Dinner was a can of ravioli and a half loaf of bread, toasted and slathered with butter, consumed while sitting cross-legged on the couch in front of the TV. She scraped the bottom of her chipped ceramic dish with a spoon, set the dish on the coffee table, then flopped back on the couch’s cream and orange paisley cushions.
She loved her couch. Worn, stained and sporting a psychedelic flowered print, it had been her father’s most interesting piece of furniture. “Take it. Take it,” he had insisted. “Your mother and I picked it out together.”
Jack O’Malley rarely talked about his dead wife. The small revelation about furniture shopping made Maggie feel like she’d walked in on him in the shower.
Maggie lay dozing on the riotous pattern, her t-shirt laden with bread crumbs and butter, before finally succumbing to sleep just before midnight.
The whistle of her phone dragged her from the depths of sleep. A text message. Groggily, Maggie reached for the device, certain it was Constantine.
It was from a phone number she didn’t recognize. Maggie clicked to read.
Want to play?
Maggie blinked and rubbed her eyes. Another text appeared: How much?
How much for what? she texted back.
How much for a date?
Maggie stared at the message, trying to process what she was seeing.
U looked very $$$exy in your pic, the texter continued. All sweaty and wet in your shorts and tank top. U do what I say & I can B very generous.
Maggie felt a surge of fear and revulsion. First the reminders. Then the video. Now this. Her phone seemed to be a portal to evil. And she seemed to be a magnet for torment.
Maggie deleted the message and dropped the phone on the couch as if it were alive. With a shaking hand, she shoved it away from herself.
It beeped again. Another text. And then another.
I pay whatever you want.
Lots of $$$ for playtime.
Don’t you want to play?
She snatched the phone from the flowered couch cushions and turned it off. She got up, crossed the room and put the phone in a kitchen drawer next to her mismatched set of silverware, hoping the drawer was strong enough to contain whatever malevolence lurked within.
Chapter 18
There were eight of them when she woke up.
Eight new text messages from eight different people, each asking her how much for a night. For a blowjob. For letting someone do whatever he wanted with her for an hour. Maybe two, if the price was right.
Some asked for additional photos. Others for a meetup time and place. All made her feel as if a hundred different hands had clawed at her clothes and pawed at her body.
She took a shower. It was too hot. She didn’t care, and it didn’t help.
Constantine knocked at the door three minutes after she’d toweled off. She yanked on a pair of cutoff sweatpants and an old Led Zeppelin “Houses of the Holy” t-shirt and opened the door. He stood there with arms thrown wide in a pose that said “just look at this deliciousness.”
He wore baggy pants, shiny, pointed shoes and a white shirt overrun by black pianos.
“Wow,” Maggie said. “I didn’t realize I would be escorted by Liberace.”
Constantine took in her attire. “Wait, wait. Don’t tell me.” He held up a finger. “Duck Dynasty? Daisy Duke’s British Invasion? Project Run Away?”
“Very funny. I’m running late. You can come in while I change.”
Constantine followed her from the front door into her bedroom. Maggie spun him around and pushed him back into the hall. “Nice try. Now go keep my TV company while I make myself beautiful. I think Casablanca is on.”
“A movie about unrequited love. Perfect.”
“What?”
“Nothing,’” Constantine replied, hopping onto the couch. “Go do whatever it is you do.”
Maggie emerged five minutes later in black trousers and her logo-ed white company button-down. She’d put a black bowtie at the collar. Constantine smirked.
Maggie put up her hand. “Save the Charlie Chaplin comments. I’m behind on laundry, and it’s the only suitable thing I had. Even this is only spot-cleaned since I wore the top to work on my first day.”
“Can I ask about today’s specials?”
“No.”
“Soup du jour?
“Let’s go.”
Since the Studebaker’s air conditioning consisted of hand-cranking the windows, they opted for Constantine’s Datsun. Christened “Nellie” when Constantine drove her off the used lot five years ago, the car sported lime green fuzzy dice on its rearview mirror and a plastic hula dancer that undulated reluctantly on the dashboard.
“Everything copacetic?” Constantine asked as he started the engine. “You don’t look so good.”
“Thanks.”
“No, I’m serious. You look—I dunno—green around the gills or something. Pale.”
Maggie pulled the elastic that encircled her wrist and dragged her long hair into a ponytail. “Wasn’t it you who told me my legs looked like they were dipped in Wite-Out? Which I haven’t recovered from, by the way. It’s probably proof of some kind of terrible condition—and don’t say being Irish.”
“So are you going to answer my question or not?” Constantine’s eyebrows bunched over his long, straight nose.
“Yes, if you’d let me get a word in edgewise.” She knew she sounded irritable, but didn’t she have a right to be? She’d gotten exactly two hours of sleep and couldn’t shake the feeling of hidden eyes crawling over her. “Something weird happened last night.”
Constantine glanced over at her, concern growing in his eyes. “Another reminder?”
“No, but it does involve the phone. I got a text message asking how much I cost. More like a dozen text messages.”
Constantine looked at her full on. “How much you cost?”
Maggie nodded. “Yeah, for a whole smorgasbord of sex acts.” Maggie freed a tendril from her ponytail and twirled a strand of hair. “I have no idea who it was or how these guys found me, but it totally creeped me out. It almost sounded like they were looking at a picture of me taken during one of my runs.”
Like the one last night.
“I turned off my phone and shoved it in my kitchen drawer,” she continued. “I didn’t want it anywhere near me. I thought that was the end of it. That it was a wrong number. Whatever. But when I turned on my phone this morning, there were more texts. All from different people. All asking how much.”
“Holy shit.”
“You’re telling me. So what do you think?”
Constantine edged the Datsun onto the freeway and shifted into fourth gear. He scratched his head with his free hand. “Well, it could have something to do with the previous owner of the phone, just like the reminders. Maybe the original owner was a prostitute and you’re getting her texts, too. But if that were true, I’d think you’d have been getting texts from day one.”
Maggie shrugged. “Maybe she got pinched by the cops and just got out.”
“True. But I tend to agree with your first assessment: wrong number.”
Maggie looked dubious. “Everyone has my wrong number?”
“They do if there was a typo in an ad for escort services.”
“What, like a phonebook?
“Like craigslist.”
Maggie sucked on the strand she was twirling, then spit it out. “I guess they do have an adult section, don’t they?” She swiped her phone on and tapped open her browser and pulled up craigslist. She scanned the ads promoting full-release massage, evenings of cuddling and promises of unfettered shoe-sniffing. She found the ad with her phone number almost immediately.
The ad contained a single photograph of Maggie stretching after her run, fingertips touching the ground, backside toward the camera. She looked c
loser, taking in the running shorts, the tree to her right.
It was taken last night.
She thought of the movement at the edge of the playground. The feeling that she was being watched. Gooseflesh crawled up her spine.
Beneath her photograph the ad’s headline asked, Want to play?
Maggie flagged the ad, trying not to see the ad copy inviting prospects to “super sexy private time,” then collapsed against her seat.
“Bad?” Constantine asked.
“Very.” She turned off her phone and shoved it into her purse. “And it’s not a typo. It has a picture of me in my running clothes—taken last night.”
“You’re sure?”
“I own a mirror, Constantine. I know what I look like. What I don’t know is why someone would do this.”
“Maybe you pissed someone off?”
Maggie stared at him. “What do you mean?”
“Haven’t you heard? Cyber-revenge is all the rage these days. Your girlfriend breaks up with you, you post naked pictures of her on Facebook. Or have your friends text-bomb her with messages to kill herself. Or…” He looked at her meaningfully. “You post fake ads on craigslist with her phone number.”
Maggie thought about who would hate her enough to do such a thing. Miles was the obvious choice. Maggie had thwarted him personally and overshadowed him professionally. But would he go to such lengths to seek revenge, to punish her? Maggie shuddered despite the heat. She wondered what he was capable of.
Constantine glanced over at her, concern in his eyes. “Sorry, Mags. Didn’t mean to freak you out. It’s probably someone playing a stupid joke.”
Maggie looked out the window at the anthill of cars teeming in the distance. She had a feeling that whoever had taken her photo and set up the craigslist ad wasn’t the joking type.
They were the last to arrive at the memorial. The assembly squeezed together on a square of grass cordoned off by white velvet ropes, as if the lines of demarcation could contain not just the grievers, but their unanswerable grief as well.
The graveside service was well attended. The bereaved—family members, coworkers, friends and about a dozen homeless men and women—were numerous and subdued. Maggie and Constantine hung at the back of the group behind a man who looked to be wearing all his clothes at once and an older man sporting a parka made from a Hefty bag. Maggie couldn’t imagine how hot they must be.
The men turned and looked at them briefly, then refocused their attention on the minister, who seemed more emcee than man of the cloth. An a cappella rendition of “Amazing Grace” floated from the front of the crowd, and Maggie and Constantine joined in, getting every second or third word right.
The crowd thinned, began to straggle out to the parking lot. Constantine gave an almost imperceptible nod toward the woman walking past them from Carson’s grave. Maggie intercepted the woman as she stuffed a tissue up her sleeve.
“Such a tragedy,” Maggie said softly to the woman.
The woman looked at Maggie, confusion flitting through her eyes as she tried to match face to name. “Yes,” she said softly. “It is.” The woman was young. Early twenties, tops. Her fishtail braided hair was secured by a leather thong. “Did you know Carson well?”
“More acquaintances than friends,” Maggie said.
The woman sniffed. “I don’t care what the cops say. He didn’t drive drunk. Booze wasn’t his bag. He was into herbal supplements.” She pantomimed smoking a joint. “But he never touched a drop of alcohol.” She reached into her sleeve, which evidently doubled as a dispenser, and produced a tissue which she used to mop up a tear teetering at the edge of her nose. Then she stuffed the tissue back in.
“You worked together?” Maggie asked.
She nodded. “At the homeless shelter, nearly three years now. He was real, you know? No bullshit. He cared about the residents. ‘The Forgotten,’ as he called them. He tried to get work for them. Housing. Health care. Medication. Whatever they needed.” She dispensed the tissue from her sleeve again, blew her nose. “I can’t believe he’s gone.”
“Me neither. It’s terrible.” Maggie paused and reached into her purse. “You know, I think Carson and I had a mutual friend.”
Maggie pulled up Elsa Henderson’s obituary photo from the newspaper’s online site, expanding it so the woman couldn’t see the context of the article. She handed her phone to the woman.
The woman studied the photograph, then handed the phone back to Maggie. “Yep, he knew her. Not sure about the friends part, though.”
“They weren’t on good terms?”
“No, that wasn’t it. I mean, it was more like a professional relationship. She’d stop by the shelter. The conversations were always real short. No clue what about. He’d kind of tense up when he talked to her. Get real short with me afterwards.” She shrugged. “Hope they were on good terms when he died. It would suck if there was unfinished business between you and someone who died.”
Maggie paused, remembering the preteen, hormone-laden years that had preceded her mother’s death. The arguments. The long, cold silences. In the quiet of the night, Maggie often wondered what could be sown with tears, what would grow in a field plowed by pain and strife. Whether her mother had inhaled the poisoned air of Maggie’s adolescent angst and had gotten sick. And then sicker.
“Yeah, that would suck,” Maggie finally said. “Thanks for your help. I’m very sorry for your loss.”
The woman teared up and nodded. She walked away, her shoulders rounded into a question mark that sought answers to the inexplicable.
“Who’s she?” Constantine asked when Maggie returned to his side.
“A friend of Carson’s. I didn’t get a name. She says there’s no way Carson drove drunk. And she recognized Elsa, the woman from my first appointment reminder. She said Elsa would come to the shelter to talk to Carson. That means two of the people from my phone reminders knew each other.”
“Yeah, I think…um…I think…” Constantine stopped, his mouth hanging open. His eyes were fixated on the entrance to the cemetery, a combination of horror, disbelief and amusement marching across his face. He nodded toward a shrieking woman barreling toward Maggie. “Friend of yours?”
The woman had picked up speed. Her arms swung wildly as she ran, her round face, purple from exertion, bounced like a bobber tethered to a large, overly caffeinated fish. She was in mid-conversation with herself when she reached them.
She stopped in front of Maggie and put a scant inch or two between them. The woman stared at Maggie, her thin mouth disappearing into a lopsided grimace. She reached up and touched the crest on Maggie’s shirt. She scraped the embroidery with a dirt-encrusted fingernail, then peered into Maggie’s face. “I’m trying very hard not to say the secrets,” she whispered, her eyes pleading. “But when I sleep, they grow in my hair and look at my brain.”
Maggie knew she should draw away, extricate herself from the strange woman and her even stranger words. But a part of her was fascinated.
Maggie put the woman at sixty, maybe sixty-five. But it was hard to be sure. Her skin was embroidered by wrinkles as sharp as knife pleats, the fat pockets beneath her cheeks doing little to buttress her sagging skin. Her hair was long, thin enough to expose an ashen cranium. But it was surprisingly tidy. Neatly combed despite the grease and dirt that bound each strand. Remnants of pride and perhaps long-buried beauty.
The woman extended a fat finger capped by a jagged nail from her other hand and tapped Maggie’s sternum. “You bear the mark. I’ve seen it before on those who transform the living into the immortal and the heretics into demons.”
The woman drew her ruined clothes around her short, squat frame and pulled on Maggie’s shirt to bring her face even closer to Maggie’s. A cloudy eye rolled in its socket before stopping to focus on Maggie’s chin. The other eye was sharp with inquisitive intelligence. “I can
’t tell if you’re seraphim or human. But no matter. I’m ready for the final Trials.” She cocked her head coquettishly. “You’ll see.” She drew herself up and pointed to her chest. “Charlene is strong. Charlene is obedient.” She winked at Maggie. “Charlene won’t end up breathless like the others.”
She flicked her finger at Maggie’s collar, bumping her in the neck. Then the woman half-ran, half-scampered away, her bent form melting into the shrubbery that surrounded the cemetery.
“She seems nice,” Constantine said.
Chapter 19
Constantine pulled up in front of Maggie’s apartment and they got out of the Datsun. Constantine stretched. “Well, thanks for an interesting morning.”
“I’m nothing if not a magnet for interesting.”
They walked up the front stairs to Maggie’s apartment house. Desiccated daisies languished in the flower beds. Blades of grass browned beneath sprinkler tractors that looked like they should be up on blocks.
“What do you think that was all about?” Constantine asked.
“The homeless woman? I have no idea, other than I possibly bear the mark of the beast.”
He nodded sagely. “That’s always been a suspicion of mine. But you did find out that Carson knew Elsa, so that’s something.” Constantine wrapped Maggie in his strong, warm arms. “You want to hang out tonight? Watch The Jerk, maybe get chili from a pump at 7-Eleven?”
Maggie smiled. “Can’t. I’ve got a mile-long list of work catch-up, not to mention some sleep catch-up.”
“Just as well. I need to finish unpacking in my new tenement, I mean apartment. It’s quite lovely. Very few rats. And lots of room for my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles collection.” Constantine bounded back down the stairs and opened the driver’s door. “You sure you’re okay? You’re not worried about more creepy texts? Or…” He let the other terrible possibilities—more reminders, more videos, someone following her—die on his lips.
Maggie forced a smile. “I’m fine. Really.” For a moment, she hoped he didn’t know her as well as he did, that he would buy her false bravery.
Protocol Page 13