Right On Schedule

After finally ending things with Robert, a financial advisor who reminded her--in both appearance and personality-- of a stick of sugar-free gum, Eliza had packed all her belongings into a rented truck and driven the roughly fifteen hundred miles from Littleton, New Hampshire to Reddington Beach, Florida. She drove all the way through, stopping only to sleep in a rest stop just past the Virginia border and then again in Orlando when biblical sheets of rain made driving on the six-lane highway near impossible. There, she pulled into a roadside stop that advertised a baby gator park, where visitors could feed the infant reptiles, and a gift shop where one could buy gator jerky and leather. Eliza, more perturbed by the rain than the macabre circle-of-life reptile farm, stayed in the truck and waited for the rain to pass.

Once arrived in Reddington Beach, Eliza began the onerous task of unpacking her previous life and trying to make all the pieces fit into her New Life. She wrestled her mattress across the lawn and into the small, tiled house she was renting and sifted through the truck looking for the boxes labeled BEDDING/BEDROOM. When she had finished with her bedroom--the most important room in a house, according to Eliza-- she walked up the street to the convenience store on the corner. There, she purchased two pieces of shriveled pepperoni pizza, one pack of Newports, caramel M&Ms, and the biggest, cheapest bottle of red wine available. She ate the pizza on the walk back to her house, tossing its cardboard container behind a bush, and was about to light a cigarette when she was accosted by a suntanned woman wearing cutoff denim shorts and a sequin bikini top who claimed to be Eliza’s new neighbor. She told Eliza her name was Crystal. Crystal was originally from Idaho but had moved to Florida with her mother when she was only 14 years old, she said to Eliza. They were fleeing Crystal’s stepdad, a real piece of work, really, the kind of guy you need to steer well clear of, seriously, and Crystal had stayed in Florida ever since. Now, at 71 years young, Crystal took care of her 90-year-old mother, who had developed COPD and was recently diagnosed with esophageal cancer-- the result of decades of smoking, drinking and partying, said Crystal shaking her head sadly. Eliza, both a heavy smoker and an alcoholic, noticed the smell of liquor on Crystal’s breath, and judged her heavily for it, conveniently forgetting the 3-liter bottle of wine stuffed into her backpack.

After disentangling herself from Crystal, Eliza promptly filled and drank a pint glass with her gas station wine, and called, in order, her mother, father, and aunt, to let them know yes, she had arrived safely, and yes, she was still happy with her decision to move, of course, she missed them already, and absolutely, let’s talk about a visit soon.

Satisfied that she had fulfilled her filial duty, she decided to leave the rest of the unpacking until tomorrow, and spend the rest of her afternoon in bed, numbing her mind with television and wine. If she shut her bedroom door, she could forget that the rest of the house was in a state somewhere between emptiness and disarray.

Laying in bed, she reached over to her bedside table and pulled out the drawer, blinding rifling through its contents, looking for her tablet. What she found, or rather, happened upon, was a small, black notebook that she was sure wasn’t hers, yet seemed vaguely familiar. She opened it, expecting to recognize Robert’s tidy, boring handwriting, but instead found mostly blank pages. In the middle of the book, she found a page with that day’s date written on the top in elegant cursive. Under the date was detailed a schedule for the day. The schedule read as follows:

March 18th, 2019

4:00 pm Walk 2 miles northwards on beach

4:40 pm Sit on bench (in loving memory of Bill “Tripper” Crawford, beloved friend and father); practice gratitude

4:45 pm Brief beach cleanup

6:30 pm Enjoy gimlet at Rizzaro’s piano bar; tip generously

9:00 pm leave Rizzaro’s, head home (please be on time)

Eliza didn’t care much about clean beaches, didn’t know what a gimlet was, and only ever tipped the compulsory 20 percent. The book obviously wasn’t hers, or Roberts for that matter, and its presence started to unsettle Eliza, and she had half a mind to throw it away, but actually, the idea of a 2-mile beach walk started to seem quite appealing, and so, at 3:43 pm, she located a bathing suit, sundress, and hat, but no beach-appropriate shoes (did she even own sandals?) and walked barefoot the two blocks to the beach access.

By the time she made it to the wide, white beach that separated luxury condos from the Gulf of Mexico, she had almost forgotten about the disconcerting little black book, turned right (which just so happened to be northwards), and began her walk, marching along the beach with gusto. It was an overcast day, and the beach was relatively empty save for a few determined vacationers. After about 30 minutes, she started to feel tired and was pleased to notice a small bench in the distance, perched at the edge of the sand dunes. Next to the bench was a rusted-out trash can. She made her way over to the bench, sat down, and failed to notice the inscription honoring the late Tripper Crawford.

Eliza surveyed the beach, watching pelicans skim the surface of the water. She saw dolphins out in the distance and felt, for the first time in a long while, relatively happy, or perhaps just noticed the absence of frustration and impatience that she usually felt. Eliza was about to begin her trek back to the little tiled house when she noticed, under the bench, a beer can half buried in the sand. Feeling rather generous towards the beach, and disdainful towards the type of person who litters in such close proximity to a trash can, Eliza reached under the beach and pulled the beer can when she noticed something poking out of it. Eliza recognized the sallow green of American money, and eagerly pulled two, crisp hundred dollar bills out of the can before shaking the can, and peering inside with her cell phone's flashlights, because finding $200 on the beach is nice, but $300 or $400 or even $500 would be much better. When she was satisfied that there was no more money to be found, she turned around and headed home, leaving the now empty beer laying can on the sand beside the bench.

When Eliza returned home, she placed her found money neatly in her wallet and took a shower, eager to wash the sand and sunshine off her body. She brought a glass of wine with her into the shower, hoping to stave off the irritation that was creeping over her, as it often did when her buzz was wearing off. She dressed herself and pondered how best to spend her beach money, and couldn’t decide, and thought it might be nice to go to a bar and spend just a little bit of the money on drinks while she kept brainstorming. Having no car, Eliza clambered back into her rented truck, lit a cigarette, and drove up the beach until she saw a small Italian bar and restaurant perched on the edge of the intracoastal waterway. She parked the van on the far edge of the restaurant lot, and made her way through the busy restaurant and into the quiet bar in the back room.

Someone other than Eliza, perhaps someone who cared more about the world around them and spent a little less time drunk, might have noticed that this particular Italian bar and restaurant was also a piano bar, and that the name of the establishment was Rizzaro’s, and that tonight they were offering a happy hour special of two for one gimlets. Eliza noticed none of this, and had effectively forgotten the little black book that had appeared so mysteriously in her home, so, oblivious to the strangeness of it all, she ordered whatever that happy hour special was, settled into her bar stool, and half-listened to the piano players rendition of Can’t Get Enough of Your Love Baby, by Barry White, drinking gimlet after half-priced gimlet.

Just before 9 p.m. Eliza paid her tab with one of the $100 bills, telling the bartender to keep the change, slid off her barstool, and slipped out of the bar. Hours of drinking made her sway and stumbled while she walked back to the large truck, and once back in the driver's seat, she fumbled with the key, finally finding the ignition and pulling out of the parking lot. Turning onto Gulf Boulevard, she lit another cigarette and turned the radio on loud.

Eliza, her mind made soft by the gin, never noticed Ian Pinson, carrying a large briefcase and dressed in a black suit, walking along the side of the road. Ian, too, was drunk, and in a great deal of distress, only in part because his leather shoes were slowly rubbing the skin off his heels. Ian stopped and bent over to adjust his socks, when he lost his balance and stumbled into the road. At this exact moment, Eliza bent down to brush some ash off her seat, and veered slightly to the right, and didn’t see Ian, who was bent over, but felt two large thumps as the wheels of her truck passed over his body. In a dull panic that only alcohol can produce, Eliza stomped on the brakes, swung out of the car, and ran behind the truck, where she found a mangled man that had been, just moments before, Ian Pinson of South Carolina. Eliza, who had never met Ian, did not care that he was dead, but she did care that she had hit him with her car, and in her distress, grabbed his briefcase, and ran back to her truck, hoping that another car would run him over and think they, and not she, had killed him.

Eliza sat on the empty kitchen floor, staring at the briefcase, which she had opened as soon as she got home, and thereby discovered that the briefcase was full of neat stacks of $50 bills amounting to just over $20,000. When she had first opened the briefcase, there was a small black book sitting innocently on top of the money, and the sight of that book brought back the memory of the book she had found in her house, and she suddenly realized she had followed the schedule laid out in the book, and, in a panic, hurried to her room, only to find there was no such book anywhere to be found.

Back in the kitchen, Eliza suspiciously eyed the black book, which she had first laid next to the briefcase, and then had stashed on top of the refrigerator, and then inside the freezer. Now it was laid down carefully next to the money, again. Eliza was rapidly oscillating between fear and giddiness while she considered the more-than-unusual book and what this kind of money could mean for her. Once, she thought of the dead Mr. Pinson, but only briefly. Finally, fear started to ebb away as a tsunami of greed swept over her.

Slowly, Eliza reached for the book, and began to leaf through the pages until she found, in the middle of the book, tomorrow's date, along with a detailed schedule.

The first order of business, written in elegant cursive was as follows:

March 19th, 2019

9:00 am Unload remaining boxes from truck, place inside; wash vehicle; return to rental center on Tyrone BLVD