Forgotten Spirits

by Barbara Deese

  The temper Vinnie had once been known for flared again. Slamming his fist into his hand, his voice rose, filling the air with angry noise. “You just had it all worked out, didn’t you?” he yelled, punching the air to emphasize his words. He’d always spoken with his hands, and when they came too close to her face, she stepped back. “Tell me, did I have any say in anything? Moving to another state, having a baby? Christ, you just made plans and plugged me in however it suited you, and you never told me fucking anything!”

  Molly Pat wedged herself between the two of them, making a low rumble in her throat.

  Foxy let Vinnie go on, knowing she had to take the full brunt. “I had a right to know,” he said more than once.

  He’d had a right to know all of it, she’d known that all along, but seeing the mess she’d made of it, she understood more acutely. Fear had driven her to behave in ways she would never behave now. She couldn’t go back and duplicate her flawed thought process, and even if she could, it wouldn’t change a thing.

  They barely looked up when a snowplow scraped its way down the road, sending a plume of snow that smacked into the rear of Foxy’s car.

  His anger spent, Vinnie hung his head and shook with silent sobs.

  Foxy could handle the anger, but not the tears. It wouldn’t do for them both to fall apart, and so she tried some of the techniques she used to deal with her panic attacks. She counted backwards from 100 by threes and breathed deeply. She tensed and released muscle groups, mentally naming them as she’d learned in her massage school’s anatomy class. Soon she could feel her body absorbing the excess adrenaline. “Vinnie,” she said with as much composure as she could muster. “Why did those guys beat you up?”

  Chapter 21

  Vinnie was remembering that day as if it were unfolding now. Sometimes that’s how it was, like the movie Groundhog Day. In the midst of a dreamlike memory he’d rouse enough to realize he’d lived every second of this day before. He was loath to keep reliving it, yet it would keep replaying until it reached the same sickening conclusion, and although his conscious mind recognized it as memory, the rest of him experienced all the same feelings, both exhilarating and excruciating, as if they were fresh.

  In his recurring memory, he coasts up to the curb in front of the house he shares with Foxy. A white plastic chair tilts against the stucco wall. Their attempt at desert landscaping—prickly pear cactus and yucca plants—looks a little sad. It’s a few minutes after noon and, assuming Foxy is still asleep, he slips off his shoes just before unlocking the front door. His movements are furtive, although he tries his best to convince himself he’s merely being considerate so as not to wake her. She’s been so tired lately.

  From the kitchen, he can see the bedroom door is open a crack, and so he pads over and peers through the narrow space. The bed is made with those stupid gold-and-rust-colored pillows propped against the headboard. He hates those slippery pillows that have no function other than to clutter up the bed. He calls out to Foxy, but she’s not there. Looking at the empty bed, he feels relief rather than curiosity about where she’s gone.

  No longer worried about making noise, he goes back to the kitchen, drinks some orange juice straight from the pitcher and then opens the freezer. Pushing aside bags of frozen peas and corn, he removes three paper-wrapped packages of meat, sets them on the table and reaches in for the now exposed foil packets of money. The first one he grabs sticks to the ice buildup. His first reaction is to be annoyed. Why can’t Foxy defrost the freezer every now and then, he thinks as he tugs on another pack of money. His mother never let frost build up in her freezer, not even after she got rheumatoid arthritis so bad.

  Now, seventeen years later, a more temperate Vinnie stood in the steadily falling snow and looked at the crusty ridge the snow plow had deposited between car and road. As his former wife reached into the trunk and held out a little trench shovel to him, her grin slid away almost as soon as it began.

  He’d always loved all the ways she smiled—the little amused twitch at the corners of her mouth, the suggestive grin, the dazzling smile. People used to speak of her as vivacious. Today as he looked at her, the words that came to him were drained and edgy. Still, she was beautiful.

  He cringed remembering the stupidity of his younger self and his irritation about his wife’s aversion to defrosting the refrigerator. What kind of a dumb ass, he wondered now, would marry a woman like Foxy and then pick at her about such a trivial thing as that? But of course he knew now, the younger Vinnie had been angry at only one person—himself. In the years between Then and Now, he’d been through twelve-step programs, had a relapse or two, studied addiction and counseling, and had worked with scores of young men who took their own self-loathing out on those closest to them.

  Slipping back into the endless-loop memory, he can almost feel the coolness of the money as he peels some hundred-dollar bills out of one packet and more from another. It doesn’t look like much, so he digs for more, and then tucks the wad into the inside pocket of his leather jacket. After putting the remainder back in the freezer, just the way he’d found it so Foxy’s eagle eyes would detect nothing out of place, he heads off in the direction of the Flamingo.

  He drives fast, tapping the steering wheel nervously, bobbing his head as if he were listening to music, trying to calm the jitters. His most recent losing streak has left him depressed and agitated and he knows it has to be coming to an end. It’s bad enough to have Foxy constantly on his case about playing cards or spinning the wheel, but then yesterday, Wylie decided to chew his butt about it, too. Like Wylie had never played games of chance! Wylie said to him, “Even if you don’t care about losing your wife, you should at least think about yourself. Sooner or later, you’re gonna find yourself in bed with the wrong people and they’ll have your ass.” That’s what he said. It was like a prophecy, but one Vinnie wouldn’t believe until after it had happened.

  Well, screw Wylie and screw Foxy too. He knows Foxy has been trying to talk to him, but he’s been avoiding her until he gets himself out of this hole he’s dug for himself. Well, today, he’s going to score big. That’ll shut both of them up. The stars are aligned for a winning streak, and he’s not about to pass up the opportunity. He can feel it coming like the cool front that moves in every fall to displace the scorching desert heat.

  He’s been gambling long enough to know when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em. As soon as he gets a win, he’ll replace the ten-thousand he borrowed from the freezer, and hopefully have enough left over to take Foxy on a nice vacation. He feels bad he’s been so irritated with her lately. She works so hard and lately her back has been hurting her. Maybe he’ll take her to one of those Club Med places where she can just lie around and do nothing. She’s earned that.

  He doesn’t even want to think about the other money he’s taken from their stash. He’s given a lot of thought to why he’s had such a long losing streak. The problem, he’s figured out, is the casinos themselves. It doesn’t matter if you’re playing black jack, roulette, or penny slots—the odds are stacked against the customer. It’s all set up so you win just enough to think you might keep on winning. You fix a number or a goal in your head, like “I’ll quit when I’m up seven-fifty,” or “As soon as I double my money, I’m out of here.” But the way it works for him, if he hits it big, maybe tripling his money, he says, “I’ll just spend down to where it’s double my original investment and then I’ll quit,” but then when he reaches that mark, he remembers how he feels coming from the bottom and is suddenly reaching out with both hands to pull all the chips toward him.

  What makes him think his luck is changing was this. Yesterday, he and Wylie and Al were at the Flamingo playing nickel slots They bailed on him, but he was on a roll, and when he hit a four-thousand dollar jackpot, he moved over to the dollar slots. He expected to get another big hit each time the reels spun. Twice he got a win, fifty-two dollars on one and f
our-hundred sixty on the other, but he was going for the big win now. Again and again, he came up with nothing.

  He was still sitting in front of the one-armed bandit with his head in his hands when the guy at the next machine introduced himself as John and said he looked like he could use a drink. Super nice guy, clean cut, genuine smile. Over at the bar, he and John threw back a couple scotch and sodas, and John picked up the tab and invited him to a private game of poker in his suite at the Flamingo.

  A suite. He’s stoked at the idea. He’s always wanted to be one of those guys who’s invited to play with the big boys.

  And that’s where he was headed with the ten-thousand dollars on the day he’d come to think of as The Day the Music Died. All these years later Vinnie can smell the smoke in John’s suite, and can feel the slaps on his back as the other poker players welcome him. The memory is on him in full force.

  He’s disappointed to see that the suite is nothing all that special, but the guys John invited slap him on the back and hand him a drink. They’re players—their clothes and jewelry say it all. They’re rolling in it, and Vinnie means to relieve them of some of their wealth.

  One guy smokes cigars, big fat ones, and cusses a lot. The others, except for John, smoke ordinary cigarettes. John fusses at the cigar smoker like a little old lady when he drops a chunk of ash on the table.

  Vinnie takes to the setting and the card game like he’s been born to it, like he’s one of the favored. Even though the room is nothing compared to the glitz of Las Vegas and the guys are just regular guys, there’s something lavish to it all. Maybe it’s the way someone comes along and spills some damn fine scotch into his glass whenever it gets low.

  For just a second as he stood looking out at all that snow, he remembered the taste of the scotch. Too quickly, it mingled with the taste of his own blood.

  He’s down a couple thou when he hits it big. He knows they’re all watching him as his Adam’s apple bobs up and down. He almost quits. It’s right on the tip of his tongue to say he has to leave. What difference does it make it they think he’s a pussy?

  That’s how he remembered it, anyway, but his sponsor told him years ago he was kidding himself, that no respectable addict would have quit when he was ahead. Still, in his memory, he liked to believe he was about to cash out and take his sorry self home.

  Maybe they’d seen it in his eyes, but John, if that was really his name, took that moment to say he was looking for someone like Vinnie to manage his new sideline business. John didn’t say what the business was, exactly, just kind of dangled the idea that it might be the key to Vinnie’s future. “You got a real gift for dealing with people,” John had said, and then hinted that the job Vinnie would be perfect for involved working with celebrities.

  All the time John is talking, he’s dealing the cards, and Vinnie is sliding a stack of chips into the middle of the table as if he’s been taken over by some force outside of himself. He loses the next hand and the next, and still John is spinning some amazing future for him. John has a fatherly smile that gives Vinnie the false impression they’re just playing for fun, and with a playful punch to his shoulder, he offers to stake him for the next round.

  Vinnie had known better. It would have been obvious, if only he hadn’t been so besotted with being invited to the table. It had felt fifty times better than the first time he was invited to sit at the grownup table at Thanksgiving dinner. It also didn’t help that he’d been drinking—how much, he didn’t know. Stories abounded about guys like him, guys who borrowed money to stay in the game. In the midst of Vinnie’s undoing, Wylie’s warning never even popped into his mind.

  At almost 5:00 a.m., he’s stumbling down the carpeted hall at the Flamingo accompanied by two of the poker players. They’re both broad-shouldered and rock-hard. Their muscles ripple under their shirts. One has a pinkie ring on his meaty hand, a black stone surrounded by diamonds. The other one has a small scar at the corner of his right eye not quite concealed by his tinted glasses. Their jovial expressions remain, but the menacing undertone is unmistakable.

  Vinnie has been thinking John and his friends might be playing him, but he’s certain of it now that he’s being escorted to his car. He promises to deliver the twenty-six thousand he owes them in cash, and is excruciatingly aware of his colossal lapse in judgment. All he wants is to get out of here without his face getting rearranged. The goons gave him until ten o’clock that night.

  He looks back and forth between his poker-buddies-turned-captors, and dreads coming back here in the next few hours. The booze hits him hard, and his knees buckle. Tipping and slamming his shoulder against the wall, he bends over and throws up on his own shoes. Tinted Glasses hands him a hanky and tells him to keep it.

  Down in the lot, the two goons shut the door of his car and watch him drive off. Pinky Ring grins and does a little toodle-oo wave through the driver’s window.

  Turning north on the Las Vegas Freeway, he looks in his rearview mirror. He doesn’t think anyone is following him, but can’t be sure. He wracks his brain trying to remember if he told anyone where he lives.

  There’s more than enough money in the freezer to cover his debt. He has to focus on that saving fact. On the sixteen-minute drive home, he cries and prays to a God and a few saints he’s ignored for a while. He promises he’s done gambling. Surely God will forgive him the sin of lying to his wife if it means he’s giving up gambling, won’t he?

  He begins to work out the cover up. After bringing them the cash, he decides, he’ll tell Foxy they’ve been robbed. There’s a good chance she won’t believe him, but she’ll never be able to prove it. Besides, it’s all he can come up with.

  As the wrought iron fence of their house comes into view, he has the thought that he might just come clean and tell her the truth. The talk—no, it would be more of an ugly confrontation—takes shape in his mind. He doesn’t know if he can bear the look on her face. But it’s possible, he thinks as he steps through the door, to tell her the mess he’s made of things. He’ll throw himself at her mercy, and then he’ll drive to the bridge at the Hoover Dam, climb over the wall and jump. Either way, he’s done gambling.

  He’s still debating what he’ll tell her when he opens the bedroom door and sees Foxy sleeping on her stomach with one arm draped over the side of the bed. As he watches from the hall, she groans and rolls so he can see her face. Her forehead wrinkles as if she’s in pain, and still asleep, she groans again and turns away from him.

  Closing the door quietly, he goes into the kitchen to get the money, still debating how to explain it to his wife.

  The gaping hole in the freezer looms in his memory, and along with it, the feeling he’d just had his heart ripped out of his chest.

  Chapter 22

  Minnesota driving could be treacherous. Temperature extremes kept the state’s Department of Transportation busy year round. Melting chemicals had to be poured onto icy roads, where melted ice then crept into fissures in the pavement to refreeze and swell, expanding the cracks. Robin was a skilled driver. She’d navigated over thirty-five years of whatever weather and road conditions Minnesota dished up, and that was saying a lot. For the first twenty miles, all they’d encountered were bone-rattling potholes, the kind that changed city streets into slalom courses.

  “Someone called in to WCCO this morning to report she saw the face of Jesus in a pothole in front of her house,” Grace said when Robin dodged a hole big enough to swallow a family of four. Inspired by the caller, Grace began searching for shapes in the road, like some people found shapes in clouds. She spotted the silhouette of Mona Lisa, a series of yeti footprints and the state of Montana. Robin managed not to sink her wheel in the Eye of Horus. When they reached Interstate 35, the roads were rutted in places, but overall traffic moved at a decent pace.

  Today’s winter storm warning promised “snow and blowing snow.” The threat of whiteo
ut conditions was relegated to the very southern part of the state.

  By the time they were out of WCCO’s range, Robin turned off the radio. “So, tell me what you found out at the sleep study.”

  “I snore. Fred was right. They told me I had . . . I don’t know how many arousals per hour.”

  “Arousals?” Robin said.

  “It doesn’t mean what you think. It measures sleep disruptions.” Grace scratched a place behind her ear and grimaced. “What on earth?” she said, extracting a gooey wad from her hair. “Oh, that’s lovely. They left an electrode on my head. Yuck.” She pulled a Kleenex out of the box on the console and wrapped it up. “I have to go back to the sleep doctor, and she’ll probably put me on one of those machines. I just hope Fred follows through. I’m not going to be the designated snorer in our family.”

  Robin laughed. “It’s more than just snoring, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, it’s a health risk, I guess,” Grace admitted. “Now, tell me all about this mysterious message in a bottle.”

  Robin was, in fact, dying to talk about Sierra’s papers Cate and her mother had found in Foxy’s apartment.

  Grace sat wide-eyed as the story unfolded, interrupting when she got to the part about breaking the bottle. “Wanda actually said, ‘Let me have a crack at it?’”

  Robin chuckled. “Her exact words.”

  “Okay, so they broke the bottle open. What was in it?”

  “They found papers that prove Wylie, the guy Sierra was living with off and on, was not the father of her son. I don’t think Foxy even suspected, because she referred to Wiley as Beau’s father.”

  “Hmm.” Grace ran her fingers through her hair, checking for more electrodes. She didn’t find any, but her hair felt disgusting. “Do you think the real father knows?”

  Robin twisted her mouth to one side. “Mm-hmm, I do. And I think he didn’t want anyone else to know.”