Credible Fear of a Red Sedan
James Marino
Now the sky is dark with rain, and the new telephone from the thrift store rings. Lift the receiver: there is a rustling noise or creak, the muttering surf of voices on adjoining lines, and after your second hello there is something that might have been a sigh. There is a firm, clearly audible click. The phone makes its steady whine, pleading to be dialed.
Rain taps its nails against glass. The branches reach over the porch to scratch the gutters. On the porch are the silhouette of a rocking chair, the outline of a bicycle, a vine full of twinkling lights, and a plastic bin filled with cans and newspapers, no longer visible.
The new phone is ringing, on the far side of the bedroom door. The old phone lies powerless on the coffee table: an oblong paperweight like a dark mirror. The television moves through its news: fires, medical fads, basketball scores, tornadoes in other states, high school girls who have disappeared. The old-fashioned answering machine speaks in the bedroom, the recorded voice. It ceases in the midst of a word. Spinning tape records the telephone’s whine.
The computer rests closed on your vanity. You have fifty-three new friend requests on Facebook. The tablet is in the closet under three sweaters. You have four hundred and seventy-nine new e-mails. You have two hundred and sixty-eight mentions on Twitter. They say bitch whore bitch slut cunt whore. The router lies unplugged in a shoe box. You are offline.
The phone rings. The rain drums. A voice speaks in the bedroom, your own voice, claiming that you have gone. It says everything it’s meant to say. The beep sounds. No other noise than the roof and rain.
Go through the narrow hallway and the bedroom door in the dark. The telephone lies on the nightstand, beside the answering machine’s unblinking eye. The bedside lamp pulls on, with a little chain. Spools of tape whir and turn. There is no sound but the buzz of an open line. No words, no cough. The second hand of the nightstand clock makes its circle and begins anew. There may be a sound like faint breathing on the far end of the connection. You take the receiver from its cradle. Before your second syllable, the dial tone is back. Put the phone down and stare at the blinking light. Press the answering machine’s buttons, so the tape will crawl back to where it began.
The lamp is on. Your reflection is caught, frowning, on the dark surface of the bedroom window. The image is lit from one side, hollowed like a waning moon: one cheekbone, one hand fidgeting with the others’ rings, the contours of a throat. This is what you might see from outside. From the street.
Shut off the light.
Rain mutters against the windows. The news has surrendered television to comedians. Oil in the big pot hisses amiably, each corn kernel popping with a soft, monitory cough. Butter surrenders its shape in the small pot, bubbling and nearly brown. Mix butter and popcorn in a glass bowl and set them on the coffee table, near the smartphone’s obsidian blankness. Sit with the television and a magazine. Do not answer the phone in your bedroom. Do not look at email or twitter or texts. Keep your hands busy without the smartphone.
The windows are dark. The telephone rings, and rings again, and is still. The television comedians say good night, good night. A key turns in the outer door, quickly, the bolt giving way and the door pushing open for rough hands and heavy feet. Someone in the vestibule bumps against a wall. There is shouting. Feet pound the steps to the second-floor apartment, in several pairs. From above the ceiling comes laughter and sullen music. The outside door does not shut. The sounds of rain and wind are closer by. Furniture moves upstairs. A question is shouted, twice, from the top of the staircase without a satisfactory answer. Feet tumble down the steps, and the door closes. The door locks. There is a firm, clearly audible click.
Pick up the popcorn from the floor. It was only an accident. Fixing this is not so hard. Your hands will steady again soon.
Water runs in the bathroom sink. Rain taps the eaves. The bed is a few feet to your left, easy enough to find in the dark. The nightstand is jostled and the silver frame, which has stood empty, is knocked to the floor. It will be found face down in the morning, with a crack wandering across the pane. The rain taps the window glass and walls. The rain persists.
The sheets are cool, and then warmer. There are knocks on the outside door, at brief intervals: rest and demand, demand and rest. In time, a neighbor comes from upstairs and the knocking ends. Two pairs of steps climb the stair to the second floor, where the laughter and heavy feet continue. The telephone does not ring.
In the morning, the red Volkswagen is at the corner. Its wipers move back, then forth, with their scolding noise. Its idle engine drones. The figure behind the wheel wears the outline of a baseball cap, low over what would be the eyes. The Volkswagen is parked along the curb, in a line of cars, so that its license plate is out of view. This Volkswagen is a Jetta, rather than a Rabbit, Golf, or Fox. Many Volkswagens are red; there are several popular makes. This red Volkswagen, a recent Jetta, runs its wipers and engine among empty cars. Step onto the sidewalk with your umbrella. The Volkswagen drives away without its lights. Ride the bus to work, return, visit the supermarket. A red Volkswagen waits idling in a disabled space. It does not turn on its lights. From your distance, it may be a Jetta or Fox. It is not in all likelihood a Golf. It seems to bear Connecticut plates. It drives away.
You come into your home, and the telephone rings.
Beware of routines. Fewer routines make one less vulnerable. "Less vulnerable,” an expression distinct from “safer,” itself distinct from "safe."
Vary the morning ride to work, the times of departure and return. Don’t take the same route to the grocery or use the same market each time. Don’t rely on a favorite shortcut. Don’t take the same walk to the pharmacy or the park. Be more careful at night. And remember: don’t surrender control of your life.
Routines: two minutes stretching the left hamstring, two minutes more for the right. The Achilles tendon; the quadriceps; the spine. Legs spread and waist bent, palms spread flat on the floor, each toe grasped for thirty seconds with the opposite hand. Double-lace the shoes, zip five dollars and a key into the nylon pocket, and let the headphones play the same playlist every time. Run north along the sidewalk toward the river. Hook left onto Mercer Drive with its elm trees, past the wooden gables of other centuries and the house where a famous senator died. Eleven tenths of a mile to the river, past the footbridge and the new lilac. Seven tenths of a mile to the river's hairpin bend, and seven tenths back and one point one miles home. Afterward, fruit and spring water from the corner variety and a walk back toward Mercer to prevent cramps. All of this, twice or three times each week, from necessity, and lately necessity has grown. These weeks demand it five times, or six, and one day, after the phone has rung and rung and said nothing, you run your circle twice. What harm can there be?
Except that it is the same route always, to count off your pace, except that it is impossible to surrender the shading elms and the water for three-point-six miles of exhaust fumes and don’t-walk signs. Except that the course takes just under thirty minutes each day (under twenty-eight, now), so that a hypothetical observer who had studied the runner's schedule could determine when someone passing by on Mercer would return.
The sky grows dark with rain. Come from the corner store drinking, with your handful of orange and coins. The red Volkswagen is there. It waits on the opposite curb, by the turn toward Mercer Drive. Its wipers cross its windshield and return and return again. You could go inside now and close your door. Sacrifice the day’s walk and surrender tomorrow to your cramping quadriceps. Stretch on your carpet, as far as space permits.
No. Walk instead with head high, swing your arms gently, and concentrate on form. Keep your spine straight and shoulders loose, so that as you move you work against gravity and nothing else. Look forward, tasting your cool water and its plastic lip. Mercer Drive is ahead, and the elms.
In the corner of your eye, the Jetta moves, slipping into traffic. You will be thirty yards toward Mercer, at least, before it can turn and reach you. Perhaps fifty. Fifty yards further from your door. The walk is half a mile, and then half a mile back.
Turn. Don’t cross but turn right and hug the block. Will four circuits give a mile, without crossing a street? Will you have to circle eight times, or twelve? The Jetta does not appear until the next corner, which it rounds in the other direction. You see unlit headlamps, dark glasses, a baseball cap.
The Jetta passes three more times on the far side of the block. It passes twice on the next leg, and then you are back in front of your door. It passes, three times. You turn the corner. Keep your eyes ahead, and drink. Turn again onto the far side of the block. The Jetta passes, passes. Is it slowing? No one else is on this street.
Walk the fourth leg without hurrying. The Volkswagen passes. Yes, Connecticut plates. You know the number. Keep to a walk, a cooling stretch for your legs. Do not run toward the final turn. You near your own door again, and the Volkswagen rides parallel with you. Do not reach for your key, not while the car is in sight. When it’s gone, take your key and use it. Pace the corners and circumference of your carpet, wondering how many hundred repetitions would make a mile. Chew the last of your orange, down your water, and swallow. Keep your eyes higher than the floor.
Sunlight comes, on certain days, even in this erratic spring, and downtown grows closer by. There are thick, yellowing paperbacks outside Chuzzlewit’s, in a wooden box that once held wine. Mysteries: three hundred odd pages of suspense with a broken spine. There is a French novel with thirty heavily underlined pages, three penciled words on the flyleaf (Precision. Voyeur. Exam?), and the remainder pristine. These are things to buy with long-folded bills dug from a denim pocket. There are photographs to pick up, digital images rendered into print, and a silver frame that must be replaced because its glass cannot.
The red car cannot be seen. It makes no approach. Strangers pass and almost jostle. They step around you, absorbed in other things. The window of North & Northwest displays an oak picture frame, eight inches tall and six wide. Inside, North & Northwest offers pens, postcards for friends, bluish stationary for letters.
The photographs have journeyed from your smartphone to your hands. Those left over from autumn show his face and yours. Only once does he smile at the camera. More often he is in the background, or along the edge. Should you have seen this, then? The camera finds him in a doorway, talking to no one. He sits in a corner, behind the arm of a couch. He glowers, six paces behind you, in a kitchen, unsure where to put his hands. More often, he stands just outside the picture, which records nothing but an elbow or knee, one polished shoe, a watch face, or five fingers atop your wrist. He faces the camera only once, smiling with an arm around your neck. You are smiling too, both of you in gray sweatshirts with the names of colleges, leaning against the Jetta as the flash reddens your eyes. Your mouth is open, with dark space beyond the teeth.
Do not go back to your apartment and the telephone. Do not leave the crowd or bring this stranger’s image into your home. There is sunlight, still, and a café across the street. Three dollars will buy coffee and a table along the sidewalk, place enough for a paperback mystery, blue letter paper, and a pen. Steaming coffee. A stack of snapshots. Space to sort the photographs into two stacks, greater and less, with and without a man’s image. One stack can be left for the wind or passersby. You will not know what becomes of them.
The pen moves across the blue paper, writing names of other places and absent friends. Some will write to you in the same way. Others will write online to mailboxes you do not open, their messages accumulating unseen. The shadows of buildings stretch across the street. Do not leave while the sun is on your neck and your pen moves in the light. There is no red Volkswagen here, and if your phone rings you do not know. It matters only that you are home, turning your bolt, before the sunlight’s gone.
