The Speed of Dark (16 page)

“You’re good at that,” Mr. Bryce says. His voice has the lift that means he is surprised.

“It is very clear,” I say. I enter my name and address, pull in my policy number from my personal files, enter the date, and mark the “yes” box for “adverse incident reported to police?”

Other blanks I do not understand. “That’s the police incident report number,” Mr. Bryce says, pointing to one line on the slip of paper I was given. “And that’s the investigating officer’s code number, which you enter
there
, and his name
here
.” I notice that he does not explain what I have figured out on my own. He seems to understand what I can and cannot follow. I write “in your own words” an account of what happened, which I did not see. I parked my car at night, and in the morning all four tires were flat.

Mr. Bryce says that is enough.

After I file the insurance claim, I have to find someone to work on the tires.

“I can’t tell you who to call,” Mr. Bryce says. “We had a mess about that last year, and people accused the police of getting kickbacks from service outlets.” I do not know what “kickback” is. Ms. Tomasz , the apartment manager, stops me on my way back downstairs to say that she knows someone who can do it. She gives me a contact number. I do not know how she knows what happened but Mr. Bryce does not seem surprised that she knows. He acts like this is normal. Could she have heard us talking in the parking lot? That thought makes me feel uncomfortable.

“And I’ll give you a ride to the transit station,” Mr. Bryce says. “Or I’ll be late for work myself.”

I did not know that he did not drive to work every day. It is kind of him to give me a ride. He is acting like a friend. “Thank you, Mr. Bryce,” I say.

He shakes his head. “I told you before: call me Danny, Lou. We’re neighbors.”

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“Thank you, Danny,” I say.

He smiles at me, gives a quick nod, and unlocks the doors of his car. His car is very clean inside, like mine but without the fleece on the seat. He turns on his sound system; it is loud and bumpy and makes my insides quiver. I do not like it, but I like not having to walk to the transit station.

The station and the shuttle are both crowded and noisy. It is hard to stay calm and focus enough to read the signs that tell me what ticket to buy and at which gate to stand in line.

IT FEELS VERY STRANGE TO SEE THE CAMPUS FROM THE
transit station and not the drive and parking lot. Instead of showing my ID tag to the guard at the car entrance, I show it to a guard at the station exit. Most people on this shift are already at work; the guard glares at me before he jerks his head telling me to go through. Wide sidewalks edged with flower beds lead to the administration building. The flowers are orange and yellow with puffy-looking blossoms; the color seems to shimmer in the sunlight.

At the administration building, I have to show my ID to another guard.

“Why didn’t you park where you’re supposed to?” he asks. He sounds angry.

“Someone slashed my tires,” I say.

“Bummer,” he says. His face sags; his eyes go back to his desk. I think maybe he is disappointed that he has nothing to be angry about.

“What is the shortest way from here to Building Twenty-one?” I ask.

“Through this building, angle right around the end ofFifteen , then past the fountain with the naked woman on a horse. You can see your parking lot from there.” He does not even look up.

I go through Administration, with its ugly green marble floor and its unpleasantly strong lemon smell, and out again into the bright sun. It is already much hotter than it was earlier. Sunlight glares off the walks.

Here there are no flower beds; grass comes right up to the pavement.

I am sweating by the time I get to our building and put my ID in the door lock. I can smell myself. It is not a good smell. Inside the building, it is cool and dim and I can relax. The soft color of the walls, the steady glow of old-fashioned lighting, the nonscent of the cool air— all this soothes me. I go directly to my office and turn the AC fan up to high.

My office machine is on, as usual, with a blinking message icon. I turn on one of the whirlies , and my music—Bach, an orchestral version of “Sheep May Safely Graze”—before bringing up the message: Call as soon as you arrive. [Signed] Mr. Crenshaw, Extension 2313.

I reach for the office phone, but it buzzes before I can pick it up.

“I told you to call as soon as you got to the office,” Mr. Crenshaw’s voice says.

“I just got here,” I say.

“You checked through the main gate twenty minutes ago,” he says. He sounds very angry. “It shouldn’t
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take even you twenty minutes to walk that far.”

I should say I am sorry, but I am not sorry. I do not know how long it took me to walk from the gate, and I do not know how fast I could have walked if I had tried to walk faster. It was too hot to hurry. I do not know how much more I could do than what I have done. I feel my neck getting tight and hot.

“I did not stop,” I say.

“And what’s this about a flat tire? Can’t you change a tire? You’re over two hours late.”

“Four tires,” I say. “Someone slashed all four tires.”

“Four! I suppose you reported it to the police,” he says.

“Yes,” I say.

“You could have waited until after work,” he says.“Or called from work.”

“The policeman was there,” I say.

“There? Someone saw your car being vandalized?”

“No—” Against the impatience and anger in his voice I am struggling to interpret his words; they sound farther and farther away, less like meaningful speech. It is hard to think what the right answer is.“The policeman who lives with—in my apartment house. He saw the flat tires. He called in the other policeman. He told me what to do.”

“He should have told you to go to work,” Crenshaw says. “There was no reason for you to hang around. You’ll have to make the time up, you know.”

“I know.” I wonder if he has to make the time up when something delays him. I wonder if he has ever had a flat tire, or four flat tires, on the way to work.

“Be sure you don’t put it down as overtime,” he says, and clicks off. He did not say he was sorry I had four flat tires. That is the conventional thing to say, “toobad” or “how awful,” but although he is normal, he did not say either of those things. Maybe he is not sorry; maybe he has no sympathy to express. I had to learn to say conventional things even when I did not feel them, because that is part of
fitting in
and
learning to get along
. Has anyone ever asked Mr. Crenshaw to fit in, to get along?

It would be my lunch hour, though I am behind, needing to make up time. I feel hollow inside; I start for the office kitchenette and realize that I do not have anything for lunch. I must have left it on the counter when I went back to my apartment to file the insurance claim. There is nothing in the refrigerator box with my initials on it. I had emptied it the day before.

We have no food vending machine in our building. Nobody would eat the food and it spoiled, so they took the machine away. The company has a dining hall across the campus, and there is a vending machine in the next building over. The food in those machines is awful. If it is a sandwich, all the parts of the sandwich are mushed together and slimy with mayonnaise or salad dressing. Green stuff, red stuff, meat chopped up with other flavors. Even if I take one apart and scrape the bread clean of mayonnaise, the smell and taste linger and are on whatever meat it is. The sweet things—the doughnuts and rolls—are sticky, leaving disgusting smears on the plastic containers when you take them out. My stomach twists,
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imagining this.

I would drive out and buy something, even though we don’t usually leave at lunch, but my car is still at the apartment, forlorn on its flat tires. I do not want to walk across the campus and eat in that big, noisy room with people I do notknow, people who think of us as weird and dangerous. I do not know if the food there would be any better.

“Forget your lunch?” Eric asks. I jump. I have not talked to any of the others yet.

“Someone cut the tires on my car,” I say. “I was late. Mr. Crenshaw is angry with me. I left my lunch at home by accident. My car is at home.”

“You are hungry?”

“Yes. I do not want to go to the dining hall.”

“ Chuyis going to run errands at lunch,” Eric says.

“ Chuydoes not like anyone to ride with him,” Linda says.

“I can talk to Chuy ,” I say.

Chuyagrees to pick up some lunch for me. He is not going to a grocery store, so I will have to eat something he can pick up easily. He comes back with apples and a sausage in a bun. I like apples but not sausage. I do not like the little mixed-up bits in it. It is not as bad as some things, though, and I am hungry, so I eat it and do not think about it much.

It is 4:16 when I remember that I have not called anyone to replace the tires on my car. I call up the local directory listings and print the list of numbers. The on-line listings show the locations, so I begin with the ones closest to my apartment. When I contact them, one after another tells me it is too late to do anything today.

“Quickest thing to do,” one of them says, “is buy four mounted tires and put them onyourself , one at a time.” It would cost a lot of money to buy four tires and wheels, and I do not know how I would get them home. I do not want to ask Chuy for another favor so soon.

It is like those puzzle problems with a man, a hen, a cat, and a bag of feed on one side of a river and a boat that will hold only two, which he must use to transfer them all to the other side, without leaving alone the cat and the hen or the hen and the bag of feed. I have four slashed tires and one spare tire. If I put on the spare tire and roll the tire from that wheel to the tire store, they can put on a new tire and I can roll it back, put it on,then take the next slashed tire. Three of those, and I will have four whole tires on the car and can drive the car, with the last bad tire, to the store.

The nearest tire store is a mile away. I do not know how long it will take me to roll the flat tire—longer than it would one with air in it, I guess. But this is the only thing I can think of. They would not let me on the transit with a tire, even if it went the right direction.

The tire store stays open until nine. If I work my two extra hours tonight and can get home by eight, then surely I can get that tire to the store before they close. Tomorrow if I leave work on time, I might be able to do two more.

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I am home by 7:43. I unlock the trunk of my car and wrestle out the spare. I learned to change a tire in my driving class, but I have not changed a tire since. It is simple in theory, but it takes longer than I want.

The jack is hard to position, and the car doesn’t go up very fast. The front end sags down onto the wheels; the flat tires make a dull squnch as the tread rubs on itself. I am breathless and sweating a lot when I finally get the wheel off and the spare positioned on it. There is something about the order in which you are supposed to tighten the lug nuts, but I do not remember it exactly. Ms. Melton said it was important to do it right. It is after eight now and dark around the edges of the lights.

“Hey—!”

I jerk upright. I do not recognize the voice at first or the dark bulky figure rushing at me. It slows.

“Oh—it’s you, Lou. I thought maybe it was the vandal, come to do more mischief. What’d you do, buy a new set of wheels?”

It’s Danny. I feel my knees sag with relief. “No. It is the spare. I will put the spare on, then take the tire to the tire store and have them put on another, and then when I come back I can change that for a bad one. Tomorrow I can do another.”

“You—but you could have called someone to come do all four for you. Why are you doing it the hard way?”

“They could not do it until tomorrow or the next day, they said. One place told me to buy a set of tires on rims and change them myself if I wanted it done faster. So I thought about it. I remembered my spare.

I thought how to do it myself and save money and time and decided to start when I got home—“

“You just got home?”

“I was late to work this morning. I worked late today to make up for it. Mr. Crenshaw was very angry.”

“Yes, but—it’s still going to take you several days. Anyway, the store closes in less than an hour. Were you going to take a cab or something?”

“I will roll it,” I say. The wheel with its saggy flat tire mocks me; it was hard enough to roll to one side.

When we changed a tire in driving class, the tire had air in it.

“On foot?”Danny shakes his head. “You’ll never make it, buddy. Better put it in my car and I’ll run you over. Too bad we can’t take two of them… Or, actually, we can.”

“I do not have two spares,” I say.

“You can use mine,” he says. “We have the same wheel size.” I did not know this. We do not have the same make and model of car, and not all have the same size. How would he know? “You do remember to tighten the ones across from each other—partway—then the others, then tighten the rest of the way in opposites, right? You keep your car socarefully, you may’ve never needed to know that.”

I bend to tighten the lug nuts. With his words, I remember exactly what Ms. Melton said. It is a pattern, an easy pattern. I like patterns with symmetry. By the time I have finished, Danny is back with his spare, glancing at his watch.

“We’re going to have to hurry,” he says. “Do you mind if I do the next one? I’m used to it—”

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“I do not mind,” I say. I am not telling the whole truth. If he is right that I can take two tires in tonight, then that is a big help, but he is pushing into my life, rushing me, making me feel slow and stupid. I do mind that. Yet he is acting like a friend, being helpful. It is important to be grateful for help.

At 8:21, both spares are on the back of my car; it looks funny with flat tires in front and full tires behind.

Both slashed tires we took off the back of my car are in the trunk of Danny’s car, and I am sitting beside him. Again he turns on the sound system and rattling booms shake my body. I want to jump out of there; it is too much sound and the wrong sound. He talks over the sound, but I cannot understand him; the sound and his voice clash.