Deadly Dues

by Linda Kupecek

  Alas, she didn’t offer any refreshment. She slouched down elegantly into the faded sofa, landing on a pillow that exuded little clouds of pale grey dust, and swirled a slender claw (whoops, hand) towards the armchair. I examined the chair carefully, tried to do a quick and subtle mental inventory of what I was wearing, which items would require drycleaning and which could be washed, and how much it was going to cost me to sit in her armchair. What I came up with was Jones New York jacket (six seventy-five at Discount Drycleaners) jeans (machine washable, cost negligible), T-shirt (washable and also disposable if things got really grim). I figured if my hair touched the back of the chair, I could get in the shower at home. Or maybe just get a haircut.

  “Lu, there is something you should know.”

  I hate sentences that begin like that. Nothing good ever comes of them. Is the next part ever “You won the lottery?” or “Your ex-boyfriend just sobbed into the phone for an hour about how much he loved you?” You know the answer to this question.

  “Stan and I—”

  She paused, and nibbled one of her tiny, ragged, pointed little nails.

  I looked at her, revolted. After everything he did to her career, she was going to confess that they really did have something going? Big-time barf.

  “—were both being stalked by Sherilyn.”

  It took me a moment to process this. Sherilyn was a witch in pink lipstick, but I thought she and Stan were a relatively happy couple. And why would Sherilyn stalk Gretchen?

  I asked the obvious. “Why would Sherilyn stalk you?”

  She looked at me for a long moment.

  I looked back at her, like a big, unaware dodo.

  She raked her pointed little nails through her hair and stared at the ceiling.

  “Gretchen?”

  She looked around, pulled a needle from a pin cushion on the table beside her (although I couldn’t swear that she didn’t get it from her hair), hauled a bit of faded tapestry onto her lap, dislodging a cloud of dust into the air around her, which sent me into a coughing fit worthy of Garbo in Camille. Maybe she said a few things in the next few minutes, but I missed it.

  “You don’t understand,” she said pointedly.

  I squinted at her. “Could you give me a teeny clue? That would maybe get me more into understanding what you are talking about.”

  “Sherilyn’s so beautiful,” sighed Gretchen. “I’ve never been with anybody like her. She wanted me to move to Paris with her.” Gretchen looked around reverently. “But I just couldn’t leave my beautiful home.”

  I took a few moments to absorb both of these amazing statements. I couldn’t decide which was more hair-raising, the notion of having a relationship with a person as awful as Sherilyn or the idea that the room in which we were sitting could be described as beautiful.

  I remembered that one of Gretchen’s parting shots at Geoff was that an affair with him could turn a girl off men forever. I thought her phrasing, as told to me, was sexist and overstated. He thought it was laughable. Poor Geoff. He wouldn’t be laughing when he heard about Gretchen and Sherilyn. Unfortunately, everybody else would be. This would probably have a disastrous effect on his love life. I suppressed a giggle at the thought. Lu, don’t be mean.

  These musings were interrupted by something dark with wings flitting around Gretchen’s head. In the interest of my mental health, I decided to view it as one of my old floaters acting up, which happened whenever I forgot the lutein supplements, and not to see it as anything else. Like maybe a bat. It flitted out of sight and I let out my breath. I tried to focus on Gretchen, which was a useful way of not noticing anything else lurking in the room. My feet were itching, my back was crawling with phantom insects, and my underarms were in desperate need of a blow-dryer. Other than that, I felt just fine.

  I reassessed her news and blurted out my honest, non-edited reaction.

  “Gretchen, why would you?”

  Sherilyn Carp was an icon of bad taste and pure meanness. Everything about her radiated ego, nastiness and pathetic bitchiness. I couldn’t see her as a trophy lover for either sex.

  Gretchen picked at the decaying doily on her armchair. She looked at me from under spiked black lashes, and I felt a pang of pity. When she didn’t answer, I tried again.

  “Gretchen, you are talented. You have won awards. You can do better than Sherilyn—”

  Gretchen’s eyes narrowed into angry slits. Two bright red spots flashed on her extremely white cheeks. I stopped mid-lecture.

  “That’s easy for you to say, Lu. You have dimples.”

  “Dimples! What do dimples have to do with it?”

  “Dimples are cute. Dimples have dollar signs. People love dimples. People look at you and see the dimples.”

  I grabbed my bag and stood up.

  “Easy for you to say, Gretchen. You live in a million-dollar mansion and you’re dissing me for having dimples?”

  It wasn’t my finest moment, but I was having a rough time weighing the difference between Gretchen’s reality and mine. She drifted around a mansion (okay, with maybe a few bats) while I was slinging burgers to make my mortgage payments.

  • • •

  I slammed the door, dodging the debris that dropped from the eaves, hoping none of it was toxic. After I brushed off the worst of it, I drove home, feeling guilty and upset. If I were a really good person, I would turn the car around and drive back and make up, but the other part of me, the part that needed to be right, just wanted to go home and sulk. And hug Horatio.

  Except that he wasn’t there when I got home. It was nearly two days since he had run out the door, abandoning me to the attentions of Mr. Size Twenty. Usually, Horatio would have wandered home by now, happy and full of doggie ego over his escapades in the world.

  When I checked my answering machine, there were the usual messages telling me I had won a magnificent Caribbean cruise, two from suspect banks with great deals on credit cards (Were they crazy? Offering me more cards? That was like giving a year’s supply of Big Macs to a junk food addict who was trying to kick the habit) and then a message from Diana Blum, the publicist for the Arts for the Animals fundraiser I had agreed to co-host many months ago. Was it happening this week? How could I have forgotten? I was so distracted with wandering toward my closet to inspect my wardrobe that I almost forgot to check the last message.

  When I did, I stood very still and tried to breathe quietly. The machine emitted the forlorn woofing of a dog, which I recognized as Horatio. A pause in the playback, as if somebody were coaching him, then another bout of sad woofs and the ping of disconnect.

  After a few minutes, I realized I was still standing beside the answering machine, my hand on the button of my blouse, my purse dangling from my left hand.

  Why would anybody kidnap Horatio? I didn’t have a fortune for ransom. Was that really Horatio? Or a crank call from a dog food company?

  I contemplated calling Ryga, but then realized I might blabber about other things I wanted to forget—for example, Stan’s so far undiscovered body—so I stopped, even as my hand was on the phone. What was I thinking? We had found Stan in his office almost two days ago.

  Stan was dead. Definitely.

  His body was missing.

  Sometime between Monday evening and yesterday afternoon, somebody had moved his body and cleaned up his desk.

  Why?

  Somebody thought I had something that was important and related to Stan and was ready to kill me to find out.

  That Somebody was killed.

  Somebody else had saved my life.

  But Somebody else still had tried to kill me at the shoe store. Why?

  What did I have that Somebody wanted?

  And why was I assuming this was one Somebody instead of several Somebodies?

  Oh, this was confusing.

  As far as I could tell, I had nothing that Somebody wanted. I was a former Somebody, but now I was a Nobody, so why the heck was anybody bothering me? Did the dog call have anything to do
with this? Was Horatio a runaway or a kidnap victim?

  I rummaged in my cupboard for some mind-brightening gingko biloba tea, and then decided that herbal tea was a definite second choice to a restorative regroup with the gang at Murphy’s.

  Let’s Act Natural

  Later, Pete, Geoff, Bent, Gretchen and I were at Murphy’s, in yet another brave attempt to look normal. Geoff, who was usually Hunk Supreme, was pale and decidedly unhunky. I was sorry to see he was almost gnome-like in his anxiety. His six feet had shrunk into the booth as if he were the witch’s puddle in the Wizard of Oz. Pete looked as if he had lost twenty pounds in the past twenty-four hours. Gretchen had kissed-kissed the air around my cheeks hello and I had done the same with her. We were friends again. She was more pointed than ever and looked as if she could etch glass with her nose or elbows. Bent seemed as if he were about to explode. I, on the other hand, looked perfectly normal.

  “Lu, you’re vibrating like an old car about to collapse,” said Pete. “Do you need a drink? Should I call the paramedics?”

  He meant well, but I wanted to slug him. I remembered my yoga classes, took a few deep breaths, and smiled winsomely.

  “Just fine here,” I said. “Except that Horatio is missing.”

  “He’s just out on a romp,” said Geoff, the great romper of all time.

  “He needs time to himself,” offered Bent, the great hermit.

  “Horatio is his own man. Let him do what needs to be done,” nodded Pete, the most soulful of our group.

  “Which boyfriend was that?” asked Gretchen.

  I deserved a medal for ignoring that and segueing into the next topic.

  “What about Stan?”

  There was a long silence while we all tried to figure out what to say about the unmentionable.

  Finally Geoff broke the ice.

  “Where the hell is Stan?”

  Bent and I looked at each other, uncertain.

  After a long silence, I looked into my Chardonnay, and said, sotto voce,“Yesterday, outside the HAMS office, Bent and I saw what looked like Stan’s body in a dumpster.”

  Pete recoiled. “And you didn’t call the police?”

  “We didn’t know for sure!” said Bent. “It might have just been a maverick arm hanging out of a dumpster! Anybody’s arm! Not Stan’s!”

  “Stop screaming!” I shouted. A drunk at a nearby table, the ex of way too many people in the industry, lifted his head and squinted at us.

  “Breathe,” said Pete, extremely calmly.

  We all took a few moments and breathed deeply in unison, just as we had done in so many acting classes so many decades ago, and smiled serenely at the drunk.

  After a reasonable pause, I continued, very quietly and with a sweet smile zigzagging between my dimples.

  “But there was the pinky ring. Definitely Stan’s.”

  “So what did you do?” asked Gretchen.

  “I went to Mitchell’s Bar and played the machines,” said Bent, without batting an eye. I admired his honesty.

  “I went home and ate everything in the refrigerator,” I said. “Except the All-Bran and last year’s fruitcake.”

  Pete, Geoff and Gretchen nodded. They understood.

  I set down my wine glass, maybe a little too heavily.

  “How are we going to find Stan’s body?”

  Pete’s face crumpled in disbelief. “Why should we have to find his body?”

  “Until his body shows up, I for one am going to be in a state of constant twitching,” I said. And it was true. I was twitching.

  “Aw, Lu,” said Geoff, putting his arm around me. “You’re just too sensitive.”

  I scowled at him. “You’re too sensitive” is the standard line that totally insensitive people use to manipulate and put down people who actually feel anything for other human beings. Geoff isn’t insensitive, just glib.

  I didn’t like Stan. I had fantasized about various ways to get him out of my life. But I never seriously wished him dead. In a way, I understood that Stan had been playing out his role. I was a supporting player in his life. He had probably never thought deeply about me or how his actions had changed my life. He didn’t even know that his passing had started me twitching. I held my breath until the twitching stopped. I was pretty sure it was a temporary condition that would probably only resurface when Stan’s name was mentioned.

  I used logic.

  “We are in a delicate and extremely vulnerable position,” I said. “We need to maintain a carefully constructed public persona while being constantly aware of the repercussions of the eventual discovery of the extremely dead body we discovered, without revealing that we were the first people to discover it.”

  There was a long pause.

  “That was really good, Lu,” said Geoff. “You could maybe get a grant out of that.”

  “Are you crazy? No way can I get a grant after this! I—and the rest of you—will be lucky not to end up in jail after this!”

  My outburst had a sobering effect on the assembly, and we all sipped our drinks while thinking about our respective futures. I know I should have been thinking about jail, but I was actually thinking about the shoe sale at Step Out, just two blocks away. It wouldn’t start until the next morning, but it wouldn’t hurt to look in the windows tonight.

  I took a moment to regroup my thoughts. Shoe sales aside, I had spent some time thinking about Stan. Sure, he was a total louse, but did he deserve to be impaled on his desk, a ten thousand dollar item, which my dues had helped buy? Whoa, Lu.

  I hesitated for a moment. Would Geoff, Pete, Gretchen and Bent think I was selling out if I said I felt sort of sad for Stan? I decided to risk it.

  “Stan was a snake—” I began.

  Gretchen clutched her tiny pointed chest in horror. “How can you say that? It is so disrespectful!”

  “—nevertheless—” I continued.

  “Have you no decency?” said Geoff, his eyebrows moving upward into his white waves of hair.

  “Oh, good grief!” I hissed. “You hypocrites! He was a creep and a thief and a blackmailer and a harasser and a louse! We all know it! Spit the pablum out of your mouths and admit it! But even if he was a horrible human being, we should take a moment to regret that he died a horrible death. Nobody deserves that.”

  There was a sobering pause.

  Then Gretchen raised her head from examining her empty glass and whispered, “Do you think they still use fresh maraschinos here, or do they keep them hanging around in the cooler for months? You never know. I hate food poisoning.”

  Wally chose that moment to swirl by with our next round, and there was a suitably subdued silence as he plunked our drinks on the table. We pretended Gretchen hadn’t spoken.

  “All right,” said Geoff, after Wally had gone on his way. “It was awful. I don’t want to think about it. And I really don’t want anybody to think I had anything to do with it. Discretion is the key word here.”

  “Ditto,” said Bent. “We need to agree on this. No loose lips.” He looked meaningfully at Gretchen, who pointed her lips at him.

  “Yeah,” said Pete. “And, not to beat the poor old horse, should we revisit the fact that it really looks as if one of us bumped him off?”

  • • •

  It might have been an unoriginal phrase from film noir, but it effectively brought the conversation to a stunning halt, much like a freight train in enemy territory with the armed rebels ahead and the renegade army behind.

  A long silence blackened the air, so long that we each had time to look into the dregs of our drinks and order another, just by limply raising our hands in unison. Wally knew our routine. In the past, this would have been post-audition, post–bad review, post-show or post-breakup, but in this case, it was post, present and future trauma.

  Why did Pete have to ruin it? Or had he posed the question just to deflect attention from himself? I had brought up the same topic earlier, but it was more in the category of random theorizing on my part.
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  I had trouble looking at anybody. I am not a suspicious person. I have dimples. I have a cheery outlook on life. But now I was wondering if Gretchen or Pete or Bent or Geoff could have killed Stan and was simply pretending to be as confused and surprised as I was. Maybe the thought had lurked in the back of my mind, but I wanted it to stay there, unaddressed.

  I took this tense intermission to contemplate my companions. Yes, they were my oldest compadres in my often challenging profession. But whom did I trust?

  Geoff I trusted in some ways but not in others. He was unreliable in romance (hence his violent parting from Gretchen) but he was essentially a good-hearted, albeit shallow, soul. He just had trouble differentiating between what was good for Geoff and what was good for the universe.

  Then there was Pete, who was one of the most honourable and kind people I had ever known. But how well did I know him? There were flashes of rage that were unexpected, which I had chosen to ignore. And the overwhelming bitterness at living alone in a home without Sally’s smile or his kids’ laughter.

  What about Bent? He was a total wild card. He was crazy. Everybody knew that, and nobody could decide whether he was a great undiscovered talent who was moonlighting as an acting coach, or a sociopath waiting to commit serial murders. I personally never supported the latter theory, although I knew several actors and crew members, even Teamsters, who quickly pushed the automatic lock on their car doors if he came near.

  I couldn’t dismiss Gretchen, who was blonde, beautiful and enigmatic to the point of being weird, and who apparently thought she was my best friend. And yet I was terrified of her at times, so what does that say?