the future: If he stepped outside this camper, there was trouble waiting.)
The figure in the dark possessed him; he couldn’t take his eye off him. When the man-he suddenly saw clearly that it was a man-turned his attention away from the elevator and toward the truck, Ben
The elevator arrived.
He twisted the handle, tempted to flee, regardless of that dark shape. He wanted out so badly he could taste it. At that same instant, however, the figure moved, walking out from between the parked cars, and headed straight for the truck. A voice inside Ben’s head warned, “Don’t!” and he found himself releasing the doorknob.
Nick stepped into the elevator, hauling the duffel bag with him. The doors slid shut.
The other man suddenly approached quickly, taking long strides, nearly at an all-out run. Patches of light flashed across his face, but even so, Ben had trouble actually seeing that face. It was as if the man were wearing a mask.
Ben lifted the bench and dove inside, driven back into hiding amid the tools and oily rags, feeling ever more involved with something he wanted no part of. How many times had Emily warned him not to so much as touch a customer’s car? It felt as if his situation was designed as some kind of lesson; he half expected the approaching figure would turn out to be Emily, having created and acted all this out with Ben in mind. He promised himself that if he got out of this, he would never, ever in a million years, lay a finger on another person’s property. He hoped this promise might in some way protect him from the man who now approached, for his stomach churned with fear and trepidation.
The camper door made a noise as it opened. Ben felt his insides go watery. He could barely breathe, his throat was so dry. Where the driver had seemed a threat, this dark figure was the one to fear.
As quickly as the door opened, it shut. Ben never felt any movement of the truck’s springs, any indication that the man had come inside. He waited and listened, blood pounding in his ears and chest. The tips of his fingers felt cold, and all at once a shiver passed through him. He felt on the verge of crying. He swallowed his fear and ventured to lift the bench a crack and peer out.
Empty. He wanted to shout a thanks to God. Instead, he hoisted the bench, climbed out, and hurried to the smudged glass of the back door.
The parking garage appeared empty. He didn’t trust this and looked back and forth, intent on spotting the other man lingering in the shadows or wedged between two parked cars, but he was nowhere to be seen. Ben twisted the doorknob and pushed, thinking that with his luck the door would prove to be …
… locked!
The second man had re-padlocked the door. A wave of nausea coursed through him. He banged the door against the clasp several times, paying no attention to the possibility of being heard or noticed. Where was good luck when he needed it?
He dropped to his knees in an effort to study the clasp and lock, in order to see if there was any chance it had been hooked but not locked. As his knee touched the filthy carpeting, he felt an unexpected bulge below his kneecap and glanced down to see the corner of a plain white envelope protruding. He slipped the envelope out. It was thick and bulging, but lightweight. He couldn’t resist looking inside. He lifted the flap to see the squiggled edges of money. Dozens of bills. Fifties and twenties and some tens. Old bills. Worn money. Lots of it.
To him, it seemed like a million dollars. Cash, right there in his hand. He would need money to get home. He had none on him. He reached in and fished out a twenty. And then another. With each bill the temptation grew. Who would know if he took the whole thing? So many times, as Emily slipped her ten-dollar payment into the cigar box she kept in the freezer, she had spoken the words to Ben: “Money is freedom.” They lived in him as a kind of mantra. Money meant independence. Money offered people the chance to be themselves. And here was this envelope of cash in his hand and no one around to see him. He could give the money to Emily; he could pay for his food; he could live with her.
The presence of the money was overwhelming. There was no drug deal. He was not trapped in the back of a truck. He was free. He didn’t return the envelope to where he had found it. Never even considered it. He folded the envelope and shoved it into his front pants pocket. He had a chance at a new life. He felt giddy. Then, all at once, the confines of the camper shell got to him. The envelope seemed to be burning his leg. It suddenly felt heavy to him, as if anyone looking at him would see it. But not for a second did he think about putting it back. He moved quickly, as if he had done all this before. He checked the tiny closet. He didn’t find a broom or a mop, but instead an aluminum baseball bat. Hurriedly, he climbed atop the camper’s tabletop and probed skyward with the bat, pushing open the skylight. It took three tries to get the hook to catch, and even then it was not
He climbed back on the table, trained his eye on the edge of the skylight, and knew he had to make it in one jump. There were no second tries. To miss would be to fall backward on the table; he would break something or knock himself out. He had one try in him.
A voice inside reminded him that this required hand-eye coordination, this was something everyone agreed he had no talent for; the voice grew louder, warning him not to even try. But the drive for survival spoke louder, and he overcame this nagging voice and blatantly disregarded it. There was no choice. He simply had to make the jump. And he had to be successful.
He squatted down, feeling the strength in his tree-climbing legs, aimed his single eye above him, having little judgment of the exact distance he had to travel, and jumped, fingers outstretched.
The wood edge slapped his palms and he gripped down and hooked the lip and held himself dangling, suspended in midair. But he had rocked the truck, causing the hook to slip off the eyelet, and the skylight came down like a Chinese poultry knife onto his knuckles. Ben cried out, but he did not let go. Could not let go.
He pulled, as he had so many times in a bad situation in a tree, as if lifting himself to the next branch. He did this twice but sank back down to his dangling position, his fingers aching under his weight. The third time he coordinated all his efforts simultaneously: He pulled himself up, banged the skylight partially open with his head, hooked one elbow, then the other, and pulled even higher, worming his torso up and through the skylight. Kicking his legs, as if swimming for the side of the pool, he wiggled up and out of the hole in the camper’s roof. He clambered over a rusted rack, where a tire and wheel were chained and locked, and slipped over the back to a narrow ladder fixed to the side of the shell. His feet touching pavement, he was off at a run, as if hearing footsteps immediately behind him.
He wasn’t going on that elevator, no matter what. Instead, he entered the stairs and descended two at a time, his fingers skating down the banister, his legs feeling rubbery from the excitement. He leaped onto the landing, grabbed hold of the railing, and pulled himself up short, stopping like a car caught by a red light.
Nick, the buzz-cut driver of the truck, the drug dealer, was standing on the stairs, wearing an expressionless face, his full attention riveted on Ben.
Ben stood there, chest heaving, recalling that the slight bulge on the man’s right side was a handgun, and that he was in the military, which meant he was a crack shot, and that Ben had been inside his truck, and that he no doubt knew this and had been thinking, planning, what to do about it, and now his hand was forced and the time had come, and Ben had served himself up on a silver platter.
He thought about the fold of money in his pocket, suddenly so heavy that he couldn’t move that leg. Surely the man saw the outline of the envelope there. Surely he knew. Caught!
The man Ben feared so much smiled and said, “Slow down there, buddy. Good way to knock some teeth out.”
Ben heard very little except something about getting his teeth knocked out. Nick climbed the stairs. Ben was directly in his path and so terrified that the man looked blurry, and his already untrustworthy legs felt on the verge of total failure. Their eyes met, and Ben felt a sick, hollow spot where his stomach should have been, and he felt a trickle of warm urine run down his left leg.
“Excuse me,” the smiling man said, and Ben stepped aside for him. Nick walked past, turned on the landing, and headed on up the stairs.
Ben sneaked onto a downtown hotel courtesy van, pretending to be with a pair of parents who didn’t notice
