The Grift

by Debra Ginsberg

  “Gideon,” she screamed. “Gideon!”

  Her breath was coming short as she turned off the highway to the street that would take her to her office. Her feet were bleeding. And now she could smell the smoke. She was too late, too late. Of course, the dreams were right. The dreams would always be right. It was she who hadn’t known how to read them.

  And now she was there and the wail of sirens was in her ears. The sky was lit with sparks and leaping flames. She kept walking until someone grabbed her arm, a firefighter who looked at her as if she was insane.

  “Ma’am, stay back! You can’t go there. Stay back!”

  Marina turned to the man and looked up at his face. Was it the reflection of the fire that made his skin seem so red?

  “It’s too late,” she whispered. And then everything went black.

  Chapter 26

  “When are you coming home, Dad?”

  Eddie cleared his throat and ran his hand through his unkempt hair. He’d spent the night on his office couch again and he felt like crap. He was way too old for this shit.

  “I’m going to see you on Saturday, buddy, remember?” He tried to keep his voice light, hoping he exuded the kind of calm confidence he wasn’t even close to feeling. Good thing his son couldn’t see him through the phone.

  “That’s not what I mean,” Jake said. “When are you coming home?”

  Eddie paused, that horrendous Harry Chapin song about the dad who’s never home running through his head. He decided just to be straight up with the kid. “Honestly, Jake, I’m not sure.”

  “Why not, Dad?”

  Eddie wanted to say, “Because your mother won’t let me,” but repressed the urge. This conversation was a minefield and so damn difficult to navigate. Be honest with the kid and risk wounding him now, hedge around the truth and risk wounding him later. And God forbid he trash the mother—that never worked. It didn’t matter that Jake was a teenager; he was still miles away from understanding his parents’ screwed-up relationship.

  “Jake, it’s complicated, okay? Your mother and I—”

  “Are you and Mom getting a divorce?”

  “No. Why, is that what she said?”

  “I didn’t ask her. I’m asking you. I have a right to know how my life is going to be affected by this thing.”

  Eddie sighed into the phone. “Jake, can you put your brother on the phone? I’ll talk to you about this later.”

  “But Dad—”

  “Jake, put Kyle on the phone.”

  “Whatever.”

  Eddie heard the phone being dropped on the counter and Jake calling for Kyle. In the distance, he heard Tina shouting at both of them to hurry up.

  “Hey, Dad, I gotta go,” Kyle breathed into the phone when he finally picked it up. Eddie, tired of feeling so guilty, was almost relieved when the conversation was over in a matter of seconds. It was quiet now, but people were going to start showing up for work within the hour. His office smelled like old coffee and body odor. He needed a shower, breakfast and a change of venue, but he suspected he was only going to manage one of the three this morning.

  As Eddie straightened up his office and rummaged around his gym bag for something clean to wear, he realized it had taken him almost fifty years to discover that he was a fundamentally limited person. He didn’t have the kind of style or panache that other men used to get through these kinds of things. Plus, he just couldn’t shut stuff out of his mind when it started pressing through. That was the worst part.

  The day after Tina told him she wanted to separate, he’d gone out and bought her roses—nice, long-stemmed pink ones, because red was such a cliché. He had the florist put them in a big vase with plenty of fern or baby’s breath or whatever, and he presented them without a card because he didn’t want to admit defeat coming in. Begging was not sexy. Women claimed they wanted it, but when a man groveled it turned them right off.

  When Tina saw the roses, her mouth flattened into a tight little line and she crossed her arms across her breasts as if to protect them. “You really shouldn’t have done that, Eddie,” she said. Eddie gave her an it’s-the-least-I-could-do shrug and started to smile, but she killed it instantly with “No, I mean you shouldn’t have spent the money. These look expensive, and it doesn’t change anything.”

  And that was it—the roses were the extent of Eddie’s creativity when it came to apologizing. When that failed, he did what she wanted and just moved out. He’d been crashing around North County ever since, sometimes sleeping in his office, sometimes in a motel, and, on one unfortunate occasion, with an employee who had a week’s worth of rotting food in his sink and a vicious Doberman named Ellie May, of all things. He wasn’t going to commute from Santee every day, not with gas prices the way they were and not if he couldn’t sleep in his own damn bed. Cassie lived up here, of course, and he was sure she would have taken him in in a hot minute, but there was no way—not after what she’d put him through.

  “Good news,” she’d told him right after all hell had broken loose with Tina. “It was a false alarm; I’m not pregnant.” Yeah, no kidding. It was amazing how fast things could turn to shit, Eddie thought. It hadn’t been too long ago that he’d found Cassie smoking hot and now the thought of her made him nauseous. It was like Shampoo, that movie he’d seen when he was eighteen. Warren Beatty at his prime, playing a Don Juan hairdresser who screwed all his female clients. He had some great lines in that movie, but the one that had stuck with Eddie had to do with how women were just irresistible. They looked good, they smelled good, and there it was. What was a man to do? This reflected Eddie’s basic philosophy in a very real way. But look where it all landed.

  Eddie’s office was as tidied up as it was going to get. He couldn’t stand the sight of it any longer and decided that he needed some semipermanent digs until Tina let him move back in, because Tina had to let him move back in—he couldn’t even begin to imagine his future if she didn’t. Although he couldn’t have found words to describe it even if he’d been able to admit it, Eddie was lost without his wife. He’d never stopped loving Tina, not for a minute. He’d always been so clear about that, with her, with the other women, with himself above all. None of his affairs had chipped off even a tiny piece of the big love he reserved for her. Tina had always gotten from him everything he was capable of giving her. Now, he wouldn’t say, like some men did, that the other women “meant nothing.” Sex meant something, even if what it meant wasn’t always love. But he’d never planned to leave his wife—never. In Eddie’s mind, this unchanging emotional commitment should have counterbalanced the consequences of his actions. In fact, Eddie believed what was happening to him now was unfair and unjust. Yes, of course, he understood why Tina was so angry and hurt, but the thing of it was, if she’d never been told, she never would have picked up on it—he was that good about holding up his end of their marital bargain. He honestly believed that the only thing he’d done wrong where Tina was concerned was to lose control and trash the kitchen. She hadn’t deserved that.

  The memory of all that broken crockery made Eddie think about Marina, the reason he’d gone ballistic that day, and he bowed his head as the spidery legs of guilt and shame crept up his back. He had no idea why he’d thought it was Marina who’d ratted him out to Tina. Maybe because Marina was the only one he hadn’t slept with, although he admitted that didn’t make much sense. They had all seemed like a bunch of goddamned witches. He’d worked so hard his whole life and to see everything he’d gained go up in smoke because of some bitch with a grudge…well, he’d snapped—and badly at that. It had actually scared him that he was capable of so much rage. He regretted it later, of course. He hadn’t really wanted to hurt Marina—he was not that kind of guy. But—and this was where his shame was greatest—he had wanted her to suffer. And she had suffered. He had no doubt of that now.

  Cassie, on the other hand…When he finally calmed down, Eddie figured out that it had to have been Cassie who’d made the phone call to Tina. Not tha
t she’d ever admit it and not that he had any way to prove it—just one reason why he hadn’t said anything to Cassie about his wife kicking him out. He hadn’t told Madeline, either, come to think of it. Now, there was one twisted chick.

  Eddie gathered his wallet and keys and headed out, thoughts of Madeline making pinpricks in his conscience. He hadn’t for a minute suspected that she’d been the one who called—no reason for it. He and Madeline had some kind of hot, dirty Last Tango in Paris thing going on that was totally self-contained, neither one of them needing more or less than what they were getting. All of which made it even stranger that it had gone stone cold so suddenly. Maybe Madeline had gotten scared that her husband would find out. From the little she’d told him, he sensed that the guy was a pretty volatile dude.

  Eddie drove mindlessly, pointing his truck toward the Coast Highway. Within a few minutes he was at the little café across the street from Marina’s office. He forced his eyes to take it in. It looked terrible still—a blackened-out hole in the middle of the building, like an empty eye socket. The fire had burned hot and fast, down to the metal. The news had made the local papers for a week running, the “psychic couldn’t see it coming” angle pretty much irresistible for the press, but then it had died out. He’d watched and listened carefully but hadn’t heard or seen anything about the fire for weeks—except, of course, from Madeline.

  Madeline’s creepy attachment to Marina really unsettled him. At least he had the excuse of being sexually attracted to the psychic. What was Madeline’s deal? She’d called him (something she almost never did—they made their arrangements for “next time” in person) after the fire, questioning and probing in a way he found very disturbing. Did he think it was arson or an accident? she’d asked him. Did the cops know who’d set the fire? What did he think? Had he spoken to Marina?

  “What’s with all the questions?” Eddie had asked her. He got a cold feeling in his gut, like she was trying to get a confession out of him or something. He wondered, not for the first time, how much Madeline knew about his relationship with Marina, if Marina had said anything about his hanging around and showing up without an appointment. He asked her again why she was grilling him, but Madeline got quiet and mumbled something he couldn’t quite hear. He waited a moment and then said, “Do you want to—”

  “No.” She’d cut him off. “Not today. I can’t. I’ll call you.” But she hadn’t—not since then. Probably just as well—Eddie had a heap of shit descend on him soon after, so he wouldn’t have been able to figure out her behavior anyway.

  You could still smell that sick smoke odor from across the street. He felt bad—really bad—for Marina now. Funny how your head could change just like that, he thought. Eddie decided to pay her a visit—just to see if she was okay, nothing more. He polished off a quick muffin and coffee (no more big breakfasts at Darling’s for him; he had to watch every cent now), called work to say that he would be in a little late and followed the Coast Highway into Cardiff. It was a short drive, during which Eddie wondered more than once if this was not an incredibly stupid thing to do. What if she wasn’t thrilled to see him? Lord knows she never had been before, Eddie thought, ignoring a twist of resentment. And what if she wanted to know how he knew where she lived? It wasn’t as if he could just come out and tell her that he’d followed her home, even if he had only done it once or twice. He started formulating some lies and hoped she’d buy one of them if it came to that. On impulse, right before he turned left on Chesterfield to head up into the hills, Eddie stopped at a flower stand and purchased a bunch of fragrant but anemic-looking roses. He hoped she’d take it from where it came. His sympathy (now, anyway) was genuine.

  She opened the door before he could even knock, and Eddie was shocked by what he saw. She still had that crazy beauty, but she looked worked. The phrase rode hard and put away wet danced through Eddie’s mind. She’d gained some weight around the middle, but her face looked thin and pale, and there was something haunted about her eyes. Eddie suddenly realized that all of his physical attraction to Marina was gone, replaced by something less visceral but equally powerful—something that pulled him right inside her door.

  He stood there way too long, roses in his hand, unable to offer them or even speak while she stared blankly at some unknown point over his right shoulder. His mouth was dry and he was starting to feel very uneasy.

  “You broke the fish plate. She loved that plate,” Marina said, and Eddie nearly jumped out of his skin. In his rage that afternoon in the kitchen, he’d picked up the huge, unwieldy fish-shaped ceramic plate that he’d always hated and hurled it against the wall, where it smashed into splinters so small that Tina would be sweeping them up for months.

  “How do you know that?” Eddie asked.

  “You might have been able to talk to her if it hadn’t been for that plate,” Marina answered. “It really hurt her.”

  “Did you talk to her? Did you?” But even as Eddie asked the question, the sound of fear creeping into his voice, he knew that Marina was seeing him smash that plate. He couldn’t explain how he knew this, but there was something about the look on her face, something about the slow, steady way she was speaking—as if she was commenting on a movie she was watching.

  “There’s a complaint where you work,” she said. “And they know you’ve been sleeping there. They’re sending someone down from corporate. You should find somewhere else to stay. You can’t afford to lose your job, especially now…” Marina stared at him hard, her eyebrows knitting together as if she was trying to work out a complicated math problem. Eddie was thoroughly spooked. He’d never believed that Marina was a real psychic or that such a thing even existed. Now he wasn’t so sure.

  “You’re having a baby,” Marina said, a little lilt on the end of her words like she was surprised.

  “What are you talking about? You mean I have a kid I don’t know about? What are you saying?”

  “No, she hasn’t been born yet. But her mother…her mother doesn’t want you to know.”

  “It can’t be,” Eddie said. “Tina had her tubes tied after our second kid.”

  “Your wife is not pregnant, Eddie.”

  “Fucking Cassie,” Eddie swore. “That bitch.”

  Marina looked over his shoulder again, and then back at him. “Cassie can’t have children,” she said. “She doesn’t know it yet and she’s going to use that trick again, but it’s never going to work.”

  “So…?”

  “So,” Marina said, and then it all became clear to Eddie: the sudden cooldown, the weird phone call. He never should have come here, never. He thrust his roses at Marina, the paper covering now damp and tearing from his sweaty hands, and she looked at them as if seeing them for the first time. She looked upset, like she was going to hyperventilate. “Don’t go there, Eddie. Please. You’re going to get hurt. Please listen to me.”

  “I don’t know what you mean. Go where?”

  “Listen, this is important. Does your wife have a friend with…with a ruby ring? Do you know?”

  That was it. He was rattled way beyond what he could take. “I’m sorry, Marina, I have to go. I’m sorry.”

  “Eddie, please…”

  He gave her a last quick look and let himself out. Shit, what a mistake it had been to come over here, Eddie thought. Just one of so many he’d made.

  Chapter 27

  Cooper was tired in every way. His heavy new body and erratic sleep schedule had drained him physically, and his overworked brain was so exhausted that he could barely calculate change for a dollar. But he was mostly just tired of feeling bad about everything. His own wretchedness had become such a relentless emotional grind that he was almost bored by it. It had been almost impossible for him to drag his ass out of bed this morning and even more difficult to make himself look presentable (since, having left hot in the dust a long time ago, presentable was the best he could manage these days), but he’d made the effort because today—well, today could be the beginning of a ma
jor turnaround. His eminence, Max, had requested an audience at his office and Cooper was on his way to meet with him.

  San Diego was experiencing an unseasonable heat wave and Cooper had to start shedding layers as soon as he walked outside, which was too bad because tight clothing had not been kind to him lately. His T-shirt was already chafing and he worried about showing up with dark sweat circles under his armpits. It had to be at least eighty degrees outside and it wasn’t even lunchtime yet. What the hell—this was supposed to be May Gray time, followed by June Gloom. There would probably be a term to describe bad weather in the summer, too, if they could come up with something that rhymed with July—July Surprise? July Good-bye? At any rate, it wasn’t supposed to be this hot. He turned on the radio, half expecting to hear news that Earth had spun out of its orbit and was hurtling toward the sun. But instead of a weather report, 102.1 FM was playing “Rehab,” that song by Amy Winehouse. They were trying to make her go to rehab, but she wasn’t going to go. Cooper appreciated the sentiment.

  Of course, nobody was actively trying to get him into rehab, although he figured that was coming soon. His father was incredibly tolerant, but there were limits to the man’s patience. Cooper couldn’t remember the last time he’d put in a full day’s work at his father’s office. And between the pills, the Starbucks and the junk food, he’d put on about twenty pounds and his skin had gone to shit. Most of the time, he looked and dressed like he lived on the street. To say he had let himself go didn’t even begin to cover it. But the reason he hadn’t checked himself into any one of the numerous rehab facilities around here had less to do with a resistance to give up his bad habits and more to do with a desire to punish himself. At first, he admitted, it was about escape, and he’d always been a bit of a partier anyway, but now it was about guilt.

  Aside from the little things (leaving his father in the lurch, shutting out his well-meaning friends, not returning his mother’s phone calls—crap, it was already May; had he missed Mother’s Day?), Cooper’s deep sources of guilt were gnawing away at him. To begin with, he never should have made those anonymous phone calls to Marina. Besides being just plain nasty, that had been a very dangerous thing to do. His sketchy behavior had already been documented by at least one person at that point, and who knew if Max had gone to the cops (although with Max’s pathological desire to remain low-profile, Cooper doubted it). Now, with the fire…well, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch for certain people to start questioning whether he had anything to do with it.