Mister Tender's Girl

by Carter Wilson

  “Sure. I can help with that. Absolutely.”

  I ask her for two black coffees. As she hands them over, she asks if I’m okay. Really okay, she puts it.

  “I’m not okay at all,” I say. “Not even a little, and someday, maybe even soon, we’ll talk about it all. But not today.”

  Honesty feels good.

  Thomas and I grab two of the six cushioned chairs in the Rose. We sit in a quiet corner, and I look outside. No one on the streets.

  “I don’t know where to begin,” I say, turning to my brother.

  He thinks on this for a moment, then leans forward and says, “What are you scared of?”

  This actually makes me laugh. “Everything.”

  “Really, Alice. What scares you the most?”

  The way he asks makes me think his question alone is right up there on the list.

  I answer, “There are things I’m scared of and things I’m worried about. Worried? I’m worried a man is coming to hurt me because he says I owe him money. But scared?” I pause only for a moment. “I’m scared of all the eyes watching me.”

  “Alice, what are—”

  “Just let me tell you. And don’t interrupt.”

  And, perhaps for the first time in my life, I open up to my brother and share. I’m brutally honest and open, telling him all the things haunting my life and what all of them do to my mind in the long, piercing hours of the night.

  I’m naked, scared, vulnerable, and it feels good.

  Twenty-One

  “Don’t go to the police,” he says. These are his first words when I finish. The comment surprises me, though I’m inclined to agree.

  “Why?”

  “Just like the penguin says, Alice. Don’t trust anyone.”

  “That was just a story.”

  “This is all a story,” Thomas says. “Everything is a story. Nothing is real.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because if this life were all real, it would just be so fucking heartbreaking.”

  A small bit of my own life slips away with his comment.

  “Thomas, this is all real. What happened to you was real. My…my stabbing was real.” I reach out and touch the welt on his face. “Our mother is real. The key to it all, I think, is how we find beauty in any of it.”

  He actually chuckles at this. “When’s the last time you’ve found beauty in anything?”

  “In the walk over here,” I say, happy to have an answer. “There were a few leaves that had fallen on top of the snow. Red and brown, resting on the soft white. I thought that looked exquisite.”

  “I didn’t see them,” he responds. He takes a sip of the coffee, looks out the window, then focuses his gaze on me. “Is the gun really there? In the planter?”

  “It is.”

  “You need to take it.”

  “I want nothing to do with it.”

  “What happens when he comes back? Are you going to give him the money?”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  He shakes his head, almost like an uncontrolled twitch, then reaches across and grabs my wrist. His fingers are still cold. “We can go, Alice. You know? We can just leave. You and me. I can help. I’m not the burden Mom says I am. I can contribute. I know I have challenges, but I can contribute. Let’s just go.”

  “Where?”

  “Anywhere. I don’t care.” Then he thinks. “No, I take that back. Let’s go somewhere warm. I ruined your chance to go to San Diego. Let’s go there.”

  How I wish it were all so easy. In this moment, I love my brother so dearly, almost jealous of the childish lens though which he sees the world.

  “There are things that stick to you, Thomas. They’re like your skin. No matter how fast or far you run, they accompany you. They are forever a part of you.”

  “Wow.”

  “Wow what?”

  “That was a line from Chancellor’s Kingdom. The Skeleton King. You don’t remember?”

  I want to say I do, but I don’t, and the fact I’m quoting my father’s decades-old stories without realizing rattles me.

  I shake my head. “Doesn’t matter. It’s true. Leaving solves nothing. We moved all the way to America years ago, and I still have nightmares most nights.”

  “So what do you do, Alice? How do you get to a place of happiness? With all you’ve told me, with everything happening to you, how do you find a way to enjoy life?”

  Enjoying life, not just surviving it. I think he’s not just asking me, but himself as well.

  “I haven’t the faintest clue,” I say.

  “You seize control.”

  “How?”

  “You take care of the guy looking to shake you down. Then you deal with this Mr. Interested shit. You fight back, Alice. You fight.”

  “Thomas, I’m tired of punching at ghosts. This is real life. This isn’t a video game.”

  “Like you said, Alice, there are some things you can’t escape. Just like your skin, they are a part of you. So just wear them. Make them fit your body.”

  “Thomas, it’s not that easy.”

  My phone lights up and vibrates. I look down and see my mother’s photo. It’s from three years ago, Christmas. She’s wearing ridiculous snowball earrings, which is the precise reason I chose this for her contact image. But in this moment, it’s not amusing.

  “Hello,” I say, holding a finger up to Thomas.

  “You have a wretched brother,” she says.

  “You had no right to hit him,” I reply.

  “Keep him. And you’ll see. You’ll start to get scared of him, too. You think he’s a child, Alice, but he’s not. Wait until you wake up, finding him staring at you from the doorway of your bedroom. Like a lion looking at a piece of meat. You wait until that day, then you tell me what an awful mother I am. You just wait.”

  I glance up at my brother and try not to picture a carnivore.

  “I’m going,” I tell her. “We’ll talk tomorrow once we’ve all had a chance to cool down some.”

  Her voice is lower, almost hissing, and I think of Gollum. “Good riddance to the lot of you. You’ve both caused me a lifetime of heartache.” And then she is gone.

  I stare at the phone, and though she’s disconnected, her picture remains. I place the phone facedown on the table.

  “Sounds like she misses me,” Thomas says.

  I change the subject, focused on something else.

  “Thomas, what do you remember of Chancellor’s Kingdom?”

  “Everything. I remember everything.”

  “Do you remember how Mister Tender came into the story?”

  “Yes,” he says.

  “I think I remember, but tell me what you know. Because whoever Mr. Interested is, maybe he knew Dad. And the more we remember, the better chance we have of finding him.”

  Thomas smiles. For the briefest of moments, I think maybe he’s actually happy, and if that’s the only positive thing I’ve accomplished today, or even this year, it’s enough.

  “Mister Tender worked at the hotel on Halloween Island, where we went right after Cloud City. Ferdinand took us there. Remember?”

  I do. The characters of little Thomas and Alice were trying to find their way back home from the otherworldly realm of Chancellor’s Kingdom, a world unto itself, complete with bizarre and wondrous provinces. Every place Alice and Thomas went answered some questions, but usually created even more. There were always clues to follow.

  “It was October when Dad told us the parts about Halloween Island. I remember that, because I hadn’t heard of Halloween before. You had, but I hadn’t. I asked if it was like Guy Fawkes Day, and Dad said no, that it was much scarier. That it was a celebration of the dead. Ferdinand took us to Halloween Island because we needed to find some key or something, I think.�
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  “Yes,” I say, the stories flooding back into my mind. “A key to a chest we found in Cloud City. There was supposed to be a map inside, but the key was with some skeleton thief.”

  “That’s right. And he was staying in the hotel where Mister Tender worked.”

  I recall my father’s voice dropping an octave when he talked about Mister Tender. Not in an overplayed, melodramatic fashion, but with the tone of a man offering a serious warning to those who would listen. He would stare deeply into my eyes when he spoke of him, as if truly trying to convince me of this character’s existence. Mister Tender is charming, he’d say. Good looking. Men want to be him. Women just want him. But if you listen to him too carefully, Mister Tender will pull you in, and from that there is no escape. He’ll give you advice, usually just the exact words you need in the time of your greatest desperation, but there is always a price for his wisdom. And that price is usually for you to hurt someone. Someone innocent.

  Mister Tender earned his tips in the blood of others.

  “And of all the characters in that story, Mister Tender had one of the smallest roles,” I say to Thomas. “Why, years later, was he the one character Dad chose to create a whole series of books around?”

  Thomas leans back in his seat and looks up at the ceiling.

  “He started drinking more,” he says.

  “When?”

  “When he was drawing the novels.”

  I’m amazed Thomas remembers this, but he’s exactly right. I was probably ten when my father stopped telling us the stories of Chancellor’s Kingdom, and Thomas would have been six. I was twelve when the first Mister Tender book came out, and my father was drinking more at that time. His drafting table was always garnished with a glass of whiskey late at night, something I can’t recall from his earlier days when he focused on political cartoons and corporate graphic-design projects.

  “I never really thought about it,” I say, “but you’re right. It’s as if the creation of Mister Tender was when he started drinking.”

  Then Thomas says the exact thing I’m thinking.

  “Maybe that was the price he had to pay to become successful. Maybe there was a real Mister Tender somewhere, telling Dad to create this character to become wealthy. Maybe alcohol was the price.”

  “No,” I whisper. “I think I was the price.”

  The coffee shop door opens, and a ghost washes over my skin. Two teenage girls enter. For a second, I think they are twins, but they aren’t.

  “He wasn’t an alcoholic,” Thomas says. “I don’t remember him like that.”

  “No,” I say. “But I probably remember more than you. I remember that when the first book became successful, I was excited for him. I didn’t really understand the book, and he didn’t want me to read it, but he told me it started as an idea from Chancellor’s Kingdom. I also remember Mom and Dad fighting more than they ever had.”

  “That’s all a blur to me.”

  “That’s because of how they were after my attack. Things were so bad, that’s all you remember. But things weren’t so good even before that. I remember turning thirteen and Mom and Dad fighting so much, we almost canceled my party. She would yell at him for spending too much time drawing, and he would yell back that she resented his success. I can remember one time he said, ‘You like my money, but you don’t want to pay the price for it.’ I always wondered what he meant by that.”

  Thomas looks dumbfounded. “I feel like I’ve blocked a lot of that out.”

  I have nothing to say to this.

  Thomas crosses his legs and leans back into his chair. “So someone is following you, this Mr. Interested asshole. He’s drawing pictures of you, doing a pretty good job at mimicking Dad’s style.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And this other guy—this drug dealer—is coming after you for fifteen thousand. But he’s not the same guy.”

  “I suppose he could be. But I don’t think so.”

  “But they know each other,” Thomas says. “Didn’t you say Mr. Interested told Starks how to find you?”

  “Right. ‘Pointed him the right direction,’ or something like that.” Thomas is processing everything that’s been happening, and I pray he comes up with some idea for what I should do next.

  “And you haven’t talked to Jimmy?”

  “No.”

  “So Mr. Interested tells Starks how to find you, but then gives you a weapon to defend yourself with.”

  “I saw it in the planter.”

  “And the book you got was postmarked from London and included unpublished cover art and an inscription from Dad.”

  “So it seems.”

  “And on top of all this, the Glassin twins were recently released from prison.”

  “Right.”

  Please, Thomas, tell me what to do.

  He uncrosses his legs and stares right into me. “And I thought my life was fucked up.”

  Hope drains from me.

  “I know, Thomas. I specialize in being fucked up. The question is, how do I un-fuck everything up?”

  “Well, take this in order of priority,” he says. “Your most pressing problem is Starks.”

  “So it seems.”

  “I can help, you know. I have money. I mean, Mom manages it, but it’s mine. Hell, I hardly spend anything as it is. I can give you the fifteen grand.”

  I had resolved not to let Freddy Starks get any amount of money from me, but when Thomas says this, it brings both tears to my eyes and the sense of a massive weight lifting off my chest.

  “I… Oh, Thomas, that’s so kind of you. I mean, it’s not like I don’t have any money at all, but I didn’t take this man’s money. I’m just not sure—”

  “Alice, all in all, it’s not that much. I mean, what else are you going to do when he comes back?”

  “But Mom needs that money to help with expenses, doesn’t she?”

  “She’s got plenty of her own.”

  “Thomas, I don’t know what to say. I—”

  “Just say you’ll take it, and we can cross one major problem off your list.”

  The brother who I struggle to relate to is making more sense than I can muster myself.

  “Thank you, Thomas. So much. Yes, I will take the money. I can pay you back.”

  He waves it off. “Don’t worry about it. It makes me happy to be giving money to you rather than Mom.”

  “We need it soon, though.”

  “It’s Sunday. Banks are closed. I’ll have to go in the morning. There should be a branch around here.”

  “Do you need Mom to sign off or anything?”

  “I’m pretty sure the savings account is in my name and hers. Either one of us can make a withdrawal.”

  “What will you tell her? She’ll surely see the money is gone.”

  “I’ll tell her I needed it for hookers and coke.”

  I laugh again. My brother is making me laugh, which is wondrous.

  Thomas places his coffee down and shifts in his chair. “The other question is what are you going to do if you find Mr. Interested? If you find out who he really is?”

  “I don’t even know how to find him,” I say.

  “But say you do. What’s your plan?”

  “I haven’t thought it through that far.”

  “But you must have a sense of it. Say you found him. Say, even, you knew who he was, and you saw him sitting here. In your coffee shop. What would you do?”

  I think of Freddy Starks standing in the Stone Rose, threatening me. How I wanted to protect my staff. How I wanted to stop the threat before something bad happened. But yet I just let him walk away.

  “I would tell him to stop.”

  Then there’s a glimmer in Thomas’s eyes. Almost excitement.

  “You already told him to stop when
you messaged with him. He’s not going to stop, Alice. He’s obsessed with you. Addicted, maybe.”

  “Well, you think I can’t go to the police,” I say. I think the same thing, truthfully. “So what options am I left with?”

  “You could run,” he says. “Just take off. Like I said, maybe take me with you.”

  I know he wants this. Wants to start a new life, but he doesn’t know what I know, which is that starting new doesn’t fix your problems.

  “Thomas, I agree we need a change. You need a change, and I want to be in your life more. But I can’t run from this.”

  “So what, then? What are you going to do, Alice?”

  And I know, because it’s been in my mind ever since I first saw Mister Tender on the dating app, taunting me.

  “I need to hunt him down. And then make sure he doesn’t ever come back.”

  Twenty-Two

  As we walk back to my house from the Rose, it’s clear my role as an aggressor needs to begin immediately.

  Freddy Starks sits in a silver Land Rover outside my house. His engine is idling, and the SUV’s breath wisps in a white cloud from its twin tailpipes. I have to pass him to get to my house, and for a moment, I consider turning around.

  “It’s him,” I say to Thomas.

  “Him who?”

  “Starks.”

  “But I thought he gave you two days. That’s tomorrow.”

  “I guess you just can’t take the word of a drug dealer anymore. Come on.”

  I don’t look over as we walk by, though I’m tempted. After we pass, I hear the car door open and close. I’m nearly at my door when he calls out.

  “Did you know someone died in your house?”

  I turn.

  “Go away,” I say.

  He starts walking toward us, hands buried in the pockets of a gray wool overcoat.

  “It’s true,” he says. “I did a little research, mostly out of boredom. Manchester is a shit-boring town, but you can find some interesting things in the local newspaper archives of the library.” He wears a smug expression. “Looked up your address. There was an article from the fifties about a woman who died in there. Lived alone, so it took a couple of days to find her. They think she stroked out. You ever hear her at night, Alice?”