They All Fall Down

by Rachel Howzell Hall

  He squinted at me. “True stories?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “So you lied to sell rich people’s used clothes and shit to poor people?”

  “No,” I said with forced patience. “I turn a boring object into an objet d’art. That’s called ‘marketing.’”

  He blinked at me. “What does your husband do?”

  I glared at Frank’s plump belly, at the buttons straining to keep his beige shirt from ripping apart. “He has a very successful dental practice.”

  Frank gawked at me as though I had swooped down from the sky to crap in his cornflakes. He stared at me a moment longer, then shook his head.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Just wondering why you’re here. With us. I know Phillip did some pro bono work, but … you sleep with him or something?” He laughed, then said, “I forgot. Of course you didn’t.”

  I lifted my chin. “Our relationship is none of your business. Let’s just say that we were close.”

  Because this is what you do. Billy’s constant lament skittered across my mind. The next word he’d always want to say but didn’t was “lie.” This is what you do: lie. Make up stories. Create something out of nothing. He’d said it back on Thursday night, after I’d told him about Prudence and her assaulting me. I hadn’t imagined the way she’d looked at me, or how her combat boots had kicked the crap out of my arm. And I wasn’t lying to Frank now about Phillip. He and I had spent a lot of time together. We were close.

  Frank stared at me and said, “But not close enough to know that he was dying, that he was dead. What a pal.”

  “We weren’t up in each other’s house all the time,” I said, my cheeks hot and nostrils flared. “We’d talk late at night for hours—”

  “About your case.”

  “And life.” Life before my case. Life after my case. And life after the next case. I cleared my throat. “He confided in me as much as I confided in him.” More or less.

  Frank cocked an eyebrow. “Not about dying, though.”

  Never about dying. Never about Wallace or anything related to his love life. Still: I meant something to him, because he’d invited me here, to his favorite place in the world.

  “And what does your husband think about you coming to an island without him?” Frank asked me now.

  I crossed my arms. “What does your wife think? Does she know that you have a thing for West Virginian widows?”

  A slow smile crept across his lips. “That … that’s nothing. Business—she inherited money from her dead husband, and of course, I’m just helping her decide what to do with it. I’m using my charm, know what I’m saying? Thinking three steps ahead. You know how we do.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Of course.”

  “You can’t stand Wallace, but you’ll kiss his ass for a million dollars.”

  “Damn right. I got bills. A daughter going to college soon. You have kids?”

  He held up three thick fingers. “And they, too, are spoiled as hell and have expensive tastes. They have no idea.”

  “My daughter’s mad at me right now. Same thing. People bully her—I handle it, talk to the folks, make sure it stops, and she thinks I’ve overstepped. But then if I didn’t step, she and my husband would complain that I hadn’t done enough.” My stomach seized and I winced—the twisted ball of anxiety that I’d left behind on the tarmac back at LAX had found my gut. I fake-sneered at Frank and said, “See, now I’m stressed out again.”

  Frank laughed. “I can be one of those parents, too.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m not buttoned up and bougie all the time.” His mouth lifted into a lazy grin. “I got kicked out of the peewee football club for cursing out the coach.”

  My jaw dropped. “You?”

  “And…”

  “And?”

  “I beat up the father of a boy who hit my daughter.” Frank sank into the chair and let his head fall back against the pillow. “The little bastard refused to apologize to Janelle, and the dad, he was the biggest asshole I’d ever met, and … I just … I lost it. No regrets.”

  “Amen.” I held out my fist.

  He bumped it.

  Solidarity.

  “The girl bullying my daughter?” I said. “She left swastikas and frog stickers on Morgan’s locker.”

  Frank gawked at me. “Your husband must’ve beat a few people’s asses.”

  I snorted. “Billy is not that type of man. They could burn a cross in the middle of his office, and he’d say, ‘It’s just a little fire.’”

  “So you handled it, then?”

  “Oh, hell, yeah, I handled it.”

  “And?”

  “And me handling it led me to being here.” I laughed and tapped the arm of my seat. “I’ll be forever grateful to Phillip for coming to my rescue. Which is why I’m trying to think of something good to say for the memorial service tomorrow.”

  Frank stood from his chair. “I’ll let you get to it, then. Morgan’s gonna realize, though, just how badass you are. She’ll be grateful that she has a mother who will get in Ignorance’s face just for her.”

  I offered him a sad smile. “Hope you’re right.”

  “I’m always right.” He straightened up and squared his shoulders. “Now,” he said in his pompous voice. “Time to mix with the hoi polloi and the great unwashed. See you around, Phil’s Best Friend.”

  And just like that, the peace I’d found moments ago returned—but I still couldn’t come up with a tribute. So I left the media room to find inspiration from the island’s quiet. But Artemis had come alive. A flushed toilet. Heels clicking against tile. The rustling leaves of jungle trees. It was better noise, though, than car alarms, revving motorcycle engines, and firecrackers.

  Even if he said no to caretaker, maybe Wallace would let me stay at Artemis a little while longer. That meant moving past the old man’s insults and buttering him up to say, “Sure, doll, stay as long as you like.”

  Because I could thrive here.

  I could start creating again.

  I could begin writing my story about the disaster that was Brooke McAllister. Turn the narrative from Bully Mom to Bravo, Mom! There’d been nothing in the settlement that stated that I couldn’t.

  Here at Artemis, I could … become.

  Even on the first floor of a mansion.

  That didn’t mean that I couldn’t peek at life on the best floor.

  Out on the terrace, Wallace napped in a lawn chair. Desi, lounging in a chair beside him, nursed a drink as she read a novel. Javier had cleaned the kitchen and had probably gone to capture urchins from the tide pools.

  I trotted up the flight of stairs to the second level, then crept down a long hallway lined with framed photos of Artemis lost in fog, Artemis beneath bright skies, Artemis lit by the full moon. Frank had returned to his golden room, and he crouched with his hands on his knees as he gazed out the window. Like he’d run out of breath. His bed’s headboard was cushiony and yellow, like the toilet seat in my grandmother’s house.

  I backtracked, passed the stairs, and came to a closed door. I turned the knob—locked. I continued down the hallway and stopped in front of closed double doors. According to Aunt Doris’s video, this suite belonged to Wallace. I backtracked again, passing Frank’s room to find the northernmost room on the second floor. The door was open, so I stepped across the threshold.

  Eddie’s bedroom had red walls and Asian-style lacquered furniture. The fancy couch held pillows that weren’t for sleeping, and all of it looked like the decorator had raided the set of The King and I. The framed print on the wall wasn’t Asian, though. It was that weird painting of the man screaming with his hands to his face and the red sky behind him, and all of it was wavy, and …

  Wait.

  Eddie had two views.

  Both north- and west-facing windows offered views of the wilderness, and looked out to the Sea of Cortez and the dark speck that was Mexico.

  How the hell had he
landed a corner room on the higher floor with two windows?

  What kind of upstairs-downstairs bullshit social experiment was this?

  Wait.

  The three large bags he’d carried on board La Charon now sat on his bed.

  My fingers burned as I stared at those bags. Looking … thinking …

  “Go on,” I mumbled. “You’re here now. You might as well.”

  I glanced back at the door, then back to the bags on the bed. Go on. I hurried over to the windows and glanced out—trees, the sea, no Eddie.

  Where was he?

  Somewhere in the house, a door closed.

  Somewhere in the house, an alarm chirped.

  Something gurgled through the pipes.

  Then there was quiet.

  I held my breath, tiptoed back to the bed, then tugged the zipper on bag number one.

  Inside, there was a locked black case the size of a drill box. There was a yellow and green carton the size of the nicest Crayola set. Shooting with the best. 7.62mm. There was a locked black plastic case about forty inches long, and another box of bullets, this one black, for a 9mm. And there was a last box: TEC-9 20R gun magazines.

  Damn.

  I was right.

  There was a wolf at Artemis.

  Eddie was the wolf, and the wolf had a lot of guns. The better to kill us with.

  11

  Terror, cold and hard terror, crackled over me like ice.

  Eddie had told a bald-faced lie on the boat about not having guns, but I was now standing over his bed, staring at bags of ammunition. I hadn’t imagined the guns after all, and it was worse than I’d thought. Because in addition to the handguns, Eddie had also brought along a rifle. A rifle! Who the hell brought effin’ assault weapons to a tropical island? In my head, in my world, a crazy man, that’s who. A psychopath.

  He needed to leave. Leave before he hurt or killed someone. Someone like me.

  This time, I used my phone to take pictures—of the gun cases, of the box of bullets, of the assault rifle magazines. It took forever for me to focus the lens, snap six usable photographs, then zip up the black bag just as I’d found it. It took forever because my hands were now numb and cold, and had grown to be the size of catcher’s mitts. Because my giant cold hands were now shaking like the rest of me. Because Eddie was planning to kill us. If not all of us, then at least one of us. And if he walked in on me right now … that one would be me.

  Unless …

  Maybe Phillip had wronged him somehow, and now Eddie planned to ruin his home-going by slaughtering his guests.

  He probably had stowed a manifesto somewhere, like most kooks did. Pages and pages of rambling, run-on sentences with poorly spelled words that went on and on about his hatred of blacks and gays and chem trails and Kenyan ex-presidents.

  I had to tell someone.

  Not Wallace—he’d been nothing but nasty to me. Mostly. Okay, he was less of a bitch this morning, but still, not Wallace. Not Frank, either—he was a kiss-ass Uncle Remus who cared more about vocabulary and Maseratis and the Dow Jones than survival. Desi wanted to sleep with the island’s entire male population, including Eddie, so I couldn’t tell her, either. And the other one, the gum chewer, Eden-Ellen-Evan—whatever her name was … no. She was … no. Back on the yacht, Javier had spoken up for me. He would listen to all that I had to say, and then afterward, he’d make me a mimosa. Yeah, I’d find Javier and tell him everything.

  Now, though, I was somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be—and I needed to leave. Now.

  The hair on the back of my neck and on my arms stood as I crept out of Eddie’s room to a hallway now longer than it was before. My shoes sank into the corridor’s thick carpet, keeping me from rushing, slowing me down even though my heart beat a million times faster than its normal pace. Fortunately, no one popped up as I turtled down the hallway. Frank had even closed his bedroom door. Still, walking this slow was unbearable—inch, pause, inch, pause—but I couldn’t risk calling attention to my being there.

  Once I reached the stairs, I flattened all show of emotion on my face. Didn’t want anyone asking, “Why are you rushing? What’s wrong? Is something wrong? Something’s wrong.”

  Down … down … down. I took each step as though land mines had been planted beneath each plank. Once I reached the foyer, I finally exhaled.

  The front doors were open, and Ellen-Eileen-Evelyn stood out on the porch with her shoulders sloped and her head tilted to the sky. At the opposite end, past the living room, Desi and Wallace remained in their lawn chairs. The sun’s light had softened.

  Javier had returned to the kitchen and was now pulling a carafe of orange juice from the refrigerator. A bottle of Grey Goose vodka sat on the breakfast bar. “Miriam’s in the house,” he shouted. “Want seconds?”

  I tiptoed into the kitchen. “No, thanks. So…”

  “Know what? I don’t think anybody’s ever cooked in here. There ain’t no grease splatters, there ain’t no char…” He grabbed two glasses from a cabinet. “Hey, you seen my flask?”

  “You dropped it back at the tide pool yesterday, so I picked it up. It’s in my room. I’ll bring it to you later.”

  “Dude, come look at this walk-in freezer.” The chef beckoned me over to a steel door propped open by a wobbly-looking kickstand. He pointed to the floor and to puddles of melted ice covering the slick terra-cotta tile. “Guess I must’ve left the door open last night.” He chuckled. “Don’t remember—I was pretty wasted.” A pulpy mess of paper towels sat on the edge of an icy pond—as if Javier had tried to wipe up the mess but had grown bored or distracted or overwhelmed before completing the job.

  I peeked in to see the freezer’s shelves crammed with cartons of ice cream, boxes of pastry shells, and bags of fruit. Not enough food for that many people—that’s what Andreas had stated yesterday back in port. Standing there in the freezer’s doorway, with my breath making tiny clouds and my eyes taking in shelves of frozen steaks, chickens, and turkeys? Yeah, there was food for days.

  “I lucked out,” Javier said. “All the meat’s still frozen solid, not that I’m gonna use frozen meat. Nuh-uh, man. I found me some fresh fish in the fridge, and I’m gonna go out and dive in a minute, bring back some of them urchins and shit from the tide pools. Cuz Phillip, that dude loved him some sashimi.” He bumped into the freezer door, knocking the kickstand up a bit. “Hey.” He bustled over to the butler’s pantry. “Are there limes? Maybe they brought over some limes, cuz if they did, then I can make some ceviche, and these cocktails with mescal, Tajín, and jalapeño, and … what else they got off in here?” He trundled back to the freezer.

  Where was Eddie? I anxiously looked back at the living room, then took a seat at the breakfast counter. “Hey, Javier, so you know that guy in the Red Sox cap? Eddie?”

  “What about him?” The chef grabbed a bag of frozen strawberries from the freezer shelf. His ass bumped the door again as he tossed the bag into the stainless steel sink. He ducked back into the freezer. “Whoa!” He slipped in the slush and landed on his ass.

  The freezer’s kickstand clicked up, and the heavy steel door slammed shut.

  “Oh, crap!” I popped out of my chair as though a firecracker had lit in my pants and I pulled open the door.

  Javier was struggling to stand because the soles of his flip-flops lacked treads. He’d make it into a crouch, but then he’d slip right out of it, banging his knees each time against the frozen tile.

  My stomach pretzeled and I was already shivering, a native Angeleno who got cold at sixty-five degrees. “Just hold on. I’ll help you up.” I repositioned the kickstand on the slippery tile. It slid an inch … then held … held … but we didn’t have much time before it slid and clicked away again.

  “Okay, I got it, I—Aye!” Javier slipped again and his eyes squeezed shut as pain rippled from his knees up and across his bloated face.

  Stooping, I inched into the freezer, no more sure-footed in my suede flats. But I inched … and I in
ched … and …

  BAM!

  The freezer door slammed behind me, loud, as though millions of doors were slamming at the same time.

  Crap. I shuddered and stopped in my step. “It’s okay. It’s okay.” I kept saying that—it’s okay, it’s okay—as I forced myself across the icy floor, as I wedged my shoulder beneath Javier’s bulk, as I slipped his thick arm around my neck. “Okay. Try to stand. Slow, now. Slowly … slowly…”

  Javier Cardoza was a big man, and if the smell of his breath was any indicator, he was also a drunk man—that meant “slow” was the only speed available.

  The cold was chipping at my ability to move. His arm was squeezing my neck.

  You know you can freeze in here, right? If he doesn’t strangle you first, you’ll freeze.

  “Almost there,” I panted, overheating now, as we inched closer … closer … to the door.

  Your sweat will become ice and then it will freeze you to death. And then? You’ll be dead.

  “It’s okay,” I whispered. “It’s okay.” I said this even as my skin tightened. I couldn’t die, not like this. I couldn’t get sick, not like this. I didn’t want to die. I’d get nothing from Phillip’s will if I died.

  My head filled with these mixed messages, but eventually positivity beat the most negative thought a person could think—I’m gonna die—and Javier and I finally reached that door. Every ounce of strength I had was now gone, and I wheezed as I twisted the freezer door handle.

  No give.

  You know you can freeze in here, right?

  I whispered, “No, no, no,” as my heart wobbled in my chest.

  Javier’s arm tightened around my neck. “One more time.”

  I twisted the handle again, then pushed it with my knee.

  The door swung open. Warm air pulled us into its grasp and greeted us like a fretful mother.

  Once we’d limped back into the kitchen, Javier kicked off his flip-flops and winced as he slumped to the floor. His left knee now resembled a strawberry cream puff—and so did his face.