The East End

by Jason Allen

  His mother looked tired, more than likely hungover. He hadn’t been home at all lately aside from the quiet hours when she and Dylan slept, and only a meager handful of words had passed between them since he’d cleaned the upper floors earlier in the week and left the window unlatched so he could break into the Sheffield estate. Why had she sidestepped when he asked about her phone call? She wouldn’t make that kind of promise about not drinking to Ray, and no other names came to mind.

  “Anyway,” Gina said, “you’re going out to prep the porch furniture now, right?” He nodded, and she kept talking while moving toward the kitchen and straightening things along the way, tamping the magazines into a tighter fan on the snub-footed mahogany table in the center of the room, primping cushions on both the designer sofas. “Soon as you’re done with that, we could use you in here. They’ll all start arriving in a couple hours. Oh, and something else you should know—Mr. Sheffield had a fall last night.”

  “A fall? Is he all right?” He’d feigned surprise but had no confidence in his performance. He didn’t want her to look at him, so he turned and grabbed two cushions for the outdoor furniture from the stack in the corner.

  “He’s heading to the emergency room now but should be back soon. When he is, let’s make sure to pay extra attention to him and see that he has whatever he needs, okay? Okay.” And with that she zipped out of the room.

  Relieved to hear that Mr. Sheffield had already spun a cover story, Corey left the house through the screen door with the warped hinges and got right to work, spraying the orange-scented cleaner on one of the white wicker ottomans and rubbing traces of mildew and dust from the creases, thinking back to a few minutes ago. Mr. Sheffield had been on his way to the hospital then, so he must have seen Angelique in the yard. She should talk to him this afternoon. The sooner the better, because she could take off as soon as Leo came through with the money, and aside from wanting to get her out of this crazy stressful situation as soon as humanly possible, the sooner Corey could stop what he’d just begun doing—rubbing mildew from rich people’s stupid fucking outdoor furniture—the better.

  He continued cleaning for the next half hour, working up a sweat. For May, this heat flirted with record highs. The thermometer tacked on the corner porch beam had leveled off at the mark halfway between eighty and ninety degrees and it was still only midmorning. Plus, the humidity made it feel much hotter, the air so thick he imagined a Louisiana bayou in the dead of summer wouldn’t be much worse. He rose from his knees, twisted side to side to crack his back and ran his arm along his brow. Sweat trickled off his fingers. He looked down at the small bed of red tulips below the porch rail where he’d landed last night after jumping off the roof, two of which had been crushed, a few others snapped higher up on their stems.

  His throat tightened. He squinted, hoping that the gray incongruity on the grass by the retaining wall had been an illusion. He’d tossed the cherub into the bushes a few yards from where Mr. Sheffield had fallen, so it made no sense for it to be out in the open there on the lawn. Even if his eyes were playing tricks on him and the bloody cherub still lay somewhere in the bushes, how stupid he was to forget to remove it from the property. He’d have to run down there and heave it into the lake, or else risk someone finding it and connecting it to Leo’s bashed-up head. Then he remembered the landscapers had been on their way out a couple minutes before he pulled into the driveway with Angelique. Someone must have moved the statue from the bushes to the edge of the lawn while they did whatever work over there. But none of those guys would have looked closely at it, right? His eyes grew heavier while he squinted, figuring that what he thought he’d seen must have been an optical illusion with all that light reflecting off the lake, since, as far as he could tell, nothing lay out there now. Unlike the other side of the property with all the sculptures, this wide slope down to the lake and the willow trees had no decorations, nothing but a blank acre or two of green grass.

  His heartbeat seemed to thump now inside his bones as the facts of the day streaked through. Right then a doctor was probably sewing Leo Sheffield’s scalp with a needle and thread, the guy Corey had nearly killed. Soon he would return from the hospital, and soon after that his guests would begin arriving in their limousines from the city. And Angelique, she’d looked like she was in shock out there on the other side of the property, standing beside the bronze pawn, staring at Leo’s car. They’d both witnessed a death and neither had reported it to the cops. They hadn’t slept. It was getting harder and harder to think straight, though one thing was for sure—everything depended on how they handled things for the rest of the day. Everything depended on their next few choices.

  He ground his fists against his eyelids, blinking away the aftereffects of too much sun, his head turning at the sound of the screen door opening. Tiffany shuffled out, cradling an oversize mug in her hands, dressed in pajama pants and a tank top covered in dabs and smears of dried paint, her blond hair wild with static.

  “Have you seen my friend?” she asked, peering over at him while blowing steam from the coffee, sounding a touch annoyed. “You know, the pretty one, Angelique.”

  “Yeah, a little while ago. I saw her walking out by the tennis courts.”

  She held the mug to her bottom lip as though it had been glued there, blowing on it some more before tilting it for a tiny sip and facing the lake. “Any of my family here yet?” Her voice sounded distant, as though she’d been talking to herself or didn’t care about the answer.

  “Your father is. I heard he came out early.”

  “He did? Why haven’t I seen him, then?”

  “My mom told me he fell and hit his head last night, and that he’s at the hospital now to get a couple stitches.”

  Tiffany turned to look at him. “He fell? Where? When?”

  “I didn’t get any details. Just that he hit his head.”

  “He was out here last night?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  A vein began twitching along his left temple as her eyelids lowered and she looked at him over the mug’s rim. Hearing that her father may have been at the house when she’d been passed out had obviously surprised her. The rest of the night’s details were so over-the-top insane she wouldn’t have believed a word, not without seeing his cell phone photos of her daddy’s boyfriend floating dead in the pool or his body out in the pines. Even then she still might not believe Mr. Sheffield had had anything to do with it. Corey watched Tiffany finish her sip and stretch with her back arched, the mug high in one hand, the tank top rising to reveal both her pierced belly button and the aquamarine frill along the rim of her underwear. Then she zeroed in on his eyes with an unblinking stare, lowering her arms and releasing a subtle sound he imagined she’d make in bed when a guy touched her just right, disguising it as a yawn. She seemed to enjoy making him uncomfortable, and kept at it, grinning as she blew the steam again.

  Corey’s mouth and throat had gone dry. Standing in front of her, sweating, with a spray bottle in hand, he felt incredibly awkward. He said something about the heat and flinched midsentence as his voice cracked. In the throes of full-on panic mode, he pointed at her paint-spattered shirt and added, “You working on a new painting?”

  “Thinking about it,” she said. “What’s my mom got you doing, scrubbing the wicker?”

  “Yeah, then mopping the porch.”

  “What a bitch.”

  Corey knew better than to agree, but didn’t know what else to say. Of all the Sheffields, Tiffany had been the only one who ever acknowledged the menial quality of his tasks at the estate, the vocalization of which now somehow made it even worse. He wished she hadn’t noticed. Even more, if he had to do this stupid shit, he wished she’d leave him alone while he did it.

  “Well,” she added after a long pause, “hope they’re at least paying you okay.”

  All he could do was shrug. His eyelids had grown so heavy, as if for
the past minute she’d been swinging a watch from side to side, holding him at her command. He felt he might fall down from exhaustion by the time she pulled the screen door open, and then in a blink, she vanished into the house.

  Feeling as though he’d passed out on his feet and had fallen into one of those bizarre dreams where you believe it’s all real, even as you know it can’t possibly be, he sprayed the next wicker chair and half-heartedly began wiping. He needed to sleep, if only for an hour, to realign his glitching thoughts and let his body recharge. A wave of dizziness buckled his knees and he gripped the porch rail to keep from stumbling. Easing down to kneel, he scanned the lawn once more to search for the cherub, but once again found nothing but wide-open space, nothing but green grass and a few geese waddling along the bulkhead.

  He didn’t have enough energy to stand up yet, and besides, he needed to think through his next move. The fucking wicker could wait, and he might even be able to skip it without anyone noticing. The night had been way too crazy, way too long. He needed to find Angelique and make sure she was all right. They needed to talk through the plan one more time before she demanded the money from Leo. His eyelids lowered like slowly drawn shades. He would stay here on his knees, sleep for a minute, maybe two. He needed to rest his eyes at least; he needed a break from this punishing light, shimmering on the lake like mercury.

  NINETEEN

  With a stack of dinner plates cradled to her chest, Gina went clattering from the kitchen to the long oak table in the dining room and set them down to answer the house phone. Sheila Sheffield’s voice came through on the speaker setting, shrunken and tinny.

  “Gina, hello. Our car is about five minutes out. Have your boy meet us at the roundabout to bring in the bags, will you?”

  “Of course, Missus Sheffield.”

  “Beautiful weather to start the weekend, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, wonderful.”

  “I’ve heard reports that a storm may pass over us on Sunday, but—”

  The line crackled with static, then went silent.

  “Missus Sheffield, are you still there?”

  “Correction. We’re actually about two minutes out now, not five.”

  “Alright, that’s great. Corey and I will be outside to greet you when you pull in.”

  “Until then,” she said, and hung up.

  Gina hurried into the living room with the phone still pressed to her ear and the dial tone droning on, thankful that Sheila hadn’t inquired about her husband. Hearing that Leo had gone to the emergency room would surely launch her into a fit of neurosis, not so much because of his injury but for the detour from her meticulously plotted weekend plans. Lowering the phone, Gina spotted Tiffany’s friend out on the porch talking with Corey, the two standing a bit too close to one another. Then she noticed Angelique’s fingers clasp around his hand. What the hell was this? He’s MIA overnight and now instead of working he’s holding hands with this spoiled rich girl?

  “Corey,” she snapped, “Missus Sheffield is pulling in now. I need you outside.”

  “Okay,” he said, and she watched Angelique scurry off the porch toward the pool. The pills in Gina’s pocketbook had been prescribed for anxiety, and while her sponsor might disagree, she decided this day justified taking a few more than the prescription advised, and if need be, maybe a few more throughout the hours leading up to dinner.

  She and Corey exited the kitchen just in time to greet the arrivals and to offer polite military-style waves at the passing limousine. Still facing the car, Gina edged closer to her son. “So, you and Tiffany’s friend are holding hands now?”

  Corey lowered his hand as soon as the car passed and shrugged. “She’s cool.”

  “Just be smart, Core. They’re not like us.”

  Then, even before the driveway gates finished closing, another limo swung from the road into the entrance. Gina waved at the second one as Corey approached the first. Pete stepped out, opened the passenger door, and Leo Sheffield emerged. The other limo pulled in beside him, blocking Gina’s view until she made her way over and found Sheila Sheffield standing on the bed of pebbles between the cars, speaking to her husband and inspecting his bandaged head like an interrogator. Measuring a mere five feet tall, Sheila was a postmenopausal woman with the short-cropped haircut of a little boy, yet, as far as Gina was concerned, she seemed to stand much taller since she also had the forceful personality of a rooster.

  Gina’s eyes met Leo’s while Sheila continued pecking at him.

  “You look like an invalid with that on your head. What will our guests think?”

  “Your concern is really touching, dear.”

  Sheila was already walking away from him as their two sons, Clayton and Andy, exited the limo she’d arrived in, followed by Andy’s longtime girlfriend, Gretchen, a stunning long-legged brunette from Switzerland, whom Gina had exchanged no more than ten words with in as many years and who’d made no lasting impression other than the high-maintenance requests for particular soaps and conditioners and lotions, which Gina made special trips to buy during the bustle of crazy weekends like this one. The seldom-discussed fact about Gretchen was that she smoked pot in the third-floor bathrooms whenever she spent the night at the estate. And then there was the more relevant fact, which no one would ever state but everyone knew: Sheila wouldn’t spit on her son’s girlfriend if she were on fire.

  Her other son’s sheepdog, Polly, loped off toward the ivy-covered archway that separated the parking lot (which Sheila insisted on calling the roundabout) from the lakeside lawn and began sniffing around the tulips. Clay called Polly back but the dog paid no attention. Leo stared at Gina and mouthed the words Please help me, and she nodded so slightly only he would have seen.

  The Sheffield boys then took turns hugging their father and commenting on the square of gauze taped over the fresh stitches on the back of his head, playfully mocking him.

  “I won’t hug you too hard, Dad,” Andy said. “Wouldn’t want you to lose your balance again and break a hip this time.”

  “Stand back, everyone,” Clay yelped, “Fred Astaire is going to show us how it’s done.”

  Leo took his grown sons in a dual headlock, the three of them jostling and chuckling in the middle of the lot. “Lovey,” he said to Sheila, “where exactly did we go wrong with these two?”

  Rather than responding to her husband, Sheila began rattling off instructions for Corey, pointing at the growing row of luggage and bags the driver had been piling beside the limousine and stating where each piece needed to go.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Corey said like a well-trained cadet when she’d finished, taking two of Sheila’s bags by their handles. Gina picked up two of the others destined for the master bedroom and walked ahead of him, looking over her shoulder at the dog as it destroyed more flowers, and at the Sheffield men leaning against one of the limousines like the preppiest preppy-ass street gang of all time. Sheila had turned away and now spoke on her cell phone to a food vendor as though her gourmet cheese order were a matter of life and death. Andy’s freakishly tall girlfriend stood outside the mix, as usual, in cutoff jean shorts and a silk blouse with spaghetti straps, her eyes covered by Armani sunglasses while she maintained a frozen pose and stared in the direction of the dog.

  After Gina helped Corey drop off the bags in the master bedroom and he headed downstairs for the next batch, she retrieved her own bag from the kitchen and slipped into the bathroom down the hall, intent on swallowing not one but two extra Xanax. The pills sat cradled in her palm, the faucet running. One day sober. Was one day enough time to fret over having to reset her sobriety date tomorrow? She had to admit she’d abused them as much as she’d abused alcohol over the past months, rarely taking the prescribed dose, often swallowing an amount by dinnertime that, when mixed with wine, shoved her into the shadowy neverland of a blackout an hour or so before the late-night talk shows began.
r />   Her train of thought derailed in the gurgling sound of water entering the drain, and then she was revisited by a series of visceral memories with Ray, his grip on her throat the night before she kicked him out, the bruises on her stomach the next day, that awful laugh and the gesture in the driveway with his finger and her spare key pointed at his head like a gun. Maryanne was right—she needed to get the restraining order right away. The water kept on running, the pills still cradled in her palm. This loneliness, she thought, should be classified as a disease. She shut off the faucet and returned the orange bottle to her bag, but kept the two loose pills in her pocket. She wouldn’t take them. Not yet, anyway. Knowing she had access to them whenever she needed them might just do the trick.

  The rest of the morning hours passed like a feverish dream while Gina busied herself with a litany of preparations and last-minute inspections of the bedrooms and bathrooms on all three floors of the house. Meanwhile, ten or twelve of the guests had arrived from the city, some already sipping their first or second drink of the weekend, most of them settled in with the Sheffield kids in the lounge chairs surrounding the pool.

  Gina made her way downstairs and into the dining room, expecting to work on the place settings and flower arrangements for the dinner table without having to feign interest in a guest’s remarks or volley with them for the sake of chitchat. But as soon as she took the first plate from the stack, she heard Sheila and Leo arguing in hushed voices from the other side of the closed glass door of the sunroom. She watched them in profile. Although she knew she should move from their view before Sheila turned and caught her eavesdropping through the glass, the desire to hear their conversation pulled her closer, to within a few feet of the door.

  “My head hurts, honey. Can we table this until after I’ve rested for a few hours?”

  “It’s a simple yes or no, Leo.”

  “I’ve already answered.”

  “So you drove out here in the middle of the night, by yourself, instead of coming today with your family.”