EIGHT LIES (About the Truth): A collection of short stories

by Sean Chercover

  Jackson slid over and put his arms around the younger man’s shoulders, holding him like a protective father. “When you get out of here tomorrow, put it behind you, Mark. Don’t look back.”

  Mark didn’t even try to argue.

  Gravedigger Peace woke to the sound of his own voice. “Sorry I sneezed, Sarge.” Sorry I sneezed. Shit. Sorry I left you behind. Sorry I lived.

  The bedside clock said it was just past midnight. He had slept only three hours. After the stoners had left, he’d sumped the water out of Walter Jackson’s grave and covered it with earth by hand, using the spade. He needed to work off the adrenaline. Once the grave was filled, he went home, tossed his ruined suit into the trash, and lay in the bathtub with a long drink. He tried to make himself cry a little, but he hadn’t cried in years and he couldn’t summon the tears. Finally he gave up, finished his drink and went to bed.

  Now he was up again, and his nerves felt raw, exposed. He tried to read, couldn’t. He got a beer from the fridge, but didn’t open it. Sat in front of the television, but didn’t turn it on. The rain had stopped at last, and the silence rang in his ears.

  Then he heard it. A sound from outside. Voices.

  He opened the coat closet and reached for the Mossberg shotgun that he kept there, then reached deeper into the closet and pulled out a machete instead.

  The moon was almost full, and Gravedigger’s eyes adjusted to the light as he walked toward Walter Jackson’s grave, holding the machete in his right hand and a flashlight in his left. Tweedledee stood pissing on the grave, then put his dick back in his pants. Beside a nearby mausoleum, Tweedledum stood with a can of spray paint in his hand. Painted on the wall was, I rode Gravedigger’s bitch!

  Gravedigger flicked the flashlight on, and both boys froze. They should have run away. But instead, they charged.

  And Mark Tindall cut them to pieces.

  I often listen to music when I’m writing. I even create iTunes playlists that serve as personal soundtracks as I’m writing my novels (obsessive? My iTunes playlist for The Trinity Game ran to six (6) full CDs). But I’ve never written a piece of fiction directly inspired by a piece of music.

  Until now.

  “Maybe Someday” was inspired by the song of the same name by The Cure, which you can find on their excellent album, Bloodflowers.

  Of course I took it in my own direction, filtered it through my own ideas about obsession and loneliness, and hopefully found my own truth in it.

  “Maybe Someday” also appears in the anthology Beat To A Pulp: Round 2, edited by David Cranmer.

  ABOVE ALL ELSE, it was the taste of her he could not forget. Every day the memory returned. A sense memory, rising spontaneous and unbidden, the taste right there on his tongue, as intense and intoxicating as the hot summer night she’d spread her long legs and invited him in.

  Every day. And with it came a flood of other memories. Freckled face, beautiful and creased by middle age; proud nose, nostrils like elongated teardrops; hooded eyes, intelligent, perceptive, but also wounded and needy. Slender fingers stroking his cheek, then clutching the hair on the back of his head as he went down.

  And every day he picked up his cell phone, brought her number up on the screen, determined to either call or delete the number from its memory. But he couldn’t call, and he couldn’t erase her number from his phone, and above all else, he couldn’t erase the taste of her from his mind.

  He didn’t believe in love at first sight. Love at first sight was the stuff of fairy tales and romance novels.

  Might as well believe in unicorns.

  But something happened in his chest the very first time their eyes met, and from the way she darted her eyes away he could tell it had happened to her also. They were at opposite ends of a long table, in a large group, hadn’t said a word to each other, hadn’t even been introduced. When she looked away she reached for her drink, adjusted her wedding ring with her thumb, bringing the diamond setting upright on her slender finger. An unconscious gesture, like the tell of a poker player. The message was clear: I’m married. But was it a signal meant for him, or a reminder to herself? He couldn’t say.

  That was their first meeting, in a large group of friends out for drinks after work. One of those things where two circles of friends overlap and then become one. Among the members of the group, the after-work drinking sessions were called “going for herbal tea.” Each Friday around lunchtime, someone would send a mass email to the group: Who’s going for herbal after work? If enough people jumped in, they’d meet at Sheffield’s patio, where they’d drink expensive craft beer or single malt scotch while sharing funny stories about their nightmare bosses, commiserating over the ongoing futility of the Cubs, deconstructing the latest novels they’d loved or hated.

  Minutes after their eyes first met, someone in the group introduced them and the thing happened in his chest again as he shook her hand and he had no idea what he said or what she said in reply, and the rest of that first night was a blur.

  He didn’t want to get involved with a married woman. And he didn’t believe in love at first sight. But the next week, when the email went around and he saw her name on the list of recipients, he felt queasy. And when she responded to the group, saying she’d join them for herbal, goddamn if that thing didn’t happen in his chest again.

  It was just a case of sexual chemistry, he told himself. Just pheromones at work, a genetically programmed response to a good breeding partner, and pheromones don’t care who’s married and who’s not. That’s all it was, nothing more. Hell, he didn’t even know the woman. They might not even like each other.

  But he joined the group for drinks after work. And they did like each other. She was smart and funny and beautiful, and clearly as disturbed as he by what they both were feeling. She talked a great deal about her husband and her three children, and she kept propping up that damned diamond with her thumb. Even so, she talked mostly to him that night, and he to her. The rest of the group just seemed to melt into the background.

  For the next five Fridays, they both attended every herbal and they sat across from each other and talked like old friends, or new lovers. But he never made even the suggestion of a pass, and she never missed an opportunity to mention her family.

  On the sixth Friday she seemed nervous as she told—someone else at the table, not him—that her husband had taken the kids camping for the weekend. She avoided his eyes for a good five minutes after that, which told him more than if she hadn’t.

  The group stayed late that night. When it was over, he offered to walk her to Belmont and she said yes, and he silently prayed that none of the others were taking the train.

  They weren’t.

  Outside the station, he told her his apartment was just a few blocks away on Melrose and he had a bottle of Talisker and a rooftop deck with a fabulous view of the city.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Just a drink,” he lied, “and some conversation. Nothing more.” He held his breath. Waited.

  “I don’t know. I should…” she looked at the entrance to the station, then back at him. “All right.”

  They sat on his rooftop deck and drank Talisker and watched thin white mist-clouds drifting across the John Hancock building, and they talked about their lives, and he found himself telling her things he’d never told anyone else. He talked freely of the profound sense of isolation that had been his constant companion, even in childhood, even with his parents, who loved him but never really knew him.

  And telling her this, he felt completely exposed, and completely comfortable with it. Not isolated at all.

  He realized then, it was far more than sexual chemistry, and had been from the very beginning. It was as if this moment of intimacy had somehow been contained in that very first look. It was the feeling that, when their eyes first met, they had seen right into each other, behind the masks, seen each other fully and truly, and liked what they’d seen. And more, they’d seen themselves being seen by the oth
er, and neither covered up. Yes, they’d looked away, but each time they looked back, they were right there again, willing to see and be seen, unwilling to shut the other out.

  She felt it too, right from the very first look, and that night on his rooftop deck, they talked about it. And then she went with him to the bedroom.

  But in the morning he woke up alone.

  She called the next afternoon and apologized, both for leaving and for leading him on, and he apologized for inviting her to his apartment, for putting her in that situation to begin with. She insisted that she loved her husband, and he believed her. She vowed that she would never allow her children’s lives to be shattered by divorce, and he believed that too. He said he didn’t want to break up her family, and he meant it.

  Then she told him the connection they’d shared was real, was maybe even love, but could never happen again. After she hung up, he cried a little. Then he saved her number in his cell phone. He couldn’t help himself.

  She stopped coming out for herbals, and after a few weeks he stopped as well. He couldn’t do it anymore, couldn’t sit on the patio at Sheffield’s making small talk with the group, staring at the door, hoping for what he knew wasn’t coming.

  He got on with his life. Eventually he had other women, other relationships. But he never felt that level of connection with any of them, that sense of truly seeing and being seen, completely exposed and comfortable, not like he’d felt with her, and he just couldn’t see the point without it, and the relationships never worked out.

  He told himself that maybe someday she would call again. Maybe someday they could be together. Maybe after her kids were grown and out of the house. Or maybe her husband would get cancer and die—and he hated himself for wishing it, but he did wish it just the same. And each time he upgraded to a new cell phone, he transferred her number over, for when the time came.

  But maybe someday never came. She never called.

  He never called.

  You don’t break up a family, just because of love.

  He sat and stared at the phone, beside the newspaper that lay open on the kitchen table. There was no use calling now, she wouldn’t answer. It occurred to him that he’d been sitting there for hours, unmoving, as the day had darkened to night. He reached for the phone, picked it up. Just like all the previous days since they’d been together, he put the phone back down on the table, hating himself for his lack of will. How hard could it be to simply wipe her number from the phone and never have to look at it again?

  The sense memory returned, the taste of her on his tongue.

  Every damn day…even now.

  He stood and opened the fridge and pushed his face into the cool white light and held it there, feeling his sweat turn cold, breathing through his mouth. He grabbed the last bottle of Old Style from the shelf and returned to the table, not looking at the cell phone or the newspaper, and drank the beer down in one go.

  To wash the taste away.

  It didn’t.

  He lit a cigarette. Picked up the newspaper and read her obituary again.

  Maybe someday.

  He didn’t believe in an afterlife any more than he believed in love at first sight—the stuff of fairy tales and romance novels.

  Might as well believe in unicorns.

  He pulled the half-full bottle of Talisker from the cupboard. He’d put it away after their night together, promised himself he’d only bring it out when she came back to him. Hadn’t touched it since.

  He took the bottle up to his rooftop deck. It was a hot summer night, like the night they’d been together, years ago. But tonight there was no mist. Tonight everything was clear.

  He sat and drank the scotch and remembered. It didn’t wash the taste of her away, but he no longer wanted to wash it away.

  After the bottle was empty, he walked slowly to the edge of the rooftop.

  He didn’t believe in an afterlife.

  Love at first sight.

  Fairy tales…romance novels.

  Unicorns.

  He stepped over the edge, into the empty space beyond.

  Someday.

  “The Non Compos Mentis Blues” originally appeared in the Bleak House Books anthology CHICAGO BLUES, edited by Libby Fisher Hellmann. It is a Ray Dudgeon story, and takes place between the novels Big City Bad Blood and Trigger City.

  Between the novels, Ray has fallen on hard times and takes whatever comes his way. In “The Non Compos Mentis Blues” he learns the hard way that divorce can be murder.

  I originally began the story with a surveillance report, just like the many I’d submitted during my days working as a P.I. The idea was to give readers a window into the authentic life of a P.I., as an introduction to the story.

  Problem was, surveillance reports are intrinsically boring. While I got many nice emails from people who slogged through the report and loved the story that followed, I got many others from people who said, basically, “Why the hell did you make me read all that stuff before you started the story?”

  Okay, lesson learned. As the great Elmore Leonard so famously said, “Leave out the parts that people skip.”

  Here’s the story, without the surveillance report.

  SHE'D READ THE REPORT, looked at the photos, but still had trouble accepting it. They often do.

  “Mrs. Hills, you hired me because you thought your husband was having an affair. He is.”

  “But some cheap little Italian restaurant and an airport motel? It all seems a little downscale, for him.” She shot me a look from behind huge Gucci sunglasses. I couldn’t actually see her eyes but I caught the abrupt change in the angle of her head. Even without eyes, she shot me a look.

  “He’s not likely to take her to Charlie Trotter’s and the Ritz-Carlton” I offered. “Or any place where he’s known.”

  “And a smoky blues club? Please. Gordon doesn’t even like blues music.”

  “Maybe he does.”

  She shot me another look. “Gordon does not enjoy blues music.”

  Thinking back on the previous night, I had to concede her point. Gordon didn’t strike me as a fan of the blues. My impression had been that he’d taken Susan Titley to a blues club in order to impress her. In order to seem hip. When he drummed his fingers on the tabletop, he completely missed 2-and-4, and in fact seemed to miss the concept of any steady rhythm. Susan Titley seemed no more interested in the music than Gordon. They talked a lot, over the music, about how great the music was. And they never shut up long enough to actually listen.

  They missed a hell of a set. Lurrie Bell—my favorite of the current Chicago blues axemen—put on a fine show, complete with searing guitar and heartbreaking vocals. Pearls before swine. But they paid the cover and bought drinks, and I suppose that gave them the right to ignore the music. Still, I didn’t like them for it and I started to feel something akin to alliance with Mrs. Hills, who now sat flipping through the photos attached to my report.

  “Where are the pictures of them fucking?” And now she wanted to see them fucking. So much for our nascent alliance.

  “I don’t take pictures of people fucking, Mrs. Hills. First, it’s illegal. Once they’re in the hotel room, they’re off limits. Second, it’s unnecessary. There’s not a divorce court in the state that will believe they were playing Scrabble all night. Now if you can arrange it so they’re fucking in public—”

  “Just be quiet a minute,” she said, “I want to read this again.”

  So I shut up and let Mrs. Hills read the report of her husband’s infidelity for the third time. She was not a bad looking woman, if quite severe. I guessed she’d already had a couple of facelifts and I put her in her early fifties. She wore a cream Chanel suit, too much gold on the wrists and fingers and three strands of jumbo pearls around the neck. Her ash-blonde hair, cut long enough to caress her shoulders, was her most attractive feature. She made my office smell like Coco, which was okay by me. Perfume—even when overzealously applied—smells better than a guy who hasn’t show
ered in a day and a half. Which I hadn’t. Across the oak desk I noticed that her overlong nails were painted to match the pearls. Highland Park nouveau riche.

  I glanced at my wall of built-in bookshelves. I’d actually read some of those books. Someday I’d read them all. Right now I just wanted to get Mrs. Hills the hell out of my office so I could sleep the rest of the morning away on the familiar burgundy leather couch in the corner. But the tension in Mrs. Hills’ ivory jaw said that she was going nowhere for a while. I wished she would just cry, like any normal wife. I reached into a pocket and dug out a half empty pack of Pall Malls, tapped one on the desk, put it between my lips and fired it up. She forced two sharp coughs to register her disapproval, but didn’t look up.

  I dragged deep and blew smoke at the ceiling and said, “Coffee?” She waved her pearlescent claws absently in my direction. “Well, I’ve been up all night and I need some, so I’ll put your name in the pot.” No response.

  I made a pot and came back from the kitchenette with two mugs full of strong black coffee and put one in front of her and sat and sipped the other one and scalded my upper lip.

  “Well Mr. Dudgeon, it appears that you’ve done your job.”

  “Not completely. That report, the photos, and my testimony will establish that your husband was unfaithful. Once. We need to establish that he was habitually adulterous or that he was having an ongoing affair.”

  “She’s his secretary. You don’t have a one night stand with your secretary.”

  “Sure. But that logic alone doesn’t hold up in court. We need to document three separate occasions of infidelity.”

  “That’s patently ridiculous. I’ve paid you for three days’ work.”

  “You can’t expect me to know when your husband’s going to—”

  “And your rates are exorbitant. I’ve checked around.” Was she actually trying to negotiate with me?

  I blew on my coffee for a while and waited for her to fire me. But she said nothing, just curled her right claw around the coffee mug and took a long silent sip. Then another. I started to get that uneasy feeling and hit the foot switch under my desk, activating a video camera I kept hidden in the bookshelf. She read the report a fourth time. I sat and smoked drank some coffee and listened to the ‘L’ trains rumble by, twelve floors below, on Wabash Avenue.