Blowing Smoke

by Barbara Block

  “I need to speak to her.”

  “Hillary?”

  “Who else are we talking about?” I took a sip of the Pale Ale and made a face. “This is stale,” I said, pushing the stein back toward him.

  He took a sip. “Tastes all right to me.”

  “I wouldn’t brag about that if I were you.”

  “So you want something else or what?” the bartender asked, dumping the beer down the drain without taking his eyes off the girl as she sashayed across the floor.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Russell.” He said this with his eyes still firmly fixed on the girl’s ass.

  “Okay, Russell. What I want is to speak to Hillary.”

  “You the person she’s waiting for?”

  I lied and told him I was.

  He watched the girl take a left into a hallway and disappear from view before turning back to me. “That’s funny,” he replied, plastering a smirk on his face. “Hilly said she was waiting for a guy.”

  I slid a twenty across the bar. “Sex-change operations can do wonderful things these days.”

  He slipped the bill into his pocket as a man signaled to him from the other side of the bar. “She’s in her dressing room. That’s two doors down from the bathroom. Tell her Russell said he’s still waiting. She’ll know what I mean.”

  “Tell her yourself.” And I left.

  If the bar area was dark, the hallway was even darker. The only light came from wall sconces decked out in dark-red-and-purple shades. The first time through I miscounted the doors, because what I thought was the third door turned out to be the bathroom, while the door after that was an office. Outlined in a halo of bright light, I caught a glimpse of a young, well-dressed guy and a couple of Hispanics in cutoff jeans and stained sweatshirts arguing. They stopped when they saw me. We stared at each other for a few seconds. Then I apologized, shut the door, and retraced my steps. The second time I got it right.

  The door to Hillary’s dressing room was slightly ajar. I pushed it open and walked in. The place was stifling. Windowless, it smelled of sweat, talcum powder, nail-polish remover, and smoke. I noticed a fan sitting unused over in the corner. Looking around, I got a quick impression of a sofa with ripped cushions shoved against the far wall, a chair piled high with clothes, a grime-stained rug with its pattern long since worn away, and urine-colored paint on the walls. Hillary was sitting in front of her dressing table. Her head was bent down. She was holding a nail file and considering the nails on her left hand.

  The door creaked when I closed it.

  “What the hell took you so long?” Hillary asked without looking up.

  “I’ve been asking myself the same question.”

  Hillary’s head shot up. She dropped the nail file and quickly shoved something lying on her dressing table underneath a crumpled-up towel. “What are you doing here?” she demanded, swiveling around to face me.

  “You invited me to hear you sing.” I found myself staring at Hillary’s shoulder blades. They protruded from her skin, as fragile as a wren’s wing. “I really enjoyed you out there. Have you recorded anything?”

  “A couple of CDs under a local label. They never went anywhere.” She cocked her head. Her hair fell over one side of her face. She pushed it back behind her ear. “So that’s why you’re here? To tell me how much you liked hearing me sing?”

  “Among other reasons.”

  She looked at me uncertainly, not sure of what was coming next, then slipped into her best Emily Post manner. “Well, thanks for coming. It was nice of you to tell me, and now that you have, I’d like you to go. I’m tired, and I need to rest before I go on again.”

  “This will just take a few minutes. It’s about Pat Humphrey.”

  Hillary stuck her jaw out. “Whatever I had to say about her, I’ve already said to the police.”

  “Say it to me.”

  Hillary stared at me for a moment. “Who sent you? Ryan? My mother?” She searched my face. “It was my mother, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “Well, screw her. I don’t have to talk to you.”

  “She’s worried about you.”

  Hillary snorted. “That would be a first.” She turned her back on me. I could see her reflection in the looking glass mounted on her dressing table. “You have to go.”

  “After we’ve talked.”

  Her hand moved toward the towel and back again. “No. Leave now.” Her voice had grown higher. I noticed her hands were trembling. “This is my dressing room. Do I have to call Security?”

  As I watched her, suddenly everything fell into place. Her extreme thinness. The way she was always wearing long-sleeved shirts and sweaters when everyone else was stripped down to tube tops and shorts. I cursed myself for not having seen it sooner, but then you usually only see what you’re looking for.

  “What are you doing?” Hillary demanded, turning toward me as I crossed the room. “I told you to leave.”

  “Show me what’s under that towel.” I pointed to the dressing table.

  “You’re crazy.” Hillary’s eyes widened.

  “Maybe. Maybe not.” I leaned over.

  Hillary grabbed my wrist as I reached for the towel. “How dare you?”

  I shrugged her off easily; her grip was as insubstantial as a bracelet of dandelion flowers, but she was on me again like a leech. “Get out of here,” she shrieked as I disentangled myself and threw her back in her chair.

  She jumped up and grabbed the nail file she’d been using as I raised the edge of the towel. A set of works—a syringe, a length of rubber tubing, the whole schmear—was sitting on a little lacquered tray.

  “Can’t get away from the Chinese motif, can you?” I told her as a starburst of pain went off.

  I looked down. I saw blood on my arm. Then I saw the red-stained nail file Hillary was holding. I wrenched it out of her hand, grasped both of her shoulders, and shook her.

  “Are you crazy?”

  “You have no right,” Hillary was screaming when the door banged open and someone said, “What the hell is going on here? I can hear you down the hall.”

  Hillary and I both turned at the same time. The guy I’d seen in the office was standing in the doorway. He appeared larger than he had when he was sitting down. A tribal tattoo ringed his neck.

  “Nothing, Johnny,” Hillary whined, taking her seat and surreptitiously lowering the edge of the towel. “Nothing is going on.”

  He glared at both of us. “There better not be. I don’t need that kind of shit in here. I’ve warned you before.” Then he looked me up and down. “Who the hell are you?”

  “An old friend.”

  His brow furrowed. “So if you’re an old friend, how come you’re fighting?”

  Hillary threw me a pleading look.

  “We were just arguing over a pocketbook.” I gave him my best smile. “It’s one of those women things.”

  It was an embarrassingly bad story, but Johnny must have decided I wasn’t worth bothering with because he grunted and turned his attention back to Hillary. “I don’t want any more crap from you.”

  “You won’t get any.”

  “I’m doing you a favor letting you be here at all.”

  “I know,” Hillary whispered, and she hung her head.

  Johnny looked from one to the other of us and back again. He jerked his chin at me. “I hear any more and you’re out and she”—he pointed to Hillary—“never sings here again. Got it? Got it?” he repeated when I didn’t answer immediately.

  “Like crystal,” I said.

  “So, how long have you been shooting up?” I asked Hillary when he left the room.

  “I’m not.”

  “And I raise roses for a living.” I took a tissue out of the box on the dresser and pressed it against the cut on my arm and watched the blood form a pretty design on the thin white paper. It took two more tissues before I stanched the bleeding.

  “It’s my friend’s stuff. Rea
lly,” she protested as I threw the bloodstained Kleenex into the trash can.

  I reached over and yanked her cardigan down over her shoulders. There were track marks on the insides of both her right and left arms. She flushed and pulled her sweater back up.

  “I repeat. How long have you been shooting up?”

  She threw me a sullen glance. “What do you care?”

  “I don’t, really. I’m not going to lecture you on the evils of drugs. Some of my best friends used to ... indulge.”

  “Big fuckin’ deal. If you’re going to go into one of these look-how-cool-I-am raps, forget it.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m not going to bore you.” I kicked the chair against the wall over, threw the clothing on it on the sofa, and sat down next to her. “These days, I thought most people smoked it. I guess you’re just an old-fashioned kind of girl.”

  “I guess I am.”

  “Either that or you’re suicidal.”

  “I’m not HIV positive, if that’s what you mean,” Hillary said.

  “But you will be if you keep this up.”

  She shrugged. “I’m careful. I don’t share needles.”

  “All it takes is one time.”

  “Maybe the pleasure is worth the risk. Have you ever thought of that?”

  “What I’m thinking is that you’re just some stone junkie, a Billie Holiday wanna-be romanticizing yourself as someone too sensitive to live in this world.”

  Hillary’s eyes blazed. “Fuck you,” she spat.

  I leaned over. “No. Fuck you. You know why I didn’t tell your boss?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “I didn’t tell him because I want you to answer my questions. And if you don’t, then I’ll march right down to his office and tell him you’re a user, and then, if he doesn’t do it, I’ll pick up the phone and tell the police.”

  Hillary gestured toward her dressing table. “First-time offender? I’ll get off with probation.”

  “You’re right, you will, but the arrest will be reported in the papers, and you’ll lose your teaching job. Schools don’t like to let addicts teach—especially elementary-school kids.”

  Hillary tried to meet my eyes but couldn’t. “I’m not an addict.”

  “Fine. User. Dabbler. Experimenter. Smackhead. Hype. Pick whatever word you want. Let’s not do stupid on top of everything else.”

  Hillary’s chin came up. Her gray eyes became lighter. She studied her nails. “It would almost be worth it to see the expression on my mother’s face when the neighbors start calling.”

  I took out a cigarette and lit it. “You guys put the D in dysfunctional.”

  “And I suppose your family is perfect.”

  “As perfect as apple pie,” I lied. “Do you want to answer my questions or not?”

  Hillary squared her shoulders. “Answer them. What other choice do I have?”

  “None.” I looked around for an ashtray and finally settled on an empty soda can. “Now, tell me again why you hired me to investigate Pat Humphrey.”

  Hillary spun her ring, a gold band with a black opal in it, around her finger. “I already told you, I hired you because I was afraid Pat Humphrey was ripping my mother off. And it wasn’t just me. Louis and Amy agreed.”

  “But you were the driving force.”

  “I was the one that suggested it. Yes.”

  “Because you didn’t want to see all your money go to waste.”

  Hillary glared at me. “There’s nothing wrong with me looking after my assets. Our assets,” she corrected herself. “Those of my sister and brother.”

  “Absolutely.” I took another puff of my cigarette and flicked the ash into the soda can as a trickle of sweat worked its way down between my breasts. A cool shower would be wonderful, but that was still a ways away. “Especially when a person has expensive habits to maintain. Incidentally, what’s the going rate for a hit of heroin these days?”

  Hillary clamped her lips together.

  “Okay. Here’s my next question. How would you feel about splitting your mother’s money four ways instead of three?”

  Hillary smoothed down the front of her sweater. “I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

  “I think you do. Your mother gave a substantial chunk of change to Pat Humphrey. I’m just wondering what you’d feel like if you found out she was legally entitled to more.”

  “I still don’t get it.”

  “According to your mother, Pat Humphrey was your half sister.”

  “I never heard anything so ridiculous,” Hillary scoffed, but her tone of voice and facial expression made it clear that contrary to what Rose had told me, I wasn’t telling Hillary anything she didn’t already know.

  “Your mother says she had a baby and gave it up for adoption.”

  “So?” Hillary leaned forward slightly. “That doesn’t mean that Pat Humphrey is that child.”

  “Evidently she showed her the birth certificate.”

  Hillary snorted. “Which is about as credible as my mother’s cat telling Pat Humphrey where she lived.”

  “You’re saying you believe it was forged?”

  “What do you think? Look, my mother is old. My mother is lonely. My mother had a stroke. She’s scared of dying alone. She’ll believe anything if she thinks you care about her.”

  “Which you don’t.”

  “We’re not a Hallmark-card kind of family.” Hillary started moving her ring up and down her finger again. “I used to. She was the one who didn’t care about me. She didn’t care about any of us. We’re all disappointments to her.”

  “How do you know?”

  “She’s told us. An infinite number of times. She wanted Louis to go to law school. He barely made it through high school, let alone graduating college. And then he goes and joins the postal service. And me! She wanted me to be the wife of... I don’t know . . . someone famous . . . someone rich. She wanted a daughter she could brag on at the country club, not a teacher, not someone who sings”—Hillary swept her hand around her—“in a place like this. And as for Amy . . .”

  “What about her?”

  Hillary wiped the corner of her eye with the back of her hand, smudging her makeup even more. “Well, you know what she looks like. You’ve seen my mother. Imagine what she’s had to say about that.”

  I didn’t have to imagine. I could hear Rose’s voice in my head telling me. “And then along comes Pat Humphrey . . .” I let my voice trail away.

  “So neat. So cool looking.” Hillary’s voice shook with indignation. “She played my mother. I don’t know how she did it, but she knew what my mother wanted to hear, and she gave it to her.” Hillary took a deep breath.

  “So then you didn’t shoot her?”

  Hillary glared at me. “I don’t like guns.”

  “That doesn’t mean you can’t use them.”

  “Anyone can use one, for God’s sake. It’s not terribly difficult.”

  “It sounds as if you know how.”

  “My father and mother used to go hunting in Africa before he got sick. Of course I know about guns. Everyone in my family does. We have them all over the place.”

  “Including Geoff,” I murmured, thinking of how he’d greeted me.

  “You’ll have to ask him about that.”

  “I will. So where were you when Pat Humphrey was shot?”

  “I’ve already been through this with the police. I was at my house.” Hillary smiled unpleasantly. “The neighbors saw me. Not that that means anything. I understand these days you can pay a couple of thousand to have someone kill someone else.”

  “Did you?”

  “No. But if I find out who the shooter is, I’ll give them a reward.”

  A phone rang, and Hillary burrowed into her bag to get it. “Where are you?” she said, turning away from me. “Well, come as soon as you can.”

  I got up, accidentally dislodging a magazine and sending it onto the floor.

  “No,” Hillary repli
ed to the person on the other end of the line. “I just knocked something over. There’s no one here.” Then she turned off the phone.

  “Your friend get held up?”

  “You have to go.”

  “Do I?”

  She plucked at her sleeve with long, skinny fingers. “Please.”

  I studied her. Hillary had crossed her arms over her chest and was kneading her shoulders with her hands. A phrase my grandmother used to use popped into my head. She used to say of someone that they looked as if they were held together with safety pins. The phrase seemed to fit Hillary.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m leaving.”

  “Are you going to tell my mother about me?”

  “That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

  Hillary swallowed and turned her head away. When I left, she was sitting with her back to the door, her face buried in her hands.

  I walked out of the bar, got into my car, and waited to see who was going to put in an appearance. It didn’t take long.

  Thirty minutes to be exact.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  I sat in my car, licking the last three squares of the old, melted chocolate bar I’d scrounged out of the glove compartment off its foil wrapper, watched the moon, and contemplated Hillary’s relationship with her mother. Talk about fucked-up. Hillary was willing to jump over the cliff as long as her mother was watching. But then, who was I to say anything? Mine wasn’t all that much better.

  What had the last fight we’d had been about, anyway? That fight in the hospital room crammed with orchids and roses. And me, dumb schmuck, standing there with my get-better bunch of carnations clutched in my hand. I crumpled the foil wrapper up into a tight little ball, tossed it out of the car window, and wiped my fingers off on the front page of yesterday’s newspaper.

  Had we fought about my hair being so messy or the dress I was wearing or why I was walking around on shoes with run-down heels? That’s what we usually argued about. Only, of course, it never was about that at all. It was about everything else. The man I was seeing and later married. The fact that I wasn’t living my life the way she wanted me to. I’d stormed out of the room, and that had been that. A week of not calling had turned into a month and then six and then a year. My mother had come up for Murphy’s funeral. And gone home the next day. Both of us stiffly polite. Both of us wanting to say things and not being able to.