Deadly Dues

by Linda Kupecek

  Geraldo actually had a tear in his eye. He hugged me goodbye, even though he came up to my shoulder and consequently was interacting significantly with my right bosom. I forgave him, because it was touching that these kids were going to miss me.

  I told them all I would drop in from time to time and drove away, my pitiful cheque in my handbag and my thoughts dwelling on how perhaps I was a small fry instead of a big cheese, working at McDonald’s. But I had met some sweet young people who had kindness in their hearts.

  • • •

  On my way home, after putting a CD of Queen Latifah ballads into the car stereo system, I thought I saw Horatio. My heart leapt. Once I had revved the Sunfire and got closer, though, I saw that it was just a Volkswagen with white advertising ribbons glued onto its exterior. Supremely silly of me when I knew that Horatio was being held captive. I supposed that I really hoped he was just out gallivanting and the message had been a hoax. The only way to lure him away from me was with garlic, as the debacle with Zonko had proven.

  I had grown accustomed to his face. I pulled down my sun visor and looked once more at the photo of Horatio in a bright blue birthday cap, which I kept there to raise my spirits. Once you have a warm body that depends on you for food, companionship and nurturing, you tend to take things for granted. Sort of like having a child, I mused, but with less of a commitment to higher education.

  My current situation had led me to a hermit-like existence. I had taken to being by myself, turning down invitations unless they came from my most trusted pals, Pete, Geoff, Gretchen, Bent, Mrs. L. and Mitzi. And my most trusted pal of all, Horatio.

  Queen Latifah was putting me into a bluesy state of mind.

  I replayed the woofing telephone call in my mind, although I hated to think about what it implied. All I could do was wait for the next instalment.

  I hit the ATM, then picked up milk, bread, frozen dinners and cheapo wine at the market, before steering homeward. Leaves swirled across Rockvale Drive, and a cold morning wind rattled my car windows.

  Winter was going to smack us in the face any day now, and I dreaded it. I hated the thought of the upcoming heating bills that I could barely afford, the icy roads, the shivering sprints to the corner store. Bears were smart. This hibernation business had a lot of appeal. Especially if I could hibernate far away from thugs, punks and missing dead bodies.

  Oh, where was Stan?

  Why would anybody cart a body away and hide it? The thought was revolting. The more I thought about Stan, the more I had an ache in my heart for somebody who, even though they had treated me abominably, was still a human being and deserved more than being dumped like a piece of garbage. If only we had called the police, Stan would have a resting place.

  Another gnawing thought was the garden gnome rescue. Who had clunked Zonko with the garden gnome? Not that I wasn’t grateful. But to whom should I write the thank you note?

  I pulled into my garage and looked around before closing the door and climbing out of the car. I grabbed my bags and emerged onto the walk, looking right and left like an automaton. Nobody in sight. Not even Horatio. No way could I do my pseudo-karate stuff with my arms full of groceries, so I tried to make up for it by looking extremely dangerous and threatening, narrowing my eyes into demented slits of ferocity.

  I was so nervous that I dropped my keys twice before I fitted them into the front door, and half-fell into the house. I deadbolt the door behind me.

  I piled my groceries on the counter, threw essentials into the refrigerator, made coffee and went into the den to check my e-mail.

  Viagra. No thanks. Delete. Investment offer from the Cayman Islands. No thanks. Delete. Hi from Jerome in Alaska, where he had met a hot trapper and was considering opening a gay bar. A discount coupon from Shoe Time, one of my favourite shoe stores. I switched on the printer and printed it, even though it was doubtful that I could afford to shop. Or be alive to shop.

  I shut down the iMac, stretched and began to pull myself out of the chair. Then I noticed Mitzi’s BlackBerry sitting by my computer. Poor Mitzi. She kept her BlackBerry glued to her hand or ear at all hours. I remembered she had dumped it onto the desk when I had startled her. I imagined she would be going nuts without it. I was surprised she hadn’t called me.

  I clicked it on so I could send a message to her desktop to reassure her that her very favourite toy (and she had a lot of them) was safe.

  While I struggled to find the right buttons to send Mitzi a message, I fell into her e-mail program. I saw a message from Stan. Several messages from Stan. Just click the close button, Lu. It’s the right thing to do. Respect Mitzi’s privacy.

  No-brainer. I double-clicked. I loved Mitzi, but I was curious. Damn. I needed a password. I closed my eyes and tried to figure out what Mitzi’s password might be. I typed in “Shoes.” Invalid. I thought again. I typed “Shuz.” Bingo. I was in.

  I stared at the list of messages for a long moment. Actors, casting directors, shoe stores, weird cosmetic promotions, a message regarding the upcoming DVD release of Darling, Detective (good news, especially if it translated into more than a few dollars in royalties), a belly dancing studio renewal—Mitzi! What were you thinking?—and six messages from Stan in the past two weeks. Since when had Stan and Mitzi been on speaking terms? I opened the first message, sat for about a minute, looking like the idiot waitress I had played in Cop Shop Chronicles (a TV movie best forgotten), then reached for my coffee mug.

  The message was rude, ripe and revolting. What was Stan doing, sending Mitzi messages like this? I hoped she responded with an e-mail that burned all the way around his baldness.

  I searched for Mitzi’s response. Mitzi, despite her weight, was indisputably irresistible, and she didn’t need Darth Vaders like Stan stalking her.

  I found Mitzi’s response, and almost gagged.

  It seemed she didn’t find Stan quite as revolting as I had thought. In fact, judging from the e-mail, she thought he was dynamite. She agreed to meet “one last time,” saying she would make it worth his while. I skimmed through the rest and was increasingly disturbed. It appeared they had been meeting regularly, while I had been floundering financially and complaining to Mitzi about Stan.

  I found my flash drive and saved it all to my hard drive. Not a nice thing to do, but I thought it might come in handy. I felt disloyal to Mitzi. I also reassessed her loyalty to me, since she was cavorting with the man who had ruined my life.

  I turned off my computer and went into the kitchen. I guess I must have had tears in my eyes, because I could barely see the table, chairs or refrigerator. I tried to be a big girl, but this knowledge of Mitzi and Stan had shaken me. Mitzi? Mitzi? My agent and best friend? I had never imagined this, never dreamed it was possible. It was so outrageous. Stan, the sexist pig of all time, falling for Mitzi, the full-blown, zaftig power goddess?? It was great. But it was awful.

  I doubted that anybody else knew. It was such a hot piece of gossip, that nobody, absolutely nobody, could have kept a lid on it. Gretchen would have whispered it to the world. Geoff would have roared with laughter and hit on Mitzi himself. Pete would have quietly taken Mitzi aside and advised therapy, then asked each of us to keep an eye on her for suicidal hints. Bent would have screamed with outrage for at least three days.

  Where was loyalty? You pay your dues, do the right thing, behave decently and somehow expect that other people will do the same. It is the concept of paying into society with the belief that if you behave decently, other people will too. You don’t expect other people, especially your best friends, whom you trusted, to cheat.

  I wrestled with this for a while. Why did I have an unrealistic expectation of fair play? We all know that at times life can seem unfair. But “fair” and “fair play” are two different matters. I had survived in a tough business for years, yet I still believed people were basically good.

  Why do we pay our dues? Why do we give others their due? Because it is the right thing to do. Because it is an investment
in ourselves and in society.

  I heated up some organic chicken soup (from a can, natch) and slouched into a chair, stewing on this. Why did I care so much? Shouldn’t I be able to shrug this off?

  I couldn’t. Mitzi was not only my friend. She was also my agent. She was hurting, too, from the missing royalties. But she had other clients, including Arnie West, a.k.a. Mr. Fix-It, whose commercials had been running for ten years. Hence her Mercedes (also courtesy of Bow Wow Dog Food.)

  I put my bowl in the sink with a bitter heart, noting Horatio’s empty dog tub (he was always way too big for a dish) and generally felt betrayed all the way around.

  What the hell. I needed answers. Could life get any worse? Why not visit Sherilyn Carp and get a nice whiff of the truly awful, shallow and—even more depressing—successful?

  Into the Lying Den

  I inspected my face in the bathroom mirror and decided that my black eye now looked as if I had just overdone the mineral makeup. I daubed on concealer, applied pink blush, brown liner and soft rose lipstick, and although not ecstatic with the results, nodded at myself. I practised looking firm and fearless for a moment, and did pretty well. Darling, Detective has come in so handy over the years. The makeup department had wanted to smooth down my curls and fasten my then longer hair into a ponytail, but Jerome, with his credits as a stylist, had intervened. He persuaded the producers that my dimples and curls worked well together. I had looked cute, but also surprisingly competent and dangerous. I heard that some viewers laughed out loud when my adorably dimpled self suddenly flattened ten villains with wildly balletic karate moves while emitting one-liners of a Dorothy Parker nature.

  I pulled on a pair of Lauren jeans, a rose T-shirt, pink Payless stiletto boots and a brocade jacket (ten dollars at an outlet store, but it looked like a million bucks), fluffed my curls and decided that I looked devil-may-care, adorable and even classy, despite the nicely fading black eye. I slung a pink suede hobo bag over my shoulder and headed out the door. I almost didn’t lock it behind me, figuring, what the hell, everybody in town has broken in recently, why embarrass myself by trying to stop them? Hey, why not put a garage sale sign at the end of the driveway? At least that would ensure that there would be witnesses to any attack. For a moment I thought that was truly brilliant, but given that I had no time or inclination to create the sign, I shelved that stroke of genius.

  Fourth Avenue was clear for a change. Some of the hookers waved at me as I passed. (The Darling, Detective crew and I had spent many hours on location in the area, because it was so beautifully seedy— gleaming office towers, dark alleys and girls so young it broke my heart, decked out in miniskirts and boots on the corners. I had brought them handfuls of brochures from the women’s aid society, but I think they handed them back to passing cops as proof of their intended reform.)

  I zoomed through five green lights and chugged onto the freeway to the industrial park where Sherilyn, along with a dozen other film companies, kept offices. The sky had turned clear and sunny, and I felt that slight frisson of expectation that comes with the change of seasons. Winter might be a drag, but a crisp, fall day with an elegant sun almost makes it worthwhile.

  Her building was a revamped hotel with small companies in the single rooms and corporations in the suites. Every room had a balcony or patio, which lent a somewhat kitsch appeal to the site.

  I pulled into the entrance, under an array of signs of varying cleverness. Don’t Shoot Me Catering, in cute blue lettering. D. Davidson Electrical Supplies, in plain black print. Late Bloomers Costuming, in wild retro calligraphy. And overpowering all of these tasty little logos was a huge sign, in giant black and pink letters, trumpeting SLL Productions. Stan had handed Sherilyn a career on a platter (along with the heads of my friends and me). I thought, nastily, that SLL could mean Stan, Lovelorn Lout. Oh, that’s so mean, Lu. The poor man is dead! Yeah, I answered back in my constant inner dialogue. Maybe I would feel more tenderly toward him if he had left me, not Sherilyn, with a million-dollar career.

  As I parked in a visitor’s space and walked through the glass doors, I wondered how Sherilyn, without any talent, managed to maintain her company, which surely even Stan’s double-dealing couldn’t completely support. I walked into her domain on the main floor and had the answer. The names on the glass windows of the offices surrounding the reception desk were those of respected, skilled, reliable production managers, accountants and show runners. The music piped through the sound system was the standard rock standard stuff from twenty years ago. Yawn. Sherilyn wasn’t particularly talented or intelligent, but she had the business smarts to surround herself with people with credits, experience and top-notch skills.

  The receptionist, an anorexic young woman with unearthly white skin and hair so black it couldn’t have come from anywhere but a satanic bottle, stared up at me in something that struck a fine balance between indifference and loathing.

  “Lulu Malone to see Sherilyn, please,” I said in my Smooth Voice.

  She looked at me from boot to curls, shrugged and picked up the phone, muttered nastily for a few moments, then waved me in.

  “End of the hall.”

  Ha. All that primping worked. Lulu Malone has been around the block a few times, and knows the score and the right wardrobe for every occasion, I triumphantly reminded myself.

  I could feel her watching me, like one of the fiends in Village of the Damned, as I strolled down the hall with all the swagger I could muster. I am an actor, and actors are blessed with the ability to bluff magnificently and walk down any carpet without fear.

  Just as I got to Sherilyn’s door, I tripped and had to catch the doorknob to keep from falling. The door swung open and I was face to face with the dreaded Sherilyn.

  She looked up from her desk with malicious amusement. Today she was the same as ever: big blonde hair, black eyeliner, pink lipstick and a low-cut black T-shirt. Her pink talons rested on her desk. But her face was splotchy, with little red marks here and there, as if she had been crying or had eaten an entire box of truffles.

  Behind her, attached to a long rope tied to the railing of her patio, was Horatio.

  “Horatio!”

  I threw my bag on the floor and ran to the open patio doors. Horatio lifted his head and bared his teeth. At me. I stopped just short of an attempt at a hug.

  “Horatio?”

  His big, beautiful eyes were dull and glazed.

  “What have you done to my dog?” My voice was even and cold. Inside, I felt my heart crumple

  “Your dog?” said Sherilyn, sorting through papers on her desk, making a great show of being disinterested. “I think Bambi is my dog now. Look at him.” She flipped open a tin on her desk and tossed him a large piece of fudge. He wolfed it down and then looked at her like a supplicant.

  Sugar? Bambi? Horatio was on vet’s orders not to have any sugar, and she was feeding him fudge? He was going to look like a sumo wrestler with hair if this went on. I would have to take him to Weight Watchers Doggonymous. If he didn’t die first from the humiliation of answering to Bambi.

  “He doesn’t look like your dog. He doesn’t even recognize you. Good luck getting him out of here.”

  She had a point. If Horatio didn’t recognize me, there was no way I could lead him out of there for the sake of auld lang syne. And I certainly couldn’t heave him over my shoulders like a trophy of war and swagger my way out of the building. I would collapse under the weight and be smothered by an avalanche of fluffy white hair—although his hair wasn’t fluffy anymore. Couldn’t that woman have combed him? He looked terrible. I felt sorry for him, the way I have a little pang when I see a woman at the supermarket with rollers in her hair and dirty nails.

  Of course I could call the police. But how long would it take to get Horatio out of her clutches? I worried that the kidnapping of a large, lovable dog would not be high on their crime list.

  I forced myself to walk to the chair, hang my bag over the arm and lounge authoritatively.
Not easy to do when you have dimples, but I managed.

  “You’re lucky I haven’t pressed charges,” I said, gesturing delicately toward my face.

  She looked at me contemptuously. “As if. I know you can’t afford a lawyer. Aren’t you working at some fast-food dump?”

  I was offended on behalf of Habim, Robyn, Thug and Geraldo. “It is not a dump. It is a highly successful franchise. And I was a proud part of the team.”

  She picked up on was.

  “Lost that job, too?”

  She gave a little snort of pleasure. How could anybody be so awful?

  As she laughed, her eyes fastened on me, and I looked inside her. It wasn’t much, a little lightning flash of silver grey light that was pure malice, maybe even evil, and something else. Jealousy? And terrible pain.

  I didn’t want to think Sherilyn was evil. I always tried to see unpleasant people as struggling with their own pain and expressing it in malicious or destructive behaviour. But that flash of nastiness made me shiver. And the shot of pain and anger inside her eyes was so intense that I wanted to burst into tears and run down the hall. I didn’t. I had to deal with Horatio. Even in that moment, I realized that Sherilyn probably didn’t even know the sorry state of her soul. Expensive spa treatments do not equal self-awareness.

  “I wasn’t fired from the Bow Wow gig,” I said, calmly. “They loved me and would have kept me on forever if Stan hadn’t interfered.”

  Wrong move. She smiled even more. I realized that it might not have been Stan who decided to end my gig. It was Sherilyn.

  I tried to figure this out. Most of us knew that Sherilyn kept Stan dangling—whoops, poor choice of words—but it had never occurred to us that she was entirely responsible for the foul things he did.

  She continued to leaf through papers, occasionally glancing at me, waiting.

  “I think I have something you want,” I said.

  “More than one,” she said. Her bright pink lips curled into a little snake for a second.