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Chapter 16 ~ Fake Grad School
“My Mom was tickled – no, thrilled – to hear I’m going out with Julie,” Bob said. “I suppose years of patient hints have paid off. I can picture her every night hiding under her blanket with a flashlight, scripting her next step towards her future daughter-in-law and grandchildren. Now I’ll bet she’s got wedding bells in the back of her mind already. It used to bug me, but now I think it’s amusing. Well, sort of.”
Franck was pacing back and forth in the living room. He couldn’t think of anything but his own situation. Zeke. McIver. Papers. North Carolina. Jail. “Or worse”? What did he mean by that? What to try to do before Monday, if anything.
Every now and then he checked that his hat was firmly on, which it always was. Once, as he reached for his hat, he gripped his frizzy hair and for the first time ever, had the urge to pull out some hair, but that would have been too cartoonish, too predictable, to freak out and pull out your hair. He thought of himself as anything but predictable.
“Anyway,” said Bob, “she has sorted you out.”
Franck stopped in his tracks and leaned on the table. “What? Your mother has sorted me out?”
“She’s very organized, Franck. She found the old number for my cousins, as she calls them, in North Carolina. She said Rosa was delighted to help out, feed you, give you a place to stay for a few days while you do your research.”
“What research? What did you tell her?”
“Just that you were doing a big paper on North Carolina history for grad school.”
“School? I’ve been out of school for four years, Bob.”
“Lots of people get back in part-time, doing graduate work and all that. Anyway, she bought the story and you’re good to go. What did you want me to say? ‘Hi Mom, my roommate is on the hook for forgery and fraud and is being blackmailed into getting some guy to sign away his house to a scam artist. Can you help?’”
Franck stopped pacing. He was silent. He sat down.
“Bob, this is real. I’m really in this situation. Regina must have told me about twenty TV shows but this beats them all. How can this guy Zeke, out of the blue, make me…”
“Look, you may as well try. You’re all set to go to Linton. That’s where McIver last was. Go. Ask around. Give it a shot.”
Franck drew a breath and let it out slowly. “I guess I just have to do it. I mean, I could go to the police about this Zeke guy but what am I going to tell them? They already have me pegged as a little off the mark for terrorizing horses and maybe driving on railroad tracks. What happens if they add forgery to the list?”
“I don’t think,” Bob said quietly, “that you can hang anything on Zeke at this point. There’s nothing illegal about threatening to take you to court.”
“Did I tell you he threatened me with jail, or worse? What was he trying to say? Is he going to send some goons out to rough me up, is that it?”
“Is that what he said, ‘jail or worse’?”
“Yeah. Then he hung up on me.”
“I don’t know, man. Sounds pretty sketchy. Maybe he’s bluffing on that one, Franck. Anyway, you do have the weekend to at least try to make good, and a place to go.”
“Okay, I just have to do it. I’m going to get online and get a plane ticket. Look, tell your mom thanks, and thank you. I’m sorry to put you through this. I’m going to do what I can, and get this over with. And then, well, even if I find the guy, how am I going to get him to sign?”
He headed toward his room and stopped. “Hey, Bob, why don’t you go with me? It would be fun. You know those people, too, you’re cousins. You could introduce me. We could work together, figure out how to find this guy. I’ll give you a baggy suit to wear.”
“No way,” said Bob. “I don’t really want to deal with those people or go back to North Carolina. I haven’t talked to or heard from them in more than ten years and I kind of like my Dad’s take on it—let sleeping dogs lie. You’ll be fine, you are great at improvising your next move. I’m no good at that."
Bob started over to his corner office desk in order to sit down and sort something out and look through papers and find something to do. "Besides, what am I thinking? I’m going out with Julie this weekend.”
“Right.” Franck slumped off to research travel plans. He had a constant pit in his stomach.
Chapter 17 ~ Flight
“Are you a terrorist?” asked the security agent, glaring intently into Franck’s eyes.
After having removed his shoes, belt, and jacket, emptied the content of his pockets, been pulled aside to be frisked, have his hat removed and searched, and pulled aside again to be examined, this question slapped Franck directly on the funnybone. He burst out laughing.
“Wow, you blew my cover,” he chortled, “The attack plans are in my briefcase.”
“What briefcase?” snapped the agent intensely.
“I don’t have one,” chuckled Franck, a little dampened by the ferocity of the agent’s voice.
The agent lunged at Franck, planted his big hands on the table between them, his face two inches from Franck’s.
“Listen, joker,” he hissed in a loud whisper, “I can cart you off to the clink right now. Federal offense to joke about terrorism. I can make you do jail time starting tonight.” The three Ts in “time” and “tonight” each arrived with a fleck of spit that landed on Franck’s cheek and nose. He didn’t dare wipe it off.
“I-I’m just visiting friends in North Carolina,” he said quietly.
“Why are you acting so nervous,” said the agent.
“Because you’re scaring me, that’s why.”
“You been in jail before?”
“No.”
“You’re not going to like it. The guards are bad enough, but the other prisoners will make mincemeat out of you. What’s the address you’re going to?”
“I don’t know. Here’s the phone number. I have to call when I get in.” He pulled a slip of paper out of his shirt pocket.
The agent grabbed the paper and stepped back to a computer. He looked something up and made a phone call. After a while he came back.
“Who’s Rosa?” he snapped.
“She’s the person I’m going to see. I’m doing a research paper for graduate school. She’s the cousin of my roommate.”
The agent was searching Franck’s bag. He pulled out some papers.
“What school are you going to? Wait, what are these?”
“Um, they’re documents.”
“I can see that. Why do you need these in North Carolina?”
“Um, I have to give them to the owner of a house back home. I’m trying to help him get his house problems sorted out.”
The agent stepped back and instructed another agent to watch Franck. The first agent disappeared through an open doorway with the papers. Franck waited. He stood silently for a little while. He tried not to seem nervous. He breathed deeply and quietly. He looked around him. Endless streams of people going through security lines. A lanky woman with long frizzy hair had been pulled aside for frisking. Her jeans were practically falling off for lack of a belt, she was barefoot, and with her arms out for the electronic wand to search her for weapons and bombs, she looked distraught and pitiful. She turned her pleading eyes in Franck’s direction. Franck wondered how people can tell they’re being watched even from this distance. The moment she saw Franck her pleading look turned into a sharp glance. She looked away quickly, and no longer seemed pitiful. Maybe she had realized he was in far worse trouble than she, or maybe she found him intriguing. He turned quickly back to his own predicament.
He was tired of hearing threats about crimes and jail. He felt dark, somber, and tired. Tired of waiting.
The agent strode back in, carrying Franck’s papers.
“Collect your things, you can go.”
Franck hid his surprise and did as he was told. He wandered toward the gates in a daze. He was wishing Bob had come along. Would they have frisked and interrogated him if he was traveling with such an ordinary, solid citizen as Bob? Bob was a good guy, but Franck couldn’t remember any particular clothes or colors Bob wore. Nothing out of the ordinary. He didn’t even seem to have any interests. Maybe the musicals. Yes, Bob liked those, knew the songs. But he’d never been in one. Now that would be special. No point running Bob down, thought Franck, as he wandered past a food court. It would still be nice to have him along. It would be great to have company. All these people striding around, and I don’t know a soul, he thought.
A woman in a tight black outfit hurried past him, clicking her heels. Neither of them could know that she was the woman who had answered the phone once when Franck called his health insurance company with a question about his coverage.
A large man rolled his suitcase behind him, looking at nobody right or left, just keeping his eyes far ahead of him, looking for a gate or an exit or a bathroom. This man’s brother owned a restaurant in Boston where Franck and his parents had once eaten dinner. His brother had even come up to their table to talk with them and see how everything was. A long forgotten episode.
One woman who sat reading a book at a gate not ten yards away from Franck lived in a house Franck had often noticed because of its well-kept garden, full of colors and varieties of flowers and plants. He would often marvel that someone could know how to do all that gardening, much less find time to do it. It was only two blocks from Franck and Bob in Port Haven. She was absorbed in her book, and Franck was still wandering, a little dazed, and they took no notice of each other. Maybe some day they’d meet in Port Haven, while she was out weeding, but they’d have no reason to know they had come so close to meeting at the airport.
Directly in front of Franck, a man with short red hair and a black vinyl jacket stood in a challenging stance, gesticulating with his hands. “You can’t do that!” he said loudly. “Just stop and do as I tell you.” Franck stared at him incredulously. Then he noticed the wire hanging from the man’s ear. He was on the phone.
There wasn’t all that much time before boarding but it seemed like forever. People rushed by, hurried and harried, or sat reading in waiting chairs by the side, or stared mesmerized at their laptop screens.
Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink, thought Franck. People, people everywhere but not a soul to speak to.
A woman coming toward him reminded him of Donna, his violinist girlfriend from college. The face seemed familiar, and even more familiar was the casual way her violin was slung over her shoulder. Maybe it was Donna herself, after all these years. Not quite the same eyes and mouth, but she might look a little different by now.
At this point the woman was in front of him and closing in fast. He began a maneuver to avoid a collision course but it occurred to him at that moment that all the while he had been daydreaming about his old girlfriend he’d been staring at her, and she had been returning the gaze.
She was too close to avoid and her green eyes were locked onto his. She smiled. He didn’t quite know whether he smiled back or not.
“Did you, did they, was it hard for you? You know, when they questioned you?” she said in a thin, somewhat shaky voice.
“Well…wait, you were over there being frisked, weren’t you? Did they find anything?” he said.
“I asked first. Did they nail you for anything?”
Franck laughed, and felt relieved for some reason. “No, they scared the shit out of me and then let me go.”
“Must have been a frightening moment for you then,” she said.
“Well the guy took away the only piece of paper that has my only contact for when I get where I’m going. And he left the room for a long time. Looked me up on his computer or something, I don’t know what all he did, but he had me sweating. You didn’t look too happy yourself.”
“No, but I think it might be random or maybe it’s our frizzy hair.”
Franck chuckled. “Yeah, we both have it, don’t we?”
“Did you get your phone number back?”
“Oh yeah, he tossed it at me. I think he was disappointed I wasn’t a terrorist! That was his first question, can you believe it? Are you a terrorist?”
She laughed. “Did you admit it?”
“You know, I’d like to joke about it but the guy gave me the complete creeps. He probably installed a listening device in my carry-on.”
They moved to the side of the stream of people where the flow was slower, and ambled along past the shops.
“I like your hat, it’s cool. Pinstripe, looks ridgy. I had a jacket made of something like that material once.”
“Really? I get weird looks and this waitress where I work always gives me a hard time about it. But she’s not too bad. We went out the other night and she was actually nice about it.”
“Oh she’s your girlfriend?”
“Ha! No! She’s married to her television, I think. That’s all she could talk about.”
“Oh. I don’t get into that.”
“Me neither. My roommate and I don’t even have one.”
“You want to go for a drink?”
“Yeah, that would be fantastic. I’ve been wandering around ever since I escaped my interrogation. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. How about over there?”
They found a small round table at a tequila bar.
“Never been in a tequila place, is that all they have?” she said.
“No, but we have to order them, now don’t we?” Franck smiled.
“Right you are. What’s your name?”
“Franck. What about you?”
“Franck, like French. I like that. Or like Cesar. The composer.”
“You know him? Do you play his sonata?”
“No, never have, but it’s beautiful.”
“Yeah, there’s a lot in a name. What’s yours?”
“Dawn.”
“You must have been born at sunrise.”
She chuckled. “In a way.”
Their drinks were nearly downed and they talked about whether to order another, when Franck suddenly tuned into the airport PA. It had been regularly interrupting their conversation to announce all sorts of flights and delays and pages to late passengers and standbys, and to remind them not to carry somebody else’s bag, and to tell them that the terrorist alert level was still Orange, but he was able to tune it out and focus on Dawn until a suddenly familiar name blared in his ears.
“Paging passengers Robert Wainwright and Susan Carver, last call for Flight 287 to Charlotte, last call, please come to Gate 19 immediately.”
Franck grabbed his things. “I have to go. Dawn, do you mind paying for me if I give you the money?”
“I have to go, too, actually,” she said, pulling her things together. “Let’s just figure out the bill and leave money on the table.”
They walked together toward the gates. Franck quickly wrote out his email address on part of the slip of paper with Rosa’s phone number and tore it off for Dawn. Dawn took it and continued walking quickly with him.
At Gate 19, both turned in.
Dawn turned to Franck. “It’s okay, you don’t have to escort me. I’ll email you. It was great talking to you.”
Franck kept walking to the gate. “Wait, are you on this flight?”
“Yeah, and they just said last call.”
Again came the PA voice, “Paging passengers Susan Carver and Robert Wainwright, last call for Gate 19, Flight 292 to Charlotte, your gate is closing.”
“Dawn, are you Susan?”
She laughed. “Yeah, and you, you must be Robert! Come on, let’s not stand here and miss our flight!”
On board, Franck ditched his assigned seat and took the empty middle seat next to Dawn. She smiled and helped him settle in. They both felt buoyant.
Hey Ed, I'm collecting the chapters to dive into when I get a breath! Thanks for sharing your novel here.