he was receiving.

“Vanderhooven, Vanderplatz…Vander-something,” June said vaguely.

“You don’t even know your coworker’s last name?” Tobias complained.

“Hey, we were hardly bosom-buddies. We were merely two soldiers fighting the war on hunger, one sorry customer at a time,” she replied glibly.

“Not very well,” Tobias remarked acidly. June chortled loudly at that commentary.

“No, here we wage a valiant fight against the war on hunger, but we’re dead losers in the war against heartburn.” June was interrupted by a thunderous crash, as the new girl dropped an armload of dirty dishes just short of the bus tray.

“Oh wonderful,” she said sarcastically. “Well, nice talking to you, but I gotta run,” she said. “If you find her, tell her she’s going to fry in hell for making me train a new girl by myself.” Tobias slipped a five under his coffee cup, grateful to be leaving the depressing dive for the last time.

With the little he had to go on, Tobias tried to formulate a plan of action. He knew the block she lived on and had a clue as to her last name, which wasn’t much, but at least it was something. He supposed he could hire a private detective, but there was a crudeness to such an approach that turned him against it. He would feel like a lunatic hiring someone to track down a coffee shop waitress.

Besides, only a truly desperate person would resort to a move like that, and he certainly wasn’t desperate. He merely wanted to find this Priscilla and…and…what? Tobias stopped abruptly in the middle of the sidewalk, causing another pedestrian to smack against him.

“Sorry, man,” he said, embarrassed, as he moved out of the path of traffic. As he stood in front of a high-rise office building, he wrestled with his intentions and calculated the distance to Priscilla’s neighborhood. It wasn’t that far a walk—twelve or fifteen blocks at the most. But in his irrational state, he couldn’t figure out if cruising up and down her block until he caught sight of her was a smart move or not.

But on the other hand, how else could he find her? With more demons taunting him than he had been exposed to in years, Tobias set off in the direction of one of the seamiest sections of town.

During the half-hour walk to Church Street, Tobias worked to make sense of his sudden obsession. He was a man at the top of his form twenty-four hours ago, yet now his world threatened to spin off its axis due to the displacement of a common working-class girl, woman—whatever she was, a person he knew nothing about. After ten blocks of serious reflection, Tobias was still utterly clueless as to reason for this sudden mania.

It’s okay
, he told himself.
There’s nothing wrong with checking out her neighborhood. I’ll simply walk up one side and down the other, and if I don’t happen to find her apartment, then no harm done.
With that disclaimer filed neatly under ‘reasons to act,’ Tobias turned the corner at Baker.

The ugliness of the block hit him like a rotting pie in the face. It made his blood run cold to think of all the people who called this dreary, drab place home. Every step he took made him cringe as he imagined living there.

He remembered from grade school reading about all the immigrant families housed together under appalling conditions, many forced to live in oppressively small quarters without windows, most going without the most rudimentary conveniences. It didn’t look like a whole lot had changed since that time.

He had walked the length of the block without realizing it; as he stood on the corner, he debated whether to cross to the other side as he had planned. He had not been paying any attention to the names on the mail slots and buzzers he had passed, so it wasn’t as though he was making a diligent effort to find her.

After coming face to face with the world in which she lived, he wondered at the image he had formed of her in his mind. Whatever he had previously thought of her would now have to be amended.

As he stood there gazing up and down the street, he reviewed his impressions of her. First there had been the explanation about her name: Priscilla versus the Bobbi of her nametag and her nickname of Sam. He remembered being amused by her nonchalance, her apparent lack of self-consciousness and her wry wit.

He could still recall how she looked the first time she waited on him. She was actually fairly attractive, underneath the tacky uniform, though not in any remarkable way…except for her eyes. He recalled how he had been struck by the dark blueness of them.

Then, there was the way she looked at him while taking his order—very self-possessed, very comfortable with her role, not at all demeaned by it. Well, why would she be, if this was what she was accustomed to? Maybe working at Frank’s seemed like a good thing in her eyes. What a depressing thought. But if she didn’t like it, why had she worked there? Then again, she might not have had many choices.

He turned around and walked down the other side of the street, this time pausing at each entrance to examine the roster of tenants. From the outset he knew the deck was stacked against him; several buzzer buttons didn’t have any identification next to them at all. He could scour the entire block, up one side and down the other, and still never find Priscilla Vanderhoffen, or whatever her name was.

He worked the first side of the block to no avail. He asked two elderly women if they knew a Priscilla. One of them brightened at the mention of her name, which set his pulse to racing. Unfortunately, the Priscilla she was thinking of was Elvis’ widow. Discouraged, he ventured to the other side of the street.

He had given such studious attention to each building’s registry, he was starting to attract wary looks from idle observers who stared down from their cramped windows. Finally, irked by his task and the malignant vibes he was receiving, Tobias looked up to address his audience.

“Do you know where Priscilla lives?” he called out. Of the four voyeurs, two closed their windows defensively, one shook her head and the forth merely scowled. “Thanks,” he said sarcastically and moved on.

He was three-quarters of the way down the second side, wondering what other brilliant ideas he would come up with next, when a nameplate made from plastic tape caught his attention. P. Vanderpool, it read, white letters punched through blue tape. P. Vanderpool.

That’s got to be her
, he thought, excited by the possibility.
Okay, now what?
He stepped away from the entrance and looked up at the four-story edifice, hoping for some confirmation of what he suspected. Much to his disappointment, there was no banner flying from any window with ‘Priscilla lives here’ emblazoned across it.

He stepped back up to the entrance and found her name again. P. Vanderpool, apartment 3E. He peered into the cloudy glass panels of the old wooden door, looking for signs of life. No such luck. He took a deep breath and beat his hand repeatedly up and down the panel, until the buzzer sounded and the doorknob gave way in his other hand.

Priscilla lay slumped against a pile of crushed pillows on her bed. She had been in that position much of the time since the previous afternoon. Every now and then she was seized by a spasm of industry disguised as a plan, but she repeatedly ran out of steam.

She had exhausted her entire store of optimism and dismissed every attempt to look on the bright side. As far as she could tell, the single positive aspect gained by her recent unemployment was that she’d never have to see Frank the Food-Slayer ever again.

Other than that, being jobless felt akin to being at sea without a raft. As pathetic as it seemed, working at Frank’s Coffee Crematorium was the only thing she had going for her. Without that job, she had nothing.

She had reached the point in the honest assessment of her life where she had become immune to the sense of humiliation or failure. Everything now struck her as hopelessly absurd, and every new revelation made her shake her head with weary wonder.

It was absolutely preposterous to think she missed that God-awful job—lousy pay, crummy environment, food she wouldn’t take home to her dog, if she had one. But without it, she didn’t know what to do with herself. In reality, she should be jumping for joy, for now she was free as a bird. But freedom wasn’t worth much unless you knew how to use it. Freedom to lie on one’s bed for twenty hours at a stretch was actually rather unfulfilling, she decided with a sigh.

Disgusted with herself, she got up, stretched, crossed to her window and scanned her dreary vista for inspiration. Not surprisingly, she didn’t find much to inspire her, although it did occur to her that if she were really free, she could walk out of her miserable hole and never look back. This offhand idea immediately started to germinate. She sank down on the foot of her bed and let the fantasy grow.

“Why stay here?” she asked herself out loud, delirious with the thrill of a possible out. “There is absolutely nothing to tie me to this apartment, this city or this state, for that matter. Why not leave?” She stood and took in her three miniscule rooms and her scant possessions.
This would be very easy,
she estimated, as she opened drawers and cupboards and did a quick inventory.

There was little she felt attached to; most of what she had accumulated over the last twelve years of living in the city she’d be happy to never lay eyes on again. But if she were going to leave, she’d need a place to go. As she looked inside what served as her coat closet, and spied her winter coat lying in a heap where she had thrown it, the thought of moving to a milder climate suddenly came to mind.

“Florida. I’m going to move to Florida,” she said with conviction. “Why not? Mild winters, friendly people, relaxed lifestyle—what could be easier?” Sure, Florida was the perfect solution. She’d pack one small bag and hop on the first Greyhound Bus headed south. With the nice fat wad of reserves she had saved up, she’d be able to find a cute little house to rent close to the beach, with plenty of windows to let the sunlight in all day long.

Maybe she’d go all the way down to the Keys, where the communities were small and accepting. She could get a waitress job, or maybe try her hand at something more mentally stimulating, for a change.
Yes indeed,
she thought,
this is starting to look very much like a silver lining.

As she sat basking in this joyously optimistic vision of starting over, her silver lining began to tarnish. And what was the cause of the abrupt fizzle? Philip Glessner. She fell back onto the bed, furious with herself for allowing one casual, burgeoning friendship to conflict with the first viable plan of escape she had hatched in years.

She lay there and cursed herself, her better judgment futilely arguing against her conscience. There was nothing between her and Phil that should prevent her from leaving town. Yet, she was reluctant to stand him up, nor could she bring herself to call him and cancel.

Truth be known, it was the promise of having dinner with him that had contributed to her crushing sense of inertia over the past twenty-four hours. She should have never given into his pleas or her weaker impulses. If she had just stuck to her guns and said no, she could be skipping to the bus terminal that very minute.

Call him—tell him you’ve had a family emergency and you’ve been called out of town for the foreseeable future
, she reasoned with herself.

“I can’t,” she answered. “Besides, I don’t have any family.

Yeah, but he doesn’t know that. Okay, have it your way—if you don’t want to leave without telling him and you don’t want to stand him up tonight, then meet him as planned and leave town tomorrow
.

She shook her head as she thought of Phil, what a nice guy he was, and how generous he had been to her. After all, she wouldn’t be able to entertain ideas of escaping her colorless, claustrophobic life if it hadn’t been for him and his ridiculously large tips.

“I don’t have anything to wear to a place like that,” she admitted.

You’re telling me. So take a few bucks out of your stash and go buy something
.
It’s your damn misplaced sense of guilt that’s keeping you from doing what you want. So, take some of Phil’s money and buy a nice outfit for the dinner with the man you’re so afraid of mistreating
.

Priscilla had no comeback for that argument. With deliberate slowness, she got off the bed and unearthed her wads of cash. She removed five twenties, then another, and one more and stuffed them into the pocket of her jeans. If she couldn’t find something decent for a hundred and forty bucks, then screw it. She needed every cent she could get hold of if she was going to make a good start in Florida.

She was purposefully dallying, trying to postpone the unnecessary expenditure and the imminent rendezvous. It didn’t take much for her to lose her nerve, attaching herself to quite a different plan of action as soon as it occurred to her.

“I can’t go anywhere until I figure out what I’m going to take and what I’m going to get rid of,” she said, ignoring her common sense reply that she have time to pack and discard in the morning. She began by dumping the contents of her drawers out onto the bed, where she sifted through the items with little interest.

“Better get some garbage bags,” she said as she realized how much there was to dispose of. In no time, she had stuffed virtually all her clothing into the plastic bags. There were only a few articles that survived the cut. She had four large black bags, stuffed to the limit, which she hauled to the trash chute, two at a time.

When she returned the second time, she was struck by one serious oversight on her part: the stacks, piles and boxes of lyrics she had composed over the past twenty-odd years. She sank down on the arm of her easy chair, hand to her mouth. It was as if she had been planning to sneak away to safety and leave her kids behind.

What was she going to do with all these words, all these bits and pieces of herself? They were as much a part of her as an arm or a leg. Yet, they were also her albatross, an anchor to the past she would be carting into her new life, if she could figure out how to transport it all. But how could she take all this on the bus? It’d be impossible. She groaned and rubbed her eyes.
So close to making a clean break.

Decisively, she stood, and with only a cursory glance at the top pages, she gathered up all the loose notebooks and tossed them in an old cardboard box she had stashed under her sink. She set it by the door and gathered up the miscellaneous containers that housed the fruits of her limitless inspiration, stacking them all together.

When she had corralled every scrap she had ever written, she began to shift the lot of it out into the hallway, restacking it in front of the incinerator door. Because of a new rule, the door was always kept locked now, so she had to go to the manager’s office to get the key. Down the three flights she went, anxious and trembling, fearful she might lose her nerve.

“Hi Mrs. Kay. Sorry to bother you, but I’ve got some paper I need to burn,” Priscilla said to the elderly manager, practically yelling to be heard over the din of her television game show.

“Come in, come in,” Mrs. Kay beckoned. “If they’re newspapers, they can be recycled,” she said.

“No, it’s all personal stuff.”

“I see,” Mrs. Kay said as she closed the door behind them. Just thirty seconds more, and they would have seen Tobias Jordan as he pushed through the front door.

Feeling a bit like a thief in broad daylight, Tobias threw furtive glances over his shoulder as he pressed the elevator call button repeatedly. After waiting an inordinate length of time without witnessing any progress, Tobias figured it for defunct and headed up the dimly lit staircase.

Upon his arrival to the third floor, he was greeted by a huge pile of trash someone had carelessly abandoned. He skirted it and slowly made his way down the hallway, looking for apartment 3E. Halfway down he found it.

Tobias stood looking at the door for several seconds before making up his mind to knock. He knocked and waited. No one came. He knocked again, more loudly—still no answer. He waited a moment and tried again.

Well, this had not been part of the scenario he had worked out in his head. Of course, none of this had really been planned, but after coming this far and struggling so hard with his decision, it was rather dismaying to feel thwarted.

Stumped at what to do next, he retraced his steps back to the staircase, pausing in his distracted state to stare at the pile of garbage. It was then he realized the contents of all the boxes and brown bags were spiral-bound notebooks.

Idly curious, he picked up the top one, scanning the words as he flipped through the pages. At first glance, he assumed it was poetry. Not many had titles, but the few he found were amusing:
The River of No Return Wilderness Ball, Happy People and Other Myths, Flying Blind in a World Full of Seers
. He could discern the connection if he really studied the lines, and he was consistently rewarded by sly, clever insights.

After skimming through three notebooks crammed solid with verse, he quickly poked through the other bags and boxes and determined the contents were the same. He was astounded by the sheer volume of words before him.

It must have taken someone years—maybe a lifetime—to compile this monumental collection. But what was it doing just sitting in the hallway? The juxtaposition of the incinerator next to someone’s life’s work made his skin prickle with dread.

Priscilla trudged up the steps, head down, mind on a thousand pressing thoughts, the foremost being her decision to venture out into a brand new life. It had been a long time since she had made any conscious attempt to steer her life, and she felt a great deal of angst over her daring plan.

In reality, it wasn’t all that daring; it wasn’t like she was leaving anyone or anything behind. There was no reason to feel she was severing any vital part of herself. The truth be known, she was merely hacking off the dead wood in hopes of preserving what little life force she still possessed. If this change worked the way she envisioned it, she would someday look back at this barren period in her life and marvel at her narrow escape.

Still, she couldn’t help but feel a bit tenuous about picking up and leaving. She had been living in New York all her adult years, trying to forge a life for herself. She had the niggling concern she might not know how to function outside of its magnetic pull. All she could hope was that by the time the South Carolina coastline rolled by, her heart would be drunk on the enormity of her freedom.

As she neared the third floor, she was met with a sight that was so hard to assimilate, she feared she was hallucinating. Her dogged pace slowed to a halt as she struggled with the concept of Tobias Jordan rifling through her discarded lyrics.

Tobias swung around as he became aware of her presence. He had been so absorbed with the abandoned treasure, it took him a moment to connect Priscilla’s sudden appearance with his reason for being there.

“Oh, hi,” he said vaguely, torn between the two rewarding discoveries. “Do you know who this stuff belongs to?” he asked.

Priscilla, baffled beyond words, cleared the last three steps and came to a stop at a safe distance from the eccentric rock star. “It’s mine. What are you doing in here?” she asked. Of the two mysteries confronting her at that particular moment, she decided it was more imperative to explain his presence than his unfathomable interest in her very private thoughts and observations.

“I don’t know if you remember me or not—” he began feebly.

“Yeah, you’re Tobias Jordan,” Priscilla said matter-of-factly. This was not the answer he had expected. “What—you didn’t think anyone would recognize you under that flimsy disguise?” Tobias squirmed. Was he really that easy to spot?

“You still haven’t answered my question,” Priscilla said rather tersely.

It was unsettling to find herself in such a bizarre situation. She felt as though she had gone down one set of stairs, only to come up an entirely different one, one which apparently led straight to
The Twilight Zone.
If this were a dream, she’d just as soon wake up. Strangely enough, Tobias seemed to be having as much difficulty with their predicament as she was.

“Uh…” Tobias uttered in response to her question. He had neglected to think that part of his plan through, and he now discovered he had no reasonable justification for loitering in her hallway.

“Uh…” he added feebly, setting the notebook carefully back in the bag. Priscilla crossed her arms and narrowed her gaze on him, forcing him to say something. “I wanted to see you again. I paid the other waitress a hundred bucks to tell me which block you lived on.” Tobias shrugged, having nothing more believable than the truth to offer.

Priscilla’s head whipped back as his explanation registered. This admission was harder to comprehend than the fact that he was in her building. If this was actually a dream, it was a doozy.

“You lost me.
Why
did you want to see me?” The most eloquent reply he could muster was another shrug.

“This is too weird,” Priscilla said, her mind spinning as she walked off toward her apartment. She stopped abruptly and turned back to Tobias. She was so rattled, she had forgotten what she had been in the process of doing. She couldn’t just walk away and leave the chore for later, not with him dredging through all her stuff like a homeless man in a dumpster.

She strode past him, took the key to the incinerator door out of her pocket and unlocked it. She carefully opened the furnace door and reached down for the closest bag of notebooks. In spite of her confusion, her heart made its reservations known loud and clear.

“No!” Tobias called out in unison with her own inner voice. “You can’t burn this stuff. It’s wonderful.” He grabbed the bag from her hand, more forcibly than he had intended. Priscilla took an involuntary step backwards, landing dangerously close to the incinerator.