Chaos, Desire & a Kick-Ass Cupcake

by Kyra Davis

  I hesitated a moment too long. Anita took the pause as an admission. “Well neither one of us has him now, do we? I have to say, you’re not his type. Aaron always preferred blondes. I’ve certainly never known him to have an exotic fixation…but I suppose all men go through their phases.”

  “Okay, so you’re grieving, and I feel bad about that, so I won’t punch you,” I said, in my most conciliatory tone. “What I’d really like for you to understand is that your husband came to me and my partner. My partner is also my boyfriend. His name’s Anatoly and he’s a P.I. London came to us for help.”

  “That still doesn’t explain how you ended up with the key to his apartment,” she correctly noted.

  “I did try to get in touch with you,” I continued, desperately trying to evade. My phone dinged and I glanced down at my bag. It was then that, from the corner of my eye I noted Jason coming out of the building with the bags. Had it been five minutes? I made a little show of searching my purse for my phone while casually side stepping a little more toward the street, bringing Anita’s focus away from the building. “I wanted to talk to you about the dog,” I said as I pulled my phone out, “and about everything London told me and Anatoly. Your husband thought…” for a moment I let my voice trail off as I noted my new text message.

  It was from Catherine.

  “…he thought he was being poisoned,” I continued, trying to maintain a poker face. Catherine’s text read:

  I want to talk, but my mom can’t know

  Maybe we can meet?

  “If you’re trying to tell me that Aaron could be paranoid, I’m very much aware,” Anita was saying. “And if you’re trying to come up with some elaborate story to hide the true nature of your relationship with my husband, you’re wasting your breath. The only one poisoning Aaron was Aaron. He died because of congestive heart failure. But let’s be honest, he really died of personal neglect and substance abuse. The man had more pharmaceuticals in him than a Walmart pharmacy.”

  “London was abusing pharmaceuticals?” I asked, honestly aghast. That wasn’t possible. Not London who thought all pharmaceuticals were instruments of the devil.

  Anita scoffed. “He told me he stopped the Abilify, which admittedly would’ve been bad.”

  “Abilify…to treat bipolar disorder, correct?”

  “Yes! Although I’ll tell you this, he didn’t need it when he was with me. He was stable when he was with me.”

  The way she said me made it clear that she was blaming London’s next fling for his instability…and apparently I was supposed to be the next thing. I pressed my lips together. There were only so many times I was willing to protest my innocence.

  When I didn’t take the bait, she sniffed and looked away. “Anyway, he didn’t stop taking the Abilify. The doctor told me it was in his blood stream along with everything else you could think of. They couldn’t even identify it all it was so mixed up. They said he was even taking prescription strength allergy medication. The man didn’t have allergies! He was a mess. Maybe you thought you could save him? Perhaps you see yourself as a modern day Florence Nightingale? Well, you’re not. He’s dead. You helped kill him if you did anything at all.”

  “I barely knew your husband,” I hissed. Apparently, I did have it in me to protest my innocence one last time. “I sure as hell didn’t help kill him. But…” I hesitated, and then continued in a softer tone, “I didn’t help him either. When will they be able to identify the…well, the drugs in his bloodstream they weren’t able to immediately identify? When will the autopsy be?” On my phone I texted back to Catherine:

  Of course! Any time.

  “There isn’t going to be an autopsy.”

  I jerked my head up from my screen. “But…there has to be!”

  Anita gave me a withering look. “This isn’t a suspicious death. He’s not a celebrity. I don’t have to request an autopsy. I don’t have to stand here and waste my time talking to you either.” She bent down and picked her boxes up again. “My daughter and I need to see his apartment and find out what kind of disaster he’s left us.”

  “So you really haven’t been in there yet?” I asked. If that was true she was in for a brutal surprise. I almost wanted to pull out a pair of latex gloves from my purse and offer them up…but to Cat, not to Anita. Anita was a bitch.

  “You may be a regular visitor here,” Anita retorted, “but his wife and daughter haven’t had the chance to even step through the door yet. And by the way? If I find you’ve taken anything of value out of there I will call the police.” Anita lifted her chin and shook her hair out of her face before turning her back to me and marching off to her car. As she did I saw Jason drive by, presumably with the bags of articles that I compiled in his car. Jerk.

  A few seconds later Anita was coming back toward me, Catherine by her side. Nothing about that woman resembled an innocent grieving widow. Anita had a story and I could sense it was a dark one.

  As the two walked past me toward the apartment building Catherine hung back by half a step from her mother for just the briefest of moments. Just long enough to mouth the words “I’ll text.”

  I smiled to myself as they went inside the building. I didn’t have to feel guilty anymore. Now I could fully be all in.

  “I miss the monsters of my childhood, the creatures that hid under my bed and came alive in the best told ghost stories. The monsters of my adulthood are both less interesting and a lot more terrifying.”

  --Dying To Laugh

  There were no more texts from Catherine. For the rest of the afternoon and well into the evening, I kept my phone clutched in my hand. But the only time it vibrated was for Facebook, Twitter, email notifications and one text from Anatoly apologetically informing me he was going to have to tail the workers-comp scammer again tonight. There was nothing from Catherine at all. I did try texting her but got no reply. I was willing to cut Catherine a lot of slack because of her grief but she was beginning to bug me.

  On the other hand, reaching Jason was no problem, for all the good it did me. He refused to relinquish the papers, at least not yet. He clung to his argument that his knowledge base made him more qualified to figure out how they were relevant.

  Dena was going to kill me.

  I decided to use the time before my inevitable murder to read over the few things I had been able to stuff into my purse. The BMJ piece written by the NYU professor was packed with facts but dry as hell. I had to re-read several of the sentences over again because my mind kept wandering. The professor’s main point was that Trial disclosures remain below legal and ethical standards (her words). She named off several companies who were the worst offenders, most of whom I had never heard of: Gilphar, Orvex, Alson-Richter and a few others. She was particularly critical of Orvex. But Nolan-Volz wasn’t mentioned which made me think the article might just be further evidence of London’s broad paranoia than of the reasons behind his specific demise.

  The anniversary card was a lot more interesting.

  The personal note written inside read:

  My love,

  Ours was a forbidden love, too powerful to deny. Seven years later I still feel the power of our love every day. I know how much you’ve sacrificed for me and I know I’m not always the easiest person to live with, but never doubt how grateful I am to have you in my life.

  Yours Always and Forever,

  Anita signed her name with a scrawl so that all you could read was the A and the beginning of the N that flowed into a wavy line.

  Something about the note felt wrong to me but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. Maybe it was the forbidden love thing? How was their love forbidden? Had they been with other people at the time? Then again maybe it was just the overkill of clichés and overall cheesiness. Ours was a forbidden love, too powerful to deny? Really? Did she steal that from Hallmark’s movie of the week?

  It wasn’t until 8pm and after a consultation session with my favorite therapist, Smirnoff, that I finally got around to calling
Dena.

  “Hey,” she said upon picking up. “Good timing, I just got home.”

  “Oh?” I settled into the armchair in my living room, sitting cross-legged like a girl ready for kindergarten circle time. “Are you going to be seeing Jason tonight?”

  “No, I need some me time,” she confessed. “I’m going to curl up with two inches of scotch and The Handmaid’s Tale.”

  “The book? I haven’t read it,” I admitted.

  “It’s dark and it’s fucking with my head but I’m really digging it.”

  I smiled and then took a deep breath. “Dena…I saw Jason today.”

  She went quiet for a moment before asking, “You asked him to meet?”

  “No,” I replied quickly. “He just…showed up. At London’s apartment. I told him not to come. He came anyway.” Ugh, my words sounded so halting and awkward.

  “And then you sent him away?” she asked, warily.

  “Yes!” I immediately confirmed then winced as I forced myself to tell her the rest of the truth, speaking so fast the words rushed together into one rambling run-on sentence. “The thing is he didn’t leave and then Anita showed up and everything kind of got mixed up and Jason offered to help me get the articles out of the apartment building without her noticing and I didn’t really have any choice but to say yes, because I really needed help but now he won’t give them back because he says he can read the articles faster than me and make sense of them faster than me because, well, this is the kind of stuff he reads and I did argue with him but…” I finally paused for a breath before admitting, “in the end I let him take the articles home to read.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I winced again. Dena’s uh-huhs were never a precursor to anything good.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, softly. Ms. Dogz wandered into the room and then turned her body into a comma as she lay down by the coffee table. “I screwed up.”

  “You did,” Dena agreed, her voice even, “but not as badly as I have.”

  “You?” Mr. Katz entered the room. He must have sensed that the conversation was about to get interesting.

  “When you first wanted to talk to Jason about…well about whatever this thing is that you’re wasting your time with, you didn’t call him, at least not at first. You called me.”

  “I did,” I confirmed, “and you were less than thrilled. Rather than respect your feelings I pushed it and called him anyway.”

  “Yeah, that’s true. But I didn’t tell you why I wasn’t thrilled about it and I didn’t explicitly tell you no. Anyone who knows me knows that I don’t have a problem saying no or shutting things down if it suits me. So when I didn’t say no…I can’t blame you for taking that as a reluctant yes. So some of the blame is mine, and the majority of the rest is Jason’s for not taking no for an answer…and for being crazy. He’s responsible for his crazy. I shouldn’t have projected my frustration with him onto you.”

  I exhaled loudly. My friendship with Dena was one of…possibly the most important friendship of my life. I wouldn’t have been able to forgive myself if I had damaged it. “Sooo, are you going to take this out on Jason?” I asked. “What are you going to do? Smack him upside the head?”

  “No, that’s foreplay,” she replied, dryly. “I’m going to talk to him and then I’m going to think about our relationship.”

  That sounded ominous.

  “He loves you,” I said softly. “You know that right? I mean he really, really loves you.”

  “Yeah, and there are a thousand subcategories of love,” she noted, “most of which don’t come with lifetime guarantees. I don’t know what category Jason and I fit into.” She hesitated a moment before asking, “What about you and Anatoly? What kind of love do you have going for you? Lifetime guarantee?”

  “Yes,” I said automatically…although…were there any guarantees in life? “We’re in the soulmates-who-have-tons-of-amazing-sex subcategory,” I clarified.

  “Not bad.” I could hear the smile in her voice. “I’m going to call Jason now, okay? Oh and for the record? I still think this London thing is stupid.”

  “I know you do. Be gentle with Jason.”

  “Gentle’s not my thing,” she quipped before hanging up.

  That night, long after I had given up on hearing from Catherine and after I had settled into bed, I found myself in a rather unpleasant dream. I dreamt that I needed to write, but the words I needed were scattered around London’s apartment, hiding under crusty paper plates and crinkly newspapers that I couldn’t bring myself to touch. My own squeamishness and reticence were insurmountable obstacles. I wanted to cry but I found I couldn’t even do that. I was just…lost.

  I don’t know exactly what woke me up from that nightmare. I checked the clock by the bed. Three seventeen am. I started to pull my feet out from underneath Mr. Katz as was my habit when I woke in the middle of the night. But Mr. Katz wasn’t there. I gently kicked my legs around, searching for the weight of my favorite fur ball. But no, nothing.

  With a yawn, I propped myself up with one arm and scanned the room. Ah, there he was. I could make out the dark silhouette of my Mr. Katz sitting on the floor, staring at the open bedroom door. That was the joy of not having kids. When you only lived with your lover you never had to close the door.

  What was odd was the way Mr. Katz was sitting up, not curled up the way he would normally be at this time. I looked down to Ms. Dogz’s makeshift bed. Ms. Dogz wasn’t there.

  “Huh,” I said, quietly. I got out of bed, found my robe draped over a chair and slipped into it. Still groggy I made my way down the hall, my cat followed closely behind me.

  It probably wasn’t a problem that Ms. Dogz had chosen to sleep in another room. She appeared to be fully housebroken. But then again, I had known this animal for just over seventy-two hours and if she was a chewer of furniture or a late night carpet pisser…well, that just wasn’t something I wanted to discover in the morning.

  At the top of the stairs, I hesitated. The light in my stairwell didn’t work. That usually wasn’t a problem for me because the hall light upstairs was bright enough that I could make out each step. But I couldn’t see anything in the living room beneath me. I loved my home more than any other place I had ever lived, but in the wee hours of the morning, when there was no street noise to be heard, and rooms full of darkness, it really could be a little creepy. When I first moved in people told me it was haunted. And every once in a rare while, I found myself wondering if those people were right.

  But I was being silly. The only thing in here that was going to go bump in the night was Ms. Dogz who might knock over the kitchen wastebasket at any moment.

  I made my way down the stairs, only then turning on a small lamp to cast light into the living room. “Ms. Dogz?” I called. Nothing.

  “Sophie?” I tried again, silently cursing myself for giving in so easily to using her previous name.

  She did respond though. She responded with a growl.

  It stopped me in my tracks. She wasn’t in the living room. But she was close.

  She growled again. It was a deep, frightening sound, one that didn’t match the sweet tempered mutt I had welcomed into my home. I hesitated, suddenly unsure of myself.

  “Sophie?” I said again, a little softer. It was disconcerting, calling out my own name into an empty room.

  I moved toward the front of the house. Mr. Katz didn’t follow me this time.

  It was in the foyer that I found the dog. I turned on the light to see her clearly. She was facing the window that stood along side the front door. Her hair was up, her ears back.

  “Sophie?” I said again, nervously this time.

  Again she growled, still staring out into the night. She was growling at something…or someone.

  Anything can hide in the dark.

  Almost of its own accord, my hand reached out and I flipped on the porch lights, then I jumped back, half expecting to see the man with the baseball cap illuminated on the other side of the windo
w.

  But there was no one there. I stepped forward, cupped my hands against the glass.

  Nothing.

  I looked down at Ms. Dogz who looked up at me, her eyes silently pleading with me to believe her. I’m not crazy, I really saw something!

  She reminded me of London.

  I went to the laundry room. There was a gun safe right next to the keypad for the house alarm (the code for which I could never remember). But I remembered the code to the safe. In less than a minute I had my loaded gun firmly in hand. Quietly I walked back to the front of the door. Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out. I tried unsuccessfully to steady my heartbeat. After inhaling deeply one more time I flung open the door and stepped outside, gun tight in my grip, trusting that there was indeed something to confront.

  Except there wasn’t.

  I took another step, then another and another. Ms. Dogz remained in the doorway, wary, on guard. I walked as far as the first of the two steps of my front porch. Not a single car on the street. I turned toward a rustling in the bushes, then the trees. Just the wind.

  I turned around to face Ms. Dogz. “There’s no--” I cut myself off as I noticed my front door. There was a small piece of paper taped to it, a little bigger than a business card. As I stepped closer, I could see it was the kind of card you would expect to see in a bouquet of flowers.

  My hand was shaking as I peeled it off of the finished wood and brought it close enough to read the words scrawled across it in black pen:

  Be careful, Sophie.

  Slowly, I slipped the card into the pocket of my robe and turned back to the night. “Is anyone there?” I called out. I hated the tremor to my voice. The little shiver in my body that had nothing to do with the cold.

  I locked the door as soon as I stepped back inside. I wished to God I could remember the alarm code for the house. I wanted to be alerted, loudly, if anyone tried to get in. I walked back into the laundry room and studied the keypad. Anatoly always set it to some WWII date, which didn’t help me. It wasn’t the beginning or the end of WWII I knew that. It might have been the end date of some battle? Was that it?