Chaos, Desire & a Kick-Ass Cupcake

by Kyra Davis

  “Okay, slow down.” I sat on the armrest of the couch. Ms. Dogz sat next to me, her expression expectant. “His having worked at Orvex…it’s odd. Maybe even suspicious but we don’t want to jump to conclusions.”

  “Jump to conclusions? Rispolex caused heart murmurs! Aaron London had fluid around his heart! These drugs are hurting our hearts! How’s that for a metaphor for corporate America?”

  This was way too many hysterics for me to handle this early in the day. “I’ll read the article, okay?” I assured him as I pushed myself back to my feet and headed for the front door.

  “I’m coming over tonight so we can go over everything,” Jason volunteered.

  I hesitated, my hand on the knob of my front door. Anatoly’s face from last night flashed before me…. that look of rage, then surrender. We were in dangerous territory. We had things we absolutely had to work out and if I valued my relationship, it really shouldn’t wait until tomorrow.

  “Tonight’s not good,” I said. “Anatoly and I need some alone time.”

  “People are dying!” he whined. “Have alone time tomorrow. We need to meet tonight.”

  “Jason,” I sighed as I started to open the front door. “I--”

  I was interrupted by a screeching siren alarm. Our alarm, the one we never used. Ms. Dogz freaked out. She started running around the foyer and then sprinted outside into the front yard only to turn around and sprint back inside. And the alarm was still going. Shit!

  “Jason, hold on,” I yelled into the phone as I ran through the house, to the laundry room where the alarm keypad was. “Umm…” what was the code? Oh God, what date did he use for this one? The siren was still going. Would the police come?

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!” I brought my phone back to my ear. “Jason,” I yelled, “I have to hang up. I have to…oh, oh, I remember!”

  “Remember what? What the hell’s that noise? Oh Jesus, are they coming for you?”

  “What? No, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I need to call you back so I can look up the date when the battle of Stalingrad ended.” The police would be here any second. No police before coffee!

  “You don’t know the end date of Stalingrad? I know the end date of Stalingrad.”

  “What is it?” I shouted.

  “If I tell you can I come over tonight so we can figure this shit out?”

  “Jason!” If I could have reached through the phone to strangle him, I would have done it.

  “February 2nd, 1943,” Jason replied, proudly.

  “Great.” I hung up the phone and put 02021943 into the keypad. The alarm stopped. “Oh.” I stood there in the silence, the wailing still echoing in my ears.

  I tightened my robe and fell back against the washing machine. Everything was a mess. My relationship was getting rockier by the minute, someone…or someones…possibly corporate America, was leaving threatening notes on my front door and…

  …The sound of approaching sirens captured my attention. The police charged for false alarms, didn’t they? I gave Ms. Dogz a look. “Everything’s a mess.”

  Ms. Dogz bashfully looked away as if she didn’t want to see me in such a pathetic state. I stepped out of the laundry room and found my eyes were drawn to the coffee maker. On it was a bright yellow post it: a note from Anatoly telling me he had set the alarm and reminding me of what the code was. That could have been helpful.

  I sighed and went to the front door, catching a quick look at my reflection in the glass of the dining room display cabinets. I was wearing a knee length plush white robe with colorful polka dots all over it. Obviously the perfect armor for dealing with the fallout of the battle of Stalingrad.

  I put Ms. Dogz on her S&M leash and opened the door anticipating the police would be there soon. Ms. Dogz and l listened as the sirens got closer and then the black and whites came into view. “Play it cool with the policemen, Ms. Dogz,” I counseled. “At the moment you’re undocumented.”

  The cars sped to the house…and then past the house. They just drove right by. “Oh,” I said surprised. “Sooo…they’re not coming to check on me?” Did that make me feel more or less safe? I waited a moment to see if maybe they just missed their stop. Did police ever do that? Just accidentally pass up the house they’re rushing to because their GPS messed up? It did seem a bit unlikely.

  But they didn’t circle back. I was on my own. Maybe I was always on my own. Maybe all the trappings of security and protection meant nothing in the unpredictable and unstable world of 2017.

  Maybe there really were no impediments that could keep my stalker from hurting me.

  The Chronicle was still in my driveway. If Anatoly was irritated with me, he would have taken it. He knew I liked to read it over coffee.

  On the other hand, if he was deeply angry he wouldn’t stoop to pettiness. So either he wasn’t all that upset with me anymore or we were on the verge of (another) breakup. I tread out, barefoot to the driveway and fetched the paper, all the while scanning for unwanted notes.

  The minute I got back into the foyer I found the article on Nolan-Volz. The headline read:

  Gilcrest & Co. To Acquire Nolan-Volz After Promising Early Results of Anti-Addiction Drug

  The byline read Tereza Calvan. This was the Chronicle article Gundrun Volz thought I was interviewing him for. I quickly read the paragraph that had made the first page and then flipped to the page where the article continued. The pending acquisition was announced less than a week ago and the stock market was salivating over it. Apparently, Nolan-Volz had gone through a few bumpy years half a decade ago when they struggled to win federal approval to begin clinical testing for Sobexsol. It had gotten to the point where there had been speculation that they would have to fold. But eventually they did get that approval and the early results had been stunning. Sobexsol was a drug aimed at curbing people’s addictive tendencies. For those who were biologically prone to addiction Sobexol targeted the part of the brain that was responsible for the addictive cravings and significantly dulled them. It was considered a huge breakthrough in neuropharmacology. And at a time when more people in America died of opioid overdoses than car crashes, the prospects of massive sales were huge.

  And of course, Gundrun Volz was quoted quite extensively. The article made him look like a visionary.

  “So now he’s a lauded public figure,” I whispered to myself. That would make it harder for me to convince others that he was dangerous. I thought about last night’s note again. God, things had gotten totally out of control. Part of me was tempted to find a way out or at least make myself a very strong Bloody Mary.

  But instead, I found myself walking through the living room, dropping the paper onto the coffee table and then heading into my office. I was almost in a trance as I sat down at my computer. Listening to the familiar chime as it powered on. And then… I clicked onto Word.

  I stared at my empty document. I slide my fingers over the keys, reacquainting myself with them, feeling their smooth edges, the way they petted and scratched my fingertips. I hadn’t really felt the keys like this in well over a year. The keyboard was a little like an old lover. You knew what it could do, you just had to remind yourself where and how to touch it, which pressure points to hit, how to make it sing.

  Slowly, I began to type.

  In the center of her palm was a spot of crusted blood, just to the left of her lifeline, right on top of the line of fate. It wasn’t her blood. But it was definitely her indictment, the consequences of which were crouched behind some shadowy corner, ready to jump out and strike her down.

  I kept writing, my fingers picking up speed until they were flying creating a living breathing woman out of nothing, giving her a burden and a history that was unimaginable…except I was imagining it.

  I was writing.

  Writer’s block, GONE! I was cured!

  The cure lasted for exactly six and a half pages.

  My cursor was impatiently blinking at me again as my hands hovered uselessly in the air.
The letters on the keys suddenly seemed random. I couldn’t think of a good way to string them together.

  I sat there like that for a full ten minutes, occasionally writing a few words before immediately deleting them, my creativity rolling further away with every tick of the clock. Whatever had boiled up in me had now boiled away to nothing.

  “Fuck,” I whispered. But unlike Anatoly, my keyboard didn’t have a sexy-clever come-back. My words were just…gone.

  I sat back and stared at my screen. Perhaps the question shouldn’t be why did I lose my creative spark so quickly but what had sparked it to begin with. Had my subconscious found the words I needed tucked under the moldy pizza boxes of London’s apartment? Had inspiration been woven through the words of that menacing note?

  I got up and went back to the newspaper. Maybe there was something in the article that I missed…something so horrible and terrifying I would be inspired to finish the chapter.

  But when I picked up the paper I noted a headline on the front page that I had missed before:

  Unidentified Man Found Strangled To Death in Presidio Park

  But it wasn’t the headline that bothered me. It was the fact that someone had underlined it. As in, underlined it with a fine point pen.

  I dropped the paper.

  Why would someone underline a headline about a local murder…unless they were trying to make a point. To threaten me. Again.

  I swallowed hard, picked the paper back up and found my way back to the laundry room, activating the alarm once again, using a little piece of bloody history as the passcode.

  “I’m fine. Everything is fine,” I whispered to myself.

  I was a liar.

  I found Ms. Dogz waiting for me in the kitchen, looking up at me expectantly. With unsteady hands, I put the paper down on the island and started to read.

  I read the article over four times. But it told me nothing. A tatted up white dude, about six-feet tall, had been found dead in the bushes of Presidio Park. He had been strangled with a metal cord. He had no ID on him. No wallet but the police weren’t saying if it was a suspected robbery or something else. It was an ongoing investigation.

  So two dead. London and this other guy. I lifted my hand to my neck, imagining what it must be like to have something as harsh as soft steel deprive you of the air you needed to breathe.

  I was going to get so much writing done today.

  “If someone gives you a sugar pill, tells you it will cure your physical ailments and you really believe it, there’s a decent chance the pill will work. If a man tells you he can fix all your problems and you really believe him, there’s a good chance he will drive you insane and completely dismantle your life. When it comes to our relationships, we need to check our magical thinking at the door.”

  --Dying To Laugh

  I almost canceled on Mary Ann. I had written a full twenty pages and walking away from my computer felt physically painful. But in all the years I had known her, Mary Ann had never flaked on me. Not one single time. And so I simply couldn’t bring myself to flake on her, although I did tell her ahead of time that I might be a bit distracted.

  Also, how long could I be home alone before the man in the black baseball cap showed up?

  So perhaps a little time with the sweet and ever amiable Mary Ann really was the best option for the afternoon. Still, I couldn’t quite believe what it was we were about to do. I sat in my car, now parked in the covered parking lot, Mary Ann by my side, shaking my head. “How did you talk me into this?”

  “It’s exciting, isn’t it?”

  I gave her a bewildered look. “But…we don’t belong here.”

  “I do!” She got out of the car, happily slamming her door behind her.

  I followed her with considerably less enthusiasm.

  “This,” she insisted, linking her arm with mine as she led me to the warehouse style building, “is a pragmatic thing to do. I’m being very mature and pragmatic.”

  Yesterday Mary Ann had downloaded a new app that gave her a word-of-the-day. Today was pragmatic. I bit back my reply and managed a forced, tight-lipped smile as we walked through the automatic doors of Babies R Us.

  She half skipped, half ran over to where the shopping carts were. “Should we get two carts? This is a big sale and I do want to take full advantage of it.”

  “But you don’t have a kid,” I pointed out for the umpteenth time.

  “But I’m going to have a kid,” she explained as she settled on getting just one shopping cart and gleefully wheeled it toward the shelves.

  “But you don’t know when you’re going to have a kid,” I tried again.

  “Of course I do! I’ll have my first little one in almost exactly nine months!” she leaned over and whispered conspiratorially, “We’ve had sex for the last two nights in a row without condoms!”

  “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean--”

  “Oh! Look at this!” She grabbed a Björn baby carrier from a shelf and held it out, with straight arms, to admire it. “Everyone tells me Baby Björn is the best. It’s not on sale, but it’s probably unwise to skimp on something like this, don’t you think? Or do you think it’s better to get one of those swing things. Lots of the attachment-parenting people swear by the swing things.”

  I had no idea what she was talking about. The only swing-things I had ever heard about were the sex swings Dena carried in her shop.

  “Oh!” Mary Ann laughed and reached for another box. “I meant sling. Sling things! Gosh, there’s so much to learn in such little time!”

  “You know, it’s possible you’re not pregnant yet,” I said, as if repetition was the clearest route to sanity.

  “Oh no, I’m sure I am.” She reached for my hand and placed it firmly on her flat stomach. “You feel that? It’s like it’s almost…oh, I don’t know…like it’s bloated or something.”

  “Yeah, but maybe you’re bloated or something,” I suggested although if this was bloated I needed to get my ass to a Weight Watchers meeting immediately.

  Mary Ann laughed and released my hand. “Don’t be silly.” She turned back to the shelves. The Chipmunks Christmas song started playing in the background, solidifying my suspicion that this place was one of the circles of hell. “The slings are on sale but they look kind of complicated. I think I’ll stick with the Björn. The Swedish always raise their children to be so nice and talented and tall. Just look how well Alexander Skarsgärd turned out. I bet his mother carried him around in a Baby Björn.”

  “Yeah, that would explain why he’s so tall,” I said, dryly.

  “You never know,” she placed the Björn in the basket and moved us toward the car seats, “maybe they stretch out in there. Anyway, why didn’t you think you’d be good company today? What’s going on?”

  “Oh, just the London thing. You know I tried to talk to Anatoly about it but he’s being every bit as stubborn as Dena is. Maybe even more so. He’s mad at me for looking into it at all, which doesn’t make sense. More’s happened since I’ve last talked to you about this. And that means there’s more reason than ever to think London was murdered.”

  “London was murdered,” she repeated, thoughtfully. “That sounds wrong. Like you’re talking about a sporting team or something. Like America just murdered London on the soccer field.”

  “Okay, except America’s a country and London’s a city and that’s not really an expression, but aside from that I see your point.”

  “Right?!” she said as if I had just stated my full agreement. But then, her attention really was elsewhere. “Do you think it’s okay to get a discounted car seat?” She studied a large box featuring a happy, safe, car-riding baby. Next to the box was a sign with the words twenty-five percent off in glaring red print.

  “Probably? At the very least it should be secure enough for theoretical children.”

  “You’re probably right,” Mary Ann agreed, missing my sarcasm. “So why do you think Anatoly’s so freaked out about your looking into the London
thing? Does he have the same concern as Dena? That you’re giving into paranoia?”

  “Yeah,” I admitted as I helped Mary Ann heft the car seat into the cart. “I don’t really understand the argument. It’s not like I’m building a bunker underneath the house. I’m just investigating a suspicious death.”

  “Maybe he’s upset about something else and he’s, um, what-do-you-call it…projectiling.”

  “Projecti…I think you mean projecting,” I corrected. A mother dragging a screaming toddler behind her, scooted past us down the aisle.

  “Yes, that’s it, projecting,” Mary Ann agreed. “Did you see how darling that little boy was?”

  “The one with the red face?”

  “First, that’s kind of racist Sophie,” Mary Ann scoffed as she moved us toward bedding. “Second, I don’t even think he was Native American. Latino maybe? Or Armenian? Whatever, he was just adorable!”

  “Are you serious? Okay, you’re serious.”

  But Mary Ann didn’t seem to hear me. “If Anatoly seems mad about something that it doesn’t make sense to be mad about, he may really be mad at himself.”

  “You think?” I asked.

  “Didn’t you tell me Anatoly refused to listen to London or take him seriously? Maybe he’s mad at himself about that and you’re looking into it just reminds him of it.”

  I blinked in surprise. That was the thing about Mary Ann. She could say something that was incomprehensibly…well, stupid and then turn around and say something surprisingly insightful and wise. “If you’re right,” I said hesitantly, “how do I deal with that? How do I even get him to talk about it?”