Crazy Thing Called Love

by Molly O'Keefe

  Phil choked on his tongue.

  “Sabine, right?” Richard looked around for confirmation and Ruth got very interested in her manicure, but Maddy knew a chance when she saw it.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Right.” Richard nodded. “Explicitly against the station’s HR policy. A policy we keep around so I don’t have to think about any of my employees naked. You’re out. Pack your shit and make sure I don’t see you again.”

  Phil didn’t move, his mouth agape. His Superman Says Stay in School T-shirt was sadder than ever.

  “Do I need to call security?” Richard asked.

  “My lawyer—”

  “Won’t help you. You’ll get a package, Phil. Now leave.”

  Phil shook his head and slunk away, his proverbial tail between his legs.

  “As for you two …” Richard pointed his fingers at Ruth and Maddy. And Maddy braced herself for the hit. “… you have one week to fix this.”

  “Fix what?” Ruth asked.

  “The show.”

  What would Matt Lauer do? Maddy thought. He’d pounce on this opportunity.

  “We’ve got some great ideas,” Madelyn said, even though they didn’t.

  “We’ll worry about great ideas after you get Billy back on the show,” Richard said.

  “He won’t … he won’t come back.” Maddy looked at Ruth, who was still white-faced and small. No help. “Not after that.”

  “Convince him.”

  Like it was that easy? Did he know nothing about Billy Wilkins?

  “What happens if we don’t?” Ruth asked.

  “Well, Ruth, you’ll be fired for going along with that fiasco this morning.” He turned to Madelyn. “And you’ll be doing weather at five a.m. in Omaha. We clear?”

  Numb, both Maddy and Ruth nodded.

  Richard left, taking all the air in the room with him, and all the strength from Maddy’s legs—she collapsed onto the green room couch.

  “What are we going to do?” Ruth asked.

  “You quit, remember?”

  “I know. Maybe I still will.” Behind her dark glasses her eyes were alive. “I don’t know about you, but I could use a drink. Or twenty.”

  They’d never done this, in their years together. Sometimes when they worked late, they’d order salads from the deli and eat in the conference room. But they’d never socialized outside of the office. Maddy didn’t socialize with anyone outside of the office.

  All part of her life on the iceberg she’d been calling home.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  Holding two new toothbrushes and a tube of toothpaste, his pockets stuffed with water bottles and protein bars, Billy stood outside his guest bedroom door. The second he’d opened the front door Becky had run into this room with Charlie, acting like the devil was chasing them. Of course, the way Billy had been yelling, he couldn’t blame her.

  But it had been twenty minutes since she’d barricaded the two of them in the guest room and he was beginning to get nervous.

  Beginning? What a joke. He was sick with worry, with anger and stress. What if they jumped out the window?

  Carefully, he twisted the doorknob, planning to just look in on the kids, see if they were both sleeping. Or missing. Or dead.

  But the door was locked.

  What the hell? With sudden, exasperated anger, he lifted a fist to pound on the door, but he stopped himself, took a breath, and carefully knocked.

  “Becky?” he called through the wood.

  Silence. Lots of it. And then finally the door creaked open. Her little face poking through.

  “Did Janice call?” she whispered.

  He shook his head. “I thought maybe you’d want this stuff.” He held out the toothbrushes and toothpaste and a bottle of water.

  If he’d held out a snake she couldn’t have looked more distrustful.

  “I didn’t poison it. I promise.” He smiled, but the tension around the girl was too thick to even dent. One hand slipped out and grabbed the water. Another hand grabbed the toothpaste.

  And then the door shut in his face.

  Again, the urge to bang on it was pretty hard to resist, but stomping around like a bully wasn’t going to help anything.

  Denise. God. Denise was dead. Those poor kids in there.

  It had been a long time since he’d felt so useless. The divorce. The trade to Dallas. He was nothing but a dumb body. There was no one in this situation he could fight. No opponent he could punch to the ground.

  He wasn’t even entirely sure what the situation was, since his sister couldn’t be bothered to return his phone call.

  Maddy would know what to do, he thought, but he instinctively rejected the thought of calling her, much less having her here.

  He couldn’t … he couldn’t even stomach thinking about Maddy right now; the wound was too raw. The woman he’d known would never have done this. Never. And he was afraid that he might have only seen what he’d wanted to see. That he’d ignored the reality of this new Madelyn Cornish, that she had changed so much that all the things he loved about her were gone.

  They had both walked away from their past, but if she’d done this …?

  Then he was a fool.

  A fool who needed to figure out what to do next. Luc was going to come by and drop off groceries and some new clothes for the kids, but that left many many empty hours.

  Realizing he couldn’t stand outside a closed door all day, he walked down the hallway, through the dining room, and to the kitchen, where his cell phone sat like a loaded weapon on the counter. He’d turned it off a half hour ago, unable to keep up with the phone calls and texts.

  He scrolled through the numbers until he found the one that Becky had given him in the truck and hit call.

  “Leave a message.” Janice’s recorded voice jerked him sideways. That smoker’s rasp she’d practically been born with reminded him all too clearly of being a little kid, following his tough, ball-busting big sister around with nothing but worship in his heart.

  The beep sounded. “Call me, Janice,” he said through clenched teeth. “This is your last chance.” He spat out the numbers for his cell and home lines and hung up, his anger unspent, growing larger by the second.

  As soon as he hung up his phone rang.

  “Victor,” he said, not even having to look.

  “All right, Billy. We gotta talk. This shit is getting crazy.”

  “Okay.” He sighed and collapsed into a chair.

  “You need to make a statement. The Mavericks’ front office is seriously up my ass right now.”

  Some of those messages on his phone had been from the head of the team’s PR department. Hornsby too. They were not happy with him.

  “Fine. Write it up.”

  “I think … I think it would be best to make that statement on AM Dallas.”

  “No.”

  “Billy—”

  “No. Nonnegotiable, Victor. I’m not stepping foot on that show again.”

  “All right, all right. I’m just trying to do some damage control. What’s the story with the kids?”

  “They’re not my kids. They’re my sister’s. She … she died a few months ago. As far as I know they’ve been living with my older sister.”

  “Man, I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t want sorry,” he said, rubbing his forehead, a useless effort against the giant thundercloud of pain building in his skull. “I want all of this to go away.”

  “Okay. I’ll do my best. So, why did the kid say you were her father?”

  “She was coached, it was a setup.”

  “By the show?”

  “That stupid fucking Phil guy, Ruth too. Maybe Maddy.”

  “You willing to take a paternity test?”

  “No!”

  “I’m just trying to make this go away, Billy. You want me to get the lawyers on it?”

  “They already are.” He’d called his lawyer the second they entered the house.

  “O
kay, I think I’ve got enough to work with. I’ll be in touch. Keep your phone on.”

  Billy hung up and his phone immediately rang again.

  Coach Hornsby.

  The fight, the anger, it all drained out of him and he was just too tired to hash out the details, too tired to defend himself against a guy who didn’t understand him, much less like him.

  A man who was undoubtedly back to being disappointed in him.

  How was he going to explain that he’d left these kids behind with his addict younger sister. And his older, cold and brutal sister.

  He couldn’t even explain it to himself without wanting to throw up.

  He ignored the call and within a moment a text bloomed on the screen.

  Billy, Coach Hornsby’s message said, I need to hear about what happened from you. Management is out for blood and I can’t hold them off forever. Help me help you.

  Oh, man, now the guy was quoting Jerry Maguire.

  Billy forwarded the message to Victor. Let him handle Hornsby and all his disappointment.

  The second the message was sent, an email took its place.

  It’s Dom, the email said. You want to talk?

  No. No, he did not want to talk.

  Ignoring Victor’s command, he turned off the phone, and sat all alone in his house. He looked at his hands and wondered what he was supposed to do. What was right in this situation? Because he couldn’t see it.

  This was one of those moments that required him to be better, and it had been so long he didn’t remember the steps up and out of the darkness.

  But maybe … maybe he was already doing what he could. Maybe being better sometimes meant being patient.

  Finding some comfort, some confidence in that thought, he sat back in his silent house and waited. For what, he wasn’t sure, but whatever it was, he would handle it. Maybe not well. But he would handle it.

  It was dark in the seedy little bar and no one recognized her. Which was great, because by the time she got done with her third vodka soda, Maddy didn’t recognize herself.

  “We have to get Billy back,” Ruth said. Her hair was messy and the neckline of her dress had been pulled aside. There was a flash of a purple bra strap. Purple.

  All in all, it kind of looked like Ruth had just been fucked.

  “How?”

  “You were married to the guy,” Ruth said.

  If only that had come with special knowledge. A guidebook. Something. Billy in his anger was as unpredictable as ever. But the one thing she was sure of was that he didn’t want anything to do with her. Or the show. She had to think of a way to get past that.

  Ruth’s elbows hit the table. “I need another round.” She bypassed the sullen woman who was supposed to be taking their orders and instead signaled to the bartender, who nodded.

  It seemed like an oft-repeated conversation between the two of them.

  “Do you come here often?”

  “Twice a week,” Ruth said. “A shot of Jack and I cry in the bathroom for ten minutes.”

  Maddy gaped at her producer.

  “Swear to God, it was the only way not to hit Phil in the head with a hammer.”

  The waitress with the ill-fitting tank top and a put-upon attitude brought them their drinks.

  “You have any more peanuts?” Ruth asked, lifting their empty bowl.

  The waitress spoke volumes with the roll of her eyes.

  “If this place weren’t across the street I would never come here,” Ruth said as the woman left.

  “Come on, Ruth, we need to be thinking. We have an opportunity here to put together the kind of show we’ve always wanted to do. Let’s forget gluten-free cheese and making the perfect cocktail, let’s do the stories that matter.”

  “What would Matt Lauer do?” Ruth’s sarcasm infuriated her.

  “No! What would we do? If we had no restrictions, what would we do?”

  “What about Billy?”

  “I’ll handle Billy.” She thought of Becky’s blue eyes, so like her mom’s. The blue of a clear sky on hot days. Tomorrow she’d go over to Billy’s house and see how they were. See if she could help.

  Ruth stared deep into the ice of her fourth drink.

  “Why are you so scared?” Maddy asked, the knowledge that fear was guiding Ruth right now only obvious after three drinks.

  “I’m not scared, I’m mad. Mad at myself for thinking I was so clever to go to Phil behind your back. Mad at you for not telling me the truth about Billy. Mad at Richard for making us pick up after Phil. I mean, what are we doing here, Maddy?”

  “Our jobs.”

  “Well, our jobs suck right now. I never dreamed about having a husband and kids or a house with a white picket fence. I couldn’t give a shit about that. But I do want a life. I’d kill to have a friend to watch Survivor with. I’d kill to have sex. Real sex. With another person. Don’t you want that?”

  “This job is what I want,” she said. It was the truth and at the same time not quite. Right now she wanted more. She looked down at her glass and blamed the alcohol … not Billy at the fund-raiser. Not Billy with those kids. Not Billy turning the lock on her office door.

  “You know how I felt the first time I heard that Phil was banging Sabine? I was jealous. Jealous.”

  “You want to have sex with Phil?” Maddy gasped, she couldn’t help it. The thought was repulsive.

  “God, no.” Ruth shook her head, appalled. “Gross. I have to scrub my brain now. No, I was jealous that Phil got to have it. Kinky sex in the workplace. It’s not fair. I’ve worked myself right out of a social life. So have you.”

  “How do you know it was kinky? The sex.”

  Ruth shrugged, her collarbone a knife blade peeking out of her shirt. “I don’t. I just wanted someone to be having kinky sex.”

  Maddy felt herself blush, felt the burn of embarrassment flood her face. She was like one of those cartoon characters who catches fire and then is dust and ash afterward.

  “No,” Ruth gasped, because she was no dummy and Maddy was practically broadcasting her sex life. “In the office?”

  “Just once.”

  “Okay. Okay.” Ruth sat back, her arms spread wide, a strange grin on her face. “Spill.”

  Maddy chased down the straw in her drink and shook her head.

  “Nothing?” Ruth asked and again Maddy wondered if this was what friends did. Ruth sobered and sat forward again. “Okay. Then tell me this, what are you so scared of?”

  “About what?”

  “Billy. Why aren’t you at his house right now?”

  “You saw him.”

  “Yeah, and I’ve seen him every other time he’s been here. The man is crazy for you. You tell him you didn’t know what Phil was doing and he’ll believe you.”

  He would, Maddy knew that.

  “And from there, isn’t it just a hop, skip, and jump to getting him back on the show?”

  “I don’t want him on the show,” Maddy said. “I never did.”

  “Because you were married?”

  The marriage was the least of it. She set down her drink, lining up the bottom edge of her glass with the damp ring on the paper napkin in front of her.

  “Never mind, Madelyn. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t pry. And I know it’s not like you should trust me.”

  “No. No, it’s okay.” She did want to talk about this. She didn’t have anyone else in her life she could confide in. And three drinks had made Ruth seem pretty trustworthy. Billy had always told her she was a terrible drunk, too trusting, too ready to believe the best in people when they were showing her their worst. “My mom signed her name Mrs. Doug Baumgarten,” she said, because this, this was the root of it.

  “So did my mom. It was a generational thing.” Ruth shrugged like it was no big deal. Maybe because she’d never been married. Maybe because she’d never looked that decision in the eye and decided, just decided, to put aside her name for someone else’s. Like everything she had been up until then didn’t matter.
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  “I started doing that with Billy when I was thirteen. Thinking of myself as Mrs. Billy Wilkins.” Ruth sat back, her black eyes surprisingly understanding. “It wasn’t just my name. He was my life. My identity. And when we broke up, it wasn’t just him that was gone. It was me too, in a way. I was defined only by his boundaries. Where he ended, that was me. That was what I got. And he had a way of filling every available space, every thought. Until I was nothing.”

  She wasn’t making sense, but Ruth was nodding like she understood.

  “And if word gets out that Billy and I were married,” she snapped, “there goes Madelyn Cornish. I’m back to being Mrs. Billy Wilkins. And I’ve worked too hard to let that happen.”

  “So why are you having sex with him in your office?”

  “Because part of me misses what we had together and part of me is weak and part of me is stupid and all of me is lonely.”

  For him. Lonely for him.

  Ruth reached between them over the scarred black surface of the table, past their half-full drinks, and grabbed her hand.

  “I’m sorry, but you heard Richard—Billy has to come back on.”

  “I know and I’ll do the best I can to get him. Tomorrow.”

  Ruth nodded. “Tomorrow.” It was a promise.

  The silence between them was kind. Generous. The type of silence that gave everyone the privacy of their thoughts.

  “But … about the show,” Maddy said. “I have an idea.”

  “I’m listening.”

  Maddy leaned forward and so did Ruth.

  “An hour show, one topic. Interviews, panels. It can be serious and fun. But no more traffic reports. No more weather.”

  “What about Joe the Cameraman?”

  “Gone.” It hurt to say it, he was so great in front of the camera, but the new show had to be totally different. A whole new animal.

  It took a long moment, during which Maddy died about a hundred times, but finally Ruth sat back and slapped the table.

  “I love it!” They pushed aside their drinks and got to work.

  Maddy’s soul, starved on a diet of snake segments, cheered.

  Becky’s hands were sweating. Everything was sweating. Partly because she’d put on every scrap of clothes that the Luc guy had bought for them.