“This woman has nothing to do with you,” I said. “This is a picture of Molly, my former wife Molly. She left the house three days ago to go to the drugstore and I haven’t seen her since.”
“She never liked the name Alma,” he said, still clutching his corner of the photo. “She thought it too arty-farty. It was her one fault. So that may explain the change of name, okay? Whatever she chooses to call herself, I still miss her. Hell, I’d take her back in a nanosecond.” He tugged on the photo and came away with the attached condom half of it. His elegiac moment was replaced by self-righteous anger. “I’ll give you thirty seconds to get your keester out of here before I call the police,” he said, and started counting. I let twenty seconds elapse before making my exit.
My half-picture in hand, I went back to the house, hoping someone might have returned in my absence, Molly in particular, though I had long since given up being absolute. I would have settled with reasonable contentment for anyone.
47th Night
Anticipation tends to defeat itself. The house was empty on my return but there was a letter concerning Molly waiting for me in the vestibule. It was poorly spelled, mostly ungrammatical and eccentrically punctuated, though its intent was undeniable. The gist of it was, that if I wanted to see Molly again alive and unharmed, it would cost me a hundred thousand dollars in small bills.
This was their sale price, they said, a bargain considering the value of the hostage. They would contact me again (reported a postscript) concerning arrangements for the transfer of the money.
One hundred thousand was a lot to ask for a woman who was no longer my wife. When I looked closely, I noticed the letter was actually addressed to Donald. I gave a sigh of relief until it struck me that in Donald’s protracted absence — he had not left a contact number or forwarding address — the burden of Molly’s safety was in my impoverished hands.
To the best of my memory, I had eight-hundred-twelve dollars and thirty seven cents in my checking account and another two-hundred in one of my socks so if I was going to ransom Molly, I needed to raise ninety-nine thousand or so in short order however it might be done. I tried to be systematic, which had never been my strong suit. There was little chance I could raise that much without resorting to crime and I played out that scenario briefly before rejecting it absolutely. Borrowing seemed the last and least fraught of my limited options, and I wondered if I had any rich friends I hadn’t thought about for a while.
Pacing the hallway, wandering the various empty rooms of the house, accruing desperation like moss, I had a brainstorm. ninety-nine thousand would seem like chump change to Molly’s business exec father. So I phoned Buck, who I wasn’t even sure was still alive from an old number which yielded another and then another. He was in a hospital somewhere in California, a woman with a husky voice told me, and was not expected to return home. He was in the cryogenics ward, though no irrevocable decisions about his future had yet been made.
I took down the hospital number, and knowing it was a longshot, expecting nothing, I got Buck on the phone at first try. “Good to hear from you,” he said, though he had no idea who I was. “How much is this going to cost me?”
I laughed, though I knew he wasn’t joking. “The money is not for me,” I said. “It’s for Molly, your daughter Molly.”
There was a prolonged silence at the other end.
“Are you there, Buck? I’m calling about Molly.”
“Whatever she may have told you about me, it’s all lies,” he said.
“It’s not about what you did. She’s being held for ransom by kidnappers.”
“She’s just a child,” he said. “If you showed yourself in person, old as I am and sick as I am, I’d break you in half. You hear me?”
I explained that I was the one trying to get her released, but he persisted in confusing me with the kidnappers.
“How much would you take to let my little girl go free?” he asked in a bullying voice.
“Buck, I want her free as much as you do,” I said. “The kidnappers are asking a hundred thousand dollars.”
“Would you take fifty?” he asked. “Fifty is a very generous offer.”
“Anything you’d be willing to give would help,” I said, “but to get her released I have to raise one-hundred-thousand.”
“Get a real job, you bum,” he said. “I’m willing to pay forty. Take it or leave it. And I want her back all in one piece. You haven’t removed any parts, have you? I want everything put back in its original place or we have no deal.”
At this point, someone, a nurse perhaps, took the phone and asked me to identify myself. I said I was a former son-in-law calling about his daughter.
“I can’t allow you to upset him,” she said. “If you told me what you wanted, perhaps I could present the news to him in a way that would disturb him less.”
I wasn’t prepared to discuss the issue of Molly’s ransom with someone I’d never met. “It’s a personal matter,” I said. “It’s also urgent.”
“Is it?” she said. “I’ll give you two minutes to tell me what this is about and then I’m hanging up. Is that clear?”
I lost about forty seconds reviewing my alternatives and then I told her as succinctly as possible the problem I faced. She laughed when I finished my story.
“You’re barking up the wrong tree,” she said. “I hope that’s the appropriate phrase. I’m here to tell you that Henry no longer has any money in his own name. It was all…”
“Henry?” I said, interrupting her. “I was led to believe the man I was talking to was my former father-in-law, Buck.”
“Oh no,” she said. “Henry has been given Buck’s bed. Of course we changed the linen. Buck was frozen two days ago.”
48th Night
Waiting for the kidnappers to get in touch again, I emptied my bank account into small bills. I got a call the next night and a muffled barely audible voice asked if I had gotten the money together. “Not all of it,” I said, which was a major understatement.
I could almost hear the mental machinery grinding on the other side of the line. Finally, whoever it was said, “Maybe you don’t want your wife back in one piece. Maybe you don’t want to see the little woman ever again.”
“When we split up — the truth is, she dumped me — I used to feel exactly that way,” I said.
“We might be able to take a little less,” the muffled voice said, “but then we can’t guarantee the condition you’ll get her back in. How much you got?”
I was embarrassed to tell him. I wasn’t always this broke. It was alimony payments on several fronts that had reduced me to my present circumstances.
“Can you come up with seventy-five?” the voice asked.
When I hesitated, he said, “What about seventy? You can put together seventy, cowboy, huh?”
“I’m afraid not,” I said.
“We’re not doing a fire sale here. Tell me what you’re willing to spend, cowboy, and I’ll tell you whether we can make a deal.”
I mentioned the money I had taken from the bank and what it combined to when added to the money I had stashed in a sock.
“No way,” the voice said. “Just setting up the operation cost us twice that amount. Do you think we’re in business to lose money?”
“Look, I sympathize with your position,” I said, “but the thousand is all the money I have in the world at the moment.”
“If that’s your story,” the voice said, “—is that your story, cowboy — then all I can tell you is that you’ll never see your former wife again.” He hung up the phone, or we were cut off from another source, before I had opportunity to announce my regrets.