A Farewell to Legs

by JEFFREY COHEN

“I can’t help it. Your legs can take my mind off of anything, except your. . .”

  We both started, and looked up, when the doorbell rang. It was after eleven, and our doorbell never rings after eleven. It hardly ever rings before eleven. And at this hour, you could almost certainly rule out the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Abby stood up, and pointed to the door, as if I didn’t know what that bell going off in our living room might have meant.

  I went to the door, cursing the fact that we have neither a peephole nor a door chain. For all I knew, Hannibal Lecter was standing on my doorstep, but a strange fear of insulting my guest would keep me from checking on his intention to eat my liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti. Being civil has its costs.

  On the way, I tried to see through the divide between the drapes on our front window, but the BMW parked in front of our house was unfamiliar. I wondered what Hannibal was driving these days.

  Turned out, it didn’t matter. I opened the door, and Stephanie Jacobs Gibson was standing there, still in the gasp-inducing clothes she had worn at the reunion. Her face, however, was a little wan, and seemed freshly damp on both cheeks.

  “Steph,” I said, more loudly than was necessary. Across the room, Abby was already sizing up the competition. As if anyone could compete with Abby.

  “I’m sorry it’s so late,” Stephanie said. “I wanted to call, but I didn’t know if that would wake the kids, or if you’d be awake, and then I needed to go somewhere, so I got out your business card. . .”

  “Come on in,” said Abby. I stepped aside to let that happen, then closed the door behind Stephanie. Abby walked to her, took her hand, and introduced herself. My wife has roughly seventeen times the social skills that I have.

  I got Stephanie a beer, at her request, and we sat in the living room, Steph and Abby on the sofa, and me on the floor facing them, backed up to the entertainment center, an imposing piece of furniture Abby and I have dubbed “The Monolith.”

  “I’m so sorry to hear what happened,” Abigail started. “You must be. . .”

  “Shocked,” Stephanie cut her off. “I’m shocked. But I’m not heartbroken. I’m not even sure I’m sorry.”

  Abby and I took a minute to pretend we weren’t looking at each other, but Stephanie noticed.

  “Don’t get me wrong, I never wished him dead,” she said. “But things hadn’t been good between Louis and me for a long time. He had affairs. A lot of them.”

  I coughed, because it gave me time to think. Stephanie offered me a sip of her beer, but I shook my head. If I drink anything after nine o’clock, it’ll be followed by a Maalox chaser before bed. “I never knew you were married to Cra. . . to Louis.”

  Stephanie grinned. “It’s okay, Aaron,” she said. “I know you called him Crazy Legs. Even though I never knew why.”

  Abby stood up and walked to me, put a hand on top of my head, the way you would with a little boy who’d just done something precocious. “Aaron never knew why, either,” she told Steph. “He explained it to me, and I still don’t know why.” They shared an “oh, those men” look.

  “How’d you end up married to Legs, anyway?” I asked, trying to shift the conversation away from me as the stereotypical man.

  Stephanie stopped grinning and stared into the neck of her beer bottle for a moment. “Well, we dated a couple of times senior year after I broke up with Michael. I didn’t think much of it, but Louis. . . well, Louis was persistent. Anyway, after graduation, I went to Montclair State, back before it was a university, and Louis went to NYU. So he’d come over, or I’d go into the city, and after a while, it got to be a regular thing.”

  I decided to ignore Abby’s look and ask a question. Hey, I’m a reporter. We do that. “I think what I meant was, what did you see in the guy? I mean, we always thought he was kind of. . .” I quickly remembered that Legs was dead, and that stopped me.

  “. . . an asshole? Well, that’s because you were guys.”

  “We still are. Kind of.”

  “Louis was always nicer to a girl he wanted to impress than he was to anybody else,” Stephanie said. “You didn’t get to see what he was really like until he had gotten what he wanted out of you.”

  Abby sat down next to me. “I assume you mean he wanted sex,” she said. Stephanie nodded. I gave Abigail an “I-thought-you-said-to-shut-up-and-let-her-talk” look, and she gave me a look with language you can’t print in a family newspaper.

  “But it was more than that,” Steph went on. “He decided he wanted me to marry him, even after I slept with him. He thought I’d look good on his arm, so he kept up the charming act. God, this is an awful way to talk about the recently murdered, isn’t it?” She stood up. “Where do I throw out the beer bottle?” she asked, sniffling a bit.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Abby said. “Do you want another one?” Stephanie shook her head. “I drank at the reunion, and I still have to drive back to the hotel tonight.”

  “You could stay here,” Abby answered. “We have a sofa bed.”

  “No. I’ve already taken up enough of your evening. I should go,” said Stephanie. “I have to drive back in the morning. Fact is, I would be driving back now, but both my sons are out of town, so I don’t have to be there for them until tomorrow.”

  “Back to D.C.?” I asked, and she nodded. “Was Legs in the government?”

  “He is. . . was, the head of a big political foundation, People For American Values,” said Stephanie. “He actually became pretty important. Not as important as he thought he was, but important.”

  People for American Values. Somewhere in the back of my knee-jerk liberal mind I remembered something, but couldn’t classify it. I probably grimaced, and stored that bit of confusion away until I could ask Abby, who knows everything.

  Stephanie picked up her jacket from the banister hook and put it on. “Isn’t there anything we can do to help you?” I asked, but she shook her head.

  “You’ve already done it,” she said. “You were here when I needed you.”

  “We live here,” I said.

  She laughed, and kissed me on the lips, gently. It wasn’t a sexual thing, but it got Abigail’s attention. Nobody who isn’t me would have noticed, but she did narrow her eyes a millimeter or two.

  “What bothers me more than anything else,” Stephanie said, “is why. I know Louis wasn’t the most lovable man on the planet, and he had political enemies, but everybody in D.C. has enemies. Why kill him?”

  “The police will find out,” I said. “Legs was important enough that they can’t just forget about it.”

  I opened the front door for her, and as she was about to walk out, she stopped. “Aaron,” she said.

  I waited, but she didn’t say anything else. “What?”

  “Aaron, you. . . you found out who killed that woman here, right? You could find out about Louis.”

  I almost closed the door on her foot. “Oh, no. Steph, no. The Madlyn Beckwirth story, that was. . .” I looked to Abby for help, but after the kiss, my wife was not in a charitable mood. “That was a fluke, a mistake. I’m just a magazine writer. Honestly.”

  But Stephanie hadn’t changed much since high school. She knew how to get what she wanted, and her wheels were already spinning fast. “One of the journalists Louis and I got to know is a features editor at Snapdragon. And besides the music stuff, you know they cover politics.”

  Stephanie stepped back inside, and I closed the door, so the neighbors wouldn’t be distracted by my terrified screams so late at night. I felt the trap being sprung around me.

  “I know, Steph, but really. I don’t know anything about politics. I write mostly about home entertainment equipment.”

  Steph was having none of it. “You know about murder investigations, and you knew Louis. You could write it, Aaron. Don’t turn me down now. I can get Lydia from Snapdragon to call you tomorrow morning. Please.”

  In times of crisis, my wife is always my strength. I looked at her for help, and as usual, she came through
with flying colors.

  “How much does Snapdragon pay per word?” she asked.

  Chapter

  Five

  “Well, what did you want me to say?” asked Abby. I considered going downstairs for some butter, to see if it would melt in her mouth, but I was too tired. Stephanie had left, and we were in our bedroom, getting ready for bed a good two hours later than we’d expected.

  “I was hoping you’d come up with a reason I can’t write a story about something I can’t possibly know about for a editor I don’t know, whose arm is getting twisted to hire me, at a magazine I’ve never worked for before. That’s all.” We start getting ready for bed most nights by making the bed, since we almost never do that when we get up in the morning.

  “I thought you’d want to write it,” Abby said. She pulled the sheet smooth on her side, and started straightening out the blanket. “For crying out loud, Aaron, they pay two dollars a word, and you’ve got to figure this is at least a 3,000-word piece. That’s a nice chunk of change.” She had me there, but she couldn’t stop, which is always a fatal error. “Besides, I figured you’d want to do anything you could to help Ms. Cleavage.”

  I pulled the blanket up on my side and started to take off my jeans. “So that’s it,” I said. “You know, it’s funny. I’ve never actually seen you jealous before. I wouldn’t have expected it. I’d have quicker expected it of me.” I hung the jeans on a hook sticking out of the closet door. We live in a very classy house.

  Abby satisfied herself that the bed was now acceptable, and slid off the gym shorts she had on, then started looking around the room for her pajamas. “I’m not jealous,” she said casually. “I just find it amusing how easily you can be played.”

  “Played?” I stopped looking for a T-shirt disgusting enough to sleep in, and walked to her side of the bed. “What do you mean, played?”

  “Oh, come on,” my wife chuckled. “She bats her eyes, hikes up her boobs, and does that, ‘oh Aaron, you’re the only one who can help me’ thing, and you go right for it.”

  “She has no reason to ‘play me,’ as you so endearingly put it.”

  “She wants you to investigate her husband’s death,” Abby said. “She wants you because she knows she can supervise the investigation as long as you’re watching her bust line instead of the facts.” Abby knelt down to look under the bed.

  “Her bust line is a fact. Well, two facts actually. Besides, why does Steph need to supervise the investigation?”

  “Steph is from D.C. All those people are control freaks.”

  I sighed, which I don’t do often. “She’s not from D.C.—she’s from Bloomfield, New Jersey.”

  “And you’ve wanted to hump her ever since she lived there.”

  There are few things my wife does that seriously annoy me, but when she talks the way she thinks men talk, she can piss me off with the best of them. Mostly because I don’t talk like that, and I’m pretty sure I’m a man. She found her pajama bottoms under the bed, and when she stood up, holding them, I was standing within a foot of her, looking right into her eyes. Abby was a little startled, but she grinned, thinking she’d scored a withering blow.

  “I’d like to point out that I was looking for a way not to help her when you volunteered me,” I told her, my breathing getting a little heavy. “Now, you listen to me. There is no one more beautiful, no one smarter, no one sexier, no one funnier, no one I’d rather be with on this planet, than you. You are the absolute center of my life, and I would gladly devote all my time on this earth to convincing you that nobody has ever loved anyone as much as I love you, but unfortunately, we need to sleep, eat, and pay the mortgage. So stop being a moron.”

  She took a moment, smiled, and dropped her pajama bottoms on the floor.

  “Come on,” Abby said. “Let’s mess up the bed again.”

  And somehow, I forgot to ask whether she was familiar with People for American Values.

  Chapter

  Six

  Lydia Soriano, Snapdragon’s features editor, called me at ten the next morning. Impressive, especially considering it was a Sunday. Stephanie, or Crazy Legs, must have had more clout than I’d estimated.

  “Mr. Tucker, we’re interested in a 5,000-word piece on the murder of Louis Gibson. I understand you have some background on the subject.” Lydia had a very businesslike voice, but you could tell there was a human being in there somewhere.

  “Call me Aaron. Please.” I started. “And actually, no. I don’t have any background at all. What I have is a knowledge of. . . Louis from his high school days and a very loose friendship with his wife from around the same time.”

  “I understand that you’re reluctant,” she said without missing a beat. “But I’m told that you have investigated some murders before.”

  Stephanie must have been very persuasive. “I’ve investigated exactly one murder, and I managed to solve it by annoying the murderers enough that they came after me. I wouldn’t exactly call that a stellar record.” I wanted Snapdragon to know exactly what it was getting, if it was getting anything.

  “You know, Aaron, you keep this up, and I’m going to feel like you don’t want to work for us.” Well, what do you know? There was a sense of humor there after all.

  “I’ve always wanted to work for Snapdragon. In fact, I’ve queried you guys maybe fifty times in the past five years. I just want you to have an accurate picture,” I told Lydia. “If you hire me, you’re paying, um. . .”

  “Ten thousand dollars.”

  I took a cleansing breath, the only useful thing I got from being a Lamaze coach twice. “. . . Ten thousand dollars, for someone who is not an investigative reporter, a crime reporter or a political reporter, and you’ll be hiring him to investigate a crime that is, in all likelihood, politically motivated. Don’t do it just because Stephanie Jacobs told you to.”

  “I’m not going to pretend I didn’t call because of Stephanie’s reputation,” said Lydia. “But I do the assigning around here, not her. And it’s my ass on the line if you turn out to be a screw-up.”

  “Don’t mince words, Lydia. Come right out and say it.”

  She chuckled. “Aaron, have you ever been a magazine editor?”

  “Not on your level, no.”

  “One of the things you have to rely on is your own instinct. I called you because Stephanie recommended you. I did it because she’s a friend, and because her cooperation is going to be central to a story that everybody who covers politics is going to want. We’re tired of being thought of as Rolling Stone’s slow-witted cousin, and we want to make a big splash. She’s giving you exclusive access to her, and ‘exclusive’ means exclusive. She isn’t talking to anybody else. Also, I read as many of your clips as I could get off the Web. But still, I wouldn’t offer you the story if I called you and you sounded like you were going to read through the police reports on the Internet and write a story about the extinguishing of a strong voice for the fundamentalist right on Capitol Hill. Frankly, I thought Louis Gibson was. . .”

  “. . . An asshole?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “He certainly was one in high school, and I haven’t seen him since then, but I’m willing to bet he got worse. Am I allowed to write that he was an asshole?”

  Lydia didn’t miss a beat. “If you can back it up with facts, sure.”

  “Well, stop beating around the bush,” I said. “Ask me if I want the ten grand.”

  Chapter

  Seven

  Monday morning was the usual blur of sandwiches made and bagged, drink boxes, water bottles, snacks and apples placed in lunch bags and boxes, clothing located, teeth brushed, cereal poured, medication dispensed (Ethan gets 15 milligrams of Ritalin every morning), hugs, kisses, hair brushed, shoes lost, shoes found, more hugs, and pushing the kids out the front door. All before eight in the morning.

  I had an assignment from the Newark Star-Ledger about new video products sold in New Jersey. I work quite frequently for the Star-Ledger’s �
�Today” section, which concerns itself with lighter, feature material. Travel, parenting, consumer issues, that sort of thing. In this case, the section was about advances in video technology (there hadn’t been any lately, so I was making it up), and I’d been given a list of four people the paper would like me to interview. I had reached two, and needed to make a visible effort at the other two before writing. The deadline was Wednesday, today was Monday, so I assumed this would be no problem.

  Still, it was only eight in the morning, and you can’t count on anyone being in their office before nine, so I started my day, as I usually do, with the New York Times crossword puzzle. I make a big show, when asked, about how it helps me to think about words and increases my vocabulary, but the fact is the puzzle is a good way to kill time and postpone having to do anything that approaches work. Does it improve my vocabulary and get me thinking about words? Sure. Does that make even a one-percent difference in what I would write about video technology for “Today”? Get real.

  So, I was attempting to find a six-letter word for “dummies,” and failing miserably, when the phone rang. Our newly installed Caller ID box informed me that the incoming call was from the Buzbee School main office, and at 8:30 a.m., that is never good news.

  I’m used to getting calls from the school. Ethan suffers from Asperger’s Syndrome, a neurological disorder like a high-functioning form of autism, which manifests itself in many ways, almost all of them socially unacceptable, or at least odd. The school calls often, if just to let me know when he’s having a rough day. A paraprofessional named Wilma Coogan follows him around all day, and will frequently call me with a question, or when a situation arises she hasn’t seen before. So I breathed a long sigh to gird myself for what was clearly going to be a rough day.

  “Hi, Aaron, it’s Anne Mignano.” Uh-oh. The principal herself. Now I was really in trouble.

  “Who did he set on fire, Anne?”