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california
** Part One **
It had been going on for days. He'd
sit on the bus a few seats in front of me, thinking he was being
inconspicuous I guess. But I could see his backward looks out of
the corner of my eye. It was driving me crazy, like puppy love does
when you're not the puppy.
I finally found my opportunity at a
Sbarro in the middle of Indiana. I sat down before he could notice
behind a plastic plant at the end of the pasta bar. Through the
plant I could see him at the marinara sauce, looking quickly around
the seats to see where I might have gone. I had the element of
surprise.
"Why you followin' me?" I
said loudly, popping a teeny garlic toast into my mouth.
"What!?" His look of
panic gave way to a crafty insolence. He'd obviously seen Peter
Lorre in The Maltese Falcon. "Because you're writing about me,
that's why."
"Says who?" said I,
unable to conceal my immigrant heritage.
"Do you deny it?"
"Deny this," I said,
still in character. "If I catch you paying attention to my
business again you'll wish writing was my only talent. Now beat it,
and sit somewhere else from now on."
"I'll wish writing were your
only talent," he said.
After I finished I cornered the
little pipsqueak in the restroom and gave him an idea what a sink
can do to a head if you're not careful. I hate to be edited.
His name turned out to be Edmund. I
knew he must be from one of those countries where titles and manners
still matter, because he had an annoying tone to his voice which
said he'd been brought up better than I had. Maybe Boston. I never
could stand those people. Anyway, I asked around and found out who
he was, but not why he was going to California. Why was I going to
California? You got me. Something to do to pass the time, I guess.
When Edmund turned up dead I felt a
little guilty, at first, partially because I didn't miss the little
bastard at all and partially because I was worried I had caused it
with this paragraph. His seat partner, though, a tall stewardess
from Scandinavia somewhere who wanted to see the ground for a
change, said he'd been dead for a few hours, and I wrote this just
now. She said she thought he'd been asleep, or pretending to be,
because he real casually reached over and put his hand on her knee
and then left it there for about three hours, the little pervert.
The thing was, when she finally had to get up to go to the bathroom
she realized his watch was caught in her stocking, and when she
managed to get it unstuck he just kind of flopped over into the
aisle like the stiff that he was. She probably thought the jerk was
going to make his move, and instead he left the planet. What some
women go for, I don't know.
When the coroner finished looking
over the body so we could get on our way we all heard over the
intercom that "unfortunately the late lamented passenger had
died a natural death while napping and had no doubt gone on to his
just reward" or some such crap. I was not looking forward to
putting up with a lot of fake mourning for another 2000 miles.
You know how it goes in these
stories, some of the other people started saying how it didn't make
sense for somebody to just go like that with no provocation. Maybe
they saw the faucet marks on his head or I don't know what, but it
seems like they decided I did something to bag the guy and make it
look like a regular old death by heart attack or gallbladder or
something. I figured I had to nip that in the bud right off,
especially since I had this whole thing to finish and couldn't be
distracted by some kind of vigilante escapade, so I decided to go
find out what I could. If somebody did off the guy, which I wouldn't
blame them for for a minute, at least I could turn them in so the
pressure would be off me to explain what happened.
First I thought I'd go for the
stewardess. If anybody had seen something, she might have. The only
thing was, these foreign girls, they talk the universal language
just fine, but when it comes to a real conversation it's not so
easy. On the other hand, she let this guy feel her up for three
hours, so one way or the other I thought it might turn out to be a
profitable experience. I went up and sat in the dead guy's seat.
"How you doin'?" was my
opening. I didn't get raised in the Bronx for nothing.
"It's so sad, about the dead
guy, right?" she said, flashing her killer, um, smile.
"Yeah, well, everybody's
talking like I did something to him, which I didn't, so it would be
nice to clear that up, ya know?"
"Oh, what did you do?"
she said, not getting it.
I decided on a different angle.
"Did he know anybody on the bus besides you?" I asked.
"Well, he didn't 'know'
me," she said, laughing. Was this girl some kind of Norwegian
biblical scholar? "We just, you know, sat here and talked a
little and then he put on my knee his hand and died! There was no
time for any other thing."
"OK, so whadja talk
about?" I asked.
"Well, let's see, he said that
he was born in Belgium but educated in Great Britain, you know,
because there are the very good schools there, although in my
country also the schools are really perfect, you would be surprised
at how well educated the students become when they go there, and
then he told me that he was going to kill somebody!"
I looked at her then. Was she
kidding? There was nothing in her face, and I don't think she could
speak the language that well anyway. I decided she must just be
telling the truth. For all the good that did me. It was going to be
a long trip.
Part One
** Part Two ** Part
Three
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