Jessica parked her Tesla in the drive. Planning to meet Mike at Luigi’s for drinks after a quick shower and change, she didn’t bother to open the garage. It had been a long but rewarding day. Two major clients had responded to their annual email reminders with automatic renewals. She had expected a flurry of competitive bids and questions on both. The renewals were big enough to earn a smile—a wide smile—from her usually glum supervisor. Even at just two percent, her commission would put her into bonus territory,
She grabbed her laptop, shoulder bag, and Fiji bottle and marched up the walk to the front door. Extending her hand to punch the four-digit code, her fingertips touched solid wood. The keypad was gone. She ran her fingers up and down the red lacquered door in disbelief. There was only the brass circle of an old Yale lock. Glancing left, she noticed the house numbers 1495 were in black and white ceramic tiles, items she’d replaced with designer gold numerals a dozen years ago.
She tapped the spot where the pad should be. This was crazy.
The door opened, and a thirty-ish woman in Capri pants and bouffant hair appeared.
“May I help you?”
“You live here?” Jessica asked.
“Yes. You from Avon? I know we’re getting a new girl.”
A telephone rang loudly in the kitchen.
“Jus a sec. I gotta grab this. Probably my husband.”
The blonde trotted down the hall to the kitchen, picked up a yellow wall phone, and returned with its bulky receiver followed by a curling yellow cord.
“Yes, yes. The TV repair guy fixed it today. And hey, swing by the dry cleaner's. It’s my good dresses, but there’s a coupon in the glove compartment. Shouldn’t be more than two dollars. OK, the Avon girl is here, gotta run.”
She smiled at Jessica, “Sorry, you know how men are. So, are you taking over for Janet?”
“Look, I don’t understand. You live here?”
“Sure. Second family on the block. Wilsons on the corner were first. Bought the model house. Her kids raise hell with their skateboards, but they’re good people.”
Her kids?
“Sybil Wilson?” Jessica asked.
“Oh, you know her?”
“Yes,” Jessica nodded slowly. Sybil Wilson was eighty-six with middle-aged twins.
Skateboards?
“Are you OK? You want to come in?”
Jessica followed the woman into the Swedish modern living room with orange mobiles and pastel wallpaper.
“Are you OK?” the woman asked again.
Jessica looked around the room and into the green and yellow Formica kitchen. Where was her furniture? The bay window she had installed last summer? The hardwood floors? What’s with the wall to wall carpet? In the corner a TV in a massive wooden cabinet was showing black and white Soupy Sales.
“Look, I’m Jessica Van, and this is my house. I bought it over ten years ago. Who are you and how did you move in?”
“Ten years ago? Honey, this house was brand-new in ’62 when we bought it. Do you have the right street? These subdivisions look a lot alike.”
“1495 Grandview.”
“Right, but honey, this our house. We’re the Callaghans. We live here. Look.” She picked up a handbag from the hall table and fished through her wallet. “Look at this.”
She handed Jessica a cardboard New Jersey driver’s license.
“That’s me. Helen Callaghan. This is our address. 1495 Grandview. Look at the date. License was issued almost three years ago. August ’65.”
Jessica dug in her purse. “Well, look I just got an email about my property tax. I have it on my phone.”
“Your phone? You have a telephone in your purse?”
“It’s gone. I had it just now when I pulled up.”
Helen Callaghan looked over Jessica’s shoulder.
“That your car, the blue Falcon?”
“I have a Tesla.”
“Tessy? Honey, looks like a Ford Falcon to me.”
Jessica looked at the sixty-year-old compact sedan in the driveway and nearly dropped her shoulder bag. Across the street a woman who looked like she could be Sybil’s granddaughter was yelling at two boys on skateboards.
“Are you OK? You seem in shock. Like you might pass out,” Helen warned. “You’re white. Maybe you should sit down. My husband’s on his way. He’s a doctor. Let me call the clinic and see if he’s left. I think you need to see someone or get some help, OK? Lemme call and get you a glass of water. You seem lost.”
When Helen returned from the kitchen Jessica Van was gone.
As soon as Ted Callaghan came in from the garage, Helen filled him in.
“It was so strange. She didn’t seem drunk. She wasn’t acting crazy, but she insisted this was her house and she knew Sybil. But when I asked her about her car, she freaked. I went to call you. And then she was gone.”
“You got a good look at her, right? Can you give the police a detailed description? Sounds like a mental case. And she’s driving a blue Falcon?”
“She was gone. I looked, and the car was gone, but I didn’t see her drive off.”
“Well, she could be a missing person. Let’s call it in. But she was otherwise rational and not violent?”
“No. Just like she was in shock. But she said weird things like having a telephone in her purse.”
Callaghan picked up the receiver and dialed the police. “Psychosis, no doubt. Or some breakdown. Someone could be looking for her.”
Jessica nodded. “It could be anything these days.”
Ted noticed the Zap comic his nephew had left on the counter and shook his head. “Everyone is going psycho now.” He dialed the police, gesturing toward the TV showing bearded students burning draft cards. “Sometimes I think the whole world’s on LSD.”
Mark Connelly is an English instructor at Milwaukee Area Technical College. His fiction has appeared in Bristol Noir, Indiana Review, Milwaukee Magazine, Cream City Review, The Ledge, The Great American Literary Magazine, Home Planet News, Change Seven, Light and Dark, 34th Parallel, Mobius Blvd, and Digital Papercut. In 2005 Texas Review Press published his novella Fifteen Minutes, which received the Clay Reynolds Prize.