Island Girl

by Lynda Simmons

  By the end of the first month I’d thrown the clock, the phone, and our remote control at the television. By the end of the third I’d smacked Tony with all of them, and by the end of the sixth, our marriage was over. Tony couldn’t tell the little shit no, I couldn’t live with the kid barging in every morning with a smirk on his face and toast in his hand, and his mother couldn’t get me packed up fast enough. Rets ret roing, rararian.

  Ruby laughed when I turned up with my bags. “Nothing lasts forever,” she said. “But six months is embarrassing, even for you.”

  She didn’t understand that I wasn’t embarrassed, I was heart-broken. My lifelong love, my vow eternal, shattered by Scooby fucking Doo. And I can honestly say that cartoons have never been heard in my home since—until this morning.

  I was lying there with my eyes closed—because I knew from experience that it was going to hurt to open them—listening to what could only be cartoons and thinking about Tony for the first time in years. While it wasn’t Scooby I was hearing—or the Flintstones or anything else I recognized—the music, the voices, the overdone sound effects left no room for doubt. Cartoons were definitely playing close by, and my poor hungover brain could only wonder where I was and who had turned on the television. And how come my left shoulder hurt?

  Raising my right hand to block out the light, I finally opened one eye. Saw a black bedside table, a glass of water, a bottle of Extra Strength Tylenol, and a framed picture of Grace and me as kids—tongues out, eyes crossed, index fingers up our noses. Definitely my room. But who was in here with me?

  I lowered my hand and closed my eye again. “Whoever opened those curtains is dead.”

  “Finally, you’re awake,” a woman said. “Do you have any idea what time it is?”

  Her voice was close, familiar, and slightly pissed off—which was funny considering it was my place, my television, and my curtains that were open. “Happily no,” I said, lifting my head this time and squinting into the light.

  “Well, it’s noon,” Brenda the Former Bartender said and rose from the sofa in front of the television. On the screen, a new show began—Bugs and Daffy stepping out in top hat and tails. Overture, curtains, lights. I half-expected George to come bounding into the room and smear jam on my pillow.

  I shuddered and sat up a little more, scowled as Brenda threw back yet another curtain. “What are you doing here?” I asked. “More important, how did you get through the front door? And why the hell are you watching cartoons?”

  “I’m here because I need to talk to you. Your roommate let me in, and it was either this or some fuzzy French channel.” She looked over at me. “Is there a reason you only have rabbit ears?”

  “I don’t watch a lot of TV.” Not since they cut off the cable at any rate. But I couldn’t come up with a reason why that should be any of her business. Or why my crazy Russian roommate had decided we were holding open house today.

  “Probably better for you,” Brenda said, and yanked back the last curtain, filling the room with sunlight and making me wince. Why I had ever believed that a room with east-facing windows was a good idea was beyond me.

  She came over to the bed and picked up the glass of water on my night table. “You should drink this.”

  It was all too much, too soon. “I’ll drink it later. Right now I need to sleep.” I lowered my head, pulled the covers up to my neck. “Come back later.”

  “I’ve already been here for three hours.” She put the glass down with a thud, yanked back the covers, and dropped them on the floor at the foot of the bed. “Liz, this is important. Hal was at the house this morning. I’m scared and I’m not going away until you talk to me. So you might as well get up.”

  She stood firm, looking down at me with her tiny little hands on her tiny little hips while on the other side of the room, Wile E. Coyote banged a hammer against an Acme anvil again and again and again. I groaned and pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes. Welcome to Liz Donaldson’s private hell.

  “What do you need to talk about so badly?” I muttered.

  “The suggestion you made to Gary yesterday.”

  Gary—her very sweet brother. I could picture him clearly, loping across the baseball field, rolling his shoulders, offering to meet me at the Duck. I felt myself smile in the silly, dangerous way of all romantics. Had he done that? Had he met me in secret?

  I remembered sitting at the back table with the boys, drinking shots of something while the service got slower and slower. So much so that I finally went to the bar and asked the new bartender, Stevie, what the hell her problem was. I couldn’t remember the answer, but I was pretty sure Gary’s face had not been at the table to that point—which might be something to celebrate, depending on how the rest of the evening had gone.

  “You should know that silence does not discourage me,” Brenda said.

  I lifted my hands from my eyes and squinted up at her, thinking of terriers and muzzles—perhaps a nice choke chain. I sighed and lowered my arms. “I’m not trying to discourage you. I just can’t remember details right now. What was my suggestion?”

  “Petition into bankruptcy. Surely you remember that.”

  Not immediately, but as I struggled to sit up, things started to come back bit by bit. A guy with a baseball bat. A husband with money problems. And finally, yes. Petition into bankruptcy. Not a wildly popular or even completely legal solution in a case like Brenda’s, but doable—if a lawyer had balls.

  I propped a pillow behind my back and stretched my legs out in front of me. “Did you talk to your lawyer about this?”

  “I called him last night. First he wanted to know if I’d been reading legal advice blogs on the Internet again. Then he said that a petition into bankruptcy was complicated and started using terms like ‘quantum of unsecured debt’ and ‘pari passu,’ and I pretty much stopped listening until he said, ‘Brenda, you can’t do this. So stop thinking about it and stop worrying. I have everything well in hand.’ When I suggested he might like to meet Hal and his baseball bat, he told me I was overreacting and to be patient.”

  “Sounds about right.” Clearly, there were no balls on Mitch’s legal team. While that was obviously a problem, what was less obvious was why it should be my problem. Or why I was wearing yesterday’s jeans and T-shirt. Or why there were now holes in the knees of those jeans.

  I assumed the holes were related to the pain in my shoulder somehow, yet I had no memory of falling down or anything else remotely uncomfortable happening. Of course it was still early on the morning after to be piecing together the night before, and why bother anyway? No doubt someone at the Duck would be more than happy to fill in the blanks for me tonight.

  “So I hung up and decided I was finished being patient,” Brenda went on. “I wanted to know more about this thing I shouldn’t be thinking about before I stopped thinking about it. That’s why I’m here.” She opened the bottle of Tylenol, shook two tablets into her palm, and held them out with the glass of water. “You really should take these.”

  Admitting defeat, I took the pills and popped them into my mouth. Swallowed them and then sipped the rest of the water slowly but with purpose, resisting the urge to gulp. When I was finished, she took back the empty. “Can you handle another?”

  I nodded carefully. “Kitchen’s at the end of the hall.”

  “And the bathroom is the second door on the left, and the boys who live downstairs aren’t allowed to use it.” She went out the door with the glass. “I’ve been here a while, remember?”

  “Three hours,” I said, cautiously putting my feet over the side of the bed. “Do you know how creepy that is? Especially since you wanted nothing to do with me yesterday.”

  I heard her stop and come back along the hall. And was pleased with the suitably guilty look on her face when she poked her head into my room again. “I’m sorry about that, okay? I was worried about Mitch and the kids. And there you were, getting in my face, trying to be the helpful drunk—”

  �
��I was sober by then,” I said, pushing myself up to standing position.

  “Fine, you were sober. But there was still no reason to believe you were qualified to talk to me about anything but the weather.”

  “Thanks a lot,” I said, steadying myself with a hand on the wall just in case.

  She came over to stand beside me. “Come on, Liz. It’s not like you ever advertised your skills or talked about what you did. Even now, when I look at you, I see Car Bombs and Highland flings, not briefcases and closing arguments. How was I supposed to know you were a brilliant lawyer?”

  “Who told you that?” I asked, and started walking, making my way slowly, carefully toward the sofa. It wasn’t far, no more than fifteen feet, but with a hangover it might as well have been a football field.

  “Gary said it first. And your mom backed him up.”

  Gary. What a nice name. Strong. Sexy. Still out of bounds.

  I stopped and gently turned my head. “Ruby said I was brilliant?”

  “She said and I quote, ‘Liz is both a brilliant lawyer and a crushing disappointment.’”

  “That sounds more like her,” I said, and turned back around, waited patiently for my brain to catch up before taking another step.

  “You can say what you want, but I like your mom. And after talking to her, Mitch and I both agree that the airport should be shut down.”

  “I’m sure you do.” I started walking again, putting one foot in front of the other. “How long did you spend with her anyway?”

  “About fifteen minutes.”

  When I reached the sofa, I stood perfectly still, watching the Coyote plummet off a cliff and feeling my stomach follow him down. I looked away before he hit bottom. “And in those fifteen minutes, she managed to tell you about the bird sanctuary, noise pollution, and the fact that Babe Ruth hit his first professional home run right there on Hanlan’s Point, where the airport is today. Am I right?”

  “We were surprised about Babe Ruth.”

  “Most people are.” Unable to resist, I looked back at the television, witnessing the emergence of the Coyote yet again from the dust. He lay among the rocks, battered and broken while the Road Runner stuck out his tongue and raced off again, just like that fat little shit George did every morning.

  I bent at the knees and picked up the remote. Pointed it at the television and put the Coyote out of his misery once and for all. Blessed silence descended and hell seemed a little more tolerable.

  “So did you sign her petition to close the airport?” I asked.

  “Yes, and I’m glad I did.”

  I tossed the remote and took a much-needed break on the sofa. “You only feel that way because Ruby gave you her usual spiel, and she’s very good at it. But I wouldn’t worry about your sudden conversion. You should be fine in a day or two.”

  Brenda shook her head and went off with the glass again. “I hope not, because I kind of like being one of the rebels.”

  “That’ll wear off too,” I called, and touched a hand to my shoulder, feeling for the tender spot. Discovering it was large and extended all the way around my upper arm. I lifted the sleeve, revealing a huge purple bruise. Heat, unpleasant and stinging, moved through me. What the hell had happened last night?

  Brenda reappeared with a full glass. “You should know that even though you don’t support their cause, everyone at the protest had only nice things to say about you.”

  “That’s because they’re nice people. Just horribly misguided.” I lowered the sleeve, afraid there were more surprises waiting for me beneath the holes in my jeans.

  She pressed the glass into my hand. “This one guy, Mark, was a big fan. He said you were not only brilliant, but you also used to be the shining star at his firm.”

  “I was.” I sipped the water slowly again, feeling myself waking up, my brain clicking faster. I’d forgotten Mark was at the protest, and I smiled, remembering how odd it had been to see him standing on the curb after all these years. Waving signs, chanting. Getting hit by a taxi.

  Shit. The taxi.

  I sputtered and lowered the glass. “Was he okay?” I coughed. “After the taxi hit him, I mean. Was he okay?”

  “He seemed fine.” She took the glass and patted me on the back. “Said the car just bumped him and refused to go to the hospital no matter how much your mom nagged.”

  “Good for him.” I spotted my cell phone on the coffee table and thought about turning it on, calling to make sure he was okay. But after thirty seconds of niceties, he’d find a way to turn the discussion to Ruby, and I was in no shape to have that conversation now or in the foreseeable future. Better to send a text. Sry abt taxi. Glad UR feeling better. Luv, Liz. He’d expect nothing less from his former shining star.

  But that could wait. Right now, I needed to focus on my shoulder. And my knees. And what had happened at the Duck.

  “Can you explain petition into bankruptcy now?” Brenda asked. “Mitch is waiting to hear from me.”

  And Brenda’s situation, of course. Mustn’t forget Brenda’s situation.

  “Sure,” I said, and crossed to the door.

  “Then where are you going?”

  “I need to pee.”

  She followed me out to the hall and past my crazy roommate’s locked door. “I need you to tell me what it is in plain language.”

  “Guaranteed.” I paused at the bathroom door. “But what about Mitch? Doesn’t he want to know what it’s all about too?”

  “I told you, he’s waiting for my call. He said he’d trust my judgment.”

  “That’s my kind of man.” I closed the bathroom door, leaving her in the hall while I gingerly pulled down the jeans and inspected my knees. The scrapes and bruises weren’t as bad as I’d imagined, but they would make short skirts awkward for a few days. And I still had no recollection of falling.

  I pulled a handful of tissues out of a box and dabbed at the scrapes. I was sure I had a phone number for one of my buddies around somewhere. I’d call and find out what happened last night. They’d all had their share of bruises and black eyes over the years, and the stories were usually good for a laugh a day or two later.

  I dabbed again at the scrapes, figured they’d be fine until I took a shower, and pulled the jeans back up. Risked a quick glance in the mirror and wished I hadn’t. Puffy eyes, pale skin, hair everywhere. Hangover face was never pretty. I washed that face, brushed my teeth, and pushed at my hair. Even dug around in the medicine cabinet for an elastic. A ponytail didn’t make the picture prettier, but at least the hair was out of my face. And the good news was that I was hungry, which meant a trip to Willy G’s—my favorite dive on College Street—because there is nothing like strong coffee and a high-fat breakfast to ease a hangover. And with luck, Brenda’s guilt would encourage her to say, My treat. She had come to my house, after all. Woken me out of a sound sleep. Made me think too soon. It was worth a shot.

  “Your lawyer was right,” I said, stepping out of the bathroom to find the hall empty and the aroma of coffee all around me.

  “I thought you might be ready for a coffee,” she called, and smiled at me from the kitchen door.

  Oh shit, I should have warned her. “Stop!” I called, and hurried along the hall. “You can’t make anything in there. Not coffee, not tea. Definitely nothing that requires food.”

  She took two mugs from the hooks under the cupboard and looked over at me. “Why in the world not?”

  I stood in the doorway, watching in horror as she picked up the coffeepot and filled those two illfated cups. “Because none of the food in this kitchen is mine.”

  “None of it?”

  “Just the overripe banana in the garbage pail.” She raised a brow and I shrugged. “What can I say? I hate to shop. The point is that everything here is the legal property of my roommate. And she will kill me if she finds out we so much as looked at her stuff.”

  “Don’t be silly.” Brenda went to the fridge and swung back the door, blocking my view. “Nadia’s n
ot like that.”

  I could only stare as she rummaged through the cartons and plastic containers. “You know her name?”

  “It happens when you spend an hour talking to someone.”

  “You spent that long talking to Nadia?” Brenda nodded and set something on the counter. Sweet Jesus, not the cream. “I hope she paid you,” I said, putting the cream back where it belonged and hoping I got the positioning right.

  “There was no need. I found her charming.” Brenda snatched the container out again before I could close the fridge. “But rest assured she doesn’t have anything good to say about you either.”

  “And here I thought we had nothing in common.” I closed the door, figuring I’d water the Russian’s cream later. Seemed to work fine the last time. And the bitch could use less fat.

  Nadia had moved into the room next to mine three months ago, the only other adult in a house full of students. She was older than me, which was comforting, and much taller with broad shoulders and a permanent scowl. I figured she used to be a judge at the Olympics. Figure skating, no doubt.

  Since we were the only tenants on the second floor, I’d tried to be friendly, even asked her to come to the Duck for a drink. But in all the time she’d been here, she’d spoken exactly four words to me in heavily accented English: “Nevair touch my stuff.”

  I had no idea what kind of work she did or if she ever had any fun. All I knew was that she thumped around in her room a lot, locked up before she went down the hall to the bathroom, and kept a chart on the fridge, accounting for every scrap of food in the kitchen including a tea bag count, the weight of the rice, and the ounces of milk, cream, and juice. If the landlord had allowed padlocks on the cupboards, I’m sure she would have installed them immediately.

  I’d used a lot of words to describe her to my buddies at the Duck over the last few months, but charming was never one of them.

  “Have some coffee,” Brenda said. “And tell me how the petition works.”

  “It pushes the company that owes you money into bankruptcy,” I said, my eyes moving from the cups on the table to the chart on the fridge. Nadia would have weighed the coffee tin that morning. Now it would be fourteen ounces less two scoops. Perhaps I could add a little sand.