PASSE-PARTOUT: Book One, Chapter 8
I wake up on the couch in Jamey’s apartment. The windows are still closed, but the sunlight is streaming into the room between the curtains, and I smell…food. Real food. Cooked-in-the-kitchen food. I haven’t had it in a while—at least since Dad…
I rise from the couch, the room is a bit blurry, but I see a woman I don’t know in the kitchen.
“Good morning,” I croak, “I’m Paul.”
“Hi!” the woman replied, “I’m Maggie, Jamey’s wife. Are you hungry?”
“I’m starving. You didn’t have to cook just for me.”
Maggie chuckles and smiles. “I didn’t. I cooked for all of us.”
God, she reminds me of Jamey. She’s taller than Jamey, fair-skinned with a loose ponytail of auburn hair, but the glorious smile and warm laugh is shared. They’re a good match.
“Well, good! Thank you so much for cooking for all of us!” I try to be a witty houseguest, but the cigarette-and-whisky morning scratch just makes me sound hungover. But, not Maggie. She’s awake and moving as if she’s been up for hours (she probably has). She places a cup of coffee in my hands. “Here. Jamey tells me you probably could use this.”
I look into the dark cup, try to sound somewhat cheerful, and ask “Has Jamey talked to you about me?”
“Pretty much every night when she gets home.”
“I’m sorry I’ve kept her out so late. I’m a bad influence.”
“Yes, you are,” Maggie looks at me and smiles, “but, Jamey thinks you are a good person and needs help, and I trust her.”
“Well, I don’t know which of those labels is the most accurate, but Jamey has helped me—a lot. I owe her.”
“I think a lot of people do,” Maggie’s smile lessens a little, “Jamey and I—We are both our own people and make our own decisions about things, but—I need to tell you this—do not hurt her. She’s the most loving person I know. If she’s gets hurt for you, or if you hurt her yourself, I will personally bring a godless misery into your pitiful life.”
Maggie puts a plate down for me and lets her serious demeanor slip a little. “But, for now, I’m sure you’re hungry, and, for now, you don’t have to worry about me. Take. Eat.”
As we are eating breakfast, Jamey emerges from the room. She’s in those same warmups and sits at the table. Maggie places a cup of coffee in Jamey’s hands and Jamey looks at me through sleepy eyes.
“How did last night go?” she asks.
“Good. No dreams. Good.”
“Good. I’m yours for today. What do you need to do?”
“What about the statue? I want to know about the statue,” I reply.
Jamey leans back in her chair and holds the warm cup of coffee to her cheek. She pauses, looks at me. “OK But, just so you know, there’s nothing on the statue on the internet. No pictures, not history, not even a single mention in the newspaper d-bases. I don’t think you are going to get far.”
“Maybe someone on the square knows.”
“Yeah…and they’ll ever so happily talk to us.”
“Oh yeah,” I reply, “They’ll be open books.”
Jamey and I follow Monument Place to the plaza. She looks at me and says, “You start on one end, and I’ll start on the other and we’ll meet on the other side of ‘Bronze-Butt.’” I chuckle, nod my head and we split up. The buildings on the square, if you remember, are not the most modern, not the most inhabited. But Jamey seems always to be on the side of the most well-reasoned thought. If I can’t find out anything, I have a feeling that she might.
The first door I knock on is a glass door not unlike the one to the store. The rapping on the door shakes dust off the door frame and I see bits of insulation fall from the ceiling tiles. Nothing. I knock on the door again and call into the glass: “Hello! Heeelllloooo!” Again, no one answers. In the corner of the room, I see a mouse scuttle along the edge of the baseboard and into a hall that faces the door.
No one.
The next three doors are almost identical. Doors knocked. Dusts dislodged. Empty echoes from within returned. Having done almost this same exact thing earlier, and, I might mention, having returned to find my Dad in my apartment, I get a sense of deja vu. Except that I know exactly why I’ve felt the exact thing before. A twinge shoots through my stomach and I hold still for a moment, eyes closed. Waiting for the moment to pass. I have the strongest desire to leave and find Jamey. I turn and scan the plaza. I see her walking to a door almost directly across the square from me. She’s walking like she’s happy. I smile and inhale a slow, deep breath and let it sit at the bottom of my gut. She’s fine. But I also notice that she appears to have had the same kind of luck I’ve had.
The next building doesn’t have a glass door. It is solid metal. No security glass, no security speaker, and a big-ass lock on the door, but even it is rusted, with corrosion foamed at its port. I give the portal a solid knock. The sound of the knock turns to a thud, as if I’m hitting a thick slab of lead. If I did not see the gap around the door, between the door and the frame, I would think that this was just another wall of a building—perhaps the wall to a vault. I thud on the door again and yell “Hello! Heeeey!” I’m met with silence. Jamey, having finished her side of the plaza, walks up beside me, and looks at the door.
“And?” she asks, looking at the door, scanning it from crown to foot.
“Nothing. Nothing here. Nothing at the five other buildings. You?”
“I got nowhere. One building had a tenant, but they didn’t speak to me. I saw their figure cross the second story front window above the shop, but they didn’t deign it necessary to come greet me. But, forget about them. This door intrigues me. Anything inside that you can make out?”
“Try knocking on the thing and you tell me.”
Jamey gives the door two knocks. The same dull thud—a palm on concrete—returns. She tries the door and the knob refuses to turn, refuses to even give from one side to the other.
“Yes,” she says, “This door definitely intrigues me.”
“I think we should go in. What do you say?” I ask.
“I agree, but not now. Night would be better.”
“Have you been here at night? Nuh-uh. I’d rather take my chances by day. Besides, I think Bronze-Butt is giving me the eye and, if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not have to come back to this place after today. Anything we don’t find, well, we just didn’t find—so be it and all that.”
“Well, ok then. We’ll go in today. How do you propose to enter a building whose only door is made of a ten-ton block of steel?”
I sigh. She has a point. Even though there are no people on the square, just beating on the door during the day is a bit cavalier.
“The store had a back entrance for the trucks. I guess this one might have one, too. We just need to find out a way around to it,” I say.
Jamey replies, “I didn’t see a gap between the buildings. It looks as if they all share common walls with their neighbors. Maybe we can go to the other end of Monument and follow the alley all the way back down here. It’ll take a while. Monument is a long stretch.”
I nod my head, “Yeah…I don’t fancy going down the alleys anyway. I’ve been behind the store a few times, and it always seemed like it would a great place for unreasonableness to occur.” I scratch my head and look around the plaza, trying to avoid the statue. I see the windows on the second stories of the buildings. “Do you think there are fire escapes to the roofs?”
“Actually, I think I saw one on the edge of the corner building where we started,” Jamey says.
We walk to the two-storied building and find, in fact, a fire escape. A most unreliable-looking fire escape. It seems that everything in this place was constructed without the thought of rust. I look at Jamey. She nods her head as if to say “Go on. This is your idea. You get the tetanus first.”
I climb up the rough-edged rungs of the ladder until I make it up to the roof. Jamey follows. Across the rooftop, the wall of the next building crops up two more stories higher but was of a single piece with “our” building. Jamey shakes her head. “The fire department would have the shits if this got caught up right now. One errant spark and everything would domino.” The thought isn’t pleasant, and I start noticing every piece of rotted wood, every rusted fuse box, every exposed wire.
Yeah, I think, they are the ones that would be having the shits. No doubt we would be strolling along through, taking our time, seeing the sights.
There’s no fire escape on this side of the building, so we try to raise a window. Like most everything else on the plaza, the room inside is empty, a layer of dust on everything. And, like everything else on the plaza, just touching the window causes a fall of dirt to cascade to the floor, which causes the dust to billow away from the window. The glass itself seems sturdy, but as soon as the frame is lifted, a crack shoots across the pane. Jamey whispers “Hurry.” and we silent ourselves into the building and work our way to the roof. Every rooftop gives us a new challenge: no fire escape? Try a window. Windows won’t open? Try prying open a hand hold with a coin. One window even came loose from the building, frame, and all. And thus, we worked building to building.
Three buildings from the “vault,” Jamey puts her hand on my shoulder and tells me to wait. “This is the building. The one with the tenant.” We look for a fire escape and see that there is none. By this point, we have traversed up and down the various rooftops and we are stopped on a four-story building. “We have to go through. I don’t think we can go over, and I am not going down that fire escape to the alley.” I peer over the side of our building and see that the escape is really not one at all, just a tangle of wire and bars hanging to the roof’s edge by two bolts, one of which is close to shearing.
“We go through,” I say and go to the window farthest from the front. It is sunset now and, while I can’t see any movement in the room, I can’t see if there’s any sign of anyone living in this part of the building either. I push the window frame up and it moves easily.
“Noooo no no no. Someone is here. This one works too well,” I mutter.
Jamey whispers, “Then be quick about it.”
We both crouch through the window and walk through the darkened room. The floor sounds a faint creak as we walk across. There’s a sound of footsteps somewhere in the house. “Find an adjacent room.” I whisper, and Jamey turns away and walks in the opposite direction down the hall. I move every door open, ever so slightly, and look in. Windowless darkness in each, but their smell is not old. I don’t detect the hint of dust like I did in the other buildings. I move from door to door. Nothing. As I touch the doorknob of the room at the top of the stairs, a hand reaches out from the black and grasps mine. “Shh,” Jamey says as she motions to follow her. I start my heart again and follow her.
“Who’s up there?” a shout from the bottom floor. Jamey and I jump bolt upright and keep moving towards the window. “You better find your way the fuck out of here,” the voice screams, (is it a woman? an older man?) “I don’t need the fuckin’ police to do what I need to do to you. Get. The. Fuck. Out.” I hear footsteps slam on each step. I hear a noise akin to a bolt slamming into place on a gun—who cares what kind.
Yes, ma’am. The fuck out I am getting…
Jamey leads me to a room with a window. She has already opened it and we barrel out, Jamey first and me second. We hit the roof in a run. The next building is lower, but there is no ladder. I run faster than Jamey, but halt when I get to the edge. Jamey huffs “Don’t stop! Jump!” and pushes me over the side of the building in the midst of her full run. I plunge over the side and hit—two yards down—the next roof hands first. I feel the grit of the tarpaper grind into my hands, my arms crumple as they absorb my full weight. Jamey lands on her feet, missing my head by a bare inch, and folds in half onto the surface. We wait and collect ourselves.
But, even in the midst of our shock, we both stare at the roofline, waiting for a silhouette of a head, or worse, a gun, to peer over the edge at us. We wait. We hold our breaths and wait. Nothing. Jamey crawls close to the wall we just jumped and rests up against the brick. I follow and sit by her. We look at each other and I shake my head. Jamey looks at me, turns my head towards the next building. “Look! and wonder!” she says and smiles, “‘The Vault’ awaits.”