Hex: A Ruby Murphy Mystery

by Maggie Estep

  “Then you’re staying with me.”

  “No. You remember how awful that was,” I say, thinking, with horror, of the night when my ex, Sam, packed his bags and left, and Bob, having not heard from me for a while, came by and found me emotionally pulverized, lying on the couch. He forcibly took me and the cats over to his place. It was a nice gesture, but he made everything infinitely worse by insisting on perpetual extended discussions on the entangled nature of love. I didn’t feel better until I went to Oliver’s a few nights later. Oliver helped me just by lying next to me, quietly, and holding me.

  “That was only because you were heartbroken and didn’t want to listen to my infinite wisdom,” Bob says. “This is different. You’re coming to stay with me.”

  “No, Bob.”

  “Then I’m gonna call you every five minutes for the next twenty-four hours,” he threatens, just as the sound of police sirens come braying up from the street. “Cops don’t ever do anything quietly do they?” he says, and right on cue, the men in blue start pounding at the downstairs door.

  I go let them in. They’re a Laurel and Hardy team. One tall and skinny, the other short and fat.

  “You Murphy?” Laurel barks.

  I agree that I am.

  They make an extreme racket trundling up the stairs behind me. Oversized flashlights bang into walls, radios bleep, boots stomp.

  “They don’t seem to have taken anything,” I say, showing the cops in.

  Their faces are blank. Hardy’s stubby eyebrows look like aborted crochet projects.

  “You piss someone off lately?” Laurel wants to know.

  “I don’t think so. But maybe.”

  “Could you be more specific, ma’am?” Hardy whines.

  Bob shoots me a look and I sigh and launch into the whole insane story.

  Neither Laurel nor Hardy shows any signs of life as I tell my tale Occasionally, Hardy asks for more specifics. When I give them to him, he just grunts, doesn’t even bother to make more than perfunctory notes on his pad. It’s not until I get to the part about Ned Ward and our tryst that both cops perk up.

  “So you’re saying you had relations with this Ned Ward person?” Laurel asks.

  “And he threatened you?” Hardy adds greedily.

  “I had, uh … had relations, yeah, but he didn’t threaten me, just that I saw he had a gun.”

  Evidently seeing that a guy you’ve just screwed is armed is not something to be alarmed about. At least not as far as Laurel and Hardy are concerned. In fact, once it’s clear to them that no, Ned Ward did not in fact threaten me, they lose interest in him too. Hardy gives me a card with the precinct’s number. Tells me to give a call if it happens again.

  Great.

  The two cops clunk down the stairs, banging their flashlights and holsters into the wall as they go.

  “Well, that was helpful, wasn’t it?” Bob says.

  I shrug.

  “Got any cocoa?” my boss wants to know.

  The man is a freak for cocoa. Accordingly, even though he rarely visits, I keep cocoa in the cupboard.

  About twenty minutes later, sated with cocoa and reconciled to the idea that I’m going to ignore his advice to go to Texas, Bob bids me a safe evening and heads home across Surf Avenue.

  I sit on the couch with one cat on my lap and the other staring at me from her perch on the couch arm. I don’t feel so good. My apartment always seemed like a little fortress to me. Now it feels like a trench with a neon arrow pointing the way. Maybe I do need a trip to Texas.

  I pick up the phone and dial my friend Stacy’s number in Houston. He’s not home.

  I try Ariel. I get her voice mail, yet again.

  I try Jane. The answering machine clicks on, telling me that neither Jane nor Harry can get to the phone right now.

  I sit staring at the wall.

  Eventually, I hear someone in the hall. I quietly get up off the couch and reach for the screwdriver in my little toolbox by the stereo. I stand shaking, waiting for whoever it is to come blowing through my door. But it’s only Ramirez’s door that I hear opening. I look out my peephole and see him and Elsie going into his place.

  “Ramirez,” I say, springing into the hall.

  Ramirez and Elsie eye me warily. Elsie’s face is puffy. Ramirez has a thousand years of worry in his eyes. Neither of them notices the condition of my front door.

  “Are you all right?” I ask Elsie.

  She shrugs. “I got pain, mama,” she says. She looks so small. Her lovely wavy black hair is plastered flat against her small, acorn-shaped skull. There are dark circles under her brown eyes.

  “Can I get you anything?” I ask, wanting to burst out and tell them what’s happened, needing desperately to have the solace of other human beings, but trying to contain myself in the face of what they’ve been through.

  “Oh my God, what happened?” Elsie suddenly notices my door. Her tired, puffy face comes to life.

  “Someone broke into my place and fucked up all my stuff.”

  “The cats?” Elsie asks, knowing what a maniac I am about my cats.

  “They’re okay. Scared but okay. I think they must have hidden as soon as they heard whoever it was come in.”

  “Who did this to you, Ruby?” Ramirez is suddenly on fire. He’s pushed through the door and is standing looking at the havoc beyond. The cats are now both sitting in the living room, staring ahead, as if demanding an explanation for the mess that’s been made of their home. “You and your cats you come stay the night with us,” he says firmly.

  Though I hate being a houseguest, I’m scared enough to agree to it. I start collecting some things as Ramirez stands there bunching and unbunching his fists. It’s a bit nerve-wracking when an eccentric Vietnam vet reaches the boiling point. Elsie puts a soothing hand on Ramirez’s arm as I pick up the phone to tell Bob I’m staying with Ramirez and Elsie for the night.

  “Oh,” my boss says in a tight voice, obviously offended that I’m staying with Ramirez rather than him. I’m in no condition to smooth ruffled feelings, though. I bid him a good evening and click off.

  I shoo my cats across the hall into Ramirez’s place. It’s pretty much the mirror image of my own but with completely different decor. Cluttered with discount furniture and velvet paintings.

  Elsie goes into the kitchen to put water on for tea. Ramirez, tense as wire, withdraws into the bedroom and closes the door.

  I throw some blankets I’ve brought over onto the hideous flower motif couch as the cats dart around, bellies to the ground, confused about the new environment. I sit down and stare at my knees.

  “You need a stiff drink,” Elsie says.

  “I don’t drink, Elsie.”

  “Comes a time when everybody needs a drink.”

  “Sure. But I’m not gonna have one. It won’t help.”

  “Have some tea at least. The water’s hot. Come,” she says, reaching for my hand, pulling me up.

  I stand at her side as she pours hot water into three cups then dunks in odd-looking large tea bags. The infusion starts to turn purple.

  “What kind of tea is that?” I venture.

  “Secret tea to help us all.”

  “Oh,” I say.

  It’s not yet ten P.M., but we’re all three ravaged from our collected stresses, and a half hour later as I lay stretched out on the couch, I muse that the secret tea must have contained barbiturates because my eyelids are bags of cement. Before I’ve had time to try to convince the cats to sleep with me on the couch, I’m out.

  Pietro Ramirez

  26 / American Swearing

  There’s not much peace to be had in this world, and lately I’m not even getting my small share of it. I wake up and find my girl curled on her side, her body all tight like she’s fighting pain in her dreams. I decide right then and there I’ve had enough shit from the doctors, I’m taking my girl to the emergency room and that’s that. I’ll let her sleep for now, but then she’s going in. I don’t care what th
at shit ends up costing me.

  I get up to go into the kitchen, and as I open the bedroom door, a cat comes at me and I nearly fall over. It takes me a minute to figure out why the hell there’s a cat in my house, and just as I’ve remembered about Miss Ruby camping out on the couch, the other cat comes at my legs.

  Miss Ruby herself is still passed out on the couch. I look down at her, trying to will her awake to tend to these fur-covered monsters, but she’s out cold. I go into the kitchen, avoiding the animals, and put on some coffee.

  I’ve been sitting at the kitchen table just a minute or two when my girl comes in, rubbing sleep from her eyes and tugging her T-shirt down over her pretty ass.

  “Hi baby.” She leans down and kisses me.

  “I’m taking you to the hospital,” I tell her.

  My lady frowns, pulls the shirt down tighter over herself, like she’s trying to completely flatten those problem titties, but doing this gives her some pain and she makes a face and sits down next to me and in a small voice says, “Okay, we’ll go to the hospital just as soon as we’ve made sure Miss Ruby won’t be needing us.”

  The coffee finishes brewing, and Elsie pours some in a cup with plenty of milk and sugar, then, sidestepping the cats, brings this to Ruby, waking her and urging her to drink it down and tend to her starved animals.

  When Elsie comes back into the kitchen, I tell her to put some clothes on because I don’t entirely trust Ruby, who I think is a bit of a dirty girl and might be getting funny girl-on-girl ideas watching my lady walk around half naked.

  Elsie rolls her eyes at me. “What you think, baby?” she asks. “You think me and Ruby gonna do something?” She laughs at me, a teasing laugh that’s good to hear considering there hasn’t been that much laughter out of her this last week.

  “What am I gonna do?” Ruby wants to know, coming into the kitchen, sipping on her coffee and working at not being tripped by her restless cats.

  “Nothin’.” I shrug at the girl. “Those things are hungry,” I tell her, pointing at the cats.

  “Apparently,” she says, then goes to the refridge and pulls out some raw meat that I guess she brought over from her place.

  “You sure those things ain’t getting mad cat disease from eating that shit?”

  “Probably are.” Ruby smiles and puts the cats’ bowls down.

  The cats are definitely a little wilder than most cats I’ve seen. But, of course, I avoid spending too much time around cats in the first place.

  Ruby watches the cats eating for a minute then thanks Elsie and me for letting her stay.

  “And you’re gonna keep on staying,” Elsie tells her, putting her fists on her hips the way she does when she has a strong point to make.

  I give my lady a funny look. Not that I’m opposed to Ruby being here when we’re here but with going to the hospital and all, I don’t want to be leaving the girl and her cats in my place.

  “I’m gonna make arrangements for myself,” Ruby tells us. “Gotta get Ariel on the phone, and then I may go on over to my boss’s place for a day or so.”

  Elsie says that no, she wants Ruby staying in our place, and I’m about to pull her into the bedroom and give her a talking to but Ruby’s already on her cell phone, calling the Ariel woman and talking to her.

  Elsie and I go into the bedroom, and when I pull the door closed, she immediately puts her arms around me and squeezes me to her.

  “Don’t hurt yourself,” I say, pulling back from her a little, worried she’s hurting her breasts.

  “Ruby won’t do anything,” my lady says. “You can trust her.”

  I frown at Elsie, then tap her lightly on the ass. “Put some clothes on. I gotta get you some help.”

  I watch her slip into a pair of jeans and a loose red sweatshirt. She looks good. Too good to be hospitalized.

  I come out of the bedroom and find Ruby packing up her cats’ meat. “You taking that somewhere?” I ask.

  “I’m going to Manhattan. With the cats. Ariel’s place.”

  “The blond lady? You’re staying with her?”

  “It’s probably safest. She’s not gonna be there anyway. She has a house on Long Island. She’s going out there and I’m gonna stay at her place.”

  “Oh,” I say, feeling a little shitty now about not wanting Ruby staying on here with us.

  “Don’t feel guilty, you offered to let me stay,” the girl says, reading my mind.

  I smile at her. “Yeah.”

  Elsie comes out of the bedroom looking like a million bucks, and even though I’ve seen her close to every day for the last five years, I sometimes still get the breath taken out of me at the sight of her.

  “Close your mouth, baby,” she says to me, smiling, then turning to Ruby, “Pietro’s taking me to the hospital. I gotta get this shit taken care of.” She motions to her chest.

  Ruby looks worried, but Elsie tells her it’s all gonna be okay—her chest and Ruby’s break-in problem and all the rest of it too. My lady is an optimist. I guess somebody’s got to be.

  I go with Ruby over to her place so I can keep an eye on her while she packs up some stuff. Finally she pulls out carrying cases for her cats. The fat one goes in okay, but the little one escapes and goes under the couch. I stand there watching as Ruby gets down on her belly and sticks most of her body under the couch, pulling the little cat out and getting it into the case.

  “You gonna be all right?” I ask, feeling shitty again, like I should be doing more to help the girl.

  “I’ll be fine, you just take care of Elsie,” she says. I nod, and a few minutes later her phone rings and it’s a car service there to take her into the city.

  Elsie comes out into the hall and the two of them hug. They look good like that, the white girl’s skin pale against the coffee of Elsie’s cheek, and for a quick second I think about what it would be like if they did do some girl-on-girl shit, but the idea passes pretty fast. I carry the fat cat down the stairs for Ruby and help her get settled in the car.

  The driver pulls off into traffic, and I go back upstairs. Elsie looks sad now.

  “You think she’s gonna be okay?” my lady wants to know.

  “She’ll be fine, baby,” I tell her.

  Elsie doesn’t look convinced, but I persuade her we’ve got to get going. She puts some things into her big red purse and we leave.

  Twenty minutes later we’re waiting in the emergency room and I don’t like it. Bright lights and a lot of nasty nurses and sick people. Elsie gets called in to see the screening nurse. She’s in there maybe two minutes, then we’re back to waiting for a damn long time before finally Elsie gets called again. A nasty white nurse shows us to a little curtained-off bed, and Elsie is told to sit on the bed and wait. I pull a chair up next to the bed and put my back against the curtain separating us from the next patient, some woman who’s moaning a lot.

  Finally, a good-looking black lady doctor comes in and her and Elsie seem to like each other right off. Elsie goes telling the doctor the whole story about her breasts, and I just sit there, feeling like a shithole because I can tell the lady doctor thinks this is my fault, like I wanted my lady to have huge titties and that’s why all this happened. I want to tell how I liked my lady’s rack just fine the way it was and how I’d be a lot happier if she wasn’t dancing and showing her stuff to men, but that I also wanted to honor my lady and do what she wanted. But I don’t say anything.

  We’re left alone again while the doctor is off having some tests run. At some point I actually fall asleep with my head resting on Elsie’s bed. Next thing I know, the doctor is back, saying she’s admitting Elsie into the hospital for IV antibiotics and she’s explaining all kinds of things in a lot of detail but all I can think is that my girl is getting hospitalized and it’s my fault.

  Elsie doesn’t seem to think it’s my fault in any way, but that doesn’t make the guilt leave. I stay at her side as we wait over an hour for an orderly to come and transfer her up to a room. I wait with her,
in the room this time, while a nurse hooks up IVs to my lady’s pretty arms.

  “I want you to go, baby,” Elsie tells me after I’ve been sitting holding her hand for a long time.

  “I’m staying here,” I tell her.

  “I’m sleepy, Pietro, I need to rest. You go on. Come back tomorrow.”

  “I can’t leave you here.”

  “You have to leave me here; they ain’t gonna let you spend the night. I’m gonna be fine, this shit’s gonna knock all that mess right out of me.” She motions at the bag of drugs at the end of the IV pole.

  I squeeze her hand.

  “Don’t look like that, baby, I’m gonna be fine. Now go on.”

  And eventually I leave.

  I walk down Ocean Parkway, with the cars whizzing by and the night falling, and I feel bad. When I get back to Coney, I go looking for Guillotine, but the dogs aren’t in the yard, which means he’s gone walking them somewhere. Feeling like hell, I turn back, sort of heading to my place, but then, thankfully, I run right into Guillotine.

  “Ramirez,” he greets me.

  “Guillotine, what’s up?”

  “Something the matter?”

  I tell him what’s the matter. He looks serious and worried. Even the dogs look worried.

  “I gotta go take over at the carousel,” he says. “James is home sick and the girl he’s got running it’s gotta go home. Wanna come with?”

  I nod. Even though I should really see what’s going on over at my Inferno instead. I figure Indio’s got shit under control and I’ll feel better sitting with Guillotine, who won’t say much.

  We head over to the carousel, and the girl—a little Dominican girl named Lucy, who’s got five kids at home—is relieved that Guillotine’s there to take over.

  Guillotine ties the dogs up in a back corner, near where all the broken-down carousel horses lie in a heap.

  A bunch of white people have come over and are climbing onto some of the horses. I go around collecting $2.50 from each of them, and then Guillotine goes into the middle of the carousel and starts it up. The old fucked-up organ grinds out its song and the thing starts spinning. After telling me to keep careful count and make sure no one makes off with any of the brass rings, Guillotine sends me up to the little platform, where I feed the rings into the contraption that sticks out, just within reach of the carousel riders. They’re aggressive carousel riders, each of them succeeding in getting a ring each time their horse swings by, and I’m sort of losing track of just how many rings they’ve got and I can see Guillotine, standing there near the organ, giving me a dirty look, like he knows I’m losing track.