All I Did Was Shoot My Man

19

A few minutes later the cab pulled up in front of the Tesla Building. I was still thinking about my messages and how they formed the pattern of my day.

“Pops,” Twill said.

“You get out of here,” I told him. “Go up to the office and tell Mardi to give you two hundred dollars out of petty cash. Use it for the pizza and anything else you might need.”

“What about you?”

“I got places to be.”

I gave the driver a Wall Street address and sat back while he put up a tactical offense against the midday traffic.

As he struggled silently I thought about Aura.

We hadn’t seen much of each other in the last half year. I was pretty sure that she was using a private entrance to the building and taking the freight elevator to avoid running into me.

We loved each other, but I was married and living a life that seemed hell-bent on destruction. Aura could have handled either situation, but dealing with both was just too much for her.

I tried to decipher her message but found that it was beyond my abilities and so I took two more aspirin, sat back, and started counting my breaths until reaching ten, at which point I started the count over again.

“Mister?” the small brown-skinned cabbie said.

I’d been sound asleep in the back of the cab. It was an animal nap — dreamless and broad.

The entire first floor of the block-long office building comprised the Rutgers Assurance security system. First there was a desk where you made your bid for admission.

I started out by asking to speak with Antoinette Lowry. When asked the nature of my business I let it drop that I represented a woman named Zella Grisham. This proposal, along with a state-issued picture ID, caused the visitors’ turnstile to unlock. I passed through and walked down a wide pale green hallway that had no doors or other ornamentation. I suspected hidden cameras backed up by computer software and human wetware that studied the travelers there looking for clues to their motives.

By the time I reached the next room, carpeted in deep red and furnished all in mahogany, the receptionist had prepared a badge with my name and picture on it. She was young, possibly Korean, and smiling.

“Go down this hall, Mr. McGill,” she said, gesturing in case I was deaf or didn’t speak English, “and take the second elevator on your right.”

The orange passageway was also spacious and bulged out in places where there were elevator doors. When I got to my destination I realized that there was no button to push.

All that security and they were still ripped off for fifty-eight million dollars.

I wondered if some member of the security force noted my smile.

There were more hurdles to pass before I got to the modern antechamber with a solitary, rather aged receptionist and a tan couch. Needless to say I passed every barrier: like a flightless bug making his way into the interior of an insect-eating plant.

There were no magazines or other distractions there, in what seemed like my own private waiting room; no clock or monitors, wall calendars or framed photographs of the gray-headed sentinel’s family. She, the hard-eyed receptionist, was white and wrinkled. She wore glasses and had not smiled in years. Behind her desk was a tan door, off center in a bare white wall.

I sat for maybe three minutes before taking out my cell phone.

This action caught my guard’s attention.

I had no new messages.

For a few moments I considered calling Aura and finally decided that this wasn’t the right environment to talk about lost love. But I had the phone in my hand and so I decided to call my daughter — why not?

I began entering numbers.

“No cell phone usage in the building,” the nameless picket said.

I smiled, nodded, and brought the phone to my ear.

“Hi, Dad,” she said after the third ring. She sounded a little out of breath.

“Hey, doll.”

“How are you?”

“I was worried when you didn’t come home last night.”

“I stayed at Gillian’s house. We had like a slumber party, five of us girls.”

“Was it fun?”

“Yeah. Was there anything you needed to talk to me about?”

“I’m sorry about your mother. She’s having a tough time.”

“I know.”

Somebody cleared his throat just then.

I looked up to see a little guy in a light gray suit and a burgundy tie, not silk. He was wisp thin and had a mustache that was once black but had frosted over a bit. The invasion of white hairs was a subtle warning to the thatch on his head.

“Mr. McGill,” he said.

I held up a finger and said, “But you don’t have to worry about her, baby. I’ll make sure that she’s okay.”

“I know you will, Dad.”

“Talk to you later?”

“Okay. Bye.”

I folded the phone and pocketed it, stood up and realized that the little guy was still taller than I.

“No cell phone use in the building,” he said.

Had the receptionist called him? I didn’t hear her. Was there a special button under her desk expressly for cell phone emergencies?

“Sorry,” I said.

“I’ll have to ask you for your phone,” he said, holding out his left hand.

“More than that,” I said. “You’ll have to take it.”

The little white guy had bushy eyebrows that furrowed. There was no gray in them yet.

“You’re here to see Miss Lowry?”

So he hadn’t come for the phone.

“Yes.”

“My name is Alton Plimpton,” the man said. “I’m a general manager for Rutgers.”

“What’s that exactly?”

“All senior receptionists answer to my office,” he said proudly.

I could tell that he expected me to be very impressed.

“And Miss Lowry?” I asked.

“She’s not here and her supervisor is indisposed, so I came over to see if I could help.”

“Miss Lowry doesn’t report to you?”

“No.”

“Does she work for your boss?”

“Um... no.”

“Then you can’t help.”

“But she isn’t here.”

I sat down.

“I can’t think of any place I’d rather wait. What else could you do in a room like this?”

“You can’t wait if she’s not here.”

“If not,” I speculated, “then why let me in in the first place?”

“Mr. McGill—”

“Mr. Plimpton, I’m going to sit on this couch and wait until I speak either to Miss Lowry or somebody she reports to. You can go back into your rats’ maze and tell the king rat that I said so.”

A tremor went through the reception manager’s thin frame. He almost said something and then didn’t. He turned away and went through the tan door, leaving the dour receptionist to glare at me.

I put my hands, palms up, on my knees and stared vacantly at the doorknob, counting my breaths and emptying my mind of all malice and love.