Tuesday Mooney Wore Black

by Kate Racculia

  “Poe’s narrators are always drama queens. ‘I admit the deed!’” Tuesday muttered. “‘Tear up the planks! here, here! – It is the beating of his hideous heart.’”

  A black and white blur galloped out of the bedroom and straight through the papers.

  Tuesday gently smacked her own forehead. “I am a terrible cat mom. I haven’t fed him yet.”

  “On it,” said Dorry. The tuxedo blur – Gunnar – was sprawled on his back on the kitchen linoleum, looking very weak and hungry, or as weak and hungry as a slightly overweight cat can look. “Talk about drama queens,” Dorry said, and rubbed the thick white fur of his belly. His eyes slid closed.

  “So anyway,” said Tuesday, her voice echoing toward the kitchen, “I thought ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ might be the decoder ring, the key to deciphering – whatever the clue is. If it were a straightforward substitution cipher, you know, a jumble of seemingly meaningless letters that he gave us and said here, crack the code, someone would have cracked it in five minutes. But the clue itself is hidden. Under the floor. Like the old man. All we can hear is the beating of its hideous heart.”

  “Which is only in our minds,” called Dorry over the plinking of cat kibble into Gunnar’s dish.

  “He said he already told us where to begin, so I printed off every letter to the editor he ever wrote, of which there are many. I’ve spread them out by month and year.” She looked up. “How do you feel about reading a bajillion letters tonight?”

  Dorry walked back to the living room. “What am I looking for?” she asked.

  Anything. Anything that didn’t seem quite right, that called attention to itself. Or, as Tuesday said with a shrug, any jumble of seemingly meaningless letters. Dorry threw her legs over the arm of the couch and Tuesday took her cat-scratched leather chair, and for the next thirty minutes, they read.

  Dorry was surprised that it sort of bummed her out. This guy – Vincent Pryce – seemed pretty cool. He made a lot of dumb jokes, but he also really, really cared about things. He cared about teaching theater and music in elementary schools. He cared about scholarships for kids to attend summer programs and prep schools and colleges. When a handful of parents tried to get The Diary of Anne Frank taken off their kids’ summer reading lists, he went ballistic.

  Pryce also had strong opinions about, of all things, Valentine’s Day. On February 13, 2006, he wrote, “Please – this holiday makes a mockery of one of our greatest capacities as humans, perhaps THE greatest function of the heart: to love and to be loved.” On February 10, 2007: “Ask yourself: why do many of us feel compelled to spend this day proving we love each other, something we could be doing any other day of the year without the absurd theater of chocolate roses or edible underwear?” February 14, 2008: “Roman godlings, bare-bottomed. Flowers that smell of sugar and rot. Hearts. Candy hearts. Chocolate hearts. Stuffed hearts with cheap lace edging. Hideous hearts, all.”

  Hideous hearts.

  Dorry grabbed a pen and began to circle.

  Tuesday’s buzzer rang.

  “Thank the Maker,” Tuesday said, and pressed the button under her intercom to let the delivery guy up. She was in the kitchen, clanking silverware against plates, when Raj – their normal Palace of India Thursday-night delivery guy – knocked on the door. Dorry, distracted, opened it.

  It was not Raj.

  It was a white guy. Tall. Lanky. Dark hair that was somehow annoying – kind of fake-looking and wrong, like a wavy helmet of snapped-on Lego hair. His whole face was long, prickly with five-o’clock shadow, except for his smile, which was soft and wide. He was wearing jeans and sneakers that looked like the kind the rich kids at her old school collected – because that was a Thing, collecting sneakers – and a bright white T-shirt, bright blue V-neck beneath a beat black motorcycle jacket with a rip in the sleeve. He smiled at her, then thought better of it.

  “You’re not Raj,” she said.

  “No, but he said to say hi. And to give you this.” He had a rumbly voice. He handed her the usual brown paper bag of food, order slip and receipt stapled to the folded flap.

  “Tuesday,” Dorry called. “Could you—”

  She could feel Tuesday standing behind her.

  “You’re not Raj,” said Tuesday, and then, sharp, “Did you pay for our food?”

  The man nodded.

  “So you could pay for our food but you couldn’t pay your auction bid?” She paused. “Actually, that isn’t much of an argument.”

  “No, it isn’t,” said the stranger. “It is far, far easier for me to pay thirty bucks plus tip for Indian than fifty thou for New Kids tickets.”

  “Do you know this guy?” asked Dorry. “Or should I call nine-one-one?”

  “I haven’t decided yet,” said Tuesday.

  “Well. You should decide,” said Dorry. “Because the food is getting cold and I’m hungry.”

  “This will only be a second,” Tuesday said. “Take the food.” She looked at the stranger. “You,” she said, “aren’t coming in. But I want to talk to you.”

  Dorry cradled the food bag and walked in her sock feet to the kitchen, listening the whole way.

  “How did you find out where I live?” Tuesday’s voice was quiet but firm.

  “You of all people should know how easy it is to find someone’s address,” he answered.

  “Okay, let me rephrase: where the hell do you get off coming to my apartment?”

  Dorry set the bag on the counter. Gunnar, having followed her into the kitchen, gazed up at her expectantly. Dorry lifted him into her arms, which wasn’t at all what he’d been hoping for.

  “—apologize.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “I knew you’d say that,” he said. “Which is why I brought this—”

  Dorry didn’t need to hear more.

  She bolted into the living room, Gunnar bouncing in her arms. “Don’t you TOUCH her,” she shouted, “or I will throw this cat at you.”

  The stranger was holding a piece of paper between his first two fingers. Tuesday was reaching for it.

  Gunnar sort of sighed.

  “He has claws,” Dorry said. “And he knows how to use them.”

  “It’s okay,” Tuesday said. “This is a classic example of money having its own rules.”

  Dorry shifted Gunnar’s weight. It was like holding two bags of warm flour wrapped in a sweater.

  “Money has its own sense of what is and is not appropriate human behavior,” said Tuesday. “For example, money” – she indicated not-Raj, who gave a stupid little wave – “thinks it’s okay to show up at a stranger’s apartment so long as he’s hand-delivering a check for fifty thousand dollars.”

  “Does that mean I can come in?” he asked.

  “No,” said Tuesday.

  “I meant to pay. I swear. My secretary gets requests for money all the time, so she turns them down out of hand. I forgot to tell her this one was legitimate.” He shrugged. “It was a crazy night. And I am truly sorry for the trouble I’ve caused.” He looked down at the floor. “Still making fists with your toes, I see.”

  “Stop staring at my feet,” said Tuesday.

  The stranger flushed. It made Tuesday smile one of her small smiles, the kind that meant she was playing around. That was enough for Dorry to relax a little. She set Gunnar down on the sofa, next to Pryce’s letters about Valentine’s Day.

  “To be honest—” said the stranger.

  “Please do,” said Tuesday.

  “I have a proposal for you. I assume by now you’ve heard about Pryce’s quest.”

  Tuesday nodded.

  “I know a lot about him. He’s – he was, I guess – a family … acquaintance. I’ve seen his collection. And, assuming some ‘portion of his great fortune’ includes the collection, I can personally vouch that it’s worth whatever we can do to make it ours.”

  “Pretty liberal use of the plural possessive there, Arch,” said Tuesday. She crossed her arms and propped herself against the doorfra
me.

  “I know things,” he said. “You know things, and what you don’t know I bet you know how to find. The check I just gave you – I can write another one, just as big, if you agree to help me with Pryce’s game.”

  “No,” said Tuesday.

  He opened his mouth in a perfect O. Dorry leaned into the silence growing between them. Because she knew Tuesday, she knew it was a deep-thinking silence. But the stranger – Arch or whatever – didn’t know that. He panicked.

  “I’ll double it,” he said. “One hundred thousand for your help.”

  “I’m charmed that you take my silence for hardball,” said Tuesday. “Trust me, you’ll know when I’m playing hardball, and that wasn’t it.” She stared at him. “Why me?”

  “Because you’re smart,” he said.

  “Unlike,” said Tuesday, “the horde of lawyers, accountants, private investigators, and public relations handlers your family has on retainer.”

  “They’re smart but you’re smarter.”

  “I doubt that.” Tuesday narrowed her eyes.

  The guy frowned. Then he muttered, “I met you, I liked you, I feel bad that I flaked on the fifty thousand. And, well: nobody in my … complex family knows who you are, which means you can operate with a degree of anonymity.”

  “Fine, that’s why me. Why you? What does the collection have that you can’t get somewhere else? You’re almost passing for aspirational middle class in this J. Crew catalog drag right now—”

  “Hey,” the guy said, and smoothed his blue sweater over his stomach. “This is not J. Crew.”

  “—but I bet you’ve got four figures in loose change in your pockets. From a financial standpoint, to you, Pryce’s ‘great fortune’ has negligible value. Forgive me for questioning your motives, but contracting me for this is like – if I were to contract Dorry here to help me hunt down a pack of gum.”

  “I would do that,” said Dorry.

  “I know you would, kid,” said Tuesday. “No, not even a pack of gum. It would be like me hiring a PI to find a wad of gum under a desk. So why do you, dirty, filthy, stinking-rich Nathaniel Allan Arches” – with every adjective Tuesday lobbed at him, he nodded – “want a wad of used chewing gum?”

  He tugged on his right earlobe, and Dorry blinked. A tell. He had a tell. The next thing out of his mouth would be a lie, or, if not a direct lie, something that wasn’t entirely the truth. Her mother had had a tell: whenever she was about to drop a Wild Draw Four on Dorry in Uno, she tapped her fingers on the cards.

  He inhaled. His chest rose. So many tells, thought Dorry, and looked at Tuesday, who had no tells, or at least none that Dorry had ever noticed.

  “Why does everything have to be about money?” he said. “Honestly, and I would expect someone who roots around in the digital drawers of rich people for a living to know this already, if you have enough money, it stops meaning anything. You can’t touch it or taste it or feel it. Then the things that matter become what you can touch, or taste, or – feel.”

  “Objects, you mean. Something in Pryce’s collection,” Tuesday said.

  “Let’s just say” – his already deep voice lowered, which made the bottoms of Dorry’s feet tingle – “that the value is sentimental.”

  Tuesday didn’t respond.

  “One hundred fifty thousand,” he said. “Final offer.”

  “One hundred fifty is my retainer, plus expenses,” said Tuesday. “I want a working partnership. We split the detecting, the legwork, fifty-fifty. If we win, we split the reward fifty-fifty. I’ll take half, you take half. Or you can buy me out, for however much Pryce’s estate is currently valuing whatever the prize turns out to be.” She smiled. “But for no less than five million.”

  Dorry’s throat dried up. She made a little coughing sound halfway between a gasp and a laugh.

  “Oh, now you’re playing hardball,” said Archie.

  “Still not,” said Tuesday, grinning. “But closer.” She stuck out her hand.

  Archie paused.

  “Why does everything have to be about money?” Tuesday said. “C’mon, I know you’re good for it. I’ve done the research.”

  He slid his hand into hers.

  “We start tonight,” said Tuesday. “Because you know anyone else who’s serious has already started too.”

  So Archie came in. He introduced himself to Dorry with a handshake, and Dorry felt herself start to giggle, because seriously, a handshake? Then her hand went sort of rigid in his warm grip, and after he let go, her first thought was I did that wrong. Or did she? How was she supposed to shake a guy’s hand, a guy who wasn’t her dad’s coworker, wasn’t her mom’s old college friend, wasn’t saying, while they held her cold hand, I’m so sorry for your loss?

  They all sat at Tuesday’s rickety Ikea table and ate and strategized.

  “Tell me about Pryce,” said Tuesday.

  “He was a weirdo. A true-blue, first-class, dyed-in-the-wool weirdo.” Archie dipped a piece of naan into the malai kofta sauce. “New money, vulgar money. Barely tolerated. And I really don’t think he gave a fuck. Oh—” His eyes darted to Dorry.

  Dorry snorted. “Dude,” she said, “you kiss your mutha with that fucken thing?”

  “This is your influence?” he said to Tuesday. “Look what you’re doing to the youth.”

  “I believe the children are our future,” said Tuesday.

  Dorry cleared her throat.

  “Oh children,” said Tuesday, “do you have something to say?”

  Dorry felt herself blush. She did. She had a lot to say. She coughed. “Um, I think I might – know where to start looking.”

  Tuesday’s head jerked like a bird’s. “Wha— that’s great. Where?”

  Dorry looked at Archie, blushed again, and looked back at Tuesday. “Do you really trust this guy?” she asked. She didn’t, but she trusted Tuesday completely.

  “I trust his money,” said Tuesday.

  “I want a cut,” Dorry said.

  Tuesday cackled. “And that,” she said to Archie, “is hardball. You got it, kid. I can’t spend five million all by myself.”

  “Actually, you can,” said Archie.

  “Well, I have no plans to go to college again. Dorry needs it more than I do.”

  Dorry knew she was still blushing – she could feel her face almost pulsing, and a cool tight spot in the middle of her forehead – and when she stood up, she shook a little. Even if Tuesday only shared one million dollars, it meant Dad could afford the apartment for as long as they wanted. It meant they would never have to move back to the suburbs, or buy a car or have to drive one. And if neither she nor her father ever learned to drive, they could never hit a patch of black ice and smash through the guardrail of a bridge and sail into the river below. They could never be missing for two days in a blizzard, sealed under ice and snow.

  They could never drown in freezing water with their seatbelt still on.

  She grabbed the letters she’d been reading before Archie knocked on the door. Gunnar was sleeping on them (of course), and was less than pleased to be displaced. “Pryce had a real problem with Valentine’s Day,” she said, handing the printouts to Tuesday. “Every year, he wrote about what a sham it is. He calls candy hearts hideous hearts.”

  She heard Tuesday suck in a breath.

  “I started circling the first words, then the first letters, of each Valentine’s clipping. In order. So far I have P A R. It could be spelling a word, right? And didn’t the obit say something about hearing the city’s hideous heart?” She was talking too fast. “We’d have to find them all to be sure, but I bet – I bet the first letter of every Valentine’s letter spells Park. As in Park Street.”

  “Park Street station. The oldest subway in America. Of course,” said Tuesday. “Where else but under the ground would the old city’s heart be beating?”

  “Where else?” said Dorry. Her own heart was leaping like it would never stop.

  4

  THE CITY’S HIDEO
US HEART

  Tuesday, on the sidewalk outside her apartment, snapped her bike helmet’s chin buckle.

  She couldn’t believe she was doing this.

  But of course she was doing this. It was the most fun she’d had in an age.

  “Archie,” she said.

  Nathaniel Arches turned around. “What?”

  “I never told you my last name,” said Tuesday.

  “I never told you mine either.”

  Fair point.

  “Are you so surprised by my resourcefulness?” he asked.

  “Your resourcefulness,” she said, “is borderline creepy.”

  “Isn’t your whole job borderline creepy?”

  “I don’t cross the border. I have a code of ethics. I don’t, for example, show up at the apartment of someone I have researched.”

  “You just write up dossiers about us that we don’t even know exist.”

  “Dossiers that help the people I work with strategically persuade you to become just slightly less rich, so the hospital can build a nice new oncology suite. Besides,” she said, “you knew. You know. You gave those interviews.” He pulled his own helmet over his head as she continued. “You tweeted those memes. You put an idea of yourself out there for me, for anyone, to find.”

  “Did you ever consider,” he said, “that I was using my resourcefulness to impress you?” His voice was muffled by the helmet, but his eyes were visible, the same eyes she’d recognized in the ballroom of the Four Seasons. “And that with our powers combined—”

  He threw his leg over the motorcycle, parked illegally in front of her building’s driveway. Tuesday didn’t know much about bikes, but she knew his was a Ducati, and that it was very cool.

  “Your game needs work,” she said.

  The first glow of sunset was disappearing over the top of her apartment building when she climbed on the bike and locked her arms around him.

  “Seems like it’s working okay,” he muttered, and ripped the bike to life. She was charmed, begrudgingly; it was the cheater’s way of getting the last word.