The Other Mr. Bax (3 page)

B
unko
…
Where’d that come from
?
Florida
? Joyce recalled teasing her sister Brenda with the goofy nickname throughout middle school and into high school
.
Bunko
… Inventing silly pet names was a hobby of hers, born from an inexplicable desire to get a rise from her sister. This one had stuck… and then evolved. As they matured, its meaning changed, morphing into a term of endearment.

Dearest Bunko
.

Before clicking the send button, Joyce checked her message for errors. A growl churned in her belly. She glanced at the computer’s clock—
5:22
—sniffed the air, searching for the smell of cream-of-broccoli soup, but found no hint of it. Other than a protein bar, which she and Roland had shared earlier while on their hike, she’d not eaten since breakfast. Again she sniffed the air. The sound of violins drifted up from the living room below, competing with another groan from her stomach.

Half an hour
… The fact that Roland had not yet called her down for lunch puzzled her.

She gave the clock another peek, then pictured her husband downstairs, on the phone, a bowl of soup waiting for her on the table, getting cold.
She shut down the computer, then got up and left the room. A string quartet swelled in fidelity as she descended the staircase, then softened as she passed the stereo speakers on her way into the kitchen. A can of soup sat on the counter by the stove, unopened—piles of chopped vegetables and a partly-sliced red bell pepper awaited assembly upon the food-prep island nearby. And a knife lay on the floor.

“Rollo?”

She picked up the knife and placed it on the counter, then went off looking for her husband. She stuck her head in through the doorway of the bedroom—“Rollo?”—but heard only the music coming from down the hall behind her.

Did he go to the store
?
She glanced over her shoulder toward the living room.
He would’ve said something
.

“Rollo?”

She listened for the sound of movement from his studio above. The music—a quiet passage found its way up the hall. A picture entered her mind: her husband, standing at the foot of the stairs, calling up to her, “I’ll be back in a few minutes!”

Did he
?
And I didn’t hear
?

She stood in the doorway of the bathroom, rubbing her chin, her eyes chasing thoughts.
I didn’t hear the car
,
or the garage door
.
She concentrated on the sounds in the air. The music, she realized, had probably drowned out the sound of him leaving.
She returned to the living room, stepped up to the stereo and turned the volume down.
The store
…
We’re out of mayonnaise
. She went to the front foyer and opened the door to the garage. A shadow passed across the back of her mind, like a wave pushing a premonition before it. Both cars were there.

“Roland?”

She gazed toward his station wagon. An image of her husband crouching behind the front fender popped into her head, and with it, a spike of anger. She brushed the thought away as she realized how unlike him such behavior would be.

She passed from room to room, upstairs and down, checking everywhere—and then back to the kitchen. She leaned out the back door, toward their raw, ambiguous, desert yard. “Roland!” She waited—listened—then let out an annoyed huff. “He left. He friggin’ up and left. Not a damned word. It’s just so… I can’t believe he’d do this.”

Returning again to the living room, she dropped into a large, plump armchair. The string quartet approached its end. Hardly aware of the music as the last notes dissolved into a long silence, she caught herself watching the clock on the VCR add up the minutes. She drew in a breath, then pushed out a sigh. Her eyes scanned the walls around her, skipping from painting to painting, finally settling on a small pen and ink drawing, which hung above the entertainment center—a gift from Roland, his first ever, in fact. The drawing, it seemed, represented a thousand memories—the park by the pier where they’d met, nearly sixteen years earlier, was the starting point.

She was twenty-nine at the time, writing music reviews for a small bi-weekly arts and entertainment paper in Asheville, North Carolina, where she shared an apartment with a man two years younger than herself, Jeffery Dudash. Jeff worked part time at a local bookstore while devoting much of his remaining time to his rock band.

They’d met on a warm, smoky, summer night. She’d gone to a club on Broad Street, looking for material for an upcoming edition of the paper, where she first saw Jeff on stage. His violin playing had grabbed her interest—his fluid improvisations, which were possibly too perfect for improvisations. And there was his ever present smile—cocky and confident. Their relationship quickly evolved from a casual meeting over coffee and bagels to a live-together arrangement. But then, two short years later, it began to show signs of stress and discontentment.

Both had conveyed, on separate occasions, doubts concerning their future as a couple. In hope of finding clarity with regard to her
own
future, Joyce arranged to take a couple weeks from work—get away, think it over, sort it out. Jeff seemed comfortable, possibly even pleased with the prospect of having time alone. So Joyce called her sister, who was living in Tampa at the time, and begged the use of her couch.

She drove down the following Friday, arriving at her sister’s apartment near Mac Dill Air Force Base just before sunset. She was more than familiar with the area. Her and her sister had spent a significant portion of their youth in that neighborhood. Their father was stationed at MacDill Air Force Base from the time she was thirteen until her completion of high school.

With open cartons of Chinese take-out scattered across the coffee table, the two spent the first evening catching up on each other’s lives.

“Bummer that you and Jeff didn’t work out,” Brenda said.

“I never said that.”

Brenda struggled with a stray noodle, clinging stubbornly to her lower lip. “Bummer.”

Joyce rolled her eyes.

“Oh, you know what else is a bummer? I have to work tomorrow.”

“Shit. Do you?”

“Sorry. I’ll see if I can take a weekday off,” Brenda said.

Joyce’s shoulders dropped. “Uh… so, what am I going to do… like tomorrow?”

“The beach?”

“You mean start out with a nice sunburn.”

Brenda made a eureka-face. “The mall!”

“Huh uh.”

“I’m trying to think of things that aren’t so touristy,” Brenda said.

“I’d rather be a tourist.”

“Well, then, Disney World.”

“Remember going to the Dalí Museum when we were kids?”

“Oh, yeah… yeah.”

“Where is that?” Joyce dipped her eggroll in soy sauce and bit into it.

“A few blocks south of the pier. St. Pete.”

The Saint Petersburg Pier
… Joyce again glanced at the drawing Roland had given her. It didn’t seem that long ago, but it was. It had been over sixteen years. She looked at the clock on the shelf below the TV—
6:14
. The house seemed all at once too quiet. She leaned forward—annoyed, concerned, trying to ignore the tension building within her muscles. The clock—its numbers offered no clue as to what had come before, or what was to follow.

Where the hell are you
?
You knew I was hungry
,
and you just up and leave
?
Another walk
?

It didn’t make sense. They’d only just returned from a long hike on the res.
She’d assumed that, like her, Roland would be eager for lunch. She thought she’d made it clear that she was hungry.

Left without saying a thing
.
This is
… “It’s not right,” she whispered. She rose from the chair, stepped into the kitchen, scanned a list of numbers she kept pinned by the phone, and stopped at Carole’s, their nearest neighbor. She lifted the handset, thought about what she would say, her fingers hesitating over the buttons, then finally tapped in the number. It rang once, twice, a third time.  A voice broke in. “You’ve reached How and Carole Brown—”

She returned the phone to its base. “Shit.” 6:29 became 6:30. She picked the phone up again and tapped in her sister’s number.

A moment later—“Hello?”

“Brenda. Hey. Did you get my e-mail?”

“Uh… I haven’t had a chance to check today.”

“Yeah, well, anyway, I wrote you one while Roland was making lunch.” Joyce looked down at the knife on the counter. “I was upstairs, at the computer. When I came down, he wasn’t here… and he hasn’t come back. I don’t know where he is.”

“Uh…”

Joyce sighed. “Maybe it’s nothing.”

“What’s nothing?”

“He just up and left. Didn’t say a thing. His car’s here, but he’s not. Does that make sense? I mean, it’s not like Roland to pull crap like this.”

“Could he have gone somewhere with a friend? Someone came by and picked him up?”

“It’s not like him, Brenda. Hell, he knows I’d beat the holy crap out of him if he took off without letting me know.” She again sighed. “That doesn’t sound too possessive or controlling, does it?”

“Borderline… Maybe he was thinking he’d only be gone a minute, and then had some kind of trouble… a flat or something, you know?”

“You know what bothers me?” The pile of shredded lettuce waiting on the cutting board was beginning to wilt.

“What?”

“The knife on the floor. He dropped a knife on the floor, but then just left it lying there. That bothers me.”

“Maybe he didn’t realize…”

Together, they devised a number of scenarios to account for the knife, and then Roland’s absence—all innocuous, while also unlikely. Innocuous, though, was precisely what Joyce was aiming for. Regardless of her earlier premonition, deep down, she was convinced he would show up at any minute with an explanation absolving him of any wrongdoing.

“Well, whatever the case is, I’ll still beat the crap out of him.”

Her sister laughed. “And he’s aware of that?”

“Am I being ridiculous?”

“No, no, you’ve surpassed that.”

The topic shifted to books, movies, Brenda’s recent trip to Vancouver, and the weather—both Phoenix’s, where Joyce lived, and Santa Clarita’s, where Brenda lived—working toward goodbyes, after which Joyce agreed to call again, should she feel the need.

“Call anyway,” Brenda said. “I’m too curious. And show him no mercy.”

Feeling more settled, Joyce set the phone down—her fears talked away, or pushed to the side, while the hunger she’d been ignoring reasserted itself. Using the vegetables Roland had already prepped, she assembled a rollup, poured a glass of wine, then took a seat at the dining table. A patch of sunlight, from the window at her left, lay across the table. She gazed out toward Mineral Butte, about a half-mile away. Beyond it, the mountains appeared flat, dusty-mauve. The butte evoked memories of summer nights—her and Roland upon its roof, stargazing, and making love and dreams. Any other time, she would’ve appreciated the view. It instead invoked a peculiar feeling: a mix of anger and fear, which she didn’t want to acknowledge. Roland, after all, had only been gone a few hours. But then his leaving unannounced was something he’d rarely done before—only once, that she could remember. He was upset at the time…
very upset.

She took a bite from her rollup—her thoughts drifting from the conversation with her sister, to Roland, then skipping to the day following her arrival in Tampa—all those years ago.

Her sister had left for work by the time she woke that first morning there. Joyce had her day pretty well planned out: the Dalí Museum, lunch at Ted Peter’s Seafood Shack, a walk on the beach, and then back to the apartment to spend the evening with her sister. She put the couch she’d slept on back in order, showered, dressed, helped herself to a bowl of granola, then headed out for the day.

As was typical of Florida, the day was hot, humid, and sunny. Her drive into downtown Saint Petersburg was dotted with memories of her earlier life there: Tampa Gardens, Disney World, high school, a canoe trip with old friends, a Zappa concert. She wondered about the boy who’d taken her to the concert, Alec Walker—their first and only date.
Fifth Street… Alec… talked like he had only minutes left to live. 1957 Chevy
…
the poor kid… Fourth Street… Was that my first-ever rock concert
?
No, it was that really big place on Kennedy. Who was it
?
Chicago
?
Third Street
…

Joyce was about to make a right turn when she noticed a crowd of people mingling about the park near the South Yacht Basin, a block ahead of her car. A banner stretching across the road read, “Mainsail Art Festival.” On impulse, she turned left, found a public garage near the park, and left her car there.