Ten After Closing

by Jessica Bayliss

  “Ryan banked on you not ratting on him,” Oscar goes on, “even if that meant flashing his gun to get what he wanted. Because that’s what you do. You protect him.”

  “They thought they had it all figured out. The perfect plan.” I point at the dead woman lying in a pool of her own blood. “But it’s a whole new game now.”

  14

  WINNY

  TWO HOURS AND FIFTY-FIVE MINUTES BEFORE CLOSING

  Never before had the sage-green walls of Winny’s room felt so much like prison bars, but they wouldn’t be for long. She stood before her closet—which might only be her closet for another few hours—sliding hangers back and forth, the wood and plastic clacking with each movement.

  “You can’t be grounded,” Janey said on the other side of the phone line.

  “Yes, I can.”

  “I can’t go to Brian’s party alone tonight.”

  “Please. All our friends will be there.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Listen, I’ve got something to tell you. When you didn’t show, Scott gave me a ride home from the gallery.”

  “Scott . . . came? Now I’m glad I got stuck talking to the school nurse about the dangers of the Coxsackie virus and why total isolation is a must. What the hell kind of name is that for a disease, anyway?”

  “Focus, please. That’s not all. I . . . uh . . . sort of . . .” Winny flopped onto her bed and pulled a pillow over her burning face.

  Janey’s voice cut through the wad of fabric like a fire alarm. “What? What! You’re literally killing me right now.”

  “I kind of kissed him.” Winny squeezed her eyes shut and awaited Janey’s ear-shattering squeal.

  Janey didn’t disappoint. “Are you shitting me?” The drool in her voice practically seeped through the phone.

  “I’d never shit you, Janey my dear.”

  “Like, you kissed him, kissed him? Full-on lips and tongue and everything?”

  “Eww. No! It was just a little kiss. Fast. But . . . sigh . . . it . . . was . . . nice.”

  There was more squealing on the other side of the line.

  “This is bad. I mean, what kind of person am I? I kissed my friend’s boyfriend. He must hate me for real now. The fact that he’ll even still talk to me after what happened last winter, after all those times he asked me out—”

  “That’s ancient history.”

  But it wasn’t, not to Winny. The memory of the third time she picked her EMT class over a date with Scott wouldn’t stop playing in her brain—the way his face had gone flat and how he’d sucked in that tiny breath, like she’d struck him.

  “Winny! After the kiss, what did he say? What did he do?”

  “Nothing, not really. I kind of freaked and ran into the house.”

  “Ran? Dragging that huge-ass painting?”

  Winny wanted to hide under her comforter and never come out. She’d tripped and huffed the whole way to the door—with Scott watching. As if she hadn’t already made a total fool of herself. “Exactly. It was a super-graceful exit.”

  “I bet. Your life has taken some very interesting turns today.”

  Winny grunted into her pillow. “When I woke up, everything was totally normal, I swear.”

  “And you’re stuck in the house after all that? So not fair.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Winny got up and returned to her closet, where she pulled a white eyelet lace sundress from the rack. She’d been saving it for a special occasion, and she couldn’t think of a more special occasion than the night she stopped being her parents’ obedient daughter. If she really confessed, she’d stopped being that Winny months ago. Her image in the family portrait was blurred and dull from too many coats of paint thinner. When her parents kicked her out for disobeying them, they might make her leave all her stuff. This could be her last chance to wear this dress, and she wanted to fill in that blurred space with something beautiful and festive and maybe even a little sexy. Even if just for tonight.

  Tomorrow she’d worry about everything else.

  “What do you mean, it doesn’t matter?” Janey asked. “Of course it matters.”

  “It doesn’t matter if I’m grounded, because I’m coming to the party anyway.”

  “Holy shit! No! Winsome Sommervil is going to sneak out?”

  “Shh! Don’t say it so loud.”

  “What? Am I on speaker or something? Are they in the room?”

  Winny giggled, then snorted. “No. Oh my God, I literally suck at this.”

  “Yes!” Clapping and the squeak of bedsprings told Winny that Janey was jumping on her bed now. “OMG, this is going to be an epic party. I heard a very interesting rumor. A very important rumor. You think your life changed today, tonight will blow you away.”

  “Might as well pile it on. You’ll pick me up?”

  “Just don’t tell your mom I helped you sneak out.”

  Winny’s mother’s footsteps sounded in the hallway. Winny shoved the dress into the closet and slid the other hangers around so it wouldn’t look like she’d been messing with it. It wasn’t like her mom could figure out her plan from the way her clothes were arranged in her closet. Then again, Winny wouldn’t put anything past her mother. But, instead, the footsteps passed by her door without stopping. Winny flopped back against her pillows, then hopped up again, unable to sit still. The next couple of hours were going to feel like forever. “So what’s this rumor that’s going to change my life?”

  “Hold up. I’m getting info as we speak,” Janey said. “I refuse to disclose what I know until it’s confirmed.”

  Winny rolled her eyes. “Dramatic much?”

  “Yup. Besides, look who’s talking.”

  Winny’s hair was still up in its bun from earlier, and she pulled out the pins, letting it fall over her shoulders. The twist had given it a smooth wave. It would be perfect with the spaghetti straps of her dress. Add her silver sandals with the tiny buckles and a pair of turquoise earrings, and she’d be set. Janey’s rumor could turn out to be nothing. Winny might not have a chance to see Scott, but it didn’t matter. None of that mattered.

  She was calling the shots now, and if everything in her life was going to be different tomorrow, she would make tonight count.

  15

  SCOTT

  FORTY-SEVEN MINUTES AFTER CLOSING

  When Ryan and Toto slip into the kitchen to talk, I expect to breathe a little easier, but that’s impossible. It may not have felt like much when I took the blow, but the bruise on my cheek grows more painful by the minute. Winny and Sylvie keep glancing at it, Winny with worry all over her face, Sylvie with guilt. It’s the same expression she gets when she looks at her brother. On the other hand, maybe I should be happy that Sylvie cares, that she’s upset that I took a hit in her place.

  I’m used to it. My mother seems to be quite willing to let me be the official whipping boy of the family.

  Between the throbbing in my cheek and Twitch’s never-ending soliloquy, I’m having trouble thinking. Twitch is supposed to be watching us, but he can’t seem to keep his eyes off Maggie’s body.

  “Guys, let’s focus here,” Oscar whispers, leaning low. We all move closer and form a tight circle. “This is our chance to come up with a plan.”

  “Your phone has been plugged in for a few minutes,” Winny says to me. “You think it’s charged enough for a call? I can pretend I need something else from behind the counter.”

  My face burns—which is not helping the throbbing—but I don’t know if my embarrassment is because of my broken phone or how it got broken in the first place. For a moment, the image of a box of generic cereal fills my mind. “It will take a while. It sort of took a flight across the room this morning.” We should have left the useless thing in the basement. “The basement,” I whisper.

  “You okay, Scott?” Sylvie has that motherly look on her face again.

  “I’m fine, and I think I have an idea.”

  “What idea?” Pavan leans closer.


  “The tunnels. What if we can get out that way?”

  “The tunnels?” Oscar asks.

  “Maybe we can take the passages to another building. Bust our way through. If we set off someone else’s alarm, even better.”

  “Shit. Maybe,” Oscar says.

  “Maybe nothing.” Sylvie glares at him. “We’re not all marines, and Scott is just a kid.”

  “So you want us to just sit here? Do nothing?”

  She turns to me. “Sometimes it’s better to wait, to sit quiet, than to rush into something just for the sake of action. Scott, we have no idea what’s down there.”

  I know she’s right. I wish I’d checked out those passages before today, but the idea of some dark, underground, musty space just doesn’t do it for me. Who knows what’s down there? Flooded walkways; rats; sewage pipes, maybe busted and seeping I-don’t-want-to-know-what onto packed dirt floors. “But if it’s our only shot, we need to try.”

  Pavan shakes his head. “I’m afraid Sylvie is right. We cannot get out that way.”

  “Well, so far, it’s the only idea we have,” Oscar grumbles.

  “When they converted the factory space across the street into condos a few years ago, I was an engineer on the project,” Pavan says.

  “That’s right.” Sylvie smiles. “You used to come in on your lunch break when we first opened.”

  “So you’ve been down there?” I ask.

  “Not me. They filled in the sub-basement space with cement before I was hired. I can’t say about the tunnels below the other buildings on the street, but we were told that many of them had caved in over the years. Think about it, they are hundreds of years old.”

  “That settles it,” Sylvie says. “The tunnels are out of the question. Too dangerous.”

  I point at the dead woman. “What, more dangerous than men with guns?”

  The door from the kitchen swishes open as Toto and Ryan emerge from their private meeting.

  “Twitch!” Toto shouts. “Will you shut the hell up? We could hear your ass all the way back there, man.”

  Twitch is still riveted by the body. And then it hits me. He shot her. It must be messing him up. Removing her from the café may be our key to getting downstairs.

  “It’s Maggie,” I pipe up.

  “Scott!” Sylvie hisses, but I drop a hand on her arm.

  “I know what I’m doing.” At least, I hope I do.

  “What?” Toto says.

  I motion to the body. “Maggie. She’s getting him worked up. Us, too.” I try for a sheepish, scared smile. Let this guy think I’m freaked out. Freaked out and embarrassed about it. “What if we move her downstairs, out of sight? It’s cool down there. She’ll . . . keep.”

  “Scott, don’t be stupid. Just sit quiet,” Sylvie commands. “Doing nothing isn’t always a bad thing.”

  I can tell from the way Oscar’s brow wrinkles that he’s torn. Then Becky’s voice from earlier is in my head: They call and you jump.

  Maybe Sylvie is right, and this is a huge mistake. Maybe it is better to wait, to be patient. Do I really think I can just rush in and fix everything?

  “Fuck, yeah,” Toto says. “Anything to shut him up.” He turns and shouts the last part in Twitch’s face, but the guy is either too high or too spooked to notice.

  I give Sylvie a shrug. For better or for worse, the decision is out of our hands now.

  “I’m not carrying a body,” Ryan complains. “It’s not my mess.”

  It. Mess. How can he talk about another human that way?

  “Twitch can do it,” Toto says with a smirk. “Serves him right for making the mess to begin with.”

  But Twitch’s babbling only grows louder.

  “Are you kidding?” Ryan asks. “He’s on the verge of a breakdown. Isn’t the whole point to get the body farther away from him before he loses it?”

  “If you ask me,” Oscar whispers, “he’s way beyond that point already.”

  “Shh!” Sylvie smacks his shoulder.

  Rubbing his forehead, Toto kicks a chair leg, causing it to screech across the tile before it crashes into a table. “Fine.” He turns to survey us. “Don’t all volunteer at once.”

  “I’ll go,” Sylvie says.

  But Toto just laughs. “You’re staying here.”

  I take a hesitant step toward Maggie.

  “Scott, no,” Sylvie protests.

  “Then who? Oscar can’t carry anyone.” Pavan stares at Maggie, frowning. He doesn’t want to do this anymore than I do.

  Maggie’s corpse. I just volunteered to carry Maggie’s corpse.

  I feel a small pressure on my arm. Winny’s hand. But I can’t focus on that because from this angle, I can see Maggie’s face. It’s as though someone turned on one of those digital camera filters—everything grays out around me, except where Maggie’s lying. The world is too sharp, too bright. I know that woman. Knew her. Now she’s dead. And I’m going to carry her corpse—Maggie’s corpse.

  The body. I’ll call her the body. It’ll be easier. Then Ryan’s words come back to me: It’s not my mess. No. I’ll call her Maggie. She deserves that.

  “Someone’s getting himself an A-plus tonight.” Toto waves at me to get a move on.

  “I can’t do it alone.” I turn back to the group. “Anyone?”

  “I said, I’ll help,” Sylvie hisses through gritted teeth.

  Toto spins our way again. “And I said, not you. I’m not letting you out of my sight. She can do it.”

  Winny’s eyes go wide and she clutches my arm. “I can’t touch a dead person, Scott. I can’t do it.”

  I move so I’m directly in front of her and take her by the elbows. “You can, Win. I know you can. You just kicked ass in patching Oscar up. This will be nothing compared to that.”

  “Blood was one thing, but a body . . .”

  “Winny, we have to. You know why,” I add in the softest whisper I can manage.

  She swallows hard, and stares off into space for a second, muttering something I don’t catch, but a second later she’s back.

  She nods. “I’ll do it. I’ll be okay.”

  I give her a fast hug and inhale her cherry-vanilla scent like it’s the last beautiful thing in the world.

  No, that’s not true. Nothing and no one is more beautiful than Winny.

  God, I hope I’m right about this, because I’m not the only one who will pay if we mess up. Not like at home.

  We’re all at risk here.

  16

  SCOTT

  THREE HOURS BEFORE CLOSING

  Scott’s mother pounced on him as soon as he stepped through the door. “Where have you been?”

  He shrugged. “Just out. Helping a friend.” Except helping a friend didn’t usually involve kissing.

  “Dad’s been calling you for hours.” Waving Scott the rest of the way inside, she closed the front door with a practiced movement, making barely a sound. Not that his dad would have been able to hear it over the TV blaring from the living room. “He’s been in one of his moods since you left,” she said, glancing over her shoulder.

  “When are you going to stop doing that?” Scott asked.

  “What?”

  “One of his moods? Is it his Johnnie Walker mood or his Smirnoff mood?”

  “Shh, Scott! He’ll hear you. He’s already pissed about that damned video and it didn’t help that he couldn’t get you on your cell.”

  Scott dug the shatter-faced phone out of his pocket and held it up to her. “Dead. Maybe if he hadn’t broken it, I could have charged it.” He wasn’t technically lying. She didn’t need to know that he’d seen the calls, and ignored them, before the phone died. “I guess I’ll just run out to the store and get a new one. But, jeez, I’m flat broke.” He scratched his head. “Now why would that be? Oh, right. I have to hand my pay over to my parents.”

  “After everything we’ve done for you, you’d think you could help out a little and not throw it in our faces all the time.” />
  “Help a little?”

  His mother shook her head and plodded down the hall to the kitchen. Scott followed, and the racket from the living room grew louder. The TV was on full blast, some talk show audience going crazy over today’s guest or some new product. But there was also the whir of the . . .

  “Is that the electric drill?”

  His mom threw him a sharp glance, then she tilted her head to better catch the timbre of the sound. She winced. “Dammit. I told him to just leave it alone.”

  “What?” Scott called after her as she turned toward the living room.

  “The leg splintered off the coffee table this afternoon after he . . . bumped it. That’s why he was calling. His toolbox is in the trunk with the rest of his drill bits.”

  “Sounds like he’s got it under control.”

  “He does not. He’s blotto. He’ll cut off a finger or set the house on fire. Or worse.”

  Yeah. Worse. But she wouldn’t have to experience worse. Worse was for Scott and Scott alone.

  “And if you hadn’t set him off, he wouldn’t have taken a drink at noon, and maybe he wouldn’t have kicked the damned table.”

  “Right, because it’s all my fault.”

  “Jack?”

  “Mom, just leave it.” Scott hooked an arm around her waist. “Come on. We’ll go upstairs until he’s over this.”

  She threw off Scott’s hold and stopped in the living room doorway. “What are you doing? Scott’s home now. You can get your tools.”

  The whirring stopped. “It’s about fucking time.” His dad rounded the corner, red-faced, hair mussed, the cordless power drill still clenched in his fist.

  Scott’s mom jumped back, retreating deeper into the hallway.

  “I called you at least ten times. You think you could pick up once.”

  “My phone was dead.”

  “Why can’t you fucking keep it charged? I pay good money—”

  “You pay?”

  “Scott,” his mom warned. He couldn’t see her. The shadows in the hall were too deep and his dad too tall, but her tone said he’d crossed the line. Again.