Extraordinary Adventures Page 7

  But he knew now that something was wrong. Even though he had never done this before, he knew that everything was happening too fast for him, and that it was over before it had even started. He came before he was fully inside her. He was inside her, he thought, to some degree. But how far? An inch? Half an inch? Less? Some scientifically measurable amount? And then it was over and she was patting him on the back, so sweetly, and saying, “It’s okay, Edsel. It’s okay. Let’s just lie here.”

  The next time he saw Mary Day (two days later, more?) she hugged him and gave him that look—that secret look, like You and I know what happened but nobody else does, or will. Ever. Okay?

  But that was the problem: he didn’t know what had happened, not to this day. Only she did. Where was she now? Probably in New York City or Paris or Hollywood. He would never see her again. He would never be able to ask. He would never know. Surely other men had suffered similarly, but other men had been given a chance for a do-over. Not Bronfman. And he never found the shoes he’d secreted by the tree. They had been stolen. “At least you went barefoot,” his mother said when she picked him up at dusk. “I bet that felt good.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I think it did.”

  DAY

  THREE

  ONE

  When Edsel came downstairs the morning after his mother’s birthday, he found a glass of orange juice on the table in what his mother always called the morning room. It wasn’t really a room, just an alcove off the kitchen with a small round table and a couple of small wicker chairs where the sun shone bright and liquid in spring and summer. Today the light was like a flood; he had to squint and look away while his eyes adjusted. The bird feeder on the other side of the window had been hijacked by squirrels.

  “Morning!” came his mother’s cheerful greeting.

  He sat down in one of the chairs. She delivered a cup of coffee—“Cream and sugar, just the way you like it!”—and ruffled the hair on the top of his head, as she had for as long as he could remember.

  She sat down. She’d taken a shower; her war paint was gone. She picked up a wasabi pea from a bowl on the table and tossed it at the window. The sudden crack against the pane scared the squirrels away, at least for a minute.

  “They drive me insane,” she said. “Totally, completely insane.”

  But she wasn’t insane. She was fine—look at her! Where had last night’s mother gone? Maybe things weren’t as bad as they seemed. Maybe she’d had one of those really minor, almost harmless strokes. He’d heard they were the speed bumps of the brain, nothing to get too concerned about.

  “So, honey,” she said.

  He sipped his orange juice and raised his eyebrows. “Umm,” he said.

  She had something to say. That’s how she introduced a conversation of import.

  “So when you moved into your new apartment, I’m guessing you put me down as an emergency contact.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Who else would I have put?”

  “That’s fine,” she said. “Of course. It’s just—the manager of your complex, a Mr.… I can’t remember his name.”

  “Endicott,” he said. “He called you?”

  “Just a few minutes ago.”

  Bronfman waited. His mother stood up quickly and rescued the bread from the toaster: smoke signals were rising. She placed the toast on a small plate and gave it a swipe of butter.

  “Well, apparently,” she said, gently setting the plate down in front of him, “you were broken into last night.”

  “My apartment?” he said, as if he had several places that might have been broken into—a summer home, a boat, a storage shed.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  She touched his hand.

  “That’s terrible,” he said. He stood with no real goal in mind. People just don’t sit during emergencies. Then he looked at his mother. “I have to go there, now. Right?”

  He had always looked to his mother for affirmation, which is why last night had been particularly hard for him: he knew he wouldn’t be able to do that anymore. But this morning it seemed that she could help him, one last time.

  “You should go, but before you do I have a little story of my own to share. A man broke in here, too, not long ago.”

  “You never told me that,” he said, alarmed. “Why didn’t you tell me that?”

  “I didn’t think you’d want to know. But if you do I’ll tell you. He was gorgeous. I was in my bathrobe, and I met him at the door. I’d heard him scraping at the lock. He came in and I opened my bathrobe. That’s when I realized he was actually the man who had fixed my car, and I always knew he wanted me. He threw me against the wall and we, um, kissed.”

  She winked at him.

  “Oh, Mother,” he said, sighing. “You’re not feeling well.”

  “I’m fine, sweetie,” she said. “Now run like the wind! Mr. Eckelberg hasn’t called the police yet, leaving that decision in your hands. Take your toast.”

  He did take it, and drove to King’s Manor, taking small bites out of the crunchy toast at stoplights. The world was falling apart around him. Bread crumbs gathered on his lap.

  TWO

  He parked in the empty space in front of his apartment. Absolutely no one was there—where was Mr. Endicott?—and his door was open to the air. He was stunned, almost in shock, detached, watching himself walk in. Maybe it wasn’t that bad, he thought. Maybe they’d only taken a couple of things.

  Nope. They’d taken everything: the toaster oven, the change jar, the white plastic alarm clock, the wall-mounted telephone, the antique footrest, the tabletop television set ($129 at Target, with a remote control, built-in DVD player, the works, almost new). They took his knives and his forks and his spoons (he had two of each) and the steak knife, and the knife he used to quarter apples. They even took his apples. The list was practically endless: a half-used roll of toilet paper, an embattled tube of Crest, the German beer, a towel, his favorite pillow, his cowboy hat—yes, his cowboy hat, they took even that. He’d almost forgotten it was there until he saw that it was gone. Tucked in the corner at the back of his bedroom closet, the cowboy hat (too small now for the head of most adult-size humans) was the only souvenir he had kept from his childhood, and maybe the only souvenir he had from his entire life. Though it probably qualified as an antique by now, based on the number of years that had elapsed since its manufacture, it was worthless, just a straw hat with a silver sheriff’s star pinned to the front of it. On the cowboy-hats-for-kids-market, it might fetch a quarter. But they took that, too. The only thing they didn’t take was the jar full of monogrammed ballpoint pens he’d been collecting for the past ten years or so. He had almost a hundred. Many of them had come in the mail—Scott’s Plumbing had sent one, and so had a local Realtor’s office. Others he’d lifted from the display container near the cash register. That’s where he got Klondike’s Tire Service and Camelot Records. Looked as if they were all there. The burglar must not have seen them. It didn’t occur to Bronfman that they’d been seen and left behind.

  Bronfman called the police, of course, immediately, and no more than fifteen minutes later a black-and-white patrol car eased into his treeless complex. Then another car came. Two police cars! Kind of amazing, really, that they would send two police cars for this, for him. Bronfman stood on the cement platform in front of the door to his apartment and watched as one of the policemen lifted himself out of his car, so slowly it looked as though he had just awakened from a nap. This was supposed to be a porch Bronfman was on—a stoop. When he rented the apartment the manager had placed a small metal chair on it, as if this was where a man might while away an hour or so in the evening, drinking a beer, smoking a cigar, watching the traffic out on the two-lane highway rumble by. But it wasn’t a porch. It was no more than a slab of concrete bordered by clumps of clay, tiny anthills, snake-size black holes and grass shoots numbering in the dozens.

  The policeman stood, stretched, and as Bronfman watched him uncurl he realized: he wasn’t a he at a
ll. He was a she. A lady policeman, Bronfman thought, then, correcting himself, A policewoman. He had seen one before, of course, on television, and in real life, too, at a distance, but he was pretty sure he had never seen one up close, and certain he’d never had the opportunity to speak with one, as he was just about to do. He couldn’t help thinking that this was a sign. That maybe he had been broken into for a reason. Because it was nothing short of miraculous that another woman would be presented to him in such close proximity. Slowly she approached and, as she did, gave the complex a quick once-over, her expression a cocktail of boredom and disgust. Closer still, she acknowledged Bronfman as briefly as she possibly could, took a long, deep, and thoroughly disappointed breath and waved the other car away. Bronfman knew what this meant: before getting to the actual scene of the crime, she knew that, even at its worst, it wouldn’t be worth a second cop.

  The policewoman made her way up the curb and removed her sunglasses with a laid-back flourish. She had short, sandy-blond hair, high cheekbones, a strong chin, but with no makeup her face took on a tomboyish flavor. She wasn’t slight by any means—she appeared to be as solid as an ox—but up close there was no mistaking her for a man. How quickly—and against his will, really—an image of her appeared before his eyes in a semi-sheer off-white sleeveless blouse, and a patterned skirt, and red shoes with a little bit of heel—transforming her, just like that, from a tough and humorless enforcer of laws into a woman, the way it’s done in books and plays. Bronfman believed that other people had other selves, even if he didn’t think he himself had one. She walked up the battered sidewalk with the slow, steady gait of a sheriff from the Old West, an old coot who had seen it all, was afraid of nothing, trusted no one, was essentially lonely and unloved but for that one sweetheart long ago. She gazed beyond him, or around him, not directly at him. Bronfman shifted his weight from one foot to the other, uncomfortable. Why wouldn’t she look at him? Probably just absorbing the crime scene. Entrances, exits, telltale clues. Putting it all together in her sharp-as-a-tack professional mind.

  She ambled up, stuck out her hand, and Bronfman took it. He predicted a strong grip, but, even so, she surprised him. She nearly crushed his knuckles. One more pressure point and he’d have been on his knees.

  “Officer Stanton,” she said.

  “Bronfman,” he said. She waited. “Edsel Bronfman.”

  She wrote his name on a little pad.

  She pointed to Bronfman’s apartment. “This is where the incident occurred?”

  “Yes,” Bronfman said. “Last night. I wasn’t here.” I was staying with my mother, he almost said.

  She walked past him and, as she did, he noted some fragrance. He had no idea what it was, but it was nice, and he wondered if she got any pushback for it down at the station. Stanton smells like a flower today. Maybe she’s going to arrest some bees who stole some honey. He kept close to her. Bronfman was an inch or two taller than Officer Stanton, and, who knows, maybe two or three years older. He was of an age where it was impossible to tell how old younger people were. He had yet to accept the idea that someone his junior could possibly be an adult, that such a person might even have children. And now here was another one, and she was a policeman. Wearing a gun and a pair of handcuffs. But no ring on her finger. Bronfman gave himself an imaginary pat on the back for noticing this—a detail that, even a few days ago, he would never have thought to see. He wanted to call Carla D’Angelo and let her know.

  She did her slow walk from room to room as Bronfman followed behind. Bronfman never had people over—never—and now that one was here he realized what a shabby place his was, how provisional, the closest thing to a thatched hut America had to offer. She had something going on in her mouth. The little muscles around the edge of her jaw were rippling. Gum? Tobacco? Impossible to say.

  “Happened last night?” she asked him.

  “Yes,” Bronfman said. “At some point. I’ve been gone since yesterday. I called the police immediately.”

  “Got it.” Officer Stanton peered into the bedroom, and then into the smaller, second bedroom, which was entirely empty. She stood looking at that room for a second. She made a whistling sound. “Wow,” she said. “They really cleaned you out.”

  “Oh, there was never anything in here.”

  “Nothing?”

  He shook his head. “Not even an empty box.”

  “Computer?”

  “I don’t have one,” Bronfman said.

  For the first time since her arrival Officer Stanton stopped, turned, and really looked at him, a man who’d become interesting in a carnival-sideshow sort of way. “You don’t have a computer?”

  Bronfman shook his head.

  “Not even an old one? A laptop?”

  “I use the computer at work,” he said. It was as if he were being cross-examined. He began to sweat. “Email. The Web. The whole Internet. I have it there. I don’t know why I’d need one here.” But now he felt as if he should have a computer, that he was wrong not to, that by not having one he had given her reason to see him in a diminished light.

  Officer Stanton nodded. “Fair enough.” Her jaw muscles quivered. “I think computers are taking away our brains, a little at a time. One day we’ll wake up and they’ll have everything, because we’ve given it to them of our own free will.”

  “That’s scary,” Bronfman said.

  She shrugged. “Now it is,” she said. “But it won’t be. We won’t care. We won’t have the brains to care.”

  It took her a single minute to tour the entire apartment, after which she removed the sweat-stained miniature steno pad from her back pocket. She scribbled something. Bronfman tried to see what it was, but she kept one hand over the pad, as if it were a poker hand. Bronfman didn’t have to read it, though, to know what she was thinking. She was thinking the same thing he was: Why had someone perpetrated this ridiculous crime? Bronfman himself, had he driven past a yard sale full of his own stuff, with a big FREE sign posted in front, would have passed it by. His stuff was cheap, used, unwanted. Bronfman was where stuff went in the weeks and months before it was taken to the dump. Bronfman was a hospice for things.

  “I guess it’s not the crime of the century,” he said.

  She laughed. He has a sense of humor, he wondered if she might be thinking. I like a man with a sense of humor. “The century is young,” she said. “But you’re right.”

  They stood in the narrow hallway, the walls bare except for holes where nails had once been hammered. This is where pictures should go, he often thought. That was a goal of his, pictures.

  “I’m guessing this has never happened to you before?”

  “No,” he said. “Never.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “The first time this happened to me I wanted to—well, let’s just say I’d never been so angry and so … Not sure I can describe it. But then that’s life, right? That’s why I have a job.”

  “Why?”

  “Because stuff happens. Stuff like this. Imagine a world in which I wasn’t necessary.”

  “You?”

  “Police,” she said. “Law enforcement. A much different world from the one we’ve got, right?”

  “Absolutely,” he said.

  “Here,” she said. “Here’s my card.”

  “You have a card?”

  “I do.”

  He took it and looked at it. And there in the middle, in big letters, was this: her name. Serena Stanton.

  “Serena,” he said.

  “Make a list of everything that was taken, especially possessions you have the serial numbers for, or a receipt, and write it all down. Scan it and attach it to an email and send it to my attention.”

  “Scan and attach,” Bronfman said. He did that all the time on the printer at work. He could scan and attach as well as anyone. “By all means.”

  She took another look around, and Bronfman noted what he thought was a softening in her hardened gaze. “Honestly, Mr. Bronfman,” she said. “I don’t kn
ow if you’ll ever see your belongings again. These are very tough cases to follow up on, and there are so many others out there, other more … well, I’ll just say it—other more important cases. We don’t have the resources.”

  “Of course,” Bronfman said, following her out. “I understand completely. Murder, kidnapping, extortion. They take precedence.”

  “I mean we may never find out who did this.”

  “I see.” Bronfman sighed. “And if I do?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “If I find out who did this. Should I call you, or should I take matters into my own hands?”

  Officer Stanton—Serena—took a long look at Bronfman, trying to get a read. She narrowed her eyes. “Do you know who did this, Mr. Bronfman?”

  Bronfman shook his head and stubbed the soft black parking-lot asphalt with the toe of his shoe. “No,” he lied. “But if I found out—”

  “Call,” Serena said. “You have my number.”

  “So it’s okay to call you?”

  “I just said it was.”

  “Okay. Great. Thank you. Thank you so much. Oh. One more thing?” She waited, eyebrows arched. “Your pen,” he said. He had noticed that her pen was inscribed. Birmingham Police Department. Followed by the address, the phone number.

  “Yes?”

  “Do you think I could have it?”

  “My pen?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I collect them. Pens.”

  He smiled, blushed: he knew how silly it sounded. But he really wanted her pen.

  “No,” she said. “You can’t have my pen. I’m sorry.”