Dooley Takes the Fall

by Norah McClintock

  “What are you doing here?” she said. He couldn’t believe how hard her eyes were, like iced pebbles. “You didn’t even know my brother.”

  What was she so mad about?

  “Rhodes invited me,” he said. “Look, I was going to call you.”

  “Right,” she said, like she didn’t believe that for a minute, like he was one of those guys, the kind that slept with girls (Jesus, he wished he could sleep with her) but never called them afterwards, and then bumped into them, say, at a party.

  “You know,” he said. “About the hypnosis thing.”

  “You’re not going to do it, right?” she said, snapping the words at him. What was going on? Why was she so pissed off? “I talked to that homicide cop again, the one who they called when Mark… when he died.” Her eyes were burning into him. “When I told him I’d talked to you about getting hypnotized, he told me about you.”

  Oh.

  “I bet some people think you’re pretty cool,” she said.

  It was true. A certain kind of person found him very cool. A certain kind of girl, too.

  “Well, I don’t,” she said, confirming what Dooley had already figured out. “Not even remotely. I think what you did is despicable.”

  Geeze, the cop told her that?

  “So you don’t want to help me, fine, don’t help me. Just stay away from me, okay? Stay away from me.” Tears glistened in her eyes, but they weren’t sad tears. No way. They were mad tears, like what she really wanted to do was hit him. She looked hard at him for a minute longer. Then she spun around and walked back to Rhodes, who frowned as he listened to whatever she was saying and slipped an arm around her. That’s when Dooley walked through a second door.

  He looked at the champagne in his hand and at the big photograph of Mark Everley up there on the easel. What the hell? Here’s to you, asshole. He downed the whole glass in one long swallow and turned to leave, but there was Bracey, refilling glasses again. Refilling Dooley’s glass.

  Dr. Calvin: Say you find yourself in a situation where your peers are drinking or doing drugs. What do you do, Ryan?

  Dooley: Join the fuck in.

  Dr. Calvin: Let me rephrase that, Ryan. What should you do?

  Dooley: Why is it a guy’s always supposed to do what he should do? Why can’t he once in a while do whatever the hell he wants to do?

  He knocked back the second glass of champagne and headed for the door. At least, he started to head for the door, but then he detoured, weaving through people until he reached the other side of the room where Beth was standing, her head bowed a little, saying something in a soft voice to Rhodes, who was looking at her, all blue eyes and sympathy.

  “Hey,” Dooley said. Rhodes looked at him, but Beth didn’t. Dooley poked her in the arm. “Hey,” he said, angry now. “You think you know me, is that it? You really think you know me?”

  “Hey, Dooley, are you okay?” Rhodes said.

  Beth looked at him. What he saw in her eyes was what he used to see in the mirror some mornings.

  “You don’t know me,” he said. “You don’t know anything about me.”

  A hand fell lightly on his shoulder. It was Rhodes. He steered Dooley gently but firmly away from Beth.

  “You don’t know me,” Dooley yelled over his shoulder at her. He was thinking maybe he should have eaten something because, boy, that champagne had gone right to his head.

  “Hey, take it easy,” Rhodes said, his voice soft and soothing. “Come over here.” He led Dooley to the bar and sat him down. Dooley saw Beth across the room. A couple of girls were pressed in around her, talking to her, looking like they were comforting her. “Hey, how about something to take the edge off?”

  Dooley said no. He said he had to go. Across the room Beth had turned her back to him. So what? What did he care? The only thing he knew for sure about her, other than she was pretty, was that her brother was an asshole. Maybe she was one, too. Maybe behind those coffee-colored eyes, she was some kind of bitch. She heard a cop tell it and she thought she knew everything about him. Maybe she was telling all those girls, “Hey, that guy Dooley over there, what a loser. You know what he did?” Well, so what if she was?

  Rhodes was handing him a glass. Coke. With a kick.

  He took it but thought he should go home.

  “Bracey’s looking for someone to play,” Rhodes said. “He’s a good match for you, Dooley. Come on, you’re not going to run off because of that, are you? She’s just upset. She loved her brother. You know how that is.”

  Dooley didn’t know.

  Rhodes steered him to the pool table, where Bracey was shooting by himself. A girl wandered over. It was the same stick-thin girl Landers had dragged from the room earlier. Rhodes introduced her: Megan.

  “Hi,” Megan said. She had one of those little-girl voices that Dooley couldn’t decide, was it natural or was it put on? “I’ll keep score,” she said. Dooley couldn’t help staring at her skirt. It didn’t cover much. She had big lips that were bright red. Her eyes were spacey.

  “You break,” Bracey said.

  Dooley set down his glass and picked up a pool cue. It turned out to be a long game, and Bracey turned out to be a funny guy, the one-liners spinning out of him one after another, keeping Dooley laughing, which was something he didn’t do a lot of. Megan got Dooley a refill on his Coke. He glanced across the room at Beth, who was sitting with Rhodes and the blonde, Jen. He wanted her to notice him—See, I’m still here and you know what? I’m having a great time. But she didn’t even glance in his direction.

  He missed his shot. Bracey walked down one side of the table, sizing up his play. Megan stood so close to Dooley that he could feel the heat coming off her body.

  “You like to party, Dooley?” she said.

  “Depends.” Party was such a fun-sounding word, but Dooley had learned that it meant different things to different people.

  “I bet you do,” she said. “I bet you’re a party central.” She pressed against him, wriggling and smiling.

  Bracey sank the last ball on the table and grinned.

  “Let’s go again,” he said. “Hey, Megan? Get lost.”

  She stuck out her tongue at him and snuggled closer to Dooley. Dooley wondered if Beth was watching. He hoped she was.

  “Hey, Dooley?” Bracey said. “Trust me, you don’t want the grief.” He nodded to his left. Dooley looked and saw Landers scowling at him from the other side of the room. He glanced at Megan.

  “He’s your boyfriend, right?” he said.

  “He thinks he is,” Megan said. She turned her back to Landers, concentrating everything she had on Dooley, moving when he moved, staying with him for the whole game, which Bracey won. He whooped and jumped up and down.

  “Let’s go again,” he said, pumped with victory.

  Dooley glanced around, looking for Beth. She was still over there with Rhodes. He didn’t see Landers anywhere.

  “Sure,” he said to Bracey. “Let’s go again.”

  Then his pager vibrated. He checked the readout. It was the store.

  “You know where there’s a phone I can use?”

  Bracey pointed to the bar. “There’s one behind there.”

  Beth was over by the bar.

  “Some place quiet,” Dooley said.

  “There’s a phone in the kitchen,” Bracey said. “Out that door, hang a right.”

  Dooley took his drink with him and set it down on the counter while he made the call, praying it would be Linelle who picked up, not Kevin.

  It was.

  “Your uncle called,” she said. “I told him you were in the can. He said for you to call him.”

  Dooley was thinking, shit. If he called from here, his uncle would see on his display on his cell phone that he wasn’t calling from the store. Shit, shit, shit.

  “He gave me a number,” Linelle said.

  “He’s not on his cell?”

  “He gave me the number of some hotel, Dooley. You want it or not?”
r />   Dooley listened closely, repeated it to himself as he punched it in, and came up with what he thought was a pretty good plan B. (I’m on a cell. Someone at work is letting me use theirs. I don’t know why you won’t let me have one… His uncle would get impatient then, wanting to get to the reason he’d called Dooley in the first place. Yeah, that could work.)

  One problem: Bracey was only partly right about the kitchen. It was quieter, but it wasn’t quiet enough that his uncle wouldn’t catch the party sounds. Dooley left the kitchen and moved through the house farther from the party, looking for a quiet place with a phone in it. He passed one room. The door was partly open. Through it he saw Landers with the maid, Esperanza. Landers had her by one arm and he was muscling her, pulling her toward him even though it was clear she didn’t want to go.

  “Please,” she said, her voice soft and Spanish-accented. “Leave me go or I will tell Mr. Winston.”

  Mister Winston? The maid looked like she might be a year or two older than Rhodes. Dooley wondered how she could bring herself to call him mister. He wondered how she felt when she said it. He wondered, too, if she called Rhodes that to his face and, if she did, he wondered how it made Rhodes feel.

  “You sure about you want to do that, Esperanza?” Landers said. He yanked her close to him and held onto her with both hands. “You sure you want to tell Mr. Winston? Because if you do, I’ll have a talk with Mr. Ray. You want me to do that, sweetheart? You want Mr. Ray to fire your ass and send you back home?”

  Dooley guessed that Mr. Ray was Rhodes’ father.

  Landers backed Esperanza up against the wall and pinned her hands to her sides. She squirmed and twisted her head to one side, as he moved in toward her.

  “Hey,” Dooley said.

  Landers turned his head around to look at him, but he kept his grip firm on the girl.

  “I don’t think she’s interested,” Dooley said.

  “Who asked you?” Landers said. He reached out with one leg to kick the door shut in Dooley’s face. Dooley put out a foot to stop it closing all the way, then pushed it open again.

  “Why don’t you go see what your girlfriend is up to?” Dooley said, stepping in close to Landers, crowding him. In a soft voice meant just for Landers, he said, “Gillette told you about me, right?”

  Landers hesitated. Dooley could see he didn’t want to back down, but he also didn’t want to take Dooley on, not one-on-one. He released Esperanza but gave her a menacing look, the kind that suggested that he’d be back when she was alone and that, boy, she’d be in for it then. He shoved his way past Dooley.

  “You okay?” Dooley asked her.

  She nodded, but she looked scared.

  “Esperanza,” someone called. A girl. Dooley didn’t recognize the voice. “Esperanza, Win said to tell you they need more potato chips.”

  Esperanza straightened up. She rubbed her fingers under her eyes to dry her tears, and went back out into the kitchen.

  Dooley continued his hunt for a phone in a quiet place.

  He found another room, wood-paneled, with a desk over by the window and a phone on it. He dialed the number his uncle had given Linelle. A man answered and gave the name of the hotel. Dooley asked for his uncle. He glanced around while he waited for his uncle to come on the line. All the furniture—a couch, a couple of armchairs, the big chair behind the desk—was black leather. The desk was neat—nothing on it but the phone and some framed photos, not even a speck of dust. One of the photos was a woman. Rhodes’s mother, Dooley guessed. Another was a family shot—a man, the same woman, a kid who looked like Rhodes, only younger, and a girl who had to be Rhodes’s sister. Two more: single shots of the same two kids.

  “Ryan?” It was his uncle, shouting into the phone, it sounded like, but his voice still almost drowned out by music and voices. “Ryan, you there?” he said. It turned out Jeannie had left her cell some place, she couldn’t remember where, and she had been using his all day checking last-minute arrangements, and now it was out of juice. “Jeannie took a room at the hotel,” his uncle said, getting to the point. “We’re going to stay over. I’ll be home some time tomorrow. Okay?”

  “Yeah,” Dooley said. “You want me to call you when I get home?”

  “What time’s that going to be?”

  “I’m on until closing. Then mop and vacuum and get home, so maybe quarter to one.”

  “Hell no, don’t call me,” Dooley’s uncle said. “Just be good, okay?”

  “Okay,” Dooley said.

  He went back through the house to the kitchen. Gillette was in there now, perched on the counter, an open beer bottle in one hand, talking to someone. At first Dooley didn’t see who it was. Then, as he entered the room, he saw that Esperanza was there, too, pouring potato chips into a couple of bowls, talking softly to Gillette, even smiling at him. She didn’t look nervous around Gillette the way she had around Landers.

  Dooley glanced around.

  “Looking for this?” Gillette said. He picked up a glass from the counter next to him—Dooley’s glass, with Dooley’s drink in it—and handed it to Dooley. Dooley took it with him back to the party room where Bracey was waiting for him.

  “Everything okay?” Bracey said.

  Dooley looked around the room. He didn’t see Beth any-where and wondered if she had left. He scanned the room again. Rhodes wasn’t there, either. What did that mean? Jesus, figure it out. A guy like Rhodes, living in a place like this, the guy probably had his pick. Dooley walked over to the easel with the picture of Mark Everley on it and looked down into the glass ball. Rhodes’s cheque, unfolded, was lying right on top. Five hundred dollars. Right. Dooley knocked back half his drink and headed back to the pool table where Bracey was waiting. He picked up his pool cue again. It was early. If he wanted, he had all night.

  Fifteen

  Dream shards, sharp and spacey. Pool table. Megan, hanging on him, her body hot in that tiny skirt and clingy top. Bracey laughing. Gillette, crooked in the doorway, like he was standing on an angle. Esperanza crying somewhere—not in the party room, in another room. Gillette, holding her again, his arms wrapped right around her. The floor, rising and falling like the ocean, and the walls, rippling like hot air over black asphalt on a hot July day. Laughter, echoing in wave after wave. Megan’s lips pressed against his. Landers, scowling. Beth, watching. Rhodes, watching, his arm around Beth. Shouting. Gillette, leaning into Beth, telling her something, then both of them staring at Dooley. Landers, his face twisted and close to Dooley’s, so close it blurred. Then outside. Black sky. Gillette. A few half-hearted stars peeking through what looked like cloud cover. A car sliding by. Footsteps echoing on pavement. Loud ringing.

  Then nothing.

  Someone poking at him.

  “Come on, pal, wake up.”

  Rough hands on him, hauling him to his feet.

  Nausea. Throwing up.

  “Jesus Christ, they don’t pay me enough! Call an ambulance. Let them handle it.”

  Nothing.

  Nothing.

  Nothing.

  Pounding headache.

  Lights stabbing through his eyelids like the blades of a knife, slashing them, gashing them.

  Reaching with his right hand to shade his eyes and hearing: “Ryan!”

  Sounding familiar.

  His uncle. Shaking him.

  “Wake the fuck up, Ryan.”

  Shaking him again, majorly pissed.

  Shielding his eyes with one hand and opening them and finding himself in a room he didn’t recognize on a bed with side rails—a hospital bed, he realized blearily—and seeing a uniformed cop sitting on a chair near the door. Standing over him, looking pretty sharp in a tuxedo, was his uncle.

  “What time is it?”

  “Five-thirty in the morning. You have any idea where I’m supposed to be right now, Ryan? I’m supposed to be sleeping in a bed with a mattress you wouldn’t believe anything that firm could be that soft in the swankiest hotel in town.”

  D
ooley had never heard his uncle sound so disgusted.

  He tried to sit up. His head throbbed. The light blinded him. He had to squint to look at his uncle.

  “What happened?” he said.

  “Jesus,” his uncle said. “Were you that far gone you don’t even remember? Is that what you’re telling me? I trust you to live up to the conditions, and what do you do? You go out and get yourself high. What the hell’s the matter with you? Are you aching to go back or are you just stupid?”

  Dooley felt sick inside. Not throw-up sick this time, but the other kind, the kind of sick you get when the cops show up at your door and you’re pretty sure they have you good this time. But worse than that because, contrary to what his uncle probably thought, no, he did not want to go back. He wanted things to get better, not worse. Why else had he spent the last couple of months doing everything they told him to do? He’d been working on it. He’d been trying, for Christ’s sake. But looking at his uncle now, he realized that it was all gone. None of it counted. He’d burned it up good. It was ashes. But he knew he had to offer something.

  “There was this girl,” he began.

  “Don’t,” his uncle said.

  “I just want to expl—”

  “Don’t you dare try to tell me that some girl made you get high,” his uncle said, spacing the words out, talking slowly so he didn’t start yelling, he was that mad.

  Dooley glanced at the cop who was sitting just a couple of feet away and who could hear everything. He wondered what he was doing here. His uncle looked at the cop, too, then he looked back at Dooley, waiting, making it clear that if Dooley was in the position where he had to explain himself in front of a cop—and apparently he was—it was his own damned fault.

  “This guy invited me to a party,” he said.

  “A party,” his uncle said. “You said you were working tonight. You didn’t say anything about a party.”

  “I thought if I told you about the party, you’d tell me I couldn’t go.”