“I don’t care,” Michael said. “Can I come pick it up right away? A driver’s license and a major credit card. No problem. What? I don’t want to get it in the morning. No, I’m coming to pick it up now. I don’t care about that. See you in a few minutes.” Michael hung up.
“What in the world?” Karen said.
“Get packed,” Michael said. “We’re checking out.”
“Checking out? Wait a second. Let’s slow down here. I don’t understand what’s going on.”
Michael stopped taking his socks and underwear out of a drawer of the dresser and said, “We’re going to take that painting home with us.”
“You can’t do that.”
“It’s my painting.”
“It’s sold.”
“I’m unselling it.”
Karen shook her head, almost smiling. “Would you please just sit down and take a minute to think about this?”
“No. Just get packed. Please get packed. Actually, it doesn’t matter whether you get packed now. You’ve got a plane ticket. I’ll meet you in Denver.”
“Do you honestly think Joshua is just going to hand over that painting to you?” she asked.
“Do you honestly think I’m going to ask for that bastard’s permission?”
“Then how are you going to get in?”
“I’ll meet you in Denver.”
“You’re not going to break in, are you?”
Michael stopped packing and sat down in a chair. “I have to do this. I know it sounds crazy, but I’ve got to do it. Now, I’ve got,” he looked at the clock, “forty-three minutes to get over to the car-rental place. I’ll understand if you fly home. In fact, that’s a better plan. Okay?”
“I’m coming with you.”
“Whatever. I don’t have time to discuss it either way.” He resumed packing.
“I’m coming with you,” Karen repeated and started packing her clothes along with him.
The car rental was part of a chain, and was located on New York Avenue not far from the hotel. The place was surrounded by a twelve-foot, chain-link fence with razor wire spiraled along its top, and fat circles of white light spilled from evenly spaced floods on the sides of the building. The cars and trucks huddled in clumps as if for protection, and Michael, even in his raving state, managed a pun silently, thinking the cars were waiting to be jumped. The Ethiopian taxi driver waited while Michael and Karen spoke to the intercom at the gate. Michael looked into the closed-circuit camera and spoke loudly.
“I’m here to pick up a van,” he said.
“What’s your reference number?” a static-covered, lethargic voice asked.
“You didn’t give me a reference number.”
“We give everybody a reference number.”
“Let’s just go,” Karen said.
“My name is Lawson. Don’t you remember talking to me? The van to Denver?”
“I remember, but I need the reference number,” the voice insisted.
“You didn’t give me one, you asshole.” There was silence from the speaker.
“I’m here to rent a van for twenty-three-fucking-hundred dollars. I want to know what your fucking name is so I can tell your fucking boss why I had to go to fucking Avis to rent a fucking van.”
The gate made a loud double-clack as it unlocked and Michael pushed it ajar, then waved the taxi driver on. He and Karen carried their bags across the asphalt lot, past the clusters of cars and vans to the door where they were briefly scrutinized by yet another camera before being let in. The attendant was seated behind a metal table, his pajama bottoms and bedroom slippers visible for all the world to see. Michael looked at the man, frowning. His age was a mystery — the ratty blond beard, crew cut, and the red eyes set into sallow sockets. Michael felt sick.
“I was sure I gave you a reference number,” the man said.
Michael didn’t say anything, but opened his wallet to find his license and credit card.
“This is a rough neighborhood,” the man said. “You can’t be too careful. They would just as soon eat your liver as look at you.”
“Who’s they?” Michael asked.
“Them punks.”
Michael put the cards on the table.
“All the way to Denver, eh?”
Karen nodded, looking around.
“Don’t worry ma’am,” the attendant said. “This place is sealed up tighter than a flea’s asshole.”
“How nice,” Karen said.
“But once you leave this yard, well, may God have mercy on you.”
“Shut up,” Michael said. “Charge it to the card and I don’t want the insurance.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Michael, let’s forget this and take a cab back to the hotel,” Karen said, pulling at the sleeve of his jacket, pleading with her eyes.
“You won’t get a cab to pick you up here,” the attendant said. “Hell, if you was stabbed and bleeding to death, no ambulance would come here. Not at night anyway.”
“Just hurry up with the van,” Michael said.
The man finished the paperwork and Michael signed it, then stuffed his card and license back into his wallet.
“Here are the keys,” the attendant said. “Number one-five-one.”
“Where is it?” Michael asked.
“It’s out there somewheres.”
“Just give me some fucking idea where it is, man. Christ, you’ve got vans all over the place out there.” Michael looked out the window. Just seeing all of the vehicles under the puddles of light made his head throb. “Look, there’s three-two-seven. Let me have three-two-seven.”
The man didn’t want to change anything, but he scratched out the number on the form and wrote in the new one. “Okay, there you go.” He handed over the papers to Michael along with a different set of keys.
Michael gave the man one last hard look.
“Just honk when you’re at the gate and I’ll let you out.”
As they walked out to the van, Karen said, “Michael, please listen to me.”
“No.”
Michael unlocked the vehicle, Karen’s side first. The key stuck and turned abrasively in the hole, and then they got in. “Why do they all smell like this?” he said, inserting the key into the ignition and giving it a turn. The first attempt provided nothing but a click. On the second try the engine was slow to turn over, but did. Michael gunned it a couple times, extra loud, for the benefit of the man inside who was watching them through the window. He honked at the gate, the gate opened, and they drove out onto New York Avenue.
The journey through town to Dupont Circle was tedious and uneventful. At the circle Michael drove around twice before getting on Massachusetts in the right direction. After a series of turns he managed to locate Joshua’s gallery and parked the van in the circular driveway of the neighboring building. It was nearly eleven o’clock.
“You’re actually going to break in?” Karen said.
“Yes. You wait here in the van.”
“Michael,” she complained. “What about the alarm?”
“Joshua doesn’t have an alarm. He has a sign that says he has an alarm, but no alarm. He’s too cheap.”
“I’m scared.”
“Wait here.” He started to get out, then leaned back to kiss her. “Thanks for coming with me.”
Michael went first to the front door and, finding it secure, he made his way along the side of the building, looking for another way in. There were three levels and Joshua lived on the top.
Michael was convinced there would be a way into the gallery. The painting was a piece of him; it had come to represent that part of himself which was still real, that part which was about the art alone, pure expression, his soul, his heart. There would be a way in. He found a window at the rear of the building that, because of its age, was loose and rattled to the touch, and he managed to work the lock open with his pocket knife. He pulled himself up and into the storage room/kitchen, being careful not to knock over the empty cartons that had been stacked haphazardly on a table beneath the window. There were spots of light throughout the rooms, lime-colored night-lights plugged into the wall outlets; an awful green, he thought, but somehow soothing to the pain in his head. He paused at the open stairway and listened for movement in the building.