Suzie

Suzie didn't like the word paranoid. Unless you were referring to Black Sabbath, she took it personally every time someone said it. She always assumed that just because she looked at the world a little differently, perhaps with a bit more scrutiny, that everyone around her thought she was “just being paranoid.” Because she was more observant, and more questioning, she was “just being paranoid.” Because Suzie was innately distrustful of others—because she understood how self-centered and self-absorbed others could be, actually—she was “just being paranoid.”

This was all mainly due to her paranoia, of course, but Suzie preferred to call herself a self-preservationist.

“That's why I'm still alive,” she would say when people used the Bad Word.

Unfortunately, Walter, her loving husband of three-and-a-half years, loved to use the Bad Word.

“Geez, Suz,” he would say while they were out walking Frog along the bike path by Collins Cove, and she would start up with some of her 'theories and observations'. For example, she had seen the guy living in that blue house right over there buying cough syrup at Richdale Convenience twice in the last two weeks, which meant that he operated a meth lab. Or that Mr. McComber over on Pickman Street was a vampire. “Don't you think you're being a bit paranoid?”

And she would remind him of that Nirvana song, the one that went, “Just because you're paranoid, Don't mean they're not after you.” And they would laugh about it, but it would still make her a little mad.

One day, while they were out walking Frog after dinner, the couple noticed a big, yellow truck parked on the side of the road. The word “Hertz” was written in black letters on the side.

“Looks like someone's moving in,” Harold mused.

“Or out,” Suzie mused.

Frog stopped to sniff a patch of grass. Then he peed on it.

“I wonder why it's on this side of the street and not in someone's driveway?”

“Couldn't say, Suz.”

A few days later, when she went out for her run, Suzie saw that the big, yellow truck was still there. She ran past it and down Arbella Street. Of course it's still there, she thought. It takes people more than a couple of days to move...right? Regardless, she was getting one of her feelings. Something wasn't quite right. She turned down Bridge Street. I think I'm going to keep my eye on that truck, Suzie vowed then and there.

It hadn't been moved by that evening. Or the following day. Or the day after. Suzie was now very, very suspicious. “Have you noticed anything suspicious?” she asked Walter that evening while they made dinner. “Out by the Cove?” she added when he just looked at her.

“No. Like what?”

“Like that Hertz truck, Walter. It's still there!”

“So?”

“What do you mean, 'so'? It's still there! Walter, it's been days. Something's not right.”

“Geez, Suz, don't you think you're being a bit paranoid?”

One week later, the big, yellow truck still hadn't moved. Not so much as a parking space.

“Jesus Christ, Walter, come look at this!”

Walter rushed over to the living room window of their second-floor apartment, where she was standing on her tip-toes and tapping on the glass. He expected to see a horrible car accident, or a tree had fallen and crushed someone's car, or the roof of a house. “What, Suz? Oh, no, that goddamn truck again? Wow, that thing's really getting to you, isn't it?”

“Walter, no one rents a truck for that long. How long does it take someone to move in, anyway? Something's wrong. Maybe someone died! Maybe a piece of furniture fell on them.”

“Holy hell, woman—”

“Walter, you need to call someone!”

“I do?”

“Call the police!”

“No way! If you think something's wrong, why don't you call the police? I don't think anything's wrong! There's a truck outside that's been there for a few days.”

“Two weeks, Walter!”

“Really? It's been there for two weeks?”

“Yes!” Suzie glanced down at her feet, embarrassed. “And I can't call the police.”

He remembered. “Oh, that's right. Last time you called them, it was to report the bomb at the elementary school that didn't end up being there.”

“You should've seen that guy, Walter. He was up to something.”

“That's right, he was wearing a turban. Geez, Suz, that was a dooz,” Walter laughed. He rubbed his wide's back affectionately, kissed her, and walked away from the window.

Suzie watched a man on a bicycle stop in front of the truck to adjust his helmet. Then he moved on. A woman walked her dog on the other side of the street. A group of three children walked toward the park on the other side of the Cove, bouncing a ball. She considered for a moment. “Say, Walter...you don't suppose...—”

“That there's a bomb in the back of the Ryder truck?” he correctly guessed. “No.”

“Hertz.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

But the seeds had been sown, and within hours Suzie was thoroughly convinced that there was a bomb on the yellow truck set to blow half of Collins Cove to kingdom come.

Late that night, while Walter was snoring gently beside her, Suzie snuck out of bed, dressed, crept downstairs and into the basement. She rummaged through their storage area until she found what she was looking for. Then, she stepped out for a bit. Just to go for a walk. She was having trouble sleeping, needed to clear her head—at least, that's what she would tell Walter if he discovered she was missing. The light at the intersection of Bridge Street was blinking red, but there were neither cars nor pedestrians to see it. Silence and stillness. Perfect.

Suzie crossed the street and marched toward the shadowy, hulking thing at the intersection of Arbella and Collins, beneath the glow of streetlights. A moment later, she was standing beside it, holding a pair of bolt cutters.

The truck looked cold and menacing at night. She imagined the cab doors opening, shadowy men jumping out to assault her...kidnap her...worse. Maybe the back of the truck was a makeshift torture chamber. By Christ, there was someone sitting on the passenger side! She was looking right at him! A form! A lump!

A microwave, Suzie realized with tremendous relief.

She crept to the back of the truck, eyeing the padlock securing the latch. At least she knew that no one would throw open the back from the inside to grab her. She put her ear up to the door and listened.

No ticking sound. But did there have to be? Maybe the bomb had to be triggered manually, but by remote. Suzie looked around at the houses lining the quiet street. A light was on in one, but the surrounding houses were all dark. She brandished the bolt cutters. Well, it's now or never, she thought.

Walter picked his wife up from Salem Police Station after she was able to convince the nice officers that she really was not at all attempting to break into the back of the Hertz truck. In matter of fact, she was trying to save the neighborhood, and weren't they at all interested in who owned the goddamn truck, anyway?

After listening to her theory about alleged explosives stowed in the rear, one of the officers recognized Suzie from the incident at the elementary school, and decided that, yes, she was harmless. A little paranoid, true, but harmless. “Didn't I tell you that it's a felony to call in false bomb threats?” he warned, and Suzie was thoroughly embarrassed.

Not entirely convinced that there was not a bomb in the back of the ominous truck, of course, but embarrassed.

After that little misadventure, Suzie was implored to never bring up the Hertz truck again. I don't care if it's parked there for the next thirty years. Please, Suz. And she agreed.

Fortunately for both of them, the truck disappeared one week later. Well, it didn't so much disappear as explode. It woke them both out of a sound sleep, and they bolted up in bed.

“Walter!” Suzie cried, her face mashed up against the bedroom window in terrified glee. “Look!”

“I see it! I see it! Geez, Suz, maybe you were right.”

As things turned out, the only explosive that ended up being on board the Hertz truck that night was the gasoline in the fuel tank. Someone threw a Molotov cocktail at the truck, it caught fire, and boom.

“See that, Suz?” Walter said when he read her the article in The Salem News. “Someone else hated that thing just as much as you!”

“Yeah,” Suzie said, but something wasn't quite right. She felt it. There was certainly a chance that the big, yellow truck wasn't targeted, but the first target. Like those dumb kids that steal Hyundai Elantras and go for joyrides because they're so easy to hotwire. “Maybe we should start parking in the garage downtown,” she said.