Sophie’s Last Stand

by Nancy Bartholomew

  I stood at the top of the stairs, my eyes closed, trying to envision the unloading of the big rental truck with my worldly belongings packed tightly inside. I thought hard, trying to visualize my plastic tubs of teaching materials. With a sudden flash, I remembered. The storage boxes were at the top of the closet in the guest room. I turned away from the stairs and walked past my room, toward the end of the corridor.

  “Don’t wake up Darlene,” Nick cautioned. We were just outside the door, my hand on the knob, when he said this. I looked back at him.

  “How do you know she’s still in there and sleeping?” I whispered.

  Nick gave me a look, as if to say, I’m dead. I know it all.

  I shuddered and turned the door handle. Darlene was sacked out across the guest bed, still wearing her broomstick skirt and sandals. She lay on her back, mouth open and snoring so loudly I no longer had to wonder how Nick knew she was sleeping.

  We crept slowly across the floor toward the closet. I pulled open the door, only to have it stick, then screech as I tugged at it.

  Nick and I looked back toward the bed. Darlene had stopped snoring. I held my breath, watching my sister, praying that she wouldn’t wake up and see us.

  I carefully edged the door open and saw the big pink tubs sitting on the upper shelf. As I worked to slide them silently toward me and down onto the floor, Darlene snored on, now and then pausing to mutter something unintelligible.

  Just as the second plastic bin slid forward and down into my arms, Darlene sat bolt upright in bed, opened her eyes and said, “Why, Nick, you’re still here.”

  I froze, my heart pounding against my rib cage. Nick took a couple of steps toward the bed and answered her. “Yeah,” he said, his voice as casual as if they were standing around at a family picnic. “I had a couple of things to take care of before I went over, you know?”

  The bedsprings groaned as Darlene shifted her weight. “I know just what you mean,” she said. Her eyes were focused on Nick and she seemed not to even notice me. “Don’t worry, I’ll watch out for Sophie. She’s finding her destiny, Nick, and it wasn’t you, after all. So if that’s what’s holding you back—”

  “Nah, nothing like that,” Nick interrupted. “I know she’ll be just fine. Go on back to sleep. I didn’t mean to disrupt you.”

  The bed groaned again as Darlene flopped back against the mattress and sighed agreeably. “I just love these kind of dreams, don’t you?” she murmured.

  “Yeah, kid,” Nick said, “they’re a real kick in the ass.”

  Darlene was soon snoring again. I straightened up and walked over to the bed, where Nick stood staring down at my sleeping sister.

  “Come on, before she wakes up again,” he said, turning to me. “You know how she is with the questions.”

  I gave him a sharp look, but said nothing. I had questions of my own. I turned around, grabbed the bin labeled Rainy Day Crafts and left the room with Nick right behind me. If he thought I was going to hand any video I found over to him, well, that just wasn’t an option.

  I closed the door to my room, placed the tub on the floor and pried the cover off. Construction paper, glue, glitter and various craft materials filled the box. It had obviously been searched, because things weren’t as I’d left them, but the vandals hadn’t been thorough, for deep down inside the crate, past magazine photos and miscellaneous doodads, was the art supply box, along with six identical boxes full of supplies. I reached for the box and pried up the lid.

  At first pass, it seemed to be the Shrek videotape. But when I looked closer, I saw the original movie label had been carefully peeled off and placed over another cartridge.

  Without waiting for Nick’s instructions, I got up and stuck the tape in the bedroom VCR and turned the TV on. A woman and a man stood locked in an embrace, passionately kissing. They appeared to be in a hotel room. As I watched, at the far right edge of the shot I could make out something moving, someone hidden out of the lovers’ view.

  The movie was shot through a window because I could see the edge of a curtain framing the action. Nick’s work, obviously. Another Peeping Tom video. Another innocent pair of lovers captured in their most intimate moments.

  The woman was naked except for a pair of thong panties. Her hands were resting on her companion’s shoulders. He pulled her into him, cradling her in his arms. I started to turn away but the camera suddenly zoomed in on their faces.

  The woman, tall with black straight hair that fell neatly over her shoulders, broke the embrace and moved a step or two away from her lover. She was staring at something he couldn’t see, a look of horror transforming her face into a masklike grimace.

  The boyfriend, a head taller than his companion and dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt, was still smiling at her, unaware of the danger that lurked just behind him. A third figure had stepped out of what appeared to be a hotel room’s bathroom. He was a short, squat man wearing a dark colored windbreaker and holding a black handgun with a long barrel. He held the weapon straight out in front of his body, aiming it at the woman’s companion.

  Before I could move, the man with the gun fired. The boyfriend fell forward, dropping to the floor, obviously dead, shot at close range in the back of the head. The woman screamed, her upper body covered in the blood spatter from her lover’s violent death. She seemed to have forgotten her armed assailant as she dropped to her lover’s side and began a high-pitched keening that chilled me to the core. The sound of a door slamming echoed in the background as the movie faded to black.

  “Oh my God! Nick, who are these people? What happened?”

  I looked up, ready to hear the rest of the story, needing to know what had happened. But Nick had vanished.

  “Nick!” I screamed, not caring now who heard me. “Come back here, you bastard! What is this?”

  But Nick still didn’t answer me. It was Darlene who came running, panicked and still half-asleep.

  “Sophie, Sophie,” she said, moving to my side and wrapping her arms around my shaking shoulders. “Hey, shh, it’s all right,” she cooed. “You were having a bad dream. Shh. I’m here. It’s all right now.”

  She hugged me tight against her warm body, sighing and rocking me gently back and forth. When the trembling stopped, she let me push away from her and reach over to grab a tissue from the nightstand.

  “Are you okay?” she asked, her voice filled with concern and sympathy.

  “I’m fine,” I said, but my voice cracked, giving me away. “I had a nightmare about Nick. He was—”

  “Hey,” Darlene said, interrupting my explanation, “what is that?” She was pointing to the TV. The screen had somehow returned to the last image, freezing on the tableau of the woman leaning over her dead lover. “Oh, my God! That’s terrible!”

  I hit the power button on the remote control and the screen went black.

  I sniffed, suddenly smelling something that I hadn’t noticed before. Darlene stopped and inhaled, her forehead wrinkling into furrows of concentration.

  “Do you smell that?” she asked. “What is that? I can almost think of it, but not quite.”

  It would come to her in a minute. It was unmistakable to me. Paco Rabanne cologne. I always said he wore too much of it, but Nick didn’t care. “Gives ’em something to remember me by,” he’d say, and laugh.

  Chapter 15

  “You have to call Gray,” Joey said. “He needs to get that videotape to the FBI.”

  We were standing by the dining room doorway, overlooking the kitchen and a hastily assembled war council that included my entire family, half the retired population of Neuse Harbor and Durrell the dog. I had descended the stairs to a houseful of company, all drawn, as the Mazarattis are, by a death among us, even if it was an ex-member of the family and a man who in recent years had treated us all like dirt.

  Ma was cooking, as usual. She stood with her back to us, stirring a huge stockpot of sauce and muttering to herself in Italian. Now and then she would look over her shoulder,
shake her head grimly and return to her work.

  Joey’s wife and children milled about, helping Ma, carting bags and boxes in and out of the house. Angela had supervised the general cleanup of the downstairs devastation—I knew this much from Joey. She did it more in an effort to avoid Ma than anything else, but also because she was a born organizer. She had to be; she was married to my brother, the poet, the man of concepts but not details.

  Mort, Pa, Frank and the other old guys, minus Pete, who was still recovering in the hospital, sat around the table mapping out strategy. They wore grim, determined expressions and wrote copious notes on small pads of paper that Mort provided.

  “It’s my years in the military,” he stated, as if this explained everything. “You gotta write stuff down, especially at our age. Once it’s here,” he said, gesturing with a forefinger to the side of his head, “it’s gotta go there.” He gestured to the paper. “Or we’re all sunk. Right guys?”

  There was a chorus of gruff grunts followed by an immediate return to business.

  “Like I was saying,” Joey continued, his voice pitched low so Pa and the old guys wouldn’t overhear us, “we’ve got to bring the police in on this, and I don’t think we can sit around delaying any longer.”

  I hadn’t shown the movie to anyone other than Darlene and Joey. I didn’t want to involve the old guys.

  Darlene turned around and looked over her shoulder, hearing something we hadn’t. “Well, speak of the devil and up he jumps.”

  Gray Evans walked across the back porch, and she leaned forward to open the back door for him.

  “There you are!” she cried. “We were just talking about you.”

  Gray was watching me. His expression was somber still, but lighter, as if the weight between us had lessened a little, only it hadn’t. If anything, Nick’s death was going to push us further apart, because I carried the burden of the videotape and having to explain how I’d suddenly “found” it after receiving an afterlife message from my ex-husband.

  I motioned to Gray, letting him follow us from the back porch, past the old guys in the kitchen and on into the dining room before I spoke to him. “I found what everyone’s been looking for,” I said, and handed him the Shrek carton.

  Gray seemed puzzled at first, but nodded and moved toward a window, where he could examine the tape in a better light.

  “Wait!” Ma cried, startling us all by suddenly appearing in the doorway. “Don’t move!”

  Gray turned and looked at her, frowning as she crossed the room toward him. She reached deep inside the bosom of her dress and tugged to release something.

  “There is evil here,” Ma said to Gray, her eyes burning with intensity. “You can’t fight the dead without protection.”

  Her voice was loud, carrying clearly to the men sitting at the kitchen table. At the mention of the word dead, every Italian in the house crossed themselves. In fact, every time Nick’s name was mentioned we crossed ourselves. It didn’t pay to take chances with evil vibes.

  Ma pulled a thick gold chain with a small gold medallion attached out from the recesses of her dress and lifted it over her head. “Here,” she said, offering it to Gray. “Wear this. It will protect your unborn children.” Her eyes traveled from Gray to me, as if there were some significance to be made from her gesture.

  Gray was clearly confused, but took the offering because Ma wouldn’t have it any other way.

  “Is corno,” Ma said, holding the golden horn-of-plenty medallion out to him. “It will keep you safe from the evil eye.” She crossed herself again and looked almost fearfully around the room. “It was my father’s. Now you wear it.”

  “Your father’s? Oh, Mrs. Mazaratti, I can’t accept this,” Gray began. But the hand was quicker than the eye and Ma slapped him upside the head before he knew what was happening.

  “You take or else!” she cried. “The children are all that matter!”

  Gray rubbed the side of his head slowly and nodded. “Thank you, ma’am,” he said. “The children. Yes.” He carefully placed the chain around his neck and leaned down to kiss my mother on the cheek. “Thank you, ma’am,” he said, his voice gentle and filled with warmth. “I won’t let anything happen to it.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Ma said gruffly. “Is for my grandchildren. You carry the future of my family.” With that, Ma vanished back into the kitchen.

  There was no way for Gray to understand without an explanation that the horn was worn by men to protect their fertility, and I for one wasn’t about to tell him. The man radiated enough sexual energy to take care of himself in a battle against the evil eye. When and if we ever got to a place where a discussion of children and fertility ever came into play, I’d explain. But for now, that possibility seemed as faraway to me as space travel.

  “The movie,” Joey said. “Soph found it in her teaching supplies. Nick told her about it before he died.”

  “Well, actually afterward,” Darlene began, but Joey silenced her with a warning glare.

  Gray studied the cassette carefully. When he had finished, he looked up at me.

  “I take it you just found this and were about to call?” There was no mistaking the tone, the barely suppressed anger that boiled just beneath the surface. His jaw was clenched and I knew he thought I’d been holding back.

  I met his steady gaze and said, “Something like that, yes.”

  Gray didn’t believe it for a minute, and as I’d had the tape for well over an hour and shown it to my brother before discussing our presentation to the authorities, I couldn’t sell the lie any harder than I already had.

  “Let’s talk,” he said, and when I motioned toward the living room he cut me off. “Upstairs, if you don’t mind. I believe I saw a TV and VCR in your room?”

  I felt my face flush under Joey and Darlene’s knowing scrutiny. This was just great.

  “Okay, come on. You can watch the tape. After that I think you’ll understand that we were, of course, going to call you or the FBI right away.”

  And I would’ve called him, but he was obviously feeling that I’d known about the tape for longer than I’d said and had preferred to protect Nick over coming to him with the information. I followed Gray up the stairs, motioning Joey and Darlene back. It wouldn’t do for them to take the heat, too. After all, Joey had wanted to call Gray as soon as I’d told him.

  “I’m sorry for your loss, Sophie,” I said sarcastically as we reached the second floor. “I know you must’ve been through an ordeal, even if he was your ex-husband and treated you like dirt. I know you were so sleep deprived that you didn’t think right off the bat to call me….” I let my voice drift off as I turned and glared at him.

  There was a barely perceptible softening of his features. “Listen, Sophie, I am sorry that you’ve been through such a hard time.” He ran his hand through his closely cropped hair and seemed to be almost at a loss for words. Almost.

  “Sophie, I want this over with for you. I want you safe. I want your family and friends to be safe, too. I apologize, but I was trying to do my job. It’s all I know to do. It’s not just my duty—it’s personal. People I care about are in danger. I don’t understand why you seem not to see that.”

  The agonized look on his face tore at my heart. Deep down inside, where the true Sophie Mazaratti doesn’t deceive herself, I knew he was being completely honest. The trouble was, I didn’t always trust my assessment of the truth, not in light of Nick or any of the events of the past few years. I wanted to let go and believe Gray, but the guard dog in me couldn’t. Not yet.

  “You left. You just weren’t there anymore. I didn’t deserve that,” I said.

  I heard the catch in my voice and saw his reaction to it. He looked pained. He started toward me and kept on coming even when I backed up a step.

  “Sophie, I wouldn’t do anything in the world to hurt you, not intentionally. I thought you were taking care of Nick and didn’t want me around. I thought the best thing I could do would be to find
the people who tried to attack you the other night. I thought I was helping you.”

  I couldn’t stand it, couldn’t stand to be inches away from his strong embrace and yet so far away emotionally. I went to him, walked right into his arms and felt him wrap himself around me.

  “I don’t know what you want from me, Sophie,” he whispered. “But I would give you the universe if I thought it would make you happy.”

  I couldn’t say a word. Instead I lifted my head and watched as he lowered his to meet my lips. We kissed like starving lovers, hungry for the feel of skin touching skin.

  It was Gray’s pager that brought us back to the present reality. It vibrated against his belt, rumbling through both our bodies insistently.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered, pushing back enough to grab the offending device from its holster.

  “I know. Duty calls and calls and calls,” I said.

  He was looking at the tiny screen, pushing the button to light up the display, and frowning.

  “Sophie,” he said, “I’m sorry. I’m going to have to leave in a minute, and I really need to know about the video. Can we switch gears, just for now? I promise—”

  I raised the tips of my fingers to his lips and stopped the explanation. “Gray, I’m fine. Let me tell you everything Nick said and then you can take it from there.”

  He couldn’t have known how transparent the relief was on his face. I almost wanted to laugh, but settled instead for a terse, comprehensive explanation of Nick’s last words to me. I never mentioned the dream or whatever it was. I showed Gray the short clip and told him that Nick had hoped to make money on the film and that it had backfired on him. I told him everything Nick had said all over again, in detail, even the parts that didn’t seem to have a meaning to me.

  “He said they were after him,” I said. “I don’t think Tony Lombardo was the only one looking for this.”

  “Who? Did he give you any names?”

  I thought hard. “No. Wait. There was one name he mentioned. In the hospital he said something about a woman named Kathy, remember? He said she brought him down here after Connie ran off.”