Death in Eden

by Paul Heald

  The closet space extended at least fifteen feet deep and it was too dark to perceive distinctions between the black, dark blue, and purple clothes hanging there. He stuck his hand along the closet wall and found a light switch that quickly filled the space with a soft fluorescent glow. Before him spread row after row of dresses, skirts, pants, sweaters, shirts, lingerie and a separate section for outfits that could only be costumes for Janet’s more fanciful roles. At the far end of the little room, filling the wall from floor to ceiling, were over a hundred cubicles housing everything from tennis shoes to outrageously high heels. He goggled for a moment at the immensity of her collection and then quickly started to scan the rows of shirts and sweaters running parallel above and below.

  He spotted two purple sweaters on the right side of the closet and pinched off a small sample from each. Then he spotted a purple wool skirt and realized that once his inspection was over, he would have a pile of little tufts in his pocket with no idea which garment they came from. He was anxiously working his way through the left side of the closet when he heard a large crash from the kitchen accompanied by a shriek. He froze for an instant, then he shut off the closet light and ran to the bedroom door. Just as he was about to stick his head out into the hallway to see if the coast was clear, footsteps approached and he heard her cursing her clumsiness.

  He spun around in a panic and quickly surveyed the room. The bed was too low to hide under, so he ran back into the closet, shut the door, and peered out from behind the linen curtains that covered the glass of the French doors. A moment later she entered, holding the stained front of her blouse away from her skin with both hands. She stood next to the bed, carefully undoing the buttons and letting the garment slip off her shoulders to the floor. She looked in the direction of the closet for a moment, but instead of going inside to grab a new top, she picked the soiled blouse off the floor and walked into the master bath.

  Here was a chance to escape. One quick move and he could be down the hall happily typing away when she emerged, but when he peeked past the curtains and saw her filling up the sink with water, he saw the large oval mirror above it provided a perfect view of the closet entrance. If he opened the door to leave, she would see him as she stood soaking the garment. Go to the toilet, he urged her. If she sat down and relieved herself in the corner of the bathroom, he could slip away without being spotted. He watched her squeeze the shirt a couple of times in the soapy water, but she made no further move.

  With the stain safely soaking, she wiped her hands on a plush towel hanging next to the mirror. She straightened up and slowly arched a kink out her back before grabbing a brush and running it vigorously through her hair. When she was satisfied, she touched up her lipstick and strode back into her bedroom. He was ready to retreat into the corner of the closet and seek shelter behind a wall of dresses when she stopped and pulled out the top drawer of the wardrobe.

  He sighed with relief as he watched her consider a colorful knit top. She slid the drawer back in and examined herself in the full length mirror attached to the back of the bedroom door. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other as she unfolded the sweater, and he could not take his eyes from the movement of her body. A low-cut, blue bra supported full, round breasts, and beneath it her stomach was flat, with hips flaring out at precisely the place he found himself staring when confronted by midriff bearing co-eds on campus. Layla gave a little shimmy as she slipped on the garment, and he felt himself respond involuntarily.

  He adjusted his trousers and assessed his chances. If she went back to the kitchen, then he would be home free. If she decided to check on him in the study, he could bolt across the hall to the guest bathroom and pretend to be washing up for dinner.

  She paused for a moment in front of the mirror and undid the top button of the sweater. She stood to the side and checked the view, pushing her breasts up slightly with her hands, then frowning and buttoning up again. As she reached for the door, she took one last look in the mirror and pursed her lips. Something was not quite right. She smoothed the sweater against the skirt and returned to the brightly lit bathroom to make a final decision on the outfit.

  They look great! He beamed a mental message across the room. They look fabulous together! But Janet shook her head and slid her hand to the zipper on the side of the skirt. It fell to the floor, and Stanley saw a lacy pair of panties that matched the light blue of her brassiere. When she bent over to pick up the skirt, he nearly gasped aloud, but the joy of peeping ended abruptly as she spun out of the bathroom and strode toward the closet to find a skirt to match her new top.

  Stanley scrambled to the very back of the clothes rack. Some of her longest dresses hung in the corner, and he made himself as small as possible behind a drape of fluffy chiffon formalwear. The doors to the closet opened, and he held his breath, holding his body absolutely still. If the light were turned on, he could not escape being noticed. Through squinting eyes, he saw her step into the room and reach straight for the upper rack of skirts across from him. She had a specific item in mind and made no move to flip on the light switch. He watched nervously as she reached for the garment, plucked it off its hanger and left the room without a glance toward his hiding place. She shut the closet door. Only then did he exhale, pausing a moment before slipping out. As he emerged from the dresses, he was surprised and dismayed to hear a popular tune playing. She wasn’t going to sit in her bedroom and listen to the stereo, was she?

  Then, Stanley recognized the music, and in horror he reached into his pocket to silence his cell phone. As he fumbled with the cursed device, it fell to the floor, and he was just picking it up when the doors to the closet opened and the bare-legged porn star stood staring at him first in astonishment and then in anger.

  Time then slowed down for Stanley and instead of panicking he stood outside himself and in a calm, almost leisurely fashion, he began formulating a plan. By the time he straightened up, phone balanced in his hand, he thought he had found a way out.

  “Hello? Stanley Hopkins here.” He put his free hand on his hip and answered the phone in a nonchalant pose. “Yes, Inspector McCaffrey?” He tilted his head as he listened to the detective’s message, daring to make eye contact with, and then nodding at, the fuming Janet as he pulled out his pen and took notes. “Alright, terrific.” He paused again and nodded coolly. “I got it. And could we meet tomorrow afternoon?” He wrote a bit more on his pad before saying goodbye and snapping the phone shut authoritatively.

  When he looked back up, Janet had her arms crossed over her chest, flashing eyes demanding an explanation.

  “Well,” he explained with a savior faire that belied the tight situation, “that was McCaffrey. He’s given us the name of Geary’s alibi witness.” He tapped the note pad meaningfully with his pen. “Some meth head in West Hollywood. It doesn’t sound like it’s going to be hard to track her down.”

  She stared at him for a second, ignoring his reference to the next day’s work schedule and interjecting with menace, “What the fuck are you doing in my closet!”

  He aimed for apologetic rather than totally ashamed, “I’m so sorry! I should have asked you before looking in here, but I just knew that this was going to be fabulous.” As he spoke he gestured expansively with both hands, “and I was totally right. This is amazing!”

  He saw confusion mixing with her anger and quickly continued. “Look,” he explained as if he were quite embarrassed, which was not hard to play, given the admission he was about to fake, “you’ve meet Angela. I’ve been married for ten years and I’m straight as, well, a really straight guy . . . but I’ve always loved women’s clothes. I used to dress up in my mom’s stuff when I was just a kid, and I’ve got my own little closet at home full of hose and dresses and stuff.” He saw Janet’s eyes widen.

  “Oh Angela knows! Thank God she read all those Dear Abbey posts on how cross-dressers aren’t gay.” He gave a little lop-sided smile. “I mean, she thinks it’s a little weird, but she’s gotten used to
it. It even kinda spices things up once in a while, if you know what I mean.”

  “You’re a cross-dresser?” The confusion had faded toward suspicion, still spiced with a generous serving of outrage. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “But that’s no excuse for me just barging in here without permission!” He shook his head, ashamed of having given in to impulse. “I’m like a kid in a candy shop sometimes. You’re always so put together with your wardrobe that I just knew this closet would be amazing.” He shook his head. “God, I’m just like the little kid and the proverbial candy jar. I really am sorry. It won’t happen again.”

  “You didn’t put anything on did you?” The mere thought threatened to pop the eyes out of her head.

  “No!” He looked appropriately horrified. “I would never stretch out your clothes! I swear, I just wanted to look at them.”

  Stanley had learned long ago in the middle school playground facing down the local bullies, that making himself ridiculous threw people off guard and derailed their anger. Sure, now a beautiful porn star wearing only her panties and a tight sweater thought he was a transvestite, but she had no clue as to the real reason for his intrusion and when she finally had time to think it over, she probably wouldn’t stay all that pissed off at a minor league pervert who merely longed to check out her dress collection.

  She shook her head as she could not quite take in the situation, then she stepped to the side and spoke in a voice filled more with exasperation than rage, “Could you just get out of here?”

  He walked immediately across the hall into the bathroom and shut the door. The figure in the mirror blew out a sigh of relief and then splashed some water on his face and toweled off. He leaned against the sink, wondering what to do with the pile of purple fluff in his pocket and how to make the best of Janet’s new image of him.

  When he emerged, he peeked in the bedroom and saw that Janet had dressed and gone back to cook. For a moment, he considered finishing his exploration of the closet, but instead he returned to the study and worked dutifully at the computer until he heard a voice calling him to dinner. He walked with some trepidation down the hall and into the dining room where he found a large bowl of pasta primavera sitting in the middle of an elegantly set table. A half-empty bottle of white wine flanked the food, and a second full bottle stood in a marble cooler beading with moisture. He was pouring himself a glass when she appeared with a salad bowl in one hand and a basket of garlic bread in the other.

  “Can I help you with anything?”

  “No, this should do it.” She sat down and gestured for him to do the same.

  He thanked her for preparing the meal, and they sat down to eat in uncomfortable silence. After a couple of bites of the pasta and a generous sip of the wine, she looked up at him and spoke.

  “In the pantheon of shitty things people have done to me in my life, what you did might seem pretty minor, but you’ve got to understand how much I like my privacy. When you’re most intimate business is a commodity, you really treasure the scraps of privacy you get.” She looked up at him with deadly seriousness, willing to put the closet episode behind her if he showed any comprehension of her point. “Just don’t do anything like that again. Understood?”

  He nodded. He knew when to just shut up.

  She lifted her glass again and twirled a bite of the pasta on her fork. “Why don’t you tell me some more about your book? Not just the porn parts,” she said with the merest glimmer of a smile, “but the whole project.”

  Unfortunately, the book was being written by a different person in a different life. The “whole project” barely seemed interesting anymore. He had wanted to show that most people in most jobs held the same sorts of attitudes about work: they hated their bosses for the same reasons, smoked pot before work to cope with the same kind of stress, fantasized about their co-workers equally as often. When he tried to explain it to Janet, the whole idea sounded like a waste of time.

  As they finished the second bottle of wine and opened a third, most of the awkwardness had disappeared. Self-doubting, cross-dressing professors and porn stars had some common ground, and both of them realized that for different reasons their present careers could not last much longer. Alcohol made them optimistic that something interesting would present itself.

  “You know,” she admitted, “I like this interviewing stuff. There’s got to be room on cable somewhere for a sexy, edgy talk show. I could run circles around Dr. Ruth.”

  “Hey, I’d watch. That’s for sure.”

  “What about you? Are you going to find another teaching job somewhere?”

  “No way!” He slapped the table a little too hard. Ever since he‘d come to Los Angeles, he had enjoyed using bits and pieces of his law degree more than being an academic. “I could open up a celebrity law practice in Hollywood.” She laughed. “I don’t know . . . but I need to think of something. The clock’s ticking.”

  “Yeah, for me too,” she said. She picked up their plates and carried them into the kitchen. “Do you want to go out and get some dessert?” She stuck her head out while he picked up the bread basket and the bowl of pasta. “I don’t have anything sweet in the fridge.”

  Stanley stood up and had to steady himself. “I don’t think driving a car is a good idea right now.”

  “Me neither,” she admitted as they finished clearing the table and piled the dishes on the kitchen counter. “You know, if you can’t take us to Ben & Jerry’s, then you certainly can’t drive across town to your hotel.” She bent over to put the plates in the dishwasher. “We could call you a cab, but that would mean stranding your car here.” She stood up and dried her hands with a towel. He tried in vain to decipher the look in her eyes. “Or you could stay here.”

  It really was the most sensible alternative. “You’re sure you don’t mind?”

  “Not at all,” she said as she tossed the towel in the sink. “I’ll show you the guest room upstairs.”

  He watched her flex and sway as she walked up the stairway and he almost reached out to touch her as her skirt swished before him at eye level. When they got to the top of the stairs, she led them to a cozy room overlooking the courtyard and turned down a woolen Navajo blanket covering the queen size bed. He could not decide what looked more tempting, his hostess or the beckoning refuge for his weary, wine-sodden bones.

  “There you go,” she said as she pulled down the comforter. “You’ll find fresh towels and stuff in the bathroom.” She straightened up, put a hand on his shoulder to steady herself and whispered in his ear. “Good night.”

  * * *

  On the other side of Los Angeles, the phone in Stanley’s hotel room rang shortly after 11:00 p.m., at 12:30 a.m. precisely, and a little before 3:00 a.m. Angela made a final attempt at his cell phone before she went to bed, but it went straight to voice mail.

  XXVI.

  EXIT STRATEGIES

  Janet was sitting at the kitchen table, scraping a cup of non-fat yogurt and sipping coffee when her overnight guest made his way downstairs. She had already spent an hour on the exercise bike, run a virus scan on her server, and checked the status of her online brokerage account. She offered him something to drink.

  “Coffee’s fine.” He took the cup, poured in plenty of cream and sugar and sat down with a sigh. “Thanks for letting me stay.” He blew across the top of the hot liquid and took a small sip. “If I had driven, I might have ended up spending the night with Don.”

  “Or worse.”

  “Or worse,” he confirmed. He took another sip and then scanned the headlines of the Los Angeles Times spread out on the table. “I’ve been thinking about today. This is it for the interviews, right?”

  “Right,” she said, “just two this morning, plus a couple to reschedule later, if you want.”

  “Could I work here tracking down Miriam while you’re doing the last couple of interviews?” He grabbed an orange from the basket on the table and unpeeled it. “We could pack the equipment afterward, have
a quick lunch and then track down Geary’s alibi witness in West Hollywood.”

  “Porn stars in the morning and meth heads in the afternoon,” she replied. “Sounds like a plan.” Scruffy and unshaven, the young professor had a bit of a Hugh Grant sort of air, basically charming and trustworthy. Surely it was safe to leave him home alone now that he had learned his lesson.

  She finished her coffee and saw she was running late. She grabbed her purse and pulled out a spare key to the condominium. “Make sure to lock up when you leave.” She tossed it to him. “And don’t stretch out any of my dresses!” His strangled protest brought a smile to her face that lingered halfway to the hotel.

  The first interviewee was an old friend, Singelica Hotte, a tall redhead who claimed unequivocally that Don could never have committed the crime. Janet had always admired her friend’s long legs, but those thighs weren’t quite as thin as they used to be. The new boob job was probably meant to draw attention away from the slippage further south. “There are a hundred people in the business more likely to kill Jade,” the redhead argued. “He’s the nicest guy in the valley. I’d even be a character witness. I don’t care what anyone else thinks.”

  “You might care if no one hired you afterward,” Janet replied. A studio like Chimera would surely resent someone working the wrong side of the street.

  “Fuck that,” spat the veteran of over one hundred videos, “I’m almost done with porn anyway. Next week is my last shoot; then I’m going out on a farewell dancing tour.”

  “I’ve heard that one before,” Janet replied doubtfully, “maybe even from you.”

  “I’m serious this time. The money stopped going up my nose a long time ago, and I’m gonna retire. You know my partner, Sarah? We’re going back to Pittsburgh, where you can get a house for a tenth of what it costs here. Then, I’ll go back to school, or open a business or something.”