Danse Macabre

by Kory M. Shrum

  There was something else…

  It might’ve had something to do with the way the girl leaned over Piper’s shoulder, their sides pressed together, under the pretense of learning how to change the register tape. But Piper could feel her hot breath on her cheek and fought to concentrate on the task at hand.

  She worked the plastic casing off the register and fished out the spool inside. She replaced the last of the paper with its dark purple stripe. She pressed the feed button when she was done, and fresh white paper came through the slot.

  “Thanks,” Dani said, giving another coquettish smile.

  “No problem.” Piper checked her watch again. It was almost six in the evening. She had to get a move on. The asshole got off work at eight tonight, and Piper wanted plenty of time to talk to her mom without him there.

  “I’ve got to run, but I’ll be back at ten to lock up,” she said, hoping that would give her enough time to run home, talk to her mom, get the last of her stuff and drop it off at Henry’s before he went to dance at The Wild Cat.

  “Hey,” Dani said, coming around the corner.

  Piper hesitated, noting the shift in tone.

  “Listen, I don’t want to be weird. And if you’re not feeling it, just say so. I promise not to quit or be a crazy or anything like that.”

  Piper arched a brow, and then worrying that would be seen as too cynical, added a crooked grin. “Yes?”

  “I like you,” Dani blurted and then laughed, wringing her hands. “If you’re open to the idea, I’d like to spend more time with you. We could do dinner or a movie, or whatever you want.”

  Piper hadn’t been on a date in months. She had a few girls who booty-called her—three this week actually—but dating…

  “You are talking about a date, right?” she asked. “Like an actual date?”

  Dani laughed nervously, her cheeks filling with color. “If it’s weird, you can bring friends. We can make it a group thing. I don’t care. If you’ve got someone our age who wants to hang or—”

  “Okay,” Piper said with a smile, feeling a tad light-headed. “Tonight I was going to read cards in the square. You can join me if you want. I’ll be there for a few hours, and then after we can—” Can what? her mind accused. “We can do whatever,” she finished lamely.

  Dani grinned. “Yeah. And then whatever.” She shrugged one shoulder, mockingly.

  Piper laughed again. “Okay, I really have to go. Sorry.”

  “It’s cool.” Dani waved her on. “See you tonight.”

  * * *

  Piper’s feet felt lighter as she traversed the roads between the streetcar stop and her mother’s door. She kept replaying the way Dani had looked when she’d asked her out. The blush in her cheeks, the way she’d bitten her lips and laughed nervously.

  All those good feelings fell away when the house came into view. The house she grew up in as a kid, back when her father had still been alive. They’d moved into this row house when she was three or four. She couldn’t remember exactly. Her father had once told her that they’d lived in his mother’s house before that, until she died and left them a little bit of money. The house went to an uncle she’d never met.

  They’d used the money to buy this house because, as run-down as it was, it’d been clean and close to his job.

  But then he died of lung cancer when she was fourteen. No doubt the three packs a day helped with that, and it became her mother’s house. Only her mother didn’t take care of it.

  The air conditioner broke first, and then the upstairs plumbing. The windows needed to be replaced, and the roof sagged. She knew her mother had missed the property tax payments more than once. It was only a matter of time before the government foreclosed on this place. No love lost.

  The only thing worse than living in a decaying house was the men who infested it.

  She knew well enough to stay the hell away from them. And none of them had lasted long, even the two her mother married on a whim. One annulment and one divorce later, and it became clear that her mom chose men who liked to move on to other women with more to give.

  But this latest man—Willy—he was four years and counting. It didn’t look like he was going anywhere.

  Piper aimed to change that.

  The screen door slammed behind her as she stepped into the house. Black smoke rolled along the ceiling. “Mom? Shit. Mom?”

  “In here,” she heard.

  Piper stepped into the kitchen and found the source of smoke. A pan on the stove had caught fire.

  She grabbed the towel off the rack and seized the handle of the pan, throwing the flaming disk into the sink. Then the towel caught and she threw the rest in to contain the blaze. She couldn’t be sure if this was a grease fire or if food was burning. The flames were too high to see the source. So she grabbed the baking soda from the fridge and doused it.

  “Christ, Mom,” she said coughing. She opened the window. Freezing air wafted in, sucking up the smoke.

  “You’re lucky the fire alarm didn’t sound. Someone could’ve called 911 on you.”

  “No batteries in the alarm,” her mother said, pulling a fresh cigarette from her case. Her back remained to the flame as she sat hunched over the kitchen table. As if her kitchen hadn’t almost burned down around her.

  Damn, she’s high. Nothing Piper could do about it. She needed to talk to her mom, and now was the time. “What? I just changed the batteries.”

  Her mother cupped her hand over the cigarette. “I needed them for the remote.”

  “Wheel of Fortune isn’t worth dying over, Mom.”

  “Somebody won $50,000 today and a trip to Montana. I’d like to go to Montana. I’d like to get the hell away from here.”

  Piper didn’t take this opportunity to tell her mom that the contestant likely won that trip and money ages ago. No doubt her mother was watching reruns.

  “You’d like to get away from here?” she asked instead.

  “Who wouldn’t? It’s too cold. This neighborhood is shit, and I can’t pay half the bills here. My check don’t cover it. This month I’ve got to catch up the electric. Then I’ll be dead broke again for weeks.”

  “What if you could move?” Piper asked, fanning a second ratty dishtowel over the sink, trying to help dissipate the smoke.

  Her mother’s eyes lit up, her mouth pulling into a grin.

  Hope lurched in Piper’s chest.

  “We could get out of this neighborhood and get a smaller, cheaper place. Something that didn’t require upkeep. We’d have more money. Wouldn’t you like that?”

  “Lord knows I do. Just the three of us?”

  Piper’s heart flopped. “No, Mom. Just me and you.”

  Her mother pursed her lips and drew deeply on the cigarette, the cherry burning bright. “I am tired of his ass.”

  “Then get away from him. Mom, get away from him. I’ll help you.”

  “It ain’t that easy,” she said, grinding her half-finished cigarette into the glass ashtray. “I can’t pay for this house by myself. I know you help, but Willy does more than his share, too. But houses got more than bills. They got water heaters, plumbing, furnaces and shit like that.”

  None of which had received any attention from her mother in years, but she said nothing.

  “We can sell it,” Piper said. “And that’s why the apartment is a great idea. Nothing to fix up. No extra bills.”

  “But this was your daddy’s house,” she said, smashing her cigarette against the kitchen table, six inches from the ashtray.

  “He wouldn’t care,” Piper said. “He’d want you to have the money.” And to get clean.

  Piper often wondered if her mother started using drugs because her father died or if her father had simply done a good job of hiding it from his daughter.

  Piper came to the kitchen table and sank down into the chair. For a moment, her mother only regarded her with one of those glassy, distant stares.

  “You’re so pretty,” her mom said, patting her
cheek with a shaking hand. “My beautiful girl. You’re the best thing I ever did.”

  “Mom, I’ve got an apartment,” Piper said, comfortable with this small lie. Because come payday tomorrow, she would have enough to put the deposit on a two-bedroom she’d found north of the French Quarter. Nothing fancy. Not nearly as charming as the apartment above the detective agency. But it was quiet and clean and roomy enough for the two of them.

  “I can afford to cover it all by myself. You can sell the house, pay off your debts. Your whole check will be yours. You don’t have to worry about anything.”

  Her mother searched her face, her eyes round with sadness. “You don’t want to live here with me?”

  “I can’t, Mom,” she said, looking at the back of her hands. She turned the silver ring on her thumb self-consciously. “I can’t live with these men you bring around. I’m sorry.”

  Her mother opened her cigarette case and tapped out a fresh one. Piper produced a lighter from her pocket and lit it for her.

  “But I want you to live with me. It’s a cleaner, safer place. But you’ve got to agree to leave Willy behind, Momma. He can’t come. It’s only us.”

  “The house—”

  “We’ll deal with the house together. But right now—” We’ve got to get you clean. “We need to focus on taking care of ourselves.”

  Her mother drew deep on the filter, the white paper burning brighter in the dim kitchen.

  “It’s a nice apartment?”

  Piper sat up straighter. “Two bedrooms. You’d have your own room overlooking a park. And it’s on the second floor in a better neighborhood. It’s even got radiator heat in there and a big bathroom. It’s got a tub you can soak in.”

  “I do like baths,” her mother said, with a wistful smile. “We don’t get hot water in the upstairs bath no more.”

  “I know,” Piper said. “But these taps are nice and hot.”

  “But no Willy?”

  “No Willy,” Piper said. And no dope.

  “If I go with you, then I won’t be able to get my fix no more,” she said. She looked Piper dead in the eye. The gaze cleared.

  Piper’s heart skipped a beat. She hadn’t wanted to have this part of the conversation yet, fearing it would push her mother in the wrong direction.

  But her mother seemed to see the truth on her face. “You don’t just want me to leave, Willy. You want me to get clean.”

  “I worry about you. I don’t want to come home and find you dead one day with a needle in your arm. If you don’t get clean, that’s exactly what’s going to happen.”

  No one said anything for a long time. Piper stood up to close the window. All but a thin haze of smoke had escaped into the blustery night. She checked the time. It was already almost 7:30. She had twenty minutes to get out of this place, and she hadn’t even made it upstairs to pack up.

  Piper leaned against the sink, looking at her mother’s frail bent back. She wasn’t sure what else she could say, should say, to convince her this was what was for the best.

  Then her mother spoke. “I don’t want to live like this. I don’t like waking up in the morning feeling sick. I don’t like the way Willy talks to me, or the things he makes me do.”

  Piper bit down on her anger.

  “But I don’t want to be out on the streets either. This has been my home for twenty years.”

  “I can take care of you, Mom,” she said quietly, reclaiming her seat at the table. “I won’t let you rot in the streets.”

  “It’s a nice apartment?”

  Piper crossed to the kitchen table and took her hand. “It’s great. You’ll love it.”

  “And you’ll be there?” her mother asked.

  “I’ll be there.”

  “And all $700 of my check will be mine?”

  Piper smiled. “I don’t need it. I can pay for that apartment and all our food and stuff with my jobs. You can focus on getting better. I want you to get healthy again.”

  Her mother squeezed her hands, her smile bright and infectious. “When do we move?”

  17

  After an uneventful drop on the shores of La Loon, Lou stepped out of her linen closet into her bright apartment. The sunshine on the river sparkled through the high window, splitting Lou’s head in two. She drew the shade, turning a coin over and over her knuckles.

  It was a coin she’d taken from the reporter’s pocket.

  She placed it on the counter, using it to pin down one corner of that annoying letter, and stripped naked. Her wet clothes hit the floor with a soaked plop as she stepped out of them.

  This would be her second shower for the day. She’d wash her hair again. She didn’t want lake water from some other world—not to mention what might have come off the dead reporter she’d hauled to the other side—drying in her hair.

  She turned on the shower, turned it all the way to hot and stepped into the stream.

  His face flashed repeatedly in her mind. His wide eyes, his pleading.

  She stayed in the stall, the hot water burning her skin raw until it turned cold on her.

  Then she stepped out, grabbed a towel and went to the hall closet to dress.

  In the kitchen, the coin glinted on the island.

  She picked it up, turning it in the light. It was a half dollar. She turned it over and over in her hands as if she could divine the truth from it.

  Did I kill an innocent man…?

  There was one way to find out.

  The coin cut into the palm of her hand. She was holding it too tight. Then the darkness gave her passage.

  When she pushed open the door, she found herself in a tin cup of an apartment. A beat-up sofa the color of shit sat in one corner. A boxy TV sat on an overturned milk crate. A coffee table with nicks gouged out of every leg rested between the two. On the opposite wall, a fridge and a single counter sat with a sink. The only other door opened onto a bathroom with a toilet and shower stall. There was no room to turn around.

  She supposed if the window shade had been open and the room brighter, she would have entered through there.

  On the sofa, beneath a standard pillow, was a laptop. Lou took it, following the cord to the wall and unplugging it. She wrapped it around the device.

  Nothing else was worth taking. Not the handful of dishes nor the hot plate. A sad collection of utensils and a vacuum with dust on it sat in a corner beside the front door.

  No pictures. She couldn’t even figure out where he kept his clothes until she found the three large totes in what could’ve been a coat closet. There was some cash in these totes, but she didn’t take it.

  She stepped back into the shadows and slipped.

  She expected to push open the door and find herself in her own apartment.

  Instead, she stepped into Konstantine’s bedroom. The bedroom was empty and the bed made. She put the laptop on the foot of the bed and crossed to the window. She opened it to find the river awash in sunset. People marched up and down the street, some engaged in rapid conversation. Some ate gelato despite the frigid night closing in on them. One girl’s lips looked nearly blue as she laughed.

  An old couple with shopping bags between them, pulled their coats tighter and marched on, a slow processional toward the river crossing.

  Leaving the laptop on the bed, she went downstairs. This room was spacious with a tiled floor, uneven in its old world charm.

  A desk sat in the corner, with a large painting hanging on the wall behind it. A fern hung from the ceiling, reminding her also of the ferns that lined King’s balcony.

  Past the desk was the kitchen.

  She pulled back the curtain beside the front door and saw a courtyard below. She spotted a few apartment doors on either side and, on the far right, an archway connecting with the street.

  She laid down on the sofa and closed her eyes.

  Voices echoed outside the door, slowly pulling her to consciousness. A lock clanked, a door popped open and then Konstantine stepped into the apartment with
a young boy on his heels. No more than twelve or thirteen.

  Lou, still reclining on the sofa, sat up.

  The boy spoke to Konstantine in rapid, excited Italian. Konstantine replied as quickly, pushing the boy out the door and locking it again despite his protests.

  “Are you hurt?” he said, obviously surprised to see her.

  “No,” she said, realizing how this must look. She’d appeared in his house without an invitation. She’d checked it out and went to sleep on his couch. It was almost like a fairytale where the girl got eaten by the bear at the end.

  He removed his coat, showing a tight sweater underneath. It was a charming blue. The color of the Mediterranean Sea. He pushed the sleeves up past his elbows, showing a hint of the tattoos that snaked up both sides.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  She sat up, placing her boots on the floor. “I killed a journalist.”

  “Petrov sent him?”

  “No. He was…just a journalist.”

  Konstantine’s eyebrows arched in surprise. “Did you kill him accidentally?”

  “No,” she said. “Then I stole his computer.”

  Konstantine sat down beside her on the sofa. “Could you start from the beginning and perhaps tell me the whole story?”

  Lou did. She began with King’s call to the moment she put a bullet in the journalist and dragged him to La Loon, spending no time in the shallows this round. She recounted going to his apartment after disposing of his body and finding the laptop.

  She pulled the coin from his pocket. “And I took this.” She handed it over as if it was the last piece of business.

  “He knew your name,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said. “The undercover journalist that Mel hired must know my name, too.”

  “Are you going to kill her?”

  She said nothing.

  Konstantine leaned back against the sofa, turning the half dollar in the light. “If he knew who you were and wanted to reveal your identity, nothing can be done.”

  “King, Melandra, Piper all know who I am, and I haven’t killed them.”

  “Yes, but they are your friends. What reason does a starving journalist have to protect you?”