TAKING CARE OF JOANNIE MADISON

By

R. Ambardar

I picked up the refill on my prescription at Walgreen's and walked out onto Main Street, now enveloped in a thick, dripping haze even as late as it was. The heat and humidity seemed to axe me in the scruff of my neck as a cat would pick up its offspring, but without its goodwill.

I strung a bandana around my neck. It would soak up the perspiration while I took time returning to my apartment. What did I have to return to except loneliness and the dread of insomnia?

There were still a few people sauntering down Main Street. The red light of Embers Bar and Restaurant, a few shops that were still open, and a party store, threw a cautiously welcoming pool of light on the sidewalk. A customer or two are okay, the lights seemed to say. But we're close to quitting time, so vamoose.

It's time to quit, alright. Quit drinking, quit with the meds I'm on. Quit period, and join my twin brother, Bobby wherever people go when they take their own lives.

But tonight, I had an agenda. I waited at the corner of Main and Mulberry knowing this was the route Joannie would take jogging. She told me so at work. Not that there was too much time for talking in between taking clients to see homes registered with us at the McDaniel Real Estate Agency. But I managed to snag her at the water cooler or in the coffee room.

"So how's jogging?", I would say - casually, you know. Don't want her to guess I'm really interested in everything she does. She's short, dark-haired, curvaceous, unlike the leggy women you see on magazine covers. But she's got spunk and it shows in the sprightly way she behaves and talks.

"Great," she says. "The nice thing about jogging at night is that the streets are free -- no traffic. Good way to exercise."

Joannie is a health nut. Wonder what she'd do if she knew I'm on meds for depression.

"Isn't it risky jogging at night?" I was cautious about not appearing too concerned. Didn't want to sound like somebody's nosy old Aunt Edith living alone with a houseful of cats. But I felt a clutch of fear in my chest knowing this eye-catching woman was out cavorting in a tight jogging suit, at a time of night when kooks were on the loose.

Now, the clock tower to the west of the business district chimed eight like a carillon ringing out a tune. Clocks can be musical makes you want to hum right along. And I did.

I saw someone in a dark, figure-hugging jogging suit emerge from the road that runs uphill toward Pizza Haven, open all night, where Joannie moonlighted some nights.

I stepped into the shadow, in between two brick store fronts and watched her approaching, her suit following the contours of her body, her hair tied up off her face, a feral grace in her movements and a nice athletic run.

Joannie, I said under my breath, I'm here to protect you. There was that homicide two months ago. A young woman was found dumped in the lake and they never caught the guy. Could be a serial killer.

I watched fascinated as she approached, an occasional beam of light from a store window shining on her for a few split seconds. She looked straight ahead of her, determination molding her jaw line like a well-sculpted statue. I held my breath and pressed back into the shadows. Just then, a whiff of gardenia drifted toward me. The perfume she usually wore.

Next moment, something fluttered to the ground, but she jogged on unaware of it. I picked it up and stared at it. Then I knew I had to catch up with her.

I started out on a run. I wasn't in the best shape but a couple of times a week at the Atlas Fitness Center had given me a modicum of physical endurance.

Once I used to be a mean sprinter when Bobby and I entered track in high school. Bobby and I were inseparable - we were fraternal twins. We had vowed never to get married and be separated. No telling whether the wives would be friends or not. But Bobby went ahead and got married anyway.

I tried to concentrate on deep breathing. The heat was overpowering. I should have been wearing shorts and a tank top, instead of jeans and T-shirt, but I pressed on regardless toward the flea market, now closed for the night.

In places I broke off into a power walk like I'd seen demonstrated on the ESPN channel, sort of a duck-like waddle, with an exaggerated swing of the arms. Passers-by had thinned out, except for teenagers clinging to one another while buying ice cream cones at the outdoor stand.

I plodded on, thinking, of how as kids, Bobby and I would save our allowance to buy chocolate bars and colored plastic boats to take down to the edge of the lake to sail in fair wind. Then Bobby got married . . .

"You should try it too," he said.

I hadn't seen him this happy, until one day Sue left him. She felt too constrained by his possessiveness; she wanted to play poker at the casino and travel.

Independent women didn't know how to accept a man's devotion with grace. All they thought of was their rights.

The road hollowed out toward the lake in the other direction. How much further was Joannie going? Her footsteps slowed for a few moments as if she sensed someone following her.

She turned around and jogged in place. Then she saw me. I couldn't tell if she recognized me, but I waved and approached her.

"Joannie, wait," I called.

She said nothing for a few moments, appearing to study me. "Ray? Is that you? What are you doing here?" She waved her arms around, breathing heavily. She was in good condition to be able to keep up a run for this long.

"You dropped something," I said, and handed her the $50 bill I'd picked up as she went by.

"Thank you, I didn't even realize I dropped it." She shoved it into the side pocket of her suit. She didn't have headphones slung around her neck as I'd seen on other joggers. "And you followed me all the way to return it? How nice of you."

"I worry about you, Joannie," I said softly, moving closer to her, unable to believe I had caught up with her at last. Now I could reveal to her how much she had been in my thoughts. Her chest rose and fell as she tried to catch her breath, and wisps of dark hair tumbled from her pony tail onto her face. I couldn't stop staring at her, thinking how beautiful she was.

"Why?" she sounded puzzled as if there could be no earthly reason I should be concerned for her, and that hurt me. She should have known I worried about her jogging at night. I had mentioned it to her before.

"Because it isn't safe. I worry about you as I'm sure your folks do as well. There are weirdos about," I said.

"And you are one." She threw back her head and laughed, the wildness of her laughter filling the still night air. There was no one near us, except the fog lifting off the lake like a puma waiting to pounce on its victim.

"Stop it," I said. My voice turned low and menacing, bitter with the pain she was causing me. Just as Sue had hurt Bobby, who would have been alive if it hadn't been for her. "Stop it." I caught her by the shoulders. She barely reached my chin and felt small and supple under my hands.

"Let go of me. How dare you!"

She wriggled out of my grasp and took a few steps backward. "What's the matter with you? I can take care of myself. Now, please leave."

Joannie stood there raving at me. Only the scraping of her shoes as she moved away from me echoed in the night air, black and misty like velvet, thick enough to swallow us both into its yawning gullet.

"You don't understand . . ." I began, hating myself for sounding pathetic and vulnerable. How contemptible I must seem to her!

"Oh yes, I do. You've been following me. You know what? You're the kook - not the ones you say you're protecting me from."

"You just don't understand, do you?" Rage lashed over me, destroying everything in its path like a wildfire -- reason, compassion and self-restraint. I stood there, a hollow shell of what I could have been if it weren't for Joannie's disregard of me. I saw how it must have been for Bobby, how Sue had broken his heart when she left in search of excitement instead of being grateful for his loyalty and devotion. "You women are all alike."

"And how many have you known? Couldn't have been too many," she said with a flint-like laugh.

"What do you mean?"

"You're under psychiatric care. I heard some talk at the office."

I don't know what hit me, but my hands curled around her throat, a slender yielding throat . . .

They questioned a long-haired young man who worked in Pizza Haven. A week ago, somebody had witnessed an argument between him and Joannie. Seems he had been harassing her, following her. I held my breath and waited. After taking care of Joannie, I had removed the $50 bill and shredded it. You couldn't be too careful.

At the office, a few days later, I successfully sold a ranch-style home to a young couple, when Jack, the owner of the real estate agency, walked in.

"We're pleased with that sale you just made, Ray." He pulled out a cigarette and lit it.

"Those things could kill you," I said.

He shrugged. "Live while you can, I always say." He blew a ring of smoke and looked at me. "Poor little Joannie. Who would have thought . . ."

He turned to leave and then returned as if he remembered something. "By the way, there's some new information."

My chest thudded uncomfortably. "Really? What?"

"No details," Jack said, "but seems Joannie always carried around a small voice recorder around her neck on a cord."

"A -- voice recorder? How do you know?"

"The police were here to ask a few questions -- what sort of employee she was -- that kind of thing. They seemed optimistic about some leads."

"What sort of leads?" My mouth felt dry and the question rushed out before I had time to think. Had to watch myself, keep my head and not give things away. What happened was not my fault, after all. I did what I did in self-defense. She had attacked my pride, my very sanity. I couldn't have that. But . . . I couldn't forget how small she felt. Poor Joannie, why did she have to go out like that?

A voice pierced through the fog of my thoughts.

"Ray, are you okay?" Jack turned around and looked at me oddly.

I kicked myself for being so transparent. I could do better than that; my sales record was one of the highest in the agency. I took pride in being good at my job.

"Yes," I replied, keeping my voice flat and matter-of-fact. "Just thinking about my next appointment coming up fast. Er - did they find anything in the recorder?"

"Not sure if it was on or not. They'll know soon.”

The next day I heard the voice recorder turned up nothing and I breathed easier. The serial killer who had struck recently was still at large, and that could make things a little fuzzy for police investigators.

I closed a deal on an expensive lakeside condo to pats on the back from Jack and others in the agency. I returned later than usual to the office that evening. Throwing myself into the demands of my job had driven away demons that tormented me in past months. I blocked Joannie out of my mind as well and finally pulled myself together.

I straightened the brochures on the rack until they stood in colorful geometric designs when Jack walked in.

"Working late?"

"Just winding down and getting ready tp leave." I looked around for my briefcase and saw where I had left it by the door.

Jack came straight to the point. "They found a $50 bill on her person. They'll check for finger prints. Won't be long now. . ."

The room spun around me, and I felt myself being pulled into a vortex at a bottomless pit of a cone.

"Ray, you okay? You haven't been yourself these past few days." Jack came closer, his face shifting like a distorted image in a mirror.

I clenched my fists forcing myself to hold steady until he left.

"You were friends with Joannie. Don't worry, they'll find the cuss who did this." He put his hand on my shoulder and left the room.

Images jammed my mind as I tried to figure out how I could have gone wrong. The paper I had pulled out felt crisp under my fingers. But unnerved as I was seeing her lying there, I grabbed the wrong paper from her side pocket.

They say there's justice beyond one that men mete out ot one another. For me it's not seeing Joannie again.

I spend most of my time at work - it's a type of forgetfulness that blocks the innermost recesses of the mind. I highly recommend it to those who, like me, are treading the fine line between sanity and the brink of total collapse.

* * *

R. Ambardar has published short mystery, mainstream and romantic stories in print and electronic magazines including A Writer's Choice Literary Journal, Futures (Dec 2000), Without a Clue (September 2000), and The Story Teller and received an Honorable Mention from the Writer's Journal in their March/April 1998 Contest for the short story "The Lost Date".