No Hope for Gomez! (5 page)

10.

Blog entry: Sitting in the stuffy waiting room, I wondered how I’d managed to forget to bring my laptop. It was probably because I hadn’t expected them to be open on a Saturday morning. (Although, being there, I had difficulty remembering exactly why that was). Also, it hadn’t occurred to me they’d actually have a waiting room. You never saw that in movies, which was my only reference point for these kinds of places.

The waiting room was as sober as it was unexciting. Posters depicting crimes and their punishments donned the walls. The plastic-backed chairs were linked together to form a crooked u-shape. The room’s three other occupants sat evenly spaced out and gazed about their persons disinterestedly. None of them looked non-threatening enough to strike up a conversation with. A stack of very old, dog-eared magazines lay discarded on a side table, serving merely as a reminder of much simpler times. Not even worth a cursory glance.

With every passing second I began to doubt my sanity a little more and I feared that if they didn’t call on me soon, I’d run off and forget all about this crazy notion.

Blog entry: Small silver lining: Waiting around without distractions had allowed me to come up with a makeshift love test. A little mental experiment that would tell me more about my feelings for Dr. Hargrove.

Blog note: The test goes as follows: First, I’ll imagine us spending years and years together, Dr. Hargrove and I. Every single holiday, every Christmas, every one of my days off.

This means that each time I have sex, she’ll be there. Every time I have relationship problems, she’ll be the cause. Whenever I try to take a shortcut, she’ll throw the map at my head. And so on.

That’ll be the warm up part of the test. If that doesn’t make me miserable, I’ll move on to the next and final stage. I’ll imagine a future in which Dr. Hargrove is the sad victim of a paralyzing accident. I’ll be obliged to take care of her wheelchair-ridden body for the ensuing 40 odd years. And, if that thought doesn’t scare me as much as the thought of never seeing her again, then it’s on. I’ll know we’re meant to be together. 

My initial feelings don’t count, though, I might over-think things, so I’ll
feel
more about this later.

Blog entry: The guy sitting closest to me, a biker with tattoos running down both arms, was called to the desk, where he was met by an officer. Then there were only three of us left.

Again my insecurity tried to play tag with me; of course I wasn’t the crack detective I thought I was. Of course I had nothing new to tell these people. If they hadn’t followed up on the inconsistency in Joseph Miller’s blog already, it was because it wasn’t of importance. As soon as the officer in charge of the investigation had a few moments to spare, he’d come and tell me they received hundreds of these visits every day, hundreds of idiots playing detective and thinking they’d found a vital clue that’d turn out to be a dud. ‘The only difference between you and them,’ the detective would tell me, ‘is that you’re obviously not twelve years old anymore. Now scram!’

Just because this was a totally new experience for me, something I’d never considered doing before, that didn’t mean I still wasn’t a raging cliché.

Blog entry: Was about to excuse myself to the officer at the desk and flee, when a well-dressed man came from the back and blocked my escape. He asked me if I was Mr. Porter, then introduced himself as Detective Norton. He walked me to his desk.

Blog entry: Detective Norton donned a grave expression and I braced myself for the ‘You’re not twelve years old anymore’ speech.

“I’ll be honest with you, Gomez,” he said. “There’s been quite some pressure on me to put this case to bed.”

I wasn’t sure what kind of reaction he expected, so I said, “I see.”

He nodded. “It looks like an unfortunate accident, and that’s what they want the report to say.”

“Ah.”

He leaned in closer. “But,” he said, lowering his voice, “between you and me, I’m not liking it. There’s something odd about this case. Something that doesn’t
feel
right.” He shot me a knowing look. “So, if you have anything I could use to keep this one open a little longer, I’d be grateful.”

“Really?” That was a surprise, but it didn’t make me feel much better. My insecurity had helped me realize that what I’d found was only a shadow of a hint of a nothing. 

Detective Norton cleared his throat. “Well?”

“There are some irregularities in Joseph’s meatpacking blog.” I said. “That’s it. That’s all I’ve got.” I wasn’t sure how much of that sentence he’d understood, so I added, “A blog is an internet page of sorts. Joseph wrote stories on it about his days as a meatpacker.”

Detective Norton frowned. He shift-pressed his computer out of screen saver mode and opened a site from his browser-history. It was the blog. “You sure?” he said. “I’ve read this drivel over and over and I couldn’t find anything remotely useful.”

“May I?” I reached for the mouse. Detective Norton indicated for me to go ahead. I scrolled to the top of the blog, highlighted the time and date of the latest entry, and began to explain. He cut me off. “That’s almost a full twelve hours after Mr. Miller lost consciousness,” he said. He rubbed his chin. “I can’t believe I didn’t catch that.”

“It took the insane ramblings of a multi-phobic for me to spot it,” I said. “But I’m not entirely sure what it means.”

Norton made a note on a pad next to his keyboard. “I’ll get the tech boys to have a look, make sure there hasn’t been any date tampering, but, from what I can tell…”

“Yes?”

“It appears someone added an entry
after
Joseph passed out. That means we’re probably looking at foul play after all.”

Blog entry: Detective Norton gave me his card and asked me to contact him if I discovered anything else. He even promised to keep me up to date on the investigation as much as he was allowed to.

Returned home and flipped channels on the TV. My mind stayed on the Miller case. Who would update his blog and why? Whoever it was, they knew more about Joseph’s condition than I did, had probably contributed to it. But how?

One thing was clear: No way was Dr. Hargrove devious enough to create a cover-up like this. And no way would she continue to dispense lethal trial drugs to the rest of the unsuspecting participants.

No way.

Blog entry: Thinking about Dr. Hargrove, I decided it was time for my love test. I lay down on the floor and relaxed. Slowed my breathing and ran over the scenarios I’d come up with earlier. I reiterated all the little details and mentally put myself in the different situations, then gauged my emotional reactions. When I was done, I repeated the entire exercise from the beginning, just to be sure.

Blog entry: Passed the love test with flying colors!

11.

Blog entry: Next morning Warren came over to play a game of ludo.

I asked him not to.

I told him at the door that it would probably be a bad idea, what with me not really liking him and everything, mostly hating him in fact, but he smiled, said I was a ‘funny guy’, and pushed past me into my living room.

He’d brought his own game and set it up on my living room table.
“You start,” he said. “I’m not picky, choose any color.”

I was still standing at the door at that point. I waited for him to make eye-contact, then nodded toward the corridor. “Come on,” I said. “Out!”

Warren shook his head. He told me to stop kidding and pick a color. I did. Green. But I left the door open just in case. I wanted to keep the leaving-me-alone threshold as low as possible.
We played for about half an hour before I realized we were actually playing two different games. What I’d thought of as ludo was actually a game called gin rummy, and what Warren was playing seemed to be a mixture of craps and table tennis. Once we started playing by one consistent set of rules, though, the fun was really over.

Warren kept winning by throwing higher numbers, and I kept countering by asking him to leave. I still thought he might catch on that I wasn’t kidding. He didn’t.

I don’t have a knack for board games either, it seems. But, even more annoying than Warren’s uninvited presence, was the fact that he consistently beat me at a game of pure chance. How was he defying the odds like that?

Decided this warranted further investigation. First, I’d have to get rid of Warren.

Blog entry: The games continued throughout the morning. Couldn’t get Warren to stop for a second. At 11:55 a.m. I took my pawns from the board and announced it was probably time for lunch. Warren agreed and said, “Thanks Gomez, that sounds great.”

I didn’t get him anything to eat. Thought he was more likely to leave if he stayed hungry. This, however, didn’t happen. So I pretended to fall asleep. Which didn’t work either. Warren threw the dice for both of us and moved our pieces over the board. From his shrieks of pleasure I gathered I still managed to lose most of the games.

So I pretended to get an important call. A friend had been hit by a car, I had to leave for the hospital right away. Warren donned a concerned expression and told me he’d wait, I might need to talk to a friend when I returned. I mumbled something to the effect that I hated hospitals and that the car hadn’t been that big anyway, and sat back down.

Warren eventually left of his own accord.

This was just after midnight.

Blog entry: Went to bed but couldn’t sleep. There was no drilling, but wandering thoughts kept me awake.

I wasn’t sure what to do about Dr. Hargrove now that my love test proved I really was in love with her.

Clearly she needed to become my girlfriend. I was lost without her. But simply waiting for her to realize we were perfect for each other seemed a bad idea. This was my usual approach toward the opposite gender and so far it hadn’t done me any good. Plus, Dr. Hargrove was different from most women. She had the mind of a scientist. She was likely to ignore her own romantic feelings, especially regarding her test subjects.

I couldn’t just wing it either, show up in her office and hope enough interesting banter occurred to me that she could not help but notice how great I was. I’m not good at banter at the best of times, and I am hard pressed to come up with anything sane when put under pressure.

No, in order to catch an exotic fish like Dr. Hargrove, I’d have to come up with a military grade plan of attack. I’d have to clearly define my every move up front, including secondary targets, alternate routes, and exit strategies. I couldn’t leave anything to chance. 

Blog entry: Lay awake staring at the ceiling. Somewhere a dog barked. I realized I could actually do it. I could plan everything out to perfection. How would she even stand a chance? I may not be the brightest spark in the fire, but battles are often won, not by those who have smarts, but by those who have the resources. And I had almost unlimited resources!

My job wasn’t very demanding, not mentally. My hobbies, home activities, friends and neighbors, they were anything but mentally demanding. I could easily divert all my mental resources toward finding ways of getting Dr. Hargrove to like me. Every minute of every day. That constituted a huge amount of thinking.

And what could she do? She didn’t even know there
was
a battle. She could perhaps divert a small amount of mental resources toward deflecting my advances, but they’d be too subtle for her to even recognize. By the time she realized there was anything to deflect, it would be too late. I would’ve grown on her!

Suddenly I felt optimistic. I finally had a plan. Decided to figure out my first move right away.

Blog entry: Nothing came to mind.

Blog entry: Thinking for another hour. Still nothing.

Blog entry: Thinking for another two hours. Nothing.

Blog entry: Got up to get some water, thought some more, drank the water, did some more thinking, drank more water, hummed a tune to relax, thought some more, had to pee from all the water, thought on the toilet, drank some more water, thought on my way back to bed, closed my eyes, did some more thinking.

Hours later I watched the sun come up. I realized this was going to be more difficult than I expected. I might have overestimated the power of my resources. Not to worry, though, less quality simply called for more quantity. It’d take a little longer, but the outcome would be the same: Dr. Hargrove would be mine!

12.

Blog entry: Arrived at the store an hour early, couldn’t lie in bed a second longer. Sat out on the sidewalk in front of the store browsing the net on my laptop while waiting for Hicks. Assumed he’d get very upset if I opened up without him.

Hicks arrived on time but was still upset. He didn’t expect to find me on the sidewalk. Sat with Hicks until he calmed down, then helped him carry some crap out to the curb. Let him to do some sweeping as my way of apologizing for the change in routine.

It was a clinic day so I had to update my blogs and work out at least a small part of the first step of my plan to conquer Dr. Hargrove. I couldn’t show up at the clinic unprepared.

I actually wanted to tell her something meaningful today. Something she’d think about later, and then she’d remember it was me who told her.

No idea yet what this should be.

Blog entry: Didn’t get much time to worry further; a weird guy entered the store.

Some explanation is needed here. Most guys visiting my store are pretty weird. They’re basically weird by definition. They choose to spend their free time looking at this old crap that I (hopefully) get paid to look at. Instead of going home and watching TV, drinking beer, finding useless stuff on eBay, they decide to browse my crap, saying things like, ‘The detailing on this lid is exquisite,’ or, ‘Visible wear on the handles indicates moderate to active usage.’

It makes no sense to me. Why would grown men behave this way?

But this particular guy was weird beyond ‘heavily into antiques’ weird. This guy’s weirdness was amplified by three factors: First, there was the suit. The guy was actually wearing a three-piece business suit. You don’t get a lot of antiques shoppers in business suits. You get some parkas, you get some hippie-wear, and, on occasion, you get a wraparound quilt, but business suits apparently do not come with the territory.

Second, there were the sandals. Now, as a rule, sandals
do
come with the territory. In fact, so many sandals come with the territory that I often wonder where they come from and how they get to my store. I never see them out and about outside of business hours. I don’t see them on public transport. I don’t see them walking the streets. How do they arrive at my door? Is there some kind of time multiplex thing going on where I’m always working when sandal wearers are allowed out of their cages?

Sandals don’t go well with anything (with the exception of perhaps a beach), and they certainly don’t go with a suit. They occupy a class of their own and I’m hard pressed to understand how they don’t actually force some kind of rift in reality, causing the Universe to either implode or re-balance itself (perhaps by magically adding some afghans and a sports cap).

Third, there was the hat. Now some hats go well with business suits, most hats don’t, but nothing goes quite as badly with a business suit as a sombrero, which was what the guy was wearing. Now, don’t make the mistake of thinking that a sombrero-business suit combo is so wrong, it becomes right again. It doesn’t. It just becomes creepy. Don’t even bother imaging it.

Stranger still, the guy managed to wear his sombrero at a suggestive angle. Something  not many sombrero wearers can pull off, especially when the sombrero in question is plastered with ‘I love pasteurized milk’ stickers.

So, this guy entered my store, browsed my crap in his suit, sandals, and stickered sombrero, and completely broke my concentration.

Blog entry: I followed the guy to the back with my gaze, then wrote him up in this blog entry. Then I tried again to think of a way to charm Dr. Hargrove. I had to come up with something good because our last visit didn’t go too well. There’d been a little banter, but the most I got were some sad little smiles, which disappeared very quickly. In fact, Dr. Hargrove seemed very down that day.

I suddenly realized I had my answer. This would be my way in! I would find out what was making Dr. Hargrove sad, and I would fix it for her.

I started typing excitedly, noting down my promise to myself that whatever it was, however difficult it proved to be, I’d do it. No matter how much time or money or energy it’d cost, I’d fix Dr. Hargrove’s problem and make a crack in that professional wall between us. And, if I played my cards right, I might get her to think it was
her
idea to break down that wall. Which would be even better!

Blog entry: Sombrero guy came to the counter to ask me about the specials.

I closed my laptop and looked around, told him everything in my store was pretty special.

He asked, “Like what?”

“Everything.” I pointed out a turquoise vase by his feet. “Like that, for instance. That’s pretty special.”

“What’s so special about it?”

I shrugged. “The stitching.”

He frowned, examined the vase, then asked about the house recommendations.

Several very personal recommendations sprung to mind but I decided against them. Instead I took a different route and pointed out more random crap around the store. 

“Yes,” he said, taking in each item, “that’s all good stuff, I suppose.” Then, without making eye contact, he asked; “Have you ever seen
Driving Miss Daisy
?”

I have to admit I was temporarily taken aback. I’d heard a lot of crazy stuff in my store, but this was an entirely new level of crazy. Sombrero guy waited for an answer, so I said, “I have. When I was young. And stupid. And very, very bored.”

“Aha!” he said, “but have you seen
Driving Miss Daisy, The Last Stand
?”

I hadn’t.

He laughed slyly, handed me a business card with only an address and a phone number, and told me to come over to watch it, once it was released. He turned on his heel and walked to the door. Just before opening it, he glanced over his shoulder and said, “They’re bound to make that movie sometime.”

He tipped his sombrero at me and disappeared.

Blog entry: Wondered whether attracting weird characters was perhaps some kind of knack, and whether this might turn out to be my only knack in life.

Found myself hoping I was wrong on both counts.