Rules of Lying (Jane Dough Series)

by Stephie Smith

  I didn’t venture out until Monday. When I did, I wanted to weep. A good third of the shingles were missing from my roof. Some of them were in pieces on the lawn, some were stuck in my trees and shrubs, some were littering my neighbors’ properties.

  I patrolled my property as best I could, considering that half my trees lay on it, or at least that was the way it seemed. I wouldn’t have to worry about removing the wooden structures anymore because they’d been removed for me. All that was left of the shed where the kittens had been born was a concrete pad.

  Debris was everywhere, some of it mine and some not. I had no idea where the twenty by ten foot aluminum roof that was wrapped around one of my light poles had come from, but it didn’t belong to me.

  My privacy fence had escaped damage, so that was something to be thankful for, but bamboo was everywhere. Not just the pieces we’d dragged into my little woods, but bamboo trees that Richard and I had left standing, that hadn’t appeared to be in any danger, had been blown over, broken in two about eight feet up, and were now parallel to the ground. I couldn’t believe winds had blown through at a force capable of doing that yet had left my house standing.

  As I circled my house to the other side, my heart dropped. A large oak had been wrenched right out of the ground. It had toppled onto the electrical lines, and the weight of the tree had stretched the wires to my house so tight that the electrical mast and pole had been ripped away from the house. Great. I’d be out of electric for a while. A long while.

  I had to go through the house to get to the garage since the garage door was electric. I turned off the main line to the house, and then I called Florida Power and Light. Yes, the automated line said, they knew my power was out and they had no idea when it would be restored. I followed instructions to let them know that a power line was downed by trees. I hoped this meant they would send someone to my house.

  I wondered what the rest of the area looked like and remembered I had a battery-operated television, so I spent an hour hunting for it with a flashlight. I flipped it on, expecting it not to work, but it did. The news station kept flashing a number for FEMA, so I called them, and my insurance agent, and left my information.

  Now what? I had cases of water plus cans of tuna and loaves of bread. Even after the mayonnaise went bad, I could still live on plain tuna from the can. At least I wouldn’t have thawed meat to throw out; I never had enough money to buy more than I could eat right away.

  While I was trying to figure out what to do next, Richard showed up. Impressive, considering it had started raining like hell again, and the street drains didn’t seem to be doing a great job. I knew that the roads in town had to be blocked by downed trees and, of course, the streetlights would be out. Yet he’d driven through that to get to me. One point for Richard. Heck, maybe even two.

  As he was entering via the front door, Little Boy flew past him to get outside, almost knocking him down.

  “Jesus! When did you get a cat?”

  I explained about Little Boy, his girlfriend, and their three kids.

  “I’m allergic to cats,” Richard said with a sneeze.

  It occurred to me that I should quit keeping score. I didn’t see how Richard could end up with points on the positive side of the meter, and who cared anyway? A guy who couldn’t put up with a couple of cats was no guy for me. Not that I’d ever had a doubt.

  I told him about the electric, and he insisted on taking a look for himself, saying maybe the mast hadn’t really been ripped off. I clenched my fists to keep from smacking Richard and took back all the points I’d ever given him. I mean, wasn’t he basically saying I couldn’t tell if something had been ripped from my roof? And it wasn’t like anyone with eyes couldn’t tell from looking at the damned pole, which was pulled six feet away from the house. I didn’t bother to go out with him, thinking there was no point in my getting wet again just for the opportunity of making a couple of sarcastic remarks. That was a decision I would come to regret.

  Three minutes later I heard a shout. I raced outside to find him lying on the ground, my six-foot ladder flat beside him.

  “Are you okay?” I shouted over the pounding rain. “Can you move?”

  He tried and winced in pain. He shook his head. “Call nine one one. I need an ambulance.”

  An ambulance? He had to be freaking kidding me. “Are you sure you can’t move?”

  “Call, Jane! I think I’ve broken my back.”

  Oh my God. I punched 911 on my cellphone and forced myself to breathe in and out while I waited for someone to answer. It seemed to take forever.

  “Nine-one-one emergency,” said a voice. “Is this an emergency?”

  “Yes! A man has fallen off a ladder, and he may have broken his back!”

  “What is your name, please?”

  “Jane Dough. D-O-U-G-H. He needs an ambulance.”

  “What is your address, please?”

  I shouted out my address while Richard moaned. I answered a few other questions and punched off the phone. The hospital was only two miles away, so it didn’t take long for the ambulance to arrive. Before the paramedics had time to get out of the van, a local news truck pulled in. Talk about ambulance chasers!

  Richard must not have liked the thought of being on the six o’clock news because he pulled his shirt up over his face as soon as he saw the reporters. There appeared to be nothing wrong with his shoulders and arms. I couldn’t say the same for his bared chest. It wasn’t injured, though, just wimpy.

  The reporter was shouting out questions about Richard’s identity as the paramedics loaded him onto the backboard, but I pretended not to hear. I dashed along beside Richard as though I was planning to ride along, but then made a sharp turn into the side door to the garage and shut it behind me. The reporters knocked on my front door a few hundred times and then gave up and shot footage of the toppled-over ladder and the tree lying on the electrical lines.

  I didn’t know if any embarrassing headlines ended up in the paper because the next day I couldn’t communicate with the outside world. The slow-moving drains had stopped taking water completely, and the entrance to the neighborhood was two feet under water. Unless I had a big truck—and I didn’t—I wasn’t going anywhere for a couple of days.

  My situation had gone from bad to worse, and something told me the worst was yet to come.

  Chapter 19

  Richard was released from the hospital with a herniated disk and ordered to wear a back brace for several weeks. Several weeks! How was he supposed to help me clean up my yard while wearing a back brace? I wanted to scream but didn’t because it seemed a little selfish, him getting injured while trying to help me.

  But then I remembered I hadn’t needed him to confirm that my electrical mast was actually ripped from the roof and that he’d gotten injured while being an ass. I couldn’t bring myself to say what I was thinking, however, because I’d inherited my mother’s passive-aggressive gene, so I seethed in silence while trying to clean up my yard by myself.

  Three weeks to the day after I’d spent the night in the closet with a bunch of stray cats, I did it again. But the second time was worse because my roof was already compromised. Hurricane Julie was stronger than Flossie, but she moved through more quickly. Twigs and branches rained down on my lawn again, which was fine since I’d never raked it after Flossie. Another third of my shingles were torn from the roof and tossed onto the lawn too. Thankfully, the insurance inspector hadn’t come out yet, so I could lie and say all the shingles had gone missing during Flossie, thus avoiding a second hurricane deductible.

  The day after Julie moved through, Hank and Keith showed up. They loaded up Keith’s truck time and again with yard trash that could be dumped at the town’s mulching facility. They also hauled away the remaining rotted wood from the various structures that no longer existed.

  I wondered what Hank had done at the girl’s house, the one he’d been staying with all this time, but I didn’t feel comfortable enough to ask. I kn
ew what he would have been doing at my house if he’d been staying with me, and none of that included work.

  “You need anything else?” he asked, after they’d finished taking loads to the dump.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Groceries, water? Money to pay a contractor to fix your electrical mast?”

  His brown eyes had a softer look now that his dark hair had grown in. Or maybe it was just that his look was softer because he was concerned about me. It felt good to think someone cared about me.

  I shook my head. “I have water and food. I can’t get a contractor out here, or rather, Richard can’t. He’s been calling since Flossie. My phone is still out, and without power, I can’t charge my cell.”

  Hank frowned. “I’m pretty sure I can get an electrician out here, if you want me to call. And I’ll take your phone home and charge it for you before I go back to my friend’s. You shouldn’t be without a phone.”

  “I don’t want to bother you. You’ve helped me a lot already.”

  “It’s no bother. You’re welcome to take a shower at my place any time you want to. It can’t be fun taking cold showers even if it is hot as hell outside.”

  I took him up on the offer of charging my cellphone because I knew it wasn’t a bother to plug it in. But the shower was something else. That would be a bother to him, and I couldn’t bring myself to say yes. I didn’t understand why I could let him help me in the yard but couldn’t say yes to his offer of using his shower. After I figured out everything else in my life, I hoped I could figure out myself too.

  *****

  “Come on,” Sue said the next day. “Take a break. I wanna go to the fair.”

  I was surprised to hear that the county fair was still a go, but Sue said they’d left the tractor trailers packed until after the hurricane passed through. She’d shown up in spite of me already telling her I couldn’t take time off from repairs. Sue was nothing if not persistent.

  “Go with Mark,” I said. “I’ve got too much work to do.” I did too.

  “I am going with Mark,” Sue said. “And so are you. He’s picking us up here in thirty minutes, so go change your clothes.”

  “Why? You don’t want to be seen with me dressed like this?” I was wearing worn-out cotton capris and a halter top that was barely there. I’d been working in the yard all morning. I was dirty, sweaty, and in a bad temper. Sue, on the other hand, was pristine in navy blue shorts and clogs and a navy and white polka-dotted halter top.

  “Have you taken a look around here?” I growled. “Everything is a mess, and there’s no one to clean it up but me.”

  Sue’s gaze swept around, over the various piles of crap I’d been gathering from the yard, and she shrugged. “Yeah, I’m seeing it. And it’s a mess. But it’s still gonna be here when we get back. You need to take a break, and I’ll even help you clean up tomorrow—if you come with us today.”

  Hmmm. That was a deal I couldn’t pass up. Not because Sue would be a lot of help, but because I would enjoy making her sweat. Sue hated to sweat; she avoided it like the plague.

  I took a cold shower, applied sunscreen to my face and arms, and added a dab of mascara and lipstick, hoping in the semi-dark bathroom that I got the correct product in the correct place. I couldn’t do anything with my hair—not without electric—so I twirled it into a makeshift bun and clamped it with one of those giant butterfly clips. I slipped on undies, shorts, a tank top, and a pair of tennis shoes. I would have preferred sandals, but I wasn’t sure of the condition of the fairgrounds post-hurricane. Mark arrived just as I was finishing up. I climbed into the back of his Range Rover, leaving Sue to ride shotgun.

  As we closed in on the fairgrounds, my pulse sped up and I felt a trill of excitement. I loved carnivals; they always brought out the kid in me. Rides were still at the top on my list, but I also enjoyed the general atmosphere, which included contests between the locals, games for the kids, picnics, and vendors selling their services and wares.

  Mark angled us into a great parking spot and when we all got out, Sue’s eyes sparkled with excitement and Mark, looking back and forth between us, was grinning ear to ear.

  “Look! The Mysterious Marissa!” Sue jumped up and down as she pointed at the outer ring of vendors.

  Those particular stalls were manned by psychics. There were six of them: three touting palm reading and three Tarot cards. Two of the six claimed to be mediums. I hoped no one saw any dead spirits around me. That was all I needed right now.

  “I have to get my palm read,” Sue said. “Tom said the Mysterious Marissa read his palm last year and everything happened just like she said.”

  “What did she say would happen?” I asked.

  “He wouldn’t tell me—you know how brothers can be—but he said she was for real.”

  I didn’t know how brothers could be, but that didn’t matter. Tom’s pronouncement made me a tad uneasy because I was superstitious. A friend in Los Angeles once gave me a lucky bamboo plant. The instructions said the activities conducted in the room where I placed the plant would bring great success as long as the plant flourished. I placed it in the room where I wrote, and the prophesy came true. While the plant was healthy, my books did great. Then one day I noticed that the leaves were turning yellow. No matter what I did, I couldn’t save the plant. It died and sure enough, I never sold another book.

  I wasn’t sure I wanted the Mysterious Marissa to read my palm.

  Sue seemed a little nervous too. “You go first,” she said to Mark.

  “Why me? You’re the one who wants the reading.”

  “Because you’re the man,” Sue replied. “You’re supposed to make the way easier for us women. You know, like hacking a path through the jungle or something.”

  “Some jungle,” Mark said. But he disappeared behind the beaded curtain, as we knew he would. The other psychics tried to engage our attention—all of them except the dark-skinned girl named Angie who just smiled at us—but Sue told them we were waiting for Marissa.

  Sue left to get beers and was fighting her way back through the crowd with two of them when Mark came out. I was saving her place in line. The line consisted of just Sue and me, so no problem.

  “That was fast.” I looked at my watch. He’d been in there less than fifteen minutes for a twenty-minute reading.

  “She told me something exciting would happen with my job,” Mark said as he took a beer from Sue and handed it to me. “A big promotion. She said all I had to do was open myself up to the idea because it was just waiting for me.”

  “Do you believe her?”

  Mark shrugged. “Why not? I work hard and I’m good at what I do. It’s not like she said I was going to find true love and live happily ever after.”

  “I believe her,” Sue said. “But what’s wrong with finding true love? That’s what I’m hoping for. Wish me luck!”

  I wished her luck, but I rolled my eyes at Mark. “Now we have twenty minutes of standing around watching guys mark their territory.”

  “Huh?”

  I sipped my beer and nodded to the dirt lane where people entered the fairgrounds from the parking lot. “Right there,” I said. “Just watch.”

  We studied the groups coming in. As the second group passed, one of the guys spat into the dirt where I’d told Mark to watch.

  “See?”

  “He’s marking his territory?”

  “Isn’t he? It must be some kind of primal thing. They sense that the guy before them spat there, so as each guy comes along, he covers up the last guy’s spit with his own.”

  “Or maybe it’s just the last chance to spit before they’re in the middle of the crowd.”

  “But why do they have to spit at all? You don’t see women going around spitting. It’s gross, and there’s no reason for it. That’s why it has to be some primal thing, something they can’t help.”

  “Maybe guys like to spit.”

  “Yuck. What’s to like? Why can’t they just swallow like normal h
uman beings?”

  Mark laughed and shook his head.

  Sue came out a few minutes later, beaming. “She said my Prince Charming was waiting for me to recognize him!”

  “And you believe her?” I asked, the same way I’d asked Mark.

  “Yes! Tom said she’s the real deal.”

  “It’s more likely you gave something away or she just assumed. I mean, guys are interested in their careers, women are interested in romance. Well, not me. I’m just interested in having a normal life again, one I can afford to live.”

  “Well, what are you waiting for?” Sue asked. “Go on in.”

  *****

  “I see so much going on around you,” said the Mysterious Marissa.

  She was at least ten years older than me, three inches shorter, and twenty pounds heavier. Her hair fell in a thick black curtain almost to her waist, but I was pretty sure that her hair, like her long acrylic nails and the dramatic eyelashes, was fake.

  I was thinking her psychic powers were fake too. She could make that statement about “so much going on” to anyone and it would be true. She wasn’t even saying that any of it had to do with me. Just that it was around me. So far I was unimpressed. I raised one cynical brow, refusing to give her any information. She would have to work for it.

  “Everyone is trying to tell you what to do. You must look inside yourself for the answers, for the others have none.”

  Yeah, right. Everyone was always telling everyone else what to do. That was human nature, wasn’t it? At least it was in the Dough family tree. She was watching me intently. She had to have known I was unimpressed.

  “I …” She squeezed my hand and stopped without finishing her sentence, a look of pain or perhaps fear replacing the mask that had been there a moment ago. Try as I might to remain unconcerned, I felt a bit of trepidation.