Майкл Корита - If She Wakes

“I’ll check it, sure,” Savage Sam said, now seeming positively enthusiastic about the prospect.

“Just give me a call back if you find anything.”

Five minutes, she thought when she hung up. That was how long it would take Savage Sam to call back with news of the discovery of a cell phone. He probably already had it in his desk drawer, waiting on a buyer from Craigslist or eBay.

She was wrong — it took nine minutes.

“It turns out there was one in there,” Savage Sam informed her with a level of shock more appropriate for the discovery of a live iguana in one’s toilet. “Jammed down by the gas pedal and wedged just between it and the floor mat. Crazy — I never would’ve seen it unless I’d been looking for it.”

Abby grinned. “I bet. Well, I’m sure glad you checked again for me.”

“Yeah, happy to help.”

“You’re positive there was just one?” Abby said.

“Positive. What do you want me to do with it?”

“I can pick it up today, or I can have the police do it?”

“Why don’t you grab it,” Sam said. “I don’t need to get in the middle of things.”

Abby wondered just how much swag this guy sold. “I can be there just before five, if that works for you?”

“That works.”

Abby paid the tab. Three beers — when had the third one snuck in there? Oh, well, she was still legal. One for the spine, one for the shooting hand, and one for the memories she’d rather not let into her head while she was behind the wheel. Clarity could be a bitch sometimes.

She won’t quit,” Shannon Beckley insists.

Her face is hovering just inches from Tara’s, but she’s squinting like someone peering through a microscope, searching for something. Her voice carries conviction, but her eyes lack it. Her eyes think the search might be hopeless.

“Trust me,” Shannon says.

I always trust you, Tara answers, but no sound comes out. Why isn’t there a sound? Strange. She starts to speak again but Shannon interrupts. Not unusual with Shannon.

“Trust me,” Shannon repeats, “this girl... will... not... quit.” Shannon’s green eyes are searing; her auburn hair is falling across her face, and her expression is as severe as any boot-camp drill sergeant’s. Tara can smell Shannon’s Aveda moisturizer, with its hint of juniper, and feel her breath warm on her cheek. She’s that close, and yet Shannon’s eyes suggest that she feels far away, unable to see whatever she’s looking at. That’s confusing, because she’s looking at Tara.

Good for her if she will not quit, Tara tells her sister, and again there is no sound, but that concern is replaced by confusion. Hang on — who will not quit? And what is it that she’s not going to quit?

Shannon is always forceful, but her face and words carry heightened intensity as she makes these stark but meaningless assertions about the girl who will not quit.

Not her eyes, though, Tara thinks. Her eyes are not nearly so sure about things.

Shannon leans away then, and the light that floods into Tara’s face is harsh and white. At first she can’t see anything because of that brightness, but then it dulls, as if someone has dialed back a dimmer switch, and she sees her mother. Her mother is crying. Rick is rubbing her shoulders. Good old Rick. Always the man with a hand for the shoulder and a comforting word. Usually the words don’t mean much, silly platitudes, bits of recycled wisdom. But Tara’s mother needs a steady diet of encouragement. The supportive touches and comforting words do the job she used to let the pills do.

But what is today’s crisis? Tara watches her mother cry and watches Rick rub her back with a slow, circular motion that feels nearly hypnotic, and she tries to determine what the problem is, why everyone is so scared, so sad.

Oh, yeah — someone won’t quit, that’s the problem.

Tara’s mouth is dry and her head aches and she is very tired. Too tired to deal with her mother’s anxiety yet again. Let Rick deal with it. And Shannon. Shannon is here, ready to take charge, as always. Why is Shannon here? She’s in her last year of law school at Stanford, and Shannon doesn’t miss classes. Ever. But here she is...

Where is here? Where am I?

She knows this should matter, and yet it doesn’t seem to. Between Rick’s soothing and Shannon’s shouting, it will all work out. Tara isn’t needed for this one. She’s too tired for this one.

What is this one?

The girl who won’t quit. That girl is the problem. Who exactly she is and what exactly she is up to, Tara doesn’t know, but the girl who won’t quit is clearly causing the trouble here. Tara is too tired to join them all in their concern, though. The whole scene exhausts her and makes her strangely angry. Whoever the girl is, she needs to back the hell off and leave everyone alone. Look at them. Just look at their faces. See those tears, that fatigue, that sorrow? Back off, bitch. Back off and leave them alone.

Just go away.

Tara decides she will sleep again. Maybe while she sleeps, this relentless problem girl will finally abandon her confusing quest.

All Tara understands with certainty is that it will be better for everyone when that girl finally quits.

Savage Sam might’ve been sixty or a hundred. Either one seemed reasonable. He stood well over six feet, even with his stooped stance, and that natural forward lean paired with his unusually long arms gave the impression that he could have untied his boots without changing posture.

“I might not have been completely clear about the phone when we talked,” he said when he greeted Abby at the front gate. He was carrying a shoe box.

“You don’t have it?”

“Oh, no, I think I’ve got it.”

Abby frowned. “I don’t follow. Either you have it or you don’t.”

“Not necessarily,” the old man said, and then he took the lid off the shoe box. Inside were at least a dozen cell phones as well as a heap of chargers and three GPS navigators.

“Now, before you get to thinkin’ somethin’ that isn’t true,” Sam cautioned, “I want you to know that I always hang on to them for thirty days before I sell them. A firm policy. Otherwise it’d be stealing.”

“The state law is thirty days?”

Savage Sam blinked and squinted. He had bifocals tucked into the pocket of his flannel shirt but chose to squint instead, as if the glasses were a prop or he’d forgotten he had them. Or perhaps he’d swiped them out of a car and was intending to sell them later.

“It’s awful close to thirty days, even if it isn’t exactly that,” he said. “They might’ve changed it.”

Abby didn’t think they’d changed the law regarding the presumption that whatever was in a wrecked car belonged to the car’s owner, but she wasn’t interested in debating the point. “That many people leave their phones?” she asked, peering into the bulging box. “Most people these days would rather cut off their hands than walk away from their phones.”

“A lot of times it’s probably an old phone or a backup or something. People give phones to their parents or grandparents, and the old-timers have no use for them, so they just pitch them into the glove compartment and forget about them. And you’d be surprised how many I find that are still in the boxes they came in.”

It made some sense. She stared at the contents of the shoe box.

“You don’t know which one came from the Honda, then?”

“Well... no. I mean, I just picked it up and threw it in there. Didn’t think about it. Now, I recall it was one of the nicer ones. Probably an iPhone.” His wizened thumb jammed into the box and shifted an iPhone forward, then another, and then a third. “But I don’t know exactly which one. And with you saying there’s police involved, and a man’s been killed and all... it would probably be easier if you sorted it out.”