Run Away Baby (16 page)

“The mailman likes you.”

“Are you talking to me?”

“Who else would I be talking to?” Sharlene asked, looking around. She’d come back from lunch in time to see Charlie bringing Abby a latte from the coffee shop, along with the day’s mail. It was a sweet, but very dumb, move. Sharlene wasn’t going to let it go. “Does he buy you coffee all the time?”

“No! Never before.”

“Has he asked you out?”

“Of course not. I’m married,” Abby said. She pretended to be really absorbed in sorting through the mail he’d dropped off. “I think he’s just really friendly. I mean, he’s brought
you
coffee before, right?”

“Hell no. I wouldn’t want him to. He’s hot, but he’s got a dark side.”

“Why would you say that?”

“I’ve heard rumors.”

“Rumors?”

“There are things I could tell you. We should go out and get a drink. I’ll fill you in.”

“He seems nice enough to me.”

“That’s because he likes you.”

“I guess now that you mention it, I
have
noticed that he’s a little obsessed with me.”

“I
told
you so.”

“Look at this neat letter,” Abby said. “The envelope is shiny! Do we have anyone working here named Lewis Johnson?”

“How do you not know who works here by now? You’ve been here going on a year.”

“It hasn’t been that long.”

“No, there’s no one here by that name. See? He’s so into you that he can’t even sort the mail right.”

“Oh stop.”

“Did he drink out of it already, or is it all fresh like he got it just for you?”

Abby looked at the paper cup and shrugged. “I think it’s fresh. Honestly, Sharlene. It means nothing. Right? He’s just a big flirt.”

“Well, you’ve got that part right. He and Danielle used to be fuckbuddies, back in the day.”

Everything inside Abby instantly turned to ice. She looked up quickly, trying to keep her composure. Was Sharlene messing with her? It certainly didn’t look like it.

“Danielle from
here?”
she asked. She tried to keep it as emotionless as she could, tried to turn her shock into something that could pass for mere surprise.

Sharlene’s eyes lit up when she saw she’d hit a nerve. She rarely shared this much with Abby, since she considered Abby to be connected to the top of the corporate ladder.

“Now, I don’t want to spread gossip…” Sharlene said.

“You can tell me, Sharlene. You can even have my latte,” Abby added, holding it out to her.

“You sure?”

“Sure I’m sure. In fact, I don’t want it. What if he poisoned it?”

Sharlene took a long, slow sip of the latte and then wrinkled her nose. “So this is a latte? Well la-tee-da. Tastes like dishwater to me. I thought it’d be sweet.”

“Enough about the latte. Tell me! Before Danielle gets back from lunch!”

“Well, if you’re sure you want to hear it.”

“Yes. I’m sure.”

“Okay. She and that mailman used to do the bangbang in the downstairs storage closet about four times a week.”

The
bangbang.
Abby cringed. “Does the bangbang mean sex?”

“Yeah.”

“Danielle and our mailman. Had sex. Are you kidding me?”

“I know, right? Danielle looks all proper and shit, but she’s a ho like all the rest of ‘em. This was a while before you were here. We used to lock up for lunch and be closed for an hour. One day Glenda who doesn’t work here anymore went down to get some paperclips right during the middle of the lunch hour. Danielle and the mailman were down there going at it.”

“The same mailman we have now?”

“Same guy.”

“For sure?”

“For sure! This was maybe two years ago. No, I take it back. It was more like a year and a half ago. Glenda backed right out of there like she wasn’t even there, and I don’t think they ever even knew she’d seen them. Well, the story got back to Niles Henry, he used to work in accounting with us, and he was a real perv. He started going down there and hiding behind the heating ducts to watch. There was some dark little corner where he could stuff his skinny self and beat his meat. Clark Lorbmeer found out about him watching, and Niles ended up quitting over it, it was that or get fired. Then Danielle started dating some college football player and she gave the mailman the ol’ heave ho.”

“So she broke it off? Not the other way around?”

“I think so.”

“Why didn’t one of the partners fire her?”

Sharlene took another sip of the latte. “I guess they’re happy with her. Aside from Clark Lorbmeer, maybe they never even knew it happened. He might have never said anything to the other two.”

“I doubt that,” said Abby.

“Anyway, those bigshots all have bigger fish to fry than worrying about who the receptionist is banging.”

“Are you
positive
this happened? Did they catch it on camera?”

“Of course not. Where do you come up with these things? We don’t have cameras around here.”

“Okay,” said Abby.

“And anyway, once it was over, what would be the point in firing her?”

“Did it go on for a long time?”             

“Maybe a few months. But I can’t say how long it had been going on already when Glenda caught them.”

“Wow. Unreal,” said Abby.

“Are you okay?”

“Sure I’m okay. I’m fine.”

“You seem a little upset.”

“I’m just surprised.”

“A little disappointed?”

“Sharlene! Of course not! As you know, I’m married. Why would I be disappointed by any of this?”

“I’m kidding. Yanking your chain.”

Abby went back to pretending to sort the mail. She wished Sharlene would go away now so she could think. If this was happening a year and a half ago, it wouldn’t have even been that long before she and Charlie had met. She was ill.

“These are all for you,” she said, handing a small stack of mail to the still-lingering Sharlene.

“You wouldn’t want him anyway,” said Sharlene.

“I know that.”

“You’re not going to ask me why I said that?”

“Fine. Why wouldn’t I want him anyway?”

“He’s a choker.”

“What do you mean?”

“Niles Henry said he liked to put his hands on Danielle’s throat when they were having sex.”

“That’s normal, right?”

Sharlene slammed the latte down on the reception desk. Some of it splashed out the tiny drinking hole in the top of the lid. “Are you fucked up? That’s not normal. That’s not normal
at all.”

“Shhh. Keep your voice down. Everyone’s going to be back from lunch soon.” Abby grabbed a tissue and wiped up the spill.

“Are you saying your hubby does that to you?”

“No! Plus, I’m not going to talk about what my ‘hubby’ does. I’m just saying, if it doesn’t seriously hurt you, a little rough stuff is normal. Isn’t it?” Aside from Charlie and Randall, Abby had only had sex with two other guys. Considering fifty percent of her sexual partners had choked her, she thought it was pretty typical behavior.

Sharlene laughed hoarsely, rubbed her eyes, smeared some eyeboogies on her pants. “No. Not at all. Sorry, Honey, but that is effed up.”

“Okay then. I get it,” said Abby.

“Seriously,” Sharlene said, leaning in closer. “That mailman? There are things I could tell you…”

The front door opened and Danielle breezed in. “Sorry I’m a couple minutes late. I tried that new Greek place and it took them
forever
. They’re truly on Greek island time. Don’t bother going there; their cucumber sauce tastes like it’s made with mayonnaise instead of yogurt. Barf! And their falafel is really hard. Is falafel even Greek? I was under the impression it was from someplace else.”

“How’s that football player boyfriend of yours?” Sharlene asked her.

“Great. Why do you ask?”

“Just wondering. He treatin’ you right?” Sharlene gave Abby a not-discreet wink that Danielle couldn’t help but observe. Abby kept sorting mail.

“Yeah. Of course. Why wouldn’t he?”

“No reason.”

“I feel like you’re trying to stir something up,” Danielle said.

“No way. I just wondered how you two lovebirds were doing.”

“Whatever. I have
tons
of work to do Sharlene, if you’ll excuse me. Abby, I can take over with the mail sorting,” Danielle said, laying her manicured hands on the mail bin and pulling it out of Abby’s reach. “If I let you do it, I have to redo it anyway, so you might as well leave it for me.”

“Fine,” Abby said. “I really didn’t want to do it anyway.”

“While I’m thinking of it, Sharlene,” said Danielle, “you need to quit smoking out your office window. It makes our business look trashy, not to mention, our air conditioning bills are atrocious.”

Sharlene slammed the latte down again, but it was now too empty to splatter. “You’re calling
me
trashy?”

“What’s
that
tone supposed to mean? You’re the reason our electrical bills are so high. You’re the reason no one around here has gotten a raise in forever.”

“That window doesn’t even close all the way. This isn’t my fault,” Sharlene said.

“Abby, move please,” Danielle said. “You’re making it really hard to work.”

Abby stepped to the side and noticed a photo of Danielle and her football player boyfriend, tucked off beside some plastic stackable files. In all the times she’d sat at her desk she had never seen it before. She picked it up and scrutinized it for a moment and then set it face down.

“Abby, stop touching my stuff. Seriously. Both of you need to get out of my space before I lose it,” Danielle said.

Abby went to her office and closed the door while Sharlene remained upfront arguing with Danielle. She sat down at her desk, surveying the ticket stubs and playbills trapped beneath the glass, mementos of someone else’s happy life, noticing them all again for the first time in months. Then she put her head down on the cool, empty desktop. She listened to her own breathing.

She didn’t want to picture Charlie and Danielle together, but she couldn’t help it. She imagined Danielle’s narrow face, Charlie’s dark eyes. She couldn’t turn off the images. She told herself that it really shouldn’t matter. If anything, it should make it all that much easier.

She sighed and a tiny cloud of condensation appeared on the glass desk top. She drew a frowny face in it with her fingertip and watched as it disappeared.

It was almost quarter after 1:00 on Tuesday afternoon. Time to go home; if she hung around much longer it would start to seem unusual. And like Charlie had told her, dozens of times now, all she needed to do was be completely normal.

So she grabbed her purse, waved goodbye to Danielle who barely looked up from the mail she was sorting, and went out to the bright, sunny street. As predictable as could be.

“Barabara Walters? Is this supposed to be a joke?”

“Not a joke.” He was one of those people who talked under his breath. Abby could barely hear him.

“You know that’s a news lady. Right?”

“It’s just a name.”

She squinted at the driver’s license. “There’s an extra A. I’m not even Barbara. I’m Bara-Bara.”

The guy in the driver’s seat looked at her blankly. She turned to the guy in the backseat. “Is this all you’ve got?”

“These are good. The best. Top quality. Indistinguishable from real.” He was practically shouting. He seemed like he might be high on something. Abby was afraid he might spring over the seat at her if she did anything sudden.

She scrutinized the passport, driver’s license, and birth certificate in her lap. At least they’d been consistent with the spelling of Barabara. Also, she appreciated that she was 5’9” instead of 5’8” and had returned to being twenty-four years old.

“Do these actually
work?
Like, could I actually board a plane with this thing?” she asked, holding up the passport. “Does it have all the proper… I don’t know what you call it. Is it, scannable or whatever? I think passports have barcodes and stuff now just like credit cards.”

Both guys nodded emphatically. “Good as the real thing,” said the guy in the back seat.

“Really?”

“Best you can buy,” the guy next to her assured her in his weirdo whisper.

“Where do these come from? How do you, like,
create
them? Or are they stolen?”

“Mmmm, can’t say,” said the guy in the driver’s seat. “We just sell them. That’s all.”

“Don’t worry about where they come from,” said the guy in the back.

“Fine,” Abby said, scrutinizing the documents some more. Before meeting them she’d examined her own driver’s license to get an idea of how it should look, but her new identity was from Mississippi, not Florida.

“I don’t know how a Mississippi license is supposed to look,” she said. “You didn’t have Florida?”

“Mississippi’s as good as Florida.”

“I don’t know about that. But fine. Good enough.” She stuffed everything into the small, greasy manila envelope she’d pulled it all out of. The three of them sat there in silence. It was time to pay up.

Now again for that all-important question she’d asked at the start, the question that hopefully had prompted them to put in a little extra effort for her, and that would theoretically make this whole deal go okay: “And you can get me more if I need more?”

They looked at each other, enjoying the prospect of more easy money coming their way. “Absolutely,” they said in unison.

“Here you go. Seventy-five hundred dollars.” She handed it to the guy in the driver’s seat. He passed it to the guy in the back. She waited while he flipped through it.

“It’s all here,” he reported to his friend, who nodded in response. He stuck his sweaty little hand over the seat for her to shake. “Nice doing business with you,” he said. She shook his hand and then turned back to the man next to her, supposing she’d better shake his hand too. He didn’t extend a hand to her, though. Instead, he gave Abby a menacing look. Like, What’s your story anyway. She had on sunglasses and a brown wig from her pile of sex costumes. She didn’t look like much. Forgettable, she hoped. There
is
no story, she was trying to tell him back.

“Nice doing business with you guys, too. I’ll be in touch. See you around.”

She shoved the manila folder into her oversized purse and walked back into the mall – one she didn’t normally go to. Once inside she stood by the gumball machines, waiting. The doors were mirrored – Whisperface and Speedball couldn’t see whether she was watching or had moved on.

Don’t worry about me,
she tried to psychically tell them.
I’m just shopping at Deb.

For several minutes their rusty Subaru stayed unmoving in the parking lot. Finally they pulled away. The front of their car had a little fin on the hood. There was a sticker on the back, the kind that indicated they could park at a certain apartment complex. Abby memorized the details so if she saw them again she’d notice. She watched as they drove down Palmetto Drive, turned right, passed through the green light by a carwash on the corner, and were gone.

When she was sure she was safe, she went back out to her SUV, got in, returned her wig to the plastic bag in her purse, and drove to the real mall. She bought a couple of alibi pairs of shoes, and was back home before the housekeeper was even done with her second load of laundry.

This new housekeeper looked at Abby the same way she always did when Abby came in, giving her a requisite, one-second-long smile. She was no Rosa, that was for sure. In fact, Abby wasn’t even sure what her name was. These days her brain was too full to add any meaningless details she’d soon be dumping back out again.

“Hello. How’s it going today?” Abby asked her.

“Good. Do you need something?” the housekeeper asked, looking up in annoyance from the clothes she was transferring from washer to dryer.

“Take your pick,” Abby told her, placing both shoeboxes in front of her.

“For me?” she asked. Her scowling face softened.

“Yeah. Which would you like?” They were both strappy and impractical.

“These are very nice. Expensive,” she said. She looked worried.

“Please, I want you to have a pair. They’ll fit you. I noticed we wear the same size. Which do you like better?” Abby asked.

“You don’t need to do this. Mr. Randall would not like me to take these.”

“I’m your boss, too, and I insist,” Abby said forcibly. Then she smiled and added, “So, please, choose a pair.”

The housekeeper pointed to the pair with Coach logos all over them.

“Fabulous. You deserve them for all the hard work you do.” Abby placed the box on top of a stack of towels and tapped the lid a couple of times. “They’re going to look great on you.” Before she could argue, Abby took the other box and her purse and disappeared into the bedroom. She closed the door and locked it, and lowered the shades until it was nearly completely dark, in case there were cameras she didn’t know about. Then she returned the wig to its place, slid the manila envelope behind a pile of jeans on one of her closet shelves, and crawled into bed.