Unhinged

by Barbra Leslie

  “Fuck,” Darren said. He slapped the back of his neck a couple of times, a trait from childhood. I’d noticed he’d picked it up again, in times of stress.

  “Fuck,” I agreed. “We’ll talk about it tonight, with everybody. Rosen’s going to keep the boys today. Working out and movies.”

  “And you?” he said. He took the Chinese from the microwave and stirred it, stuck it back in. “What are you going to do until then?”

  “I’m going to the strip club,” I said. It came out of my mouth before I thought about it. Yes. I would go and check things out at Helen of Troy and see if this Zuzi chick was working. I could get an idea of whether she was telling the truth. Fred was probably blinded by some kind of hero complex thing. Or something else that I didn’t want to think about, when it came to my dead sister’s husband.

  “A fine plan,” Darren said. He rubbed his hands together. “A rainy afternoon at a peeler bar. I think I’ll come with you.”

  “No. You stay here with the boys.”

  “Danny, I can’t handle any more eighties movies.”

  I didn’t want Darren to come. An idea had come into my head, in the past minute or two, that a strip club might be just the kind of place where a girl could score a little coke. Just a gram. Not to cook it, not to make crack and zone out. Just a few lines to get the synapses firing. I needed my spark back, my creativity. Even Dave knew that; he’d scored some for me back in Nova Scotia when we badly needed to brainstorm. I’d only used it that one night. But that night was… well, the last time I really felt alive. And as soon as I thought that, I knew it was true. I was going through the motions of life, trying to keep us all together, but I wasn’t sure how much longer I could keep going. Once Michael Vernon Smith was dead, his threat to the boys and the rest of my family gone, I wanted to be gone too.

  Darren was eating his food from the carton and looking at me. “Danny?”

  “I’m thinking,” I said. My voice came out funny, and I had tears in my eyes. I felt tired. I felt so tired, all of a sudden. Jack was gone, Ginger was gone, and I’d royally screwed things up with Dave, because I wasn’t capable of loving anybody again. I knew it, and now Dave did too. And I had one last fight on my hands, a fight I would have to wait for. I wanted nothing more than to get a hotel room and a big bag of crack, and watch stupid TV. I wanted to turn my brain off and crawl into a hole. In that moment, I knew I wasn’t capable of being that woman, day in and day out, the woman who kept spinning her wheels, running miles in combat boots and lifting weights and fighting. The woman who was constantly going over every possible permutation of worst-case scenarios, waiting for the day when evil came back into our lives.

  I needed someone else to do it. I needed Jack. I needed Dave.

  “Oh, kitten,” Darren was saying. He put his food down and pulled me in for a hug.

  “Kitten?” I said. I rested my head on his shoulder for a minute. “Where the fuck did that come from?”

  “No idea,” he said, “but I kinda like it.” He was patting my back and swaying a little, holding me as though I was a kid. “No strip clubs for you today, sister,” he said quietly. “You need a long nap.”

  “Yeah,” I said. I did. Sleep had never been easy for me, and lately it was as elusive as smoke. I’d felt fantastic when I woke up, but as deeply as I’d managed to sleep, it had only been for a few hours, not nearly enough to make up for the deficit I was running on.

  “I do too, actually.” Darren let me go. He grabbed both of our mugs and poured the coffee down the drain. “Go to bed for a while. I’ll call Skip and Laurence, tell them the news, and I’ll crash for a while too. I’ll set an alarm, wake you up before dinner.”

  “What about Fred and his stripper?” I said.

  “The stripper can wait until tomorrow,” Darren said. “Not priority one just now. You feel me?”

  “I feel you.” I headed down the hall to my room. Darren could keep the plane in the air for a few hours. Thank God for him.

  “Danny?” I turned around at Darren’s voice. “It’s going to be okay.”

  “I highly doubt it,” I said, “but I love you for saying so.” Nothing is going to be okay ever again, I wanted to say. I smiled at my brother, and went to my room.

  After I locked my bedroom door behind me – I had ensured that all doors in the building had good locks installed, though none of us tended to use them – I got to my knees beside my nightstand and reached for the pistol I had duct-taped underneath. It was illegal to store firearms that way in this country, but my peace of mind trumped that law any day. I checked that the cartridge was loaded, and sat on the floor with it in my lap for a long time.

  I tried to meditate to help relax my mind for sleep, something Dr. Singh had recommended. I doubted she would approve of meditating with a loaded gun in your hand, but what she didn’t know, et cetera.

  I did fall asleep, curled up on the floor next to my bed with a loaded gun at my side. Whether it was the meditation or the loaded weapon that calmed me, I couldn’t tell you.

  SEVEN

  Marta and Mama Estela had obviously been arguing for much of the afternoon. Marta was in a rare bad mood, and her mother – who seemed to cheer up a bit when she’d had a good screaming argument – was nearly smiling. Dinner was less elaborate than usual; Marta had all the fixings for fajitas laid out on the table. There were platters of chicken and beef strips, along with roasted red peppers, onions both fried and raw, two kinds of lettuce, her homemade pico de gallo, refried beans, a couple of bowls of shredded cheese, and what looked suspiciously like store-bought tortillas. I could see Darren eyeing them with his eyebrow raised, and Luke elbowed him.

  “Don’t mention it,” he said under his breath, plopping a tortilla on his place and ladling sour cream a quarter of an inch thick over the entire surface. Ah, the appetite of the twelve-year-old boy. “She already got an earful.” Luke swung his eyes at Mama Estela, who was chugging a beer at the counter and managing to mutter to herself at the same time.

  “Yes, I threw out all the flour,” Marta said. She didn’t miss a trick. “The man on the news, he said that you should throw all your flour away.” Mama Estela rolled her eyes, looking so much like a Cleary that I nearly did a double-take. “It’s poisoned,” Marta was saying. She looked like she wanted to cry.

  “There were concerns of listeria in some processing plants,” Rosen explained to us. He was carefully picking out protein and vegetables and arranging them beautifully on his plate. I had never seen him eat a processed carbohydrate, which I told him repeatedly was a very obnoxious trait. “It was on the news. Certain brands, with specific expiry dates, were recalled.”

  Darren and I both nodded, and busied ourselves with assembling our fajitas. We knew better than to get in between Marta and her mother. I almost wished I hadn’t taped my gun back under my nightstand before coming down.

  It wasn’t the flour, of course, that had everyone on edge. Every person in that house, including Marta’s son Eddie, had moved here with their eyes wide open to the potential risks. None of it had been easy – Rosen and Marta had upped sticks and moved countries so they could stay with the boys. In Fred’s more obnoxious moments he pointed out to Darren and me that the fact that we were paying them more than double the going rate would have had some influence on their decisions. I liked to point out that they agreed to come to Canada before any talk of salaries was mentioned. I doubt they would have accepted so easily if Darren hadn’t been part of the package. While they showed Fred respect, it was apparent to anyone with a scintilla of emotional intelligence that there was no love lost there. They had witnessed the tension and fallout in Ginger’s house when her husband Fred had fucked the boys’ nanny, who just happened to be an evil bitch of the Smith Family, and instrumental in getting Ginger killed.

  That kind of mistake sticks in the craw. Sometimes I pitied Fred for the guilt he’d always carry, and sometimes I hated him for his role in the whole debacle. But he felt the same about me, so
we were even-steven on that score.

  Everybody at Marta’s seemed slightly jangly. Darren and Rosen talked to the kids about what Dave’s crew had uncovered, and that while we knew Michael Vernon Smith had flown into Toronto, we couldn’t be sure he was still here. And so on. I was only half listening. I slipped upstairs right after I finished eating. Darren and Rosen were handling everything, and I couldn’t sit still. I had to move. I had to do something useful.

  I had to see about getting some coke.

  I jumped into the shower for five minutes, then changed into one of my basic bar uniforms: jeans, combat boots, and a well-cut black shirt. I slicked my dark hair off my face – it was short now, very short, which every male in the house had made clear was not their favorite look. My hair is naturally blonde, like Darren’s, but I felt almost like an imposter as a blonde. I didn’t have the personality for it. Ginger did. Ginger glowed. I glowered.

  I spent about three minutes putting on eyeliner, mascara, and some red lipstick. Darren had told me that with my new shorter hair, I looked a bit like the chick from The Matrix movies. And apparently I smiled about as much as she did, as well. But that actress, Carrie-Anne Moss, had a lean, shapely body, whereas with all the running I’d been doing my naturally thin body was starting to look gaunt again. Not like when I’d lost thirty pounds on the Crack Diet. I didn’t think I looked unhealthy. But the angles of my face were becoming more severe, and of course I was firmly into my mid-thirties, when a face loses the softness of its twenties. I tried to look at myself objectively, which isn’t something I did with any regularity.

  I didn’t look like somebody a stranger would mess with, I didn’t think. “Lesbian dominatrix on her night off” was the phrase Darren and Fred had come up with, when they’d had the chance to see me when I was on my way out to prowl. They seemed to think it was a teasing sort of insult, but I liked it.

  I started to leave, but slipped back into my room and rooted through the shoebox I kept random bits of jewelry in.

  I slid heavy rings on each hand. The better to hit you with, my dear. I definitely wasn’t on the prowl tonight; there was no way in hell I was picking up any man who was leering at exotic dancers in Helen of Troy. But I was a woman alone going to a strip club in the evening, a strip club where my brother-in-law had been badly beaten the night before. I was on a fact-finding mission, a foray into enemy territory. But if someone was going to get hurt, I was damn sure it wasn’t going to be me.

  I debated slipping a gun into my boot, but it was possible the bar had a metal detector at the door. Some clubs did, nowadays. Even a very thorough bouncer might have found that I was carrying. I didn’t particularly mind going down for shooting Michael Vernon Smith, but I wasn’t keen on the idea of facing charges for carrying a loaded firearm into a strip club. However, in my bag I carried my honeycomb brush – an innocent-looking round hairbrush that concealed a very lethal-looking stiletto dagger in its handle. It had been a gift from Dave, months back. I was as thrilled with it as some women would be with diamonds.

  Always be prepared, that’s my motto. The Boy Scouts stole it.

  My plan had been to slip out undetected, but it was earlier than I would usually head out, and with today’s news, it wouldn’t be fair for me to just disappear. So with great trepidation, I made my way back down to Marta’s kitchen to let everyone know I was going out for a couple of hours.

  I walked in on an unusual quiet moment. Everybody was eating and/or checking their phones. Even Mama Estela had the news on. My boots weren’t silent, so my entrance was impossible to downplay.

  “Oh,” Darren said. He looked at me, expressionless, over his reading glasses. “Kitten with a whip, I see.”

  “This is how I always look,” I said. Defensive? Me?

  “I have seen you wear makeup about five times in the last year,” he said. “Now you look like you’re trying to be an evil Kardashian sister.”

  “Bitch, please. I do not have their… assets.”

  “You could be their skinny German cousin,” Rosen piped up.

  The boys were laughing like a pair of six-year-olds. Mama Estela looked me up and down with her eyebrows raised up to her hairline, and muttered something in Spanish to Marta, who blushed and continued scrubbing the table. I wondered if I had overdone it a bit with the lipstick.

  “Now that you’ve all had your fun,” I said, “I’m going out for a few hours to meet a friend. I will not be late.” I looked at Darren when I said that, so he knew that I wasn’t out doing the nasty, two nights on the trot. “Where’s Fred?”

  “Gone out,” Darren said, looking at me meaningfully.

  “Oh?” I didn’t want to say anything incriminating in front of the boys. “And one of you gentlemen didn’t want to join him?”

  “He didn’t tell us he was going.”

  “He texted us to say we should wait up. He wants to watch a movie with us,” Luke said. He was eyeing the left overs on the table as though deciding whether or not to go back into battle.

  “Well, good,” I said. “Maybe I’ll watch one, too, as long as it’s not something that will make me want to rip my eyes out of my head. And remember, this is the last night of staying up late. School soon.”

  “Say Anything…?” Rosen said. He looked at the boys. “It’s your auntie’s favorite film.” I was going to correct him, but the three of them started jabbering about downloading soundtracks.

  “I really won’t be long,” I said to Darren quietly. “Maybe I’ll run into Fred.”

  “Jesus,” he said. He rubbed his eyes. “Text every fifteen minutes, please.”

  “Every thirty, and don’t worry,” I said. “Strictly getting the lay of the land.”

  “I’ve heard that before,” Darren said. He glanced at the boys and lowered his voice further. “We have enough on our plates, Danny. This isn’t our fight.”

  “Just making sure,” I said. I turned and clomped out of the kitchen, a little put out that nobody had at least told me I looked, I don’t know, good. It’s disconcerting for a girl to have a room full of the males in her life bust a gut when she changes her look a little.

  Good thing I’m not much of a girl.

  * * *

  Helen of Troy was about a twenty-minute walk from the bakery, and the rain had just stopped. It was good to be outside, to feel like the dingy streets in our part of town had been washed clean. I thought I could smell the beach, Lake Ontario being only a quarter of a mile away, but it was probably the rain and wishful thinking. The oppressive mugginess in the air had been flushed away, but it was still a warm enough evening. I felt rested after my long nap, and energized. I had to be doing something, and this was all I could think to do tonight that might be of any use. Besides, if Fred was there, he was going to need backup. He must have it bad for this girl, I figured, if he was going back a second night, after getting the stuffing beaten out of him less than twenty-four hours ago.

  I walked with purpose, and with even more awareness than usual. The street was quiet; most people were probably inside eating dinner. Besides, it wasn’t a part of town with a lot of foot traffic. I kept thinking of Fred wandering back into that place, and sighed heavily as I walked. As if I didn’t have enough to worry about, without him falling in love with a stripper in peril and wanting to play white knight. But it made me pick up my pace. And think of a strategy for when I walked in – I wanted to keep a low profile. And if Fred had somehow managed to make it past the bouncer at the door, I didn’t want him to see me right away. Or more to the point, I didn’t want to be seen with him. I wanted to talk to Zuzi by myself, woman to woman. Fighter to stripper, as it were.

  Helen of Troy was trying to be an up-market strip club in a down-market neighborhood. The sign was in neon red cursive, smaller than you might expect, and the brickwork looked like it had recently been painted, a creamy white that would have to be repainted every few months to keep it looking good. But it did look good.

  I felt happy. I always felt oddly h
appy when I was about to walk into a bar. Not because of the alcohol – I enjoyed wine, but it didn’t rule my life like crack had. No, it was the theater of it, the becoming a different person depending on what I wanted to achieve. If I went on the prowl in an upscale suit bar, I dressed and spoke differently to when I targeted a basic pub. In Helen of Troy, the stakes were even higher, and the buzz I was getting as I approached the door made me smile. I paused for a second to wipe the smile off my face, though. I was going to be cool when I made my entrance, polite but unsmiling, until I got a sense of the place.

  Voices to my right made me turn my head.

  Fred, getting into a black town car with what looked like tinted windows. He was climbing into the backseat, of his own volition. Nobody was with him, no stripper or bouncer.

  But inside the car, through the open door as Fred got in, I caught a glimpse of a man. My view lasted for perhaps three seconds, but I knew who that man was.

  Fred had just gotten into a car with Michael Vernon Smith. And that car had pulled into traffic, turned left and away.

  EIGHT

  My hands weren’t even shaking. I noticed, somehow, how calm I felt.

  I called Fred’s number first. It went directly to voicemail. I didn’t leave a message.

  I dialed Darren, and when he answered I quickly told him what I’d seen.

  “Okay,” he said, and I knew my brother’s trying-to-sound-calm voice. The boys must be close by. “Are you going to make the calls?”

  “Yes, I’ll make the calls. You take care of things there.” I could hear Matty’s gurgling laugh in the background, and Eddie’s high-pitched, uncontrollable giggle. “Take care of the boys.”

  “On it,” he said. “Call me back when you’ve talked to everybody.”

  I stood on the sidewalk, lost in inaction for a moment. If only I had grabbed a cab the second they’d pulled out, I could have followed them. But it was early evening, and while there might be cabs around here at closing time, I didn’t see any now. And it was too late.