by Adam Sommers
Gradually she got control of her thoughts. With her lips trembling and a small drop of mucus leaking from her left nostril, she told herself: “Focus. What is…” her eyes fell on Eric’s notebook. It had “From” and “To” dates on it spaced about a week apart. Underneath he had neatly printed his name in block letters almost like someone would on a high school binder. That was cute, thought Carrie, and looked at the two words “Eric Berger” transfixed.
“Oh, fuck! Are you kidding me?” She blurted out. “No. No, noooo way!”
She wiped her face with the sleeves of her shirt and reviewed the thought. Maybe it was a mistake, it was a dream. Or hormones. Then, like before, the sobs burst to the surface without warning. She grabbed the notebook and smashed it against her face, “Oh, God,” she gasped. “Oh, shit… I love him. I love Eric Berger. Holy crap.” Saying it made it real and surreal at the same time.
“I love him?” she asked the newsroom. “I love him,” she murmured back. She did it again and again as if testing it, trying to find the flaw. “I can’t…. I do…. But I can’t…. But I do. I do. I do.” It took many minutes of this debate with herself before the reality became absolutely inescapable. Every time she tried to tell herself “no,” “YES” thundered back without a trace of doubt.
Finally, she gave in and wondered: “What the hell am I going to do now?”
She smiled and laughed at herself, alternately feeling delirious and terrified. Do I call him this minute and tell him? Do I hide it? Do I ask him out? There were no answers. She’d never been in this place before and didn’t know what a person did. How does this work? she fretted. I love him, so he has to love me back, right? Isn’t that how it is? Otherwise it just would not be fair.
Carrie Scanlon hoped he was having the exact same thoughts at the exact same minute. He probably is, she assumed. He’s probably in his apartment, right now, right this instant, looking up in the sky and trying to figure out how he can tell me. How we can be together.
Leaping ahead she imagined marriage, kids, a house! She had never seen any of that in her future. Never even thought about it. But now it was right there, and she suddenly wanted it more than she wanted food.
Jayne Grayman and her fucking Fairfax could go fuck themselves. If Eric loved her, she’d be happy to work on the moon or shovel horse manure. It wouldn’t matter. She swiveled in HIS chair, at HIS desk, touched HIS phone. She used her index finger to draw the words “I love you” on his desk, where there was just enough moisture from her tears to make the writing legible. Good Christ, can’t let him see that, she thought, and instantly wiped it away with the palm of her hand.
But what if he did not love her? Tears welled up again at the thought. It was too painful, too scary to contemplate, and she threw the possibility out of her mind. No. No. He had to love her simply because she loved him. “I love him,” she said again softly. God, that sounded good. She was happier and more frightened than she’d ever been in her life. For just an instant she had the mental image of her and Eric sitting on her living room couch looking at the options in a book full of wedding invitations and it made her crack up laughing. Anyone who saw her there in the dark deserted office alternately weeping and giggling would have assumed she’d lost her mind.
With a big smile still on her face, she jumped to her feet and bounded out of the newsroom. At four in the morning she arrived back at her place, stripped naked, got into bed, wrapped her arms around her pillow pretending it was Eric Berger and was out in seconds.
Chapter 30
It was cloudy, appropriately enough, as the mourners gathered to bid their last farewells to Bethany Mildred Schmidt, the sister of Jayne’s mother, who passed away as gently as a summer breeze at her Florida estate at the age of eighty-one. They did not bring Jayne’s mother Ethyl down from Boston for the last rites since her condition caused great pain if she moved more than a few feet at a time.
Ordinarily, Jayne avoided such family get togethers. She’d just send a card and her congratulations, sympathy, regrets, whatever the particular occasion called for. But she liked her Aunt Beth, perhaps better than anyone in her family—mom and dad included. Growing up, her aunt’s estate was a summer paradise, a sprawling maze of places to hide and trees to climb. But the best part of it by far was that mommy and daddy were not there, and Aunt Beth let her have the run of the place, including, crucially, putting the various nannies and maids (and their children) at her disposal. For the entire summer she was the queen of the castle.
The Grayman clan did not bury their dead with the rest of the riff-raff in a common cemetery. Attached to the estate in Florida was a small church, and adjacent to that a private graveyard complete with polished and imposing headstones. So the mourners needed only walk the short distance from church to grave.
Standing there thinking that in an hour she could be back at the airport and a scant three hours later back home or in the office, Jayne let her eyes wander. The faces masked in grief, whether real or manufactured, were familiar to her. Friends of the family, cousins she rarely saw. She smiled and said hello, mumbled a few words to each. But there was no pretense, no outpouring of affection. Already some of them were thinking about the reading of the will, adding to their piles. Jayne was in line to receive some of it, but she’d let her accountants deal with the actual shifting of assets. Her main concern was that the place not be sold. If need be, she reasoned, she’d buy it herself.
As a ray of sun poked through and then just as quickly disappeared, Jayne caught sight of a man about her age standing on the periphery of the three or four dozen people in attendance. The well-built figure wasn’t paying any attention to the minister mumbling prayers in front of the casket. He wasn’t even looking in that direction. Instead, he was staring at Jayne, and not in a particularly friendly manner. The editor-in-chief returned the look with a wan smile then began to casually stroll over. It seemed as if the man was about to attempt an escape and then decided to hold his ground.
“Paul.”
“Jayne,” he snarled, looking down, but not making eye contact.
“Didn’t expect to see you here.”
Paul Caluso, with a pleasant round face and shock of sand-colored hair matted with some kind of gel, didn’t say a word back. They stood in awkward silence for a moment. “You got, uh, big,” Jayne tried.
Paul ignored the comment and breathed deeply. “Only reason I came is because she was good to me. I don’t mean when…,” he stopped. This was not what he wanted to say. Then he began again. “We talked, Jayne. She asked me back about a year ago, when she knew there was nothing left to try. We’d talk, hours at a time when she had the strength.”
Jayne swallowed hard. The way Paul had said it there was no mistaking that the subject of conversation was often Jayne herself. The big-bodied woman let a couple of ticks of the clock go by quietly and couldn’t think of anything to say, then offered, “Do you want to get a drink?”
Paul stared at her, not believing what he’d just heard. “Seriously? With you?” he spat.
“Come on, Paul. It was a long time ago. We were kids.”
“We weren’t all that young, Jayne. I was like nine, and you were a mean little twelve-year-old bitch. I’m guessing you’re a mean little grown-up bitch, too.”
Jayne absorbed the blow as if she expected it. She wanted to edge away, to end the encounter, but she’d never show that level of weakness—especially not to someone whose mother used to clean the toilets in her bathroom.
“You liked some of it,” Jayne tried.
“Are you completely insane?”
“I could tell you did.”
“Playing ‘Tie Me Up’? You thought I liked that?” Paul’s face twisted in rage.
“Well, you didn’t cry.”
“My mother was in the next room,” he hissed, trying not to attract attention. “She needed the job. I came here today because I liked your
aunt. She gave my mother a good life, and when she got sick, Beth made sure she got to see good doctors. She even left us some money.” As he leaned closer to make his last point a small fleck of saliva flew from his lips and he saw it hit Jane’s cheek.
Disgusted, she wiped it away, but Paul wasn’t done with his speech. “Mom’s better, by the way, even though I know you don’t give a shit.”
“Really? She left you money?”
“Really. Not much, but enough. And covered the bills.”
“Huh.”
“So I came to pay my respects.”
“You’re a liar. You came here hoping to see me, so you could shit on me. As if it would make any difference.”
For just a fraction of a second Paul had the urge reach his hands out and strangle the life out of Jayne Grayman right here in front of all of her relatives and not give a damn if he went to jail for the rest of his life. But he thought of his children and his wife and he let the vision pass, reluctantly, then admitted, “Yes, I hoped you’d be here.”
“Proving my point. There must have been something you liked,” Jayne said triumphantly.
“No, you stupid, self-centered cow, I didn’t want to see you because I liked you. Nothing could be further from the truth. I hoped to see you so I could tell you that what you did to me is unforgivable. It made me a mess for a long time. By the time I got to high school I didn’t know if I was gay or straight. I got married and divorced and suffered a lot of depression.”
“Aww, you poor thing,” Jayne mocked.
“You remember, in the attic of Billy’s cottage. Your little experiments. On me. With Kenneth? And we went along because you said you’d tell your aunt and our moms would get fired and we’d be poor and starve. And like idiots we believed you.”
Jayne flushed bright red, but it was impossible for Paul to tell if it was anger or embarrassment. He guessed anger because Jayne was never embarrassed or ashamed of anything she did.
“It was just games.”
“No. At first, maybe. It was weird and scary and fun. But you, you…,” he struggled to find the right words though he’d rehearsed them a thousand times. “You were just deviant. That’s the word for it.”
“Shut up!” Jayne said it too loudly and others in the group turned to see. Petrified that Paul might make an even bigger scene, she grabbed him by the arm and tried to pulled him away.
“Get your goddamn hands off me,” Paul barked and knocked her hand away. “I’m not going to disrespect your aunt by carrying on. I only came to say that I have survived you. I’m in a very good place. I went to Georgetown. I’ve got my own law firm. I have a good wife and two children and a life that I love.”
“You’re still a little shit.”
“You can’t hurt me anymore, Jayne. I just wanted you to know that. That’s why I came. I came to tell you you can’t control me. I’m a good person.”
“Get out of here. Get out now,” Jayne whispered.
“I’m leaving. I’ve said what I came to say. You’re sick, Jayne. There’s something very wrong with you. I accept that. I’ve learned to accept that. You know how many therapy sessions I had to have before I came to understand that none of what went wrong in my life was my fault? It all stemmed from you. I’m amazed you’ve made it this far without winding up in jail or getting murdered by one of your…I don’t even know what to call them…men…I guess. I thought about it. I thought I’d track you down and put a bullet in your face. I thought about it a lot.”
“Leave or I’m calling the police. They’ll be here in two minutes.”
“I’m on my way. Goodbye, Jayne. I hope you die of tit cancer. And I hope it hurts like fucking hell.”
With that, Paul turned quickly around and hurried to his car.
Chapter 31
Mitch was in the kitchen and had something in his hand that looked like a dirty softball. Eric came over from the couch to see that it was actually a massive ball of lint Mitch had taken from the small dryer tucked into a closet off the kitchen.
“Uh,” said Eric, “er, what exactly are you doing?”
“I’m sculpting. You like it?”
“It’s a ball of lint. It’s disgusting.”
“It’s my art. I’m making a bunny.” He continued to play with the amorphous blob of coagulated threads and dust until it had the shape roughly of a gray snowman about the size of his forearm. Eric watched in fascination and revulsion. Then, in thirty seconds, revulsion won out. “THROW IT AWAY,” he yelled and started getting up to take the thing from Mitch.
“Ah!” Mitch made a falsetto-voiced shriek. “You mock my masterpiece.”
“IT’S A BALL OF LINT!”
Mitch put his hands on either side of the ball of lint. “Don’t you listen to him. You’re beautiful.”
“Put it in the garbage. Please. I’ll give you five dollars if you throw it away.”
“Not only is it a bunny, it has magic powers. It can tell the future.”
“The future?” How far was Mitch going to go with this, Eric wondered.
“Yes, it tells the future, but you have to rub it.”
“Rub it?”
“Yes, you must rub it and it will tell your future.”
“You crazy bastard.”
“Rub it,” Mitch said and presented the ball of lint that looked nothing at all like a sculpture of a rabbit capable of telling the future.
“I’m not touching that thing.”
“Come on,” Mitch urged. “Don’t you want to know your future?”
“No,” said Eric. “The future sucks.”
“Okay, I’ll rub it for you.” He stroked the thing lovingly and moved the couple of feet toward Eric. “Wait, I’m beginning to get something. It’s moving. It’s reshaping. It’s going to spell it out!”
“You’ve lost it,” yelled Eric, yet he could not look away.
Mitch peered at the ball intently. “Whoa!” he jumped. “I did not see that coming.”
“What? What?” said Eric, instantly angry at himself for showing any enthusiasm and offering Mitch encouragement.
“It said, ahhhmmm, gooonnnaaaa git . . . you sucka!” Then he swiftly reached over and grabbed both of Eric’s nipples with impressive aim and twisted them one way then the other.
“Owww! You fucking retard!” Eric yelped like a girl as he pushed Mitch away.
Before Eric could even think of anything to do back to Mitch, the phone rang. Eric grabbed it as he wrenched himself away from Mitch.
“Hello?” he asked slightly out of breath.
“It’s me.”
“Hey, Janon….Get off me, you queer!”
“Whoa, what’s going on there?” Janon asked.
“Nothing. Just my roommate being retarded.”
“Oh.” Janon was confused but decided to ignore whatever Eric and his roommate might be doing. “Anyway,” he began again, “Shame, shame. Your girlfriend has been a naughty little girl.”
“Oh ho, what have you found?”
By now, Mitch had backed off, but still held the lint-ball bunny where Eric could see it, waving it up and down.
“I wish I could tell you,” said Janon. “She did something, but whatever it is, the record has been sealed by the court.”
Eric had done enough court reporting to know what that meant. No record could be released. In fact, as far as the court was concerned, there was no case. Nothing had happened.
“But there was some case against her, right?”
“I think it’s her. The Baltimore County Civil Part Seventy-one has a case, ‘McNeill et. al. v. Grayman.’ Only reason I guess it’s your girlfriend is there is a sexual element to it.”
“How do you know that if the record is sealed?”
“Good question,” Janon Masterson answered. “You can get a little hint by what part i
t’s in. Part Seventy-one is almost exclusively for sex cases.”
“Not bad,” but Eric was still skeptical. “There’s got to be other Graymans, right? It’s not a lot to hang your hat on.”
“True enough,” Janon said, and Eric immediately realized his mistake. If Janon was arguing a point, he’d have something to back it up. How else could he win? “But the thing is,” Janon continued, “is that this McNeill, Arnold McNeill, used to work at the Baltimore Mirror, the same time someone named Jayne Grayman used to be the senior managing editor.”
“Oh.” Now, Eric was sold—and overjoyed. He’d been so busy following her family’s money, he hadn’t even looked into her professional past. He sort of assumed that he’d find out she’d done nothing before daddy or daddy’s money bought the paper and made her boss.
“That’s good,” Eric said. “When I start my own paper you can be a reporter.”
“No thanks, too bloody,” replied Janon.
“Pussy.”
“I like my office. I can play on the computer until the cows come home.”
“You know she’s stinking rich, Jayne Grayman? She doesn’t even need this job. Not by a long shot.”
“Yeah?” Janon was suddenly much more interested in Eric’s problems because he knew that if he happened to be at the intersection of someone with money and someone who was in trouble some of that money might wind up in his hands.
Eric told him of the family fortune.
“That kind of money means she’s got good lawyers. Be careful, mi amigo.”
“What have I got to lose?” Eric scoffed. “I don’t really have anything. You can’t fall off the floor.”
