A pause. I knew that he had probably lost all respect for me and was going to tell me that I was insultingly transparent. Well, give a girl a break. I was doing the best I could under awkward circumstances. I blessed my lucky stars that I hadn’t made a pass at him. And that since he never watched commercial television, he wouldn’t recognize the dialogue.
He looked at me sombrely.
“Wasn’t that a line from a movie?”
“Mini-series.”
He shook his head and made his way to the door.
“Actors.”
“What? What did you say?”
“Actors. You can’t tell from one minute to the next if they’re being real.”
“Excuse me?” Now that he was disparaging my profession, I was truly insulted.
He smiled faintly and shrugged as he went out the door. Was it my imagination or was he being somewhat patronizing?
“I’ll tell you what’s real.” I followed him to the door, gearing up into a rant. “Real is a man dying on top of me. Real is being choked in the middle of a shoe sale. Real is losing my dog. I know what real is, and what real emotions are. And I am grateful that I am capable of feeling all of it, even when it’s painful, because that’s what makes a person truly alive!”
He turned in surprise and opened his mouth, probably intending to insult me further. But I was too quick for him.
I slammed the door in his face.
I blew out a breath and felt much better. Nothing like a good rant to relax a person.
And I was on my own once more, trying to stay alive.
• • •
That healthy rant didn’t decrease my need for a friendly, nonjudgmental ear, preferably one attached to a body that was holding a plate of hot food.
I punched in Pete’s number and got his recording. I left a clear and measured message, along the lines of “Oh God, I feel so awful and I need to talk to somebody and I was in a dumpster and do you have any of those great squash tarts or maybe a tourtière hanging around in your kitchen? Call me on my cell. I am going out to look for Horatio.”
I hung up and gagged at my idiocy. In e-mail, there is the convention of recalling troublesome or inaccurate e-mails. How does one do this with phone messages? It is humiliating to call back and ask the person to delete the message because most answering machines play the idiotic messages in order and they will have already listened to your first edition of drivel before encountering your second edition of different drivel.
The next number I dialed was Geoff’s. He answered, breathing heavily.
“Hey, Lu, baby, how are you?”
“You’re drunk,” I said.
“Not drunk,” he breathed.
I heard a high-pitched moan on the other end of the phone.
“Right. You’re busy,” I sighed.
“You bet,” said Geoff. “Talk later.” He emitted a groan and clicked off. I heard the dial tone and wondered why I was the only person in the world not engaged in amorous activities. Now that I thought of it, I was not the only one. Bent was always alone. Pete was alone and lonely since Sally had left him. Gretchen had lovers, but rarely brought anybody home to Chez Havisham. Stan and Sherilyn were the only constant couple I knew, and they were pretty frightening.
And after my conversation with Gretchen, I was no longer sure they were a happy couple.
My phone rang.
“Pete?”
It was Geoff.
“Hey, Lu. You need me? I can come over. I’m not that busy.” I heard an outraged female yelp from his end of the phone, and then a little oof from Geoff, as if somebody had punched him.
“Hey, I’m fine. Let’s talk tomorrow.”
He signed off, sounding relieved, and I returned to my thoughts about Stan and Sherilyn.
Where was Stan? Or what used to be Stan? He was a horrible person, but he didn’t deserve to be carted around town like a flea market find.
That brought me to Stan’s handkerchief. I had been so distracted that I now realized I hadn’t really examined it. All the rummaging through the dumpster debris must have clogged some of my brain cells. Hunting for a dog who clearly wasn’t out roaming the streets, while ignoring a major clue?
I rummaged for plastic gloves under my kitchen sink and found two lefties, with no right glove in sight.
I wrangled them on and pulled the horrible hanky from the right boot by the door. Gagging, I ran up the stairs to the bathroom, holding it at arm’s length. I closed the sink drain and plopped it in the sink. Ran hot water and organic household cleaner on it. Where are the environmentally incorrect powerhouse chemicals when you need them? Emptied the water, holding the hanky in place. Did it again. And again, this time with shampoo. I rinsed it maybe only twenty-five times. I sprayed lavender on it (lavender is a mild antiseptic, although I doubt any aromatherapy bottle labelled Lavender Dreams would do much good in this case). Finally, I figured I could take off the gloves (my right hand hurt only a little bit from wearing a left glove on it for half an hour— nothing a good chiropractor couldn’t fix), and I shook out the hanky, holding it by one corner.
Something clunked onto my bathroom counter. Something gleaming, hard and brassy. It was a safety deposit key.
This is wonderful, I thought. How handy to have a safety deposit key and not a clue regarding the whereabouts of the box it matched.
Parsnips and Police
My cell phone rang. Holding the key in my now overly disinfected hand, I ran to answer. Not desperate for human contact, no, not me.
“Hello?” I said calmly.
“Man, Lu, you sound terrible. You okay?” asked Pete, his voice warm and concerned.
I took a few deep breaths.
“Are you baking?”
“I’m always baking. Come on over.”
So I grabbed my handbag (four dollars, Kenneth Cole, Sunrise Flea Market, and I must note, a vastly superior Kenneth Cole to the one Sherilyn had sent my way), sneaked out my door, scurried into the Sunfire, slammed the door, pressed the lock (not that it always worked), backed down my driveway with an unpromising rumble, and headed towards Pete’s place. I was such a coward.
Only when I was on 17th Avenue did I realize I was still clutching the safety deposit key. I even had an imprint of the number 247 on my palm. Great. Hope no hand commercials came up in the next few days. I started imagining a scene in which my beautifully arranged dead body washed up on shore, my hand elegantly stretched out, with the imprint of 247 on my palm. Lu, stop that. You are not going to be washed up on shore. For one thing, you are nowhere near a shore.
I decided not to be so creative about my future and concentrated on getting to Pete’s place. I stuffed the key into my bag, steering with one hand.
When I arrived at Pete’s bungalow, I pulled into his driveway, climbed out of my car and took a moment to breathe in the night air. I might be frightened, threatened, de-dogged and no doubt fired from my job with the overly dressed clown, but at least I could appreciate a crisp fall evening. The leaves settled around the trees in Pete’s yard in bouquets of orange and rust, which I could just see in the lights from Pete’s windows. His home was so civil, so comforting.
I walked through the disintegrating leaves on Pete’s side walkway, my Rockport loafers kicking them aside like pieces of old confetti. How unlike him. Usually he was out with a leaf blower the moment the first brave little stem hit the ground. I knocked on his kitchen door. He must have been waiting on the other side, because the door whipped open immediately. I squinted into the warm, bright light from his kitchen.
“Hey, Lu. Come on in. I have parsnip pie.”
Parsnip pie. Was this a great life or what? Pete put something into his parsnip pie (Was it cumin? Cinnamon? Cloves?) which made one bite a transforming experience. I had arrived at just the right time.
Pete looked even worse than he had on my last visit. The dark shadows under his eyes were more pronounced, and his apron looked as if it needed a good wash and maybe a disinfecti
on, too. I hear that baking is great therapy, but even I know that you have to clean the gunk off yourself every now and again. He had a five o’clock shadow that was way old, and I was shocked to see that he had major white hairs in his bristle. I almost offered to do a Miss Clairol on him, then thought better of it. I could barely handle my own beauty treatments. Why inflict my incompetence with hair dye on him? Besides, men could get away with the greying look: it made them respectable, dignified and sexy in an authoritative way. Women counted the grey hairs and knew that until society went through a major revolution, we were at risk of becoming invisible unless we made a lot of noise. Luckily, I was accustomed to making a lot of noise.
I threw my bag on the floor and collapsed into a chair at the table. Pete slid a plate in front of me.
“Close your eyes,” he said.
I did, and inhaled. It was wonderful. Warm, spicy. A scent that took me to the casbah and back.
“Open wide,” he said.
I obliged, and he spooned a mouthful of pie into me. Heaven.
I chewed, and moaned, and felt the best I had in days.
“Oh, Pete,” I murmured, in the middle of a chew, “why bother with acting? You could have your own restaurant. Or at the very least, a catering company. Or a bakery.”
“That’s what Sally always said.”
There was an awkward pause while I looked at what was left of the glorious pie and tried to decide what I could say that wasn’t a stupid cliché, patronizing or just plain dumb. Sally had left him and it was unfair. She had taken the kids, and Pete now received regular missives from her lawyer. All because Stan had convinced the world, including Sally, that Pete had been having an affair with Sherilyn. Anybody who knew Pete, with his quiet substance and authenticity, was offended by the thought. Pete and Sherilyn? No way.
“I’m sorry, Pete. I hate to see you so sad. Stan was such a liar.”
He fidgeted with the serving fork for a moment.
“I always felt bad that I never told you the truth, Lu. You’re just about my best friend, aside from Sally.”
I looked at him, wondering what was coming. A confession? I wanted to run out the door, but he was between the door and me.
“I did have a thing with Sherilyn. It was only one night. I thought nobody would ever know.”
I stared at him blankly, realizing that my powers of perception were rapidly diminishing into that of a fourth-grader. Pete and Sherilyn? No way. Okay, maybe he fell for the pink lipstick. Or the cleavage.
I looked at him, stunned, the parsnip pie trapped in my mouth. I stared at him, finally chewing it away.
“How could you? She and Stan have done horrible things to all of us. How could you?”
“I hate myself,” he said softly. “It just happened.”
And he had denied, denied, denied. And we had believed him. He had looked stunned when Sally had left him, and knowing how he adored her, none of us believed for a moment that he would ever be unfaithful.
Faithful, faithless. Life seemed a little unbalanced in that department right now.
I stood up, trying not to let my eyes fill up (I could only cry so much before I got dehydrated) and headed for the door, then had second thoughts, and returned to the table to grab the last of the parsnip pie. I wrapped it in a paper towel and stuffed it into my Kenneth Cole bag.
As I muttered my way to my car, I heard Pete’s voice plaintively calling after me. “Lu, you don’t understand.”
I turned the key and cursed the Sunfire into life, then pulled out onto the road, grabbing another piece of parsnip pie and stuffing it into my mouth. I chewed it furiously as I wheeled my loser car onto Sloan.
For a year, we had been united in our disdain of Stan and Sherilyn, our determination to stand fast, do the right thing. No matter how tough things were, no matter how many nasty missives from Stan’s office or from Sherilyn’s minions, we had our moral superiority. And now I find out that Pete, the one of all my friends I had envisioned with ethics galore, had cheated on his wife with Sherilyn, the woman who was the root of our problems?
I wondered if Geoff or Gretchen or Bent knew, but I didn’t have the desire to call any of them up and say, “Oh, by the way, Pete’s ethics are in his pants.” Or something equally unfair and distasteful. I must be better than that. I determined to try to see things from Pete’s point of view. But no matter how hard I tried, I kept seeing things from his pants’ point of view. I tried again and realized that, like many actors, he might have been feeling insecure, and that perhaps Sherilyn (hard as it was to believe) might have bolstered his ego. Maybe there were problems in his marriage with Sally about which I knew nothing. Hey, what the hell, as long as I was in fantasyland, why didn’t I just imagine him bumping off Stan?
Well, that was easy. Now I could go home and get a good night’s sleep.
I stuffed another handful of parsnip pie into my mouth and took a wild left onto Rutherford. Then I saw the flashing lights behind me. I pulled over, trying desperately to chew down the pie, but I must have found the King Kong parsnip in there, because it wasn’t going away. I kept chewing frantically, even as I saw the dark-clad figure approach my car door.
The officer who appeared at my car window looked about fourteen years old. This is what happens after you pass thirty. Everybody you meet looks like he or she just got out of kindergarten and needs your advice. I was just about to tell him that he should get some highlights and pluck his eyebrows, when it dawned on me that I should just keep my mouth shut.
Which was a good idea, as I was still chewing on the parsnip pie.
The child officer looked at me patiently as I chewed. The aroma of the unknown spices must have nearly knocked him over.
“What are you chewing, ma’am?”
Oh, that “ma’am” hurt.
“Poosnip pie.”
A long pause as he translated that. I lifted the paper towel with the remnants of the pie and showed it to him. He looked at it longingly.
“And where are you going, ma’am?”
Ouch again.
“Home.” You annoying little twerp, I wanted to add.
“That’s good,” he said. “Detective Ryga just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
Thank you, you sweet little boy, and I bet your mother is proud of you, I mouthed as I drove away, trying not to make too big a deal out of it, although maybe I shouldn’t have given him what was left of the pie in gratitude.
I parked in the garage, after an overdone visual sweep of the street and yard. I had hoped Mrs. Lauterman would be on guard duty, but her windows were dark.
This time I was ready. I edged up the walk, my keys in my hand, in the same stance I had taken in the self-defence video I had done a few years ago (in the pre–Bow Wow days). Nobody leapt out from the shrubs, which I thought was a good sign. The police had taken away the garden gnome, so I didn’t have that for comfort, but I reminded myself that all was well. As defence, I had my keys, my high-powered voice (four thousand dollars in vocal training) as a warning siren, and my intense desire for self-preservation, backed up by all the varied moves I had learned over the years, which included a weird Om-KICK! Om-SCREAM! Om-CHOKE! that I had never really mastered.
I berated myself for not using these skills earlier, and congratulated myself for at least remembering snippets of my experience on countless film sets. Where was the reality? When had I actually fought off an attacker, except for the unknown assailant at the shoe store and the kid with the Crocs? My performance with Mr. Size Twenty—pardon me, Zonko—had been pathetic. My life experience seemed pretty minimal compared to my film experience.
I put my key in the lock, slipped inside with more speed than I thought possible, closed the door and turned the deadbolt. I tried not to think of this as all there was between me and the great Green Room in the Sky.
Then I checked the patio doors. If that idiot crybaby could make it through those doors, breaking in would be a piece of cake for any wandering eight-year-old crimin
al, to say nothing of anybody older and in a more sinister mode. I wedged a long wooden spoon into the slot between the doors and hoped for the best.
I stood for a moment, wondering how I was going to sleep. Why was my life so different from great film noir where the heroines had Alan Ladd, Humphrey Bogart or Robert Mitchum, however jaded, at least marginally interested in their well-being?
Who was interested in my well-being? I thought about this, as I climbed the stairs and indulged in a lavender chamomile bath.
I decided that Mitzi, Mrs. Lauterman, Pete and Jerome were the most involved in my well-being. Jerome was in Alaska. If he had been in town, I know he would have roared over with a bottle of gin, a stash of makeshift weapons and his DVD of The Party. My parents cared, of course, but they were thousands of miles away trying to kill people with croquet balls. My other best friends were sprinkled around the continent on film shoots and tours, and I knew that however much they loved me, not one was going to tell the director that they couldn’t play the death scene (the one that might win them the Oscar) the next day because they were needed back home with a friend who was trying not to play a death scene for real. I didn’t blame them. Actors understand priorities.
I knew I had friends, but how could I call anybody and beg them to come over? I hated the thought of sounding needy.
If Horatio were here, he could offer comfort, even though he had proved himself useless as a bodyguard.
I was alone, achingly alone.
Then Hollywood saved the day.
After my bath, I went to my den and found the dusty jars with my marble collection (acquired in my youth and augmented over the years with flea market finds). I sprinkled the marbles liberally around my front door and the patio door in the den. Thank you, Home Alone.
They looked so beautiful, their colours softly gleaming in the dim light from the hallway. I was devaluing them, leaving them around on the floor. I wondered where I had put my most valuable marble, the sulphide with the clown inside, and hoped I had stashed it in a drawer for safekeeping.
Silly me. What was I thinking? Nobody was going to break in. I should just gather them up (especially the latticino swirls) and go to bed. But I was so tired that I decided to leave my beloved marbles by the doors and deal with them in the morning.
Deadly Dues Page 16