Lila didn’t seem to mind. Or if she did, she hid it. She shook her head and propped her elbows on the table, on either side of her still-full plate.
“Nope,” she said. “I don’t have a clue.”
“Are you lying?” Tuesday pushed.
“Tuesday,” Dex warned, but Tuesday didn’t look at him, and Lila laughed. It sounded genuine enough, but still. What use was asking a widow, to her face, if she was lying? First of all, it was rude. Second of all, of course she was lying – not as Tuesday thought, but to herself – faking it until she made it, telling herself she was okay, that she preferred the company of strangers and neighbors to curling into a fetal position on the floor and crying herself unconscious.
But then. Lila didn’t look like she was faking anything. She looked kind of – how to describe it—
Luminous.
“I’m not lying,” Lila said. “Vince was an exceptional secret keeper.” And she looked at Constance – Dex caught it, and it caromed like a rubber ball around his buzzing brain – and Constance looked back. A powerful intelligence passed between them. It wasn’t combative. It was a kind of vow, warm and solid. It had weight and mass; Dex practically felt it push against his sternum.
Constance placed her napkin beside her half-eaten plate.
“Emerson,” she said, “we’ve paid our respects. We ought to leave Mrs. Pryce to her guests now.”
The standard departing pleasantries were exchanged. Thank you for stopping by. Of course you didn’t intrude, do come back. Anytime. Dex stayed in the brunch room. His vantage at the table allowed him an unobstructed view of Lila leading Emerson and Constance back toward the foyer. It happened so quickly, Dex could have – if he hadn’t been in a state of drunken high alert, tender to the world, to Bert beside him, to Tuesday’s socially suicidal tendencies; if it hadn’t been for his bloody maryed brain – he might have convinced himself it didn’t happen. That he hadn’t seen it. But he had.
Constance Arches’s bony fingers threaded through Lila’s and squeezed, hard.
And then let go.
6
HUNCH DRUNK
Tuesday and Dex sat on a bench in the Common, drinking coffee out of borrowed travel tumblers, squinting into the brilliant fall sky, listening to the leaves and watching the people, wondering whether anything that had just happened would make more sense with sobriety.
Tuesday doubted it.
Lila didn’t come back from leading Emerson and her mother away. They all heard the door shut, and then, in the silence that followed, a muffled little sob.
Bert cleared his throat. He asked Tuesday and Dex if they wanted some coffee. “Lyle,” he called gently to the foyer, “we’ll be in the kitchen. Come in whenever you’re ready.”
She croaked an okay.
The kitchen was unlike any room they’d yet seen in the townhouse. It was full of light. Real, live light. “It burns,” said Dex, shielding his eyes from the glass back wall, panes gleaming with late-morning sun, overlooking a small backyard patio and garden. It wasn’t gothic and gloomy, but it wasn’t Nancy Meyers kitchen porn either. Empty tomato juice bottles clustered on the island, cool granite dotted with red, like a vegetable splatter movie. It looked like the kitchen of someone messily eating her feelings: the countertop held a rogue’s gallery of salty snacks – Pirate’s Booty, pretzels, pita chips, white cheddar Cheez-Its – at least four packages of Trader Joe’s Joe-Joe cookies stacked like books, and an empty pint of Ben and Jerry’s so clean it was probably licked.
“Regular, I assume?” Bert pointed at the coffeemaker.
“Yes, God,” said Dex. “Double regular, extra regular, intravenously, yesterday.”
“I’ll see what I can do.” Bert was absolutely low-key flirting, and Tuesday patted herself on the mental back. He was self-possessed, anxiety aside, and kind, and, if the salt running through his hair wasn’t premature, age appropriate. But she wasn’t quite prepared, if Dex asked (which he undoubtedly would), to make a recommendation. Bert was hiding something. She knew it.
She recognized it plain on his face.
“So.” Tuesday cleared her throat, wrapped her hands around the cool stone edges of the island, and leaned forward. “What was that all about?”
Bert didn’t turn around, but his shoulders rose slightly, like he’d been jolted with a tiny current. He poured water from the carafe into the top of the coffeemaker.
“Arches,” he said. “That was all about Arches.”
“I know about the feud,” Tuesday murmured.
Bert did turn around then, and raised an eyebrow. She chose to interpret it as a sign that he was impressed.
“Frankly,” she continued, “I wouldn’t eat those muffins.”
Dex, leaning beside Bert against the counter, cranked his head in her direction. “Tuesday,” he said.
“I think the muffins are probably fine,” Bert said.
“Forget about the muffins,” said Tuesday. She apologized again, and said, “I get awkward when I meet new people. Who know famous people,” which was technically true. “How long did you say Lila was with Vince?”
“About four years.” Bert was easier now, talking about his friend. Telling her story. He hugged himself again. “Three years married this month. They just had their anniversary.” He shrugged without letting go of his own arms. “She has a tendency to overthink things, and she was just getting used to it.”
“Overthinking?” asked Dex. “Marriage?”
“Money,” said Tuesday.
Bert smiled at her. “Two points for Tuesday.” The coffeemaker gurgled. “Vince owned eight houses. The cheapest one – he’s got another apartment on Beacon Hill, over on Pinckney – is worth over two mil. She went from our little piece of triple-decker heaven in Somerville to a castle. From working like a dog for peanuts to not working at all, and having anything she wanted. It was unreal. And honestly, it’s not like she’s even used to it – she was just kind of figuring out how to be okay with it. How to get the hang of being wealthy without it making her crazy or an asshole or a crazy asshole.” The corner of his mouth lifted in a grin that immediately drooped. “Then this.”
“What?” asked Tuesday. “What’s this?”
He shrugged his shoulders higher and held out both arms, palms up, in the universal gesture of the hell do I know? “All this? Vince dying? And leaving behind this – game?”
“Nice tattoo,” said Dex. Bert blushed and crossed his arms again, covering the tattoo, but not before Tuesday finally saw it close-up: one of John Tenniel’s famous illustrations from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the White Rabbit, standing on its hind paws, wearing a checked coat and looking at a pocket watch.
She reopened her mental file on him. “Bert,” she said. “What’s your last name?”
“Hatmaker,” he said.
Dex hooted. “That’s a name. Bert Hatmaker. I didn’t know real people had names like that.”
“Isn’t your name Poindexter?” Bert deadpanned.
Sly and dry. Good but nervous. Knows more than he’s telling. Tuesday paused, mental pencil over mental paper.
“Dex becomes me,” Dex said.
Bert smiled at him. Dex smiled back. Put Dex on the case, Tuesday scribbled in her file. Not that he isn’t already.
“What we’re dealing with here – from what you’re saying,” Tuesday said, “is some very complicated grief. While she was adjusting and overthinking, was she ever a crazy asshole to you?”
“Huh?” Bert twitched. “No, she—” He shot up straight. “Lyle!” he said. “Coffee’s on.”
Lila stood behind them in the kitchen doorway, one hand on the wall. She spoke to Bert as if he were the only person in the room.
“How much did you tell them?” she asked.
Dex frowned at his travel tumbler, then smiled at it, because it belonged to Lila or Bert, and returning it was a reason to see either or both of them again. Soon.
“See, we didn’t need a plan,” said De
x, stretching his back against the bench. “It was a social call. And they sang like social canaries.”
“Just because you didn’t have a plan,” said Tuesday, “doesn’t mean I didn’t.”
Dex peered at her sideways. She was worrying her thumbnail between her teeth.
“What are you thinking?” he asked. “Or overthinking.”
“Whether those canaries sang us the truth.”
He saw no reason to doubt either of them, but then, Dex never did. Trusting no one was Tuesday’s job.
And Lila had put on a trustworthy performance. She was an actor – Dex knew one when he saw one – but just because it was a performance didn’t mean it wasn’t true. Still sniffling from whatever had passed between her and Constance Arches in the hallway, Lila entered the kitchen from stage left. Her bare feet slapped on the tile floor. She repeated her question to Bert.
“How much did you tell them?”
“Not much,” Bert said. “I was waiting for you.”
“We should tell them,” she said.
“Well, we kind of have to now,” Bert said.
Lila sighed. “Booty me,” she said, and Bert tossed her the bag of Pirate’s Booty. She caught it and yanked it open in the same graceful movement.
“The morning after Vince died,” Lila said, scooping a handful of Booty into her mouth and talking around it, “a man dressed as Edgar Allan Poe came to my door. Pale as hell, half-drunk pouchy eyes, Victorian suit, stuffed bird sewn to his damn shoulder. Told me he had a message from the beyond.” She swallowed. “It was maybe seven-thirty. I’m wearing – I think I’m wearing these exact sweatpants. My life feels like an impossible surreal nightmare, and this fucker rings my bell before eight a.m., and for a hot second I think I’m going to gouge his eyes out with my thumbs.”
She paused. The bag of Booty crinkled as she lowered it to her side.
“Then he starts—” Her chin trembled. “Wait,” she said. “That’s not where the story starts. I need to back up.” She inhaled slowly with her eyes closed. “I met Vince at karaoke,” she said, and Dex couldn’t stop his own intake of breath. A romance after his own stupid heart. “I was out with a friend—” She nodded at Bert, and Bert pressed his fingertip to his chest and mouthed, She means me. “After a peculiar night. A peculiar, shattering, liberating night.” Lila paused again. She composed herself once more and stood, firm, ready to launch her monologue to the back of the house.
“A new teacher on staff, Heather,” she said, “asked if I wanted to go with her to the Museum of Fine Arts for their evening cocktail hour – a famous hunting ground for older, wealthy men looking to bag young nubile things. I like art, I wasn’t currently bagged, and Heather was new and looking to make a friend. So I went with her. It became very clear, very quickly, that she didn’t want to make a friend, let alone me as a friend. She wanted to get bagged, and didn’t want to look so desperate to be there alone. It was a strange evening, fairly inane; I talked to a lot of old white men who thought my eyes were here.” She moved her hand in a circle over her chest. “Heather wasn’t getting bagged. When I suggested we bag the mixer and hit the falafel joint around the corner so the night wasn’t a total waste, Heather got – riled. She said to me, ‘You would rather eat falafel than get married.’”
Dex snorted. He covered it up, not sure if he was being rude.
“No, it’s hilarious,” said Lila. She chewed a few more bites of Booty. “It was the worst insult Heather could imagine. When she said it, her face went still as an assassin’s. She shot to kill. And we hardly knew each other! But I heard those words, and I knew they were the truth, and they set me free.
“‘Yes,’ I told Heather. Yes, I would rather eat delicious falafel at the joint around the corner than flatter my way to an intimacy with someone for whom marriage is a financial transaction, young flesh for old, security for heirs. Yes, I would rather enjoy creamy tahini, a soft pita, those perfectly fried little balls, than torture myself about what was or was not happening in my life when my life was good. Yes, I rejected marriage – as an abstract, arbitrary signifier, as a legal and social status that determined my value, as a bullshitty benchmark I’d blown past years ago anyway. Yes!” She raised a fist in the air. “I wanted pleasure. Yes, I wanted companionship. Yes, I wanted a life of meaning. Yes, this was thirty-six, goddammit, tonight I wanted falafel and tonight it would be mine. I would rather eat falafel than get married.”
Dex said, “I want to clap. Can I clap?”
Lila continued. “It wasn’t Heather’s fault – she didn’t know my life. I didn’t know hers. And whatever natural anxiety she had about coupling could’ve only been made worse by the garbage we’ve all been eating all our lives, every piece of fairy-tale cake we’ve choked down that rewards a girl – for her kindness, her wit, her courage – with a wedding. As though a wedding is a marriage, as though marriage is itself a trophy.” She shook her hair back over her shoulders. “So I left, grabbed my goddamn falafel at the joint around the corner and called my friend and asked what he was up to.”
“I was dating a guy at the time,” said Bert, and Dex noted, as he was surely meant to, all the information contained therein. I date men. I was dating someone at that time whom I am dating no longer. “Who hosted karaoke at a bar in Brookline.”
“So I walk into this karaoke bar, still eating my falafel,” Lila said. “It was so good, salty and rich, crispy and soft, like deep-fried freedom and truth and acceptance. It tasted like the known, owned self. It tasted like fuck you, patriarchy. And halfway through savoring this falafel, I heard him. Vince had—”
All this performance was bravado. All of this drama was camouflage.
“—a perfect tenor. Perfect pitch.” She looked down. “He sounded like Paul McCartney. This fantastic old man with silver hair, wearing a frigging cape, got up and sang ‘No More Lonely Nights.’ And he made the whole room turn toward him, all our hearts on a string.”
Tuesday sat back on her stool and crossed her arms.
“I complimented his cape,” Lila said. “Later, when he was offstage, I said, ‘You don’t see many capes in the world today. They’re difficult to pull off.’ His speaking voice was lower than his singing – I liked his big ears and his big nose, a little Cary Grant, a little busted Harrison Ford; his eyes were intelligent but kind, with a glint – and he said, ‘Am I? Pulling it off?’”
She sagged a little.
“I know how it looks,” she said. “Young woman – well, not as young as some – marries much, much older wealthy man. Trophy wife. But it wasn’t like that. I didn’t want to get married. I wanted, more than anything in the world, love.” Her throat caught. “The kind that lasts longer than life. So, the morning after the auction. A man dressed as Edgar Allan Poe wakes me up and he – he’s a Singing Poe-a-gram. He sings the first song I ever heard Vince sing, and it’s the first time I notice the refrain. I won’t go away,” she said, her tiny voice thickening with uncried tears, “until you tell me so. No, I’ll never go away.”
Her voice cracked.
“You get the point,” she said. She splayed her fingers and mimed a waterfall from her face. “Weeping. Because Vince was still here. Is still here. He’s dead but he won’t go away. Like this – today. He’s been sending me food every day. Pizza and takeout and catered brunch just shows up at the door. He’s feeding me. I mean, that’s partly why I invited you.” She shrugged at Dex. “I need help eating all this stuff.
“Anyway, the poor singer looked terrified that I was snotting all over him, but he was sweet, gave me a tissue. Then he told me he’d already been tipped and asked if I needed a hug. A hug. From a faux Poe.” Her voice clotted again. “That was Vince.” Lila pushed the tears out of her eyes with her thumbs.
She blinked. “Shit. Shit – ouch. I got – I got Booty in my – shit.”
Bert turned on the faucet. Lila crossed to the sink and dunked her face under the tap to flush her eye.
“That’s quite a story,” sai
d Tuesday.
“I know.” Lila’s voice echoed out of the stainless steel basin.
“Vince was theatrical,” said Bert.
Lila righted herself, blinking, water streaming down her face and matting one side of her hair. “Vince was a lunatic in all the best ways. He’s not done with life, despite being dead. He’s not done with me, or you or you, or anyone who takes him seriously enough to play this game.”
Dex’s fingers tingled. “Are you saying we’re in danger?”
“God no!” Lila said. “I’m just saying if you want to win, even if you just want to play, think like a lunatic. A theatrical lunatic.”
“With a romantic streak,” said Tuesday.
“Shouldn’t be difficult,” Dex said. Out of the side of his eye he caught Bert, tucking his chin to his chest and blushing again.
Dex could see that Tuesday’s assessment of Vince as a romantic – which, of course; no one sends a soft-rock Poe-a-gram from beyond the grave unless they believe not even death can conquer love – impressed Lila. Over her shoulder to Bert, she said, “I knew these were the horses to back.”
“What about the Arches family?” Tuesday asked.
Lila’s face went still. “What about them?” she said.
Tuesday shrugged. “You tell me.”
Lila thought for a moment. A bead of water from her wet hair slid down the side of her face, and when she spoke, it didn’t sound a bit scripted.
“Stay far away,” she said, “from Nathaniel.”
“Is this how a pawn feels?” Dex asked. Probably, thought Tuesday. A pawn. Or a rook. Were rooks the same as ravens? She didn’t know how to play chess. A ratty city squirrel raced out from beneath their bench and bounded anemically over the Common’s leaf-strewn grass. “Are we being used?”
“At the very least we’re getting sucked into some bizarro family drama.” Tuesday tapped her fingers on her tumbler. “Disappearances, deaths. Long-standing grudges, rivalries beyond our control.”
Tuesday Mooney Wore Black Page 12
