Allie’s friendship with Cindy, Cindy’s connection to Winston Verbale and her own relationship with Win had put her on the spot. She didn’t relish the task of telling Verbale about Cindy’s death because she didn’t know what to expect. The only time she had informed a client of a death, the relationship of victim to survivor had been clear and unambiguous, which gave her an expectation of the survivor’s feelings and reactions and thus how to deal with them. With a coworker she trod on uncertain ground.
Winston Verbale and Cindy had been seeing each other for just a few months, but Cindy had not discussed Verbale with her in any detail. Certainly Win hadn’t said a word about it. His position as director of Human Resources at the mental health clinic precluded talk about personal issues. Sure that Cindy and Win had been good friends or more than friends, she felt obligated to reveal the news to him rather than let him hear it from the anchorman on TV or read it in the Yuma Heat news.
Winston Verbale entered her office with a professionally genial smile on his face but his tone of voice held an edge. “What is it you need to talk about in your office instead of mine?”
Allie came from behind her desk, closed the door and sat on the sofa, gesturing Verbale to the chair next to it. If she had remained behind her desk it might imply she wanted to assume the role of counselor in this situation. Since she did not, it was not a message she wanted to send. She said, “Sorry, Win, but you have glass walls and you leave your door open. People are in and out of there without knocking. My office is more private. This is something personal.”
He sat and waited, looking cool and composed in green slacks and short-sleeved dress shirt of pale green. She noticed again that his blue eyes were set in an open, strangely innocent face which often disarmed others.
“Win, I have to tell you something that will be difficult to hear. I’ve learned Cindy is dead.”
“Cindy? Cindy Cameron?” His face appeared puzzled.
“They think she died between a week and ten days ago. I’m sorry I can’t tell you much more, but evidently it’s going to be aired on the TV news this evening. You two made no secret of the fact you were dating and I just thought someone should tell you in person.”
“She told me she was taking time off to care for her mother back East. Was it a plane crash?”
“No. It happened here -- well, near here. Win, I didn’t know her mother lived back East, much less that her mom was sick.”
“We were close. She told me things she probably wouldn’t tell anyone else.”
“You took a long weekend at the same time she left. I thought maybe you went with her.”
“No. When she told me she was leaving I decided to take a trip myself. I went back to Costa Rica for a few days.” He squinted as the afternoon sun moved through the open slits in the venetian blinds and cast stripes of light and dark across his face. Allie rose quickly and drew the blinds closed.
“I remember,” she said. “When she didn’t answer my calls, I went to ask you about her, but you were gone, too.”
Verbale shook his head as if in denial of what he had heard and looked down at his knees. He rubbed his face, pressing his knuckles into his eyes. When he looked up again tears smeared his cheeks.
Allie fell silent, feeling her own eyes sting. Then she said, “I’m sorry Win. She was my friend, too.” She saw him glance at the box of tissues on the end table but reject the thought of taking one. He knew they were for her counseling clients and didn’t want to be cast in that role. He placed the palms of both hands on his cheeks, swiped down and back in a childlike gesture, sniffed, and said, “Did you know they were going to feature her in the next edition of Yuma Now Magazine – about her bird watching and those articles she wrote for the national birding magazines? And she was thinking about going into local politics?”
“She talked to me about both those things. She told me you taught her a lot about politics. She wanted to get more involved, herself.”
He gave her a look filled with doubt or irony; she couldn’t quite read it. She asked, “So you two enjoyed your time in Costa Rica?” When Cindy returned, she had hinted to Allie that her relationship with Win had run its course.
“It was the best. Cindy was a very affectionate girl.”
The word “girl” stung in her ears. Her emotion shifted from compassion to confusion. She changed the subject. “I hear you’re going to run for the vacant seat on the city council.”
Verbale sniffed but his eyes brightened. “The opening was unexpected. George Smith died last January and they’ve been trying to get his widow to accept the seat, but she doesn’t want it. So, special election.” His voice conveyed confidence. “I appreciate your letting me know about Cindy.” He rose to leave but at the door he turned back to her with a raised eyebrow. “If TV reporters didn’t get onto it until today, then how did you find out?”
“Um…I can’t tell you. I’m sorry.”
He hesitated as if about to ask something else then turned the door knob and left without looking back.
Allie remained on the comfortable sofa instead of returning to her office chair. She wanted to sort thoughts from feelings. She expected this conversation would lead to an opportunity to grieve with Verbale about their mutual friend, but he had refused to go there. He was harder to understand than his rather ordinary but open face suggested.
• • •
Win tried to wipe the smile of anticipation from his face as he opened the wide door of the wheel-chair accessible, all-users bathroom. It contained no stalls and one toilet in full view. He closed the door without locking it and approached the toilet. What were the chances? Win, lose or draw? The question no longer stimulated an erection, as it had when he first began this game of bathroom roulette. It was still exciting, but after pulling the trigger of an unlocked bathroom door dozens of times, it felt less and less like the thrill it replaced. The real thrill was the prickle of fear-anxiety-hope-exultation crawling across his scalp, legs quivering at the sound of dice rattling onto the wheel, eyes following the hypnotic turn, turn, the agonizingly slow climax as the dice settled and he exhaled an explosion of suspense.
He lifted the seat of the toilet and took his wide-footed stance. He slowly unzipped his pants, and reached into his briefs for his flaccid penis. He did miss those erections, because the additional minutes it took for the hard-on to recede increased his chances for a hit. He had gotten a dozen hits recently, but no wins. For a second he entertained the old, familiar fantasy. The woman who opened the door wouldn’t start, blush, and apologize. She would quietly step across the threshold, close the door and lock it. He would turn and she would see his prick and imagine herself holding it while it grew even larger. She would approach slowly, eye to eye, knowing he would give her the best, the very best, screwing of her entire life.
He loosed his stream of urine, ignoring the familiar tinkling, listening for a sound from behind, an opening door. He decided this was not his lucky day, shook off the last yellow drops and started to zip up when it happened. He glanced around quickly to catch the look of dumb shock on the woman’s face. She uttered an embarrassed, “Oh, I’m sorry,” and slammed the door.
Score! A chuckle burst from his throat like an ejaculation. He turned, grinned into his reflection in the mirror and strolled from the bathroom without washing his hands. The woman was fat and unattractive. He was glad they hadn’t made it together and he wouldn’t fantasize about her. But later, when he needed it, a quick sniff of urine on his fingers would bring back the memory of the ridiculous expression on her pathetic, pudgy face and along with it his feelings of triumph and superiority.
• • •
Staccato rapping on her door – Allie looked up from note-writing in surprise. The last client was gone, the next not due for an hour. Other staff members would knock then enter. When she opened the door, she was nose to nose with the tearful face of her last client, Debbie. The woman’s round and lumpy form filled the doorway then she pushed forward to enter th
e room, almost knocking Allie down. The woman hurried to her usual place, the easy chair. She sat, grabbed a handful of tissues from the box on the end table and lowered her face into her cupped palms.
Allie remained standing and took a deep breath. What now? Debbie Smith was a low-key but important member of the community, the widow of a councilman and a politician in her own right. When Allie had first accepted Debbie as a client it occurred to her that the woman had the soft, under-done look of a half-baked loaf of bread. Debbie’s tall puffy body was topped by a large head that sprouted short beige hair over a fleshy face so lacking in character and distinction it defied description. Allie could never picture the woman’s features when Debbie wasn’t in front of her. Were the eyes blue, brown, or something more indeterminate? Were the lips full or narrow, cheeks high or flat? When she actually looked into Debbie’s face, Allie often felt a vague sense of puzzlement, as if in some subtle way the woman wouldn’t quite come into focus.
Right now, Debbie's undefined features were twisted by strong emotion. She looked up at Allie, and blurted, “He…he.., I saw him…he…!”
Allie walked to the sofa and sat down next to the client chair so she could put a comforting hand on Debbie’s arm. She looked into her client's eyes and spoke in a soft and calm voice “Okay, Debbie, slow down and tell me what happened.”
Slowly and with prompting, Debbie revealed the story. She had walked in on a man in the unisex bathroom and it brought back a traumatic memory from her childhood.
Allie felt her face soften and her shoulders relax in a rush of compassion for the child Debbie had been. A sensation of warmth in her chest often filled her as she did the work she knew so well, and this was no exception. She left her hand on Debbie’s arm as she acknowledged the feelings and asked the questions that helped Debbie calm down, process the incident and understand the dynamics of past trauma.
Finally, with habit born of professional necessity, she took a surreptitious glance at the clock, and felt the pressure of her next appointment encroach on both her attention and her empathy. She asked, “Do you think you’re calm enough to drive home now?”
Debbie hesitated. “I’m wondering what will happen if I see him again. I think he must work here.”
“Why is that?”
“The nice-looking man with blondish hair who always smiles. I think I saw him in the hallway once before.”
Allie knew instantly. “Yes, Winston. He works here, but he’s the director of our human resources department and he’s a very nice person. What do you think might happen if you see him again?”
Debbie glanced around the room, as if searching for the answer. “Nothing, I guess.”
“I think you’re right. He’s probably forgotten about it already. Just an unpleasant little accident, wasn’t it?”
Debbie shook her head. Her helmet-like hair didn’t stir, but another drop of mucous oozed from her nose. She wiped. “I feel calm.” A long pause. “But I don’t feel safe. The way he looked at me. Like he was surprised, too, but with a different expression. And something else was really strange. When I was running down the hall I thought I heard him laughing.”
• • •
Chapter Twelve
Win left the office about twenty minutes after five, unable to find any task sufficiently important to keep him, and aware it was now late enough to inform anyone who might notice that he was industrious and dedicated to his job.
While he drove, he thought about Allie’s news that Cindy was dead, his red-haired Cindy. He could almost feel her wise, comforting, massage-therapist hands on his body, her long, silky hair. . .then he mentally pushed the memories away, squeezing his thighs together to discourage a fulminating erection.
He drove his clean and polished, late-model Mercedes with his left hand, the other hand alternately fiddling with the satellite radio controls, smoothing his hair or rubbing his thigh. He drove at exactly the speed limit and with an eye out for pedestrians or other drivers he might know and acknowledge with a casual wave.
He had always wanted a luxury car and to him the Mercedes was the epitome. He remembered with relish the first day he drove this car. He sat in the leather driver’s seat, enjoying the smell and feel. He smiled, saying aloud, “My Mercedes, my Mercedes, my Mer-kaaaa-deez.” Ah, he deserved it but then Cindy hadn’t appreciated it. She liked her little Volkswagen, a woman with no taste at all.
Cindy, Cindy. It had been simple but right, at first. She had been agreeable, low-maintenance and he loved seeing the envious look in other men’s eyes when he told them he had hooked up with a massage therapist. Of course she would never have been a contender for wife, not his wife, with a questionable background, uneducated, in a mundane profession. She stole into his life as a pleasant distraction and then became a competitor. With her ridiculous hobby of bird watching she had gained more name recognition than he had managed in his whole life. The fact that she might actually worm her way into Yuma government was an insult, and then she had hinted she was going to break off their relationship.
What was it about her that he hadn’t recognized as a threat? Thoughts of Cindy summoned the memory of his brother, thoughts slithering into his mind without warning. Yes, she reminded him of his brother, the golden boy who did nothing and got everything, everything Mom and Dad had to give. The ass-kisser always thought he was better than me. When I had that thing at the casino and got put in jail, he stopped speaking to me, thought he was too good for a brother who spent one damned night in jail on a misdemeanor.
But Cindy. I’m glad she’s gone. I never wanted to be a bird watcher. I should be the one who’s being watched, not the one watching. If she started in politics even on the school board or some other low-profile position, she would have risen. Like my brother, things that should come to me came to her instead. Her and her, “Don’t harsh my mellow.”
Home in fifteen minutes, he opened the garage door with the remote, came to a smooth stop and opened the door of his newly-built, ranch-style house. When he stepped over the threshold he had a brief but familiar sensation that the house was trying to swallow him. Cool air greeted and enveloped him, the feeling of coolness enhanced by the interior wall color they called “cottage white.” He had chosen not to paint over it with color so the whitewashed effect harmonized with the cream-color of the tile floors.
His steps echoed slightly as he walked into his office. He went to the phone, but no messages from anyone important, only a telemarketer’s come-on. Something new on his desk drew his attention, a bill from the housekeeper who had been here today, straightening, vacuuming the already-clean floors and polishing the sleek and functional Danish modern furniture. He liked the floors bare of rugs, the walls naked of art work or other decorative hangings that would have been distracting, too much like the old-fashioned and over-stuffed home of his parents, who had been foolish enough to think they could beget and raise children starting at the age of forty.
He sat at his teak desk, picked up pen and paper and began to make notes for his acceptance speech to the Yuma City Council. His eyes strayed to a framed photo of his deceased parents on the wall above his desk. Too bad they were gone and wouldn’t see the start of his rise to success. No, he thought, they didn’t deserve it, especially Mommy Dear. She never had faith in me, no matter how much I did to prove myself. It was just my brother she trusted to succeed, Momma’s favorite little boy, the rotten turd.
Finally, when I’m on the Council, this no-action funk, this losing streak will end and things will be different. Articles about me and pictures will be in newspaper. I’ll give interviews, maybe get spots on local TV news and the morning talk show on KYMA.
He sat back and pictured himself rushing directly from work to council meetings which might go on until nine or ten, calling constituents or getting calls from local people who had problems and needed his help. He would listen and speak with sympathy and then just a word from him to the zoning commissioner or the health department inspector would solve the
issues and turn constituents into political backers and friends.
Unexpectedly, a different thought occurred – that he might look out into the crowd of citizens at council meetings and recognize a person he had surprised in a bathroom. His own crow of laughter brought him out of the reverie.
He sat forward in the chair and began to type, inspiration streaming from memory of speeches by Kennedy, Reagan, and Bush. This was good, this would work. He revised and rewrote on the computer, reminding himself he needed to buy one of those smart-looking notebooks so he could work anywhere with people around to see him.
Feeling a surge of energy, he went to the kitchen to put a frozen dinner in the microwave and sat on the stool at the counter to eat. Back in the office, he made more changes to refine the speech, tweaked it again and again, experimenting with different type fonts for printing it although he was aware no one else would ever see it.
He stopped briefly to go the bathroom, which for some reason left him feeling strange and uncomfortable. When he took the last page from the printer and sat back in his office chair he realized he was done now; there was nothing else to do this evening. He felt the silence begin to suck at him. When he was alone like this at night the house became like a vacuum, sucking his life away. The sensation was subtle at first, then pervasive. The house was removing him, molecule by molecule, cell by cell. Nothing could be guarded, nothing held back, the tiny holes in his being were growing in number, life flowing from him like water from a breached dam.
He shook his head to clear it, to dismiss the feeling of becoming nothing, an emptiness in empty space. His heart began to pound and his skin grew clammy. He pulled his handkerchief from a back pocket and wiped his forehead. There, there was no crushing pain in his chest. He wasn’t dying; he wouldn’t die of a heart attack. No. The certainty came…he would simply weaken, collapse, and dissipate into nothingness.
He pushed out of the chair, grabbed the remote and turned on the TV. It was tuned to the local newscast. He saw the newscaster’s face, just a talking head, heard the loud and self-important words but they were just sounds; they made no sense. Then an image of Cindy’s face appeared, and suddenly he heard the words, “…local woman…body discovered…Sheriff…”
Fatal Refuge: a Mystery/Thriller (The Arizona Thriller Trilogy Book 2) Page 6
