by Mary Malcolm
I’d been excited at first that he understood, but as he spoke further, that excitement faded as I caught the sarcasm in his tone. “Eidetic,” I said, in defense of what I can do. “The proper term is eidetic memory.” Jackhole.
He stood and motioned for me to do the same. “Ms. Carver…Lucy, we’ll be in contact if we need anything further from you. Most likely HGR will not be opening tomorrow, so you should talk to your manager about when to come in next.”
I left, shoulders straight, in search of John. What did I care? I mean, sure I cared that someone lost his life, but the loss of money at a company I just started at shouldn’t be my concern. Without my abnormal brain, I wouldn’t have even seen the problem to begin with. Detective Reyes didn’t believe me, and I didn’t need him to. I simply needed to get a ride home, forget about tonight, and try to do a better job of keeping my head down next time.
Right, likely.
“Have you seen John Poole?” I asked John’s coworker, Ben, when I made it downstairs.
“Yeah, he left twenty minutes ago,” he said.
Well, that sucked. I didn’t have his number, we’d only talked through work, and I was sure my purse was either in his car or still at his house. And with cab fare tucked in my wallet I either had to call my aunt at one in the morning to get home, or walk. I took my phone out of my pocket and Google mapped it. Three miles.
God, I need a cigarette.
Halfway home it started to rain, and I somehow pulled a butt muscle. I limped the rest of the way and vowed over and over to start looking for a new job. “Come to work, he said. I’ll get you a cab, he said. Yeah, I bet he has some beautiful ocean view property in Arizona to sell me, too.” Also, it didn’t matter how good a kisser the guy was, John should never have left me alone at a crime scene involving a dead body on our first date.
****
“So you stuck your nose in again and now you’re gonna have to find another job.” Aunt Dolores bustled around the kitchen as she lectured. She slammed a pot on the stove and went about making chicken noodle soup.
I’d caught the sniffles during my limp home in the cold October rain and sat uncomfortably bundled in a bathrobe and slippers with a tissue pressed firmly against my nose. I’d called out sick for the rest of the week but hadn’t “officially” quit yet. After having the job only three days to begin with, I probably didn’t need to make it all that official. Even for me this set a new record.
“I didn’t mean to stick my nose in,” I said, sniffling. My head threatened to split, but at least I didn’t sound as horrible as I felt. “I thought I was doing the right thing.”
“Drink your tea.”
I took a drink, not wanting to argue, and certainly not wanting to make things worse. I knew she was pissed. I’d done this before and had to quit jobs, but this was the first time it involved the police. The first time for anything this serious. She didn’t have to tell me how awful it was. My stomach twisted into knots.
I still didn’t know if I was at fault, but it certainly wasn’t great that I was on record ranting about my crazy ability. And crazy I must have sounded. The more I thought about Detective Reyes, the more I felt completely foolish for telling him so much.
“I can’t keep supporting you like this, Lucy.” Aunt Dolores added the carrots and celery to the pot of chicken and set it to simmer. She turned to face me. Her shoulders slumped.
At sixty-two Aunt Dolores was by no means ancient, but certainly not a spring chicken, either. Her hair thinned at the front and she hadn’t dyed it in several months, leaving wisps of white around her face. For some reason, until that moment, I hadn’t seen the mesh of lines across her cheeks or the dark circles under her eyes. She would work double shifts until the day she died if that’s what it took to support me.
I couldn’t let her do that.
“I’m sorry, Dee. I’ll find a job to keep.” This time I meant it. It wasn’t fair to her, and it certainly wasn’t fair to me to keep stalling my life. I might hate what my brain does, and though I can’t control it, I could certainly control my reaction to it.
I went upstairs to lie down but couldn’t get my eyes to close. I called Ana, my best friend, but got her voicemail. She’d been out of town on a photoshoot. “Call me when you get a chance.” I sighed and tossed the phone onto my dresser.
Ana had been my first friend when I came to Fort Worth. My first friend ever, really. I moved in with Aunt Dolores at sixteen and had no idea what life was like outside of the farm. My entire knowledge of the twenty-first century came from books. I’d never seen a cell phone, never actually used a microwave, never laid hands on a computer. I emerged like a person who had been serving out a life sentence in solitary and then suddenly been paroled.
Back then, Ana’s parents lived across the street, yet she spent more time living with us than at home. And I loved having her. She was my tour guide into a brand-new world of tampons and texting and my guardian angel all wrapped up into a Red Vines-chewing, braces-wearing little package.
The braces were long gone, and she gave up chewing on Red Vines once we started kissing boys. Sometime over the years she became more my sister than my friend. So much had been happening, I needed her more than ever. I closed my eyes and tumbled into a fitful sleep.
****
A knock sounded at the door, waking me hours later. I waited a few moments for my aunt to answer, but when she didn’t and the knock repeated, I pulled myself from under the covers and shuffled downstairs. From the peephole I saw Detective Reyes in street clothes but with his piece still holstered at his hip.
I opened the door a crack. “Detective Reyes, I didn’t expect to see you again.”
“May I come in?”
“Do you have a warrant?”
“Do I need one?”
I frowned. “Thought you might somehow have decided I was responsible for the murder.”
“I know you aren’t.”
“Good, because being accused of murder after being called crazy would have been a real drag.”
He took a breath. “I’m sorry. I’m here to apologize.”
I stood my ground, not nervous about his being there but not quite certain if I wanted him in my house, either.
“May I come in?” he asked.
“Fine, but only if you use the magic word.”
His jaw clenched. “Please?”
I stepped back and opened the door.
As he walked past, I smelled a lingering hint of Acqua di Gio—my favorite cologne on any man—and a faint tang of peppermint. I motioned for him to continue to the kitchen, and as I walked behind him, I openly ogled the tight muscles flexing in his blue jeans. He walked with an air of confidence that came from someone driven toward success.
In the kitchen, I motioned for him to sit at the table while I set two cups in the microwave to heat up some water. Our coffee-maker-slash-hot-water-heater broke over a month ago and, why replace it when we had a perfectly good working microwave? “Do you want tea or coffee?”
“Coffee is fine. How are you today?”
“You aren’t here to make chitchat.”
His lips pursed, and he sat up a little straighter, visibly insulted by my cutting to the chase. “No, I’m not. You just don’t look that great so I thought I should ask.”
“I’m a little under the weather but fine.” I sneezed and grabbed another tissue. He didn’t have to be kind; I knew I looked atrocious. I’d caught a glimpse of myself on the way to the door: hair poking up every direction, black smudged under my eyes, my nose puffy and red. I’m already rail thin, but when I get sick I somehow seem to look even skinnier. Basically, I looked on the verge of death.
“About last night…”
I stood by the counter, arms folded, ready for a fight.
“I shouldn’t have been so quick to dismiss you.”
My insides vibrated and an unwanted quaver crept into my voice. “No, you shouldn’t have. But it doesn’t matter. I know you’re here to tell
me you found out what I said was true, and now you’re afraid your captain will look poorly on you because you dismissed a lead. But I don’t plan to stay at that job so I’m no longer a lead. Take whatever information you found and do your own work.”
He tapped his thumb on his thigh and leaned slightly forward. “You’re right. All of that is right. And I wouldn’t blame you for leaving. But thing is…”
“This is an active investigation and now you need my help.”
“Yes but—”
“But you don’t want to bring a kook into your investigation.”
“I wasn’t going to say—”
“No, you may not have used those exact words, but the gist is there, right?”
“Will you stop doing that?”
“What?”
A tic formed by his jaw. “Finishing my sentences.”
My voice came out steadier now. Strong. “Anyone who’s ever seen a cop show would know why you are here.”
The microwave beeped giving me an excuse to turn away. I don’t even realize when I do things like that, like finish people’s sentences or come off as a know-it-all. I just do them. And then I get defensive because I’ve been doing them. It’s a cosmic-circle pain in the ass, really. With Detective Reyes it felt good, though, to finally have the upper hand. “Coffee, right?”
“That’s fine.”
“Black?”
“Yes.”
With a button-down detective trying to prove his way in the world, it’s a good guess he isn’t a froufrou coffee kind of guy. Him coming to my door in street clothes with no other officers meant he’d realized he’d made a mistake and wanted to make it better.
But it didn’t mean I had to forgive his treatment.
Or help.
But even as I made his coffee and my tea, I couldn’t stop seeing Mr. Winters’s face. I wasn’t supposed to have seen the body, but when the coroner uncovered him, presumably to collect evidence, I did. A glimpse, not long enough to scar me for life but enough to imprint on my memory. He’d been strangled, or at least that’s what they were saying at the scene. His eyes bulged from his slightly purple face. The gray slacks he’d been wearing that day were wet from when he lost his muscle control, and I saw a circle of blood on the floor from where he’d fallen.
He’d been nice to me. Loyal to his team. Proud of his company.
People shouldn’t die like that.
I gave Detective Reyes his coffee and a chance to say his piece.
“Would you sit?” he asked, shifting slightly in his chair.
I wanted to remain standing but it wouldn’t help hurry him along, so I sat, uncomfortably, at the edge of a chair. Ready to bolt. “Go ahead.”
He took a breath and inched forward in his chair to match my position. Definitely reading me. “I understand why you’d want to quit,” he started again. “I can’t blame you.”
Good cop.
“But a man died. Our department analyst started going over the information you gave us and saw that you were right. If everything else you said is true, about your memory, about being able to observe and retain the information—”
“Because I’d lie about something as crazy as that?” I hadn’t meant to interrupt, but it always frustrated me so much when people questioned me. Especially when it mattered. This time it mattered.
He couldn’t mask the irritation on his face. “I believe you, Lucy. But you have to understand, what you say is pretty radical. It isn’t as if you’ve been saving up information for months, you’re giving me information you gathered over a three-day span. As it is, it took our guys working through the night to come up with the data you supplied. And only because you already gave them what to look for.”
Okay, so, very good cop.
“Could you hold off on quitting? Maybe stick it out for a bit, see what else you might pick up? Let me know anything suspicious?”
“You want me to play Sherlock at HGR.”
“I want you to do what you do anyway, but let me know what you find.”
“You want me to plug myself in a dangerous situation. One where someone already died.”
“No.”
I waited.
He leaned back, no longer matching me. “Yes. You’re in a position to help us solve this, probably quicker than we’d be able to on our own. Mr. Winters’s murder and the missing data may not be related at all. It could be you stumbled upon a completely separate problem. But if they are involved, we could sure use your help.” He touched my arm.
Heat flooded my cheeks, and I looked away from his dark brown eyes. I thought about my aunt. About how it was my turn to take care of her. “Will you compensate me?”
“We could pay you as a consultant.”
“What about when this is over and HGR finds out I’ve been spying on them?”
He stood and swallowed the rest of his coffee. “I can’t promise anything, Lucy. You want to quit anyway, you said as much. This is a chance for you to get paid doubly for doing what you do anyway.”
“Can I think about it?”
He rinsed his cup and walked toward the front door. “I can give you until Monday. We have other leads we need to follow, but to be honest, the information you already gave is the strongest, and we need to have an answer soon.”
I shut the door behind him. Leaning against it, a smile spread across my face. How exciting. A chance to finally have my brain work for me. Like he said, the two might not be connected at all, but if they were I’d be a part of something big. Important. I’d be Rudolph on that first snowy sleigh ride.
I knew before I heard his car drive away that the answer would be yes. Still, was this me selling out? I thought about my parents, how disappointed my dad would be to find out I was working for the police. Suddenly my yes didn’t seem so assured.
****
My parents and I lived in a seventies-style split-level house eleven miles up a mountain. We moved there after my third birthday and did everything off the grid, or as much as possible. My dad welded metal sculptures and sold them to galleries for cash, or traded them for supplies. We paid for our rented house (which included all the utilities) in cash, which I only knew because of the many late-night lectures my father gave about the dangers of living under society’s thumb.
I grew up believing my mother had been a fine arts professor in Fort Worth before my family moved to rural Arkansas. She taught me from home. Gave me dreams, hopes, books—tons of books. I had a simple, good life, and I didn’t know a life separate from that existed. I’d go with my dad to pick up supplies a few times a month, and would do my best to not be too curious about the other kids I saw.
I knew they wondered about me too, but not knowing our ways were so different helped a lot. These other kids acted rude with their gawking. I felt no self-consciousness for being unordinary. I had no idea why it mattered so much to them.
Moving to Fort Worth at sixteen made me feel like a foreigner: the traffic, the constant chatter, people rushing everywhere, and no one taking time to just enjoy a moment. I’d yet to fully recover.
When I woke from my nap, I found a note from Aunt Dolores on the kitchen counter telling me to eat the soup when it cooled and to rest while I could. I scooped a cupful and had just sat down to read a book when someone knocked on the door. John.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, peeved he thought I would want to see him after he left me to fend for myself. Between John and Eli it felt as if the douche Olympics had come to town and my house was their sports arena.
He held out my purse in a peace-offering gesture. “I went through it, not snooping, but I needed your address.”
I didn’t say a word.
“Last night was crazy, right?”
“Totally.”
“Never been through something like that before.”
“Not this year, at least,” I said, still standing at the doorway, no intention of asking him in.
“So…” he said, purse still dangling between us.
“So?”
“I had a good time before all that.”
“Me, too,” I said. “Right up until you left me at a crime scene, and I had to walk three miles home in the rain.” I took the purse and dropped it onto the hallway table.
His face fell. “Why’d you walk home? I called a taxi for you.”
“What taxi?”
“Ben was supposed to come find you when the taxi showed up. I ran home because I forgot my badge.”
Feeling guilty for having wished his balls would shrivel and fall off, I motioned him in. “You should have found me and told me yourself. Ben never said anything. All I was told was that you went home.”
He stopped me in the hallway and pressed his hands against either side of my face. “Lucy, I’m sorry. I would never intentionally do that to you.”
My anger melted. “Would you like some soup?”
Dee came home to find us tucked into each other watching Some Like It Hot on The Movie Channel. She smiled as she walked into the room, and I sucked in my cheeks anticipating what she might say.
I’d had one serious relationship. One heart-breaking, tear-my-world-apart relationship, which left me so swollen with hurt that I chopped off my once-long hair and changed my entire look from Little Bo Peep to GI Jane. It was because of what I went through with Bobby and the way it ended that my aunt still told me from time to time that if I were a lesbian, it was okay. I’m not. Unfortunately, I hadn’t dated much since then and certainly hadn’t brought another man home, which hadn’t exactly dispelled her thinking.
“So,” she said in a slightly singsong voice. “This must be your boyfriend?”
I groaned and shook my head at John as if to say, I never told her that. “Aunt Dolores, this is John Poole. One of the guys I work with. John, this is my aunt Dolores.”
He stood. “So nice to meet you, ma’am.”
“Oh, don’t you ma’am me. My mother was ma’am. You can call me Dee.”
I died inside. Why do older people say things like that? Of course her mother was ma’am, but so was she. Obviously! But the heat that I knew blazed a trail of red across my cheeks did not stop her.
