“I think the guy’s out of control, and it’s pretty obvious that he only cares about himself. People like that are always dangerous. If he’s up to something, I’ll find out, I promise. I’m pretty good at this, actually.”
Cal didn’t ask what he meant by that. What Lebell had done prior to his arrival a year ago was something they didn’t discuss. Cal had tried, initially, of course, but he knew evasiveness when he saw it and simply stopped asking.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, bro,” Lebell said. He grabbed his leather jacket from its hook on the wall, put it on.
“Yeah, okay,” Cal said. “Take it easy, man.”
Lebell exited through the office. Cal waited till the sound of the Mustang faded, then stepped into the adjoining room, locked the door, and armed the security system. Moving through the work bays, he double-checked those locks and shut off the lights. His nighttime routine, darkness following him in stages till the entire garage was in complete blackness.
The only entrance to the apartment above was the plank stairs against the far wall of the third bay—there was no outside stairway, no fire escape, nothing at all. An old building, yes, but as secure as a fortress for those people and things occupying it, upstairs and down.
Cal made it the rest of the way through the garage by memory. At the bottom of the plank steps he looked up and saw a thin line of soft, dancing light coming from beneath the door above.
Heather was at last awake. He checked his watch, saw by its luminous dial that it was now just past seven thirty. His routine was shattered, for this night anyway, but suddenly that was the least of his concerns.
Three
He smelled her the moment he opened the door, that mixture of jasmine and rose oil, a vial of which she kept next to her candles and deck of worn tarot cards on the bureau in her bedroom.
Closing the door behind him and locking it, he heard from the far end of the apartment the sound of water running. This, and all the burning candles, told him that Heather was taking her nightly bath.
The top floor of the building, intended as a storage area, had been hastily converted by Carver into a living space; a large room originally, but makeshift walls of unpainted Sheetrock had been erected in one half of it, creating two small bedrooms and, between them, a narrow bathroom. A raw, bare-bones place, it was nonetheless all that Cal needed. The other half of the room—a sparse kitchen and what served as a living room—had been, with the exception of a counter, left undivided. A wide open space, hot in the summer, cold in the winter, it was tonight a place of drafts that at times caused the candle flames to dance, some even sputter, on the verge of being blown out.
As he stepped from the kitchen and into the living room area, he could see Heather through the half-open door of the bathroom. Her long back to him, she was sitting in the claw-footed tub that stood in the center of that room. She had just shut off the water and was leaning back, submerging herself up to her neck. Her hair—dark, thick, straight—was fastened into a loose bun, a few strands hanging free here and there. She must have thought the sounds of all those doors closing downstairs, followed by the racket of Lebell’s Mustang racing off, meant that Cal had gone out for the night; otherwise the bathroom door would have been shut completely. Respecting such privacies and avoiding any semblance of impropriety were rituals both she and Cal were always careful to observe.
He returned to the kitchen, opening the refrigerator door and grabbing a container of leftovers as loudly as he could. The refrigerator, at least four decades old, had a heavy door that shut with a sharp bang and a metal latch that caught with a loud click. Certainly Heather would hear all that and realize that he was home.
Then, right on cue: “Cal? That you?” There was no concern in her voice; there was no chance that it was anyone but him.
“Yeah.”
“I thought you’d gone out already.”
Cal placed the container on the counter next to the refrigerator, his back to the bathroom. “Change in plans.”
“You can turn on the lights if you need to.”
“No, it’s fine, I can see.”
“I’ll be out in a minute.”
“Take your time.”
He grabbed a clean fork from the dish drainer and stabbed through a chunk of chicken, catching also a little bit of pasta. Hungrier than he realized, he shoveled the first forkful in, then quickly shoveled in another. He was normally fed and showered by now, either playing cards with Heather in the living room or out with Lebell. There was for him no ignoring the sense of, at this moment, being just a little astray.
“I can’t believe I slept so late,” Heather said.
A deep plunk followed by a long trickling sound told Cal that she had stood to get out of the tub.
“You must have been tired.”
“Oh, yes, I’ve had a terribly busy day,” she joked. “You know, in a few more months, I’m probably going need you to help me get in and out of this thing. Or maybe I could just live in the tub, have you bring my meals to me, wait on me hand and foot. You’d do that, right?”
“Of course,” Cal said. “Whatever you need.”
“Such a good boy,” she teased. She was out of the tub now—all watery sounds had ceased. Standing on the bathmat, then, drying off. “Why the change in plans tonight?”
“I need to finish up the car I’m working on.”
The bathroom door opened all the way, and he heard the sound of bare feet padding on the plank floor.
“I’m decent now,” she said.
Chewing, he looked over his shoulder. She was wearing a kimono-style robe that he had found for her at the thrift shop in Southampton. Black, faux silk, sleeves that stopped just past the elbow, an embroidered hem that was several inches above her knees. Unwilling to leave his place, and having arrived with close to nothing, Heather was dependent on Cal to get things for her. Over time he had collected a number of essentials, and he kept his eye out pretty much everywhere he went for items he thought she might need.
Her hair was still up, the loose strands, damp now, clinging to her sleek neck. She was taller than Cal, statuesque—and, at forty-three, nearly twice his age. Her face was oval shaped, her features delicate, precisely arranged. A dancer in her youth, then briefly a television actress—guest spots, mainly, dramatic roles in a handful of cop dramas. She had given it up—probably had been asked to—when she married Ronnie Pamona. Cal’s brother, Aaron, had worked for her in the restaurant she and her husband owned, a place in Wainscott she’d named Helenbach’s—her mother’s maiden name. She had often quietly joked that the name was also fairly descriptive of her marriage, which was like going to “hell and back.” One of life’s funny little synchronicities, according to her.
Aaron, a prep cook, had gotten Cal a job as a dishwasher. They had worked for Heather for almost four years, becoming, as was often the case with restaurant people, as close as family. Working six shifts a week—doubles on the weekends—will do that. Aaron had a habit of coming up with nicknames for people, names that fit and often stuck. Heather was Heatherlicious. Cal and Aaron—the Rakowski boys, Heather liked to call them—had rarely addressed her by anything else.
Cal glanced at her stomach, at the bump that could no longer be concealed by even the loose-hanging black kimono. Getting larger and rounder by the day now. Four months pregnant when she had arrived, carrying the child of a man she had finally come to hate—a man she vowed would never see her again and, more importantly, never, ever meet his son—she was now six months along. On her left wrist still was the cast that had been newly applied by an emergency room doctor the night she had driven herself to Cal’s place. He had offered, when she had called, to have a friend drive him to the hospital so she didn’t have to drive with a broken wrist, but she had refused to let him do that—refused, even, to let him call her a cab and leave her vehicle in the hospital lot for now. Too dangerous, she had said. There had to be no trail for anyone to follow.
Crossing the length of the l
iving room, she moved past Cal standing at the counter and entered the makeshift kitchen. Having yet to apply her jasmine and rose oil, she smelled simply of damp hair and clean skin.
“You should sit down when you eat, Mr. Fix-it,” she said.
One of her nicknames for him—he could fix anything; he’d had, since he was a young boy, an innate mechanical aptitude.
At the sink Heather rose up on her bare toes and grabbed a plate from a shelf. Placing the plate on the counter between them, she took the container and fork from his hands, scraped the remaining pasta and chicken out and onto the plate, then handed the fork back to him.
“Sit down and eat like a civilized man,” she said.
He pulled up a stool, sat on it, and resumed eating.
“Would you like anything to drink?”
“Water’s good, but I can get it.”
“It’s okay, I’m right here.”
She turned to the sink, filled a glass from the tap, turned again, and placed it in front of his plate. Taking an opened bottle of red wine from a cupboard beneath the counter, she poured herself a half glass. She stepped back and leaned against the sink, looked down at her stomach, and began to run her free hand over it, a gesture both absent and loving.
“I laid down at, what, four?” she said, “and didn’t wake up till a few minutes ago. Jesus. I’ve got three more months of this ahead of me.”
“We must have awakened you when we brought the oil in. Sorry.”
“No, believe me, a three-and-a-half-hour nap is more than enough.” She focused on her stomach for a moment, took a sip of her wine, then said, “I had this crazy dream.” Her voice was low, soft.
“What about?”
“It was nighttime, and really windy, like tonight. Almost... Gothic. Blustery. I must have heard the wind blowing as I slept.” She glanced at the kitchen window. “Anyway, I was holding this candle that I needed to keep from going out. I don’t know why, but it was very important that I kept it burning. I was outside, somewhere, and suddenly someone was behind me. I couldn’t see who it was, all I saw was this shadow looming, but I knew it was a man, and I knew he was up to no good.”
She stopped there, then took another sip.
“So what happened?”
She shrugged, then said, “I kept trying to lose him. One minute I was out on this English moor, and the next I was in this old city, in these winding back streets. Then I was out on the moor again, then back in another city, running, hiding, looking back every time I stopped to see if he was still there. All the time I was doing this, I was trying to keep this little goddamn candle from going out. It barely gave off any light, was always flickering, but it was all I had. I mean, I could barely see my own hand in front of my face half the time, and it was probably only making it easier for this shadow to follow me, but I knew it had to stay lit, no matter what.”
Cal listened closely, thinking about everything she had said. He had once spent the night with a woman who devoted what felt to him like hours the following morning to explaining the dream she’d had when they’d finally gone to sleep. That was tedious, uninteresting; this wasn’t, not at all.
“Did you finally get away?”
She squinted a little, trying to remember. “I don’t know. I guess I woke up before it got to that. I mean, in the dream I was being chased for hours and hours, it just didn’t end. Through town after town after town, miles of nothingness between them. I remember being so exhausted that I was ready to give up. I actually remember getting pissed—I mean really pissed—and coming very close to turning around and telling whoever it was behind me to just fuck off. I was still pissed when I woke up.”
“Weird.” He wasn’t sure what else to say.
“Not really, I guess. Pretty straightforward stuff, if you think about it.” She took in a breath, let it out. “All right, Mr. Fix-it, I’ve told you my dream, now tell me one of yours. The most recent one you can remember.”
“I don’t really have any,” he lied.
“C’mon, every one dreams.”
“I guess I just don’t remember mine.”
“That’s a damn shame. I’d be interested to know what goes on in that noggin of yours while you sleep.”
He felt a blush start, looked down at his plate in an attempt to hide it. “So I take it the man in your dream was your husband,” he said. He’d stopped eating to listen to her; he resumed now with the little that was left.
“Maybe. Or maybe not.”
“Who else could it be?”
“It could be me running away from my own bad-ass self.”
“You said it was a man following you.”
“Yeah. My shadow is my opposite, so it would make sense that in a dream it would be a man.”
“So there’s a part of you that’s up to no good.”
“I think maybe there’s a part of me that’s afraid of getting up to no good. Of having no choice but to get up to no good. I know for certain there’s part of me that’s wishing no good would befall a certain someone.”
This someone she spoke of was, of course, her husband. Though the man had played no part in running the restaurant, he had come in often, usually with friends or business associates, run up huge tabs and made it known to everyone that this was his place, that when he snapped his fingers, people all around jumped. A large man, a former professional football player, he was proudly short-tempered and capable, obviously, of a kind of brutality Cal couldn’t imagine.
The only person who hadn’t ever seemed afraid of him was Aaron. He’d been a celebrated wrestler in high school, freakishly powerful for his size and amazingly fast. At times it was obvious that he was actually going out of his way to displease the man.
Protective of his kid brother, but, too, protective of Heatherlicious.
The heroic thing to do, if not the smart thing—but that was Aaron, or the way Cal liked to remember him.
“He’s out there looking for me,” Heather said, “and he’s got all the money in the world to burn. That’s what he used to say every time I threatened to leave.” She paused a moment, then continued. “I’m starting to realize that I can’t hide forever. I mean, in three months this darling little brat inside of me is going to need to come out. All Ronnie has to do is wait till my due date and pay someone to keep an eye on the hospitals. Or do it himself.”
“It’s not like he can walk in and grab your son and walk out. Right?”
“You don’t understand, Cal. I never want to see his face or hear his voice ever again. I want him to never have any contact with this child. He’s going to grow up to be a good boy, just like you. Once I give birth, all Ronnie has to do is have someone follow me when I leave the hospital, find out where I am, so he can file a lawsuit. Can’t sue someone if you don’t know where they live. Once the suit is filed, he’ll drag the whole thing out till the little money I managed to squirrel away is gone. Can’t run and hide without money.”
Pamona was a ruthless businessman, there was no doubt about that. The list of business partners he had “screwed” was long. The man had, in fact, behind Heather’s back, sold the restaurant that she ran and loved to some South American gangster two years ago. Word was, according to Lebell, Pamona had recently bought the restaurant back from the bank after that gangster mysteriously disappeared and the property went into foreclosure.
Cal tried to think of the best thing to say to Heather right now, but all he could come up with was, “So we’ve got three months to figure something out.”
“That’s not much.”
“We’re both pretty smart. I’m sure we can come up with something.”
He was just a kid, he knew that; what could he hope to do against a man like Ronnie Pamona? Or the kind of men Ronnie Pamona could afford to hire? At the same time, though, what else was there for him to say to her? He was grateful to be able to offer her a place to stay that was safe, and there had been no sign at all of her husband—or hired men—in the two months she’d been here. Wherever
the man was looking for her, it wasn’t above a ramshackle garage out in the no-man’s-land of Bridgehampton.
“Let’s talk about something else,” Heather said. She’d put the wineglass—half of her nightly ration already gone—on the counter-top, was touching her stomach with both hands. “Someone else’s problem always cheers me up. What’s this jam your boss is in that’s keeping you from a Friday night on the town?”
“Some rich guy he needs to impress wants his car tomorrow.”
“I see. A matter of life and death.”
“Exactly.”
“I could get dressed, come down and hand you tools.”
Cal, chewing his last mouthful, grinned. She was, of course, joking, he knew that. The image, though, had its appeal. “That’s okay, but thanks.”
“I think I’d look cute in a pair of your coveralls, don’t you? I could wear a little cap, put it on sideways. My glass of red wine in one hand, me handing you tools with the other. C’mon, it’d be fun.”
They laughed. A small distraction, for her, but she’d take what she could get.
“Okay, suit yourself,” she said.
“So what’s Heatherlicious up to tonight?”
“Oh, you know, my usual big plans. The bath, my doctor-approved half-glass of wine, a few dozen or so games of solitaire. Then, of course, some much deserved sleep.”
Cal stood, gulped down his water, then carried the glass and his plate and fork to the sink. Heather remained where she was, watching him as he began to clean up after himself.
“Did you have enough to eat?”
“Yeah.” He glanced at his watch. “I’m going to wash up, then chill out for a bit before I go back down and finish up. I was thinking maybe I’d hang around up here till ten.”
“We could play a few hands.”
“Sure.”
“It feels like a gin rummy night to me.”
“Whatever you want. Anything for Heatherlicious, you know that.”
She smiled, amused and pleased and, too, just a little proud. That nickname, even after all these years, never failed to evoke this very mix of responses from her.
[2010] The Violet Hour Page 4