by Bill Alive
The old dude made a show of confusion. Clearly he hadn’t done much acting since his grade school Christmas pageant. I hoped, for the sake of the cast and crew, that he hadn’t had any major lines. “Excuse me?” he drawled. “You talking to me, son?”
“The pizza guy, with the orange car,” Mark said. “When I said that, you…” He cleared his throat. “You looked like you recognized him.”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Beside the old dude, a large wifely woman with an enormous seasonal Jack O’Lantern sweater nudged his excess gut. Under the ceiling’s bleak fluorescence, the pumpkin’s sequined eyes glittered with unhallowed cheer. “Don’t you be rude, Wallace,” she snapped. “I’m sure he must mean—”
“I don’t care what he means,” the dude said. “I don’t know this guy from Adam.”
“I’m sure he’s a nice young man,” she said.
“What’s a ‘nice young man’ doing in here?” The old dude glared at Mark, and his sagging cheeks flushed red. “If I could do that computer stuff, you think I’d be in here? You ever done a day of real work in your life?”
“Wallace—” his wife warned.
“I’d be out laying road right now if a damn Mercedes-Benz hadn’t clipped me. Some asshole in a hurry to get to his desk. But if you think I paid all my taxes for all those years so a healthy young sonofabitch could whine all this shit about his commute—”
“Wallace!”
The old dude glowered, but he clamped his mouth shut.
Mark looked scalded. Anger and self-defense writhed across his face.
Then he closed his eyes, and took a deep breath.
He squinted over at the harried welfare official, a squat fortyish woman whose frizzy round head barely peeked above the counter. With his face calm, he turned back to the old dude.
“Don’t worry,” Mark said. “You remind her of her father.”
The old dude gaped, bewildered. “What? Remind who?”
Mark nodded toward the counter. “She remembers you from last time. She’ll renew your coverage. Just … be nice to her. Tell her you’re thankful the government has people like her. That her folks must be proud she does this kind of work. Seriously, say that.”
The old dude goggled at Mark. Now he looked scared.
But his wife’s eyes were wet with hope. Her knobbly fingers clasped her husband’s knee. “We will,” she said. “And the man you want is Patrick Hopkins, he lives on Paine Street.”
“Thank you,” Mark said. He leapt up and turned to go, then twisted back and tossed the old dude the clipboard of forms. “Keep your taxes,” he said. “Your Social Security’s going to need it.”
And we got the hell out of there.
Chapter 32
We escaped back to the open air, and my middle-class lungs could breathe again.
I thought I’d gotten enough poverty exposure to last me a couple months, but we were just getting started. Paine Street cut right across the most menacing part of town.
I think I’ve mentioned how Back Mosby only has two roads we really use. These roads join at the north end of town, then run roughly parallel, carving between them a wide wedge of no man’s land. You’d think this central piece would be prime real estate, the heart of town … but it’s the opposite.
Behind the stores that line the main roads, cruddy old houses are packed in too tight, like an overnight bus maxed out with shabby insomniacs. Half the lanes in there are one way, with crappy cars parallel parked bumper-to-bumper along the curb. The instant you drive in there, you can feel the eyes on you, glowering from decaying porches and peeking from behind windows curtained with thrift store sheets. They know you don’t belong.
The welfare lady hadn’t given us a house number, but she didn’t need to. Parked outside a shambling corner house was a crazy orange car. A shoddy pizza light tilted on the roof like a party hat after a fistfight.
Mark strode up the broken concrete of the walkway and knocked sharply at the peeling door.
My gut tensed. I was already getting smothered by the whole neighborhood, by the resentment that curdled in every corner. Now I realized I was about to confront some proud, brooding country dude with so much manly manliness that he’d snagged Vanessa’s secret passion, despite having the career skills of a high school sophomore.
The door opened.
An old, pudgy, balding guy scowled at us. “What do you want?” he drawled.
For once, Mark was at a loss for words. “Oh,” he said. “Hi.”
“Is your son at home?” I said.
The old guy’s face creased deeper with irritation. “Son?” he snapped. “I don’t have no son.”
“Whatever. Housemate,” I said. I pointed at the orange monstrosity. “Whose car is that?”
“That’s my car,” he said. “What is this?”
Mark’s face fell.
Then I saw that despite the pudge, this guy was tall and he was still broad-shouldered. Although he was balding, that was only up front; from the back, he had a decent crop of shaggy hair in darkish gray.
From the back, Kelsey could have imagined him as a decent-looking dude.
Heck, the dude had probably been decent looking, twenty years and twenty thousand beers ago. But today … Vanessa’s secret lover? There was no way…
“Who the hell are you guys?” the pizza guy demanded.
Mark had recovered. “Do you know Ed and Vanessa Kimm?” he asked.
“Who?”
Mark muttered, “There must be another pizza guy in this town with an orange car.”
“Maybe not!” I said. My pulse was pounding. I was daring to hope. “Maybe Ed was just randomly yelling at a random pizza guy! Just being Ed!”
“What the hell is this all about?” the pizza guy said. “Wait. Is this about that prick who gave me a hard time because his wife was out tanning on her lawn? I don’t know what he had to be so grumpy about, with a wife like some magazine cover. That woman was just passing me the time of day—”
“Sorry to bother you,” Mark said. He spun and strode off.
“Hey!” the guy called after us. “What the hell?”
We Thundered back toward home. Mark was solemn, even disappointed, but he’d lost his earlier edge of despair.
“So,” I ventured, when we’d pulled in and he’d cut the engine. “No secret lover?”
“Don’t look so excited,” he grunted.
I tried not to. “What about the welfare thing?”
He shrugged. “I’ve still got Internet,” he grumbled. “I might as well keep looking for clients until the bank actually forecloses. Who knows? Maybe someone’ll actually pay up front.”
“Cool,” I said. “Can I use the car, then?” I added casually. “For work?”
Mark eyed me. “You know, plenty of STDs could care less about a condom.”
“Mark! Oh my gosh! I was not even thinking about that!” Which I wasn’t. At least, not on purpose.
“Right, you’re more into the romance thing,” he said. “With a woman whose husband was just murdered, and who then barely survived a near-lethal assault.”
I squirmed. “She survived thanks to us.”
“Even better. Definitely a solid foundation for a healthy relationship.”
“You would know!” I snapped.
Mark flinched.
I felt bad. That was a low blow, considering how he’d opened up to me about Akina. The problem is, with Mark, feeling bad just makes things worse. Because he felt me feeling bad, and he winced, which only made me feel worse…
He got out of the car. But he’d left the keys in the ignition.
Ten seconds later, I was rolling back down the mountain, my chest pounding with excitement. It occurred to me that one of these mornings I should really get to work before noon, but come on, I had to go check on Vanessa.
Just to make sure she was okay! I swear that’s all I had in mind. She might still be in shock from last night, right? Not to men
tion the grueling interrogation she must have gone through with Gwen…
Her house seemed so normal and quiet in the blah daylight that I had a quick shiver of dread, like maybe I’d imagined the whole crazy night and rescue. Then I got my own PTSD flash of Roxanne and the gun … okay, it had definitely happened.
I knocked. And waited.
Silence.
Anxiety spiked, squeezing the base of my neck. What if someone else had meant to kill Vanessa, someone besides Roxanne? What if they had come back, after all the cops had gone … what if there were a new body staining that kitchen tile…
The door creaked open, and I nearly gasped with relief. Until I saw Vanessa’s face.
She looked completely … normal.
Like nothing had happened.
“Pete!” she said, with a forced, friendly smile.
Actually, it wasn’t like nothing had happened, more like less than nothing, like she’d never hired us in the first place. Like I was some dude from work who was stopping by without texting first, about to claim some flimsy pretext because I was too chicken to ask her out…
“I just, um, I came to check on you,” I said. Great, now I sounded like a stalker.
“Oh! That is so sweet,” she said, like I was not only a work dude, but about sixty years old.
I flushed.
She waited.
Hand on the doorknob, standing in the doorway, not inviting me in.
“Are you busy?” I said. “Is this a bad time?”
She wrinkled her eyebrows, considering this. “Well…”
Then, from inside, came the inevitable male voice. Of course.
“Vanessa?” he said. “Who is it?”
Wait, did I know that voice?
I peeked in around Vanessa.
On the living room couch sat Roger.
Chapter 33
Roger recognized me almost before I recognized him. As I was still processing his presence, his face twisted in a scowl.
My gut clenched, and my mouth went dry. My body braced for another burst of Rogerian rage.
“It’s all right, Roger,” Vanessa said, light and placating. “It’s Pete. I was telling you about Pete.”
Her tone was killing me.
Roger said, “Oh!” and he adjusted his face into a forced smile. He looked like the college boyfriend who’d thought he was facing the old high school boyfriend, but had found with relief that it was only the old hilariously awkward prom date. “I didn’t realize it was the same Pete. We’ve met.”
“You have?” Vanessa said, gushing. “Pete, I didn’t realize you knew Roger!”
And then I knew. I had a sudden certainty, sure as any empath, that this was her secret, that she’d been hiding her connection to Roger damn hard from the second we’d met her.
But … why? Why Roger?
“I didn’t realize you were in Roger’s group,” I said. “How did you meet? Through Kelsey?” I turned to Roger, trying to ignore how much this balding friar dude still intimidated me. “Does Kelsey know she’s joining? When I met him, he did mention you, but, um…”
I trailed off, because Roger’s smile had turned superior. He and Vanessa shared an amused, private look.
I died inside. It was all over.
Vanessa smirked. “Kelsey has a little ‘thing’ for me,” she said, with infinite tender contempt. “We’re gradually getting him used to the idea of me joining.”
“He’ll be fine,” Roger said. He eyed me. “He knows God comes first.”
Subtext: Unlike you, jackass.
I stood there wilting on the doorstep, their shared silence repelling me like a force field of holy loathing. I knew that if I walked away now, that was it.
I steeled myself for one last desperate sally.
“I hate to bring this up,” I said, “but did you already send our check?”
“Oh, right!” she said. “I’m so sorry!”
She left her post at the door and padded down the hall to the kitchen. I followed her in, darting past Roger’s clear vibe that I should wait outside. He started to heave up off the low couch, but she waved him down. It was only Pete, after all. Pete was harmless.
Vanessa bustled through the kitchen into a back room “office” that was crammed with packed plastic utility shelves and an old rolltop desk drowning in papers. Okay, maybe she was a bit of a slob, but here among her bulk paper towels and industrial-size cans of coffee, I felt a fresh wave of intimacy … which then hurt worse, in a fresh stab of loss.
She rifled through a drawer, and without turning back toward me, she said, “How much?”
I hesitated. Then I blurted a number ridiculously high, enough for both Mark and I to live on for two months.
“Sure. Absolutely,” she said easily, still searching. “Oh my gosh, it’s the least I can do.”
In spite of everything, I admit, I felt a queasy rush of excitement. Were we really going to actually have money?
Then Vanessa gave a little stamp of frustration and moved to ransack another drawer. There was something odd about that stamp, but I couldn’t place it. She was moving fast, in a hurry to get this over with. “Sorry,” she said. “I barely write checks anymore, you know?”
“No rush,” I said. I sounded so lame.
At last she dug out her dented checkbook, and she flipped through the old carbons (or whatever they’re called) to get to the actual checks. The last carbon had been made out to Valley Light Retreat Center.
“Oh, you went to Valley Light?” I said, desperate to fill the silence. “I’ve heard that’s really nice. Nice views of the mountains, and … valleys … and things…”
Vanessa was already engrossed in writing the check. Distracted, she said, “Yes, it was lovely. Roger sure knows how to pick a spot.”
Oops.
Her writing hand froze. She checked to see if I’d caught that. I had.
In my real voice, finally, I said, “That was your ‘business trip’? You went on retreat with Roger?”
She looked away. “I had a lot to discern, Pete. Ed was…”
“Ed was what? Was he hurting you?”
“Not physically.” She sighed. “I never thought I’d say this, but…” Her voice trembled, and she shut her eyes. “…maybe it’s providential that he’s gone.”
I felt ill. This woman was slipping away, right in front of me, sinking into some crazy I couldn’t understand. Or had I just never known her in the first place?
“Vanessa,” I said, pleading, calling her back from the pit. “Last night—”
“Last night, I nearly died,” she said. Her eyes were cold, now. Righteous. “From the woman who murdered my husband.”
“Maybe,” I said. “And she went home and overdosed. She’s dead.”
She flinched, and for a second, her eyes softened with compassion.
But then she said, “God rest her soul.”
I must have looked stunned, because she got all earnest. “Life is short, Pete,” she said. “In the midst of life, we are in death.”
“That’s what Roger says.”
She frowned, like I’d accused her. Which I had.
“Did Kelsey get to come on your little getaway?” I demanded. “Or Yvette? Or maybe Roger’s wife?”
As soon as I said it, I regretted the move. Her face went hard.
“Have some respect, Pete,” she said sharply, like I’d jeered at a veteran in a wheelchair. “Roger is my spiritual director now.”
“Your what?” Nothing about that sounded good.
“I don’t expect you to understand, Pete. Look what God’s had to allow to get my attention.”
“Allow?” I said. “Vanessa, don’t you think … maybe this isn’t the best time to make any major decisions?”
Her eyes flashed, and her face twisted with righteous anger. I barely recognized her.
“I so appreciate your generous concern,” she spat. “But I’ve already waited far too long. Roger’s the only man who’s ever cared about my soul.�
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The implied accusation was clear. I felt a twinge of panic, like I’d been caught checking out her cleavage after all.
Then I realized … she no longer had cleavage.
She was shrouded in a long, gray, shapeless sweater. It flapped over a long denim skirt that nearly reached her ankles. And her feet were bare — that was why the foot stamp had sounded so odd. I’d never seen Vanessa without the clack of heels.
How long had she been seeing Roger?
And what kind of bifurcation had split her personality along the way, the old Vanessa still flirting on the surface while the hard new Vanessa transmogrified in a secret spiritual chrysalis of contempt?
She scratched out the rest of the check and held it out. I took it with dull silence, nothing more to say, certain I would never see her again.
God, if only I never had.
I showed myself out. I couldn’t resist a last glance at Roger, but I wish I’d resisted. His patronizing grin of victory haunted me all the drive home.
I probably should have gone to work then, but I was in no condition to smile at customers. When I walked into our living room, Mark said with a chuckle, “That was quick.” Then he spun away from his screen to give me a sharp look. “What’s wrong?”
Without a word, I handed him the check.
His eyes went wide. “Holy crap!” he cried. “You got this out of Vanessa? Well done.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Oh my goodness.” He kept rereading the gargantuan number, double-checking it was real. At last he tore himself away. “So what’s eating you?” he said, concerned.
“You can’t just vibe it?” I snapped. “The one time I don’t want to talk about it?”
He squinted, then shook his head. “Actually, no.”
I groaned. But I told him everything.
When I finished, he sat frowning, thinking hard.
Then he looked stricken.
“Holy crap,” he whispered.
He jumped from his chair and bolted for the door. Halfway there, he twisted back and snapped, “Give me the keys!”
“Why? What is it?”
“Don’t you get it? Vanessa was gone with Roger when Ed was poisoned.”
“So?”
