Tuesday Mooney Wore Black

by Kate Racculia

  Her eyes had been open with interest before, but now they nearly hopped out of her skull.

  “Way to bury the lede,” she hissed.

  “But we knew he knew,” said Dex.

  “We knew he knew more than he was telling us,” she said. “But we didn’t know he knew. Now we know he knows.” She smacked Dex on the forearm. It hurt more than he thought she meant it to. “He’s Pryce’s helper. Pryce’s living agent.” She stubbed her finger into the table like she was crushing another cigarette. “We’re cracking this thing wide open. We’re cracking it tonight. You text that man to get his cute butt here for a predrinks drink right now.”

  “Hold up,” he said. “Just, wait a second. It’s clear that Rabbit—”

  “Rabbit? Did you – did you just call him Rabbit?”

  Dex continued. “It’s clear he knows at least a bit about what’s going on. More than we do. More than Lyle, even. But he—”

  Tuesday had not stopped muttering to herself. Dex heard “—not a person, he’s a precious moment” and felt a strange stirring in his chest that could only be protective instinct. And not for Rabbit, or at least not Rabbit alone.

  “Tuesday,” he said. He turned her by the shoulders to face him. “You’re my friend. For years now. But I’ve never seen you this – caught up.” He flapped his hands as she had done. “You seem like you’ve lost not just your job, but your goddamned mind.” Tuesday’s face twisted. She cringed like she’d been struck, and Dex felt terrible, because that had been a low blow, even if it were true. He softened his voice. “I like this man. I like him a lot. I’m going to ask him to meet me here because I don’t want to up and leave you, and I realize this has been the worst, just the worst day for you, but please.” Dex took both her hands and squeezed. “Remember he’s a human. Not a database or a file or a whole filing cabinet to dig through.”

  Tuesday sat very quietly and stared at him.

  “All humans are filing cabinets,” she said finally. “Some are just better organized than others.”

  “Tuesday.”

  “And some have way more files than others. Like, some have big fat files full of amazing shit.”

  Dex sighed.

  As ideas went, this was not a great one.

  “Poindexter.” She squeezed his hands back. “I’ll be gentle.”

  A job and a mind were two different things. Just because she lost one didn’t mean she was going to lose the other.

  Bert – Rabbit – Hatmaker sat across from Tuesday Mooney on his own wobbly McFly’s stool, drinking his own shitty bourbon. Sweating. His upper lip shone. The high line of his forehead glistened. He was sweating like a bastard in an argyle sweater vest, because it was sweater weather and Bert Hatmaker was the kind of bastard who would wear an argyle sweater vest and smile shyly at her like he didn’t know she knew everything. Like he had any kind of poker face. Tuesday had a poker face. Right now she had a drunk face, which was close to her poker face but more assertive and – Bert Hatmaker was sweating all over whatever the opposite of a poker face is.

  Tuesday hated him a little.

  She didn’t know why.

  “Hey,” she said. She interrupted the pie-eyes Bert was making at Dex and Dex was making back. “Hey, aren’t you a music teacher?”

  “Yes,” Bert said, only it sounded like a question: Yes?

  “How much does that suck?” Tuesday asked.

  “Tuesday,” said Dex.

  Tuesday hoisted her arms and her shoulders so high she lost her neck.

  “Just a question,” she said. “Just trying to make conversation.”

  Bert glanced at her (mostly empty) glass, then over at Dex, who sighed.

  “Parts of it suck,” Bert said, turning back. “A lot. A lot of the job is disheartening. I knew that going in, though. No one chooses to be a music educator for fortune and glory. At least, not in the traditional sense.”

  “The sense of fortune as money,” said Tuesday. “And glory as, what, renown? Respect? Fame?”

  Bert nodded.

  “So you’re saying,” said Tuesday, “that you feel underpaid? Undervalued? Underappreciated?”

  “Well, of course.” Bert laughed. “I mean, every administration I’ve ever taught under considers the arts – all the arts, but music especially – essentially disposable. The first extracurricular subject to get the chop.”

  He looked, when he said this, genuinely pained, and Tuesday tried very hard not to listen to the sympathy ringing in her ears, which was next to impossible when she was drunk. When she was drunk, she was both her most anesthetized and her most sensitive.

  And Rabbit, she could tell – Bert – whatever – she’d noticed it at brunch, but now it was pulsing off his body in waves: he was sensitive. Probably, as a kid, too sensitive. But he’d grown up into this man – this Rabbit – who could sit in a bar with a man he liked and that man’s drunk and unpleasant friend, and treat both, simultaneously, like they were worth his attention and respect.

  He believed other people were valuable, and made them feel it.

  She felt the corners of her eyes prick.

  Rabbit had the capacity to really love Dex, if Dex didn’t fuck it up.

  “But the other parts,” Rabbit was still saying, “the parts of the job that are actually about the music – watching a kid blow her guts into a trombone and figure out how to move metal, to bend air into sorrow, madness, pain, joy. I love that. I love that. That, most of the time, makes up for all the other bullshit.”

  “Other bullshit,” Tuesday murmured. The word got stuck in her brain.

  All of this bullshit.

  “And what do you do, again?” asked Rabbit.

  He couldn’t have known. He hadn’t meant to bury a letter opener in her heart, a blunt knife designed for opening things, but he had done exactly that.

  So she opened.

  “I dig. I find. I take what isn’t mine,” she said. “I share secrets.”

  Rabbit made a huh face. “So you’re a spy?”

  Tuesday saw her opening. “Takes one to know one,” she said.

  Rabbit’s eyes narrowed.

  “We know,” she said lightly. “We know you know about Pryce. And now that we know, and we can only assume you don’t want anyone else to know, we want to know everything. Else. So we can all know what we all know.”

  Rabbit looked at Dex, half amused, half confused. Dex looked back.

  His face said, Never mind the crazy girl.

  “Oh my God,” she said, pounding her fist on the table so hard the silverware jangled in its plastic Sam Adams bar caddy. She pointed at Rabbit. “We know.”

  “Tuesday,” said Dex.

  “Stop playing,” Tuesday said, “stupid games.”

  “Tuesday,” said Dex, “we talked about thi—”

  “What did he give you?” Tuesday asked, burning now, furious. She hurt all over, so she asked Rabbit again, her voice turning into a shout, “Why? Why did you do it?”

  “I—” Rabbit began.

  “You don’t have to tell us,” said Dex.

  “Yes he does,” said Tuesday.

  “No, he doesn’t,” said Dex, “not when you’re being such a bitch—”

  “No,” said Rabbit. Firm, loud enough for Nick at the bar to look up from his copy of the Herald. “No, I should tell you. I should – oh my.” He covered his mouth with his hand. His eyes leapt from Dex to Tuesday.

  Back to Dex.

  Back to Tuesday.

  “You have to promise,” Rabbit said.

  “I promise,” said Tuesday.

  “You have to promise,” Rabbit repeated, “that I can trust you. Not to tell – I mean, I’ve been dying to tell. For weeks.” He dropped his voice to a harsh whisper. “Dying, but freaked, because I—”

  “Broke the law?” whispered Tuesday.

  Rabbit turned a whiter shade of pale, which was goddamn impressive given he already had the pallor of a cocktail napkin. He was sensitive, maybe even – sti
ll, in adulthood – a goody-goody. “I’m the banker,” he said.

  “No,” said Dex. “I’m the banker. Or at least I work with the bankers. You—” He gestured up and down in the space between them, trying to indicate everything – everything – about Rabbit, from his fancy sneakers to his wrinkled trousers, his argyle to his slightly overgrown Caesar. “You are not a banker.”

  “I’m not a banker,” said Rabbit. “I’m the banker. For Life After Death. I was always the banker, when I’d go over and—” He clasped his hands and drew lower on his stool. He took a deep breath. “Vince and Lyle and I had a standing game night. Just the three of us. Lyle’s parents are dead. I’m the closest friend she carried over from her old life to her new one – she wanted Vince and me to know each other. So we played games. Mostly board games, parlor games. Puzzles. Cards. Parcheesi. Backgammon. Hours and hours of Monopoly. Vince loved Monopoly. And I was always the banker. I like being the banker, keeping everything sorted and neat and running smoothly. Vince said I was the straightest arrow he’d ever met.”

  “Pun intended?” Tuesday muttered, and Dex kicked her under the table.

  Rabbit ignored her. “One night, Vince pulled me aside and told me about the aneurysm. That he could drop any day, at any time. What did he say – something like, he was ‘going to die, soon, and for the rest of his life.’ He needed my help.” Rabbit held his hand flat against his chest, like he was pledging allegiance. “God help me, I’m a sucker.”

  No fucking shit, Tuesday thought.

  “So what did he ask you to do?” Dex said, leaning closer, chin on his curled hand.

  “Set up that fake brick wall in Park Street, for one.” Rabbit ran his hand through his hair. “That was – terrifying. Vince gave me bribe money and a contact, an old lady who’d worked for the T forever but hadn’t had a raise in years. Told her I was an artist, like Banksy. She said she loved Banksy, turned the security cameras away long enough for me to slip down the tunnel with a duffel of quick-drying cement, fake bricks, that stuffed mannequin and jester’s cap. I’ve been waiting for the Boston PD to kick down my door for weeks.”

  “That’s – that’s why you looked so familiar at brunch,” said Tuesday. “You were there.”

  “Where?” said Rabbit.

  “There. In the T.” She remembered now: a girl playing tenor saxophone for change on the platform, a man dropping a dollar bill in the girl’s open case. “On the night the obituary was published, when Archie—” It stung. It stung like a black fly to say his stupid name. “When we found the first clue.”

  “Well, yeah. Of course I was there.” Rabbit kind of smiled. “I’m the banker. It’s my job to make sure the game runs smoothly.”

  “Was it your job to make the underground decoder room?” Dex asked.

  “We did that first. Vince and I, together. He owns the building. Vince sat in the middle of the room and pointed, and I ran around and painted all the symbols.” Rabbit’s smile went full grin. “That was a blast.”

  “What else?” asked Tuesday.

  “What else what,” said Rabbit.

  “What else did you do?” She lurched toward him across the table and her brain sloshed in her skull. “What else have you done?”

  He counted on his fingers. “Chalked the code on the outside of the Steinert building. Printed and left funeral invitations all around town, with a few strategic anonymous comments – on Reddit, Twitter, Facebook – asking the crowd to spread the word. Hired the caterers and the band for his funeral. Booked the permits, so we can have a big party on Boston Common.” He rubbed his hands together. “A few other things that I swore to a dead man I would never tell, until the time was right.”

  “A few other things that you didn’t even tell Lyle?” said Tuesday.

  Rabbit sat up straight. He shook his head. “She knows I’m the banker. I couldn’t not tell her that.”

  “You didn’t answer my question. You didn’t say why,” said Tuesday, as Dex was shushing her.

  “I’ve had some odd things happen to me,” Rabbit said, “over the course of my life. I’ve learned to embrace the mysterious. Because the strange, the extraordinary – those experiences that make you look at the world like you’ve never seen it before, really pay attention to it – the strange changes you. Shows you new things about yourself. About life. Other people.”

  Tuesday huffed. “Get to the point.”

  “The point,” Rabbit said, “is that Vince was strange. And Vince made Lyle, one of my favorite people, happy. The happiest I ever saw her. I did it because he was dying and needed my help. Strange called, and I answered.”

  “You did it,” said Tuesday, cold, “because he asked.”

  “Correct,” said Rabbit.

  “He didn’t – he didn’t pay you any money.”

  Rabbit shook his head.

  “At all.”

  “Nope,” said Rabbit.

  “A dying bajillionaire asked you to commit assorted acts of light criminal mischief,” Tuesday said, “and you did it.” She crossed her arms. “For free.”

  It didn’t make any sense.

  Or did it?

  She didn’t know.

  She did not know.

  She felt sick and sad. There sat Rabbit, an adorable fuzzy bunny of a person, and Tuesday still couldn’t say why, but she could barely stand the sight of him. The fact of him. And Dex was twittering at him, glowing, reflecting the rays of Rabbit’s sainted selflessness.

  “You are too good to be true,” Dex said.

  Tuesday watched them smile at each other, and if she hadn’t been drunk, if she hadn’t been soul sick, if she hadn’t been predisposed that day to find everything good and sweet and objectively optimistic a terrible crock, and if she hadn’t felt so keenly, at that otherwise cozy table, that she was the odd one, the invisible one, alone on the outside always always always, Tuesday might have been able to control herself.

  But she was drunk and soul sick and predisposed to find everything good and sweet and objectively optimistic a terrible crock.

  “Rabbit,” she said, “you are full of shit.”

  “Tuesday!” said Dex.

  “But it’s been nice meeting you. Knowing you” – she looked down at her watch – “for the twenty-five minutes left before Dex self-destructs this relationship. I hope you like paying attention to him, because he needs someone paying attention to him more desperately than he needs any other thing in the universe.” She smacked Dex’s arm. “I’ll be waiting over here, like always, your relationship methadone, for when the high wears off.”

  She lifted her glass. “Cheers,” she said.

  Dex and Rabbit, outside in full dark, McFly’s behind them, walked down the uneven bricks of Charles Street toward the Common, looking for a cab. Dex was fuming. Normally, he didn’t fume so much as seethe, quietly, privately, until the trigger for his rage dissipated: slow walkers, distracted tourists, people who clogged up the left side of escalators by standing when they ought to have been climbing – so, really, anyone who impeded the speed of his movement through the world.

  But this was a good, legitimate fume. And Tuesday had brought it on. Tuesday, his oldest adult friend. Who had been acting lately like she wanted to be closer – who had, just today! At a moment of personal crisis! Reached out to him! It was almost possible to imagine they were, at last, going to be – well, let’s not get carried away – better friends. These facts made his fume much more intense. His better friend had not only acted like an asshole to the man he was (casually, why even label it) dating, she had acted like a complete asshole to him. Dex usually loved parading his paramours around Tuesday. Not only did he value her critical opinion, but she made him look phenomenal by association, that he should count this brilliantly weird woman as one of his intimates. And, sure, maybe it was easier to be mad at her for being cruel than it was to feel guilty about making funeral-going plans that did not explicitly include her (though of course, of course, they would go together) … on t
he day when she lost her job because of this insane game. This game that Dex brought to her attention, not that she wouldn’t have found out about it herself, but he had wanted to play. He had egged her on. He had handed her the rope to hang herself.

  And she had turned around and shot him in the face.

  He didn’t know what he did or did not owe her, but he was fairly certain he hadn’t deserved that.

  “Hey,” said Rabbit, nudging him. “Are you okay? That was – rough. Back there.”

  Hell.

  “I’m not an attention whore,” Dex said. “I mean, I like attention. Who doesn’t.”

  Rabbit said, “Okay.”

  “I’m just – what Tuesday said. That’s not why I – that’s not.” Only it was.

  Of course it was.

  “Dex,” said Rabbit, “I know. I grew up with theater kids. Who became theater adults.”

  “And I’m not, like, self-destructive.”

  Only … he was.

  She knew exactly who he was.

  “She’s not normally like that. That’s not her.” (Only: he knew her too; and while that wasn’t all of her, it was her. She was never not herself.) “I knew it was a bad idea to invite you to the bar. She got fired today,” Dex said. “Because of this goddamn game.”

  “What?” Rabbit’s feet stopped.

  “She fucked up, but she fucked up because she got caught up. In Pryce and the Archeses and all this – this.” Dex kept walking. He heard Rabbit’s feet start up behind him. “And now she’s self-destructing.”

  “We don’t have to go out tonight, we can—” Rabbit touched his elbow. “You could go back to her.”

  Dex shook his head. He didn’t want to. And Tuesday was already gone. “She’s going home,” he said. “She should go home. She’s been different lately. Like … off-her-meds different.” He sighed.