Paullina Simons - Eleven Hours

Putting her bags down on the concrete, she looked around, wondering where her Town & Country was parked. Slowly she took the pretzel bag out of one of the larger shopping bags, reached into it, and broke off a piece of a pretzel. She chewed and swallowed it. Looking at her watch, she saw it was already ten past one and tried to hurry. She picked up three bags with one hand, three bags with the other, and with her purse on her shoulder and the pretzel bag between her fingers headed up one aisle, swaying from side to side. Did she have to get those wooden blocks at FAO Schwarz? She struggled with the bags, setting them down again and wiping her forehead, wishing her hair were up in a bun.

Didi walked a few more feet but couldn’t see the minivan anywhere. She put her bags down, sighed as loudly as possible to make herself feel better, and rummaged through her purse. She found her key chain and hit the alarm button to get her car to make its noise, but the alarm did not go off. Instead she heard the dull click of a door lock opening, and looked to her right to see her white van. She had pressed the wrong button. Thank God.

Relieved, Didi dropped the keys back in her purse and bent down to pick up her bags.

A voice behind her said, ‘You know, you really shouldn’t be carrying those heavy bags. It’s bad for the baby.’

Richard Wood parked his Pontiac Bonneville in the Laredo Grill lot and looked for Didi’s minivan. It wasn’t there yet. He glanced at his watch and saw it was a little before one and he was early. That was okay. He sat in the car and listened to a Bad Company CD. Didi said Rich was forever stuck in the seventies, but he took that as a compliment.

The clock in the car read 1.17 when he decided to look for her inside the restaurant. Maybe she’d parked elsewhere. He hurried. He should have remembered that Didi sometimes parked in the adjacent Olive Garden lot to be a bit closer to the exit ramp for the highway home.

Didi wanted to speak but found she was made speechless by her heart ramming itself against her chest. She didn’t need to turn around. She recognized his voice. It was the man in the jacket. She felt slightly nauseated.

‘Did you hear me, ma’am?’ the voice said. ‘You shouldn’t be carrying those heavy bags. It’s not good for the baby.’

Didi turned around.

The man was standing in front of her, hands in his jacket pockets. The heat index was up to 120 and he was wearing a jacket over his white shirt. The incongruity of the jacket hadn’t registered in the cool mall, but now it seemed distinctly out of place.

She stared directly at him without averting her gaze. His upturned nose made him look petulant, as if he’d been waiting for a bus too long. His mouth was upturned too, in a semblance of a smile. It looked as if he was grimacing, stretching his thin lips upward, toward eyes that weren’t smiling. They were blue and they were cold, and she saw that they lacked something essential. The expression in the eyes, like the jacket, did not belong in a mall parking lot on a hot summer day.

Didi held on to her bags as she and the man stared at each other. She tried to focus, but all she saw was dark spots instead of his face. Wait, wait, she said to herself, narrowing her mental vision. Think! It’s not so bad. Maybe he is really concerned about the bags. Remember? He said the same thing to me in the mall.

Though now there was an edge to his tone, as if he were judging her. Didi knew the tone of judgment well enough. When her mother-in-law, bless her, would visit, she’d look at Didi and say, ‘You’re not eating enough, Didi.’ It was the same tone, but Barbara was her husband’s mother, and this man was a complete stranger who had followed her out of the mall.

Wait a second. Who said he’d followed her? Maybe he hadn’t followed her. Maybe his own car was parked here and he was on his way home.

Didi had been silent too long. She tried to swallow, but her mouth was dry and her heart was beating too fast.

‘You don’t need to help me. My car is right…’ She stopped, already regretting what she had been about to say. Take it back, fool, take it back. Why would she want him to know they were in front of her car?

The man said, ‘What I’d like to do is help you to my car.’

Didi lost her breath and opened her mouth.

‘I’d rather not do that,’ she said, her voice breaking. ‘I’m meeting my husband for lunch.’ Her knees began to shake. To steady herself, she leaned against the minivan.

The man stretched his lips sideways, exposing his teeth. ‘I think he’ll be eating alone today,’ he said.

Didi hurriedly scanned the parking lot for a mother with a baby, an elderly couple, a man buying a present for his wife. Why was it that when she needed to adjust her underwear or scratch her inner thigh, the parking lot was teeming with people, but now when she needed someone more than ever, there was no one? Why was that?

Dumb luck.

No, it was karma, she thought, harking back to the fight she’d had with Richie yesterday. That’s why.

Is this my karma? she thought. This young man in front of me, menacing me with his vagueness and his eyes?

She started to speak, but he interrupted her.

‘Shh,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry. I just want us to go for a little ride.’

Shaking her head, Didi said, ‘I can’t.’

‘Yes, you can,’ he said. ‘Please.’ And then added, ‘I have to insist.’

He stood very close to her between the cars. He was invading her personal space, and Didi’s knees would not stop shaking. She glanced this way and that. Please, someone just come walking, get out of a car, something, somebody see us. Please.

Didi wasn’t in the restaurant.

Rich thought there was nothing more pathetic than a man waiting for his late wife. Embarrassed, he straightened his tie and smiled politely at the hostess.

Finally he called the office for his messages and listened to one from Didi at 12.30 PM, asking him if he could meet her a little earlier. There was something in her voice that he didn’t like and didn’t understand. There was an edge to it, and the pitch was higher than normal.

It was also an unusual call. Rich and Didi had been together for ten years. In that decade, Rich Wood had never known Didi to call from the mall and ask to meet him early.

Late , yes.

Honey, I’ll be a few minutes late.

Honey, I’m stuck in line.

Honey, there is just one more stop I have to make.

Yes, yes, yes.

But honey, can you meet me early ?

If she was at the Laredo Grill, then he could tease her about it.

But she wasn’t there.

Rich knew there were many diversions between the mall and the restaurant. She could have stopped at the bookstore or the music store. Or the Container Store.

He waited awhile longer before calling his office again. There was nothing new from her after 12.30 PM. If she had stopped off somewhere, she would have called. Didi usually was considerate about being habitually late.

At one-thirty, he glanced at his watch as a little worm of worry ate away at the empty stomach where hunger had been.

Thirty minutes was too long to be stuck in any line.

He dialed the number to her cellular phone. It rang the requisite seven times before an annoying male voice answered and told Rich that the cellular customer he had called was unavailable.

Rich wondered if Didi was getting back at him for the fight they’d had yesterday, to prove to him that all it would take was for her to be a little late and he would be concerned. Maybe this is payback time, Rich thought irritably, looking at his watch every thirty seconds or so.