Across the street at Ben’s News and Smoke Shop, Ben was in a lousy mood and I had hoped he wouldn’t be. I had a headache myself, probably from the heat, one reason I thought I’d get out of the boiler room for a while and visit Ben on the pretense of buying a Racing Form, though taking the afternoon off and going to the races was not such a bad idea if there was the money and the time. I needed a distraction, any distraction, but Ben had his own world to live in.
“They keep on coming.”
A councilman, right here in river city, was proposing a ban on smoking in the sanctity of your home and automobile.
“What’s next?”
This! A health food shop was “coming soon” up the street strictly for people, according to Ben, who cared everything about themselves and nothing for anybody else. Where’s the no boozing frenzy to accompany the no smoking crusade sweeping the land, and who ever got run over by a smokin’ driver as opposed to a drunken driver? The mobsters (that’s what he called politicians and corporate CEOs) keep making new rules for everyone except themselves. We’ve all got a rap sheet. We’re bar-coded from cradle to grave. There’s a dossier on all of us. Orwell only got the date wrong.
Now it got personal. The racetrack turned down Ben’s request for season’s passes on the grounds that he had once been arrested for bookmaking. “That was 20 years ago,” Ben said. “There hasn’t been a book in this place since that time. They closed me down for a year. Chances are they’ll close me down again, now that they’ve got me in their computers. You can’t hide from their computers. But what’s the difference. The wrecking crews are coming anyway.”
“Here?”
“Haven’t you heard? A new office building’s going up. We’re being torn down.”
“No I hadn’t heard.”
“Well there it is. Everything comes to an end, right?”
* * *
Sonja failed to show up for work and never called in sick, not the first day, second day, third day… I was relieved. I was also troubled. Relieved that she was gone. Troubled that she really wasn’t gone. Not this type. They don’t just disappear. They come back. They always come back. I know this type. People like this shoot up kids in their classrooms.
But perhaps, I thought, she fell off a cliff. Even if she died, I wouldn’t care. I’d care about the waste of a life. But not HER life. I was sick of LOONIES. When I was a kid the son of the people who lived downstairs was a loony, a schizophrenic who, of course, had his good days and his bad days, and always tipped you off when it would be a bad day, as when he’d bring in his own morning newspaper and not bring in ours. That was the signal. That meant whatever medications he was taking to regulate him weren’t working, or he’d stopped taking them, and was liable to beat his mother and father. On such days he’d be waiting for Dad to leave for work, block his path and just glare at him. That left Mom alone upstairs and sometimes, in school, that’s all I thought about, Mom home alone with this loony downstairs, and though I knew all about feeling sorry for the mentally ill, I couldn’t help but despise this individual and whatever chemical, or hand, it was that that had created such a monster. Who NEEDS them? Who asked for them? Dad would call Mom every hour on the hour and warn her not to go down to the basement to do the wash. We lived in terror. We’d hear him bang his head against the walls. We’d hear the wailing of his elderly mother and father. They’d commit him – ambulances were on our street more often than the ice cream truck – only to have him sign himself out, as was allowed by the new, stupid law. I wished he’d go on banging his head. One day he banged and banged and banged, and then it stopped. The ambulance came. When they left with him his mother said he was dead. She said, “Now we’ll have some peace.” I didn’t know if she was being realistic or sarcastic. Either way, I should have felt some remorse. But the only thing I felt was that it was OVER.
* * *
Sonja finally showed up, ho-hum, as if nothing were amiss, marched straight to her desk, studied the new SUPERLATIVE script, chuckled, and started dialing. She was back to being a blonde and this, dishwater tint, only illuminated the severity of her features. Mona looked at me, as did Marie, Denise and the others. I didn’t know what to do, which was exactly what she told me when the rest of them broke for lunch. “You don’t know what to do with me,” she said. “Do you?”
“I thought you had left us for good.”
“Wishful thinking?” she said with a trace of humor.
I asked her how she knew about the paintings, as mentioned in the note she had left on my door.
“You told me,” she said.
So I had. I had actually told Mona, but loud enough for everybody to hear.
She answered the next question before I had a chance to ask.
“Those parole people have been making my life miserable,” she said. “I was in jail for something I didn’t do.
I shrugged.
“Do you believe me?”
I shrugged again.
“I DIDN’T DO IT!” she said.
“Okay.”
Then, in a much softer tone, “You of all people should understand what happened.”
Something was being said here – like what I did in New York?
But she couldn’t know about that unless she were truly psychic, which I didn’t believe. About anybody.
“Things happen,” she said.
“Aha.”
“You know how something can just HAPPEN!”
I spotted the bandage around her left wrist.
“Like that?” I said.
“I had an accident.” Then: “Sorry about the note I left on your door.”
“So am I.”
“You have every right to be furious at me. That isn’t really ME, this side you’re seeing. I’m really not like this. No I’m not. I don’t care what people say. They’re wrong. You have no idea how much love I have to give, if only someone would give me half a chance.” Tears were in order right about here but she didn’t cry. “But it’s not your fault. In fact I feel sorry for you.”
“I think you’ve said enough. There’s no need to get personal. This is only a JOB, Sonja!”
“You’re right, and when I thought about it, how rotten I was to write you that note, is when I had the accident.”
“You slit your wrist.”
“It was an accident. I’ve done it before. Death isn’t the worst thing, you know.”
“It isn’t?”
“There’s something even worse.”
“Like what?”
Now she smiled. She always smiled at the wrong places.
“Oh – things.”
“Like what things?”
“Like finding out the truth. Do you forgive me?”
There really was no choice because once they started pulling the suicide routine on you – real or faked – the game was out of your hands. They OWNED you then. I’d had another one like that, years before, who committed suicide every Monday and Thursday. You knew they were using it, but you could never be sure.
“Please forgive me,” she said. “I’ll be a good girl. I didn’t mean to complicate your life. You can see why I can’t keep a boyfriend. I scare them all away.”
“Bette Davis, right?”
“Please?”
I said nothing.
“I promise never to mention Stephanie again. I hope you both live happily ever after.
“Okay?”
I said okay.
“You won’t regret this,” she said.