Freak City Read online

  Chapter Four

  Three of the household were in the kitchen. Maribel Lewis was the public face, big hair, and booming voice of Mari-Jo Incorporated, Food Services. Her boyfriend, Todd, and his buddy Brian, were out, as usual, at the local sports bar, drinking beers and pretending to be Irish. Jolene was busying herself with food preparation. She had been to the culinary academy and spent most of her waking hours dreaming up confectionery concoctions. The two women complemented and contrasted each other completely; the silence and the roar, the taste for sweets and the nose for money. They would certainly be successful together someday and they knew it.

  Seth liked to say he was in real estate. In fact he was the handyman for his parents' property management enterprise. He was too embarrassed to admit this to anyone, but the job actually suited him nicely. He was a tinkerer and a dawdler by nature, exactly what people expected from someone in his position. He was also a homebody, which is why, in the evenings, his long frame was often slung across the sofa just outside the kitchen, in the utility slash living room by the back steps while the women conducted their business. He looked up with his goofy smile as Argus, appeared in the doorway.

  "Hey man, what's shakin'?" he asked with his customary greeting. Argus hadn't even noticed him there. He'd been looking for Jolene.

  "Oh,” he stammered, "Not much, I guess. Just wanted to say. I mean, just wanted to ask. I mean, tell"

  "What's up?" Jolene looked up from her mixing bowls and baking sheets.

  "It's just that I wanted to say,” Argus was having trouble getting the words out. "Like you were saying before. Look, I don't know what to make of that stuff, so if you really meant, if you wanted to check it out. Anyway, I'd be glad if you wanted to."

  Seth and Maribel switched both their puzzled stares from Argus to Jolene, who was nodding and said to Argus,

  "Thanks, I will. Do you want to bring it out here? Or leave it where it is? Either way. As soon as I get a chance I'll take another look"

  "I guess somebody knows what they're talking about,” Maribel put in.

  "Beats the hell out of me" Seth shrugged in response.

  "It's a mystery,” Jolene explained as Argus still stood in the doorway, not sure what he should do next. He was halfway to turning around and walking away but the other half knew that wouldn't be right, and so he remained, awkwardly rooted to the spot.

  "Some old guy came out of nowhere and gave Argus this little box, and inside it were a bunch of random things wrapped up in newspaper articles. Argus has no idea what it's all about, is that right?"

  "Not a clue,” Argus agreed.

  "I had an old street guy come up to me one time,” Seth said. "He started quoting Bible verses at me, then stuff out of the Qu'ran, and finally something out of Buddha. I was just standing there minding my own business."

  "That's crazy,” Maribel said.

  "Yeah, I thought so too,” said Seth, "but then he handed me a slip of paper, and on it was written a book and chapter and verse out of the Bible, and he told me to look it up when I got to my job."

  "Did you?" Jolene asked, although she already knew the answer. He had told her this story a bunch of times before. She liked to check to see if he was going to change it. So far, he never had.

  "Yeah,” he continued. "I mean, I was working at the bookstore so there was a Bible. Most jobs don't have Bibles hanging around so I thought it was even weird he said to look it up when I got to work. Anyway, I did, and it was out of Ecclesiastes and it said, 'of the making of many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh'.”

  "Wow,” said Maribel, "you were working in a bookstore and it was a quote about books? How did he happen to have that written down on a piece of paper anyway?"

  "Maybe he had a bunch of pieces of paper saved up,” Argus suggested, "and picked the one that fit."

  "But how did he know?" Seth asked. "Unless, I mean, I always wondered if maybe he'd seen me working at the store, but it wasn't even in that neighborhood.”

  "Homeless people get around,” Jolene said.

  "I guess so,” Seth said. "It's kind of creepy if you think about it. There's people out there who could know about you, see where you go. You don't know them but they know you."

  "Maybe your old guy was like that,” Jolene suggested to Argus.

  "Maybe,” he said. "I didn't even think of that"

  "I don't want to think about things like that,” Maribel declared, and with her bossiest voice reminded Jolene they had work to do and that the work had to get done pretty soon. Jolene promised Argus she would come around in the morning if he didn't mind, and that gave him the excuse he needed to get away from the kitchen and get back to his room. Once he was back there, he was not happy with himself. He had actually enjoyed the little conversation. He told himself that Seth seemed like a perfectly nice and even interesting guy, and that he liked Jolene even if he didn't like Maribel, and what harm would it do to come out and stay out and get to know them all better? And since when had he become such a loner?

  He couldn't answer that question. Looking back at his life it seemed he had always been like that, choosing to remain alone in his room, not even doing much except thinking and not even about anything in particular. Growing up he had shared a room with his brother. He had the bottom bunk and would stay there, under the blankets, while Alex had friends over or was just doing his stuff. Argus would peek out now and then, but never was much of a talker. Everyone thought he was smart because he was quiet, when really he had nothing to say. And then there were the long still years after Alex had left home to start his new life, and Argus was left behind to face the family that wasn't really a family, in the house that was merely there.

  He was almost paralyzed by routine, dragging himself through a college degree in architecture of all things, as if he cared anything about that. He couldn't explain to himself or to anyone else the choices he'd made, the shape his life had taken. He only knew he didn't like it and he wanted it to change. He didn't know how that was going to happen. As he'd said to Jolene, he had no idea. No ideas, really, he said to himself. He knew the blankness he felt had another name, and he knew it had held him in its grip as far back as he could recall. But to make the change happen, this was why he'd chosen to move, chosen to live with strangers, to work at some job, any job. His only notion was that any change in any way, any move in any direction, would lead to somewhere in the end, and he didn't need to know where that would be, or how that would happen. It just would. It had to.