Crazy in Chicago

by Norah-Jean Perkin

  “No. It’s impossible. I can’t trust you. Personally or professionally.”

  Cody stiffened. “Are you sure it’s me you can’t trust? Or are you worried about yourself?”

  Roberta’s eyes widened. Then she pivoted and stalked away, the ripped bag clutched in her arms.

  * * *

  Squinting against the next morning’s sunshine slanting through her windshield, Roberta ground her car to a halt by the cherry red newspaper box a block away from SUFOW’s offices. She slipped out and dropped two quarters into the box, pulled it open and retrieved the second last copy of this morning’s Streeter.

  The headline screamed of yet another gang-related murder in the notorious Cabrini-Green housing development, but Roberta hardly gave it a glance. In a second she found what she was looking for: at the top of the “What’s Inside” column, a teaser for the first of Cody’s stories on UFOs and aliens. “Aliens among us!” read the boldface headline, under a color drawing of a so-called alien.

  Roberta groaned and tossed the paper through the open car door onto the passenger seat. She followed, wishing she hadn’t bought the paper, knowing she had no choice. Whatever Cody wrote, good or bad, she needed to know. She had to be prepared to deal with the fallout, everything from calls from the media and local abductees to Garnet’s sure-to-be-foul mood.

  Pain stabbed her temples and she gritted her teeth as she drove the short distance to the office. Bad enough she’d hardly slept last night after stomping away from Cody. Or the night before, for that matter. She’d tossed and turned, wondering if she’d been fair to him, wondering if she’d been kind to him.

  After all, even if he hadn’t been abducted by aliens, he certainly was suffering from the trauma of some kind of abduction. After all, his behavior towards her had generally been nothing but kind, polite and loving. After all, she had no real evidence he had reverted to his former playboy lifestyle, Tiffany’s stated hopes to the contrary.

  She’d tossed and turned for other reasons, too. Just when she’d managed to get him out of her thoughts, she’d brush her arm against the sheet, unleashing all-too-vivid memories of his touch. She hugged her pillow, wishing she was hugging him. She wanted to tangle her fingers in his dark hair, feel the texture and the heat of his lips against hers.

  “Ohhh!” Roberta groaned. Why wouldn’t her heart accept that she and Cody just didn’t work together? Her mind certainly had, but her heart, her body, refused to accept it. Instead, they clamored for more, more, more. They pressed her into spending every waking moment thinking about him, wondering about him, dreaming about his touch, his smile, his love-making. She regretted the day she’d climbed over the hedge and into his arms.

  She parked the car off the lane behind the office, grabbed the paper and her briefcase and headed inside. The sooner she read Cody’s article the better. Seeing him trash SUFOW in black and white would douse her interests, make her see once and for all that they had little, if anything, in common.

  Roberta hurried through the narrow space between SUFOW’s offices and the neighboring building. She let herself in, dropped her briefcase and plopped onto the love seat. She checked the page number of Cody’s article and flipped to it.

  From the centerfold, a color photo of the painting in Garnet’s office stared out at her, almost as menacingly as the original. She frowned. How she hated that painting. She wished Garnet would get rid of it.

  She scanned the page. The major headline asked, “Are aliens visiting Earth?” In a box near the bottom of the right hand page, was a photo and story about a man from nearby Oak Park whose abduction Garnet had investigated last year.

  Roberta sighed. There was nothing to do but read the article. She took a deep breath and began.

  “Are aliens visiting Earth?” the article began. “Yes, no or maybe—the answer appears to depend on who you are, where you live, and how you decide to interpret puzzling signs and occurrences around you. Based on the “facts”, many of which are themselves disputed, it is impossible to prove, or disprove, absolutely or irrefutably, the existence of aliens, their visits to Earth, and abductions of human beings.

  “According to several nation-wide UFO and extraterrestrial groups, including the local Society of UFO Watchers (SUFOW), sufficient evidence exists to . . .”

  Five minutes later Roberta finished reading the two-page spread. Slowly she folded the paper and placed it on the coffee table, letting the enormity of what she had just read sink in.

  Cody did not believe in aliens. She’d known that, and it was clear from his story. But neither had he disparaged or belittled those who did. He had laid out fact after fact, followed by even-handed commentary from both points of view. His article, from beginning to end, was thorough, and it was fair, leaving the reader to make up his or her own mind.

  Roberta swallowed. A flush sizzled up her neck to her face. She’d misjudged Cody. She’d been wrong about him, and his professional motives, right from the start. Her own fears and misgivings—about herself, about what she did for a living, about the public reaction to SUFOW and its concerns—had lead her to misread everything he’d said and done.

  She twisted her fingers in her lap and bit her lip, remembering everything she’d said, all her accusations.

  Had she been wrong about everything else, too?

  * * *

  “Leave it be!”

  Cody blinked. He looked up from reading the page proofs for the second part of his UFO series, scheduled to run tomorrow. No one stood in the doorway to his tiny cubicle. And the neighboring cubicles were empty, though at eight p.m. The Streeter newsroom still teemed with activity. He could hear the low buzz of voices, punctuated by loud exclamations and occasional bursts of laughter.

  Cody resumed reading. In the opening stories that had run today, and the stories that would run for the next four days, he’d tried to find a good balance between the dry facts providing an overview of UFO theories and events over the past few decades and some individual, puzzling stories sure to attract readers’ interest. He’d also tried to be as fair, and objective, as possible—something he knew he would have done whether he’d known Roberta or not. Reading the proofs now, he knew he had succeeded. But would it be enough to convince Roberta to trust him? He doubted it.

  “Leave it be!” The commanding voice invaded his head once more. Startled, Cody jumped up and looked around. This time he surveyed every inch of his cubicle. He listened hard. As the seconds passed, he identified individual, familiar voices from the general clamor. The city editor Nate’s gruff voice. Kate’s warm alto. Janet’s high laugh. Doug Long’s guffaw. But he didn’t hear the voice that had just urged him to leave it be. Leave what be? He wondered. And what made him think the command was aimed at him?

  He shook his head and looked around once more. The voice had been as clear as if the speaker had been standing next to him. He frowned. Actually, it seemed closer than that, almost as if it had come from inside him.

  He swallowed. Not the kind of thought he wanted to have. Come to think of it, he didn’t feel that well right now. Besides being bone weary, he’d suffered several attacks of nausea, as well as continuing aversion to the Corvette. He’d had to pull over on two occasions on the way to the office. Nausea had forced him to cling to his desk on and off all afternoon and into the evening.

  Cody reached for the side of the baffle. He swore. Maybe he really was going crazy. Maybe he harbored a mental illness brought into full bloom by the events of the last year. Didn’t some schizophrenics hear voices? He groaned. Maybe he needed to try the doctor route one more time. Nothing else had worked. Perhaps it would have been so much simpler if, as Roberta had thought, alien abduction had caused his current problems.

  For a moment an image of Roberta filled his head, displacing his unhappy thoughts. Roberta with her sunny smile, her oh-so-earnest concern, her spirited defense of everything dear to her. Roberta, whose affection he had enjoyed for far too short a time.

  The light that had sta
rted to lift his spirits shut off. Roberta, who wouldn’t let him near her. Because of a past he couldn’t change. Because of her fears that he would hurt her, as well as SUFOW.

  “Leave it be!” The sound boomed through his head like the break up of a log jam.

  Cody shuddered again. What if he truly was losing his mind? What if Garnet’s suggestion that his nausea and insomnia were symptoms of some psychosomatic disease turned out to be true? He shut his eyes against the thought of a future filled with Prozac and therapists. Maybe it was just as well that Roberta had rejected a relationship with him, for her own sake, if nothing else.

  “Leave it be!”

  The relentless voice pursued him. He cleared his throat. He needed water. He shook his head to clear it and rounded the baffle into the open newsroom.

  As he turned the corner, he raised his head. His eyes collided with the metallic gaze of a man leaning against the water cooler. Eyes filled with a frigid fury.

  Instinctively, Cody recoiled. He reached for the baffle to steady himself. He looked up, once more meeting Erik’s hard, implacable stare. Steadily Erik’s gaze grew more heated, until the silver glow turned to molten metal, burning its way deep into Cody’s soul.

  Cody couldn’t move. He didn’t know how long they stood there, eyes locked in inexplicable combat. Finally, with an eerie deliberateness, Erik raised the paper cup to his lips, threw back his head and drank.

  He crushed the paper cup in his hand, and dropped it into the wastepaper basket. His gaze returned to Cody.

  “Leave it be!” thundered through Cody’s head.

  He shut his eyes for a split second, opening them in time to see Erik’s broad back disappear around the corner.

  Chapter 11

  Roberta took a deep breath and knocked on Cody’s door. As the seconds ticked by and the door didn’t open, she wondered if Cody was home or, less likely, asleep.

  Suddenly the door flung open. Cody loomed in the entrance to his apartment, a surliness on his face she’d never seen before. Dark stubble covered his jaw, accentuating the circles under his black eyes. He looked bone-weary, far worse than she’d ever seen him.

  “Are you okay?” she asked immediately.

  “I’m fine. What do you want?”

  Roberta winced at his belligerent tone. She probably deserved it, too. She persisted anyway. “May I come in?”

  Cody’s midnight eyes flickered, with impatience, annoyance, puzzlement, she couldn’t be sure which. Finally he shrugged and stepped back. “Whatever.”

  Roberta slipped past him. He shut the door, then turned to face her, his arms crossed over his T-shirt-covered chest. “So what is it?”

  His surliness, at odds with his usual charm, rattled Roberta. “Um, ah, d’you mind if I sit down?”

  “Go ahead.”

  Roberta crossed to the farthest leather couch and sat down. She tugged on the chain holding her Saint Jude medal, and offered up a quick prayer for help. She’d known apologizing would be difficult, but not this difficult.

  Cody sat down on the other couch. A granite-topped coffee table divided the space between it and the couch where Roberta sat. It was only a few feet, but it could have been the Grand Canyon for the chilly distance that separated them, a distance that she’d created with her accusations and distrust, a distance for which she had only herself to blame.

  Ignoring her, he sank back into the plush leather and closed his eyes. Roberta winced. He looked so tired, so troubled, far worse than she’d ever seen him. And she was to blame, at least for some of his unhappiness.

  Cody sighed and opened his eyes. Black and hard as onyx, they regarded her coldly.

  Roberta’s chest tightened. “Um, I wanted to—What?”

  Her gaze caught a flash of light from the coffee table. She stopped and looked. A row of shot glasses stretched along the center of the table, each of them filled to the brim with a golden liquid. At the end of the table stood an empty bottle of Johnny Walker Scotch.

  She stared at the glasses, mentally counting them. Twelve shot glasses. She looked at Cody. “What are those for?”

  Cody’s mouth twisted into a poor imitation of a smile. “I don’t have any sleeping pills. Scotch will have to do. I’ll keep drinking until either I fall asleep or pass out. Whichever comes first.”

  Roberta’s mouth dropped. “But there are twelve glasses!”

  “So glad you can count, Madame.”

  “You’ll have a hangover!”

  Cody laughed shortly. “Believe me, I’ve worked with a hangover before. That’s nothing compared to working when you’re exhausted, nauseous and seeing things.”

  He picked up the closest shot glass, raised it to her in a toast, then swallowed it in one gulp. He set down the glass. “But forget that. What did you come here for?”

  Roberta frowned at the row of glasses. “I read your article.”

  “So?” Cody reached for the second shot glass.

  Roberta perched on the edge of the couch. She looked him square in the face. “It was . . . good. Fair. Balanced.”

  He smiled, then threw his head back and swallowed the second shot. He set down the second glass and placed his hands on his knees. “Surprise. I’m not the devil incarnate after all.”

  “I never said that!”

  Cody snorted. “Not exactly. But pretty close. Obviously you and your boss think I’m the lowest of newspaper scum.”

  Robert squirmed. She could feel the heat racing up her neck, exploding in a tell-tale flush. “I don’t think you’re scum. I never thought that.”

  She looked down at her hands, twisting and crushing the material of her dress. “I . . . I was wrong. I’m sorry.”

  He picked up a third shot glass, and gulped down the contents as quickly as the first two. “Apology accepted,” he said. His harsh expression didn’t soften. “Now perhaps you’d like to leave while I drink myself into a stupor?”

  He reached for the fourth glass. Before he could touch it, Roberta grabbed it, raised it to her lips and swallowed the contents in one gulp. Tears sprang to her eyes as the potent liquor burned its way down her throat.

  “What’d you do that for?” Cody demanded.

  Roberta blinked back the tears. “You’re just going to get a hangover. Drinking doesn’t help you sleep.”

  “What’s it to you?” Cody leaned towards the table to grab the next drink, but Roberta beat him to it. Once again she tossed it down. Her eyes watered and she started to cough.

  Cody laughed. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but it’s not going to work. After all, you’ve already indicated that I’m well past saving. What was it you said? A womanizer, a liar, a cheat, shallow? And now a drunk too.”

  He smiled sardonically. “Besides, you’re a lot smaller than me. If you’re not careful, it’ll be you who passes out, not me.”

  Stung by his scathing reminder of what she’d said, Roberta reacted to the least hurtful. “I know what I can drink.”

  Cody shrugged. His gaze hard and sharp with challenge, he picked up another glass. Throwing back his head, he downed it with one gulp. Smacking his lips, he set it on the table. “Mmm, that one hit the spot.”

  Roberta stared at him balefully. “Don’t drink any more. I haven’t said everything I came here to say.”

  “You mean there’s more?” He picked up another shot glass, and studied the golden contents before looking at her again.

  Roberta pressed her hands together. Nothing was going right. And it would likely only get worse. She might as well get it over with.

  She took a deep breath. “I want to apologize for suggesting that you are shallow, that you’re a womanizer and a user. Maybe you were like that in the past, but I have no reason to believe you are like that now.”

  She paused and looked at him. His expression of polite disbelief didn’t change.

  Roberta took another deep breath. What could she say, what could she do, to make him believe her?

  “You have been
nothing but friendly, kind and helpful to me. I just—well, the way we met, the things you said about UFOs and aliens, the way you teased me—I thought you thought I was foolish. A fool concerned with foolish things. And I—” her voice cracked, “I wanted you to think well of me.”

  Silence descended on the room. Roberta heard the click of the clock advancing, the tinny sound of the refrigerator coming on bouncing off the kitchen counters and ceramic tiles.

  “You wanted me to think well of you. Why?”

  Roberta blinked at Cody’s unexpected question.

  “Why did you want me to think well of you?” he persisted.

  Roberta forced herself to look straight at Cody. What she saw surprised her. No censure swirled in his black eyes, no cynical amusement played on his lips. He gazed at her with sober intensity. For the first time this evening he looked as if he might really want to hear what she had to say.

  Roberta struggled with the words. “I—I want you to like me, to care about me. I want you to like me because I like you. A lot.”

  Their eyes met, searching for the truth they both sought. Roberta could see his defenses dropping, along with his false, uncaring mask, revealing an affection she thought she had killed with her rash accusations and mistrust.

  Cody set the still-full shot glass on the table. He sat forward, his hands on his knees, his gaze intense.

  “There’s nothing you’ve done—or could do—that would make me think you were foolish,” he said softly. He paused. “During the last few weeks you’ve helped me a lot. You’ve forced me to face how much my disappearance last year has messed me up. You’ve given me the strength to at least start to look inside myself for clues, for answers, things that I didn’t want to contemplate before. I’ve found out more about what happened to me in the last week or two than I discovered in the whole year since my disappearance. Both the psychic and the hypnosis experience have provided at least a few clues to what happened.”