Chaos, Desire & a Kick-Ass Cupcake

by Kyra Davis

  “Are you serious? Confusion hath now made his masterpiece. It’s what that hero guy in Macbeth says when he finds the king dead.”

  “Oh,” I said, taken off guard. “Wow. You’re right, that’s where that quote comes from. That’s just…wow.”

  “Is that meaningful?” Marcus asked, now sounding more curious than angry.

  “Yes,” I said, solemnly. “It means you would kill in Shakespearian trivial pursuit and it means you have to agree to see Charity tomorrow night.”

  “Why does it mean that?”

  “It just does!” I insisted. “You now owe me and if you don’t come through I will not forgive you.”

  Marcus didn’t respond immediately. I waited as I stepped on the gas and accelerated toward home. Finally, when he didn’t speak up, I pressed him. “You still there?”

  “Yes,” he said, irritably. “I’m still here.”

  “Well then?”

  He sighed audibly. “Tell her I don’t do relaxers anymore, so if she wants to play it straight I’ll introduce her to my friend Supersilk. And no weaves or braids without a regular appointment. I don’t have time for that.“

  “So you’re saying…” I waited, holding my breath.

  “Yes, fine, I’ll see her. I should be done with my last client by six pm tomorrow. You two can come in at seven-thirty. No earlier, I need to make time to feed my body and nourish my soul.”

  “Oh my God, yes! Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

  “Shush, don’t thank me for something you strong-armed me into,” he said dryly. “And by the way? Even if I didn’t agree to this you’d have to forgive me by your next hair appointment. It’s not like your curls don’t suffer from bouts of their own psychosis.”

  “I love you, Marcus.”

  “Goodbye, Sophie,” he said irritably and hung up.

  I was only hundred feet away from my house now. Anatoly’s Harley was already in the driveway and the lights inside the house were on. I parked behind it and then got out to examine it, placing my hand gently on the shimmering black metal. It was cool to the touch. I found myself smiling despite myself. I found him inside, in the living room. A martini had already been made for me and was sitting on the coffee table. He was sitting in the armchair with a beer in his hand and a dog at his feet. Mr. Katz had claimed the entire couch for himself, stretching his back legs over one cushion and his torso over another.

  “You’ve been home awhile,” I noted. “If you had called me when you reached your bike, like you said you would, we would have arrived near the same time.”

  Anatoly smiled and leaned back in his chair, looking a bit like the lord of the manor. “Infuriating, cute and observant. That’s a lethal combination.”

  I situated myself on the far corner of the couch, allowing Mr. Katz to hold claim to the lion’s share. “I assume you walked the perimeters, checked the street for suspicious vehicles, the front step for more notes, checked under our bed for monsters?”

  “If there are monsters under our bed I don’t think I want to know about it,” he demurred then took a swig of his beer. “To the rest of it, I plead guilty.”

  I thought about that for a moment, turning my face toward the dark window. I could feel Anatoly’s eyes on me, sense him tensing, waiting for another fight. I shook my head. “I’m not mad. I can take care of myself. I will take care of myself, but it’s sweet of you to want to protect me.”

  “You’re the most important person on earth to me,” he said quietly. “I’ll be damned if anyone keeps me from protecting you, not even you.”

  I turned my eyes back to him. I could tell him again that I wasn’t going to step back from the chaos of London’s death. I could tell him about Charity. But instead I simply relaxed back into the cushions. “I’m just glad you didn’t find anymore secret messages on our doorstep. Cryptic notes, underlined headlines, it’s creepy.”

  “Underlined headlines?” Anatoly asked.

  Oh, oops. I glanced down at Mr. Katz, silently asking him why he didn’t remind me of what I had and had not yet told Anatoly. “I guess I have something to show you.”

  Anatoly cocked an eyebrow and took another swig of beer. I walked over to the kitchen where I had left the newspaper and brought it back for Anatoly. I tapped the headline that was underlined. “I just opened up the newspaper and there it was.”

  Anatoly put the beer bottle down on the end table and took the newspaper from me. His eyes narrowed as he scanned the article. “But this has nothing to do with London.”

  “I know that’s what it looks like on the surface,” I admitted. “But there must be something we’re missing. Or maybe it’s a coded message? I don’t know. I was planning on going back to his apartment to see if I could find anything that would link this story to London but three break-ins to the same place…I’d be pushing my luck.” I dropped back down on the couch, startling Mr. Katz. “Everything has gotten so complicated.” Anatoly remained quiet, his eyes still running over the length of the article. I reached over and started petting Mr. Katz. “What are you thinking?” I asked.

  “I’m thinking that something about this doesn’t smell right,” he murmured. He shifted slightly in his seat his eyes never leaving the words on the page. I waited for him to further explain but finally he just put the paper down on his knees and shook his head. “I’ll look into this tomorrow too. I do have some clients I need to deal with as well. I’ll make it another long day. I’ll get answers.”

  “Thank you,” I said, simply.

  “Sophie I know you don’t want to hear this,” he leaned forward, keeping firm eye contact, “but I need you to stay home tomorrow. The dog can use the backyard when she needs to go out. I know you feel a sense of ownership over this thing, but you have to lay low until I can figure out what we’re dealing with. I won’t shut you out,” he said with a smile, selling the lie, “but you do have to work with me here.”

  “You really think that’s the only way to go? For me to stay housebound?”

  “Only for a day or two. We’ll set the alarm, you’ll keep your cell on you at all times, you’ll be safe. And when I do have a better sense of things you can help me bring it all to a close.”

  I could help him bring it to a close? I started petting Mr. Katz a little more forcefully. But when I spoke my voice was calm, even pleasant. “All right then, Anatoly. Just this once, I’ll play it your way.”

  As if.

  “I love my curls because they’re a reflection of me. I hate them because I’m an unpredictably temperamental person.”

  --Dying To Laugh

  Marcus’ salon felt different after hours. Empty, the chairs around us took on the air of antiques standing along side the posters of long dead stars. Charity looked different tonight too, softer and maybe a bit more vulnerable. She sat in Marcus’ chair, the apron drawn close around her neck as drips of water from her hair slowly trickled down along the right side of her face. Her eyeliner had become slightly smudged and her lipstick faded. Marcus, on the other hand, looked as modern and polished as ever as he clipped away at her locks with his gleaming silver scissors.

  “So,” Charity said, continuing the conversation we had been having, “you just left journalism? Not the Chronicle, but journalism all together?”

  “Yeah, the article about Nolan-Volz, that was really more of an experiment. I didn’t even let the reporter I worked on the piece with add my name to the byline.”

  This time Marcus actually scoffed. It was a little scoff though and I’m pretty sure Charity took it more as a tsk.

  “I write fiction,” I went on, distracting her from the scoffing and tsking. “Books mostly. What about you? Do you like working at Nolan-Volz?”

  “It’s fine,” she said, vaguely. “I’ve been with them for less than a year. I’d like to keep working there but who knows if that’ll be possible after this merger.” She used air quotes around the word merger.

  “But…it is a merger, isn’t it?” I asked.

&nb
sp; “More like a takeover,” she wrinkled her nose in distaste. “Not a hostile one. Gun is all about it. I think he’s ready to walk away and hand over the reins to someone else, which is weird. You’d think he’d want to see this drug he’s been working on for six years come to market before bailing.”

  It was odd, particularly since Gun had told me how Nolan-Volz was his way of proving himself to the world after his career had been tainted by the mess at Orvex. And now that his company was coming close to introducing a miracle drug to the world he was looking for a quick exit? It didn’t make sense.

  Another thing that was odd was Charity herself. My first impression of her had been completely off. I had her pegged as a Bond Girl type. But here, after downing the two glasses of champagne Marcus had offered her and with her high-fashion clothes hidden beneath shapeless nylon, her sophistication had melted away to reveal something else entirely. Her bored-sexy voice now shaped itself around the vocabulary of a typical California beach girl.

  Marcus was smiling, seeming to enjoy her company more than he had anticipated. “Gun and Charity,” he mused as he continued to snip. “The odd couple for our times.”

  Charity laughed with him and started to shake her head but noted the reflection of Marcus’ suddenly sour expression. She immediately took the hint and went all-statuesque. I felt an instant connection to the woman.

  “The article I wrote was mostly about the merger…or rather, the take-over,” I amended, swiveling back and forth in my chair. “That and Gundrun and his career. I didn’t get to delve as far into the details of Sobexsol as I would have liked. It sounds like it could be a game changer.”

  “Could be,” Charity acknowledged with a shrug, which she quickly checked after getting another look from Marcus. “Lots of drugs claim to help you get off other drugs. But Sobexsol could conceivably get you off all of them and then some. Of course, it won’t help those who are reaching for a bong because their cat just died. But for those who have addictive personalities, people who get addicted to anything, drugs, alcohol, gambling, sugar, Sobexsol could be their salvation. It’s designed to stop or at least dull those addictive impulses. If Gun could have held out a few more years he could have sold Nolan-Volz for billions.”

  Whoa. I hadn’t fully understood what this drug did before but if it could actually do that, game changer didn’t quite cover it. Maybe if I took Sobexsol I wouldn’t crave coffee and vodka. I made a mental note to never, ever betray my besties, Smirnoff and Starbucks, with that usurping whore, Sobexsol.

  “I understand the clinical trials are going great,” I said to Charity. “Are there any side effects?”

  “So far they’re pretty mild,” Charity said. “A few cases of mild insomnia, minor hair loss--”

  “Hair loss?” I asked. I could see London sitting before me, his palm up filled with the hairs that had fallen from his head.

  Look at me. See me dying. You’re witnessing my murder.

  “Minor hair loss, and it’s temporary,” she emphasized her eyes following a freshly cut lock floating to the ground “But you know, it’s early days. We have years more of trials ahead of us before Nolan-Volz can make any definitive claims.”

  “Can you overdose on this stuff?” Marcus asked. “It would be a cruel irony to overdose on a drug designed to cure you from your addictions.”

  “Yeah, that would be,” Charity laughed. “But of course you can overdose on anything. You take too many Tylenol and there’s a good chance you’ll end up in the ER. But if you take Sobexsol as directed there shouldn’t be a problem. At least that’s what the very early results seem to suggest.”

  “But, just theoretically, if someone was stupid enough to take too much Sobexsol at once, what would happen?” I asked and then forced a giggle, keeping the mood light. “What could happen if you take too much of an anti-addiction drug? Do you have an irresistible urge to join the Mormon Church?”

  Charity smiled sympathetically at my attempt at a joke. “Well, it’s designed to alter your neurotransmitter levels so, I don’t know, if you take too much it could mess with your brain. Apparently a couple of the rats they tested the drug on went a little psycho when they were given really high doses. That’s why it took so long for the FDA to agree to let the company move on to trying it on people. But that was before my time at the company. What I know is, if you take the right dose and don’t do anything stupid like mix it up with a bunch of other meds that it shouldn’t be interacting with, you should be fine.”

  Could London have been poisoned with toxic levels of the very drug he helped develop? That’s some Marie Curie kind of twisted bullshit.

  I glanced down at my phone. It was already eight-thirty. We had gotten off to a late start and the three of us had spent the first part of the night chit-chatting about random, totally inconsequential things as I tried to establish a report. Anatoly had told me he would be home around ten, which could mean nine-thirty. I really needed to be home when he arrived so it at least looked like I had kept my word.

  “It’s funny, I did know one other person who worked there a while back,” I said, off-handedly. “Did you know a guy named Aaron London?”

  Charity let out a groan. “That freak? I mean, no offense but he’s out of his mind.”

  “So you did know him,” I said with a little smile, looking back up at her. “But I guess he wasn’t always like that. At least that’s what I’ve heard.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard that too but I didn’t see any evidence of it,” Charity replied. “When I got there they had already restricted his lab access. I don’t know why they didn’t just let him go. Every week he seemed to get a little more hysterical and a lot more disheveled. His wife was already having issues by the time I got my job so maybe that’s what pushed him over the edge. I met her once, in my first week of work. She came into the office with him.”

  “I’ve met her as well,” I said with an encouraging smile. “What was your impression of her?”

  “Um…I guess it’s mean to say this now but, she was weird, right? I understand she was an addict so that probably explains a lot. They were the perfect dysfunctional pair.”

  “She was an addict?” I asked surprised.

  “That’s what I heard. She got hooked on pain meds or something. Would have been nice if she could have hung around long enough to take part in the Sobexsol studies…actually, no. What am I talking about? Family members of Nolan-Volz employees can’t take part in those anyway.”

  I was still stuck on the whole Anita’s-an-addict thing. Of course there were a lot of highly functional people walking around this country who secretly huddled up in bathroom stalls doing lines on their lunch breaks. But I couldn’t imagine Anita being one of them. Perhaps she had beaten it. “I don’t think she needs help anymore,” I suggested, cautiously.

  Charity’s expression changed to one of complete shock. Like I had uttered some kind of blasphemy. Then she forced a little laugh. “You’re funny,” she said in a polite tone that let me know I definitely wasn’t funny…which was good because I wasn’t trying to be funny.

  “Did Gun think London was nuts too?” I asked. I caught Marcus’ eye in the mirror. I could tell he was silently cautioning me, keep it casual. Don’t make it an interrogation.

  “Gun hated London,” Charity’s laugh became genuine if a bit rueful. “I have no idea why he kept him on as long as he did. I asked him once and he told me he and London used to be close friends. London’s bipolar and…well, I don’t know if he stopped taking his medication or what, but he was seriously weird by the time I met him. But I guess it wasn’t always that way? So maybe Gun had some lingering loyalty? I really don’t know.”

  I slowly swiveled my chair back and forth. Gundrun had told me he and London had no personal relationship at all.

  “A man named Gun being friends with a man named London is almost as improbable as the Charity, Gun thing,” Marcus noted. “I swear there are so many ways you could go with this. If he gets a little out of hand
you could advocate for Gun control. His wife could say she likes to play with her Gun. If my name was Gun I’d always talk about myself in the third person. Every time I had sex, right before the moment of climax I’d yell, Gun’s ready to shoot! It would be my trademark.”

  Charity gave him an odd look and then burst out laughing again.

  “Well, he seems like a nice Gun. He’s the Gun who tried to help London get back on track,” I said, in a rather clumsy attempt to get the conversation back on track.

  Charity waggled a perfectly manicured finger at me. “Actually there were many days when I thought Gun was aiming to kill London,” she said with a broad smile, still riffing off the theme. I swallowed hard and Marcus narrowed his focus to Charity’s hair his mouth pulling itself into a small frown.

  But Charity didn’t seem to notice the shift in mood. “There was this one day, I got back from some errand Gun had sent me on and I heard Gun in his office shooting his mouth off at London.”

  It was amazing how quickly Gun jokes could get old. Although Charity didn’t seem to think so.

  “I’m not being fair,” she continued. “Most of the yelling was actually coming from London but still, I heard Gun too. I couldn’t make out what they were saying but the tone! Gun was pissed. I’ve never heard him go off like that before.” She let that land, smiling proudly.

  “What was he going off about?” I asked, forcing a smile. “I assume it wasn’t about gun rights?” The things I’ll do to get information.

  Charity laughed again, delighted with our new game. “No, no. At least I don’t think so. I couldn’t fully hear them. I think it might have had something to do with Sobexsol. I did hear them mention that a few times. You know the day London was fired they had to actually have him escorted out by security?” she asked, her voice becoming hushed as if Janice Joplin hanging on the wall over there might overhear us.

  “Why?” I asked, leaning forward.

  “He went from crazy to psycho. His wife had been gone for several months by then and he was in this downward spiral. Gun asked me to deliver some papers to his office and I got there to find that he had pinned a whole bunch of other papers to the wall. Lots of confidential internal documents and memos that really shouldn’t have been on display. And some other stuff that…I don’t even know what it was. It was like in a movie. And he was ranting to himself, sweating and coughing…it was kind of scary. I went back and told Gun and he just turned white. I didn’t know you could lose so much color in the space of a second. And then he just flew past me, sprinted down the hall into London’s office. There was more shouting, I think someone actually threw something, obviously that would have to have been London who did that since Gun has too much dignity. I heard Gun yell about how much he had risked to help London and his wife…I think he was referring to his decision to keep London on so long. Gun should have fired him way earlier. But London wouldn’t hear it. Next thing I knew security was running up and literally dragging London, kicking and screaming out of there. It was wild. The craziest thing that’s ever happened at Nolan-Volz during my time, that’s for sure.”