All in all, my building is so secure I was surprised someone could even tape an envelope to the front door or lean a box against it without setting off nine or ten alarms and waking five city blocks.
The envelope was plain, white, letter-size with “patrick kenzie” typed in the center. No address, no stamp, no return address. I opened it and pulled a piece of typing paper from inside, unfolded it. There were no address headings, no date, no salutation, no signature. In the middle of the page, centered, someone had typed one word:
HI!
The rest of the page was virgin.
I handed it to Angie. She looked at it, turned it over, turned it back to the front. “‘Hi,’” she read aloud.
“Hi,” I said.
“No,” she said, “more like ‘Hi!’ Give it that girlish giggle.”
I tried it.
“Not bad.”
HI!
“Could it be Grace?” She poured another cup of coffee.
I shook my head. “She says hi an entirely different way, believe me.”
“So, who?”
I honestly didn’t know. It was such an innocuous note, but weird too. “Whoever wrote it is a master of brevity.”
“Or has an extremely limited vocabulary.”
I tossed the note on the table, pulled back the tape on the box and opened it as Angie looked over my shoulder.
“What the hell?” she said.
The box was filled with bumper stickers. I pulled out a handful, and there was still another two handfuls waiting.
Angie reached in, grabbed a fistful.
“This is…odd,” I said.
Angie’s brow was furrowed and she had a curious half smile on her face. “You could say that, yeah.”
We took them into the living room and laid them out on the floor in a collage of blacks and yellows and reds and blues and shiny iri-descents. Looking down at all ninety-six of them was like standing over a world of petulance and hollow sentiment and the hopelessly inept search for the perfect sound-bite:
HUGS NOT DRUGS; I’M PRO-CHOICE AND I VOTE; LOVE YOUR MOTHER; IT’S A CHILD NOT A CHOICE; I JUST FUCKING LOVE TRAFFIC; IF YOU DON’T LIKE MY DRIVING DIAL 1-800-EAT-SHIT; ARMS ARE FOR HUGGING; IF I’M A ROAD HOG, YOUR WIFE’S A PIG; VOTE FOR TED KENNEDY AND PUT A BLONDE IN THE WATER; YOU CAN HAVE MY GUN WHEN YOU PRY IT FROM MY COLD DEAD FINGERS; I’LL FORGIVE JANE FONDA WHEN THE JEWS FORGIVE HITLER; IF YOU’RE AGAINST ABORTION, DON’T HAVE ONE; PEACE—AN IDEA WHOSE TIME HAS COME; DIE YUPPIE SCUM; MY KARMA BEATS YOUR DOGMA; MY BOSS IS A JEWISH CARPENTER; POLITICIANS LIKE THEIR PEASANTS UNARMED; FORGET ’NAM? NEVER; THINK GLOBALLY, ACT LOCALLY; HONK IF YOU’RE RICH AND HANDSOME; HATE IS NOT A FAMILY VALUE; I’M SPENDING MY CHILD’S INHERITENCE; WE ARE OUT & WE ARE EVERYWHERE; SHIT HAPPENS; JUST SAY NO; MY WIFE RAN OFF WITH MY BEST FRIEND AND I’M SURE GOING TO MISS HIM; DIVERS DO IT DEEP; I’D RATHER BE FISHING; DON’T LIKE THE POLICE? NEXT TIME YOU’RE IN TROUBLE, CALL A LIBERAL; FUCK YOU; FUCK ME; MY CHILD IS AN HONOR STUDENT AT ST. CATHERINE’S ELEMENTARY; MY CHILD BEAT UP YOUR HONOR STUDENT; HAVE A NICE DAY, ASSHOLE; FREE TIBET; FREE MANDELA; FREE HAITI; FEED SOMALIA; CHRISTIANS AREN’T PERFECT, JUST FORGIVEN…
…And fifty-seven more.
Standing there, looking at all of them, trying to comprehend the enormous gulf of difference in the myriad of messages, my head began to throb. It was like looking at a schizophrenic’s cat scan while all the poor bastard’s personalities got into a shouting match.
“Screwy,” Angie said.
“There’s a word, sure.”
“Can you see anything any of these have in common?”
“Besides that they’re all bumper stickers?”
“I think that goes without saying, Patrick.”
I shook my head. “Then, no, I’m at a loss.”
“Me too.”
“I’ll think about it in the shower,” I said.
“Good idea,” she said. “You smell like a wet bar rag.”
With my eyes closed in the shower, I saw Kara standing on the sidewalk as the stale beer stench flowed from the bar behind her, looking out at the traffic on Dorchester Avenue, saying it all looked just the fucking same.
“Be careful,” she’d said.
I stepped back out of the shower and dried off, saw her pale exposed body crucified, nailed to a dirt hill.
Angie was right. It wasn’t my fault. You can’t save people. Particularly when a person isn’t even asking to be saved. We bounce and collide and smash our way through our lives, and for the most part, we’re on our own. I owed Kara nothing.
But nobody should die like that, a voice whispered.
In the kitchen, I called Richie Colgan, an old friend and columnist for The Trib. As usual, he was busy, his voice distant and rushed, the words all running together: “GoodtohearfromyouPat. What’sup?”
“Busy?”
“Ohyeah.”
“Could you check something for me?”
“Shoot, shoot.”
“Crucifixions as a method of murder. How many in this city?”
“In?”
“‘In?’”
“How far back?”
“Say twenty-five years.”
“Library.”
“Huh?”
“Library. Heardofit?”
“Yeah.”
“Ilooklikeone?”
“Usually when I get info from a library, I don’t buy the librarian a case of Michelob afterward.”
“Heineken.”
“Of course.”
“I’monit. Talktoyousoon.” He hung up.
When I came back into the living room, the “HI!” note was lying on the coffee table, the bumper stickers were stacked in two neat piles underneath it, and Angie was watching TV. I’d changed into jeans and a cotton shirt and entered the living room toweling my hair dry.
“Whatcha watching?”
“CNN,” she said, looking at the newspaper on her lap.
“Anything exciting going on in our world today?”
She shrugged. “An earthquake in India killed over nine thousand people, and a guy in California shot up the office where he works. Killed seven with a machine gun.”
“Post office?” I said.
“Accounting firm.”
“That’s what happens when CPAs get ahold of automatic weapons,” I said.
“Apparently.”
“Any other happy news I should hear?”
“At some point, they broke in to tell us Liz Taylor’s getting divorced again.”