Keeper of the Keys

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  Oh, yes, another jab from Martin. Martin had worked out how to keep the commission within the firm, initially selling the client on Ray’s brilliance, with the sly idea of substituting one of Ray’s smart protégés if Ray didn’t pan out. Ray had hired Joey when Joey first got out of Cal Poly, a probational graduate with no awards, nothing to his name, not even rich parents who could hire him to build a statement house he could show to prospective employers. Ray had studied his designs, loved them, and taught him everything he knew. He believed Joey had no notion of Martin’s underhanded wrangling. He trusted Joey.

  “Joey refuses to work without your involvement, Ray,” Martin said, as if reading his mind. “He considers you his primary influence, a kind of mentor. So here’s the deal. You do the design, no restrictions except doing what your client wants, working in concert with this young architect I know you respect. Any parts you don’t want to do, you have Joey handle.”

  Now was his chance to launch into an impassioned sales job that would turn all this around. He could make them see. He could appeal to Antoniou’s snobbery, give him a diplomatic lesson in how run-of-the-mill his dreams were in Laguna. He could.

  But he didn’t have the energy, and maybe he didn’t have the skill. The moment passed.

  Martin stood up. Antoniou also stood.

  “It’s gonna be fine,” he said to Martin, not looking at Ray. “Ray and I understand each other. We’re gonna get along great.”

  Kat got off work at five and headed straight for her sister’s.

  “Hand me the powder,” Jacki commanded, hand outstretched, leaning against the changing table. The baby wore no diaper.

  “Go sit down. I’ll do that.”

  “Third shelf down.”

  Kat located the blue container and handed it to Jacki.

  The baby boy lay on a paper diaper. After powdering the reasonably clean bottom, Jacki endeavored to pull up the middle section of the paper diaper and flip over the side pieces, so that the Velcro would grab. The baby fought, sobbing, face twisted up like a pretzel, tiny fists tight.

  Jacki breathed deeply, then tackled the child again. This time, the baby did not roll over beyond the white padding. “Gotcha!” Jacki crowed, folding down the side of the diaper that would keep her out of trouble, at least for the immediate future. She picked up her newborn boy. “L’il animal,” Jacki mooed. Perspiration had turned her once shiny streaked bangs a dingy, greasy color. “L’il fella,” she went on, kissing first his toes, then his stomach, and finally his moist cheek.

  She let Kat carry him into his bedroom and tucked him into his turquoise-linened crib.

  After listening at the open door for a few minutes, Jacki closed the door. They sighed, then laughed, snickering at each other’s dishevelment. Kat straightened her shirt, now with a blob of vomit on the shoulder. Jacki smoothed her hair. She wore a robe and fluffy slippers and a walking cast on her foot, and was exactly two hours out of the hospital.

  “Want a cup of tea or something? Beer?” Jacki asked in a whisper, as she tottered toward the kitchen.

  “Hard choice.”

  “Beer it is.” She opened the refrigerator, pulled out a bottle, and popped the top, handing it to Kat. “Too bad they accuse mothers who drink beer when they nurse of abuse these days. I could use one.”

  “Best beer I’ve had in my entire life.”

  “He’ll be up again in two hours and I’ll nurse him. I need to grab a nap in a minute.”

  Kat set her beer down on a grease-speckled table she could not recall ever being speckled before. “I have a lot I need to talk to you about.”

  “Did you hear something?” Jacki said, placing her finished bottle on the kitchen counter. “I could swear I heard something.”

  “Leigh-”

  “Beau’s crying,” Jacki said.

  “Is that his name?”

  “Beau Thomas Chavez.” Jacki opened the door to the baby’s room. “Dignified and historic; that’s our boy.”

  Kat followed her sister into the twilit room. Two glass night-lights shaped like daisies poked through the dark-orange gloom.

  Jacki pushed open the window curtains, letting in the last light of the day. “I should have nursed him longer before putting him down. His stomach is minuscule. Babies need to eat all the time.” She sat in a wooden rocking chair and pushed off from the floor like a person trying to have fun. She closed her eyes and pressed her back against the chair, supporting her child on a pillow. “Incredible, isn’t it. Owowow-”

  Her eyes closed and she snored, head at an odd angle, her baby safely propped on pillows as he nursed. When he let go of the nipple with a tiny pop, she awoke instantly. She handed Beau off to Kat. “Wet again.”

  Kat changed him. They put him down. He dozed for a few minutes, then awakened, his cries amazing considering the size of his voice box.

  “Forgot to burp him,” Jacki said, patting his back while he rested against her shoulder. He burped and threw up, then went peacefully down to sleep.

  For twenty minutes.

  Etcetera.

  “I have to go,” Kat said.

  “No,” Jacki wailed. “Raoul’s due home in an hour. I’m a sweaty pig and there’s no food.”

  Grimly, Kat ran out to the store, bought a roasted turkey breast, rolls, packaged salad, and carrot cake. She had trouble parking, which involved giving one person the finger and screaming at another one before she landed a spot. She lugged the bags up the elevator. She unloaded the sacks in the kitchen, laid out the food on the counter.

  She checked on Jacki and the baby. They were asleep in a rocker and a bassinet, respectively.

  She sliced the turkey, found an almost clean platter, which she wiped with an almost clean dishrag, and assembled the salad into a pretty bowl. She found the dregs of some Caesar dressing in the fridge, which she splashed into a cute bowl with a spoon. She located two new place mats still in plastic. After wiping the table, she set them down, found candles and holders in the cupboard, and placed them in the center along with a box of matches. Then she stepped back again to observe her handiwork.

  The crusty kitchen counters, rising above the dining table, detracted from the overall mood. As the sun weakened, crawling across the hardwood floors in a golden streak, Kat found bleach under the kitchen sink and blitzed through the kitchen, flinging dishes into the washer.

  Raoul arrived exactly on time, full of kisses for Jacki, all smiles, and Kat was free.

  Outside, pulling his Honda into the spot next to her, Jacki’s downstairs neighbor, who had invited Kat to come with him to watch the sunset several times, loitered. He had a thin mustache, a sliver of hair in the middle of his chin, and shaped sideburns. All this decorative shaving gave Kat the creeps, although she realized in a previous life, only a couple of months ago, she had thought him a bit of a hunk. He approached her car.

  “How about a late drink, honey?”

  She hated that her window was cracked low enough to let this guy’s voice get heard. “Uh. Sorry, Josh. Busy.”

  “Hot date? Where are you going?”

  “Stuff to do at home.”

  “What stuff?” Big smile.

  She had never figured out how to extricate herself gracefully when someone paid her too much attention. If she openly rejected him, saying, mind your own business, she’d upset him and the blow to his male ego would turn him hostile and he would say something hurtful. If she said, I need to wash my hair, same deal. She contemplated her options, feeling perplexed. Had Ray Jackson felt this way when he spotted Kat outside that house on Bright Street? Hunted?

  “You bring over different guys all the time.”

  She had brought a few of the good ones to Jacki’s. Not-so-hidden meaning: why not me, too?

  “You’re a player, just like me. Admit it.”

  “Josh, would you please back off so I can pull out?”

  A certain light penetrated his flat eyes. Hostility, coming on like a 747.

  Would she, two mo
nths ago, have gotten out of her car at this point, put her hand on his butt and said, follow me home, let’s go?

  “Aw, come over for a coupla minutes. What’s your problem? You’re here. I made a cool drink you’ll like. Gin and lemon. Fresh mint on top.”

  How did he know her favorite drink? Probably observed her once in a local hangout. Note to self: excellent reason to cruise far from her own home and Jacki’s, too.

  The Echo’s interior was heating up. Perspiration pooled below her thighs on the scratchy fabric of the seat.

  Get me out of here.

  Could she reverse the car without knocking him down?

  Without warning, as if suddenly transforming from an insensitive clod into a sensitive one, he backed away, shrugging. “Okay, another time,” he said.

  Relieved, Kat said, “Josh?”

  He turned back to face her. “Yeah?”

  “You have a lot to offer the right woman.”

  He shuffled his feet. “Yeah,” he said. “I do.”

  “I’m looking, but I’m confused.”

  “Me, too.”

  “I’m not for you, Josh.”

  “Guess not.”

  “It’s tough. Don’t give up.”

  He sighed. “You, too.”

  Being a player was getting so old.

  17

  A fter the meeting with Antoniou, Ray phoned his mother. “I’ve been hoping you would call. Are you still angry?” she asked.

  “I found another tape. That makes three.”

  A long silence. If his mother had ever prayed, he could imagine her praying right this minute. “Ray, please, this is getting-you have to stop.”

  “I found it at Bright Street. In the fruit cellar. He says he’s coming and then you hang up.”

  “My God,” she said.

  “Did he hurt you? Beat you?”

  “Who?”

  “You know damn well who!”

  She hung up on him again.

  He slammed the phone down so hard it fell off the desk.

  Suzanne, sitting at her desk outside his door, said, “Are you okay?”

  “I better go home, Suzanne.”

  “Sure, Ray.” She blinked big brown eyes and said, “I’m sorry about everything, Ray. I’m embarrassed about me and Martin.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “I just couldn’t control my feelings. I didn’t realize I might be hurting you, too, when I told the police about Martin and…I hope you and Leigh will be all right.”

  On impulse, he leaned down and kissed the top of her head. “You do a great job here,” he said.

  Ray sliced radishes in his silent stainless-steel kitchen. He put the finished salad in a glass bowl, wrapping the leftover bits of vegetable in plastic wrap and stuffing them into his refrigerator drawer. Pouring two diet sodas over ice, he carried a tray into the living room and sat it on the sculpturally beautiful dining table.

  Sipping his drink, he sat down on the sofa to wait for Kat. Leigh had hated this sofa. She wanted something plush, she always said, something velvety and plump. Leigh had been right. A home was more than its walls of glass and hard furniture. He hadn’t given Leigh a comfortable home.

  So many things he would do differently…his life was avalanching down…

  The doorbell rang, and he answered.

  Kat came inside, all business. She didn’t take off her shoes.

  “This place-any chance I could get a tour?”

  He led her around, explaining the mechanics of construction, telling her about tricky decisions he had made at the time, as if she was a potential client.

  He wound his way down to the workshop. She clutched the wall, balancing.

  “Ray,” she said, “you’re going crazy, right? Or you’re already halfway in the bag.”

  He didn’t exactly nod, but he didn’t disagree.

  All the time she followed him downstairs, she felt anxious. His eerie serenity bothered her. She had pepper spray in her bag and her hand tight on the strap and she wondered if it was a good idea to be alone with him.

  Somewhere along the way, she seemed to have accepted the idea that Leigh might be dead. But then she would think, Why? Leigh’s just left home. She looked around the basement, but there was no sign of Leigh.

  Ray gestured toward an architectural model that took up part of a shop table. “I make three-dimensional facsimiles of some of the houses I lived in as a kid.”

  “Wow.” Kat cocked her head, looking the meticulous models over. On wide shelves beyond, several other little tract houses sat, detailed with trim, porches, even house numbers clear as anything in a high-definition video.

  “It started months before Leigh left. It started when-when she-”

  “Yes?”

  “Nothing.”

  Kat ran a finger over the roofline of one. “You’ve got drainage gutters here. Downspouts. Individual bricks on the fireplace.” She put her hand inside a small kitchen. The faucet over the sink turned. She withdrew her hand. “At least there’s not running water. Yet.”

  However, they were wired for lighting. He snapped a switch to show her. The houses lit up like a Christmas village. Even the furnishings included upholstered pieces suitable to the era.

  “I can’t believe this,” she said, thinking, He is one sick pup.

  “I’ve spent these past months remembering the houses I lived in growing up, thinking about how I felt in them, who I was.” He cleared his throat. “One night, after an argument with Leigh about our future, I thought, If I could only understand. See these kitchens? I never remember anyone there but my mother. I even tried to build in her hiding places. I tried to reproduce whatever I stuck on the wall of my room with pushpins every year.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said, examining them. “If what you say is true, you haven’t lived in these houses for years.”

  “In the beginning, I thought I could somehow control the past by reproducing it. I could-move the mental dolls around, you know? Make them behave. Explain themselves.”

  “Man, you’re a real Henry Darger. Only he did it with paintings of children.”

  “It didn’t work, though.”

  “No.”

  “You still work on them.”

  “I wonder if I get it right, whether I can get what went wrong right, too.”

  “That’s pretty oblique, Ray. Promise me you won’t take up screen-writing.”

  “You asked what I’m doing. I told you. Now you tell me why you’re here again. Why we had to meet.”

  The room was so bright, the walls so white-what was that behind him in the dimness past the half-open closet door?

  Ray moved a thin wall on the model in front of him slightly. “This was a bad idea, coming down here,” he said. He turned his head a little. His eyes flicked to the right, toward the closet, and Kat saw something flash in them. “Let’s go back upstairs.”

  A shaft of cold air traveled down her neck. Kat got up and, moving fast, threw open the door to the closet expecting to see-Leigh?

  Rough coir rope, thick, dangled from the high interior ceiling from a huge industrial metal hook. A noose hung on the end. Thick knots made it secure. The rope swayed as air currents entered.

  Horrified, she moved back. Ray stepped past her, shut the closet door, and stood with his back against it. “Nothing to do with you or Leigh, okay? Don’t look at me like that. Wait.”

  He pulled something out of his pocket. “Look,” he said, walking toward her, holding his hand out. “See, I just bought the thing-”

  “Stay away from me!” She pulled out the spray and pointed it at him.

  He flung a piece of paper to the floor. “It’s a receipt from the hardware store. I bought this stuff a couple of days ago.”

  Warily, she picked up the paper and examined it.

  “Just-just go,” he said. “I’m sorry I scared you.”

  “Wait. Wait. Let me think.” Kat kept the pepper spray can ready. “You killed her?” she said. “And
you can’t take the guilt?”

  Ray put a hand on his forehead and rubbed. “My wife’s gone,” he said. “Kat, honest to God, she left me. I didn’t hurt her, not that way. I think I’m going to be arrested. My work-well, some days I think I know what I’m doing. Other days I doubt every decision I make. My father-he was a crazy asshole who never loved me and spent years trying to hurt my mother. What’s left, huh? What’s there to live for?”

  Tom had asked that question, too, and it outraged her, hearing it again.

  Kat grabbed scissors off the table and marched straight toward Ray, stopping in front of him when he didn’t move out of her way.

  A strange smile played on his lips. “Gonna help me out, Kat?”

  With a grunt of disgust, she pushed him aside and entered the closet, then hacked away at the noose until it split open. She turned back to face him. “You are not going to do this. No way. Not while I’m around. You say Leigh’s alive out there, well, then we’ll have to find her. Get her to explain why she’s left behind a train wreck of a man who, I’m beginning to believe, loves the hell out of her!”

  “She doesn’t want to be found.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Things I said to her-things she saw in me.”

  “You sound like me now, Ray, all tangled up.” She shook her head. “Maybe she’s waiting for you to fight for her! Maybe she wants you to drag her back, show her how much you care.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I could wring your neck myself! You know my brother, Tom, killed himself? You know what agony that spread around in the people he left behind? The guilt, the nightmares, the self-loathing, the accusations, the grief? Our mother couldn’t take it. You could say it killed her, too.”

  He walked past her and closed the closet door gently. “I’m sorry about this, Kat. Sorry to drag you into what’s essentially a private problem.”

  “You self-pitying-jerk! You kill yourself, and this woman you loved enough to marry spends the rest of her life crying through the days and the nights.”

  “That’s why I didn’t.” He nodded his head toward the closet. “I couldn’t do that to Leigh or to my mother.”