John Brandon - Further Joy

“I was hoping you’d know what to do,” she told the landlord. “I don’t know how to deal with something like this.”

“I’m generally not a wise choice,” he admitted, “for pinning your hopes on.” He picked up a magazine and looked at the model on the cover, then returned it to its stack. He said he had to go to the bathroom before he hit the road.

The moment he was out of sight, Pauline found herself up out of her chair and stepping over to the door that led to the balcony. She didn’t know why, didn’t know what it would accomplish, except that she wanted to be able to get back in here if she needed to. She didn’t want to have to call the landlord again. She turned the deadbolt sideways, opened the door an inch and then reclosed it. She looked out the window — the exact same view she had, of course, but somehow it seemed broader, less pinched. The sunlight looked thinner than she’d ever seen it, the air without its usual weight. When she heard the toilet flush, she hurried back to the table.

The landlord emerged and went to the front door. He stood there making a face that meant it was time to go, and then issued a grand sigh. “How you deal with something like this, I’d say, is wait,” he told Pauline. “People take off and then a couple months later, by hook or by crook, some news of them will filter back. You find out they went out west or something. Giving the landlords out there some fun.” He dug something out of his eye, then blinked deliberately. “One of these days I’m going to get rid of this business and dig ditches instead. Deep ones.”

The cops opened a file on Mal, but only because the fact that she was under eighteen forced them to. Pauline admitted there were no signs of struggle at the apartment. The police already had a backlog of violent crimes to work on, violent crimes that had definitely occurred, they told her, with blood and weapons and such. Mal wasn’t a native, so they figured she’d wised up and headed home. Putting her on file was all they would do right now.

Pauline didn’t have any pictures of Mal, so they used the one from her Florida driver’s license, promising to circulate it within the system. They weren’t going to come poke around the apartment building, didn’t care about the car as of yet. They weren’t compelled by Pauline’s secondhand description of Tug. Pauline felt surreal at the police station, like she’d entered an old TV show or something, like what everyone was saying had been decided ahead of time. She turned Mal’s deflated-looking yellow purse over and the cops accepted it indifferently and found a cardboard box to rest it in. They smiled at her humanely, waiting for her to leave.

There was no extended family Pauline knew of, no one beyond Granny who had passed away. She didn’t know the names of the people Mal always talked to on the phone. Pauline called the appliance store where Mal worked, but they didn’t have anything to offer, either. The woman who owned the place said they’d been wondering if she was going to show up again or if she’d had enough of retail. The woman seemed amused, like Mal was pulling a stunt. She said Mal reminded her of herself as a kid. She said Mal would always have a place at her store, if she wanted it.

Pauline herself still half expected Mal to clomp up the stairs outside in a new dress and with another offbeat manicure, a knowing smirk lipsticked across her face. The police had told Pauline to let them know if anything changed, if anyone came for the car or anything. That was their line — let them know if anything changed. They told Pauline to continue with her life. They told her that fretting wouldn’t help anything.

For the next few days, Pauline ate nothing but the occasional slice of bread. She kept her teapot continually heating and drank cup after cup of peppermint tea. She scoured the balcony floor and the banister, scraping off some mold that was thriving and a battalion of tiny off-white snails. She stole a glance now and again at Mal’s unlocked door, knowing it would do no good to venture past it. She almost wanted to lock it again.

Pauline was justified for believing Mal needed guidance, for always wanting to warn the girl about the way she conducted her life, but that validation was only making her feel small and cynical. That’s what a realist was: a cynic. They were one and the same. And what was the prize for it, for all the accurate cynicism? Here she was cleaning, killing snails. The world was a perilous place where fun had a price, and what would understanding that get Pauline? Her landlord and the cops and the lady at the furniture store thought nothing bad had happened to Mal, and they were going on with their lives; they were believing what was convenient for them. Pauline had been right, and now she was left to feel hollow and stymied in her prudence.

She went out to the balcony less and less. Being out there only made her miss Mal worse, and she didn’t like being next to that damned door. There was nothing behind it but fresh sadness and uncertainty; she wasn’t going to find a clue. She didn’t want back in that apartment.

Instead she would look out at the balcony from her kitchen and see birds perched on the railing. They didn’t want anything to do with the feeder. They would just perch on the rail and look around. Pauline saw more of the big white water birds, strutting aimlessly down below, jabbing around dumbly in the swamps of Central Florida, which they would be allowed to do until they wandered into some redneck’s yard and got shot to pieces for fun.

During the day she felt trapped in her own mind, a feeling she wasn’t unfamiliar with, but at night she could hear everything, near and far — dogs answering one another across county lines, insistent whippoorwills, the screeching of tires, breezes in leaves and squirrels in branches and frogs in the muck out behind her building. She heard a girl scream, surprised and giddy. She heard fireworks.

***

Pauline tried to turn back to her work, something necessary, a duty, but day after day she couldn’t concentrate. She would work a half-hour and then lose focus. She’d never had trouble working before. It was something she’d depended on. She’d been an A student and then a model employee. Now she found herself way behind on two separate projects, too far behind to hope to meet her deadlines. She wanted to email the company and tell them what had happened, that a friend of hers had gone missing, but she couldn’t bring herself to use Mal as an excuse.

On the morning the first project was due, Pauline took a walk. She left her corner of town and wandered down a two-lane county road she’d never driven. She walked past empty fields dotted with dying trees, a few muddy stockponds. And then she came into a development of some kind, with plain little ranch houses and dogs behind fences. There was a market and a one-room post office. Pauline said good morning to some polite high school kids who were all wearing ball caps and drinking coffee. She went into the store of a gas station and bought a bottle of water, then stepped back out onto the pavement. The sun was shining persistently though the cloud cover; people were cleaning their windshields. A mother yelled at her son because he didn’t have shoes on. Music was playing over the gas station speakers, a country song about having fun because you’d worked hard all week. People were making inconsequential decisions, choosing regular or high-octane gasoline, choosing coffee or soda, the Gainesville Sun or the St. Augustine Record . None of these people knew a thing about Mal, and there were hundreds of missing girls whom Pauline knew nothing about.

Before she went to bed that night, dusk still clinging to the sky, she stood inside her front door and unlocked the deadbolt. She leaned against the wood, her cheek pressed flat. On the other side of this two-inch-thick plank were countless unknown threats, all gaining agency. She slid the bolt in and out of its little nook, listening to the sure sound it made when it dropped into its spot. She turned the lever all the way over, leaving the door unlocked, and backed away. This was the door she should’ve unlocked all along, she thought. She went to her bedroom and put on a cotton nightgown, then curled up in her bed and lay there wide awake, sweating under the ceiling fan, listening to the noises outside her window.