Monday's Lie

by Jamie Mason

  The cure wrapped up with a riddle for the walk home. My mother wrote down riddles on strips of paper and rolled them into an old film canister. The little plastic cylinder snugged in just right at the joint of the dock’s skirting and last pylon. I always stirred the hole first with a length of reed grass to rout out the daddy longlegs that liked to hunker down next to our stash of brain teasers.

  At journey’s end, back in the kitchen or tucked up in the den or on the cool concrete of the front step with the firefly channel winking into the gloom, we talked out the riddle first, then the problem with its resolution or its next step, or sometimes its uncanny dissolution under scrutiny.

  Psychology courses in college had made for easy dissection of my mother’s dock exercise, but even knowing why it worked couldn’t wring the mystery from her greatest construct. When you did it as she had taught us to do it, it felt like voodoo.

  I left Christine Ames and drove back home. Not to my house, but home to where I’d learned to unpack a problem properly.

  • • •

  The house was painted a creamy off-white now. It had been a light gray-blue when we’d lived there. The current owners had added heavy-hinged, stained-wood shutters to the façade. It looked good, and I was somehow glad to see how much it didn’t look like my house anymore, or her house either. She was, we were, free of it all. Being there now was devotion, not obligation.

  I parked in the empty cul-de-sac and went for the anti-loiter, purposeful-looking stride, straight for the lake. At ten in the misty morning wearing a business suit, it was already a strange thing to do, to be walking the squelchy trail in Dry Clean Only. It wouldn’t do to look unsure of myself. I assigned myself the song—“Bus Stop,” by the Hollies.

  In the meantime, though, there was the walk and the think.

  I chewed the details of the past few weeks, mindful of finding bones. Hopeful of it even. There weren’t any, so my conclusions remained mushy. But either way, at the end of the dock, it was time to let it go. I felt as absurd as I ever had, with my antique pop song and my stage of weathered wood and the audience of trees and tiny fish. I hummed.

  I pulled up a thin reed and stirred away a crumpled leaf from the hidey-hole only out of respect for the entirety of the ritual. We’d taken away the trove of riddles when Simon went off to school. Surprise flashed up my arm when the reed bent straightaway against something solid. My hands shook as I jimmied out the little black cylinder, an old 35 mm film canister. Inside, a strip of curled, crispy paper:

  What belongs to you but others use it more than you do?

  It wasn’t my mother’s handwriting. On the other side of the paper was a smiley face and Hi, Sissy.

  “Damnit, Simon.” I’d had to use the voice command to dial him because the shaking in my hands made the numbers on the keypad too small by half.

  “Hey! Double damnit to you, Dee.” Simon laughed.

  “The answer is your name.”

  “The answer is Simon Vess?”

  “No.”

  “The answer is Simon Garrett Vess? I thought the answer was always forty-two.”

  “No! It’s what belongs to you that others use more than you do.”

  The line went quiet to the point I suspected I’d lost the signal. I was just pulling the phone away to look to see that we were still connected when I heard him again.

  “You’re at the dock?”

  “Yeah, real funny, you little asshole. You scared me to death with that. I thought I was going crazy.”

  “Dee, why are you out there? You acted fine the other night, but you’re really upset about that woman, aren’t you? I didn’t mean to make it worse.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Oh, yeah? Sounds like it.”

  “Bite me.”

  “Okay. So anyway, once upon a time, a brother and a sister had some lunch if she wasn’t sick of him. . . . Come on. Last time sucked. Let’s do it better. You’ve got to eat, right? My treat, to make up for the riddle. And for the other night.”

  I sighed. “You’re not working?”

  “Nope. Got the day off.”

  “Me, too.”

  “So, half hour? Be there or be square?”

  “I guess.”

  • • •

  A vodka cranberry sat waiting for me on the bar in front of my seat. Simon was into rum and Coke these days and this day, too.

  “I see lunch is poured,” I said.

  “It sounds like it’s been that kind of day again.”

  “As you well know, it’s been that kind of week. That kind of month, really.”

  “You look spiffy for a day off.” Simon flicked the cuff of my jacket’s sleeve.

  “Thank you. I had an appointment.”

  “Want to talk about it?”

  “Not at the moment.”

  “I’m sorry about the riddle. I didn’t think it would freak you out so bad.”

  “How would finding a riddle there, just like my dead mother used to do, not freak me out?”

  “I put it there ages ago. I just wanted to know if you ever went out there.”

  “Do you go out there?” I asked.

  “I have. Obviously.”

  “Well, were you disappointed I hadn’t thought to leave you any riddles?”

  He laughed. “Kinda.”

  I didn’t laugh. “Do you have any idea how dismal it is to have everybody wishing I was her?”

  “Now, that’s not what I meant. Come on, Dee. That’s not fair.”

  “Oh, it’s not just you. You’re in some fine company. My husband wishes I was her. And Br—”—I pulled a hand-brake turn on my tongue. I didn’t want to talk about Brian with Simon. Not yet, anyway—“that brainwashing bastard Paul Rowland.”

  Simon startled at my babbling. “Why do you think Paul wants you to be like Mom?”

  “Oh, he’s always making the comparison. You know how he is. She said he’d probably try to get me to come work with him at some point. With them, whoever they are. Does he try to get to you, too?”

  “No. Has he been around recently?”

  “No,” I glowered into my drink. “Not since the money thing. I’m just pissed off in general. Don’t worry about it. I didn’t mean to bring him up. Sorry. No use the both of us being in a bad mood.”

  Our chatter drifted, but Simon kept steering back to Christine Ames and to what he presumed was bothering me. I bumpered the truth and told him stories of Patrick’s and my recent squabbles, including an edited version of Angela’s wrath. Simon was dutifully, brotherly indignant on my behalf.

  “So, what was with the car, then? The plate I ran. Carlisle Inc.?”

  “It’s nothing.” Shit. I’d said it too quickly. I could practically watch the antennae extend from Simon. The idea of seeing Carlisle Inc. for myself had been throbbing in my mind, ramping up its boom all morning. It was the gift of the dock walk, the answer it gave. I knew where to go next.

  “Dee?”

  “Simon.”

  “Does she have some connection to Carlisle?”

  “Who?”

  “Who? Seriously? The fucking tooth fairy. Or maybe this Angela or Christine? Are you being dense on purpose?”

  “No. It’s nothing,” I said.

  “I don’t like this. You always talk to me. We talk. That’s what we do. Now there’s this wall that I can only knock holes in by sneaking around behind your back. What is going on?”

  “Nothing. You promised you’d leave it alone and you’ve already played Twister all over that one.”

  “And you promised you’d bring me in if you needed help.”

  “I have not broken that promise.”

  “Dee.”

  “I haven’t.”

  He got up from his barstool. “I’m gonna hit the head. But we’re going to have this out when I get back.” He winked at the bartender and said, “Don’t let her leave,” and headed to the back of the restaurant.

  I had minutes, at best. And I knew what I wanted now.
The want bordered on a need. Before I made a fool of myself and took this any further with Simon, I had one more errand to run. I wasn’t going in half cocked on this. Whatever shred of pride I had left, whatever could loosely have been dubbed capable in me was already hanging by a thread.

  The first part of the last part of my quest involved neutralizing my brother so that I could take the leap I needed in peace. Then I would know what was going on and what to do with it and when to involve SuperSimon.

  I pulled a $50 bill from my wallet and waved the bartender over. I slid the bill across the wood.

  “I need a favor.”

  She took a step back, hands raised. “Oh, boy.”

  “No, it’s nothing bad. Nothing you’ll regret. I promise.”

  She had a skeptic’s eyebrow. Or maybe just an experienced bartender’s.

  “No really. See that bottle of Grey Goose? It’s almost empty. I’d like you to fill it halfway, right now—and very quickly—with plain tap water. When that guy comes back, we’re going to start drinking for real. He’s on rum and Cokes, but I want you to make all of my drinks from that bottle of mostly water.”

  I got only a hard squint in answer and took a chance. She was wearing both a crucifix and a medal of St. Amandus, the patron saint of bartenders. A showy Catholic with at least some sense of humor, hopefully from a big, devout, pain-in-the-ass family.

  “He’s my brother and I need to get something done today without his brotherly interference. You got brothers?”

  She sneered but not without affection. “Yeah. Three.”

  “Okay, so you know what I’m talking about. You don’t even have to worry. I’ll get him home in a taxi, safe and sound. I love him, but he’s a pain. And right now I need him to go home and go to sleep.”

  “Okay.” She shrugged. “It’s your fifty.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Yolanda.”

  “Yolanda, you’re my hero.”

  Simon returned with his serious face on.

  “You’ve got the whole day off ?” I said before he could start in on me.

  “Yep.”

  “Then I want to get shit-faced. I’ll tell you all my sorrows if you’ll drown them with me. I’ve been trying to do the stiff-upper-lip thing. But I feel like hell.”

  So we drank, and I played it. I could feel the bartender watching my performance and hoped that Simon didn’t notice her attention. I cried a little. I waited until the fourth drink so he’d believe it, confessing that I thought Patrick was going to serve papers on me soon. I made much of my humiliation over Simon’s discovery until he swore and slurred that he was sorry and that I wasn’t a wimp, that I was “the srongesss woman since Ma.” Which was, of course, ridiculous even by drunk measure.

  By his foggy seventh drink he was the one shushing me down from singing at the bar. The concerned glower from Yolanda, our drink-pouring new best friend, was as good as an Oscar award to me. I’d almost convinced her that I was drunk on watered-down cranberry juice, and she had been in on the whole thing from the beginning. I bit down on the corner of the sober smile that tried to curl my lip out of character.

  We had one for the road (of course we did), and I primly righted myself and, giggling, asked Yolanda to call us a taxi.

  “You okay for the ride?” I said to Simon. “You’re not gonna puke in my lap, are ya?”

  I heard the driver’s neck bones pop as he craned his head back to take stock of us. Pitiful midday lushes, his sad eyes summed it up.

  “Nah. I got iss,” said Simon.

  We rolled along, the both of us swaying and overcorrecting through the turns. It was like a dance. Simon led, I followed.

  “I’ll kick his ass. I really will.” Simon’s liver was extremely unhappy with my husband.

  “What are you gonna do, bury him in parking tickets?”

  “Parking tickets? Pffffft. Oh, no—s’not cop trouble I’m talkin’ about.” Simon’s head rocked in a loose nod that was trying for wise, but only looked likely to send him to the chiropractor after his hangover let him get out of bed. “He’ll be begging for cop trouble if I ever set my real sights on him. You don’ know, Sissy, how good I’ve been. I do what I’m supposed to, but oooohh, man. Oh, man. If I could do what I can do . . .”

  “Okay, baby badass. I mean baby brother.”

  His beautiful sincerity shrugged out of the sopping booze blanket for just long enough to make the simple point he’d wanted to convey all afternoon. Or even before that, ages ago, way back when he left the riddle for me at the dock, and even when he’d pried into my business by following Patrick. “I don’t want him to hurt you. I want you to be happy. You should be happy. Ma wanted you to be happy.”

  “I know, Simon. And I promise you, again, I know where to go for help. I know you’re there for me. I always have.” I patted his hand and the haze refilled his eyes.

  I watched him spill out of the taxi and stagger up the steps to his plain, low rancher.

  “Where to now, miss?” said the driver, watching me carefully for tears or nausea.

  I blew out a deep breath, shook off the stage show I’d been playing, and found the driver’s eyes in the rearview mirror. His confusion set in before I’d even spoken.

  “Hello.” I smiled. “Sorry about all that. Everything’s fine. I need to get something from my house first, and then take me back to my car at the pub, if you don’t mind.”

  28

  Friday

  Time to go. I twist the key and the car rumbles awake. The last bend before Carlisle is just ahead. Foot to the pedal. Please let me not come back this way bewildered.

  • • •

  Carlisle Inc. is a sloppy compound made up of dusty assembly yards under mammoth scaffolds dripping with hoists and pulleys, the whole complex worked around clusters of the cheap aluminum dome sheds that the company makes for its customers. As Friday’s business hours wind down, a mild commotion of people, cars, and work trucks buzz over the worn tracks that lay out a winding maze through the site. A pleasantly warm sun is westering over the end of this workweek, and the promise of a weekend that’s made out of all the same loveliness looks as if it’s motivating everyone to keep one eye on the clock and the other on what needs doing in order to punch that clock on time.

  The few glances that could mark my approach have slid right off my car as if it isn’t there. I feel invisible in a very pointed lack of curiosity. Either slippery ignorance is a job requirement here at Carlisle, or no one wants to acknowledge my presence for fear that it might pull them off the fast track to Friday’s happy hour.

  Cars are haphazardly parked in the grassless spaces between the buildings, but the blue sedan I was hoping to see is fortunately easy to find. It’s all alone and deep in the shaded alley alongside what looks to be the main office.

  I slide the gearshift to Park. Then eyes closed, deep breath. I don’t get even a full minute before the door of the office opens up and two men step out onto the concrete apron. They’re talking, nodding over a clipboard in the bright, lowering sun, and they wrap up their business with a handshake.

  The bald one on the left looks very much as if he could be my guy, but I’ve only ever seen him at a distance and, even then, only sitting in the car. But once they separate, Baldy veers off toward the left side of the shed in the direction of the blue car. With that, I have as close to an answer as I’m going to get.

  My available options make their arguments. I could follow him, although getting out of the compound discreetly behind his car now would be something of a trick. He would almost certainly know I was there. Getting it wrong and setting him on high alert would surely undo any progress I’ve made.

  I could play a ruse—hunker down and let him go on about his business, then bluff my way into a conversation with his buddies and hope that Friday’s secondhand information will be enough to tilt Saturday out of the crosshairs. Weak.

  He’s slid in behind the steering wheel of the blue car and I’m here at
the decision. Move or don’t. You have two seconds to make up your mind. Heaven help me, Mother help me, I get out from behind the wheel of my own car before he can leave.

  I don’t have a plan, which is probably a good thing. She always said that plans were for professionals and that people who didn’t know what they were doing only fouled them up. So I scrub my mind a determined blank and leave the engine running, and the driver’s door wide-open. I pace off the distance to the other car in long, steady, Annette-Vess-style strides.

  I wait to draw the gun from my bag until the shade of the building unsquints my eyes.

  Baldy is just reaching for his seat belt when I draw even with his rolled-down window. He turns his unconcerned face up to me, no doubt expecting his colleague for a follow-up last word. What he gets instead is the barrel of my gun pressed into his forehead.

  “Don’t move.”

  He moves, but to his credit, only to raise his hands, palms out, above his shoulders.

  “Do you know me?”

  The answer dawns across his face before I even finish the question. He swallows hard and gives a redundant nod.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Jim.”

  I push the gun a fraction closer to Jim’s skull, whitening the skin in a halo around the muzzle. “Well, Jim, I have never yet killed a man who told me what I needed to know.”

  He searches my eyes and finds no lie there. “Are you wearing a wire?” His color is coming back.

  “I’m holding a gun to your head. How likely is that? Now, how do you know me?”

  I get the sense that his line of work has given Jim a certain fatalistic resignation in the face of disaster. He sighs. “Obviously, you already know.”