Trashy Chic

by Cathy Lubenski

  Her smile ran away with the spoon. She hesitated. “I woke up last night after a dream, and went to the kitchen to get a soda without turning on the lights. When I came back through the living room, I looked out the window to see if it was raining and...”

  “And?”

  “There was a man standing across the street from my building, watching my window. At least I think it was a man, and I’m pretty sure he was watching my apartment. But maybe it was a woman or a drunk who lost track of his car or...”

  “Stop!” Madison ordered.

  “Or maybe I just imagined it,” she added feebly.

  “But it was real enough to call a cop.”

  “Yes.”

  “So you called to get advice about what to do about your stalker, who was maybe a man, maybe a woman, maybe a drunk?” Madison’s jaw clenched almost imperceptibly.

  “Yes...no! I mean, that wasn’t the only reason I called.”

  An uneasy silence strung out between them, broken by the barman delivering the second scotch. Madison swallowed a large gulp.

  “Well, here’s some free advice anyway: Don’t confront this person if you see him—her—again. Don’t walk alone at night; take elevators, don’t go into stairwells. If you see someone outside your apartment again, try to see who it is but don’t take any risks and call me. In the meantime, I’ll have a patrol car swing by your street more often. Could this be an old boyfriend or someone you’re seeing now?” His jaw clenched again.

  “No,” Bertie said, as miserable and embarrassed as she’d ever been.

  “OK, how about work? Have you written anything that would piss anyone off?”

  “Puleeze,” Bertie said. “I write about washing machines and fashion. I really don’t think Calvin Klein is lurking outside my apartment because I didn’t like the pleats in his balloon dress. I don’t know anyone who would do this. Besides, why now?”

  “Do not tell me you’re still messing around in the Bellingham murder. Is that what this is all about?”

  “You haven’t seen my byline, have you?” she said bitterly. Was evasion the same thing as lying? She preferred to believe not.

  “Stay out of the Bellingham murder.” His voice sounded like steel striking steel.

  “Do we have to have this conversation every time we’re together? You. Are. Not. My. Boss. You cannot tell me, as a reporter or a person, what I can and cannot do.” Bertie was doing her own jaw-clenching now. It looked better on him.

  She stood up, tugged her coat on and stomped out of the bar.

  She turned around, went back in and asked him for a ride to her apartment.

  Bertie didn’t sleep well that night or any other night that week. She got up two or three times to peep out the window, but the watcher didn’t show. Nightmares galloped through what little sleep she did get.

  During her lunch hours, she staggered out to her tiny car in the parking lot and took a nap on the front seat, waking up feeling drugged and with the imprint of the cup holder on her cheek. She avoided Shawn and anyone who might want to say more than “Hi.” She wondered what Madison was doing, considered calling him again, but didn’t.

  She was desperate for just one spark of joy in the desert that was her life.

  After work one day, she stopped at a pet store and bought a container of death-row crickets, bred to be reptile food. Their cheerful chirping was entertaining on the ride home, but after 15 minutes, she moved the container into bathroom and closed the door.

  At work the next morning, she waited till no one was around and put a cricket behind the bookcase in Nan Shepherd’s office. Through the glass walls, Bertie saw Nan looking behind her desk, picking up her chair, and peering under furniture on her hands and knees.

  The next day, Bertie shooed two more crickets under Nan’s cabinet file. From her across-the-room vantage point, Bertie watched Nan go through the hunt-and-search pantomime again, this time looking behind pictures, too.

  A janitor showed up, and Bertie could see Nan gesturing to him as she talked, pointing under the desk and then covering her ears. The janitor returned with a broom and started moving furniture and sweeping.

  All was well for Nan the next day, till Bertie saw her chance and when no one was around, put several crickets in various places around the room, including the pocket of an old sweater.

  By Friday, a haggard-looking Nan had moved to a cubicle in the newsroom in the middle of the reporters. The door to her office was closed and the lights were off.

  Bertie smiled and gave the rest of the crickets a pardon in the local park.

  In the midst of Bertie’s Wild Kingdom adventures, Kate called with a burglary update. “The police can’t even find my report, no one knows anything about it,” she said.

  “Doesn’t sound like they’ve sicced the kennel burglary task force onto it,” Bertie said.

  “Nope, but—get this—Buddy Weir, the guy who owns the jewelry store on Bautry? He found my TV on his delivery dock and returned it this morning. There’s nothing wrong with it, it’s even still tuned to the History Channel. And Donnie, who owns the bar around the corner, just returned my leashes. They were hung on the knob of his front door. Is this weird or what?”

  Yes, weird. Putting the leashes in a place where they could be found might make sense if it wouldn’t have been easier to just throw them away. And why steal them in the first place? Pawn dealers weren’t exactly clamoring for used dog leashes.

  But the TV? Katie hadn’t sprung for a flat screen for the dogs, but it was a nice TV. Even the most inept burglar could have made a few bucks selling it.

  Friday morning, and another call from Katie. “OK, Bert, this is getting freaky. You will never believe this—I went to put my garbage cans out on the curb last night and someone stole the garbage out of them.”

  “Kaie, c’mon, someone stole your garbage?”

  “That’s what I said, girl, someone stole my garbage. I’ve been keeping the cans inside in the back door because of the raccoons, and a couple were empty.”

  “Not all of them?”

  “No—I usually fill all of them but the two on the left didn’t have anything in them.”

  “So, someone stole dog poop?”

  “No, that goes to a different place.”

  “Well, what else do you put in your garbage?”

  “BERTIE! I put garbage in my garbage, what do you think? I’m raking my brains trying to think why someone would steal it. I think the cans were stolen Sunday, the night of the break-in, but I didn’t notice it till now.”

  “You got the TV and leashes back, maybe whoever took your garbage will return it, too. You know, this is one baaaad burglar.”

  “Look, you can joke, but this sounds like a crazy person.”

  “I know, and I’m sorry. What are you going to do?”

  “There’s no point in calling the police. Gene said he’s going to stay here overnight for awhile, even though I told him he didn’t have to. He said it’s a lot quieter here, and he has to study for his midterms. He’s got the air mattress and I brought in a mini-refrigerator and microwave for him. He said he doesn’t mind using the dog showers.”

  Bertie hoped Gene’s girlfriend didn’t mind.

  “Will he be safe there?”

  “He says so. He has a baseball bat, and he can lock himself in that little back room where he sleeps and call the cops with his cell phone. I’m not really happy about it, but I can’t talk him out of it.”

  “Then I say let him do it, and give him a raise.”

  “Already done. Bertie, what am I going to do?”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The following days passed in a blur. The Bellingham story had fled the front sections of the paper for the back pages, and the case seemed to be slowly inching its way into the cold files.

  “He may have had a lot of money, but he was pretty well disliked. The cops are trying to find who killed him, but they’re not getting a lot of pressure from the family anymore,” Shawn said
a week later at Duffy’s where a birthday party for Adam Cruisewell, the religion reporter, was in full swing.

  “So, there’s nothing new, huh?” Bertie asked.

  “It’s all negative: The forensic guys haven’t figured out what the murder weapon is yet, they’re really stumped on that one, which is kind of unusual. And, for some reason, Bellingham’s executor hasn’t filed his will yet.”

  “What happened to Gardener? I thought he was the hot suspect.”

  “My sources say he still is, but they can’t bring him in without something more to go on.”

  Cruisewell dove from the top of the bar into a mosh pit of cheering reporters, shouting, “Get me a virgin,” and Bertie was separated from Shawn by a crush of bodies. (Bertie was willing to bet there wasn’t a virgin anywhere among them). They were drunk and it was a work night—time for Bertie to go home before her shadowy boogeyman came out to get her.

  She was staring at her computer screen without really seeing anything the next day when a large box was delivered to her. She routinely received products from companies, eager for her to give it a good review in her column, I Dare Ya.

  She tussled with the cardboard, cursing modern packaging, and finally ripped it open to discover a new product from the Bellingham line. Obviously, the Bellinghams’ marketing firm hadn’t been told she involved in covering the owner’s murder.

  The Bellingham Co. had sent her the Hoity-Toity toilet seat, which raised and lowered when the user whistled “Dixie.” The press release promised that it could be purchased in several eye-catching colors, including puce and hot pink. Bertie was disappointed that hers was plain-old white. For a few sheckels more, the owner could have “It’s so nice to have a man around the house” stenciled around the inside ring.

  It was guaranteed to work for 10,000 raises or the equivalent number of choruses of “Dixie,” and also worked manually.

  Bertie took it home, installed it and it did indeed shoot up and down when she whistled “Dixie.” She had some fun with it, snapping it open and shut for awhile, but then, flushed with good humor, she put a lid on her fun, and unhinged it from the toilet.

  According to the paper’s ethical code, reporters weren’t allowed to keep items worth over $25 and, since the Hoity-Toity toilet seat sold for a cool $3,000, Bertie boxed it back up (unsat-on), and donated it to a homeless men’s shelter downtown.

  Bertie was still checking out the window of her apartment at night, but with no more sightings, her fear level had dropped. She still had an eerie feeling that someone was lurking just outside the range of her vision. More than a few times, she jerked her head around, trying to catch someone or something, but there was never anything there.

  It brought back memories of her mother’s annual family get-together to watch “The Wizard of Oz” on TV. Her mom thought it was great family entertainment, but Bertie was deathly afraid of the whole setup: flying monkeys, bizarrely dressed little people, witches who melted, the dark creepy forests, etc. etc. As an adult, she wondered what the hell Frank Baum had been smoking.

  When she reached 13, she refused to watch it anymore, but even now she saw flying monkeys out of the corner of her eye. Someday, the monkeys were going to get her.

  The week creeped toward Friday and freedom, but before the toiling masses were released for the weekend, a meeting was called to discuss “the future of newspapers in a technologically savvy world.” More doom and gloom.

  Bertie rushed to get into the conference room before everyone else and raised the level of her chair two inches. When reporters and management settled in, they were looking up at her.

  After the talking heads gave their blah blah blah on that old debil Internet, the dirtiest word in modern-day journalism was trotted out: layoffs.

  “We’re not talking right now,” Don Crotty said. “But in the future, if the bottom line doesn’t start rising, we’re going to have revisit the subject.”

  Management-speak for so-long suckers.

  Newspapers across the country were laying people off; good people, talented people. One of the biggest papers in the country was shooing Pulitzer Prize winners out the door as if they’d taken a crap in the middle of the newsroom.

  The sad thing was, even with circulation and advertising revenue dropping daily, the paper was still making a profit, just not enough for the elderly owners and their umpteen kids, who were going to share the inheritance.

  “How much money is enough?” Bertie wondered. “Will there ever be enough?”

  Papers were folding all across the country and no one cared.

  Shawn stood up. “We need to put interesting stories in, stories people are going to read, not this boring crap we’re running now. C’mon, people,” he said, looking at Crotty, Shepherd and the other suits. “Let’s get with it … we’re not fighting for our lives anymore, we’re just waiting to die.”

  It was a stirring speech and Bertie could see reporters lifting their heads and listening. Blank stares came from the suits, who stood up and drifted out of the room. The word layoff floated in the air as the troops silently filed out. People looked at their co-workers, measuring their layoff potential against their own.

  Bertie left work early with a headache. The day was softly catching up to twilight when she pulled into her parking spot at the apartment building. She got out and stood beside her car, taking deep breaths and enjoying the chill air when it happened again: She saw someone out of the corner of her eye.

  She jerked around: No flying monkey … a man dressed in clothing as black as the shadow he was standing in. Her heart stopped. She opened her mouth to scream when John Gardener stepped into view.

  “Bertie, it’s me, it’s John Gardener, don’t be afraid”“ His hands were stretched out as if he could push her gathering scream back and away from him. He stepped closer to her, a black coat stretching across his chest, black jeans hugging his thighs... the man in black outside her apartment.

  “You idiot, what the hell are you doing, following me? You scum-sucking, pig-knuckled, toe-sucking flying monkey toad wart.” She swung her purse, which was approximately the size of a VW Jetta, and caught him a good one on the chin. He reached out to grab her, but raised his arms instead to shield his face. A window opened audibly somewhere over Bertie’s head.

  “Hey, what’s going on out there? Should I call 911?”

  “Bertie,” he said, his voice muffled by his arms across his face. “Meet me somewhere, a restaurant or somewhere public. I’d really like to talk to you.”

  She raised her purse for another strike.

  “Please, Bertie, please, don’t. I didn’t mean to scare you, honestly. I couldn’t find your phone number and then I didn’t want to call you at work. Please meet me at the Bop & Hop in an hour. Look, I’m leaving. I won’t be back. I promise, just meet me.”

  He backed away from her, keeping an eye on her purse, and walked quickly down the street. She lost sight of him in the rapidly gathering darkness.

  “Lady! Are you OK? Can I shut the window? It might be L.A., but it’s cold.”

  “Yes, I’m fine. Hey, thanks. I really appreciate it.”

  “No prob. Next time, try to pick a warmer day to get attacked.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Oh, and lady? I didn’t get a real good look at him, but I wouldn’t describe as a monkey to the police, if you decide to call them. Just sayin’“

  The faceless, bodyless voice disappeared in the noise of the window closing.

  Bertie hurried inside, fumbling with the key in her hurry. She pulled her cell phone out, hoping she hadn’t broken it when her purse connected with Gardener’s chin. Kate didn’t answer. She reluctantly called Shawn; he didn’t answer either.

  She stood for a moment thinking. No, she was not going to call Madison and start the cycle of “Don’t you dare,” “Yes, I will.”

  Bertie decided that if she decided to meet Gardener—a fairly massive if—she needed a weapon. She had the Mace (“Bertie: Note to s
elf: Make sure it’s Mace and not hairspray”), but something bigger and harder was called for in this situation.

  Not a knife, she wanted something with some heft. A baseball bat was too hard to carry and she didn’t have one. Ditto for a skillet, except she had one of those. She started searching through the apartment, picking up and discarding things. Vase? No, she liked that vase and didn’t want to break it. Flower pot? No, the dirt would leak out all over her purse before she got there. Book? Too awkward.

  In the closet, she found her one pair of high heels with fuck-me spikes. She never wore them (she had a fear of heights) but they might work. One was compact enough, even at size 9, to fit in her purse and the spiked heel looked quite frightening.

  Armed with the shoe, she felt safe enough to go to the restaurant, which was a ‘50s-style faux diner with bright lights and families. Just in case, though, she called and left a message with Kate, saying where she was and whom she was meeting.

  With her shoe cocked and loaded in her purse she set off.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Bertie loitered outside the restaurant after peeping in to see if Gardner was there. He wasn’t. After a few curious stares from passersby she moved into the recessed doorway of the store next door. If she decided not to meet with Gardener, she could slink away without him knowing she’d been there.

  After 10 minutes, it was getting too cold to stand there. And a black-and-white patrol car circled the block three times, slowing down in front of her on every pass. Did she look like a working girl? In loafers and a plaid skirt?

  She went into the restaurant and winced. The brightly lighted place was painted pink with 5-foot high wooden cutouts of milkshakes topped with cherries, hamburgers detailed enough to see the grease and obscene hot dogs snuggled in their buns. “Rock Around the Clock” played on a ‘50s-style jukebox. The pony-tailed waitresses wore poodle skirts flounced into wide circles by layers of starched petticoats. A black bra strap peeked out from one waitress’ white blouse.

  The place was filled with restless, screaming children and harried parents. The noise level rivaled that of a drunk tank on Saturday night, but without the comfort of too much booze.