The Stories You Tell

by Kristen Lepionka

  He leaned back and closed his eyes. “I don’t know. Maybe. Cause of death is drowning, officially. His BAC was off the charts.” He glanced at the bourbon remaining in his glass and set it on the end table. “They found his wallet in the river by the King Avenue. boat launch. Someone at the Tim Hortons across the street said he saw some guy stumbling around in the dark on Wednesday night, under the bridge. But who knows.”

  I closed my eyes again too, wondering what in the hell had happened to Mickey Dillman in the hours between the Columbus Bowling Palace and the King Avenue bridge. But there was no way to know. There might never be a way to know.

  When I opened my eyes again, the clock said it was after four and Tom was curled on his side on the sofa next to me, his face pressed into the crook of one elbow. I turned the other way and went back to sleep.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  When I woke up for real, morning light was streaming in through the window and an alarm was going off somewhere in the apartment and the sofa beside me was empty.

  I sat up, confused. My phone was on the coffee table, so the alarm wasn’t mine. “Tom?”

  The beeping was coming from down the hall. I dragged myself into a standing position, swallowing hard against a pulse of nausea.

  He was in my bedroom, on top of the blankets but with a corner of sheet pulled up and around him. The beeping emanated from his pocket. “Tom,” I said again, patting his shoulder.

  He made a soft noise, rolled over, and looked at me, just as confused as I was.

  “Is the beeping, um, something important?”

  He pulled his phone out and stabbed at the screen. “Well,” he said, holding the fingertips of one hand to his forehead, “I was supposed to be in a conference room two hours ago, but fortunately the meeting has been postponed. Jesus Christ.” He put the phone down on the mattress and covered his eyes with both hands. “I don’t know why I came in here—I got up to use the bathroom at one point and I guess—I’m sorry—”

  “It’s fine,” I said. As the surprise wore off, the reality of my hangover set in.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “No, it’s okay, definitely more comfortable in here than in there.” I touched the back of my neck, which felt like it had recently been folded into a suitcase.

  Tom sat up, hands still over his face. “Can there be coffee?”

  “Instant, or fancy?”

  “I don’t know what that means.” His voice was muffled under his palms.

  “Catherine got me a fancy one-cup thing,” I said. Saying her name made the throbbing in my head even worse.

  “Surprise me,” he said.

  I went into the kitchen, squinting at the bright light coming in through my windows. A beat later I heard the bathroom door close, then the uncomfortable sound of gagging. I leaned out into the hall. “You okay?”

  “Great,” he called back.

  I rooted through the basket of single-serve coffee cup things until I found the one that I always thought smelled the best and stuck it into the machine to do its business while I heated up more hot water for tea.

  The old wooden floor creaked as Tom joined me in the kitchen. “In addition to taking your bed, I also owe you a toothbrush,” he said. “There was one in the medicine cabinet, still in its package. So I used it.”

  “That’ll be a dollar seventy-nine,” I said. When the coffee was ready, I added some milk to it and reached for the bottle of whiskey on my counter. “Hair of the dog?”

  “Good god, no,” he said. He sipped the coffee and nodded. “It’s nice. I’m impressed. Catherine must think you’re pretty special.”

  I shrugged. “She thinks someone’s special. I don’t drink coffee.”

  We looked at each other for a long time. It felt like we could have entire conversations without saying a word sometimes. I pushed back the urge to bury my face in his shirt.

  Finally he said, “This is why I don’t drink liquor with you.”

  I waved a hand. “Yeah, yeah.”

  * * *

  It was a beautiful day, but the city was raw. I put gas in my car at the BP on Broad Street and overheard two motorists at the next pump talking about what had happened. “This girl they claim he had with him, the one who doesn’t exist. What you want to bet she’s white?” one said.

  The other said, “Practically guaranteed.”

  I didn’t disagree with the sentiments, but no one knew yet what had happened, who had called, what they’d said. I drove over to Grant Hospital, thinking. Maybe it was a case of mistaken identity—some other guy in some other backyard threatening a woman with a gun.

  Or maybe it had been swatting, like Tom had said. Maybe general, maybe specific.

  There’s a man with a gun in a backyard.

  There’s a man with a gun in my backyard.

  The irony that my brother was currently enmeshed in this situation because of a potentially similar phone call? Not at all lost on me.

  Was all of this Addison’s doing somehow?

  Wyatt’s mother seemed shrunken in her red cardigan, its pockets puffy with balled-up tissues. “He looks so small,” she said.

  It was true. Wyatt looked shrunken too, his muscular frame hidden under bandages and sheets. He had a plastic mask over his nose and mouth from the ventilator he was on.

  “The bullet ricocheted all around in his chest,” Gwen added. “They said it’s a miracle he even hung on this long, that if he can make it through today, maybe he has a chance. What on earth is my boy mixed up in?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I really don’t. He didn’t say anything to you?”

  “Nothing. He spent pretty much all day in bed, buried in his phone. Then he took a shower and got dressed and I asked him when he was going to talk to me, and he said we could talk when he got back. That he just had to go meet with someone.” She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. “My car is probably still at that place. I had to take an Uber here.”

  I was furious at someone, but I didn’t know who. My hands balled up into fists in my pockets.

  “A police officer came here. To tell me all about the very credible threat that was called in to the dispatcher. He said when they approached the house, Wyatt freaked out. Crying and panicking. Why would an innocent person do that, is what he wanted to know.”

  “I highly recommend you get yourself a lawyer,” I said, “and don’t speak to them again until you do. Definitely don’t sign anything.”

  “Wyatt is nothing to them,” she whispered. “They might not even care what really happened, as long as they can prove what they did was okay. Can you help me?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I can help you. There’s more to this story, that’s for damn sure. Gwen, do you have Wyatt’s phone?”

  “His phone? Yes, it’s in here.” She stiffly got to her feet and opened a cabinet on the wall of her son’s small room. A paper bag sat on the top shelf. “His clothes, and his shoes—” She stopped speaking abruptly and sat down, hard.

  I looked into the bag, saw Wyatt’s camo pants and a pair of black-and-red Lebron Soldiers and a watch with a rubbery white band that was misted with blood. His phone was in the pocket of his pants, its battery dead.

  “I just want to see if I can figure out who he was trying to meet yesterday,” I said, rubbing the specks of blood on his watch with my thumb; his mother didn’t need to see that. “I’ll bring it back.”

  “I don’t know if I can pay you,” Gwen said, her voice quiet.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I told her. “Please. Just focus on your son. I’ll get answers for you.”

  * * *

  That afternoon, I lay on my bed in the dark and powered up Wyatt’s phone after it had charged. My sheets smelled like bourbon and faintly like Tom’s cologne and I pressed my face into the pillow for a moment, breathing it in. Then I adjusted the brightness on Wyatt’s phone so the screen didn’t hurt my hungover eyes and typed in the first of a series of possible access codes his mother had given me; fortunat
ely, her second guess was correct.

  I looked at the recent calls first. He’d made fifteen of them to Addison over the past week, but based on the duration of the calls, it didn’t look like she’d answered or called back. Shane’s number was saved in Wyatt’s contact list and they’d talked twice yesterday—once in the afternoon that had lasted for eleven minutes, and once at seven o’clock that was over after twenty-three seconds. He had no saved voice mails. Apparently he was one of those people who listened to and deleted messages instead of just reading the transcription and ignoring it like I did.

  His most recent texts with Addison had been ten days ago, a random exchange of GIFs. Since then, he had unanswered texts from his mother and someone named JD and half a dozen from various delivery services alerting him that his food was about to arrive.

  None of it told me anything.

  I scrolled through his email—marketing messages from indie brands like Dagne Dover and Allbirds, a group thread about JD’s birthday in two months, no all-caps admissions of guilt from anyone.

  Shocking.

  I flipped through the screens of apps, pausing on the familiar icon of a bus with heart-shaped headlights.

  Navigating BusPass’s interface, I found his private messages.

  There was only one thread, and it was from yesterday, and it was with ADDY MARIE S.

  I opened the chain and scrolled up to the beginning.

  WYATT A: Girl. Where are you

  WYATT A: I can’t decide if I am worried about you or pissed at you

  WYATT A: I can’t live like this

  ADDY MARIE S: That’s dramatic

  This message was sent yesterday at four-thirty.

  WYATT A: Oh so you’re not returning calls but still up on this thing? Amazing

  ADDY MARIE S: I had to get a new phone

  WYATT A: I think we should go to the police

  ADDY MARIE S: Can we meet? To talk

  ADDY MARIE S: You know this app is prolly selling our convo to the NSA

  WYATT A: Sure. Fine. At Nightshade?

  ADDY MARIE S: Noooooooo

  WYATT A: You’re not being very helpful

  ADDY MARIE S: Just scared. Do you have a gun

  WYATT A: Wtf addison

  WYATT A: This is insane

  ADDY MARIE S: I need to be able to protect myself

  WYATT A: Well he’s obviously not going to hurt you anymore

  ADDY MARIE S: I don’t want to talk about it on here! Just come to my place. 6:30. Go around to the back

  * * *

  Then, at 6:32:

  WYATT A: Yo im here

  WYATT A: Where are you

  WYATT A: Addison I’m on your back porch

  WYATT A: Look I’ll stay a few more mins but I’m not waiting around all night

  * * *

  I guessed there was my answer. Addison got him to go to her apartment, then called 911 on him.

  “Bitch,” I said to the empty apartment.

  I was mad that I’d ever been worried about her. Finding her was still just as important, but now for a different reason.

  I reread the conversation. It was a strange one, obviously about something serious, though it didn’t come right out and say what. I supposed that didn’t necessarily mean anything; when you’re in a situation with someone, you didn’t spell out the details of it in text for a third party to decipher.

  But who wasn’t going to hurt her anymore? What did she need protection from?

  I went into the other room and got my computer, along with the business card that Ramonte Barnes had given me to log in to the BusPass master account.

  Maybe she’d messaged someone else yesterday too, someone who might not currently be intubated and in intensive care.

  I found Addy Marie’s profile, scrolled down to the “recently connected” section.

  “Holy shit,” I said.

  Wyatt’s name was the most recent one listed, but halfway down the list was MICKEY D.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Keeping in mind what Rick Dillman’s father had told me about him not liking to be interrupted while doing a project, I waited until he came out of Best Buy and walked down the street to BW3 for his dinner break, red headphones over his ears. I stepped up beside him and gave a little wave and he slid the headphones down around his neck, a faint stream of “God Bless the Child” escaping. I said, “Hi Rick, can I pay for your food?”

  He spun around and looked at me. “Because you want to ask more questions?”

  “Yes, and because I’m generous that way.”

  His eyes, hazel with flecks of gold, locked on mine for the first time. “Okay.”

  We ordered plain chicken wings and potato wedges and sodas. The cashier knew Rick’s order by heart and appeared surprised when I said to double it and offered up my credit card.

  “Yo, is Rick on another date?” she said.

  “No,” he replied. “If we were on a date, I’d be paying, because I’m a gentleman.”

  “Yeah you are,” the cashier said, winking at me.

  As we took a seat in a booth near the back of the restaurant, Rick said, “I sit here every day. Alone. But hey, you might be good for my reputation.”

  “Happy to help.”

  He gave a short laugh. “Did you used to be a cop?”

  “No, but my dad was a cop. He knew your cousin Mickey, actually.”

  “You have a cop,” he said, pantomiming a circle over the table between us, “visage.”

  “Thank you?”

  “Mickey died, you know.”

  “Yeah. I’m sorry to hear about him. I wanted to talk to you about someone I think he knew. Remember the other day when I showed you a picture of a woman?”

  Darkness edged into his eyes. “Yes.”

  “And you said you didn’t recognize her?”

  Rick was quiet.

  I showed him the Addy Marie profile on my phone. “What about her?”

  Rick’s eyes lingered on the picture of Addison onstage at Nightshade. He still didn’t say anything.

  “Did Mickey show you this?”

  “No.”

  “So you’ve never seen her before?”

  He took a long gulp from his Coke.

  “You can trust me, Rick.”

  “Mickey said not to tell anyone,” he said.

  “Tell anyone what? About her?”

  Rick’s posture had stiffened. “He said she was bad.”

  “Bad?”

  Now he shook his head. “I’m not supposed to say that.”

  A server appeared with our wings and fries. The greasiness of the spread before us appealed to the remnants of my hangover, but Rick pulled a small bottle of bright red sauce out of his bag along with a plastic container with a screw-on lid. When he uncapped the bottle, which featured a strip of masking tape that said 12-15 in lieu of a label, a sharp aroma wafted out and it got me a little worried.

  “So you put your own sauce on?”

  He nodded. “We made this. Mickey and me. A good hot sauce is complex, more than just hot. Much research has gone into this sauce. It’s for connoisseurs. For people who love the experience of hot sauce, not just for dumb jock guys who want to act like they’re so tough because they order the spiciest wings but then cry for a week whenever they take a shit.”

  I almost gagged on my soda. “On a scale of one to ten, how hot is this going to be?”

  “Ten. Well, if you don’t like spicy, maybe higher for you. Do you?”

  “Yes, within reason.”

  “What you do is, you take small bites, and chew slowly. If you think it’s better to eat fast because it’s too spicy, you’re wrong. That makes it worse. Small bites, and then take a drink of pop after. Not water. That only moves the capsaicin around in your mouth or throat, but sugar helps soothe the flavor. You can spit out the pop if your mouth is still too hot. The spicy goes with it, whether you swallow it or spit it out.”

  I watched as he moved the wings into the plastic container an
d dumped his homemade sauce on top, screwed the lid back on, and shook it hard. When he took the lid off, the smell was ten times stronger and stung my sinuses a little.

  Rick dug in with gusto, but I nibbled a potato wedge to start. “So what didn’t Mickey want you to tell anyone about? That Addison was bad?”

  Rick shook his head again. “He said not to tell, so I can’t tell.”

  “Not even to help figure out what happened to him?”

  “They said he fell in the river.”

  “Who said that?”

  “My dad and the hosebeast.”

  “The hosebeast? As in, Wayne’s World?”

  “My dad’s girlfriend.”

  “She’s awful, huh?”

  “She Talks Like This.” He enunciated the words like a Shakespeare community theater actor. “But only to me, of course. ‘Richard, It Is Time For Dinner, Will You Be A Good Boy And Set The Table Please?’” He rolled his eyes. “I act like I don’t hear her sometimes because it’s so annoying but that makes her be even louder.”

  “Do you think Mickey fell in the river that night?”

  He wiped his mouth with a napkin but didn’t say anything.

  “Can you tell me what you talked about with him?”

  “He said not to tell anyone. Are you going to try one?” He pointed at the sauce-covered wings.

  “I’m a little scared of them, to be honest.”

  “Try them.”

  “If I try one, will you tell me what you guys talked about?”

  “It’s in the vault.”

  “The vault?”

  “It’s where you put secrets that can never, ever come out.”

  I could respect someone’s ability to keep a secret, but at the same time, I really wanted to know this one. “What would I have to do, to prove you can trust me?”

  Rick shrugged, helpless. “It’s in the vault.”

  I bit into the hot wing and immediately regretted it. “Oh fuck,” I said. “This is definitely higher than a ten.”

  “It’s okay, it’s okay, power through.” He nudged my soda toward me. “Small sip. Another small sip.”