by Carter
“Oh, that’s a relief. So the miscarriage … ?”
“I had an abortion. It was actually—actually twelve weeks, not ten. I knew it was his. I thought, you know, we wanted to have a baby so much … But I just couldn’t. It wasn’t yours. Ours. I couldn’t.”
“I see.”
“I never even told Greg about it. Until later.”
“That’s supposed to make me feel better?”
She was crying now, silent tears streaking that alabaster skin of hers, but this time I felt no desire to comfort her. I steeled myself to ask the question I’d been pondering all the way back from the mountain.
“Did you two plot to kill me?” I asked.
She whirled around and finally looked at me. “No! It wasn’t like that!”
“Then what was it like, Billie?”
“Somehow—somehow Greg, I mean Tony … He found out about your life-insurance policy. He arranged that whole thing at Starbucks. I didn’t know about it until after it happened. Not at first, either. When I saw you in the hospital that first time, I had … I hated myself. I hated everything I’d done. Tony tried to come around, and I told him I never wanted to see him again. He gave me some space, but when the weeks passed and you still weren’t … you weren’t getting any better …”
“Oh, God! I was in a coma and you slept with him again?”
“Myron—”
“Jesus!”
I was shouting. Alarmed, the woman across the park gathered up her kids and hustled them to the exit. The man, lingering after them, looked at me coldly. I didn’t care. I didn’t care if anyone heard, dead or alive.
“I can’t believe this!” I cried.
“I know,” Billie said, her voice retreating to a whisper even as mine grew in volume. “I’m horrible. I know how horrible I am.”
“But he killed you anyway?”
“He started … He started saying how much he wanted to take care of me. He wanted to marry me. Then he started saying some strange things about how you—if somebody should, you know, put you out of your misery. That it would be a kind thing, if I just found a way to pull the plug. He said if it was done quietly, that doctors will sometimes do this, then the life-insurance money would take care of me. And then I kind of figured it out. He’d shot you so I’d get the money. He didn’t plan on you living. I—I confronted him. He denied it, but I could tell by the look in his eyes that it was true. I told him—I told him I was going to the police. I was going to tell them everything.”
It all made sense now, in a terrible, twisted sort of way. “So he killed you and staged it as a suicide.”
She nodded.
“He should have just pulled the plug on me himself,” I said bitterly.
“I thought about that. I’ve had a lot of time to think about it, over the years. I think he must have thought it was too risky. And that if there was foul play, the insurance company may not pay out.”
“Smart guy, that Tony. Or Greg. Or let’s just call him your boyfriend, to keep it straight.”
“Please, Myron. Please don’t.”
“Don’t what, Billie? Be mad? You had an affair with a man who shot me, the man who made me the way I am, and you let me live with a lie that last five years when you knew the truth. Don’t you think I should be, I don’t know, an itsty-bitsy teeny-weeny bit mad about that? Don’t you think?”
She bowed her head. We sat like that for a time, me fuming, her limp and defeated, the morning sun slowly creeping into the park, glinting off the slide, turning the moss on the church’s stone walls from black to green. My fingers, gripping the bench’s side rail, were numb. A cool breeze brushed against my neck. A morning bus grumbled and screeched its way down the street.
“I’m very sorry,” Billie whispered.
“Well, that’s good,” I said.
“You’ll never know how sorry. I just … I wish I could take it all back.”
I snorted a laugh. “Me too.”
“I—I don’t expect you could ever … forgive me. So I’m not—I’m not going to ask. I just want you to know how sorry I am. And how much I love you. I don’t know if you’ll ever believe it again, but I never stopped loving you.”
Her voice broke on the last words. I couldn’t look at her. If I looked at her, I might cry, and I was not going to let myself cry. I was too mad to cry. A couple of cowboys, spurs clanging on the sidewalk, strutted by us, so cocky and sure of themselves that I wanted to shout at them. I wanted to make sure they knew they were dead. They were dead and gone and there was nothing they could do about it.
“I thought up an ending to my story,” Billie said.
“What story?”
“You know, the one I told you when you first got your office. The one about—about the princess who did the terrible things.”
I sat in silence. I remembered it, though I wasn’t really in the mood for a story. I was more in the mood for punching a stone wall.
“You see,” Billie said, her voice scratchy and weak, “that princess … When she figured it out, when she knew that if she kissed the prince, all those terrible things she’d done would pass to him, she couldn’t do it. She knew he might stay with her anyway, but she also knew he would never again see her the way he did as he leaned in for that kiss. And the worst part was, she’d never know. That was what really stopped her. She’d see that things were different in his eyes, but she wouldn’t know why. So she didn’t kiss him.”
“How tragic,” I said, not even trying to hide my sarcasm.
“That’s not the end. You see, he wouldn’t—he wouldn’t take no for an answer. He said he’d stay with her anyway. Not knowing how else to scare him away, she went ahead and told him all the awful things she’d done. All the people she’d hurt. And as she feared, she watched the love seep from his eyes. But even then, he wouldn’t leave. So she did the only thing she could.”
“And what was that?”
“She left.”
As these words hung in the air, I felt the panic return, a terrible clench of panic mixed with the most profound sadness I’d ever known. It was as if a pit had opened in the ground beneath me, swallowing me whole. I knew, then, why Billie was wearing those clothes.
“It was the only way,” Billie said. “It was the only … It was the only way to make him move on with his life.”
“No,” I said.
“If the princess left, then the prince … he could find a new princess.”
“It doesn’t have to be like that.”
“He could make a new start. He could—he could find the love he really deserved.”
“Billie,” I said.
She rose from the swing, straightening her hat, her back to me. I stood. We were still alone in the park, but Portland was coming to life now, the rumble of traffic reaching us over the rooftops, kids carrying backpacks on their way to school, a garbage truck beeping and groaning on its daily route. The city was indifferent to our little plight. Neither the living nor the dead cared.
“Where—where will you—” I began.
“I don’t know,” she said. “South America, maybe. Or maybe Africa. I’d like to see something new.”
I saw her wipe at her face, then she turned and faced me, straightening her back, putting on a stoic front even as her eyes were red and her face flushed. There was an instant, no more than a flicker, when I thought I caught a glimpse of the stone wall behind her, one of those fleeting moments when I could tell. She was there and she wasn’t. She was my Billie, my wife, my lover and confidant. She was the woman who’d said yes and the woman who’d betrayed me. She was everything to me, everything I’d ever loved or wanted in a woman, but some part of me knew she wasn’t there at all.
“Goodbye, Myron Vale,” she said. “Thank you for loving me.”
“Wait,” I said.
“Myron—”
“I thought of a different ending,” I said. “To your story. I think—I think you’ll like it.”
She waited, eyes watery, pupils dark.
>
“This princess,” I said, “she told the prince all the terrible things she’d done. You’re right about that. And the prince, he was angry. He’d never been so angry. He didn’t understand why she would do what she did. But … but he still didn’t want her to go. He thought maybe they could fix it, somehow.” My throat was growing tight, but I pressed on anyway. “He didn’t know how he could—how he could survive without her anymore. He said, if she stayed, maybe they could get through it. And if they got through it, what they had, maybe it would be better. It would be better because it would be true. It would be true.”
“Oh, Myron,” Billie said.
“And the princess stayed. And things got better. And they—they lived happily ever after.”
Billie, blinking away her tears, regarded me with admiration or pity, I could not tell. The wound of her betrayal still burned within me, but I forced it from my mind. I told myself I was strong enough to get past it. I needed her too much to let her go. She stepped closer, inches away, and reached up and brushed her hand down the side of my face. I thought I felt the slightest caress of her touch, but it may have all been in my mind. Of course it was all in my mind.
“I like your ending better,” she said, tilting her head back and rising onto her tiptoes.
“I’m glad,” I said.
“Close your eyes.”
I did. As she leaned in, I felt her warm breath on my lips, and I could not believe the sensation was not real. I felt the heat of her body close to my own. Why could my mind sense these things but not her touch? My hands started to rise, to embrace her, but I kept them at bay, wanting to live with the illusion just a little while longer.
“You forgot one thing,” she said softly.
“What’s that?”
“For the rest of time, she could never kiss him.”
When I opened my eyes, Billie was gone.
Chapter 28
After one last admiring look at the empty office—as shabby as it was, there was something so official about having an office that I couldn’t help but feel a little pride—I locked up and headed down to the street. The sidewalks were packed with the usual crowd, old and young, present and past, everybody’s breaths misting in the frigid air. A woman in a bikini rolled by on roller skates. Had to love that. Across the way, a homeless man sitting on the steps of the facing building was playing “Silent Night” on a harmonica.
I buttoned my jacket, shoved my hands in my pocket, and leaned against the brick facade. What could I do, but wait for Billie? I’d spent so much of my life waiting for her, even in the old days, that I didn’t even get frustrated by it anymore. It was just part of life. Like the rising of the sun in the morning. Or my father’s fading memory. Or ghosts.
I’d been waiting a while when I spotted that Elvis guy through the crowd, the one working a hot-dog stand. I wandered over to him, leaning against a USA Today stand and watching him work. He really enjoyed it, I could tell. When there were no customers, he smiled and gave me a friendly wave, no trepidation in it at all. Cautiously, I approached him.
“You know what I can do?” I muttered, quiet enough that nobody else alive would be able to hear.
“You bet, pardner,” he said. “Word’s already gotten around.”
“You’re not afraid of me?
“Hell no. I ain’t afraid of nothing—except Priscilla back when she was chasing me with a frying pan.”
“So you’re the real deal, huh?”
“If said I wasn’t, would it matter?”
“I guess not.”
Grinning, he rotated one of his hot dogs. I could hear them sizzle and smell the grease, my stomach grumbling at it all. I hadn’t had breakfast yet.
“A man is what he believes he is,” Elvis said. “What other people believe—well, that’s like the audience at a live show. They matter, sure they do, without them there ain’t no reason for a show at all, but they ain’t the one doing the singing.” He lifted a hot dog with his metal tongs. “Want one?”
“Wish I could,” I said.
“Ah, right. So why you moping around here all hangdog? Afraid Santa ain’t coming for Christmas?”
“I’m just waiting for my wife. She should be back in a minute.”
“I see. Well, I know all about waiting on the missus. You can wait here with me anytime you want, pal. Always happy to keep you company. What you doing in these parts, anyway?”
“Renting that office,” I said, nodding toward the building.
“Yeah? What’s your line?”
I sighed. “Private investigator.”
“Sounds like a good fit, from what I hear. You don’t sound too happy about it, though.”
“Just getting used to the idea, I guess.”
A little blond girl with a red rash spotting her face stopped to get a hot dog. Elvis served it up with a smile, and the way he moved, it was just like he was on stage. As heavy and out of shape as he appeared, he still had a grace to his movements I never would. When the girl was gone, he motioned for me to come a little closer. A businessman getting a newspaper out of the stand was gawking at me, but I leaned in anyway.
“Yeah?” I said.
“Want to know the secret of happiness?”
“Sure.”
“Two things,” he said. “First, find something you’re good at and do it as much as you can. And even more important, find somebody to love who will love you back.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it, pardner.”
“That doesn’t sound too hard,” I said.
He smiled in that hound-dog way of his, both coy and knowing, full charm and tease, his eyes revealing a man who’d witnessed both the best and worst that life had to offer.
“It’s not hard at all,” he said. “It’s real easy. In fact, it’s so easy that just about everybody manages to screw it up.”
Chapter 29
I was in my office when Alesha called. Feet up, cup of eggnog spiced with cinnamon and brandy perched on my lap, I watched the cell phone vibrating on my desk, the screen glowing her name.
The room was dark except for the phone and my monitor’s screen saver of dancing green lines. Other than the faint hum of the computer’s fan and the muted hubbub of a party down the hall at the Higher Plane Church of Spiritual Transcendence, my office was an oasis of silence. Even outside, Burnside was strangely quiet for New Year’s Eve. Though in a way it made sense, since at fifteen minutes to midnight, most people were already where they wanted to celebrate.
Even me. I was where I wanted to be—alone.
It was the third time Alesha had called in the last two hours. I knew what she wanted. Last week, she’d invited me a New Year’s Eve thing at a girlfriend’s place, and in a moment of weakness, I’d said maybe instead of no. She took that as a yes and asked me when I wanted her to pick me up. To get her off my back, I told her I’d meet her there. Hence the phone calls.
When the cell stopped ringing, I took a sip of the eggnog and turned back to the monitor. I hovered with my hand on the mouse, then sighed and put my hand in my lap again. I’d spent the last hour looking at flights to Hawaii, but I just couldn’t muster the energy anymore.
After Billie left, I’d wrapped up things with Karen and Bernie, but I hadn’t done a whole lot in the month and a half since. Not surprisingly, Karen had been a little shaken up about the whole thing. Just finding out that Tony had, indeed, killed her to try to get her inheritance was one thing. To find out that he’d been skimming off the top from the Mexican mafia while he dealt drugs for them, and had slept with both of her sisters along the way, was a whole other planet of personal pain and humiliation. I sat with her a lot for a couple of days until she put herself back together enough to get on with her life. Or afterlife, in her case.
She was relieved to find out Beth was haunting Tony. It saved her the trouble of doing it herself.
At Bernie’s request, I acted as the otherworldly translator so he and Karen could have a nice heart-to-
heart. He’d come clean about his drug addiction and vowed to give it up as a dedication to her. Who knew, he might have even meant it. He was certainly grateful anyway, doubling my fee.
Which was why I’d been looking at airfare to Honolulu. With enough room in my bank account to breathe easy for once, I could afford to walk barefoot on a sun-drenched golden beach for a few weeks. But as much as I wanted to be alone here, it was hard to imagine being alone there. I was in a kind of limbo. Not crazy, at least. Not ready to once again be fitted for a sleeveless jacket. But in limbo.
Or purgatory. I’d been thinking about that word a lot lately. I often wondered what kind of book Dante would have written if only he’d walked a day in my shoes. Maybe the old man handing out the Gideon Bibles had been right. Maybe God was real. Maybe this was purgatory. Maybe the reason everybody was here, and not in heaven, was that nobody deserved any better.
I was sitting there mulling this over, and waiting for the pop and boom of fireworks to reach me from the Willamette River, when I heard scratching on my window. There were no tree branches nearby, so it was a curious sound. I rolled the chair over and pulled the blinds—and was surprised to find a black cat sitting on the other side of the frosted glass, gazing at me with yellow eyes. The bar sign across the street painted red highlights in his dark fur, giving him an eerie halo.
“Well, hello,” I said. “Where did you come from?”
Yet I realized as soon as I’d asked the question exactly where this cat had come from, because I’d seen him before. He had a distinctive starburst of white fur over his left eye. He was sleek and muscular like a tiny panther, with eyes narrowed and focused with unbridled intensity. My mother had been terribly afraid of him—maybe because he’d possessed the remarkable ability to see both living and dead people. Kind of like me.
“Patch,” I said.
As if in response, he blinked at me.
“You’ve come a long way, pal. That’s a long trek for a little guy like you.”
Patch scratched at the glass again. I opened the window—it was an old wooden window and it took some doing—and he stepped inside.