Honey

by Brenda Brooks

  I must have, for a moment, stepped out of myself, because that last thought struck me as it would have if Honey had been sitting on the sofa discussing this whole mess as if it were somebody else’s plight. Fashion sense. That’s the sort of remark she would have made herself about that anonymous woman, and then we would have laughed ourselves sick. “That suit! And my god, those glasses! What did she do, whittle them out of reindeer horns?” Jesus, yes, we would have laughed.

  I couldn’t sleep. I lay in bed staring at the fleeting shadows on the ceiling and remembered a certain night after we first moved in together. I’d worked late at the Crescendo and didn’t get home until 2 a.m. All the way home I anticipated that moment when I lowered myself into bed beside her, you know, the way you slip into the lake off a dock for that last swim in September when the water’s still summer-warm.

  I could hear busyness in the kitchen before I came through the door, Ella Fitzgerald low in the background. And what was Honey up to? Slicing mushrooms. An old chef’s apron tied on over her sweatpants and T: Lou’s Diner Open 24 Hours embroidered over her left breast. She kissed me in the doorway and went straight back to the stove, chef knife in hand, as if it wasn’t the middle of the night. As if nothing was strange. The butter hissed in that big, heavy pan she used for everything. I watched her hands move over the cutting board, slicing the mushrooms clean and thin, each layer a little sigh as it fell away from itself. The knife barely kissed the cutting board. She wore a silver cuff bracelet about two inches wide with an engraving of two sleek fish swimming in opposite directions, our birth sign. It slid toward her hand as she worked and settled in place again when she pushed back her hair. Why did a couple of inches of cool metal against her skin cause such turmoil in me, a fever I couldn’t explain? But why even try to explain? I left it alone. It was enough to think about how, later, she’d slip the cuff off and set it on the table next to the bed. Unless she chose not to. It didn’t matter. She was beautiful, that’s all I knew, and had been since the years of sparkle nail polish, and long before, further back than memory. But that night I do remember thinking, Look what her hands are now.

  “Never crowd these guys,” she said, as she placed the mushrooms in the pan. And then added an onion sliced so thin it more or less faded away. “Don’t be stingy with the pepper. Because onions can dish it out, but they can also take it.” A glass of wine stood by. She took a sip, passed it to me, and carried right on. She gave little cooking hints as she worked: Never use the jarred nutmeg because it’s been through the mill. Smash the garlic and chop it rough. Don’t overthink it.

  Water started to boil in another pot and she dropped four pasta nests in. A cup of cream went into the big pan with the mushrooms, onion, nutmeg. “Stir it slow and lazy,” she said. “But don’t hover. Let up now and then. Let everybody wonder where you’ve gone.” When the pasta was done: into the cream. Dusting of pecorino. Another splash of a nice Italian red. She laid out two plates, stripped off my coat, and tossed it on the sofa. The music changed and rose. “That Count Basie’s for you, Nic. Aren’t you glad the neighbors are always out?”

  I pulled her pillow against me and inhaled the scent of her hair so deep I thought it would kill me. And then I cried myself to sleep.

  * * *

  The next morning I devoured the first real breakfast I’d eaten since The Egg & I in Vegas, and revisited the idea of calling that cop. But whenever I caught sight of those keys lying on the bedroom bureau I slammed on the brakes.

  Then he called me instead. Could he come by for a quick chat? Twenty minutes. On a Saturday the weekend before Christmas? This was one keener cop. I suggested we might consider making it official: schedule a poker game once a week — an attempt to disarm him that I was certain he saw right through. He laughed anyway and dropped by about 11. We stood in the hall this time. No time for coffee it seemed, which at least might have precluded me breaking down and saying something fatal like, We did it. Take me away. I’m ready. But most of all please find her.

  “Have you heard from Honey at all, Nicole?” he asked, this time tossing all formality aside.

  “Not a peep,” I said.

  “Are you concerned?”

  “She may be doing some Christmas shopping in Torrent. Buying a bunch of stuff she can’t afford.” I laughed.

  “Sure, sure. You don’t have to tell me about that. My wife’s in Torrent shopping up a storm right now. I see another Christmas sweater in my future. But let me ask you this: isn’t it unusual for her to be out of touch for so long, not even a phone call?”

  “She once put me on hold for six years,” I said, without thinking.

  He thought about that for a moment. “I guess she might be feeling footloose and fancy free, what with no particular impetus to return to work.”

  “No?”

  “I mean having left her position at the bank —” he drew his notebook from his pocket and flipped through some pages “— effective last week. I gather her final obligation was the year-end bank meetings in Torrent.” He acted as if this news was understood between us, and I did too. Did he know more than he was letting on? It was all I could do not to request a flip through that notebook myself.

  “I’m due somewhere else, so I won’t keep you. Just one more thing,” he said and handed me a photo.

  “Is this person familiar to you?”

  I took a good look at the photo. “No, not familiar to me at all.” The guy in the picture was clean-cut, fifty-ish, thin. Nothing remarkable at all. I asked Smith if he was someone “wanted dead or alive,” my feeble attempt to imply I hadn’t a care in the world and what good fun, shooting the breeze with the law.

  “I don’t know how badly he may have been wanted alive, but someone certainly wanted him dead,” he said. “Mind if I leave you this copy — his name’s on the back — in case something comes up for you?”

  “Why not?” I said. “Something to do with that . . . banker guy, is it?”

  “Not possible to say at this point, but in police work, as in life, it’s always a good idea to follow your hunches.”

  * * *

  After he left I went online to try to find out what my cop’s hunch might be. It turned out the dead guy in the photo was a local who lived up Port Union way, a jack of all trades who took tourists fishing and did some property caretaking on the side. His body had been found in a boat storage facility east of Echo Point, about fifteen miles from where he lived, summer and fall, on an old twenty-acre estate on Silk Lake.

  But wasn’t Aurbuck’s family cottage the only one with that kind of acreage on Silk Lake? Didn’t Honey mention a caretaker who taxied guests to the marina in one of those pricey mahogany boats Aurbuck owned? The news story hinted that he may have been killed by someone attempting to steal property. Stolen boats were big business in cottage country. Tow them away at night, sell them fast, and disappear. No connection made to “the prick” in the news story though.

  I stared at the headshot some more. But it wasn’t until I came across another photo of the same guy — standing in a woodlot, wearing a woodsmen cap and a pair of those canvas Carhartt overalls — that it clicked. That’s when a new face began to take shape, like one of those old-time photographs dipped in a liquid bath where the image gradually floats into view.

  I was ninety-eight percent sure it was the guy who had confronted me at the house. If I pictured him with a scruffy beard and a pissed off fuck on his lips the percentage shot straight to one hundred.

  * * *

  That night I had the worst dream ever about Honey. I would have sworn off sleep for good if I thought it would ever recur.

  We were ten or twelve, lacing up our hockey skates in the hut at Crystal Bay. In reality there were always eight or nine kids in the cabin, throwing off their mitts and parkas, punching each other’s shoulders. The scent of wet wool and smoke from the wood-burning stove hung in the air. People came and went from the s
ugar bush down the road at Blue Meadows, hockey sticks and snowshoes lined up against the snow fence while they ate maple syrup drizzled onto chunks of snow or sugary deep-fried dough and hot chocolate from the catering truck.

  But in my dream the whole place lay deserted, just the white landscape, the lake smooth as deep blue glass, and six or seven raucous crows perched in the brittle trees, the sky gray and low. Honey and I were in the hut alone, lacing up our skates. She finished all her preparations first, as always: double knots on the laces, socks folded over the tops, toque jammed down over her ears — eager to be gone. She grabbed her stick, tossed the puck out the door, and threw herself onto the ice, her blades slicing tracks behind her. I may have been ten seconds behind. It was always the same: ten or twenty yards opened between us and she’d turn in one swift motion and either slap the puck back to me or send a perfect wrist shot to the sweet spot on my stick. And then off we’d race toward the marshy cove, full-tilt and playing every position along the way.

  But not in my dream. Halfway across the expected distance she was no longer sprinting toward the frozen bull rushes ahead of me. She was behind me, under the ice. I raced back, ran more than skated, threw away my gloves, and fell to my knees, hammering with my fists until they bled. For a moment she stayed put, her expression calm, bemused, her eyes on mine as if staring through one of those old windows at our house, with the wavy glass and tiny bubbles caught in it. It reminded me of the day she made me kiss her through the screen door of the cottage at Serpentine River, before she let me in. And just when I thought it, she pressed her lips against the ice, her hands splayed on either side of her face, and I watched as the current slipped the whole length of her body past me and away.

  What peace of mind after a dream like that? How could I shake it, stop seeing her face, her mouth, her body drift away while I skated and fell and skated and woke having never caught up to her? Maybe it was this dream that got me wondering — was Honey on the run or was she missing?

  * * *

  I was ransacking the drawers, looking for Detective Smith’s business card when my cell buzzed. A text came through with an attachment from the same anonymous number as before. And another video.

  I decided not to open it. What if it was a graphic continuation of that whole Aurbuck situation behind Havenhurst; a kind of sequel that might take us out to Fortune Bay and I’d have to see myself doing . . . what I did. I sat there staring at the phone and picturing Honey (and me in the Chevy following behind), negotiating the icy side roads with her old boss and lover crammed into the back seat. What could be worse than that? And anyway, who was I kidding? Curiosity and worry always get the best of people; everybody knows that.

  The new clip opened with a tight closeup of gold lettering, Ebb Tide, on a wood-grained background. Again, the atmosphere was muddy, half-lit, but when the camera pulled back the word’s context became clear: the name on the stern of one of those fancy mahogany boats from the ’50s, chrome everywhere, two-toned leather upholstery — a four-seater with a skull and crossbones mounted on the bow, the sort of craft that seems carved from a single piece of hardwood then hand-rubbed and lacquered to a high gloss. A dark inlay, lined with chrome, ran along the top and down the steep blade of the bow. The person shooting the clip savored the beauty and luxury of the craft’s body — down the burnished sides and around to the two leather seats nestled in behind the flash of its curved windscreen.

  The boat was stored on a trailer in a place the size of an airplane hangar, but even so, someone sat behind the wheel. He looked like he was cooling his heels and waiting to come into dock: none other than my home invader with his head tipped back, eyes wide, as if awed by something visible only to him, up in the rafters. And on his forehead a red speck no bigger than a fly. I had to look away. But not before seeing the note pinned to his chest: How badly do you want your girlfriend back?

  I dropped Detective Smith’s business card back in the drawer, all the while itching to — what is that thing he would have warned against? — take matters into my own hands. I began searching for Honey’s gun. Why I don’t know, because what would I do if I found it? The only weapon I’d ever owned was as an eight-year-old, a Supersoaker Blaster that shot water at unsuspecting opponents up to thirty-four feet — and I was too busy practicing scales to use it. And then it occurred to me that whoever this person was, they were, right at that moment, waiting for a response of some kind.

  What should I say? I looked again at the face of the caretaker from Silk Lake and texted back, Who are you, and what do you want? Truly the central questions in life.

  I heard nothing more until 11 that evening when, after I’d downed four or five shots of Honey’s bourbon, they texted again: $$$. When I asked how much, they answered, All of it. I asked, When? They said, Hurry.

  16.

  First in line at the bank the next morning, I asked to speak to Arch Kincaid, who had watched over my parents’ accounts and “low-risk” investments for thirty years. He’d retired the previous month, so I got someone else, a guy named Aaron, who looked about fifteen but had a framed picture of a young boy and a dog on his desk so I guessed he was old enough to be seriously hooked up, if not married. I inquired about the ins and outs of withdrawing funds from the insurance payout. He adjusted his computer screen and asked me how much I had in mind. “All of it,” I said, quoting the maniacal text.

  When the account information appeared on his screen, he laughed and said, “Wouldn’t that be great?” Then he waited for me to get serious. At least that was my impression.

  “I’m serious,” I said, and laughed too. “I don’t mean cash, right on the spot; nothing like that. I don’t want to leave the poor bank in tatters, or anything. Just a transfer into my account.”

  “How much of a transfer?” he asked, a little put off, I thought, by my “poor bank” remark. I looked again at the picture on his desk and realized the little boy was him, some years earlier, with said dog, a small, floppy-eared thing with an alarming underbite.

  “Would there be a problem transferring the whole amount?”

  “You are aware there’s just over $750,000 in this account,” he said. You’d have thought the transfer would require a fleet of armored cars and he’d have to load them himself.

  “I guess I am,” I said, with the reluctance of someone who never wanted to think about the insurance settlement, who had only ever thought of it in terms of my mother’s life, except now Honey’s life seemed to require it too, one way or another.

  And what was all that cash supposed to do anyway? Bring me solace in exchange for the loss it symbolized? Sure, Honey and I bitched about being broke. But everybody was poor now, and what did we know about being rich? Why did I have to feel, at twenty-four, like some kind of obsolete loser because all I wanted was Honey and me together in the house on Montague Street, the two of us growing into old wrecks together while we tried to keep the wild lupines separate from the tomato vines in my mother’s garden? Or we’d age and evolve beautifully like, what was it? — those great Provençal rosés of Bandol. And we’d never look back and wonder if we should have loved somebody else, somebody we regretted letting go of back in time, because we were each other’s back in time.

  “Ms. Hewett — Nicole — the bank can’t transfer the balance into your personal account just yet,” he said. “You can access $50,000 on January 1st. Which is just around the corner, after all. And your mother has made arrangements for a consistent amount each month that would more than cover living expenses, I see you’ve written some checks on that already, but the full amount isn’t available.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because of the trust fund, of course.”

  Turns out, in late October my mother had gone to the bank and, before Arch Kincaid retired, opened a trust fund for me: $50,000 the year I turned twenty-five, increasing in yearly $10,000 increments until I turned thirty, at which point the whole amount reverted
to me. It was a fantastic idea, entirely understandable, especially in light of what I’d done. She protected me to the end, even from myself. But at that moment I couldn’t help thinking of Inez, sitting across from Aurbuck with the gun in her hand. How much can we get with this?

  In the spirit of Honey’s mother, I’d go home and scour the condo until I found that damn pistol, return the next day with a suitcase, and demand new terms. Hand over the dough, you snarky pipsqueak or — or what? I’d cringe, take aim, and stick a red dot on his forehead? I was too much my own mother’s daughter for that.

  * * *

  Hurry, the text said. If some kind of lunatic had kidnapped Honey, how long would they wait? I’d expected her back on the 16th at the latest, and now it was the 21st. How patient could you expect a lunatic to be? Would $50,000 in the new year be okay? Would they wait until I turned thirty for the rest? I couldn’t sit still, so that night, about 10, I set off driving.

  I retraced a few of the routes my mother and I had driven in those last months and then, in order to pick up the pace and soothe the jitters, continued out to the main highway, stepped on it for about sixty miles, and cruised back slowly via County Rd. 8. I circled through town and headed out toward Motel Strip on the way back to Havenhurst.