Dying to Call You

by Elaine Viets

  Helen slowly unfolded from behind the ironing board. Finally she could find out what that fiendish spike was.

  It was a cheap red high heel. Size six. A scuff on the toe had been covered with red ink.

  Laredo, Helen thought. I’ll bet anything this is Laredo’s shoe. Savannah will know for sure. She picked it up and stuffed it into her purse. She didn’t see a second shoe. She checked her watch. She’d been back here for half an hour. She had to get out of this place fast, then get the shoe to Savannah. She straightened her clothes, combed her hair and walked down the hall.

  Joey was sitting at the kitchen table with the others. He looked ridiculously handsome next to these men with their big ears, big bellies and baggy skin. But on the inside, he was as ugly as they were. The long-eared man was telling a joke.

  “What’s the difference between a black man and a large pizza?”

  “I dunno,” Joey said, playing the stooge.

  “A pizza can feed a family of four,” Long Ears said.

  The men all laughed. Especially Joey. She tried not to show her disgust. He finally noticed her, standing at the kitchen door.

  “Hey, honey, why haven’t you put on your suit?” There was a touch of impatience in Joey’s voice.

  “I don’t feel like swimming,” Helen said.

  “What’s the matter—embarrassed?” Joey said.

  She nodded. She was embarrassed to be with these swine. “Tits too small, huh? Don’t worry. We can fix that.”

  “What?” Helen said.

  “You need a boob job. It will give you confidence. Don’t worry. I’ll get you one. I buy all my girls boob jobs. The doc practically gives me a group rate. I see it as investment—something we can both enjoy.” He nudged the man next to him and grinned.

  Ugh. How could he think she wanted fake boobs?

  Because you work for Steve, who hires topless bartenders for charity orgies, she thought.

  “Besides, it will help you in your work. Bigger tips with bigger tits.”

  “Call a cab, please,” Helen said. “I’m not feeling well.”

  “I can drive you, if you want,” Joey said. It was a half-hearted offer.

  “No, a cab is fine. I need to go home. I think I’m going to throw up.”

  Chapter 14

  “Another young Lauderdale girl is dead,” Ethel said. “Murdered. Says so right here in the paper.”

  American violence was the Saturday evening topic for the tsk-tsk taskforce—Fred, Ethel and Cal. Helen saw them out by the pool as she was leaving for her bartending job at the Mowbry mansion. She planned to pass by the sour trio with a nod and a wave.

  “Strangled with her own hair.” The paper crackled with Ethel’s righteous indignation.

  Helen stopped dead.

  Debbie. Her murder was in the paper. Of course it would be. She was young, beautiful and worked at a popular restaurant. Helen wanted to run away. She wanted to rip the paper out of Ethel’s hands and read every detail.

  “How old was she?” Cal asked.

  “Twenty-three years old. Isn’t that awful?” Ethel’s chins wobbled in disapproval.

  “It’s drugs,” Fred said. He’d turned his gourdlike gut into an anti-gay billboard. His T-shirt said, GOD MADE ADAM AND EVE, NOT ADAM AND STEVE. Helen figured Fred was safe from homosexual advances. Hetero ones, too.

  “I don’t doubt it,” Ethel said. “It isn’t right, a young girl working at that Gator Bill’s. Too many men and too much money. No daughter of mine would work at a place that serves alcohol.”

  “In Canada—” Cal began.

  “Any suspects?” Helen cut short his budding tirade.

  “Huh?” Ethel said. Helen was supposed to bash kids or society, not spoil a good discussion with the facts.

  “Do the police have any suspects?”

  “They don’t say anything about them,” Ethel admitted.

  “They wouldn’t,” Fred said. “The police only investigate important murders.”

  “In Canada—” Cal said.

  “You’d be freezing your ass off,” Helen said. The three stared at her. Helen walked off. Poor Debbie, dead and dissected by these dolts.

  “Really, that woman is so rude,” Ethel said. “I don’t understand how Margery puts up with her.”

  By the time she was aboard the water taxi, Helen felt better. The evening was a gift and she enjoyed it. She watched the brilliant sunset fade to tender pink and felt the soft, warm breeze. The little taxi churned through the pearly gray water, passing luxurious yachts and splendid homes, until it docked near the Mowbrys’ mansion.

  A thirty-five-foot Cigarette boat painted with red flames was parked at the Mowbrys’ dock. Helen squinted to read the name: Hellfire. She was looking at nearly a quarter-million-dollars’ worth of boat—about what she’d make in a lifetime of minimum-wage jobs. Penis boats, the sailboaters called them, and made unkind remarks about their owners’ masculinity. But Helen figured if you could afford a Cigarette boat, you didn’t much care what other people thought.

  Tonight’s party was supposed to benefit the Broward County Wildlife Coalition. Helen liked that idea—wild life to save the wildlife.

  “You’re cutting it close,” Steve said, when she arrived at the service entrance. “I can’t have late bartenders. Got that? Go set up your bar. It’s by the pool again.”

  This wasn’t the same man who’d begged her to call Joey. She wondered if he’d heard about their date.

  Tonight, the Mowbrys’ party area was done in brilliant tropical greens, blues, reds and yellows. Young women in safari outfits walked around with live macaws, spider monkeys and spectacularly ugly lizards. Helen hoped the animals went home after the first party. God knows what would happen to them at the second.

  The band did a thumping version of “Baby Elephant Walk” that sounded like it was being played by pachyderms. A different bored newspaper photographer showed up and snapped the same pictures.

  It was the same crowd of thin face-lifted women and fat rich men. Helen heard the same conversations as the men lined up at her bar.

  “Greatest president we ever had. Bombed those camel jockeys back to the stone age,” said a scotch and soda.

  “No, he didn’t. They were already in the stone age,” said a bourbon and water. The two broke into braying laughter as they left with their drinks.

  Helen poured red wine for a white-haired politician who said, “This is America. If they want to live here, let ’em speak American.”

  A hatchet-faced doctor agreed, then said, “Some bleeding heart is trying to raise the minimum wage again. Those people don’t understand what it takes to stay in business. I’m running an office and barely breaking even.” He reached for a fresh gin and tonic. Helen saw that his watch cost more than a minimum-wage worker made in a year.

  “You’re going to be here for the second party, right, honey?” the doctor said.

  “Yes,” Helen lied.

  He stuffed a twenty in her tip jar.

  “You gonna give her a free breast exam?” the politician said.

  Helen poured booze until her arms ached and her feet screamed for relief. The next time she checked her watch, it was nine o’clock. She’d seen no sign of Kristi all night. She was getting uneasy.

  At ten o’clock, Helen made an excuse to go back to the kitchen for more limes. She wandered through the party, scoping out all the stations. Kristi wasn’t working any of the bars or passing around canapés. Now she was worried.

  “Where’s Kristi?” she asked, when Steve came by at eleven thirty. The first party was ending. Helen wasn’t going to panic yet. But she had to find Kristi quick.

  Steve counted out ten twenties. “She couldn’t make the first shift. She’ll be here at the second party. The one you’re working.”

  Helen turned pale.

  “You’re not going to chicken out on me, are you? If you turn me down, that’s it, honey. I don’t know your name anymore.”

  Topless. Helen wou
ld have to work the second party topless. There was no escape. Not if she wanted to talk with Kristi.

  She couldn’t do it.

  She had to. Helen thought of Savannah, waiting for her little sister who would never come home. Kristi knew what had happened to Laredo. There was no other way to find her.

  She took a deep breath. “Yes,” she said.

  “Clean up your bar,” Steve said. “Then take off your shirt. You gotta show your tits at twelve.”

  Helen felt like she’d been slapped.

  She scrubbed the sticky spilled liquor and soda off her bar while she argued with herself. At midnight, she would be tending bar topless. She’d take off her blouse and bra and parade half-naked in front of strangers. She saw the nuns from her high school staring at her in horrified shame. She heard her mother crying. How could she?

  I do what I have to do, Helen thought. I don’t know those people. They won’t see me. I’ll be another anonymous worker. I won’t have a face.

  I’ll be half-naked for a bunch of rich jerks.

  I’m forty-two, not some blushing virgin. Besides, there are doctors at this party. They see naked people all day.

  But not healthy naked people. They see the sick, the injured and the dying. For them, good health is a turn-on.

  Then Helen remembered the way the police had looked at her, as if she was a hysterical woman. That was worse than being naked.

  Besides, said a nasty little voice. It’s five hundred bucks. After the break-in, she could use the money.

  Helen put the lemon peels, lime wedges and maraschino cherries into little glasses on the bar. She checked the ice. She counted the glasses and set out the cocktail napkins.

  She unbuttoned her blouse. There were six buttons. She’d never noticed before. Now each one counted.

  She was standing at her bar with her shirt open. She looked around. No one was pointing and laughing. The guests were inside the mansion, changing out of their clothes. The other bartenders and servers were already topless, looking like they did it every day.

  Helen took a deep breath, removed her blouse and unhooked her bra. She stuck them both in her purse.

  Going topless wasn’t as bad as she expected. It was a little chilly, since her bar was outside, but that perked things up. The men stared at her chest, which made her uncomfortable at first. Then she felt better. She knew they’d never remember her face. Their eyes would never get up that high.

  I’m invisible, she thought. I am a pair of breasts. I have no other identity.

  Some guests had stripped to their underwear. Only a few men stayed dressed. Helen was grateful to the guys who kept their clothes on. Clothes did make the man, she thought. Especially when he was over forty.

  A skinny woman whose pool house had been featured in a recent Sunday paper strolled by, clad only in pink thong panties and a push-up bra. Helen was pleased to see she had cellulite.

  Helen served a beer to a naked politician. He had on a wedding ring, but he stared at her chest as if he’d never seen a bare one before.

  She was getting used to the fat men in their underwear. It wasn’t any worse than the beach during tourist season. Most of the sex and drugs seemed to be inside the house, so she was spared those scenes.

  It’s not bad, she thought.

  Then the lizard, Mr. Cavarelli, slithered up to her bar.

  “I’m invisible. Management never deigns to notice boiler-room staff,” she told herself, as she poured his red wine. And she was. Mr. Cavarelli never looked at her face or noticed her shaking hands. His flat yellow eyes were fixed on her breasts. Helen wondered if he engaged in interspecies sex. Her skin crawled.

  What was the boiler-room boss of bosses doing at a society party? He was better dressed and fitter than most of the men. He’d also kept his clothes on. Thank God. She didn’t want to look at his lizard hide. Cavarelli took his wine and slid into the jungle of palms near the pool.

  Suddenly, she found herself staring at another man’s chest. A man wearing a well-cut black sport coat and a black T-shirt that said, CLAPTON IS GOD.

  She knew only one person who had a shirt like that. The man she’d wanted to see for more than a year. The man who had eluded her so thoroughly, she’d begun to doubt he existed.

  It was Phil the invisible pothead.

  He was real after all. And he could see her, too. Way too much of her. Helen grabbed a pair of liter soda bottles to cover her naked chest.

  “What are you doing here?” Helen and Phil said simultaneously.

  “You’re Phil the invisible pothead.” Helen had waited so long to see him, and now she couldn’t look at him. Instead, she talked to his chest, the way the men talked to hers.

  “I’m your neighbor, yes,” he said. His voice was soft and low. Another time, it would have been sexy. Now, it was like being doused with cold water. “What are you doing here?”

  “Tending bar,” Helen said. She could feel a full-body blush creeping down past her shoulders. She adjusted her soda bottles to make sure they covered as much chest as possible.

  “Helen, you—”

  “How do you know my name?”

  “Margery told me. I pulled you out of the fire, remember? Does she know you’re here tonight?”

  “She’s not my mother,” Helen said.

  “She loves you like a daughter,” Phil said. “This stunt would worry her sick. You’ve got to get out of here. It’s dangerous.”

  “Don’t be such a guy. I have a job to do.” It was hard to look serious with two soda bottles stuck on your chest.

  A fifty-something man in blue boxers interrupted. “Hey, what do I have to do to get a drink?”

  “Sorry,” Phil said. “You’ll have to use the other bar. My friend is going home. She has a chest cold.” He took off his sport coat and threw it over Helen. It felt soft and warm.

  “Oh, no, you don’t,” Helen said. “You’re not pulling that big brave male stuff on me.” She wanted to hand back his coat, but she couldn’t let go of the bottles. She shrugged it off instead.

  Phil caught it and said through gritted teeth, “Helen, look at me.”

  She’d waited a whole year for this moment. She’d sneaked peeks out her mini-blinds. She’d risen at dawn and stayed up late, hoping to catch a glimpse of him. Now he was standing before her and she couldn’t look at him.

  Slowly, she raised her eyes to his. They were electric blue with long dark lashes. Sparks were flying everywhere.

  This man was worth waiting for. He was in his forties, with a thin, sensitive face. His nose was a little too long and made a slight jog to the left. She wondered how it had been broken. He had deep laugh lines. His skin was tanned and his thick white hair was pulled into a ponytail. The effect was devastating. He looked like an actor or a rock star.

  “I’m not being sexist,” Phil said. “I’d advise a man to do the same thing: Get out of here. Now will you listen to me?”

  “I need Kristi’s address,” she said in an equally low voice. “She’s the blonde who works in the back room. I’m not leaving until I get it. Period.”

  “I know who Kristi is. I’ll get her address from Steve. I’ll tell him I’m taking you home. It happens all the time. He’ll give you brownie points for pleasing a customer. But you’ve got to leave. Now. Please.” He put the coat back around her shoulders. This time, she left it on.

  “Alright, but I have to put the bar away in the storage room.”

  “Fine. I’ll track down Steve and square your absence with him. I’ll meet you back here in ten minutes.”

  Helen broke down her bar and wheeled it to the storage room. She wouldn’t be missed. The second party was in full swing and the guests were occupied with more exotic activities than boozing.

  The Mowbry mansion was a labyrinth of halls and cul-de-sacs. On the way back, she must have turned left when she should have gone right. Two more wrong turns, and she knew this was not the way to the pool. At the end of the hall were two massive mahogany doors, t
welve feet high. The doorknobs and hinges were solid gold. Dragons and demons danced on the door panels.

  Was this the fabled back room?

  Helen wouldn’t need Kristi. She could see for herself what went on in there.

  The heavy double doors were shut, but not locked. Helen slid them open an inch and peered inside.

  The room was dense black. Tall candles flamed on silver stands. The air was thick with incense and license. Bodies writhed in the corners. A naked couple opened a teakwood box that held white powder, a mirror and a tiny silver spoon. The flickering shadows were fantastic and evil.

  Helen couldn’t take her eyes off these scenes. Then suddenly, she heard the music, a swell of powerful sadness. A requiem. Brahms, she thought. Next, she saw the heavy black velvet curtains across the back wall. They seemed to absorb the candlelight.

  An ebony coffin stood in front of the black curtains. It was flanked by seven-foot candles and serpentine vases with dead white flowers.

  In the coffin was a blonde wearing a white lace dress and holding a bouquet of lilies.

  It was Kristi.

  Chapter 15

  Kristi was in a black coffin, with white lace and lilies. No one cried. No one cared. No one even looked at her. But Helen could not stop staring.

  Kristi's blond hair was fanned out on a silk pillow. Her massive chest was modestly covered with white lace. Her skin was as pale as her lily bouquet.

  Now a man rose out of the flickering shadows and approached the coffin. His dark hair stood in peaks like horns. He had thick black hair all over his back, like a pelt. His studded leather codpiece seemed more perverse than nakedness.

  The leather man ran one finger down the curve of Kristi’s bare white throat. Helen shuddered. The finger traveled downward over the white lace. Then both his hands grabbed Kristi’s breasts. The man moaned and pressed himself against the black coffin.

  Helen watched in horror. It was obscene. The woman was lying in her coffin. How could he touch her like that?

  Then Kristi sat up, tossed the bouquet aside and pulled the man into her black coffin.