The East End

by Jason Allen

  Heads turned. Andy Sheffield shouted, “Dad!” hurrying over and falling to his knees beside Gina, who held his father in her arms and felt suddenly sober enough to assess the situation and to delegate.

  “I think he’s having a heart attack,” she said, with her hand on Leo’s cheek. “Call an ambulance. And find your mother.” Andy stood up looking stunned, and when he didn’t move right away, Gina yelled, “Call 911! Now!” The music drowned out her voice as it intensified, continuing its climb into a crescendo.

  Most of the guests hadn’t yet noticed Leo’s collapse. But the group of women Gina had been critically analyzing from the lawn had, and were on their way over as Leo’s son raced across the porch and pushed his way through others with their backs to the scene. Gina heard him call out to his mother and watched Sheila turn with a look of annoyance a moment before she heard Andy’s plea. “Is there a doctor here? We need a doctor!” The music stopped. A loud murmur followed.

  Gina held Leo in her arms with her back against the railing spindles and tried to steer him away from panicking by keeping a hand on his face and whispering that everything would be all right, help would be there soon; he would be fine. He didn’t react to her touch, or her words. He merely gazed up at her, his face tight, his eyes wide. She stayed with him, cradling him like that until Tiffany asked to take her place.

  Gina stepped aside, and was five or ten steps removed from the horde of socialites and the grown Sheffield children huddled around her boss when the strands of lights seemed to bulge, twinkling from post to post and all along the railing, the bodies of the bystanders morphing to fit her doubling vision and then her fish-eye-lens point of view. Her head lolled to the side as she knelt and picked up the torn scrap of cloth that Leo had dropped. It took her a second to realize why the pattern and material seemed so familiar—it was a dirty, ragged corner of one of the blankets from the Sheffields’ master bedroom. She turned toward the lake, thoroughly confused as to how the dog had this in her mouth in the first place, but also why it seemed to terrify Leo. Then she recalled how Leo’s friend had been wrapped in the woods, wrapped in the blanket from upstairs.

  She looked over at Leo in Tiffany’s arms, surrounded by worried guests and his two sons. Nothing about these past few days made any sense, and if he died tonight it would make even less sense to continue working here. With her elbows on the porch rail and the swatch from the blanket in her hand, Gina slid into a deeply reflective spell, recalling a montage of moments at this estate during the past twelve years. If he died tonight, this life she’d known for so long would end. If he died tonight, who would be the unlucky one to discover the man Leo had laid out in the woods?

  Sometime later, the ambulance arrived. The flurry of emergency medical technicians on the porch pulled Gina back to the present, and the first thing she fixated on was that Sheila appeared incredibly calm—businesslike rather than distraught in her chitchat with fretful guests. A minute or two passed before Gina reached her breaking point, so sickened when she heard Sheila tell the musicians to continue playing—after it seemed Leo would live—that she muttered something caustic enough to make the woman to her right gasp. And worse, when one of the cellists held his bow at his side and expressed concern, pointing out the obvious fact that Leo was still being seen to by the paramedics, Sheila went so far as to threaten not paying them if they didn’t cue back up.

  Once the music started again, Gina grabbed the arm of a man standing beside her, unable to keep her criticism of Sheila to herself. “You believe that shit? What a heartless bitch.”

  “Are you sure it’s a good idea to speak that way about your employer?” the aging James Bond–type asked.

  Gina shut one eye to see him more clearly. “You’re all disgusting,” she said.

  “Pardon me?”

  “Exactly, thank you for asking. I hereby pardon you, sir.”

  The man walked off right when a waiter came by with a tray of champagne glasses, and Gina clamped her phone under her armpit, taking two glasses before whirling around with one in each hand. She squinted at the man she’d just spoken to, who’d sought out Sheila. Both looked at her like some sort of circus oddity, Sheila shaking her head, the 007 impersonator nodding with a sympathetic expression. Meanwhile, with Vivaldi playing, Tiffany, Andy and Clay rose from their knees a few feet from their father, Tiffany looking especially terrified while the paramedics finished prepping him on the gurney and a path cleared.

  Gina gulped down the champagne in her right hand and then the champagne in her left, and dropped the empty glasses onto the lawn, unconcerned whether Sheila was still watching. Then she backpedaled out of the way and stood on the grass, barely breathing while the paramedics carried Leo past her to the ambulance. The orchestra played on as she wandered behind the procession of onlookers, and once she reached the wide parking area she squinted through the blur and saw Corey and Angelique getting into his pickup. She couldn’t navigate the field of beautiful people fast enough to reach him before the ambulance pulled away and he tailed closely behind. Guests kept getting in her way, asking if she knew what had happened to Leo, and she kept shrugging, answering that she didn’t know, finally pushing Barbara with the Jackie O glasses to the side, feeling that she needed to get to Corey now—or else something terrible might happen.

  Intending to run, she jogged along the edge of the driveway in a spacey zigzag, while the Sheffield kids and many of the guests moved in the same direction, like the best-dressed herd imaginable, as though they’d all been lassoed and tugged by the ambulance heading toward the gates. She curled off and faced the lawn sculptures, thinking she should call Maryanne. She’d had a few drinks during these long shifts at work in years past, but she’d never been anywhere near this drunk, and definitely never so strung out. She opened her phone and saw that Maryanne had been one of her missed calls. In full relapse, she couldn’t work up the courage to call her back.

  The ambulance pulled through the gates and set its siren blaring, Corey tailgating the flashing lights to the road. Gina remembered why she’d wandered out this far and resumed jogging along the driveway rocks with uneven steps, yelling at his rear bumper, but way too late. Corey was gone. She reached the gates just after they closed, gripped the bars and hung her head, staring at her shoes, listening to the siren fade. Then her phone buzzed, alerting her that she had a new text. Blinking wildly until she could see clearly, she assumed it would be from Maryanne—but instead, the message had come from Ray.

  What’s with the ambulance?

  Huh? What the hell was he talking about?

  Another text came through.

  U look tired. Nice dress tho.

  Gina angled her head to look from side to side through the bars.

  Yeah I see U.

  She stepped back.

  C what happens when U don’t answer my calls.

  Her throat constricted. She couldn’t get enough air. He was out there somewhere in the shadows. She hadn’t had time to go to the police to get the restraining order yet. She turned to find that everyone who’d followed the ambulance had already made their way back to the house, the emptiness of the lawn making it even harder to breathe. She took a few quick steps away from the gates, her ankles bending on the driveway stones as she imagined her head centered in crosshairs. Running now, another text sent vibrations into her hand. Then another. As soon as she read them, she wished she hadn’t.

  U can run

  but U can’t hide.

  SUNDAY

  TWENTY-NINE

  Despite Leo’s medical drama, on Sheila’s insistence, all the guests who’d been invited to stay for the full weekend still occupied the estate the following morning. As it turned out, Leo hadn’t actually had a heart attack. The ER doctor’s best guess had been that he’d had an anxiety attack, possibly some residual dizziness from the head wound and the concussion he’d sustained Thursday night. But after his vitals
were monitored for twelve hours, nothing out of the ordinary appeared to be going on with either his heart or his brain. Aside from giving him a prescription for Valium and strongly recommending bed rest for the remainder of the holiday, the doctor released Leo into his wife’s care.

  Their short car ride home passed with only a few terse words spoken, mostly by Sheila, about half of which focused on the “Gina situation.” As soon as they were upstairs and she’d watched him settle into bed, Sheila turned to the doorway, where Corey stood awaiting instructions, and told her husband, “Gina’s son can take care of you for now.” Looking from one face to the other, she added, “And for the rest of the day you two are going to work together to ensure that Leo doesn’t have any more accidents. Can we agree on this?”

  Leo made eye contact with Corey and raised an eyebrow. “Looks like you’re stuck with me for a while.”

  Corey looked either stoned or badly in need of sleep. His eyes were bloodshot, his eyelids heavy, and he kept shifting his weight from one foot to the other. He held his hands clasped at his waist, fidgeting with the bottom of his T-shirt.

  “I’ll get you whatever you need, Mr. Sheffield,” he said. “Everyone’s just glad you’re all right.”

  “You’re a good man, Corey. We’re lucky to have you and your mom here.”

  Sheila glared at him with folded arms. She wanted to fire Gina, but Leo hadn’t equivocated at all before he said no, and then said it again, much louder, for good measure. So now, on top of the crazy logistics he needed to sort through to stay out of prison, his wife was royally pissed at him. A point she emphasized on her way out of the room with Corey in tow, as she spoke to Leo like a child: “Since you didn’t eat breakfast, I’ll have him bring something up from the kitchen. Don’t even think about moving from that bed.”

  Gina appeared in the doorway just after Sheila led Corey out, with the portable home phone pressed against her stomach, her eyes down. “Sorry to bother you, Mr. Sheffield,” she said, glancing over her shoulder as she stepped into the room. “You have a phone call.”

  “Take a message, please.”

  She looked back into the hallway and moved closer to the bed, her hand pressed tightly over the phone receiver when she leaned down to whisper, “It’s a detective, the one who called your cell. I tried to explain that you haven’t been well and are in bed, but he’s pressing.”

  Leo squinted at her, feeling cornered, trapped in the bed. “What exactly did he say?”

  She looked over at the doorway once more and then back. “Everything, I guess. More than you told me when I found you in the woods, anyway.”

  “Jesus,” Leo whispered, “just tell me what the fuck he said.”

  Gina glared at him. “He said a man named Henry Beauchamp had been released from the hospital a week ago and is missing. His mother asked him to check in with her once a day but she hasn’t heard from him since Monday. He’s not at his apartment, and the last she knew he was excited about coming out here for the weekend. The detective wants to know if you’ve seen him—after he asked me if I’ve seen him. He said he called twice already and left messages, and if you don’t get on the line now he’ll have to make the drive out from the city tomorrow.”

  They stared at one another until Gina added, “Just talk to him.”

  Leo tilted his head back and released the longest sigh of his life. “I’m sleeping. Try to make him understand that I’m not well. Take his number and tell him I’ll call back later.”

  “What if he doesn’t wait and decides to drive out today?”

  “Please, I can’t deal with any more hypotheticals. I need to think. Take a message. Say I’ll call him back later today.”

  Gina stared for what was probably only a few seconds, but for Leo it seemed she’d held him underwater for a full minute by the time she spoke.

  “Alright,” she said, and continued staring as she uncovered the receiver and placed the phone to her mouth. “Yes, hello? I’m sorry to make you wait so long. Yes, he’s sleeping now but should be awake in the next few hours.” She turned and gave Leo another hard stare on her way out, her voice fading as he sat up straighter to hear. “Of course,” she said, “let me just get a pen...”

  Leo shoved the blanket aside and swung his legs over. He set his feet on the floor, his eyes focused on the Impressionist-era countryside painting in front of the wall safe. He had a quarter mil locked in there...nowhere near the full amount he’d promised Angelique. He could run off right now without a word to anyone, take the cash, his passport, the bank codes in the Caymans, call for a car to pick him up and head straight to the airport. The painting’s porch-fronted cottage and pastoral grasses pulled him in. The peaceful scene suddenly terrified him. He’d hardly even noticed it hanging there for all these years, and definitely had never thought about how the cottage exposed in all that wide-open space evoked a sense of loneliness, vulnerability, or how the windswept grasses held so much anxiety in their stems.

  He looked closer at the cottage’s dilapidated porch rails and its rickety wooden door. That’s what it all came down to—trapped there in the sun-drenched slats and posts, in their rough texture, Leo felt what the artist must have felt, imagined him speaking from the other side of the closed cottage door. Stuck inside, sick with loneliness, the painter had been crippled by his fear of the outside world but also too afraid of death to end it all. And because of this fear he’d lived day after day imprisoned in his own home, separated from the sunlight.

  Leo had never paid much mind to the art Sheila had selected for the summerhouse, and sure as hell had never bothered to appreciate this one. It had always served a simple purpose—to hide his reinforced steel vault, where the gold watch he’d given to Henry now lay locked behind tumblers and dials. His safe, where a copy of his most recently amended will also was housed, along with the boxes of nine-millimeter bullets and—of course—his gun. If he didn’t figure out how to move Henry soon, if some miraculous solution didn’t come to pass, the money in there wouldn’t matter. The gun would be his reason to turn the dials. The only thing left to reach for.

  THIRTY

  With the bedroom door closed, Corey spent the next half hour on a chair in the corner making small talk, while Leo Sheffield sat in bed with a fresh bandage on the back of his head, nibbling on cheese and crackers and spooning chicken barley soup into his mouth. Eventually, he asked about the boy’s plans now that he’d graduated high school.

  “I was thinking of enrolling in clown college,” Corey said. “I hear there’s always a need for more good clowns.”

  Mr. Sheffield grinned and brought his napkin up to wipe the soup dribbling from his chin.

  “I didn’t expect you to say something funny when I had my mouth full.”

  “Sorry about that, sir.”

  “No, not at all. I think I needed that. I haven’t even cracked a smile since Thursday night. You heard about my little accident Thursday night, right?”

  He lowered his spoon and set the food tray to the side.

  “I’m finished with this,” he said, which Corey assumed meant he should come over and take it away, so he stood up and took a step closer. “No, leave it,” Leo said. “I mean I’m finished with this little game we’ve been playing.”

  Corey’s heart began beating way too fast. “I’m not sure what you mean, sir.”

  “I was out on the balcony here yesterday and saw you and Angelique in the garden. The view from up here is really quite something. And then I recalled seeing you two together a few other times, and it all started to make sense.” He eased the blanket from his legs, swiveled off the bed and pushed his bare feet into his slippers. “So how long have you two been together? You are dating, aren’t you?”

  “It’s recent, I guess. Really recent.”

  “I’ve been dying to know something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “What exac
tly did you hit me with?”

  Corey tried to swallow but it felt as though a rock had suddenly wedged in his throat. He stammered, “I—uh, I don’t know what you’re—”

  “Relax, son. You really brained me, and gave me the worst fucking headache of my life, but I admit I had it coming.”

  The silence hung between them like smoke in a windowless room, each second an eternity.

  “Yeah,” Corey finally said, his face filling with heat. “You did.”

  “You think you love her, don’t you?”

  “Maybe, so what.”

  “Jesus, I bet you do. You two are so goddamn young. That’s good, though.” He paused, his face scrunched in a way that had Corey wondering if he was about to laugh or cry. “We should all be so lucky... To find love.”

  “You all right, Mr. Sheffield?”

  “In most ways I can’t really answer yes to that. But physically, yes. I’m fine.”

  “Maybe you’d rather I left you alone so you can sleep.”

  “He told me he loved me, but I never said it back.”

  “Sorry, what?”

  “Henry, the young man from the pool—” Leo pointed in the direction of the pines. “You’re the one Angelique said took photos, right? And you probably saw where he is now, too, thanks to that damn dog.”

  Corey looked at him, unsure if he should respond.

  “Maybe I did love him,” Leo said, pausing to breathe deeply. “But even if I didn’t, I cared about him, so why couldn’t I just say it? I mean, really, would it have killed me to give him what he wanted?”

  “I don’t—”

  “The thing about regrets, Corey—it’s much better to regret something you have done than something you haven’t done. Remember that. My biggest regret is not telling Henry that I loved him before he died. Didn’t matter if it was true. For his sake, I should have given him that. I keep going over it and over it, whether he’d still be alive if I’d said it.”