For Whom the Minivan Rolls by JEFFREY COHEN Read Free Book Online

environmentalist, I probably would have had to jettison
the cell phone I was holding next to my ear (hadn’t it been linked
to cancer somehow?).
    “Is it possible that it was Madlyn Beckwirth herself
calling you?” Again, my wife’s amazing capacity to change the
subject served her well.
    “No, it was definitely a male voice on the phone. On
the other hand, since I wouldn’t be able to pick Madlyn out of a
line-up, it’s equally possible I wouldn’t know if she had a voice
like James Earl Jones.” A woman in the Foodtown parking lot was
wrestling with this weird gadget they have that makes you pay
25-cents for a cart, then pays you back when you leave. She shook
the gadget both ways, then hit it with her purse. Clearly, it
wouldn’t give her back her quarter. Finally, she kicked the cart,
yelled something in the store’s direction, and stomped back to her
minivan. Another quarter in the pockets of the Establishment. If
she came back with a pair of channel locks and cut the gadget off,
every citizen of the borough would have applauded.
    I passed the supermarket and crossed the main drag
of Midland Heights, Midland Avenue (original, huh?), against the
light, trotting across the far lane. A guy in a Mercedes-Benz 4x4
honked and gave me the finger as he passed. Probably on his way to
pick up his tuxedo for some mountain climbing.
    “That call really worries me, Aaron,” said Abigail.
“Somebody knows what you’re doing, and they know where you
live.”
    “That’s why I have you to protect me, Love.”
    “Everything’s not a joke, Baby,” she said. “We have
two small children living in our house.”
    I considered pointing out that Ethan is not close to
being a small child, and could in fact take me two out of three
falls, but I saw her point. “I’ll be careful, Honey. And if this
gets out of hand, I’ll tell Harrington he can have the assignment
back.”
    Beckwirth’s house was a block past the library, and
I was approaching it now. “I’ll talk to you later, Abby. Don’t
worry.”
    “What, me worry?” My wife—a regular Alfred E.
Neuman.
    I said a few loving-husband things far too mushy to
record for posterity, put the phone—which was already flashing the
“battery low” signal—back in my pocket, and rang the bell on
Beckwirth’s door. The huge house stood silent, and I half expected
a thin, bald-headed butler with a British accent, to open the door.
Ian Wolfe, maybe. John Gielgud, if it was going to be a big part,
and he was still alive.
    My luck, it was Beckwirth. At least he had shaved,
and was dressed in clean clothes, but he still had that
recovering-addict look in his eyes, and his skin looked like it was
made out of vanilla Turkish Taffy that had melted on the sidewalk.
There was an upside, though. This time he didn’t hug me. You have
to accentuate the positive.
    “Well, Gary, you got me. I’m not sure why you wanted
to so badly, but you got me.”
    “Come in,” he said quickly. I did, and he closed the
door. His mood was not nearly as welcoming as it had been the last
time. Again, I wasn’t complaining, because it seemed there would be
no physical contact on this visit, but now that Beckwirth had
gotten me involved in finding his wife, he didn’t seem to want to
know me anymore. Familiarity, apparently, really does breed
contempt. At least in my case.
    “Sit down,” Beckwirth said, pointing at a loveseat
in the adjoining room, which I guess was a study, or a library, or
a sitting room, or some other kind of a room that people in the
middle class generally don’t have. Maybe if I did find Madlyn, I’d
tell Beckwirth my fee required the moving of one of his mansion’s
extra rooms to my house. I could badly use a separate room for my
office. That morning, I’d stepped on a Working Woman Barbie getting
to my fax machine, and put a permanent dent in my right instep.
    “What’s the matter, Gary? Having me isn’t as
pleasing a thing as wanting me?” Star Trek. Sometimes