The Coach House (39 page)

“Next!” the woman growled.

“Go on!”

“Oh, all right.” Marie sat down in front of the woman.

“My name is Ojha. O-J-H-A.” She gave Marie a hard once over. “You make me nervous.”

Marie started to speak, but Ojha interrupted her. “Don’t talk. You need to be careful.” Her eyes shifted from left to right, looking past Marie, avoiding her eyes. “He’s in trouble, and so are you.” She frowned. “Let me see your hand.” Marie held out her right hand. “The other one.” Marie held out her left hand. “Where’s your wedding ring?” Before she could answer, the fortune teller said, “Stop! I can’t continue. Go away! I don’t want you around me. Keep your three dollars. Just go away!” The craggy woman clutched a cross to her heart and chanted.

Paw of cat

Lock of hair

Power of magic

Into the light

Surrender the wand

And fire ignite

Release me!

Marie backed away, grabbed Karen’s arm and walked fast towards the parking lot.

Karen looked at Marie with wide eyes. “I heard everything. What was that chant all about? It scared the bejesus out of me.”

“I don’t know what it meant, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t, ‘It’s been nice talking with you and enjoy the rest of your day.’”

“What did you think about what she said to you? About you needing to be careful.”

“Well, that wasn’t something I didn’t already know, but to hear it come from her was pretty frightening. Makes you wonder if they really do have some insight the rest of us don’t have.”

“I’ll say.”

“What did she say to
you?”
she asked Karen.

“First she asked me for an earring, and she held it the whole time she was talking to me.”

“Did she give it back?”

“Yeah.”

“What was your fortune?”

“That I will meet someone named Edward and fall madly in love with him. But I need to be careful because he’s not the person I think he is.”

“Hmm. She got part of it right.”

“I know. Creepy, but not as creepy as what she said to you.”

“Do you believe in them?”

“Fortune tellers?”

“Mm-hm.”

“They talk about them all through the Bible.”

“Really? What’s said about them?”

“They were pretty much frowned upon.”

“Maybe I’ll follow that caution.”

Marie couldn’t get the fortune teller’s words out of her head, but even more disturbing was the woman’s facial expression when she told Marie she didn’t want to be around her, like she had just come face-to-face with the devil himself.

By their last day in San Francisco, Marie had calmed down from the fortune teller’s admonition. She and Karen ended their trip with one of the local sightseeing tours. The tour bus, which was designed to look like a trolley car, had indoor and outdoor seats. The weather was ideal, and thinking they would see the sights better, they sat outside.

“Why is everyone sitting inside on such a gorgeous day?” Karen asked when they left the depot.

“Don’t know.”

The tour guide meandered his way through the streets of San Francisco, identifying points of interest along the way. “Okay, ladies and gentlemen. We’re about to cross over the San Francisco bridge,” the tour guide said over the loud-speaker. “To the two brave girls who are sitting outside in the back of the bus, hold on to your hats!”

Marie and Karen exchanged worried looks. Then the tour guide stomped on the gas and sped across the bridge. It was all Marie could do to hold on to her purse with one hand and the side of the bus with the other while they flew over the bridge at breakneck speed. She looked over at Karen who was also hanging on for dear life. But Karen had an additional problem.

Karen had bought a wig for the trip so she wouldn’t have to be bothered with her high-maintenance hair. She held on to it with both hands, her left arm wrapped around a support pole. Her purse thrashed about on her other arm, batting her in the head every so often.

Marie tried to talk to her friend, but the wind was so forceful, no words came out. And on top of it, she couldn’t stop laughing at the spectacle Karen was making of herself, the kind of uncontrollable laughing that makes your eyes water and stomach hurt. Too bad Karen wasn’t laughing.

When the tour bus finally crossed over the bridge, the driver slowed down and pulled into a rest stop. Marie and Karen didn’t move. They just sat there looking at each other. Marie’s hair, which she had doused with hairspray before leaving the house, remained in a slightly upward position, as if the wind was still blowing it backward. Karen’s wig was another story. Between the force of the wind and the grip she had on it, it had taken a forty-five-degree turn clockwise.

“Shall we see if there are a couple of open seats inside for the trip back?” Marie asked in a forced calm voice, trying hard not to laugh at Karen’s disheveled hairpiece.

“Good idea.”

Exhausted from four days of nonstop sightseeing, shopping, and eating, the two women slept during most of the flight back to Kansas City. They had just disembarked the plane when Karen told Marie she needed to stop in the restroom. Marie waited patiently for her friend to return.

What’s taking her so long?

“Everything okay?”

“Sure. Why?” Karen asked.

Marie had a funny feeling about Karen’s long bathroom visit.
Had she been stalling for some reason?
She tried to shake it off. The days of thinking Karen wasn’t the person she purported to be were long gone. “Nothing really. Let’s go.”

They were within a hundred feet of the baggage claim area when Karen said she had to go to the restroom again. “Must have been something I ate on the plane.” Ten minutes later, she emerged and, without looking at Marie, said, “Sorry. Think I’m okay now.”

As they approached carousal number four, Marie stopped abruptly and grabbed Karen’s arm. She pulled her back, an old fear climbing up into her throat. There by the carousal was the familiar figure of Richard. Marie audibly gasped and felt a little faint. She grabbed Karen’s arm, both to steady herself and to stop Karen from proceeding.

“Stay back,” Marie whispered, leading Karen backward a few feet and around the corner.

“Why?”

“Because my husband is standing over there.” Her stomach immediately knotted. It had been nine months since she had run into him at the Atchison police station.

“Which one is he?” Karen asked, looking directly at Richard.

“The one in the black trench coat and grey hat.”

“Sure is handsome.” Marie shot her a look. “What do you think he’s doing here?”

“I don’t know,” Marie whispered. She peeked around the corner. “He’s just standing there, looking at the bags.”

“So what do we do now?”

“I don’t know. Let me think.” Marie had often thought about confronting Richard the past several months. Many scenarios had run through her mind, but this wasn’t one of them. She felt her throat tighten. Even if she were able to muster the courage to do it here, what would Karen do?

No, confronting him is something I need to do alone.

“Let’s go get a cup of coffee or something and then come back. Maybe he’ll be gone by then.” She hoped she wouldn’t later regret having made that decision.

They returned to the baggage claim area an hour later. There was no sign of Richard.

“Why don’t you go fetch the suitcases just in case he’s still around somewhere? He doesn’t know who
you
are,” Marie suggested, knowing full well he did. She looked for a telltale sign on Karen’s face but didn’t see one.

Marie watched Karen walk toward the carousal, which had now stopped moving. There were no suitcases in sight. Karen turned around to look at Marie, shrugged her shoulders and then signaled to her that she was going to the lost baggage counter.

“Where’s mine?” Marie asked when she returned.

“They said mine was the only one left on the carousal.”

“I bet that weasel took my suitcase! That lowdown dirty son of a …”

“Calm down, Marie. Maybe your suitcase
is
actually lost. What would he want with it, anyway?” Marie shook her head. “They told me to tell you to come to the desk and fill out a lost baggage claim form.”

Marie’s stomach did flip-flops as she scanned the area for Richard. “I’ll fill out the stupid form, but I know he took it. Somehow he found out I was on this flight, and I’ll bet he just wanted to scare me, and when I didn’t show up to pick up my bag, he decided the next best thing was to take it. Why else would he be standing in the baggage claim area right next to the carousal for this particular incoming San Francisco flight?” Karen gave her a doubtful look. “Don’t look at me like that. I know how he thinks, Karen. That’s something he would do.”

“Or maybe it’s just a coincidence. Maybe he was on the flight.”

“No, I would have spotted him.”

“How would he know you were on this flight? Doesn’t make sense.”

“Karen, lots of things didn’t make sense with that man. This is just one more.”

“C’mon. Let’s go fill out that form.”

“At least we had a good time while it lasted,” Marie said afterward. She hesitated a few seconds. “Especially the trolley bus ride. What a riot, you have to admit,” she teased. “I’m sorry I couldn’t stop laughing at you, but you should’ve seen yourself.”

“Wasn’t that funny,” Karen quipped. “And I’m glad you got such a kick out of it at my expense!”

“Don’t be such a poop, Karen. C’mon, you thought it was funny, too.”

“Careful. I’ll call Ojha, and she’ll put a spell on you.” She shot Marie a quick grin to let her know there were no hard feelings.

Marie couldn’t figure Richard out. She was fairly certain his only objective was to get her back, but his behaviors weren’t always consistent with that goal. She thought about each incident and tried to connect the dots, but realizing she didn’t always understand her own behavior, she soon stopped trying to figure out his.

After the San Francisco incident with Richard, Marie and Karen stuck closer to home, and when they did go to dinner together, they requested a back table where Marie took the chair facing away from the rest of the guests. In the movie theater, Marie sat in the back row next to the wall. And when they were out in public, Marie went back to wearing a floppy brimmed hat. It was a step backward that Marie regretted having to take.

* * *

By the middle of 1949, the economy experienced its first material post-war boom. The automobile, housing, and electronic industries were gradually growing, college attendance was at an all-time high, and the unemployment rate was dropping. It was the beginning of an era of restructuring.

In an effort to keep her mind off Richard, Marie tried to focus on other things. She became more interested in what was happening with civil rights, making it a point to read related articles all the way through instead of just the first few paragraphs. She occasionally tuned into Listen Chicago, a radio station that focused on Negro social issues. She had had no idea just how inferior the Negroes felt, thanks to white people who fought to keep them out of their neighborhoods and schools, who portrayed them in film as lazy and stupid, and who called them derogatory names to their faces.

She learned that there were white newspapers and Negro newspapers. The white newspapers reported only the negative when it came to Negroes. If you wanted to read about anything positive they did, you had to buy a Negro newspaper.

Truman seemed to be the first president interested in doing something about the atrocities committed against Negroes. He tried to make lynching a federal crime, although it never made it to the Senate for a vote. However, he was successful by executive order ending segregation in the armed forces.

Marie learned that Atlanta may have been one of the southern cities most affected by civil unrest, but the city also seemed to be on the cutting edge of doing something about it. It was Atlanta that was the first city to employ Negroes on their police forces and recruit them to register to vote. And Georgia was one of the first states to abolish poll taxes, a tax aimed at Negroes that barred people who couldn’t afford the tax from voting.

Marie focused on building her sideline design work and before long was turning away enough of it to consider doing it full-time. The phone company had provided her with a good income for a year and a level of safety she knew she wouldn’t have had being out in the public on her own. After much self-deliberation and late-night discussions with Karen, she decided to resign and concentrate on growing her interior design business full-time.

She contacted store owners in the smaller neighboring towns, avoiding the larger towns like Kansas City and Topeka, to promote her business. She targeted areas where there were opportunities close together so she wouldn’t have to travel that far in between clients, something she had learned from Richard.

Karen was almost as excited about Marie’s full-time pursuit with her business as Marie was herself and wanted to be part of it. She offered to help Marie conduct background checks of sorts on potential new clients. Marie accepted her offer—the last thing she wanted were clients with ties to Richard, the Chicago Outfit or Chicago cops.