I am late because my car’s tires were all cut and flat this morning, and the police came. I will come as fast as I can.
Mr. Bryce does not look at the screen while I’m typing; that is good. I toggle back to the public ’net. “I told him,” I say.
“Okay, then, what you need to do now is file with your insurance company. If you have a local agent, start there — either the agent or the company or both will have a site.”
I am already searching. I do not have a local agent. The company site comes up, and I quickly navigate through “client services,”, “auto policies,” and “new claims” to find a form on-screen.
“You’re good at that,” Mr. Bryce says. His voice has the lift that means he is surprised.
“It is very clear,” I say. I enter my name and address, pull in my policy number from my personal files, enter the date, and mark the “yes” box for “adverse incident reported to police?”
Other blanks I do not understand. “That’s the police incident report number,” Mr. Bryce says, pointing to one line on the slip of paper I was given. “And that’s the investigating officer’s code number, which you enter there, and his name here.” I notice that he does not explain what I have figured out on my own. He seems to understand what I can and cannot follow. I write “in your own words” an account of what happened, which I did not see. I parked my car at night, and in the morning all four tires were flat. Mr. Bryce says that is enough.
After I file the insurance claim, I have to find someone to work on the tires.
“I can’t tell you who to call,” Mr. Bryce says. “We had a mess about that last year, and people accused the police of getting kickbacks from service outlets.” I do not know what “kickback” is. Ms. Tomasz, the apartment manager, stops me on my way back downstairs to say that she knows someone who can do it. She gives me a contact number. I do not know how she knows what happened but Mr. Bryce does not seem surprised that she knows. He acts like this is normal. Could she have heard us talking in the parking lot? That thought makes me feel uncomfortable.
“And I’ll give you a ride to the transit station,” Mr. Bryce says. “Or I’ll be late for work myself.”
I did not know that he did not drive to work every day. It is kind of him to give me a ride. He is acting like a friend. “Thank you, Mr. Bryce,” I say.
He shakes his head. “I told you before: call me Danny, Lou. We’re neighbors.”
“Thank you, Danny,” I say.
He smiles at me, gives a quick nod, and unlocks the doors of his car. His car is very clean inside, like mine but without the fleece on the seat. He turns on his sound system; it is loud and bumpy and makes my insides quiver. I do not like it, but I like not having to walk to the transit station.
The station and the shuttle are both crowded and noisy. It is hard to stay calm and focus enough to read the signs that tell me what ticket to buy and at which gate to stand in line.
CHAPTER EIGHT
It feels very strange to see the campus from the transit station and not the drive and parking lot. Instead of showing my ID tag to the guard at the car entrance, I show it to a guard at the station exit. Most people on this shift are already at work; the guard glares at me before he jerks his head telling me to go through. Wide sidewalks edged with flower beds lead to the administration building. The flowers are orange and yellow with puffy-looking blossoms; the color seems to shimmer in the sunlight. At the administration building, I have to show my ID to another guard.
“Why didn’t you park where you’re supposed to?” he asks. He sounds angry.
“Someone slashed my tires,” I say.
“Bummer,” he says. His face sags; his eyes go back to his desk. I think maybe he is disappointed that he has nothing to be angry about.
“What is the shortest way from here to Building Twenty-one?” I ask.
“Through this building, angle right around the end of Fifteen, then past the fountain with the naked woman on a horse. You can see your parking lot from there.” He does not even look up.
I go through Administration, with its ugly green marble floor and its unpleasantly strong lemon smell, and out again into the bright sun. It is already much hotter than it was earlier. Sunlight glares off the walks. Here there are no flower beds; grass comes right up to the pavement.
I am sweating by the time I get to our building and put my ID in the door lock. I can smell myself. It is not a good smell. Inside the building, it is cool and dim and I can relax. The soft color of the walls, the steady glow of old-fashioned lighting, the nonscent of the cool air — all this soothes me. I go directly to my office and turn the AC fan up to high.
My office machine is on, as usual, with a blinking message icon. I turn on one of the whirlies, and my music — Bach, an orchestral version of “Sheep May Safely Graze” — before bringing up the message:
Call as soon as you arrive. [Signed] Mr. Crenshaw, Extension 2313.
I reach for the office phone, but it buzzes before I can pick it up.
“I told you to call as soon as you got to the office,” Mr. Crenshaw’s voice says.
“I just got here,” I say.
“You checked through the main gate twenty minutes ago,” he says. He sounds very angry. “It shouldn’t take even you twenty minutes to walk that far.”
I should say I am sorry, but I am not sorry. I do not know how long it took me to walk from the gate, and I do not know how fast I could have walked if I had tried to walk faster. It was too hot to hurry. I do not know how much more I could do than what I have done. I feel my neck getting tight and hot.
“I did not stop,” I say.
“And what’s this about a flat tire? Can’t you change a tire? You’re over two hours late.”
“Four tires,” I say. “Someone slashed all four tires.”
“Four! I suppose you reported it to the police,” he says.
“Yes,” I say.
“You could have waited until after work,” he says. “Or called from work.”
“The policeman was there,” I say.
“There? Someone saw your car being vandalized?”
“No—” Against the impatience and anger in his voice I am struggling to interpret his words; they sound farther and farther away, less like meaningful speech. It is hard to think what the right answer is. “The policeman who lives with — in my apartment house. He saw the flat tires. He called in the other policeman. He told me what to do.”
“He should have told you to go to work,” Crenshaw says. “There was no reason for you to hang around. You’ll have to make the time up, you know.”
“I know.” I wonder if he has to make the time up when something delays him. I wonder if he has ever had a flat tire, or four flat tires, on the way to work.
“Be sure you don’t put it down as overtime,” he says, and clicks off. He did not say he was sorry I had four flat tires. That is the conventional thing to say, “too bad” or “how awful,” but although he is normal, he did not say either of those things. Maybe he is not sorry; maybe he has no sympathy to express. I had to learn to say conventional things even when I did not feel them, because that is part of fitting in and learning to get along. Has anyone ever asked Mr. Crenshaw to fit in, to get along?
It would be my lunch hour, though I am behind, needing to make up time. I feel hollow inside; I start for the office kitchenette and realize that I do not have anything for lunch. I must have left it on the counter when I went back to my apartment to file the insurance claim. There is nothing in the refrigerator box with my initials on it. I had emptied it the day before.
We have no food vending machine in our building. Nobody would eat the food and it spoiled, so they took the machine away. The company has a dining hall across the campus, and there is a vending machine in the next building over. The food in those machines is awful. If it is a sandwich, all the parts of the sandwich are mushed together and slimy with mayonnaise or salad dressing. Green stuff, red stuff, meat chopped up with other flavors. Even if I take one apart and scrape the bread clean of mayonnaise, the smell and taste linger and are on whatever meat it is. The sweet things — the doughnuts and rolls — are sticky, leaving disgusting smears on the plastic containers when you take them out. My stomach twists, imagining this.