“… methane is the prime component in greenhouse gases. Cow farts, man. Cow farts. And who bioengineered the cows to fart us out of existence? The FDA, that’s who.”
The ranting guy was maybe my age, Caucasian, with thinning hair and a salt and pepper beard, and glasses thick enough to put Coke bottles to shame. He was also wearing at least four winter coats, one on top of the other.
Jacob and I both turned our full attention to him, the cop in each of us needing to assess whether he was dangerous or merely annoying. The other customers gave him a wide berth, and he didn’t seem inclined to force anyone to listen to his spiel, so I chalked it up to an instance of someone who only needed half an eye on them and turned back to Jacob.
“It’s just a matter of me engineering a few conversations. Another couple of days, tops.”
“I’m a big boy,” Jacob said with a sad smile. “I’ll manage.” More loudly now, in a public voice, he said, “See ya ’round, then.”
“Yeah,” I echoed. “See ya.”
I watched him walk out the door while my heart did a weird little flip, part forlorn, and part excited. In a way, it felt like those first heady weeks of dating. Better, though—because I already knew we were good together. I just hadn’t had to deal with the uncertainty factor in an awfully long time, and it triggered all sorts of squirmy feelings inside. And yet, I wasn’t jonesing for the next time we’d get naked. What I missed were all those mundane things I’d evidently been taking for granted. The rasp of his facial hair on my bare shoulder as we settled in to sleep. The way he’d nestle his head in my lap when we shared the couch. The smell of our bed.
I was on the verge of waxing sentimental about the clumps of body hair I periodically pulled out of the bathtub drain when a voice piped up behind me and nearly sent my decaf latte flying.
“My, my, my…. Aren’t you the beefcake magnet?”
I whipped around and found Sylvester Hale directly behind me, leaning on his walking stick, with an empty teacup in his free hand and a twinkle in his eye.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I can keep a secret. Shocking as it may be, I do remember what it was like to be young and pretty.”
“There’s no secret to keep. We were just talking.” Gee, that didn’t sound defensive at all. I attempted to change the subject. “So, I didn’t see you here when I came in.”
“Just powdering my nose…which, nowadays, I seem to do every hour, on the hour. Enjoy your nubile prostate while you can, my dear. In time, even the greatest pleasures become a burden.”
While I struggled to find some way to shift the conversation away from our prostates, Hale reached across me and settled his teacup in the dirty dish bin. With a parting nod, he turned and strolled out the door, cane tapping.
I watched the door close behind him, then shook off my awkwardness. Damn it. He got me so flustered, I forgot to set up a date.
That’s it, I thought. Come hell or high water, tomorrow morning, I was marching next door straight away and pinning him down. And the next time I saw Jacob, the fake wedding band would be history.
12
While I toyed with the idea of not mentioning my little tête-à-tête to Bly, I figured that not only would it be a phenomenally immature secret to keep, but it would erode our work relationship once it came to light. Plus, his special empath-sense would tingle the minute I walked into the room, and he’d know something was going on. Might as well just man up and face the music.
I found my fake husband doing a rigorous-looking workout tape in our chintzy living room, straining to avoid knocking over the furniture. “Upstairs is clean,” I reassured him.
He clicked off the set, and pulled up his T-shirt hem to wipe the sweat from his forehead. Nice abs, I supposed. But they didn’t do a damn thing for me. “Still, I’m none too keen on spending any time up there. Smells like exorcism.”
“More like a clearing. I mean…no one was actually possessed.” I pitched my voice casual, even though tone of voice didn’t mean anything to a high-level empath. “So, anyhow, I ran into Jacob just now.”
Bly looked at me like he’d just seen a ghost.
“No big deal,” I said. “I stayed in character, and he went with it.”
“I’m sure you both did fine. But that scenario you just described, being spotted by someone in public, being recognized and called out? Every time I get a glimpse of someone I think I know, that’s exactly what goes through my mind. Only…my encounter ends with a bullet in the back of my head.”
I dunno how most people would react to this, but cops tend to be manly men who acknowledge one another’s pain with a clap on the shoulder and a bottle of beer. Since beer was off the table, I offered a grunt of sympathy instead.
But before I could figure out what more I was supposed to say, he peeled away from the topic quicker than a muscle car gunning it through a yellow traffic light. Briskly, he said, “You’ve made contact with Hale. Now step up your game and engineer a conversation between us all.”
“Sure. But in the meantime—”
“Have a look at this paper.” Bly launched something from his phone, which dinged on mine a half-second later. “It might give you some ideas.”
“If you wanted to talk about—”
“Less talking, more reading.”
Again with the reading. If he wasn’t going to indulge in a little heart-to-heart, I at least wanted him to tell me what to do…but obviously he was determined teach a man to fish. Or in my case, teach me how to read about fishing and figure it out myself. I pulled out my phone, sat my ass down, and read.
Tradecraft info is nowhere near as opaque as those columns I supposedly wrote, but they’re still full of technical jargon. My fake husband’s nightmares provided plenty of motivation to keep me reading. On one hand, I didn’t really think he’d run afoul of some massive drug cartel and gone into hiding a la Walter White. Then again, I couldn’t technically rule out a Breaking Bad scenario, either.
According to some psychologist with a whole alphabet of credentials after her name, one reliable way to attract certain personality types—especially people who were raging egomaniacs with a sly undercurrent of impostor syndrome—was to make yourself appear vulnerable.
Like being caught ogling Jacob didn’t leave me feeling vulnerable enough. When I thought back on it, though, Hale did seem to enjoy my discomfort.
It was late by the time I was done reading. Once I pulled on the douchebag’s rumpled sweats, I did a quick circuit of the townhouse. The smell of incense wasn’t too prevalent on the second floor. It mainly lingered around the stairwell. I was none too keen on revisiting the third floor, but forced myself to check it out anyway. We’d be sleeping just below it—which was a thought I really didn’t want to entertain.
I went through the top floor with a full tank of white light and a fine-toothed comb. No ghost.
“All clear,” I told Bly, who was busy fiddling with the white noise app in the bedroom. If the words didn’t reassure him, hopefully the emotions behind them did. I climbed into the strange bed and reflected on ways I might use that evening’s run-in with Jacob to my advantage. Maybe the stay-at-home douchebag really was a cheater. Maybe he only stayed with his husband because he was accustomed to a certain lifestyle—one he couldn’t support by selling the occasional article to a dying magazine.
A guy like that might very well need to reassure himself that Hale would be discreet.
I sketched out my plan for Bly. “Two-timing me, huh? Sure, I can work with that.”
Exhausted by a long day of near misses and white light, I was drifting off when I heard him murmur, mostly to himself, “I probably deserve it.”
13
The next morning, I pondered the douchebag’s infidelity as I sipped my coffee in the quiet kitchen. I’d never been unfaithful to anyone, unless you count an opportune hookup during a relationship lull that never did pick back up. Even at the time, I was 90% sure we were too bored with each other to make the effort
to stay together. He was a college professor. I was a cop. The two of us had nothing in common, aside from a yen for dick…and the same dealer. We hadn’t quite gotten around to that “we’re through” conversation when I fell into a bathroom stall with a stranger who was way too young for me. After that, I expected to feel guilty, but I didn’t. I felt free.
I’d need to be a little less blasé about my current “dalliance.” My writer and Bly’s marketing guy had too much at stake. A shared house. A shared car.
A shared life.
Then again, a hasty divorce would be a plausible way to end our brief townhouse tenure. Upsetting to the neighbors, maybe. But realistic, for sure.
Bly came downstairs to touch base. His arty business casual was starting to look normal to me. Disturbing.
“I’ve been giving it some thought,” he said, “and I think you’re really onto something. If Hale thinks the two of you have some big secret, he’ll be more likely to seek you out. So get out there and make yourself available. The sooner we move out of this place…” he cut his eyes to the ceiling to indicate the stinky upstairs, “the better.”
According to the basic intel in Hale’s file, he wasn’t expected to emerge from his burrow any earlier than ten, which left me with a couple of hours to burn once Bly headed off to headquarters. To kill time, I shoved our moving boxes around—mostly in front of the bay window, to prove to the neighborhood I was actually doing something—then headed up for a shower.
As I walked through the home gym, I reminded myself that I was not actually living in a murder house. Yes, someone had died there. But like Bly said, people die all the time. That doesn’t make the whole world haunted. And if anyone should know that’s true, it’s me.
Even so, I gathered up all my hair goop to bring it downstairs and use Bly’s bathroom instead. It wouldn’t kill him to share with me for a day or two. Once I was showered, I went back up for an armload of clothes. Silly, letting an empty bedroom get under my skin. Especially when I knew damn well there’d been no murder, so it wasn’t haunted. That’s the line I was feeding myself when I was staggered by the undeniable whiff of rot.
I did what any isolated, stay-at-home guy would do. I called my husband.
“I smelled it again,” I told Bly.
“Sonofabitch….”
“It was on the stairs this time.”
Which meant it was getting closer to the place where the two of us slept. I didn’t need to say that out loud.
Bly said, “I haven’t mentioned anything to Laura, but you know this isn’t the type of thing we can keep under our hats.”
“She’s gonna freak.”
“And I can’t blame her. You think I want to be in the same bed if you end up possessed?”
“It’s a pretty big leap between a roving stink and possession,” I insisted. “What if it’s just some decomp that seeped into the carpet padding?”
“They changed the padding with the carpet…but I guess it’s possible the fluids soaked into the subfloor.”
Frankly, that wasn’t much more palatable than the thought of a reeking ghost waiting around to try on my body.
“Look,” I said, “maybe the ozone machine was on the fritz and it missed a spot. Let’s see if we can get some cleaners over here—physical cleaners—before we say anything to Laura that can’t be unsaid.”
“Agreed. But in the meanwhile, get out there and talk to Hale.”
He didn’t need to tell me twice. I pulled on my douchebag sweatpants and hid the fact that I hadn’t gooped my hair beneath the baseball cap I hated. Eager to make some headway, I strode out the door and pulled it shut behind me...only to find Sylvester Hale outside, climbing into the back of a taxi. I checked my watch. Ten to ten. My initial impulse was to be pissed off at the lousy intel. And then I realized it didn’t say he’d be home until ten, but that I’d be more likely to find him out and about after that time.
Damn it.
I was standing there looking at his front door like a dog trying to read when I heard my name…and forced myself not to cringe.
“Vic?” Terri-Anne called out brightly. “Hi!” She jogged across the street and planted herself in front of me. Her hair was pulled up in a clip and her lip gloss shimmered.
“Um…hey.”
“What’re you up to?”
Stalking the old man who just drove away—and doing a piss-poor job of it, at that. “Oh, y’ know…looking for…inspiration.”
“Writing is so difficult. It’s one of those things everyone thinks they can do, just because they can put together an email. But doing it well is another story.”
Most people can put together an email? I was living proof that was really not the case. But according to all the tradecraft that was crammed into my head, sometimes it’s just better to agree. “That’s exactly what I was thinking. So…guess I’d better get to it.”
“I read a study about the link between exercise and creativity, actually, and it reminded me of you. It said physical activity improves convergent thinking. And it also said that writers have high incidences of neck pain, back pain, and repetitive stress injury.”
“Uh huh.”
“According to the article, sitting is the new smoking.”
Maybe so, but it didn’t look anywhere near as cool. “Well, we all have our burdens to bear.” I started edging toward my door. “Time to get back to the salt mines, I guess.”
“Actually, I was hoping you’d come to my Fusion class with me. Yoga, Pilates, mindfulness. It would be interesting to see if giving some attention to your body made any difference in your creativity and focus.”
“I really don’t—”
“What you’re wearing right now is fine. And I’ve got a free day-pass with my membership. C’mon, try it. What have you got to lose?”
“It’s not really something I ever…saw myself doing.”
“Don’t worry, you won’t be the only man there. At least three or four men come to every class. Even Sylvester shows up.”
“Regularly?”
“More often than not, although I don’t think the mindfulness part is doing him any good. Some people just like being miserable, I guess.”
If there was even a chance he’d been headed for the yoga class, I had to give it a shot. Besides, what other option did I have—sitting around by myself inside the murder house?
Our destination was a walkable distance for two able-bodied, middle-aged people, though as we closed in, I realized it was the Halsted Fitness Club we were headed for: Jacob’s gym. If Terri-Anne tried to drag me to any afternoon classes—anything that put me at risk of seeing him after work—I’d need to grow a pair and refuse. Or at least come up with a more adroit way to weasel out of it.
I experienced a moment of panic when I filled out the liability waiver at the front desk, but I’d been drilled hard enough on the persona’s particulars that they came easily enough. The clerk insisted on scanning my fake I.D., too. It didn’t set off any alarms, so I guess the folks back at headquarters had done their job. And the FPMP-issued credit card worked just fine when I bought myself a padlock.
“Men’s locker room is that way,” Terri-Anne told me, “and the class is in the upstairs yoga studio. If you get there first, make sure to save me a spot.”
The locker room was pretty much what you would expect. Tile. Benches. Lockers. Bathroom stalls. Showers. Part of me must’ve been expecting a scene from a porno flick. Either that, or a scene from Camp Hell. But the series of rooms was pretty innocuous. There were a few other guys there, a couple of gym rats, and a couple of regular guys. And while, normally, in situations like these, I felt like every other guy was making sure I didn’t ogle his dick, we weren’t at the Police Academy. We were in a Boystown gym…and I suspected the kid with all the piercings was scoping out the bulge in my sweatpants.
I did a quick check, but Hale wasn’t there. Not surprising—he’d had a good head start. I locked up my showy red parka and headed out to face the yoga.<
br />
Terri-Anne was waiting for me upstairs with a spongy mat, a foam block, and a big rubber band all set up. She introduced me to the instructor—a thin, serious woman with a ton of dark hair and extremely sharp cheekbones—who glanced down at my wedding band, and then at Terri-Anne, and then made a sour face. Just what I needed, for the whole neighborhood to think I was not only a philanderer, but a straight one. When I made my way back to the mat, I took off the ring and tucked it into my sweatpants pocket for safekeeping.
The yoga studio was a big room with a good couple dozen people in it, so it took me a second to find Hale. With some relief, I did spot him—back by the far corner in a garish purple tracksuit, watching the interaction I’d just had with evident amusement. If the douchebag had wanted to talk to Hale, he wouldn’t have felt bad about picking up his stuff and moving. But the real me couldn’t bring myself to do it. Terri-Anne was just too excited about having a yoga buddy.
And then the class began, and I had zero time to worry about anything but my own ungainly body.
It started simple enough, with poses even I could manage, then rapidly progressed into full-scale torture. I figured I’d be pretty flexible from all the bedroom exertions Jacob puts me through…and I was dead wrong. It was an hour-long class that stretched into eternity. And whenever the teacher got an edge to her voice as she reminded us to breathe, even if my face was pressed into the mat, I had the distinct feeling she was looking directly at me.
Thankfully, the contortion part of the class drew to a close before I sustained any permanent damage. I sat stiffly in the lotus position while the instructor pointed out our various chakras, and tried not to overthink what I’d say to Hale. I could engineer a shared cab ride back home if I claimed to have pulled something. Would Terri-Anne try to tag along, or would the friction between her and Hale be enough to encourage her to part ways with me, at least for the day? I wouldn’t know until I tried.
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