Stella, Get Your Gun

I trotted up to the storefront and cupped my hands to the glass, peering intently into the darkened interior. A bald man wearing a grease-smudged gray uniform was in the room behind the cash register, sitting at the desk and looking intently at a stack of papers sprawled out in front of him. I sighed, relieved that at least he wasn’t Jake Carpenter, and knocked on the glass.

The man froze, looked at me, then away, as if he could erase my presence by ignoring me.

“Oh, come on, please!” I cried.

I saw his shoulders slump. He looked up, squinting with little coffee-bean eyes. “We’re closed,” he called, then turned his attention back to the paperwork in front of him.

“I know,” I said, “but my car’s front tire just blew and…”

He looked up again, frowning, clearly annoyed at the continued intrusion.

“I’m freezing! Come on! Really, it’ll only take a minute. Please, I’ll pay you double, okay?”

“Come back this afternoon and we’ll take a look at it,” he said.

This was not the Glenn Ford I knew. When I’d lived here the people were friendly, always ready to help a woman in distress. What was wrong with this idiot?

“Listen,” I said, pitching my voice as loud as I could without screaming at the fool, “I don’t have anywhere else to go. I’d change the tire myself, but my spare is gone, and…” Words failed me. I felt tears queuing up at the edges of my eyes and knew I was about to completely lose it. “Damn it, I said please, I said I’d pay you double. Hell, if I knew how to plug a tire, I’d offer to fix it myself. Now what more is it going to take? Do I need to flag down a passing motorist and hope they have a spare my size? Do I need to call a tow truck, the police, EMS? What?”

The man’s eyes widened; clearly he thought a maniac was accosting him. He rubbed his oil-stained fingers across his bald skull and gave up.

“All right, all right, keep your shirt on!”

He stood up, walked around the desk and through the leaf in the countertop to unlock the front door. I watched him approach, my cop instincts inspecting him and fitting him into a preliminary category. He was the kind of guy you didn’t turn your back on, short, stocky, muscular build, tattoos and a bad attitude. He was sizing me up, too, in a nasty, see-you-naked way that made me hug my arms closer to my chest.

“Wait in here,” he said before he’d even pulled the door wide enough for me to pass through. He was gone before I could say a word, grabbing tools as he scuttled over to inspect the Camaro’s tire.

Lloyd went crazy, barking like a demon maniac, teeth bared, eyes showing white and pawing at the window in an attempt to protect me from my knight in shining armor.

I opened the door and started across the lot. “Lloyd, stop that!” I yelled. “He won’t hurt you,” I added, praying Lloyd wouldn’t scare the guy off the job.

The mechanic looked back over his shoulder at me and scowled. “I told you wait inside,” he said. “I ain’t scared of no dog!”

That was good, because Lloyd clearly liked the guy about as much as I did, and hadn’t backed off his display of killer instinct one bit.

I ducked back inside the shop. The guy was a fruitcake, probably an ax murderer in his spare time. I looked past the counter into the office. It looked as if a cyclone had blown through, papers mounded on top of the desk, files open and spilling over onto the floor. It was a wonder the place stayed in business.

When he brought the tire into the shop, I walked to the doorway and watched him. His fingers flew across the rubber surface, locating the nail that was responsible for the flat and quickly working to plug it. His shop was as organized and neat as his office was chaotic.

I stepped back into the reception area, not wanting my savior to see me and get any more irritated, and waited for him to finish. I sat in a cold vinyl chair, closed my eyes and rested my head back against the wall. In ten more minutes, I told myself, it would all be better. I’d be sitting in Aunt Lucy and Uncle Benny’s warm, sunny kitchen, eating homemade cinnamon buns and drinking strong black coffee. I’d be home and nothing else mattered after that.

I guess I must’ve drifted off. The next thing I was aware of was the tinkle of the bell over the shop door. I sprang to my feet as the mechanic stepped into the room. “It’s done,” he said. “You can go now.”

“How much do I owe you?” I said, trying to smile, but stopping at the sour look on his face.

“Five bucks,” he said.

I dug into my pockets, pulling out cash and searching for the right bills. “Oh, come on,” I said, “it’s gotta be more than that. You opened up for me.”

“Five is fine,” he said, his voice almost a snarl.

I handed him a ten. “I don’t want any change. I’m sorry I disturbed you. I don’t know what I would’ve done if you hadn’t…”

“See ya,” he grunted, pushing the door open and waiting expectantly.

Some perverse part of me, seeing his rush to get me out of his hair, made me linger, walking slowly toward him. “You usually closed on Thursdays?” I asked. “I mean, in case I ever need more work done, I can remember not to bother you on Thursday.”

“No,” he said. “Death in the family.”

That took me back. Of course. He wasn’t always like this, he’d lost someone close to him. That explained everything. I looked back at the office. What if his wife had just died? Maybe she was in charge of the office, the bookkeeping and everything, and suddenly, here he was trying to find the papers he needed to arrange for her funeral.

“I’m so sorry,” I murmured. “I’ll leave you alone now.”

I stepped out onto the tarmac and heard the lock click behind me. Aunt Lucy would know all about it. Here I’d been thinking the worst when this guy had just lost his wife or maybe one of his kids. I slid behind the wheel and looked over at Lloyd.

“You see what being a cop’ll do to you?” I said. “It jaundices you toward life. It blinds you to the good in human beings. I’m telling you, Lloyd, in my next life, job, whatever, I’m gonna be something optimistic, you know, like the lay version of a nun. Maybe I’ll go into social work.” I remembered the overburdened therapists at the mental-health center in Garden Beach and thought better of the idea. “Okay, maybe I’ll take up exotic dancing. That way, I’ll be improving men’s mental health while actually getting paid for it!”

Lloyd wasn’t listening. He was looking out the window at the darkened shop and growling.

“Lloyd,” I said, “if your instincts are that good, how come you didn’t warn me about Pete, huh?”

Lloyd’s head whipped back in my direction at the mention of Pete’s name and he yipped, a quick, short bark that I interpreted as an apology.

“Okay, you’re right,” I muttered. “You told me so.” We turned off Lancaster Avenue onto Sunset Drive. “Here we go. We’re home,” I said. I coasted slower as we rounded the corner and approached Aunt Lucy and Uncle Benny’s tiny Dutch colonial.

The street was lined on both sides with cars. “Looks like they got company,” I said. “Maybe it’s Aunt Lucy’s altar guild.” But there were too many cars for it to be a simple ladies’ meeting.

A blue sedan pulled away from the curb close to the house, and I pulled in, parked and looked up at the house where I’d spent the last four years of my childhood. There was a white funeral wreath on the door.

My throat tightened. I stared up at the flowers and felt denial take over. It couldn’t be. I was tired. It was just a decoration, nothing special. The cars meant nothing. My skin began to prickle. Aunt Lucy and Uncle Benny, they’d been fine when I’d seen them last Christmas; no one had called to say they were ill. They would’ve called. Someone would have called. What was going on?

I opened the car door and stepped out onto the street, feeling as if time had somehow slowed to a frozen halt. I rounded the car and opened Lloyd’s door mechanically, watching him jump out onto the sidewalk and make a beeline for a nearby bush. It was like watching a movie.

I felt myself cross the yard, felt the cold air stinging my cheeks without registering the fact that it was cold. I was fixated on the white carnations in the wreath, staring at them as I walked closer and closer to the front door.

As I started up the front steps, the door suddenly swung open. My cousin Nina from California stood there, unsmiling, her black-lined eyes rimmed with red. She looked like an updated, shorter version of her mother, Aunt Lucy’s oldest sister, Myrna. She’s dyed her hair, I thought, taking in the peroxide-blond choppy cut and the pink tips that stood out like miniature signal flags all over her head. I felt frozen, removed from the strange movie that was my homecoming.

“Where the hell have you been?” she said, hands on hips, black vinyl miniskirt tight against her stick-thin thighs. “Well, at least you got here. I guess somebody finally reached you. We only called about five thousand times. I thought cops always had their cell phones on. Isn’t it like a law?”

“What happened?” I asked. I could hear voices behind her and caught flashes of people moving around inside the house.

Nina shrugged, stepping out onto the porch and pulling the door almost shut as she moved. “Heart attack, I guess,” she said. “He had his tablets but they didn’t do any good. By the time the ambulance got there, he was gone.”

“Uncle Benny?” I whispered, tears flooding my eyes. “He’s dead?”

Nina stared at me, frowning. “Stella, hello? Yes, Uncle Benny’s dead. What did you think?” She frowned harder. “How come you’re dressed like that?” she asked. “I mean, even I knew it was cold. And what’s wrong with your foot? Why’s it wrapped up like that?” She looked past me, her eyes lighting on Lloyd. “You brought your dog with you? You couldn’t find somebody to watch him?”

The questions came, rapid-fire, one after another, without a pause to hear the answers. I couldn’t have answered her, though; I was too overwhelmed to speak.