Hex: A Ruby Murphy Mystery

by Maggie Estep

  I look up at him and smile. He’s very easy on the eyes. Dark hair and eyes, nicely sculpted limbs, and the smile of a radiant maniac.

  “Where’ve you been?” He cocks an eyebrow at me.

  I shrug. He sniffs at me then spins on his heels and goes to the front of the room. As we all come to stand at the front of our mats, he bows his head and leads us in the Ashtanga chant.

  An hour and thirty-five minutes later, after Christopher has successfully torqued all twenty of us into unspeakable poses, culminating in fifty breaths of headstand and thirty of lotus, Jane and I wring out our soaked yoga clothes, towel our hair dry, and bid Christopher good-bye.

  We emerge into the brightness of lower Broadway. She flicks her cell phone on. I pull mine out too, checking to see if Ariel has called yet. She has not.

  We make our obligatory stop at the Astor Place Starbucks, loathing ourselves for patronizing the place. Then, having each downed a large espresso Frappuccino, we ride our bikes to Healthy Pleasures.

  We stroll the market’s bulk bins, filching a dried apricot here and two cashews there. Then we make our way around to the meat counter and each buy several pounds of organic ground turkey.

  “You ladies like the turkey, huh?” asks the tattooed guy manning the meat counter.

  “No, we’re vegetarians, but our cats eat raw meat and they love your turkey.”

  “Nice,” Tattoo says, taping our meat packages shut, scribbling the price on them with red felt marker.

  We pay for our purchases, then emerge back onto University Place.

  “I’ve got to hurry home now or my cat meat will start stinking,” I tell Jane.

  “You’re going to leave me?” she asks, indignant.

  “Yes, and you’ll be glad.”

  “It’s true. I have lots to do. I’m teaching thirty-seven yoga classes this week. But I’d prefer it if you were forcing your company on me all day to distract me.”

  “I’d like to. But since I’m resigning from my private investigator job, I’d better go grovel to Bob.”

  “Oh,” Jane says, looking sad.

  “Don’t worry, now that I don’t have three jobs, you’ll see far more of me than you’d like.”

  “Very good,” she says, imitating Harry, who says “Very good” to virtually anything.

  I get on my bike and ride away, turning back to wave to Jane, who’s standing there, bike in one hand, cat meat bag in the other, looking confused.

  I head east to Broadway, weaving through the thick traffic of bike-killer cabbies and lunatic investment bankers driving sport utility vehicles. I veer left on Worth Street, heading for the Brooklyn Bridge. It is hands down the nicest bridge to ride across, but it’s always congested with renegade pedestrians loitering in the bike lane. As I stand on my pedals, pushing the bike to the bridge’s apex, I start getting unbidden visions of Ned. I wonder if I was being paranoid, running out on what was, for all intents and purposes, extremely delicious sex—all because of a little revolver. I pull my bike over to the side of the bike lane and stare down at the water for a while.

  It’s nearly four now and the sun is starting to sink, enflaming the dark waters of the East River.

  I take a cigarette out of my backpack pocket and light it. I smoke and stare at the water. I look over to the right, where the Twin Towers used to stand. Still gone. Every time I look at the skyline, I expect to see them, and the hole created by their absence still knots my stomach.

  “You hurtin’ your pretty lungs, sweetheart,” comes the voice of a skinny dreadlocked black guy cruising toward me on a white track bike.

  I roll my eyes at him. He grins and zips past.

  I get back on my bike and tear down the other side of the bridge, narrowly avoiding a large man in khakis standing in the bike lane, taking a picture of the American flag atop the bridge.

  An hour later, after having detoured to stop and sit in Prospect Park for a few minutes, I’m back on Surf Avenue.

  I wave at Guillotine, who I see talking to the surly merry-go-round guy. Guillotine nods slowly. Merry-Go-Round Guy glowers.

  I hop off my bike, hoist it onto my shoulder, and turn the key in my lock.

  Oliver Emmerick

  24 / This Body

  I’m sitting in Dr. Liguori’s waiting room, leafing through the bizarre assortment of magazines and wondering what’s keeping him. He’s usually the most punctual doctor on the face of this earth. I inspect the contents of a Sports Illustrated, ogling a few muscular female athletes before scanning a battered New Yorker, puzzling over a few incomprehensible poems and then latching on to an intriguing essay about the work of Gerhard Richter, an artist I’ve long admired. I get so absorbed in this that I fail to notice the good doctor standing in the doorway leading to the examining room. I suddenly realize he’s been calling my name and I look up and see he’s waving me in.

  “Sorry, I got absorbed in the magazine,” I say, still clutching the battered New Yorker.

  “No doubt one of those stellar poems, huh?” The doc laughs his easy laugh. “Get the gown on,” he says, “I’ll be back in a moment.”

  I go through the obligatory rigmarole of donning the light blue dressing gown. When I first got sick, I’d just strip down to my boxers. Then I found the doctors were all pretty disconcerted at this, like I was some total pervert. So I learned to put the gown on.

  Dr. Liguori comes back and I tell him I’m hoping I don’t puke on him, having just come from another round of chemo. He smiles sympathetically. I then show him the skin around my feeding tube—which has been a bit tender. In his inimitable fashion, he gives me approximately seventy options for dealing with this dermal distress. Options ranging from traditional prescription unguents to herbal salves I can buy in Chinatown.

  The doc feels my lumps and looks at my tongue and fingernails, asking questions here and there. Then, satisfied that he’s gotten a good eyeful, he tells me to get dressed and meet him in his office.

  The doc’s office is a pleasant chaos of books and magazines and stacks of paper. Light streams in from a northern exposure facing Fourteenth Street. He’s seated in his comfortable-looking chair, staring down at some notes.

  “Sit.” He motions at an overstuffed chair—incongruous in an office setting.

  I plunk down and look over at him. The man has a well-made face enlivened by intelligent black eyes. I know he’s gay—he sometimes casually mentions his partner—but he’s not one of those flamboyant vicious gay male doctors, of whom I’ve met plenty. They’re just as bad as the disaffected Waspy hetero doctors. If not worse. Dr Liguori is just Dr. Liguori, an anomaly among doctors in that he actually converses with his patients and answers all questions, often before I’ve even thought of them.

  “I want to know how you’re doing on an emotional level,” he says, coming to the point. “I talked to Dr. Blackman this morning and he gave me all his somber pronouncements, which I presume he relayed to you too.”

  I nod, smiling at the doc’s assessment of his gloomy colleague Dr. Blackman, who is of the disaffected Waspy hetero school and seems to take sadistic pleasure in telling me he doesn’t understand how I’m still alive.

  “Yeah, he’s a real cheerleader,” I say, “but I’m used to it. You know how many doctors have told me I should have been dead weeks ago?”

  Dr. Liguori nods, looking a little pained. “But how are you dealing with this?” he asks, looking genuinely bewildered, the black eyes seeming to get larger.

  “I’ve got some pretty good friends and a lot of gorgeous ex-girlfriends keeping my mind off things. Plus, I gamble,” I say making the doc laugh as I tell him about my exploits at the track.

  We go over a few more things, like him asking me again if I don’t want to take up pot smoking to help deal with the nausea and me explaining it’s not worth it. Weed makes me paranoid and slothful. The doc laughs again. Then, giving me a few sample packets of skin unguent and some newfangled painkillers, he sees me to the door. He squeezes my shoulder
.

  “Take care of yourself, Oliver,” he says, his face all bunched up with concern. I have an urge to hug him but instead just tell him how much I appreciate him and bid him a good afternoon.

  Outside, the Lower Manhattan sky is obscenely blue. Women are wearing short skirts and T-shirts. It’s all quite radiant. And I just feel sick.

  I hail a cab to take me back home, even though it’s not very far. Playing house with Ruby these last few days has exhausted me.

  It takes me a while to climb up the five flights to my place. I fumble with the key and finally get the door open and let myself in. I go right to my futon and collapse face first. The phone starts ringing. I put my pillow over my head and hum Saint Ludwig’s Seventh to myself. Eventually, I decide to come out from under the pillow and put the real deal on the stereo. As the gorgeous first movement comes singing out of the speakers, I warily eye the blinking answering machine. I just don’t feel up to well-wishers right now.

  I turn the TV on to channel 71, the OTB channel, and mute the sound, not really having any idea who might be running today but having the racing bug back in me ever since Ruby and I went to Belmont.

  It’s fifteen minutes to post time on the eighth race, and there are some nice long odds on the board. I find myself suddenly needing to place a bet. The urge is strong enough to give me a little energy. I get up, go over to the computer and turn it on, listening to Saint Ludwig as I wait for the computer to take me to the Daily Racing Form online.

  Saint Ludwig is on to that gorgeous second movement by the time I’ve glanced at the entries for the race. Trusting one particular trainer/jockey combination on the seven horse and going on pure instinct on two others, I pick a trifecta out of my hat and decide to call into the OTB phone account Ruby and I had last year, to see if the thing is still open. A surly operator asks for my account number and password then tells me I’ve got twenty-two dollars in the account. I drop a humble twelve on the bet, boxing my fairly arbitrary trifecta so that if by some chance the three horses I picked run first, second, and third, I will hit the jackpot no matter what the order.

  It’s now one minute to post time and I actually turn Saint Ludwig off and put the sound up on the TV.

  My seven horse, a five-year-old bay gelding named Fluffy K, looks pretty good. Well-groomed and alert, standing quietly as the trainer gives the rider a leg up. The five and two horses don’t look like much, but what the hell, it’s only twelve bucks. The horses go out onto the track, meet up with their ponies and get led to the starting gate. The five horse, a gray named E Sharp, is acting up a little, not wanting to go into the gate. Two burly guys entwine their arms behind the horse’s hind end and shove him into the chute. A moment later the bell goes off, the gates pop open, and they’re off.

  Fluffy K does me proud, shooting right to the lead, on the rail. The rest of them are bunched up in two increments of five across. Kind of a messy-looking race. I start worrying a little, not caring that deeply about my twelve bucks but alarmed at the messiness of the race, which is beginning to look like a sure recipe for disaster.

  Two seconds later, though, it’s all changed and the pack has thinned out. To my shock, I see the gray horse running in second. Don’t know where my number two horse is, but what the hell. In the final stretch, with Fluffy K well ahead of the others and the gray holding onto second, the two horse, who I’ve just noticed at the back of the pack, suddenly comes around on the outside, accelerating and rapidly passing the others. The two horse reaches the gray’s heels just as they pass the finish line. I hit a trifecta.

  I sit there at the edge of the futon with my mouth hanging open. As I watch Fluffy K’s groom lead him and the jockey to the winner’s circle, the tote board lights up, announcing the payoffs. I am stupefied to see that the trifecta will pay $378. Not bad for two minutes’ work.

  I think to call Ruby and tell her of my good fortune, but I’m really not up to human interaction just yet, even over the phone.

  I turn the TV off and put Saint Ludwig back on.

  I fish one of the packets of unguent from my pocket and apply some of it to the tender skin surrounding my feeding tube. The skin becomes shiny and it all looks particularly perverse now, oily skin impaled by a clear plastic tube. It’s disgusting, actually. I never expected something like this to happen to my body. To me. My body was always a wonder to me. No matter what terrible things I put it through, it retained its good musculature and strength. I used to pump savage drugs into it, starve it, mutilate it with glass shards and knives. And the body didn’t really mind. It bounced back in no time. Transported and contained me. And now, after turning over a new leaf and beginning to take good care of this body, after close to ten years of feeding it well and giving it yoga classes and clean lovely women, it has succumbed to vile illness. It is diseased and punctured and has no fight left. It’s only through supreme force of will that I’ve kept it going these last weeks. And my will is tired.

  I lie down and pull the comforter over my head.

  I sleep.

  Ruby Murphy

  25 / Ravaged

  I’m midway up the stairs of my building when I sense that something is off. I reach the top of the steps and my stomach drops. The lock has been shot out. I scan around for something to defend myself. There’s nothing but the stepladder Ramirez was using to go after the flying cockroaches. I pick it up and hold it in front of my body. I stand listening but hear nothing.

  I knock fast and hard on Ramirez’s closed door but it seems my neighbor is out.

  I carefully push my own door open, half expecting to pass through the threshold and fall into a void. Ridiculously I flash on the movie Beetlejuice, wherein, no sooner would the protagonists set foot outdoors than they’d fall into a hellish abyss of mutant snakes.

  But all I find is my dear little apartment—in a postapocalyptic state.

  “Stinky? Lulu?” My whole body is shaking as I advance through the chaos. All the things from the kitchen are smashed onto the floor. My Moroccan light fixture has somehow been yanked down from the ceiling and is lying in fractured bits. I glance over at the piano and feel a wave of nausea. Its front has been pulled off.

  I hear foraging sounds coming from the hallway closet. I pull the door open and find Stinky, dazed-looking as he emerges from a cardboard box. I pick up my huge cat and cradle him in my arms, burying my face in the fur of his neck. He doesn’t seem much worse for the wear.

  I spend the next ten minutes searching for Lulu. Stinky follows me from room to room, occasionally moaning balefully. Just when I’ve grown convinced that Lulu is gone, she suddenly materializes in front of me, not seeming particularly thrilled, but very much alive.

  I’m so relieved I grab her and squeeze her—which makes her hiss and squiggle out of my arms, indignantly darting under the couch.

  I go over to the piano. The invader pulled off the front, baring the old uprights’ eighty-five-year-old innards, but I don’t see anything wrong. I hesitantly hit the middle C. It rings out. I put both hands on the keyboard and run up and down it. All the keys are working.

  I start looking around to see what’s been taken. The TV is still there, as is the stereo. The endless stacks of CDs seem to have been rifled through but I don’t notice any missing. I start feeling severely spooked about the whole thing. I venture into the hall but Ramirez’s door is still closed and my knock goes unanswered.

  I call my boss, Bob.

  “Ah, the girl with the faraway eyes,” Bob says once I’ve grunted a greeting into the phone.

  “What?”

  “Never mind. Is something wrong?”

  “Yes.”

  “Lovesick?”

  “Someone broke into my apartment.”

  “Are your cats okay?”

  “Seemingly. Yeah.”

  “But all your stuff is gone?”

  “No. Nothing that I can see. But someone broke a lot of my stuff and rifled through things.”

  Bob is quiet. Then: “There’s
something you’re not telling me.”

  I tell him, reporting, for what feels like the thousandth time, my activities at the track and my ill-fated date with Ned Ward.

  “Christ. Call the cops, Ruby. Don’t fuck with this.” Bob sounds aggravated.

  “It’s not my fault,” I say, put out that he’s getting snippy with me.

  “You’re so fucking naive about things that I just want to punch you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’ll be right over,” he says, “and call the cops. Now.”

  I hang up and do as I’m told. Though the woman at the precinct assures me that some officers will be at my door step in moments, Bob arrives long before they do.

  “What have you done now, girl?” Bob asks, stepping through the door. He has his steel-gray hair pulled into a ponytail and he’s wearing pink-tinged glasses that I’ve never seen before. He cocks his head, looking around.

  “The cops are supposed to be here any minute,” I tell him.

  “We shouldn’t touch anything,” Bob says, like a man who’s watched too many episodes of Law & Order.

  “I don’t think they’re gonna be doing a lot of fingerprinting or conduct any kind of extensive investigation. Whoever did this didn’t even take anything.”

  “Yeah, I can see that.” Bob frowns and motions at the chaos around us. “But they were sure looking for something. What?”

  “Like I know? I bet Ned is doing that creepy trainer’s dirty work. Gaines probably sent him to rifle though my stuff. Or maybe Ned’s on his own. I really don’t know.”

  “You know what I think?”

  “What’s that?”

  “You need to leave town.”

  “And go where exactly?”

  “What about Texas? Go see your gay guy friend. The one you used to room with.”

  “I’m not gonna go to Texas just ’cause someone broke into my place.”