The Wild Zone

by Joy Fielding

  But another half hour passed, and still she wasn’t back. What was she doing up there? What was she telling those legal dickheads? “He drinks; he plays around; he has a terrible temper; the children are afraid of him,” he could almost hear her recite.

  “Wouldn’t mind a drink right about now,” he said out loud, staring at the greasy spoon across the street. He wondered if they served alcohol, then checked his watch. Just past eleven o’clock. A little early to be drinking, even for him. What the hell, he thought. Like the song said, it’s five o’clock somewhere.

  “You got any beer?” he asked the young girl behind the counter minutes later, his eyes focused on the pink building across the street as he plopped down on a stool at the front of the old-fashioned diner.

  “Just root beer,” the girl said. The name tag on her orange uniform identified her as Vicki Lynn. She was maybe eighteen, with chin-length, curly brown hair and bad skin she tried to cover up with too much makeup. She smiled, and Tom wondered if she was coming on to him.

  “I’ll have a Coke,” he said.

  “We just have Pepsi.”

  “Then I’ll have Pepsi.”

  “Diet or regular?”

  “Diet’s not good for you. It’s got something in it that alters your brain waves,” Tom said. Lainey had told him that.

  Vicki Lynn stared at him blankly.

  “Regular,” Tom said.

  “Small, medium, or large?”

  “Are you shitting me?”

  Vicki Lynn blinked once, twice, three times. “You want small, medium, or large?” she repeated, a blink for each option.

  “Large.”

  “Will that be everything?”

  “I believe it will.” Tom glanced over his shoulder at the sparsely populated room. Vinyl-upholstered booths—only one of them occupied—lined the sides of both walls, a small jukebox sitting atop each Formica-topped table. The walls were decorated with old rock ’n’ roll memorabilia: music sheets and concert announcements, ancient photos of the Beatles and Janis and the Grateful Dead. Two posters of Elvis stared each other down from opposite sides of the room. In one, he was young, beautiful, and dressed from head to toe in black leather. In the other, he was older, bloated, and wearing a rhinestone-covered white jumpsuit, complete with matching cape.

  Dead at forty-two, Tom thought. “Long live the King,” he toasted when Vicki Lynn returned with his drink.

  Tom was just about to take a sip when he saw Lainey emerge from the pink building. He jumped off his stool, knocking over his drink, the sugary brown liquid splashing across the counter and dripping toward the floor. “Shit,” he said, vaulting toward the door.

  “Hey, wait,” Vicki Lynn called after him. “That’s four dollars you owe me.”

  “Four dollars for a Coke I didn’t even drink?”

  “Pepsi,” Vicki Lynn corrected him.

  “Four dollars,” Tom mumbled angrily, fishing around in his side pocket for some loose bills. “For a goddamn Pepsi.”

  “You asked for large.”

  “Shit,” he said, unable to find anything smaller than a ten-dollar bill. He pushed it at Vicki Lynn as he watched Lainey walk toward the parking lot at the end of the street, head high, a definite bounce to her step. What the hell was she looking so damn cheery about? He tapped his fingers impatiently on the counter, wondering if she’d notice his car, parked two rows behind hers. “Can you hurry up with that change?”

  Vicki Lynn proceeded to the cash register as if she were wading through molasses.

  “Look. I’m in a hurry.” He thought of shooting at her feet, the way they did in those old westerns he sometimes watched on TV. That would make her dance. Make her move, he thought, watching as she opened the register and meticulously began counting out the change. “Forget it,” he yelled in exasperation, exiting the diner and running down the street toward the parking lot, pushing his way through the heat as if it were a solid steel door. Lainey was probably halfway across the state by now.

  Leave it to Lainey, he was thinking. He’d waited for her for how long? A goddamn hour and a half? And then, just when he decides to relax for a few minutes, have a Coke—a Pepsi —she decides to show her face. As if she knew he was there. As if she’d timed the whole damn thing.

  He reached the parking lot, perspiration soaking through the back of his blue-striped shirt. Lainey’s white Civic was second in line at the checkout station. A woman in a red Mercedes was fishing around in her purse, gesticulating as if she’d lost her ticket. Whatever the reason for the holdup, Tom was grateful. It gave him a chance to sneak around to his car while keeping Lainey in his sights. Minutes later, he was on her tail, careful to stay several cars behind her. He was getting pretty good at this, he thought.

  His stomach rumbled, reminding him it was almost lunchtime and he hadn’t eaten since early that morning. Maybe he could persuade Lainey to let him take her out to lunch, somewhere nice, maybe even expensive. Somewhere like the Purple Dolphin. Lainey loved seafood, and even if it wasn’t his favorite, they probably served hamburgers. And Kristin said they served the best piña coladas in town, although he didn’t think he’d tell Lainey that. She’d never been a big fan of Kristin. “There’s just something about her I don’t trust,” she’d said.

  There was something about her, that was for sure, Tom thought now, pushing thoughts of Kristin from his mind. This was no time to be thinking about other women, he reminded himself. He had to focus on Lainey.

  Maybe the next time she had to stop at a red light, he’d pull up beside her and suggest lunch. She was always complaining that they never went anywhere, that he never took her to nice places. Now was his chance to show her otherwise, to prove to her he could be as romantic, as caring, as the next guy.

  Except the lights wouldn’t cooperate, turning green at each intersection just as she approached, almost as if they were doing it on purpose. Twenty minutes of green lights, he thought, shaking his head in disbelief. When did that ever happen? He had to stop her before she got home. Otherwise it would be too late. Her parents wouldn’t even let him talk to her on the phone. They certainly weren’t about to invite him in for lunch.

  They were driving west along Southwest Eighth Street when Lainey suddenly stopped in the middle of the road, then backed expertly into an available space between two cars. “Not bad,” Tom noted, wondering what she was up to now. He continued on to the next corner, then pulled over to the curb and stopped, watching as Lainey got out of her car, fed the nearby meter, and disappeared inside a store. Which one? He was too far away to tell.

  He left his car in a no-stopping zone and crossed the street, peeking into each storefront as he walked by. He passed several restaurants, a dry cleaner, and a shoe store. Was Lainey buying another pair of shoes? She only had, what—thirty pairs? All of them with flat heels. Old-lady shoes, he called them, urging her—how many times?—to get something sexy, something with stiletto heels and flirty ankle straps. The kind Kristin wore. Or Suzy, he thought, feeling a renewed surge of anger as he pictured her husband’s smug face leaning into his car window. “Dickhead,” he said, pulling open the door and entering the air-conditioned shoe store.

  “Can I help you?” a salesgirl asked immediately. She smiled, and Tom wondered if she was flirting with him.

  “Just looking,” he said, sensing immediately that Lainey wasn’t there but walking to the back of the store anyway, in case she was on her knees, looking through boxes.

  He hated to leave the soothing arctic air of the store for the stifling tropics of the street, but he couldn’t afford to waste any more time. There was a nice-looking restaurant across the street. Was it possible Lainey had gone in there, that she was meeting someone for lunch? Who? Another man? Had she been seeing someone else all along? Was that the reason for this sudden desire to end their marriage? Damn it, he’d kill her before he let another man move into his house, be a father to his kids.

  And then he saw it: Donatello’s Hair Salon.


  Lainey went there every six weeks to have her hair cut and styled. She was always jabbering on about the guy who did her hair, calling him a genius and a miracle worker. So how come your hair always looks like crap? he’d been tempted to ask on more than one occasion.

  He approached the front window, peeking through the black, cursive swirls of Donatello’s name into the interior of the salon, surprised to find the small place bustling. Lots of women looking for miracles, he was thinking as he pulled open the front door.

  “Can I help you?” a young, spiky-haired brunette asked from behind the high reception counter. She gave him a wide smile that told Tom she wanted to sleep with him.

  “Is Lainey Whitman here?” he asked, his voice low, his eyes skirting the perimeter of the salon. He didn’t have time to deal with her right now.

  “She’s in the back, having her hair washed.” The girl pointed around a curved, aquamarine wall toward the back of the salon.

  Tom followed the curve into the main room. There, half a dozen women wrapped in blue plastic capes sat in adjustable chairs in front of mirrored walls, being tended to by men with sharp objects in their hands and gun-shaped blowers at their clients’ heads.

  “I don’t know what to do about her anymore,” a middle-aged woman was confiding to her hairdresser, a rotund young man with pink streaks in his short, dark hair. “All she eats is peanut butter and sushi. How healthy can that be?”

  Do women really tell their hairdressers everything? Tom wondered, continuing to the very back of the salon. Did Lainey confide everything to Donatello? What exactly had she told him?

  He almost didn’t see her. Instead he saw a row of aquamarine-colored sinks and a bored young man, his hands full of lather, his eyes glazed and staring at the far wall, as if in a trance, massaging the head of a woman who was reclining in her chair, eyes closed, her neck stretched back across the top of the sink, her jugular fully exposed, as if waiting for an executioner’s blade. The woman was Lainey, Tom realized, recognizing the bowling-pin legs protruding from the bottom of the aquamarine-colored cape. He stopped several feet away.

  “Can I help you?” the young man asked, eyes opening, a Spanish accent twisting through the English words.

  “Lainey,” Tom said, the word a command.

  Lainey bolted up in the chair, her long, wet hair falling into her eyes and dripping lather onto the shoulders of the plastic cape. “What are you doing here?” She glanced warily from side to side, her eyes full of fear.

  The look suited her, Tom thought. “We need to talk.”

  “Not here. Not now.”

  “Yes,” Tom said, widening his stance, making it clear he wasn’t going anywhere. “Right here. Right now.”

  TWELVE

  WILL STOOD IN THE doorway between the kitchen and the living room, his eyes darting between Suzy and his brother.

  “What’s going on?” Kristin asked, standing midway between the two.

  Jeff shrugged, not moving from his position by the front door. “Apparently the lady has something she’d like to say to Will.”

  “I owe you an apology,” Suzy began.

  “You don’t owe me anything,” Will countered quickly.

  “I think I do.”

  “Never argue when a woman is apologizing,” Jeff instructed him. “That day may never come again.”

  “Smart-ass,” Kristin said.

  “Which I believe is my cue to get back to work,” Jeff said. “Come on, Krissie. You can give me a ride.”

  “Let me get my shoes.” Kristin disappeared into the bedroom, her ear on the room she’d just left. What was Suzy planning to say to Will? And more important, what was she doing with Jeff? She rifled around the bottom of her closet for her sandals, sliding her feet into them without bothering to undo their buckles, then grabbed her purse from the top of the dresser and returned to the living room. Everyone was frozen to the spot, staring at each other nervously, expectantly, like participants in a duel. “Okay, I’m ready.” She looked from Jeff to Suzy, and then to Will. “Okay, you guys. Don’t worry. Take your time. I won’t be back for a few hours.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to kick you out of your apartment—”

  “You aren’t. Honestly. I have a whole bunch of errands to run.” Kristin walked to the door. “Coming?” she asked Jeff as she stepped into the outside corridor.

  “Right behind you, babe.”

  “Jeff,” Suzy called out suddenly, stopping him.

  Jeff turned around.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “Anything to help a lady in distress.” Jeff’s eyes lingered on hers, penetrating right through her dark glasses. You know where to find me, his eyes told hers. Then he left the apartment, closing the door behind him.

  “Distress?” Will asked.

  “Figure of speech,” Suzy said after a moment’s pause. “How are you?”

  “Me? I’m fine.” I’m shitty, he corrected himself silently. Not to mention confused as hell. “You?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Just okay?”

  She nodded. “It’s really hot out there today.”

  “It’s Florida.”

  “I guess.”

  “Can I get you something cold to drink?” Will wished she’d take off her sunglasses. He found it disconcerting trying to carry on a conversation when he couldn’t see her eyes. What was she doing here? Had she really come to offer an apology? What had she been doing with Jeff? “Water? Juice? Soda?”

  “Nothing. Thank you.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Maybe some water.”

  Will proceeded to the kitchen sink, his heart racing. What did she want from him? What was she expecting? Was she expecting anything? What had she been doing with Jeff?

  He poured her a glass of cold water from the tap, waiting until his hands stopped trembling before returning to the main room. Suzy hadn’t moved from her original position, her sunglasses still firmly in place, her oversize canvas purse dangling from her left hand, as if at any moment she might bolt from the premises. Will walked over, held out the glass of water for her to take.

  “Thank you.”

  “Have a seat.” He motioned toward the sofa.

  “Thank you,” she said again, balancing on the sofa’s edge, as if afraid to get too comfortable, and sipping gently from her glass. “Water’s nice and cold.”

  “Made it myself,” he joked. Then, “You caught me off guard. I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”

  “I wasn’t sure you’d want to,” she admitted, her head tilting up toward him. “Aren’t you going to sit down?”

  Will sank down on the opposite end of the sofa, waited for her to continue.

  “I’m sure you have all sorts of questions.”

  “No,” he said. What were you doing with Jeff? he thought.

  “Your brother mentioned where he worked the other day,” she offered, as if he’d voiced this thought out loud. “I went there to ask if he’d give you a message.”

  “You don’t have to explain.”

  “Please. I want to.”

  “Look, I have as much explaining to do as you do. I’m the one who showed up in front of your house, unexpected and uninvited—”

  “Are you married?” Suzy asked, cutting him off.

  “What? No.”

  “Then I’d say the onus is on me.”

  “For what?”

  “I should have told you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I should have. I owed you at least that much.”

  “You didn’t owe me anything. You were just being nice.”

  “Nice? How do you figure that?”

  “By playing along with Kristin, by going along with the bet.”

  “It sounded like fun.” Suzy smiled, her lips turning down at the corners instead of up. “We had a good time, didn’t we?”

  “We did,” Will agreed.

  “Did you know your friend was going to follow me home?
”

  “What? No,” Will said quickly. “And he’s not my friend.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “He’s an idiot,” Will told her. “A real loose cannon. Apparently he’d been following us around all night.”

  “Too bad we didn’t give him more of a show.”

  Will’s eyes shot to hers, although he couldn’t see past the dark glasses. What was she saying? That she was sorry she’d pulled away after only one kiss, that she was interested in more, that that was the real reason she was here: not to apologize for not telling him she was married, but because she was sorry for not following through? If only I could see her eyes, he thought, wishing he understood women better. If a magic genie had suddenly appeared to offer him one wish, that’s what it would be, he was thinking, remembering the joke Jeff had told at the bar. “Why don’t you take those things off,” he said finally, reaching for her glasses.

  She pulled back. “It’s probably better if I keep them on.”

  “Why?” Will pulled them gently from her face. “Oh, God,” he said, the glasses dropping into his lap as his eyes swept across the myriad of bruises dotting Suzy’s otherwise pale complexion. They pulsed at him like strobe lights, a flash of fading purple here, a hint of dull yellow there. “He did this to you,” he said without needing to be told.

  “No. I fell.”

  “You didn’t fall.”

  “It was an accident with a neighbor’s dog. My feet got tangled up in the leash.”

  “Is that what you told Jeff?”

  She lowered her head. “He didn’t believe me either.”

  Will’s fingers were shaking as he reached out to touch her cheek. “How could anyone do this?”

  “It’s all right. I’m all right.”

  “This is my fault,” he said.

  “This has nothing to do with you.”

  “If we hadn’t shown up on your doorstep, like a bunch of stupid teenagers . . .”

  “It wouldn’t have mattered.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Are you saying he’s done this to you before?”