Trap Door

by Sarah Graves

  The place was decorated with movie posters from the forties and fifties, big living trees in tubs, and kitschy ceramic items: slinky panther planters, Smokey the Bear cookie jars, Uncle Sam Wants You mugs. In one corner stood a man-sized gorilla doll with a Red Sox cap on its head.

  Ann received her order and looked around for me, hesitating for a moment as if she’d have preferred some other table. But she came over with her food: green salad, no dressing, a grapefruit soda. While she tucked into it hungrily, I asked a passing waiter to put it all on my check.

  “Good salad?” I asked. She nodded, chewing. And after a sip of soda:

  “Yeah. The sandwiches and cake at the memorial were pretty to look at. But my body’s screaming for vitamins.”

  Mine was screaming to be stretched on a beach somewhere, no worries allowed; on my way here I’d detoured past Sam’s house, found it locked and the shades drawn, a bunch of mail uncollected from the box.

  “Not that grapefruit soda’s going to supply any,” she added with a guilty grin. “But I love the stuff.”

  Outside Sam’s place the Fiat sat scratched and mud-streaked, looking as if it hadn’t been moved in a while, windshield fogged from the inside.

  “And a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine, et cetera,” Ann concluded, forking up more greenery.

  The car not having been moved was good, though, under the circumstances. Probably he was still out for the count following yesterday’s binge, and after what had nearly happened to me on Sullivan Street, that was fine. I especially didn’t want him driving until I’d had a chance to talk to him.

  “So what’s a hipster, anyway?” I asked Ann, not wanting to go at her too directly right off the bat.

  She shook her head. “Who knows? Twenty-to-thirtyish, urban, with a certain…um, shared sensibility. Certain clubs, certain music…anti-fashion clothes, usually.” She indicated her own garb, peered at me through the horn-rims.

  “Overly self-aware, for sure,” she went on. “But the bottom line is that if you’re a hipster you can do pretty much whatever the rest of the world does, as long as you just kind of stay a little emotionally separated from doing it while you’re doing it.”

  She tipped her head thoughtfully. “Like, these friends of mine were in one of those chain-restaurant steak houses the other week. The kind that once you’re inside, you could be anywhere?”

  I nodded to show I understood. We didn’t have much of that kind of thing in downeast Maine; there wasn’t enough population density here to make it profitable. When Ellie and I went to Bangor for shopping or whatever, we ate at an Olive Garden or an Outback Steakhouse just for the novelty value.

  “So they had steaks there,” Ann went on. “And the food was fine. I mean it has to be, right? That’s the whole idea. But to them, all they talked about was what it meant to the culture, these, like, identical feeding troughs all over the country, all exactly alike.” She devoured a pepper strip. “But when hipsters get old enough to be really running things, in like twenty years? Then look out. They think they’re all about the individual, but what that really means is figuring out how to sell stuff that way.”

  A chunk of pickled artichoke heart followed the pepper strip. “Pretty soon there’ll be a microchip under your skin, put there at birth, it knows what kind of TV you want to watch. Not what you say you do, but what you really do, deep down. Knows,” she added, “what commercials to put on.”

  “Knows your secrets,” I said, smiling as she shook her head at herself.

  “Sorry,” she said ruefully. “I tend to go off on tangents.”

  I didn’t think so. More like a nice try at conversational misdirection, followed by the confession of a small personal flaw to make it seem as if the change of subject wasn’t deliberate. I turned the talk back to my original purpose.

  “Is that how you met Jen? In a club?” Because otherwise the pair of young women seemed to have come from different worlds.

  “Mm-hmm,” she replied reluctantly. Ann still didn’t want to talk about her friend; she’d only agreed to meet me here because she’d realized that I would be persistent.

  “She’d come down to the city on weekends from that fancy prep school she went to, we’d see each other around at different places,” she recalled. “Got to be pals after a while. Jen’s dad doesn’t know about that, though, her partying in town. Thought she sat in the dorm on weekends, I guess, studying and painting her toenails.”

  Uh-huh. Sure he did. “Your music pay the bills?” I asked. I could play the game, too: back off, circle around, come back again a little later. “Because if what I’ve heard about that is right, it doesn’t usually.”

  My chair rocked unsteadily as Ann nodded, chewing a mouthful of baby spinach. “You heard correct. I play with a group, a lot of gigs in lower Manhattan. You know, bars, basement social clubs, that kind of venue. Mostly downtown. At the start it was just open mikes; now they pay us. Well,” she amended, “usually they do. More than they used to. But it’s still not very much money.”

  I bent down to examine the wooden chair legs. The crosspiece between the front two ones had popped out of its hole, and when I put it back in again it still moved loosely.

  “What do your folks think about that?” I asked, sitting up. “I mean the not much money. And…the lifestyle. I mean, it can be kind of tough downtown late at night.”

  Her gaze met mine. “They think I’m a big girl and I can take care of myself,” she replied, her voice briefly steely. I got the sense that there had been a certain amount of family controversy associated with her independence.

  And now it was over because she’d won, which didn’t surprise me. “But no big disasters have happened to me,” she went on, “so they know now I’m doing all right.”

  Again that sense of an obstacle overcome, something battled if not into submission then at least to a truce. “They’re in Virginia, where I grew up. My parents are, that is. My dad’s retired from government work,” she added before I could ask. “Mom too.”

  Again nicely done; throw in extra, unasked-for information. Makes you seem forthcoming. “You go to school there?” I asked casually. “College or whatever, maybe music school? In Virginia?”

  But even as I spoke I knew I was going too fast. Something new moved in her eyes at the flurry of questions, a flicker of shadow she wasn’t quick enough to hide.

  Some little item of her past that she didn’t want to talk about, I guessed, thinking Join the club. Her cell phone’s ringer thweeped, saving her from having to answer.

  She checked it, flipped it shut. “Jen keeping tabs on me,” she joked. “She makes a friend, she gives ’em a cell phone, that way she’s never out of touch.”

  That way they’re never out of her control, more like, I thought.

  “Anyway, I’ve got a good place I live in with some other people,” Ann added after another sip of soda. “Across the bridge in Williamsburg. They’re cool, my roommates. Graphics designers, bloggers…you know the type.”

  I didn’t. Except for the crew of young regulars at the Bayside, in Eastport that kind of intensely media-and-information-rich life might as well have been happening on the moon.

  But now wasn’t the time to say that, either. “Was that how she kept in touch with Cory?” I asked. “Gave him a cell phone?” I was pretty sure he hadn’t had one on him in Henderson’s barn. Not on his belt or in his pants pockets, anyway.

  A sudden flashback memory of the white exposed skin between the dead youth’s sagging waistband and the hem of his rucked-up shirt made me wince; I banished it fast. “Jen gave him a cell phone?” I repeated.

  Each of the tables held a cut-glass bowl of sugar and sweetener packets, salt and pepper shakers, and a cup of toothpicks. Ann ate a slice of tomato before answering.

  “Yup. Don’t know where it is now, though. Maybe he lost it.” A slice of raw mushroom eluded her fork. She went after it, then popped it into her mouth. “So it’s not like I’m just hanging out,” she r
eturned to her own story when she’d swallowed the vegetable. “I hustle like mad when I’m in the city, do a lot of stuff for the band. Stuff that if you’re not a musician yourself you don’t realize needs doing.”

  She tipped her head. “And lately a little acting in some off-off-Broadway productions when I have time, not that I have much. And not that anything’s going to come of it, I know that. You think music’s a tough business, try acting. You might just as well get in the cage with the lions.”

  I nodded, then bent to wiggle the chair’s crosspiece once more. It wasn’t broken, just needed regluing.

  To do that you take the crosspiece out, tap a dowel plug in, drill the plug so the crosspiece end fits tightly into the new hole, then coat the hole and crosspiece with glue before tapping the crosspiece’s end back in a final time.

  But I didn’t have a dowel plug. Or a drill. “Mostly it’s the music business, promotion and lining up gigs,” Ann told me. “Sit in with other groups for money when I can. Most of all try to get session work. That’s what I want: a session career.”

  I rummaged in my bag, found the bottle of white glue I kept with me for situations like this. I had a little mending kit in there too, with buttons, needles, and baby spools of thread.

  But it was the white glue I used most. “That’s when studios hire you to play on someone else’s recording,” Ann explained. “As a backup musician. No luck there yet, but I keep pounding at it.”

  She smiled at her own joke as I nodded toward the elaborate drum kit. “That all yours?”

  It was a lot of expensive stuff for a struggling musician. I couldn’t help wondering how she’d afforded it, unless maybe her parents had bought it. Depending on where and how long they’d worked, a couple of retired government employees could be sitting fairly pretty in the financial resources department or teetering at the edge of penury.

  “Uh-huh. It’s mine, all right.” Ann rolled her eyes. “Only thing I’m in real debt for. But you’ve got to have your kit if you want to work, so I bit the bullet.”

  Parents cosigned the loan, then, maybe. And even with roommates, the part of Brooklyn she’d mentioned wasn’t cheap. I filed the thoughts away for future consideration.

  She’d finished her salad and most of the grapefruit soda. “And it is a lot of work,” she declared. “But then when I’m with Jen, say on a vacation in Florida or here, I live the lush life, you know? So it’s not so bad.”

  Sure, and so what if her version of luxury was picking up crumbs Jen dropped for her? It didn’t sound sustainable for the long term but it made a nice change from sharing an apartment with a bunch of near-strangers, I supposed, even if her home was in the too-cool-for-school section of the city.

  And she’d answered at least part of my question about money. “Jen pays your way?” I asked casually. “When you travel, or hang out with her here…?”

  Because I doubted a couple of sensible retired government employees would pick up the tab for much of that, sitting pretty or not. Ann confirmed my idea.

  “Sure, Jen’s the money-honey one of us. Let’s face it, she’s rich and I’m poor,” she added with a candor I found refreshing; in general I’d discovered that if you want people to lie to you, just ask them about their finances.

  “If she wants me around, she doesn’t have a whole lot of choice. She knows I sure don’t have the cash. You know the old joke about how to get a drummer off your doorstep, don’t you?”

  I did, but before I could say so she supplied the old punch line. “Pay for the pizza.”

  She leaned curiously over the edge of the table. “What’re you doing down there, anyway?”

  By then I was kneeling on the floor; fortunately, the Bayside was so clean I could’ve eaten Ann’s salad off it if I’d wanted to. “Fixing this broken chair. Hand me a couple of those toothpicks from the jar on the table, will you?”

  I couldn’t get the crosspiece out without disassembling the chair entirely, so instead I coated the end of one of the wooden toothpicks she handed me with glue, then shoved it into the gap that made the crosspiece so loose.

  “Cool,” Ann commented. I shoved another one in, then several more, forcing the final few tightly into the gap with the blade of my Swiss Army knife. Now when I tried wiggling the crosspiece it didn’t move at all.

  “There,” I said, setting the old chair aside in favor of one that hadn’t recently been repaired by an amateur using white glue and toothpicks. It would be fine when it had dried, though; from behind the counter the Bayside’s owner telegraphed thanks and finger-signed the letters IOU.

  Good enough; a waitress went by with brownies on a tray, so I snagged her and got one. “What was the deal between Jen and Cory, anyway?” I asked Ann.

  Her answering look was pert. “I told you, he thought she was hot. Well, lots of guys do, of course. But he was…”

  She fluttered her fingers in the air to mime how infatuated Cory was. “And she liked that, she liked it that he’d drop anything to come when she called and do anything she said. As for what they did when he did show up—she’s a girl, he was a guy. What do you think the deal was?”

  The familiar growl of a sports car interrupted as through the Bayside’s wide front window we watched Jen speed by in a silver Alfa Romeo convertible. Nice wheels; with her face turned up to the sun and a pair of Ray-Bans on, she looked carefree and rich as sin, a ruby red scarf streaming out behind her.

  “I keep telling her she’ll pull an Isadora Duncan with that scarf one of these days,” Ann remarked, frowning.

  The dancer and free spirit from the twenties who’d died suddenly when her own trademark trailing scarf got wrapped around a wheel of her car…the spiky-haired, multiply pierced percussionist sitting across from me was turning out to be a smart cookie.

  Meanwhile, though, the scarf-around-the-neck mental picture was a little too close to the recent scene at Henderson’s barn for my comfort. I shivered; Ann caught me at it and understood.

  “Yeah, it was awful about Cory, wasn’t it?” she asked quietly. “But it honestly wasn’t Jen’s fault. She just wants to have fun. On her way to college, why would she be in the market for a big, heavy-duty relationship?”

  “Which was what Cory wanted?” The car’s guttural growl faded into the distance. Around us the hum of conversation blended with the varying rings of cell phones—pop, hip-hop, the occasional syrupy dirge of Pachelbel’s Canon in D.

  “I guess,” Ann replied. “It’s probably the reason why she couldn’t get rid of him even after she testified against him in court. Most guys with any brains would get discouraged by that, wouldn’t you think?”

  “Wasn’t she out of his league anyway, though? A carpenter’s helper and the rich girl from the big house on the hill…”

  I let my voice draw the conclusion Cory Trow would have hated above all else: not good enough.

  Ann agreed reluctantly. “You want my opinion, he wasn’t even okay for laughs. He was the type who’s always out for what he can get. But that’s another thing about Jen, that’s not the way she picks her friends. I mean whether they have money.”

  Why would she, since she obviously had enough to go around? And she enjoyed the contrast, maybe, especially with herself at the rich end of it. “Admirable,” I said drily.

  Ann bridled at the implied criticism. “Hey, it’s not like Jen chased Cory, you know. Not that she never did that, if she got interested in a guy.” So I’d heard. “But he was the one who started pestering her back when he was working there,” Ann finished.

  Flowers don’t chase bees, either. But the bees can’t help homing in, especially if the flowers make a point of waving themselves under the bees’ noses.

  “The attention was flattering at first, right?” I asked. “But Cory didn’t understand that it was just all fun and games with her. To him maybe it was something more. So when she got bored and was ready to move on, he wouldn’t let go?”

  “Something like that,” Ann conceded. “I mean it�
��s not as if she’s perfect or anything. If a tree falls in the woods and Jen’s not there to hear it, it definitely doesn’t make a sound as far as she’s concerned.”

  That matched my own first impression of her: self-absorbed to the max. Jen Henderson wouldn’t have just dropped Cory Trow; she’d have forgotten all about him two minutes later. If she’d really dropped him, that is, not just told everyone she had.

  Ann seemed about to go on but instead a listening expression came onto her face. “What’s the matter?” I asked, but she waved me silent.

  Then I heard it, too, that unmistakable low growl. The sports car was coming back. For the first time Ann looked nervous; to cover it she reached out and took a chunk of my brownie, popped it into her mouth.

  “And then it turns out that he’s married with a kid. Can you believe it? Maybe from an older guy you’d expect that, but what a jerk,” she said, swallowing.

  “When did Jen find out?” The rest of the brownie lay on the plate between us; I broke it and handed Ann half.

  “Not until yesterday,” she replied, cutting this piece with a fork and eating it carefully, in tiny sections.

  I demolished mine in two bites as the car flew past again outside. Jen was buzzing us, I realized; angry that Ann hadn’t answered her cell phone call and knowing she was in here from the bike parked outside.

  Ann’s cell rang again; she shut it off without looking at it. “The story started going around after we found out he was dead. Although nobody’s seen her. The wife, I mean, or this alleged baby, so I can’t say I’m sure I believe it.”

  “What’s Jennifer’s father do?” I asked casually. I wanted to ask her about the alarm systems at Henderson’s place, as well, along with a few other things.

  But at my question, Ann’s hand jerked abruptly, knocking over the salt shaker. She pinched up some of the spilled crystals and tossed them over her shoulder.

  “Old habit,” she said with a half-laugh of embarrassment, seeing me notice the superstitious gesture. Suddenly a couple of other things swam into focus: the tiny gold pendant on a gold chain around her neck was a four-leaf clover. And the fuzzy object dangling from a key chain on her cell phone case was a rabbit’s foot.