“Well . . . ,” Arthur said. He scratched his very bald head. “I’m not too happy about that, but . . . if you’re sure it’s only three days.”
“Why, you sanctimonious little rodent,” Bea spat.
Arthur stumbled back a few steps from the force of her words.
“Here I’ve lived in this ratty little park for almost two decades, and have I ever once paid my rent even one day late? No. Not once. And when Herbert and I had to borrow money using the trailer for collateral, and we got behind, you were more than happy to take it off our hands and rent it back to us. Like you were doing us a big favor, keeping the bank from foreclosing. But it was a favor to yourself and no one else, because you rented it back for more than it was worth, and even that didn’t stop you from raising the rent twice more in the following years. And then you have the gall to stand here while my life is falling apart and act like three days is a major imposition? How dare you? How dare you stand in my doorway at seven o’clock in the morning and make yourself too important to try to make me feel small? Just who do you think you are?”
“Mrs. Kraczinsky?”
“Yes, Arthur. Three days. I promise. I won’t let you down.”
Bea rose, walked to the door, and closed it, blotting out Arthur’s face.
To her surprise, she didn’t feel guilty about her lie. At least, not as guilty as she’d expected. Of course she would let him down, and she would live with that. After all, other people let her down all the time.
Let somebody else cope with it for a change.
She turned on the air-conditioning. Yes, at seven in the morning. She would bathe herself in cool comfort until it was time to go. The check to the electric company would bounce, and they would never be paid for last month, or the power she used in the first few days of this month while getting ready to leave. And she was doing it anyway. They had plenty of money, and they got it by taking it from people like her. They could simply deduct the loss from their taxes, which they didn’t pay nearly enough of anyway. She and Herbert had spent their lives making up the tax shortfall caused by these big, heartless corporations.
Now she would short them and see how they liked it.
She didn’t believe herself one hundred percent. She wasn’t comfortable with these ideas so much as she was forcing herself to make her peace with them, and fast.
One thing she could not deny. The world owed her $741.12, and it was high time the world paid up. For a change.
Chapter Five
Van Sweet Van
Bea’s new home was twelve years old and boasted 145,216 miles on the odometer. It had decent tires, and air-conditioning in the dash that still worked.
It had two windows in the back, one in each of the double doors, and no windows on the sides. That was fine with Bea. The less she had to convert the trailer’s old drapes to work in her new quarters, the better. The harder it was for passersby to see in, the happier she would be.
Its sides were painted with the words “Sun Country Bakery,” with a stylized sun in the bottom curve of the S. But over the years the weather had been hard on the lettering, causing the paint to chip and peel at the edges, like Herbert’s chaotic and poorly run business near the end. Like her life with him.
It had a sticker on the rear bumper that read, “If I’m driving slowly, I’m delivering a wedding cake.” Because, in its day, that’s mostly how the vehicle had been used.
Bea worked on its interior for two days. Both days she waited until nightfall to do so, for obvious reasons.
She was inside it now, on the second night, duct-taping the bathroom curtain rods across each of the back windows. She had already done something similar with the living room drapes—affixed the curtain rod from one side of the van to the other, just behind the seats. She could now draw that curtain to separate the back of the vehicle from its cab. Anyone looking through the windshield would see nothing but two empty seats. She could draw the curtains aside while driving, to allow a rear view.
The easy chair sat in its new place in the van, which made it hard to get comfortable inside the trailer now. The previous evening she had knocked on the door of Kyra and John, the only young residents of the mobile home park, and asked their help moving it, claiming she was giving it to a friend. Kyra and John were used to such requests. To be young in a community of old people would always involve a lot of lifting and hauling, and they had learned that well enough.
She’d wanted to put it behind the driver’s seat, but John had insisted on placing it at the passenger side.
“If you were in an accident,” he’d said, “or had to stop suddenly . . . why, that thing could come flying forward and turn you into a dashboard pancake.”
Over the chair, on the van’s ceiling, Bea had stuck a self-adhesive battery-powered light she’d picked up at the dollar store. Beside the chair was a box of tissues and a carton of carefully ordered paperback books she had not yet read, or might want to read again.
She’d been able to move the chest of drawers herself, because it was only cardboard. It wasn’t her real dresser, just something she’d kept hidden in the closet because it looked cheap. But it would hold two changes of clothes, underwear, bras, socks. Two towels.
She had filled her little travel cosmetics bag—which was a silly thing to own, since she didn’t travel—with a hairbrush, toothbrush and toothpaste, ear swabs, and a washcloth. She could carry it into a public restroom without attracting attention.
“I’ll be traveling now,” she said out loud, to no one.
In the corner of the van she had placed a plastic bucket. It embarrassed her to look at it, but she knew she needed it along. Maybe there would be no adjacent restroom on any given night. Or maybe it would be cold out, or she would doubt the safety of the neighborhood in which she had parked. She could always empty it and clean it out in the morning. Maybe she would be lucky and would never have to use it. But why take chances with a thing like that?
Every blanket she owned was stacked, neatly folded, in the other corner.
She started the van briefly and looked at the gas gauge. About two-thirds of a tank. That was all she had to last for the next three weeks. Her heart pounded again as she attempted to mentally grasp the challenge. Before the gas ran out, she had to find a place that was not life-threateningly hot, but where she would not freeze at night. She had one shot. If she chose wrong, there would be no going back on the choice. Not for more than three weeks.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this, she thought for the hundredth time.