His name was Cullen or Colin or something like that, and he was a biker. He proved hard to ditch, expressing extreme reluctance to just drop me off on the curb without any arrangements for further contact. I had no phone number to satisfy him, so I promised to meet him in a pub for dinner later that day, though I had no intentions of following through. Maybe that was cold of me. He was just some lonely guy in full mid-life crisis who thought he had found a sympathetic ear, but my own obsessions and priorities called louder.
Through a series of bus maps and passersby I located Ardconnel Terrace on the fringes of the town center, where the residential neighborhoods began to blend with the industrial zone. A zig and a zag, a dash across a busy street and I was there.
It turned out to be a narrow, curving lane, packed cheek by jowl with townhouses, scarcely an alley between them. The other side was bounded by a pit of a fenced and gated private garden that descended down the side of a wooded gully.
Each home was poorly marked, as if the post men had every unit and number consigned to memory. I deduced fairly quickly which home was number six and took a position between a black-painted shed and a row of dumpsters across the street.
I studied the continuous wall of stone and brick, trying to deduce something about the status of their residents. They seemed well kept—nothing crumbling, no peeling paint. Those who lived here were not exactly poor but I couldn’t call them well to do. Toys left on the little stoops and nooks suggested that a fair number of young families lived here. This was not the monstrous lair I had imagined for Edmund and his brood.
Not much happened over the first hour. A few passersby made their way down the walk, but I heard nothing and saw no action from the dwellings themselves. Not surprising, it was a work day after all, and these were working class abodes.
I tried summoning the courage to go up to the door and knock, but I couldn’t get myself to budge. I suppose it made sense to be patient. Karla had a reason for not wanting to be found and I needed to know more about why that was before barging into her life. I hadn’t come all this way to toss away what might be my only opportunity.
My dirty face, greasy, scraggly hair and clown clothes would not make the best impression, to say the least, on whoever it was who opened that door, particularly not the kind of dad who associated cleanliness with godliness.
A police car surprised me when I wasn’t paying attention to the road. I thought for sure the gig was up; that someone had phoned in a report of some lurker, but I lucked out. It kept on motoring down the lane.
And then the door opened. I hunkered down behind a dumpster with an open lid, peeking through the gap between the hinges. A man in a grey tweed suit stepped out. He had piercing eyes and a full and blocky beard with a white skunk strip running down the middle of his chin. There was this hawk-like and feral nineteenth century look about him that reminded me of a PBS show about the abolitionist John Brown, the guy who had tried to lead a slave rebellion before the Civil War.
He dropped a letter in his mail slot and turned to look up and down the street, almost as if he could smell my presence. Even from across the street I could the web of red blotching spreading from his nose, and the weepy, inflamed eyes that were sure signs of an alcoholic.
Instead of going back in, he came down the stoop and strolled up the walk to the bigger street around the corner. He had a weird, lurching gait, more a hitch than a limp, and his hands trembled when he paused. He looked my way more than once. I thought for sure he had spotted me, but he kept on walking, out of sight.
I was huffing like a demon by that point, tingles spreading down my arms, my heart barely contained. Edmund was gone. There was nothing between me and Karla now but a knock on the door.
I scurried out from behind the dumpster, as wary as a rat, trotted up the landing and rapped my knuckles on the red-painted wood. My synapses buzzed with nervous energy as I waited, my head swiveling every which way.
But no one answered. I tried again, and when again there was no response, I retreated off the stoop and started down the walk in the opposite direction that Karla’s dad had taken. There was nothing to be done but maybe getting a cup of coffee and trying again later. I wondered if there was a pub nearby where someone might be able to tell me a little about the Raeths.
I had to keep tugging up my pants as I walked because I didn’t have a belt. I must have looked pretty ridiculous. My own clothes were stuffed in the bottom of my pack, sopping wet. I turned the corner at the end of the lane and looked around for a laundromat. It sure would be nice to have my own clothes clean and dry.
A young woman came my way down the sidewalk, clutching a bag of groceries in both arms. Her clothes were so quaint and conservative, like some villager from Eastern Europe. A plain, dark dress stretched all the way down to her scuffed brown flats. She wore a flowered blouse, buttoned up tight to the hollow of her neck, cuffs fringed with simple lace, baggy sweater that flowed and swung with each step.
I stopped and waited for her to approach, gripped by a paralysis of fascination. A large kerchief restrained shoulder-length hair, wavy and black as coal. A loop of hair swung, screening her face. She stared at the ground, not glancing up, not acknowledging my presence any more than she would a trash bin.
After all my disappointments, this moment seemed impossible. Could it really be?
“K-karla?” I said, her name catching in my throat.
