Treading Lightly
Janine shivered with fear and repulsion as the elevator doors opened to that floor.
“Mr. Franklin?” she called, a slight echo following her words.
Taking a few steps into the sub-basement, she could smell the mold, and hated the look of the rusty, exposed pipes traversing over her head. The ceiling was low, as though the building had already settled or had a mini-collapse, squashing the space originally designed. Was that water she heard dripping? Maybe the pipes had already broken with the pressure of the building that was surely starting to collapse.
The sooner she got out of there, the better. “Are you down here, Mr. Franklin?” She heard the panic in her voice, but was too creeped out to disguise it. Try as she might, she couldn’t stop picturing the rats that were probably scampering around her feet at that very moment. The Black Plague started here, I’m sure.
“May I help you, ma’am?” A young man appeared out of nowhere, scaring her to the point where what little was left of her hair almost stood on end. He wiped his hands on the dirty rag hanging from his shoulder.
“I’m looking for Mr. Franklin.”
“I’m he. I mean him. I’m him. Mr. Franklin.”
She stared at him. “Unless you’ve taken some kind of youth elixir, had hair plugs, and dyed whatever little tufts were already there from gray to black—you’re not Mr. Franklin.”
He laughed. “Oh. You must be referring to my grandfather. Gramps retired to Florida.”
“He did? When did that happen?”
“Eight months ago.”
“Oh.” Shows how observant I am.
“I’m Mr. Franklin, too, but I think that sounds so officious, don’t you? Please, call me Ben.”
“Okay, Ben,” she said, trying to recall if she’d ever heard a maintenance man use the word officious before. She might not acknowledge their presence—or lack thereof—but she did notice their speech patterns and chosen vocabulary. Her job made that a habit and a necessity. “So, Mr. Franklin, I mean, Ben.” She stopped speaking. Something was off, amiss, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. “Wait a minute. Your name is Ben Franklin?”
“Ironic, huh?” His smile was lopsided.
“Well, yes.”
“I’ve yet to invent anything useful, although I’ve spent my lifetime trying to come up with something.”
She felt sorry for him. “Most of the good things are already invented.”
“Don’t I know it,” he said with a huff, looking totally dejected.
“Keep at it, Ben Franklin. You’ll think of something.”
“Thanks.” He grimaced. “It’s a hard name to live up to.”
“I’d imagine so. It must feel like a curse for someone in your line of work.”
“Yeah. Welcome to my world.” His head hung low for about three seconds before snapping up with new life. “So, how can I help you, Miss Uh…”
“Ruvacado. Janine Ruvacado. Fifteen D.”
“Fifteen D.” He thought for a few moments. “Oh, you must be Craig’s mom.”
She smiled. Everyone knew Craig. “Yup. That’s me. Craig’s mom.”
“He’s a great kid. He was one of my first customers when I got here. I changed out some worn skateboard wheels for him.”
Her smile widened. “Yes, his skateboard. He loves that thing.”
“It’s a beauty!”
She’d gotten it for him when the money was still pouring in. It’s a good thing she bought it when she did, because now she couldn’t even afford the replacement parts for it. “Thanks.”
“So what can I do for you, Craig’s mom from Fifteen D?”
“Janine, please. Well, I seem to have broken my treadmill.”
He looked from her left side to her right, then twisted his neck as if peering behind her. “I don’t see it here, so I guess it’s still up in the apartment. Want me to take a look at it?”
“I thought you’d never ask. Your grandfather was a real love. He’d always fix anything that went wrong around here, even if it wasn’t building related.”
“Yeah, Gramps is a fixing wiz. If he can’t fix something, it can’t be fixed.”
She laughed. “Yes, it was his motto. ‘If I can’t fix it, no one can,’ he used to say.”
“Some may take that as being cocky, but with Gramps it was true,” Ben Franklin said seriously.
Biting the smile that wanted to creep across her face, she replied with equal seriousness, “Yes, I know. He fixed many a broken thing for me.”
Ben nodded, solemnly.
They walked to the elevator and Janine sighed with relief as they got in and started for the “surface” floors. Her sigh wasn’t lost on Ben.
“Glad to be out of there?”
“Yes!” Then she realized she might have been rude. “I’m sorry. How did you guess?”
“Besides the look on your face as we entered the elevator?”
“That bad?”
“Well, no. The horrified look on your face for the entire time you were down there might’ve also given it away. And I didn’t think it was because you were alone, in the middle of nowhere, with a stranger.”
“I’m sorry. It’s nothing personal. I just have a fear of basements and sub-basements.”
“Taphephobia?”
“Excuse me?”
“Do you have taphephobia?”
“What’s that?”
“The fear of being buried alive.”
“Oh. No. Not really. I don’t think it’s that bad. I’m not afraid of being buried alive.” Although now that he mentioned it, she was upset by the thought. Being buried alive had to be horrendous. “It’s just a fear of being in basements and sub-basements. I’ve got an overactive imagination.”
He nodded. “I understand.”
She snorted a laugh, trying to push aside the thoughts of a predeath burial. “You’d be the first. Everyone else thinks I’m nuts.”
The elevator stopped at her floor and they got out, walking to her apartment. She pushed open the door that she’d left ajar.
“You really shouldn’t leave your door open like that. Anyone can walk in.”
“So I’ve been told. But I figure, what are the odds of some lunatic walking in the opened door of the fifteenth floor of this building at the exact moment I’m down in the sub-basement, looking for your grandfather?”
“Pretty slim, I’d suppose.”
“Yeah, and it gave me the added incentive to hurry back up from the dungeon. I couldn’t sit around with your grand-dad shooting the breeze. I could honestly say, ‘Gotta run, Mr. Franklin, I left my door open.’”
He followed her through her apartment. “Yeah, Gramps sure can shoot the breeze when he’s in the mood.”
She opened her bedroom door. Normally she wouldn’t allow anyone in there, especially with the mess that was the usual decor, but this was an emergency. She hurried to pick up the stray panties that hung off the lamp. She hadn’t bothered to clean up, assuming old man Franklin would take his time getting his arthritic body up to her apartment. She’d also had the added bonus of knowing his glaucoma-riddled eyes weren’t as sharp as they probably once were.
“So that’s it?” the young Ben Franklin uttered, pointing to the treadmill.
Considering it was the only treadmill in the room, and had the upper bar-thingie poking out perpendicular to the walking belt, she hoped his fixing talents were sharper than his observational gifts.
He was still looking at her for an answer.
“Yes. That would be the one,” she said, trying to remain calm.
He shook his head slowly. “Doesn’t look good,” he said.
“Ya think?” she said, feeling her sense of calm sliding away.
“Yup. Doesn’t look good.”
That’s all he had to say? Even she knew it didn’t look good! Why else would she have gone down to that horrifying dungeon in search of his grandfather?
“So what are you going to do about it?” she asked, trying to leave the challenge—and hysteria—out of her voice.
He shrugged. “Don’t know for certain till I look at it.”
“You are looking at it!” The hysteria was creeping in. She’d promised Harvey she’d walk every day to help fight the osteoporosis, but how could she do that if the damn thing was broken?
“And it doesn’t look good,” he said again.
“We’ve already ascertained that chosen tidbit of information,” she said with impatience. “Is there anything else you can say or do to get it fixed in—” she looked at her bedside clock “—the next half hour?”
“Nope.”
Great! “So what am I supposed to do?”
“About what?”
“My walking. I’m supposed to walk every day for at least a half hour.”
“Sorry, Ms. Ruvacado, but you won’t be doing that on this machine anytime soon.”
“So what am I supposed to do?” she demanded shrilly. At the look of fright on the poor man’s face, she realized she needed to tone it down a bit. “I’m sorry, Ben. I shouldn’t shoot the messenger. But, really, what am I supposed to do now? I have to walk daily, or my doctor will pester me. He’s already threatened to tell my mother and ex-husband to get them involved in making me walk if I didn’t do it voluntarily. Plus I’m afraid that if I stop doing it, even for a few days, I’ll never start doing it again.”
“Can he do that?” Ben asked with astonishment.
“Can who do what?” She was way beyond her frustration level.
“Can your doctor call your mother or your ex-husband like that?”
“Not ethically. But they’re both listed as my emergency contacts, so he figured he’d extort me.”
“I thought a doctor had to take a Hippocratic oath?”
“He must’ve stepped out to the bathroom or something during that part of the ceremony. He has no qualms about blackmailing his patients if he feels it’s in their best interests.”
“That’s not right!”
“Yeah, tell me about it. But he holds the strings, so I’ve got to dance his little dance like a marionette.”
“Or walk his little walk.”
“Yes. You’re catching on to my dilemma.”
“How about a gym?”
“Are you kidding? Do that in public?” Her hand waved at the broken treadmill.
“Sure. Lots of people work out in gyms.”
She looked sideways at him, her disgust clearly evident on her face. “I’m not ‘lots of people.’”
CHAPTER 6
How were people supposed to see that? It was hard enough to hear the damn thing, but to see it, you had to crane your neck at an absurd angle. That’s not mentioning the fact that there were two different channels competing for your attention on each side. A talk show on one, and the morning news on the other.
She could’ve possibly watched one, but couldn’t decide if she should wring her neck to the right and give her full attention and allegiance to the news, or contort her neck to the left to catch the casual, witty repartee of the talk show. Either way, she’d end up deformed for the rest of the day—if not longer—with a stiff neck. Plus, both shows were at equal sound levels, thereby drowning each other out, making either one impossible to hear easily. So instead, she looked straight ahead while miserably listening to the man beside her gasp, huff and grunt.
She wasn’t used to all the added stimuli. It was hard enough for her to do this without having any other action going on around her, taking her attention from the task at hand. Breathing and walking was a complicated enough combination for her to handle. Add the two blaring, competing television sets hovering to her upper right and left sides, the mind-numbing Muzak being piped over the loudspeakers placed strategically around the large room, assorted nubile and robust young forms running around half-naked, and the huffing, panting man beside her who could not be ignored no matter how much she’d tried, and she was on system overload.
Any minute now she was going to blow. Or trip. Both were possible; neither favorable.
She looked over at the man, hoping and praying he wouldn’t keel over based on the sounds he was making. Besides having a man die on the treadmill next to her, the fuss and upheaval that would ensue would be quite annoying. Plus, on top of all this noise, the loud, blaring ambulance siren sure to follow Mr. Locomotion’s collapse would definitely put her over the edge.
She looked at him again, cyclically thinking that his utterances were horrendous and wondering how he could go out in public and make such guttural, almost animalistic sounds. They were disgusting! By animalistic, she was thinking swine, possibly boar. The snorting, gasping, huffing and panting were quite annoying and disturbing.
She was obviously oblivious to her own auditory articulations.
“You okay?” the man asked.
She looked around to see whom he was talking to. Considering no one else was at the bay of treadmills, she assumed he was talking to her. Me? He’s asking if I’m okay? He’s the one who sounds like an angry bull making an obscene phone call. “I’m fine, thanks,” she said haughtily, not wanting to add yet another action—talking—to the breathing and walking she was already juggling.
“You seem angry,” he said succinctly, between gasps.
She knew she walked like a horse, but angry? Why would he think that? And so what if she was? It wasn’t any of his business. And who the hell was he to intrude on her almost spiritual level of clarity and concentration by drawing attention to her clomplike walking style? What did he expect her to do? Tiptoe? Sashay? Undulate provocatively? Do a frigging cat-walk?
He was the one making strange noises she found totally repellent while he was sweating like the fat, bearded lady at the circus, but you didn’t see her telling him about it or drawing his attention to it, did you? No! That’s because she wasn’t like that. She reserved sharing her real thoughts with the people who knew her best. Like her beloved son, or her abhorrent ex-husband, or even her pain-in-the-butt mother. Not some strange, panting man she’d never seen before.
“I’m fine. Thanks,” she said pointedly, hoping to end this exchange. There, conversation closed.
More breathing, more huffing. “You don’t seem fine.”
Who did he think he was? Her mother? Her keeper? Her shrink? Okay, she’d been patient with the man long enough, but now he was starting to tick her off. She waited until her own breath was strong enough to talk before making her response. “Well, I am,” she procalimed, knowing full well she was not fine, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to share it with him—a complete stranger.
But then she heard the words Martin had spit at her during their phone conversation last night. Well, conversation was a pleasant word for what it really was. It was more like a screaming match, but that was neither here nor there. “You have serious trust issues, Janine. I don’t know how I can help you with that. Lord knows I couldn’t help you while we were married, but maybe now that we’re divorced I can prove it to you through actions that people—mankind—can be trusted and believed in. I do think you believe and trust me, but you won’t admit it! In what situations will you trust me with our son? Who knows, Janine. But he is my son too. And I deserve the right to do with him what I’d like to do. Your attempt to stop us from being together is wrong, and will only turn your son away from you. You’ve got problems, Janine. What do I feel is the best way for me to help you? Hell, I don’t know, I’m no expert. But what else can Craig do except eventually walk away from you? Over time, you’ll see that I’m telling you the truth.”
They weren’t the last words of the screaming match, but they certainly led up to them.
“Who the hell do you think you are, Martin? I know you like to think of yourself as the male version of Mother Teresa. But you know what, bud? You’re just a passive-aggressive bastard who uses this new age mumbo jumbo to try to sound as if he’s got things under control. But let’s not forget, little man, I’ve lived with you and know you’re just a sniveling little wuss who wishes he were otherwise! You are not taking my son river rafting, and it is because I don’t trust you to care for him properly. So go have your midlife crisis without involving Craig. And for the record, I’m not stopping you from seeing him. Go right ahead, see him till your eyes bug out, but you are not, Martin, NOT taking him rafting.”
She was reliving the conversation as the man beside her kept making his disgusting sounds. In a way, Martin was right. She did have trust issues. So what? She felt she’d always had them. But to her, it was understandable. Look at her parents, her life, her past. She lived with her past. Always. Maybe it was baggage, but as far as she knew, everyone had their share of baggage. If you were human, and you had lived a few years, you had baggage.
She looked at the panting man beside her. He probably had baggage, too. Sweat was dripping into his eyes, his face was red with exertion, and there were lines of agony on his face. He smiled at her. Or grimaced. She couldn’t tell which, but she thought he might have meant it to be a smile.
She only had the gym pass for a week, while her treadmill was being repaired, and once the damned machine was fixed, she’d be back home in her safe environment where no one could reach her or hurt her. Listen to me! I do have trust issues. Oh hell.
She looked at the man again and saw that he looked harmless. At least he looked harmless to her now. The poor guy was so exhausted he couldn’t swat a flea at this moment. So what could it hurt? He was a complete stranger. Why not tell him? In a week’s time, she’d never see him again.
“I’m sorry,” she said, hoping he’d realize she was apologizing for her rudeness but was a bit breathless at the moment, so she needed to keep things pretty concise. She took a deep inhalation to compensate for the breath she’d used to apologize.
Normally, at home, she’d be in her panties and sports bra, watching her taped programs of Family Feud. It was much harder doing this while fully dressed with no distraction of Richard Karn and the two five-person families from around the country saying completely stupid things. At home, she didn’t have to have a conversation, she just had to occasionally shout at the contestants when she felt like it. Like the other day, she was yelling “No cheese!” repeatedly before muttering to herself that the contestant was a moron. The question had been, “Why wouldn’t a mouse want to live in your house?”
Who the hell, in their right mind, answers “Because it’s a brick house and there are no holes to get in.” What was that lady implying? A wooden house has holes in it for mice to get in? Where was the logic? Janine could possibly understand “I own a cat,” or something else that made some sense as to why a mouse wouldn’t want to live in your house, but “It’s a brick house and there are no holes to get in?” What the hell kind of stupid answer was that? Did the woman live with the three little pigs?
Or how about the guy on the show a few days ago, whose question was “Why would an airplane not take off on time?” She screamed, “the weather, the weather, THE WEATHER” to him. But did he listen? No. He said, “Because it was delayed.” That wasn’t an answer. It was the question! Repeated! She’d been totally disgusted, concluding that that’s the problem with the world today…nobody listens.
She looked over to the sweating, panting man and wondered if he really cared to hear what she had to say, or if he was like everyone else in this world today and didn’t listen. He was still looking at her and was still smiling. Or grimacing. She still couldn’t tell which.
Oh well, what the hell. It wasn’t like she could hear the TV or anything, and she had to do her walking, even if it was in public, or Harvey would call Martin or her mother. Plus, she had to pass the time somehow. “I’ve had a bad couple of weeks,” she blurted out.
At first she didn’t know if he had heard her, because he didn’t answer, but when she stole a sideways glance at him, he smile-grimaced again.
“What happened?” he said between huffs. Apparently he too had trouble breathing while doing this torturous contraption. The only difference was that he was running while she was walking.
Looking at him, measuring whether she should she tell him or not, she let the question war within her head for a while. Should she tell him? Shouldn’t she? On the one hand, why should she? On the other hand, she’d only be there one week, tops, so what difference did it make? Once her treadmill was fixed, she’d be back home again. Alone. At least that’s what Ben Franklin had promised. She’d thought a week to fix the thing seemed an exorbitantly long amount of time, but he’d said something about getting a special part, which might take a while, so what could she do? That’s when she’d called the manager at the closest gym and arranged to do her walking there for a week.
The manger had tried to sell her a full membership, but when she remained adamant that she only wanted to use the treadmill, and that was all she wanted to do at the gym, he gave her a quote for a price that she felt was reasonable, and asked him to put it in writing, saying she’d be there early the next morning to sign it and pay him in advance for the week’s treadmill use.
The manager had laughed when she arrived that morning. “I thought you said you’d be in here early,” he’d said with a teasing gleam in his eye. He was a young man, built like a brick house (no mice getting in there!) with arms like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s.
“This is early!” she’d said as she yawned for emphasis.
“We’re open at four in the morning for the early birds,” he’d said before laughing at her horrified expression. “But this is a better time. It’s much less crowded now. Most people are off to work by now, so it’ll be easier for you to get a treadmill.”
He was right. It was easy. Besides Grunting Red-faced Man, she was the only one interested in the treadmills.
“So, what’s happened these last two weeks,” the heaving, crimson-cheeked man puffed out, drawing her attention back to the present.
She looked at him again, noting his flaccid cheeks bouncing with each step, his thinning wet hair plastered against his scalp, and the sweat pouring from him like Niagara Falls. Oh, what the hell! What could it hurt? “My son’s getting attitude,” she blurted then inhaled. “My agent is ignoring me—” another breath “—my treadmill broke—” another gasp “—I’ve got osteoporosis—” a gulp “my stalker may be back,” another wheeze for breath, “—the IRS thinks I’m cheating them—” some panting “—my mother thinks I’m raising my son wrong—” a small hiss of air “—oh yeah, and I have a bastard of an ex-husband who is trying to make my life a living hell.”
“Wow,” he said, slowing his machine to a walk. “I’d call that a bad couple of weeks! Want to talk about it?” His breath was becoming lass ragged now that he was walking instead of running.
“No. That’s okay.” She breathed. She was still hoofing it at an alarming pace (for her). That was quite typical of her. No warm-up, no cooldown, just jump right in at the maximum speed until she got it done and hit her goal, then stop. It was the way she had done everything her whole life.
She’d like to say that she admired people who warmed up and cooled down as he was doing, but honestly? She didn’t have the time for that. For her, life had always been “get in, do it as fast as you can, and get out.” It’s how she shopped, worked, played, ate and even now, as she’d recently discovered, exercised.
Martin used to say, “There are shades of gray, Janine. Everything’s not always black or white,” but she seemed to see everything as one way or the other. Good or bad. Love it or hate it. Take it or leave it. Black or white. On or off. She’d never been wishy-washy about anything. Anything.
She looked up at the TVs and winced. Talking, walking and breathing were causing enough problems for her; trying to ignore all that noise, when she was used to only one form of stimulation at a time, was really grating on her nerves.
“You want them off?” he said, following her gaze, his breathing now regular since he was cooling down.
“You can do that?”
“What?”
“Shut them off?” she said with amazement.
“Well, sure,” he said with a hearty chuckle.
His deep chuckle unnerved and annoyed her. She hadn’t noticed the deep timbre of his voice before, which might have been because he was gasping, snorting, panting and making other disgusting noises, but now that she’d noticed it, she wasn’t too pleased. She was more comfortable with him when he was offensive and disgusting.