Fiction Short Story
The Collateral Recovery Business
She has taken back a vintage Pac Man pinball machine, gold teeth, and hair extensions. She has taken back virginity and faith in God. But can she take something back from the shadow of a woman she loved?
The house is squat brick. Two bushes out front that have been trimmed back just fine, a newish looking mailbox. Carole doesn’t see any oil stains on the concrete driveway when her headlights sweep over it. She parks across the street and cuts the engine.
The property she’s supposed to recover at this address doesn’t seem valuable, and Carole wonders why the client who enlisted her for this job is even bothering. Shelling over the $450 Tracking and Recovery Fee for an old t-shirt seems extreme. But at least the possibilities for jokes are endless. And all I got was this lousy t-shirt . . .
This job will be a quick one. Carole has done her research—she knows that the homeowner is asleep in the bedroom at the back of the house by now. She has her slim jim and her flashlight. She has her intuition and—despite her bulky build—her covert, efficient nimbleness and speed. She would prefer a daytime job when the homeowner is away, but it turns out the woman is pretty much a recluse and does not leave her home often. Thankfully, she is also a heavy sleeper. While Carole must admit that she does sometimes enjoy the spike of adrenaline that she gets from riskier jobs, it’s about time for a mundane, straightforward gig. In and out. Grab the lousy t-shirt and then on to the Inventory and Condition Report. Carole will be able to complete the paperwork and get the t-shirt stored in the warehouse behind her house in no time flat. She may even be able to catch some uninspired late night TV before she hits the sack.
But just as she’s about to get out of the car and stalk through the darkness over to the dining room window—the one she has already cased and knows will be easiest to jimmy, smooth as butter—the gap between the heavy drapes widens. The woman who lives there is not asleep after all. Maybe she’s looking at Carole’s car, but it’s too dark to tell. And if she is looking over here, Carole thinks, she won’t be able to see her—there are no streetlights in this part of town. Although the woman’s little house seems tidy enough, this neighborhood most definitely is not the Ritz. Carole unwraps a stick of sugarfree gum. Before chewing, she allows the empty sweetness to sit on her tongue for a very long moment, until she can’t stand it anymore. She chews and stares. The woman is a dark, blotchy shadow framed by some weak light shining from far back in the house. Carole’s mouth goes dry. The gum is rubbery and the taste is gone already. She considers just going up and knocking on the front door. The woman will probably hand over the t-shirt, no problem. Carole has already filed the Repossession Report with the police, and so the woman will have received at least two Repossession Letters by now directly summing up the Reclamation Suit and Procedures.
Carole reaches for the car door handle, but she doesn’t pull. Her throat tightens and the tops of her ears burn. Her eyes are sting-y. It’s an ambush of feeling—sticky, like nostalgia. The hollows behind her knees are hot, and she has to look away from the figure at the curtain. She walks through the straightforward logistics of this particular recovery job in her mind, and then she looks back at the blotch of woman standing there and no matter how much she tries to pummel it away she can’t help but think of her: Noreen. There’s no avoiding it, all of this feeling skimming across the surface of Carole’s skin. The woman looks a lot like Noreen, doesn’t she?
There’s no avoiding it, all of this feeling skimming across the surface of Carole’s skin. The woman looks a lot like Noreen, doesn’t she? Carole has never hesitated on a job before, and she’s had plenty of dangerous opportunities to think about backing out on. That time she had to get the engagement ring back from a woman who had been proposed to only days before. That woman had fingernails like talons, thick and shiny. The 1968 mustang convertible. The houseboat. The woman who hired Carole to track down her husband and take back all the trust she had ever invested in him. Carole found him inebriated in his lover’s bed, and he screamed at her like a banshee while she wrestled his wife’s worn-out trust away from him, as if he had any claim to it at all after what he had done. The shined-up Harley with flashes of fire painted along its sides. The cast iron gas stove, heavier than Hades. The vintage Victrola. The inflated ego. The boob job. That last one was a complicated item to recoup, but you didn’t see Carole think once about backing down throughout the entire tricky ordeal.
Carole looks at the outline in the window, trying to make out the woman’s maybe-hair and her maybe-eyes. That could just maybe be a shadowy version of Noreen, right? Someone who looks a lot like her? Carole feels woozy. What if they are soul doppelgangers or something? What if Carole goes in there and this woman does look a lot like Noreen and the memories become flesh and bone real right there between them? What if Carole takes the t-shirt and the Noreen-looking woman gets all weepy and her life is suddenly ripped apart because of Carole taking away this stupid, inconsequential thing? She spits the tasteless gum into the empty wrapper and places a fresh stick onto her tongue, tries to let it dissolve there forever before chewing. But she chews, and the flavor disappears.
*
The Repossessions Industry is booming right now. Carole is lucky she got into the Collateral Recovery business when she did, establishing a solid client base solely through word of mouth and a couple monthly ads in The Shoppette Gazette . Lately, everyone wants back what they think is theirs. Training programs are popping up everywhere because of the demand. You can get your Recovery Agent Diploma after only a few weeks of online classes. Carole never had any formal training. Recovery Agent School? No thanks. Sounds made up. She has attracted plenty of clients without it. She doesn’t need it. Carole is all instinct. Plus her dad ran a donut shop. She understands business.
Now Carole has six years worth of random junk stored in the warehouse behind her house. You’d be surprised by the number of items that aren’t reclaimed by her clients, even some of the nicer stuff. Mopeds. Mounted moose heads. Inherited family gifts for clairvoyance and money management. Soul mates. So much of it ends up going to auction, ultimately forgotten by the people who hired Carole to track it down and take it back for them. They just wanted the bitterness of having it taken away, not the thing itself.
Noreen used to go “shopping” back in the warehouse. Carole knew what she was doing, but Noreen would pretend to be sneaky. Two or three years ago, not long before Noreen disappeared, Carole came home early in the morning after an all-night job and found Noreen waddling out from the warehouse with something bulky and heavy shoved beneath her tight sweater. After letting herself in through the mudroom, Noreen found Carole in the kitchen, bleary-eyed and staring at the odd shape of her middle. Noreen lifted her sweater—a glimpse of smooth skin—and set her loot on the kitchen table casually. A nice crystal punch bowl and a gaggle of some stranger’s Christmas morning memories tangled together like knotted twine. “The garbage is full,” Noreen said plainly, pointing at the overstuffed trash can. Banana peels and an empty tissue box and a lavender nightgown worn through to translucence spilled out from beneath the lid. “There are a few things that still need to be sorted out for the warehouse,” Carole said, wrestling the trash bag out of the trashcan, wincing as it ripped. “A bit of a backlog.”
Noreen had insisted on helping out with Carole’s business after she started staying with her a few months earlier. She convinced Carole to leave the repossessed items on the wire shelves in the mudroom, all the necessary forms neatly attached. Noreen’s only job was to transfer everything out to the warehouse and file the forms. But she was always so slow. “I’ll get to it,” Noreen said, staring down at her nail beds and leaning against the overflowing sink. Carole’s eyes rested on the flat plane of Noreen’s stomach, the pilled sweater. “I’m just a little behind.”
*
Carole turns on her tiny keychain pen light and roots around the glove compartment. For what, she’s not sure. A forgotten beef jerky? Some stale cigarettes from those couple of years when she smoked? An old Pottery Barn catalog? She’s not used to a stakeout, needing to kill the time. She’s too nervous to look at the figure in the window. She could sit out here until daybreak—her overworked jaw aching as she chews stick after stick of gum—and watch the woman morph into not-Noreen-at-all as the sun rises. Carole slams the glove compartment closed and allows herself a glance. The woman is still there. Maybe she’s sleepwalking. Maybe she’s a ghost.
One time Carole was hired by a frizzy-haired, quiet woman with a stutter to take back her broken heart after a bad breakup. Carole had to bring along an Igloo cooler full of ice on that job. It was more rushed than usual, of course. She was hired by an elderly community theater actress who had bit spots in a couple ABC After School Specials during the early eighties to go back in time and take back the tight, flawless skin from her younger self. She was once hired by a very generous man to take back the guilt that had built up inside the gut of his best friend who had betrayed him years before. Carole has been hired to take back family heirlooms and pets. A man and woman hired her to take back a few of the traits that their son had inherited from them—the full eyebrows and the low, even-keeled voice—because they were no longer proud of him. She has been hired to take back that one night from so many years ago. She has been hired to take back all that time spent, and that college education. When Carole was asked to take back that sweet, sweet baby, away from an abusive home, she felt as if she had been hired by the entire universe.
It would be a lot to sort through if Carole allowed herself to—all of the loaded stories that her clients schlep around. Other Recovery Agents gather at bars and coffee shops or just sit around in each other’s cars after especially complicated jobs to vent. There are even a few formal therapy groups. It’s easy to get wrapped up in the drama of the work and begin to think that all of these stories and problems are now your own somehow—the shattered relationships and the broken things. Carole refuses to allow that to happen to her.
*
Carole sets two sticks of gum on top of her tongue and ticks through all of Noreen’s things in her mind. All the ordinary stuff from that other life that maybe she wishes she could cram into the warehouse behind her house. Carole could catalog all of it, put it up for auction, and let someone else fill their house with nothing things. The tubes of dried up lipstick and the wadded tissues. The pink foam hair rollers that Noreen shed everywhere. The half empty boxes of stale Lucky Charms. The old, dog-eared issues of Popular Mechanics and the plastic coin purses. The pillowy scent that would linger for hours in the bathroom and hallways. All of that stuff is gone now. Carole misses it. Admitting that fact makes her ears ring. She wishes Noreen’s junk still filled her house, layers and layers of detritus that she could slowly peel back from time to time. She misses how sweetly tired Noreen always seemed. While primping her bangs in front of a mirror, while dropping a dish into the overflowing sink, while flipping on the turn signal at a stop sign, she’d yawn until there were tears in her eyes and say, “Not a man in sight.” Her laughter was low and rippled, and it set something tight right in the center of Carole’s stomach. Noreen was beautiful in a tired, spectacular way, and then she was gone.
She wishes Noreen’s junk still filled her house, layers and layers of detritus that she could slowly peel back from time to time. Carole is good at her job. Maybe she isn’t a people person. Maybe she doesn’t smile much at all, and maybe her eyes are not soft. But no matter how tense a situation gets, she stays calm. She’s a problem solver. She can immediately detect when someone is lying. She is perseverant. She is willing to work odd hours. She is okay with the fact that detective work ultimately means deskwork. It’s more paper pushing than glamour or suspense, all of it. The job isn’t as shady or thrilling as some people might think. Carole legally locates and legally comes into possession of the property she is hired to recover. She legally processes it and legally stores it in a secure place. All of it is legal, even the break-ins. Her company—Collateral Carole, Inc.—is bonded and insured. She does have to pay for her own health insurance, but she makes do just fine.
Carole draws her palms along the stiff plastic of the steering wheel and then she finds herself waving at the woman across the street in slow motion. She knows it is too dark for her to see. But still.
She has taken back a vintage Pac Man pinball machine. She has taken back gold teeth and hair extensions. She has taken back virginity and faith in God. She has taken back childhood nightmares. She has taken back family recipes typed up on old, yellowing index cards. She has taken back cracked casserole dishes. She has taken back genetic disorders and poltergeists. You’d think it’s a difficult job, but for Carole it isn’t. She is good at what she does. Her build is solid yet lithe. She has good intuition. Her tracking skills are superb. She’s one of the most talented Skip Tracers in the county and can find anyone who tries to bolt after receiving a Repossession Letter. Here’s the key to the job—choose a good time and avoid confrontation at all costs. Work alone. It’s that simple.
She has taken back a vintage Pac Man pinball machine. She has taken back gold teeth and hair extensions. She has taken back virginity and faith in God. Breathe in and out, she tells herself. Deep, slow breaths. She sucks in little gasps of air instead. She hiccup-breathes and fixates on the Noreen memories that have tied her soul to a chair and feels herself lose control.
The people who hire Carole: Most of them have trouble articulating their own anger and sadness. But that’s okay. Carole doesn’t really listen anyway. It’s not up to her to decide which clients to take on based on their stories. If they have the money, and if the appropriate forms have been filled out and approved, then she’ll do it. It doesn’t matter why they want to take back whatever it is they want to take back. The stories that people try so desperately to tell her, these stories are the impossible ones.
The people who hire Carole: Most of them have trouble articulating their own anger and sadness. But that’s okay. Carole doesn’t really listen anyway. What would Carole take back for herself if she could? From whom? If someone were to ask her such questions, her jaw would set into rigid muscle and her solar plexus would fire blanks. Those kinds of questions are not allowed.
The warehouse behind Carole’s house is really just an old pole barn, the wild patches of bottlebrush and switchgrass that cover her several acres of land threatening to swallow it right up. She’s not even sure how much un-reclaimed junk is crammed in there. Perhaps her one weakness: record keeping. What if she could magically animate all of that stuff and set it free, let it loose onto the bit of property that has been in her family for generations? Maybe the grasses and weeds could thicken and become forest once again. Let all that stuff run free out there and decide who it wants to go back to, which side it wants to take. Or just stay out there roaming free on Carole’s land. She could stare at that—all of those strangers’ stories—from a safe distance, sipping lukewarm coffee on the other side of the picture window. Maybe she wouldn’t need to think about Noreen if she finally allowed herself a peek at someone else’s mess.
*
How did Carole get out of the car? She has been body-snatched. The well-worn routine of her work has pushed her out into the street and here she is up on the stoop of the little, tidy house. She tells herself to focus. In an attempt to cement herself back into the present moment, she pounds her fist against the door. Then she remembers the gum and spits it into one of the neat bushes in a panic, not a moment to spare before the woman who just might look like Noreen opens the door. Carole won’t allow herself to focus on a single feature. Not the nose. Not the chin. Not the eyebrows or the eyeballs. The woman is holding the t-shirt in her hands. She has been waiting for Carole all along. She clutches the shirt like a rescue rope. It’s just a gray V-neck, pithy and worn. Carole is here to take it away. She starts to reach for it but then she places her hand over her stomach instead. It is the longing that hits her hardest. She shifts her weight from one foot to the next, her hand still holding her middle, that old ache.
There has been nothing from Noreen. No phone calls. No postcards. Just those few short months when she was here. Those wide open boring Sundays when the two of them would orbit each other throughout the hallways and the rooms of Carole’s house. Would Noreen even care if someone showed up on her doorstep to take those memories, those few months, away from her? Carole highly doubts it. Her breath falters, because admitting that doubt is something new and something painful.
Carole allows herself to look at the woman’s face. She is so used to seeing explosive drama unfold on the faces of the people she takes things from: flushed cheeks, spittle bubbled up into the corners of lips. But this woman is as cool as a wide, flat stone.
“You can’t have it,” she says.
Carole feels her hands form fists against her thighs. She is afraid that the patience she has been able to exhibit on even the toughest jobs is gone. But then she rubs her hands over her eyes and drags them down her cheeks. She looks straight into the woman’s eyes.
“I’m tired,” Carole sighs. “I need to go home.”
She grasps the threadbare fabric of the shirt between her forefinger and her thumb, and the woman lets go.
