Cold Shoulder

by Lynda La Plante

  “Joke, it was just a joke.… Look, Jake, I’m real tired, so if you don’t mind leaving …”

  He got up and went to the kitchen. “I’ll make us some coffee.” He saw the way her face tightened. She wanted him to leave, he knew, but he hadn’t finished. “Let’s talk some more, Lorraine, throw a few ideas around. Like I said, you got to find a purpose.”

  She picked up the book again. Jake walked over and snatched it away. “You can fuck around with Rosie, Lorraine, because she’s weak and desperate. She needed you in some sick kind of way—it took her mind off her own problems. But now you got to put something back, d’you understand?”

  She smirked at him. “Why don’t you put something back, Jake? Give her a screw, she needs that more than anything else! I’ll bet she hasn’t been laid in five years.”

  He could have slapped her sullen face, but he didn’t. He just held the steady gaze of her washed-out eyes. “You been screwed lately, have you? Remember it?”

  “I’ve had enough to last me a lifetime.”

  “I bet you did. A lot of drunks whore for booze—that what you did?”

  “Fuck off.”

  Jake gripped her skinny wrist. “I fuck off—and you’re fucked. You need Rosie, you need this place, because it’s all you’ve got—but you’re using her. I’m just trying to help. You’re already helping yourself. I knew you had some dough but I kept my mouth shut. I know how you paid for your teeth and the haircut but I reckon it’s your business.”

  “Right, it is,” she snapped.

  “You look a hell of a lot better than when you first arrived—and you can keep on looking and feeling better—but you have to want a future!”

  Jake had to hand it to Lorraine: she still didn’t give an inch, still showed no sign of what she was feeling. She did, however, drink the coffee he made and even though she didn’t speak to him again, she seemed to listen, chain-smoking his cigarettes, staring at the wall. Eventually he could think of nothing more to say. He wrote down a few contact addresses for jobs and went away, feeling depressed and disappointed. She didn’t say goodbye or thank him for the extra pack of cigarettes he had left. Jake was a soft touch, he knew it, he always had been, and what was strange was that he still liked Lorraine—so what was a pack of cigarettes? By the time he walked to his car, he looked up and listened, because he could hear the sound of Rosie’s vacuum. Maybe his little talk had made Lorraine think.

  By the time Rosie returned, the apartment was tidier. Lorraine had, as Jake suspected, vacuumed and had also cleaned the kitchen. Rosie’s bed was made, the bathroom was clean. Even the cat had been fed.

  Rosie mumbled thanks and put down a grocery bag full of cans of Coke, oven-ready trench fries, and a cooked chicken. She began cooking dinner as Lorraine watched television, shrugging in reply to anything Rosie said. They ate in silence, Rosie glancing at Lorraine while she sucked each chicken bone, eating with her hands, polishing the plate clean with her bread. Rosie shifted onto the sofa for a better view of the TV as Lorraine cleared the table and cleaned up. Not until she had dried all the dishes and put them away did Lorraine begin a conversation.

  “Jake was here.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “I’ll go an’ see if I can get a job tomorrow, start paying some rent.”

  Rosie nodded. “Okay. You want to come to AA tonight?”

  Lorraine hesitated. “Okay.”

  As before, Lorraine sat at the back of the church hall, playing no part in the proceedings. As she checked over the list of jobs she’d try for in the morning, her head throbbed. Then, without any warning, the sweating began, and she slipped out into the corridor, where she found the water fountain. She had gulped down several mouthfuls before she was steadier and her mouth stopped feeling like sandpaper. The fountain was close to a large bulletin board: there were lists of contacts, jobs, AA meetings, white elephant and garage sales. Lorraine noted down an address for secondhand clothes.

  Rosie appeared, looking concerned, but seeing Lorraine squinting up at the bulletin board in that odd way she had, writing down information, she relaxed.

  Lorraine looked over to her. “I guess I’ll need some clothes for work. You want to come to a yard sale?”

  It wasn’t until they got there and Lorraine began to stack up suits, shirts, shoes, that Rosie wondered how she was going to pay. When she asked how much they’d cost, Lorraine lied, telling her that the woman was practically giving away the stuff since she was moving. She had actually paid a hundred and fifty and was now down to less than a hundred bucks in her stash. The fact that she had broken into it for something other than booze, was, even though she didn’t realize it, another step forward.

  Rosie sat on the living room couch draining a can of Coke as Lorraine inspected her new clothes, trying them all on, mixing and matching. Her face wore a studied, concentrated expression. She muttered and nodded, running her hand through her hair.

  “Mmmm, nice, not bad … yes, I like it.”

  She felt jealous as she watched Lorraine parade up and down like a model on a catwalk. The clothes were good, anyone could see that, tailored skirts and jackets, a particularly nice cream silk shirt, and a black crepe one, tasteful walking shoes and a pair of brown slingbacks that had never been worn. “I doubt if you’ll need that gear for the jobs Jake’s got lined up for you,” Rosie pointed out, burping from the Coke.

  Lorraine was looking at herself in the long wardrobe mirror. “Maybe I’ll try for a real job. There were quite a few listed at the meeting.”

  Rosie pouted. “Like what?”

  Lorraine turned around. “Receptionist—got to look smart for that—nice and easy, sitting down all day. I might get lucky.”

  Rosie sniffed. “You might not.”

  Lorraine hardly slept. The sofa was uncomfortable at the best of times, but constant worrying about the next day made her toss and turn. She was sweating with the heat, which made her drink glass after glass of water. Four times she had to walk through the bedroom to use the bathroom, but she didn’t disturb Rosie, who slept as always like a beached whale, snoring loudly. Lorraine’s thirst seemed unquenchable. She finished all the Coke, all the bottled water, sweating and shaking, flopping up and down on the old sofa. Then it started—the craving. She badly wanted a beer. Would it be so bad to have just one?

  She slipped into Rosie’s old dress, and inched open the screen door. The need consumed her; she could think of nothing else. She got as far as the bottom step before she saw the patrol car moving slowly up the road, the two officers inside staring at the buildings as they cruised along. She watched for a few moments before returning to the apartment, where she looked out from the window as they passed on down the street. By the time they had disappeared she didn’t feel so desperate. Still fully dressed, she got back on the sofa.

  She had been expecting them. They must have contacted the cab companies by now, but because she had seen no sign of police interest, she had been too wrapped up in herself to give it a second thought. Now she remembered … but instead of focusing on the present, Lorraine recalled her own days in uniform.

  The only female in the precinct, she hadn’t even had a place to piss in private until they designated a toilet for her. Some joker drew a lady’s figure with enlarged tits on one of the stalls in the men’s room. She would do anything rather than go in there, and even when she had her own so-called stall, there was never any privacy, as there was always a cop leering nearby. Her partner would be furious because she was always asking him to pull over so she could run into a diner or coffee shop. It got so she wouldn’t drink during the day so she didn’t have to piss. They nicknamed her the Golden Camel, because no matter what temperature blistered the paint off the car, Rookie Lorraine Page never accepted a drink. Later, she sure as hell made up for it; she got so she could drink most of her colleagues under the table. It had started as an act of bravado, to show she was as good as any man on or off duty. She could hold it. And then she got a new nickname
: Hollow Leg Page.

  Half dreaming, half awake, Lorraine recollected times she had not thought of for years. What hit her hardest was the persistent humiliation to which she had been subjected. A woman in a man’s world, a woman none of them wanted or encouraged to become part of their close-knit group. She had clawed every inch up the ladder—always proving herself tougher than any man. She was not better educated, she had no special qualifications, and if her father had not been a police officer she doubted she would have ever joined up. She’d enrolled almost as an act of perversity.

  Lorraine had hated her father, because he had no time for her while he had doted on her brother, Kit. Whatever Kit had wanted Daddy made sure his precious son got. Kit was the pride of the family.

  Lorraine’s mother had been an alcoholic, a frightened, pathetic woman who drank in secret, who remained inside the house, afraid of her own shadow until she had drunk enough confidence to go out. To everyone’s embarrassment, she would be picked up and brought home in a squad car by one of her husband’s colleagues. She was never charged with being drunk and disorderly, whatever she did. If she stole money or became abusive, it was quietly glossed over, and she would be locked in her bedroom to get over yet another binge. Poor Ellen Clark. Sober she was regretful, apologetic, and weepy. Lorraine used to hide from the sound of her sobs by covering her ears with her pillow. When her mother was sober, the house would return to order and routine—until the next time.

  Lately, Lorraine had not given her mother much thought. Now, she could picture her pale face, her white hands always twisting the thin gold wedding ring. Her red-rimmed eyes, her lank blond hair. Lorraine was the image of her mother: perhaps that was why her father had so little time or love left for her.

  She never discovered what had started her mother’s drinking. She used to search for the hidden bottles and, under instruction from her father, pour the contents down the sink. At first she always told him when she found the telltale bottles, but it seemed to Lorraine that the awful fights that followed were always directed at her, as if the blame was somehow partly hers. In the end, the pale, thin look-alike daughter protected her mother, and simply poured away the booze without saying anything.

  Lorraine’s mother died quietly in her sleep. She was only forty-two, and Lorraine thirteen, but from then on Lorraine ran the house. She cooked and cleaned up, waited on her father and brother. She would watch them leave for ball games, always together, like pals rather than father and son.

  Kit was killed in a car accident. Two kids joyriding in a stolen car mounted the pavement and ran him down. That night Kit hadn’t come home for supper, and her father got the phone call, just as she was about to serve him steak. She could smell it, all these years later, the steak, the mashed potatoes, and the mint peas. She knew it was something terrible because of her father’s expression and the way he let the phone slip from his hand as he pressed his face into the old, flowered wallpaper. Then he punched the wall twice before he walked back to his chair and picked up his jacket.

  “There’s been an accident. It’s Kit.”

  Lorraine was left alone with a father who never came to terms with his grief. He hadn’t been affectionate before the accident, and afterward he showed her no warmth whatsoever. If he felt any pride in her being accepted into the police academy, he kept it to himself, and he was dead three weeks before she graduated.

  Lorraine sold the house and prepared to move into an apartment. It had been while sorting through his belongings that she had found pictures of her mother. She had once been so beautiful, with a fragility that took Lorraine’s breath away, but the sweet smile, even in her youth, was a little frightened. Lorraine burned most of the memorabilia, keeping only a photograph of her brother and one of her parents on their wedding day. She would have liked one of them all together, as a family, but there hadn’t been one—there hadn’t really been a family. Now she had nothing—not even a photograph of Mike or the girls. She pictured them in her mind, little Julia and sweet-faced Sally … and Mike. The feeling of loss swamped her.

  She woke up as Rosie thumped into the kitchen. She felt stiff from the cramped position in which she’d finally fallen asleep.

  “I’m going to be late,” Rosie muttered, in her usual raw early-morning mood. She stood shoveling in her cereal, milk trickling down her chin. Lorraine stretched.

  “Will you feed the cat?” Rosie barked.

  Lorraine joined her in the kitchen. “Do you think alcoholism is hereditary?”

  Rosie rammed her cereal bowl into the sink. “If you came to a few more meetings you’d know, wouldn’t you? They say it is. Why don’t you read the leaflets I gave you?” She continued spouting as she returned to the bedroom, and Lorraine uttered a silent prayer of thanks that she had not gone out for that beer. Another day over, sober.

  Rosie plodded down Marengo toward the bus stop by the liquor store. As she disappeared down the street, a squad car drew up opposite her house. Two officers checked the address and glanced over and up the rickety wooden stairs. The cabdriver had not been sure of the number he had driven the woman to, but he had known the street and the date his fare had called in. He had picked her up at Glendale Mall’s main entrance, it was logged down, and she had first asked to be dropped at the Orange Grove intersection, then changed her mind and told him to drive up Marengo. His description of her matched that of the other two witnesses, Mr. and Mrs. Summers. He was able to add a few more details: the woman had a front tooth or teeth missing and badly bitten fingernails—he’d noticed them when she had paid the fare. She’d also told him to keep the change, which was only a dollar.

  Lorraine examined herself: the suit jacket was a fraction too large, the skirt band a couple of inches too wide, but she bloused up the jacket, a safari-style fawn cotton, and with the cream silk shirt beneath, it looked good. She borrowed a pair of pearl stud earrings from Rosie’s jewel box, and used her mascara, a little rouge, and powder and, as the lipsticks were all a violent orange, rubbed on lip balm instead. When she heard a knock on the door she hesitated: maybe she should have asked Rosie about the earrings. If she was back, she might get into one of her moods. She heard a second knock; knew it couldn’t be Rosie, who would have used her key, and assumed it was Jake.

  She stepped back in shock as the two officers lolled at the door. One remained outside while the second came in to “ask a few questions.…” She lit a cigarette and sat on the edge of the sofa, thankful she had cleared away the blankets and pillows.

  “Do you live here?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Laura Bradley. Actually I’m just staying here, I don’t own this apartment.”

  “Who does?”

  Lorraine gave Rosie’s name. He asked for a description, and she said Rosie was dark-haired, Hispanic-looking, and in her late thirties.

  “Is she fat?”

  Lorraine half smiled. “No. Why? Has something happened to her?”

  “No. Were you here early evening on the seventeenth of last month? That’d be May seventeenth, miss.”

  Lorraine nodded, frowning, doing a good cover job. She repeated the date as if trying to remember, then asked innocently. “What date is it today?”

  “June twenty, miss. This was last month, seventeenth of May.”

  “I guess I was here, yes, think I was at home that night. Why?”

  “Did someone else come here? Did a taxicab bring someone else to these premises?”

  “No. Not that I can recall …”

  The officer stood up, walked toward the bedroom, and pushed open the door.

  “Just the two of you live here? Nobody else? Short, dark-haired man?”

  Lorraine laughed. “No. It’s a small place. Why are you so interested?”

  The officer showed her a photograph. It was similar to the one she had seen in the wallet but much larger. Lorraine knew at a glance that it was the same man as on the driver’s license—the owner of the wallet.<
br />
  “Do you know this man?”

  “No, I’m sorry. What has he done?”

  “He was murdered, ma’am. Haven’t you read about it? Local man.”

  Lorraine looked suitably shocked, then stood up. “Maybe he lived here before I came to stay—I can ask my friend.”

  The officer slipped the photograph back into his jacket. “Thanks. Truth is, we’re only interested in tracing the woman—cabbie says she was dropped off around here.” He relaxed, smiled at Lorraine. “Since you don’t fit the description we must have the wrong place, but thanks for your help, been nice talkin’ to you.”

  Lorraine followed the young officer to the door. “Was she murdered, too?” she asked innocently.

  “No, but we think she may have known the man driving the deceased’s vehicle. We have two witnesses.”

  “They saw her coming here?” asked Lorraine.

  “No, we were told she may have been brought here by cab. We’re asking everyone in the street if they saw her. She must have been hard to miss. She was covered in blood.”

  Lorraine opened the front door. “I’ll ask Rosie when she comes home if she saw her. Do you have a number? Somebody I can call?”

  The officer told her to contact her local station or sheriff’s office and they would pass on any information to the department handling the homicide.

  After they had gone, Lorraine leaned against the door. Her heart was beating so rapidly that she felt dizzy. She began to berate herself for being so stupid. She was not involved in any murder. All she had done was tip off the cops with the description of the man who picked her up. There was nothing to be afraid of—except that she had taken the wallet. But she’d gotten rid of it and nearly all the money was gone. They had not been new notes so she doubted they could be traced. Why was she worrying about something so inconsequential when the officers hadn’t even recognized her as the woman they wanted for questioning? She ran her tongue over her newly capped teeth. She had come a long way since that attack, physically and mentally, and eventually she relaxed and congratulated herself on the way she had handled the cop.