Cat was right on time. He just shrugged when I asked how he got past the receptionist and security. I closed the door to my room. Cat handed me the iPhone. “It’s ringing” he said.
Bob answered with his characteristic “Yup.” I asked him about how his life was going. He told me that his wife Jennifer died eleven years ago, that he was living in the same house he built fifty years ago, that he’s lonely, that he thinks the government is too busy in people’s lives, that heating with wood is the only way to go, that his German Shepherd was killed by a pack of dogs left over from bear hunting season, that the tides are still working like they always work and that winter in Maine is just damn cruel and inhumane.
He ended by saying, “So what’s this about going sailing?”
I took some time to fill him in about my being stuck in the nursing home and that I needed his help to escape. When I told him about the security strap, all he said was, “Damn government.” Bob is a Conservative. Not a nut case one, but one who adheres to the idea that if you can’t make it on your own, you have no business holding out a hand asking for help. He doesn’t protest or go to tea parties or bang the Bible like it’s a gong announcing Armageddon. He just does for himself and expects everybody else to do the same. He willingly accepts Social Security and Medicare, understands the threat of global warming, supports women’s choice, and believes that evolution might just be true. Bob’s world is definitely not flat but it’s not completely round, either.
While we talked, Cat lay on my bed fidgeting. Without the electronic wonder to keep his hands busy, he played with his keys, ran his fingers along the shiny chains, twisted the peaks of his spiked hair, and just acted overall like a six year old in church. I tried not to pay attention.
Bob and I came up with a preliminary plan. He’d drive down from Maine; he saw no problem with cutting off the security strap. “I’ll bring some tools,” is all he said about that. We can escape in his truck. That is the plan. He asked me what kind of sailboat I had. I told him that I’d have to buy one. All we had to do was stop at a few banks for me to get the money. He told me he wasn’t into robbing banks. I told him that I had the money put away. We set the date: Saturday, June 28, just three days away. Directions to Sunset Home would be sent to him, courtesy of Cat. Just before we ended the conversation, Bob asked, “Where are you anyway?”
“Upstate New York,” I told him.
I could see Bob’s frown over the phone. “What’s Upstate New York?” he asked.
“It’s like Down East Maine, I answered, “only up.”
That seemed to satisfy him. Before we hung up, I gave him the address then added, “What’s your ETA?
“I’m leaving in the morning. I’ll call when I’m near,” he said, and then hung up the phone. Cat took his phone back and held it to his heart like a good Catholic clutching a treasured Rosary. We hung out for awhile. Cat fiddled with some game on the phone while we talked. He called it multi-tasking. We agreed to meet again to discuss the escape plan. I had no idea how to involve Cat other than I was rather certain that he’d be needed. But first we had to get him out of the home undiscovered. He suggested we practice for the escape. “I bet that your ankle monitor has a GPS unit in it. Probably tracks wherever it is. I’ll hide in the bathroom while you wander off somewhere to set off the alarm.”
“Good idea,” I complimented his genius. “But why not just do it here. If I stick my leg out of the window, they’ll think I’m jumping.”
“Cool,” he said. “You stick it out the window; I’ll hide in the bathroom. When the goons come, I’ll slip past them.”
“What if you get caught?” I asked.
“I won’t!” he declared. I was impressed with Cat’s moxie.
The window raised only about eight inches, but I managed to stick my leg out far enough to trigger the alarm. The goons came. Cat disappeared. Great rehearsal.
Besides Ashley and now Cat, there were no young people at Sunset. Oh, there were the sing-songy waitresses and other help, who were probably in their thirties or forties, but they acted more like zoo-keepers than anything else. I mean, there were simply no opportunities to develop relationships with young people. Observing a changing world through what the boob-tube offered only excited resentment and confusion among Sunset’s clients. The frame of reference here was sepia-toned memories rather than the simple fact that while the trappings of life change, little else really does. Take Cat, for instance. His chains and hair, baggy pants and loud T-shirt, were my two toned shoes, zoot-suit, and Brylcreamed hair. He seemed to know a lot more that I did when I was his age, but I sure as hell remember how confused I felt in the ninth grade about the blossoming of the girls in my class and why I couldn’t find the courage to ask one out on a date. I wonder if I would have been taking lewd photos if I could have done it without a flashbulb. At Sunset, my world had stopped spinning, Cat got it turning again.
When I worked selling highly specialized machine parts to the defense industry, there were untold ways to make a few extra dollars. Let’s just say it was something like building bridges to nowhere only the bridges might be for some Senator’s precise need for a folding toilet for his mirror-polished black Chevy Suburban, or a personalized bathroom fixture, or whatever the guy wanted to feel bigger and better than anyone else. Fat kickbacks helped. I figured whatever was requested didn’t concern me. It kept our shop in business, which meant employment for our workers and bonuses for investors. I rationalized further that the more money we paid our employees and the more our investors pocketed the more taxes they paid, which gave politicians more money to give out in the form of earmarks. Everybody was happy. The only rub was that I couldn’t really pay taxes on my cash incentives, which I preferred to call them. I did give to charity, though, especially to the foundations that preserved nature. I figured that most earmarks went to screwing the environment in one way or another, so I tried in my own modest way to make up for it. I don’t think a judge would buy it for a second, but that’s what I did and I feel good about it. The results of my accepting these cash incentives were safety deposit boxes in a number of banks where I did most of my sales, which ran a corridor from Syracuse, New York to Annapolis, Maryland. Fortunately, I paid my three-year rental fee just before my kids tossed me in here. Maybe my mind was a bit addled, but I sure as hell remembered that.
I didn’t keep track of exactly how much I had stowed away, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it neared or topped the million-dollar mark.