Leaving the Comfort Cafe (29 page)

“What do you mean, ‘hm’?”

“Nothing,” he said.

Unlike Peter, she understood nothing to actually mean “nothing.”

But this afternoon, the notebook was the final straw. Emily pulled out her notebook, and Peter exploded.

“Put away the book. Please,” he said.

“I just want to write this down.”

“Write down what?”

“Stuff.”

“Stuff? What stuff?”

“Just—just stuff. What does it matter?”

“Because everything is about stuff, Em. Writing about stuff, buying stuff, staining the interior of stuff…” Peter bit his lip, but his words plowed forward, like an arrow pulled across a bow, catapulting into the world with a force Peter did not anticipate, slicing the air with a sharp whistle. “Emily, would you please, please, please, please, please, please, for the love of God please put up that stupid book!”

She glared. With one motion, she threw her pen in her purse and slammed the book. It made a small clicking sound, as if it had a lock similar to the cheesy pre-teen diaries that were decorated with blue unicorns and rainbows.

“Emily, I’m sorry, it’s just that—”

“Let me off here. Now.” She pulled out her iPhone. “I’ll call Sharon to pick me up.”

He pulled into the parking lot of one of the gazillion Starbucks that peppered the Wilmington landscape. She opened the car door with some difficulty—the passenger side door always seemed to stick—but after gritting her teeth and adding a determined shove with her shoulder, she was free from the clutches of Peter’s clunker. She got out, stood up and faced Peter.

“I don’t want to have a life surrounded by things,” he said. “They’re just things.” Peter was trying to convince himself more than Emily.

“Oh, I see. Because I like nice things, I must be shallow.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Because I have friends with ‘Mc Mansions’ you think we’re all Mc Bastards.”

“Then stop acting like you’re embarrassed to be seen with me.”

“Peter, I think you’re embarrassed to be seen with you. It’s not about stuff. It’s about taking pride in who you are.”

Peter scanned her Vera Wang dress, her Gucci handbag, and her diamond earrings.

“I dunno, Em. It kind of looks like stuff to me,” he said.

She slammed the car door. She dialed a phone number as she stomped into Starbucks without looking back. Peter swore and swerved back onto the main road and headed for the freeway. The freeway helped him think. It made him believe that he was actually going somewhere.

He wanted a new life.

When he approached Leland, one of the small bedroom towns surrounding Wilmington, small raindrops from a summer sprinkle started to pepper his windshield. Through the mist, he noticed a bright orange billboard declaring:

You are seven miles from Shangri-La, North Carolina—a taste of paradise with Southern charm.

Shangri-La? He had lived in the New Hanover area for years and never heard of Shangri-La.

Was it always here and only just now decided to use its name to its advantage, advertising suburban paradise promises of cheaper housing, better schools and Mayberry-like charm?

Maybe it was just recently incorporated to lure tourists, or maybe, like most of the world, it had thrived, grown and blossomed right underneath Peter’s nose, drowned out by the clatter of his noisy and cluttered life.

The sprinkle turned into rain.

Peter’s windshield wipers groaned. The blades were ineffective, and the rain, combined with pollen, dirt and grime, left dirty streaks across the driver’s side window—exactly in his line of vision. A few miles later, another orange billboard loudly announced:

Mannie’s New and Used Luxury Cars. No Money Down. No credit checks. No Gimmicks. LUX—UR—EE. First right at the Shangri-La Exit.

The rain became insistent, beating his windshield and bullying the windshield wipers with heavy, syrupy, fist-sized drops that sounded like hail as they hit the hood. Peter’s windshield wiper limped ineffectively side to side, begging, like a fatally wounded animal, to be put out of its misery. Peter looked for a place to pull over until the rain subsided, but it was difficult to determine where the shoulder of the road began in the twirling sheets of rain.

CRACK!

At first, Peter thought it was hail, but then he saw the long, hairline crack meander across his windshield. Something in front of him must have kicked up debris. He pressed the horn, which gave a pathetic squeal instead of an assertive warning.

POP!

It sounded like gunfire. Not hail…but maybe gravel?

SMASH!

It wouldn’t be until one week later, when Peter finally explained the incident to his editor, that he would realize how ridiculous the entire situation sounded: he was driving past Leland and collided with random debris that shattered his windshield. He was then plunged helplessly into the merciless arms of physics, twirled, turned, and then dumped into the lap of Shangri-La. His editor would rub his eyes and shake his head as Peter explained how his car came to an abrupt stop at the bottom of the exit ramp, its back fender pummeled by the green highway information sign declaring Shangri-La with an arrow pointing to the right.

Peter would then describe how he gingerly got out of the car, testing his legs carefully like a newborn calf, while heavy dollops of rain ran down the back of his jacket. His cell phone—that he always kept dutifully charged and in his inside jacket pocket—had mysteriously vanished, and the only road out of the rain and toward help was up the exit ramp to the Shangri-La business district, where he hoped to find a place to dry out, a phone, a garage, and, if he was exceptionally lucky, a good cup of coffee.

Peter’s editor would look at him with skeptical, cat-like eyes and grumble. “Did you get hit in the head? Peter, you’re sounding like one of those local loonies that we make fun of all the time. Nothing you’ve told me makes any sense.”

But the best stories never do, Peter would tell him. The best stories never do.

a novel by

billie hinton

2011

November Hill Press

Moncure, North Carolina

Signs That Might Be Omens is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, in entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2011 by Billie Hinton

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by November Hill Press, Moncure, North Carolina.

www.novemberhillpress.com

Book and cover design by Billie Hinton

Cover image: Eleni Alina

Of the five elements, none is always predominant; of the four seasons, none lasts forever; of the days, some are long and some short, and the moon waxes and wanes.

Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Signs that might be omens say I'm going, going

I'm gone to Carolina in my mind.

James Taylor

the lost things we live by

Stecoah, NC, 2004

The manila envelope sat unopened on the table. Every time Bingham walked by, he considered throwing it in the fire. Across the tabletop, a book was still open to a poem he'd been reading before he'd tackled the mail.

William Stafford: It is time for all the heroes to go home if they have any, time for all of us common ones to locate ourselves by the real things we live by.

Trouble was, he seemed to have lost the real things. He picked up the envelope and flipped it from one palm to the other. Then tore it open.

Inside was the usual piece of paper with a few lines printed in blue ink. A location. California. The contact number and a drop. Candy—a roll of Smarties this time. A thick paper envelope full of cash. Written along the bottom of the page: take your time, go for the safest possible extraction. If anything goes south, get out and notify the locals.

The enclosed photo slid through his fingers and skated across the floor. He'd sworn off this work after the last time.

But the photo. A girl, maybe seventeen. Red hair, curls. That porcelain skin some redheads had. He stacked the paper, the photo, the cash in a neat pile on the table. Laid the Smarties right on top.

Closed the poetry book and moved it back to the shelf, between Burns and McCarthy.

On the back porch, he pulled his boots on and grabbed the smallest from his assortment of hiking packs. A few hours' walk would take the edge off. And if he kept the trail clear now, he wouldn't have to battle the summer jungle later. He had a small machete in his pack for just this purpose. The act of whacking felt good. He lost some of his agitation in the rhythm. Found a measured way to think things through.

The last recovery he'd done was a girl in Georgia. Trailer in the middle of nowhere, he'd watched it day and night to assess comings and goings. Drove up to South Carolina and bought an old van and plates. Smoke bombs and golf balls. Some 12-gauge shotgun shells. Stun ammo.

He'd then gone back to Georgia and slept through the day. Got up at six p.m., dressed in dark clothing, no ID. Assembled the ammo and shotgun in the steel gray van. Eight o'clock in the evening, he drove down an old fire road a quarter mile behind the trailer and cut through the woods. The TV was on loud as he approached the front window. A girl, early teens, sat alone on the sofa. Not the girl he was looking for, but there were several glasses on the coffee table, so he'd thought maybe she was in one of the other rooms. A cinder block step shifted as he kicked, skewing his aim so the heel of his black boot went through the center of the cheap paneled door instead of the edge. The entire door stuck to his foot until he kicked it off. The girl started screaming, an oddly delayed reaction. A big guy came at him from another room, shooting. Aiming high. He had hit the bulky man with the stun ammo, but the man kept coming. He spun around and caught the man hard in the face with the butt of the gun. It didn't phase him.

He was high on something, that much was clear.

The man knocked him down, wild-eyed, and Bingham broke the barrel of the shotgun on his leg. That slowed him. He got the guy by the neck and held on until he went unconscious.

The girl was still screaming, begging Bingham not to hurt her. He flashed the photo of the girl he was looking for. She was in the bedroom. Naked, chained to the bed. Doped up so she couldn't move or speak. Her eyes devoid of anything recognizable as human. It was a look he'd seen before. He still remembered the shock and the horror he'd felt when he'd seen it the first time, years back, before he'd even started doing recovery work.

He got the girl he'd been hired to find out of there. The other girl came, too. Once they reached the nearest town, he called the contact number.

The voice answering was cautious. "What kind of candy do you like?"

He'd answered "fireballs." The candy he'd received in the mail with the photo, that time.

The drop was just over the Florida line. The girl he'd been paid to get was still mute in the back of the van. The other one talked all the way to Florida. Party hags, she said they were. Raped and beaten, traded around. Neither of them had lived in Georgia. It's just where they'd got traded to. She said this like it was nothing. A fact of the life she led.

She quieted down when they got to the drop. An older guy slid out of a burgundy sedan behind the truck stop and walked up to the van. He saw the girl in the front seat and cussed. "Fucking idiot, that's not the right girl."

Bingham had pulled him to the back and opened the door. The old man coughed and motioned to the car. A man and woman climbed out and he took the girl to them. The woman vomited to the side when she saw the girl's condition. She wiped her mouth on her sleeve and then turned and waved in Bingham's direction. A gesture of gratitude. The old man paid in cash, no envelope. Before they drove away, he came to the window with extra cash for the other girl.

"A bonus," he'd said.

Bingham had driven her to the nearest bus station and handed her the money as he said goodbye. She hugged him and said thank you. She had a little backpack that looked like a teddy bear.

When he'd gotten home to the cabin, he'd walked straight through to the porch that hung off the side of his mountain and took the double-edged knife off the ledge under the eave. Cut another notch in the support beam. It was hard to find clear space. He'd been doing this a long time.

He had nearly as many scars on his body as there were notches on the beams. Job before last, he'd been stabbed in the groin.

He had seen what people did to people. Had tasted his own blood and lived with the smell of death. There was no fail-safe, there was no balance, and for most, there was no chance of rescue. He tried to even the odds. It was his job. His vocation.

He picked up the Smarties and looked at the photo again. Then walked out to his porch and slipped that same knife down off its beam. He held onto it for a minute, reminded of the red-haired girl he'd known some twenty years earlier. Claire. She'd visited the cabin one time and sliced her hand open on this knife. He'd stitched up her wound, but later, he'd betrayed her.

The walk hadn't helped. His mind rewound itself to the past. Replayed it scene by scene. The last job. The one before that. All the way back to Claire, with her red curly hair and haunted eyes, who hadn't been a job at all.

The envelope on the table beckoned. Every time he got a new one, he swore it was the last. But this one, the photo on the table, she had red hair. She had curls. This one he could save.

He spent too many nights on the porch, laptop connected by a long grey cord strung through the window and around the baseboard in the living room to the phone jack. There was no high-speed internet on his mountain, just dial-up. It was faster than it used to be, but he spent a fair amount of time waiting for words and images to download to his blue screen.

He was checking email for the first time in a week. The little wheel churned slowly, the names crawled into his inbox at a snail's pace. The laptop kept working while he checked the steak on the grill. Stones he'd stacked by hand, the metal grate set into notches he'd cut himself. Dark beer, a good cut of meat. The mountain. What more could he want?