3 Death, Taxes, and Extra-Hold Hairspray

by Diane Kelly

  Josh hung up the phone. “What now?”

  “We attend the Sunday service,” Nick said. “And watch Fischer’s empire crumble.”

  * * *

  Josh drove Nick and me back to the parking lot at the office.

  After our coworker drove away, I looked up at Nick. “Nick, I…” Oh, God. This was going to be even harder than I thought. “I … need to … um … tell you something.”

  He stared down at me. “What is it?”

  I looked away. I couldn’t do this if I was looking into those whiskey-colored eyes. “Um … I decided … well…” I let my words trail off, hoping he’d pick up where I left off, fill in the blanks for me. Shit, I was being a wimp again.

  “You decided what?” Nick snapped.

  He knew.

  He knew exactly what I was trying to say. But he wasn’t going to make this easy on me.

  I looked down at my loafers. “I … uh…”

  “You ‘uh’ what?” He crouched down, looking up at me with those eyes. “You look me in the eye, Tara,” he demanded, “and you tell me!”

  Tears clouded my vision. The only good thing about them was that they obscured my view of Nick, of his face, his eyes. “I’m going to … to keep seeing Brett. I just think—”

  “I don’t give a rat’s ass what your reasons are.”

  He stood and, when I looked up at him, the tears rolled from my eyes, leaving my vision clear.

  “You’re making a mistake.” He took a step toward me.

  Instinctively, I took one back.

  “A big mistake.” Another step.

  I took another step, too, my backside connecting with the rear fender of my car. If he came at me again, there’d be no place for me to retreat to.

  He took a half step this time, not touching me but putting his body so close to mine that a sheet of paper would have a hard time fitting between us. I could feel his heat, smell his scent.

  It was torture for me. Pure torture.

  He knew that, too.

  He chuckled a mirthless chuckle. “You’re hot and bothered, Tara. I have that effect on you. Doesn’t that tell you something?”

  He stared down at me for a few moments and I stared right back. He said nothing. I said nothing right back. He’d challenged me, told me I was making a big mistake. That was equivalent to calling me stupid, which made me angry. The good thing was, I knew how to handle anger. It was love and romance and attraction that got me all discombobulated.

  Finally, he took a step backward. “Good-bye, Tara.”

  He put the white hat I’d bought him on his head, climbed into his truck, and drove off, taking my anger with him and leaving me, now a puddle of blubbering goo, all alone in the parking lot.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Closed Doors

  Nick’s door was closed when I arrived at the office Thursday. I kept mine closed as well. Best to avoid each other if we could.

  I felt miserable. I’d hurt Nick. That was the last thing I’d wanted to do. Hell, I hurt, too. My heart ached with a raw, edgy pain, as if I’d gone through a really bad breakup. Strange, since we hadn’t actually been involved. I supposed I’d been much more emotionally invested in Nick than I’d let myself think.

  With my heart in jagged shards in my chest, I couldn’t concentrate on my work. And why should I have to? Why the hell should I have to bust my ass figuring out how much goddamn money these cheating deadbeats owed to the fucking government? Why the hell didn’t we just shoot the assholes? Why, huh? Tell me why!

  I picked up a file and hurled it two-handed at my door. Thunk! Papers flew everywhere.

  Aaaah. That felt good.

  I was about to send another file after it when there was a knock at the door. “Come in if you dare!” I hollered. Sheez. I’d really lost it.

  The door opened. It was Josh. He stood in the doorway, looking at the file in my hand then down at the papers at his feet. “Is this a bad time?”

  I ignored his question, laid the file back on my desk, and took a deep breath to calm myself. “What’s up?”

  He stepped over the mess and handed me a printout. It was an e-mail response from Noah Fischer. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

  “False witness?” I asked. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Josh shrugged. “I have no idea.”

  As much as I wanted to avoid Nick, I knew we needed to discuss Fischer’s e-mail response with him.

  I stood, stepped over the puddle of paper I’d created, and walked across the hall, rapping twice on Nick’s door.

  “Come in,” he called.

  I opened the door to find him sitting in his chair, his laptop angled in front of him, three leather-bound ledger books open on his desk. He glanced up at me, then at Josh, then at the mess on the floor behind us. “What happened there?”

  “Something exploded,” I said.

  “What was it?” he asked.

  “Me.”

  He gave me a look that said, What are you doing, Tara? If you are this upset that you can’t be with me, then for goodness’ sake, be with me! Dump Brett and give me a shot. Come on. You know it’s what you really want. Why—

  He looked down at the paper Josh handed him.

  Okay, maybe I’d read too much into the look.

  “‘False witness’?” Nick said, looking back up now. “What does he mean, ‘false witness’?”

  “We were hoping you’d know,” I said.

  Nick shaded his eyes with his hand for a moment, thinking. “Is this his way of claiming that the person in the video and photos isn’t him?”

  “I don’t see how he can claim that,” I replied, “what with the watch and the bracelet and him saying ‘To God go the glory’ and all.” Surely he’d realize that everyone would recognize him by his catch phrase.

  Nick shook his head. “It’s a mystery to me. What say we meet at that burger place by the Ark Sunday morning and head over to the service together? Maybe that would give us a clue.”

  Last time we’d attended the Ark’s service Nick had picked me up at my town house. I suppose I couldn’t expect perks like that now that we were merely coworkers and not potential lovers.

  Josh and I agreed and headed out of his office.

  “Could you shut my door, please?” Nick called after me.

  I turned around and stood in his doorway for a moment, mentally willing him to meet my gaze. But he didn’t look up at me. His head was down, his finger running over a line in the ledger.

  Slowly, sadly, I closed his door.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Wigging Out

  “You want a prescription for an antidepressant?” Ajay asked as he used a pair of tweezers to remove the last stitch from my thigh.

  “Yes,” I replied, shifting on the exam table, the white paper crinkling under my butt. “The rooster attack left me with post-traumatic stress disorder. I need Prozac. Zoloft. Paxil. Any of them would be fine.”

  “I’m not a psychiatrist,” he said. “And this is a minor-emergency clinic. It would be unethical for me to prescribe one for you.”

  “How about a painkiller, then? Maybe oxycodone? Vicodin? Percocet?”

  “No.”

  “Can you put me in a medically induced coma?”

  “No.”

  “Party pooper.”

  He leaned back against the counter. “Is this about Nick?”

  I sat bolt upright. “You know about Nick?”

  “Yes,” he replied.

  “That’s the last time I’ll tell Christina anything.”

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I was rubbing medicated lotion on her feet when she told me so it’s covered by doctor-patient confidentiality.”

  Okay, so maybe asking for drugs was overkill. But the heartache I was suffering was unbearable. I thought it would ease after a day or two, but it had only grown worse. It wasn’t just in my heart anymore. It had spread throughout my entire body cavity, engulfing my kidneys,
my pancreas, and three quarters of my large intestine.

  I hopped off the table, using my elbows to hold the soft paper cover in place over my abdomen while I put my pants back on.

  “Christina and I are meeting for dinner,” he said. “Why don’t you join us?”

  “Thanks.” Eating out sounded much better than the bowl of Fruity Pebbles I had planned.

  I followed Ajay’s blue Viper to Rosa’s, a small mom-and-pop Mexican restaurant in a nearby strip center. I parked in front of the shop next door. It was one of those seasonal Halloween specialty stores that crop up a couple months before the holiday, hold a clearance sale the first week of November, then disappear until the following year. People milled about inside, unloading boxes, hanging costumes, and decorating the walls with fake spiderwebs.

  I met Ajay on the sidewalk in front of Rosa’s. We stepped inside, the bell that hung from the door handle jingling as the door swung shut behind us. Christina was already there, sitting at a booth, a basket of tortilla chips and a frozen margarita in front of her.

  We weaved our way around other diners to the booth.

  “Tara came to my office all sad and pathetic and whining about her broken heart,” Ajay told her when we arrived at the table. “I had to invite her.”

  I slid into the booth across from her. “Your boyfriend wouldn’t give me drugs, either.”

  She looked at me. “I work for the DEA, remember? I can get you all kinds of drugs.”

  “Really?”

  “No. I was being a smart-ass. And even if I could get you drugs you wouldn’t do them anyway.”

  She had me there.

  She slid her margarita across the table to me. “Here. Try the legal stuff.”

  I stuck the straw in my mouth and took a deep draw on her margarita. Mmm. Feeling a little better already.

  I stuffed myself silly with spinach enchiladas, rice, and beans but still felt empty inside. An order of sopapillas didn’t fill the void, either. I suppose that’s too much to ask of Mexican puffed pastries covered with sugar and honey. I felt as hollow and broken as a piñata after a birthday party.

  When we were done eating, we stepped back outside. Next door, a young woman was wrangling a mannequin into place on the sidewalk. The dummy wore a sexy French maid costume, complete with fishnet hose and a tickly feather duster.

  “Why don’t you try that costume on?” Ajay suggested to Christina, waggling his brows. “Then you can dust my knickknacks.”

  “Behave,” Christina admonished him. She turned to me. “Want to take a look?”

  “Why not?” It was over two months until Halloween, but I suppose it couldn’t hurt to take a look at the costumes. The good ones sold out quickly, especially in the smaller sizes.

  The three of us went inside. The shop was divided into thirds, with men’s costumes to the left, women’s to the right, and unisex costumes in the middle.

  We wandered through the men’s section first. Ajay picked up a caveman costume, complete with a brown plastic club. He held it in front of him. “What do you think? Is it me?”

  Christina crinkled her nose. “Nah.”

  “What about this?” He held up a Batman costume, the chest stuffed to look like muscles.

  She shook her head again.

  “This?” It was a doctor’s costume, including a white lab coat, an oversized toy stethoscope, and a brown pill bottle filled with pink, pill-shaped candy.

  “There you go.”

  The unisex section contained a wide assortment of costumes, ranging from a banana suit, to a clown, to a neon-green alien. We bypassed these selections and entered the women’s area.

  Hundreds of options presented themselves. Slutty witch. Slutty saloon girl. Slutty pirate wench. Slutty fairy. Slutty black cat. Slutty Indian squaw. Heck, they even had a slutty zombie. As if there’s anything sexy about rotting flesh. They had a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader costume, too, though it was no more slutty than the actual uniforms worn by the real squad.

  “Let’s try some on,” Christina said.

  I was in luck. The store had a good selection of small sizes. I went for the saloon girl, the pirate, and the fairy, while she opted for the cat, the squaw, and the cheerleader. Neither of us wanted to be a sexy zombie. Just the thought of zombies engaging in intercourse was disgusting. What if what went in never came back out?

  We made our way to the makeshift plywood dressing rooms in the back corner of the shop to try on our selections. When I had the saloon girl outfit on, I stepped outside to look at myself in the slightly warped full-length mirror. Not good. The fabric cups on the chest hung limp and empty.

  Ajay stepped up next to me. “It looked sexier on the hanger.”

  I punched him in the arm. Not because what he said was untrue, but because he’d said it out loud.

  He was right, though. It was hard to be sexy in anything with my 32As. Which made it all the more meaningful how much Nick wanted me. Any woman with large breasts could grab a man’s attention. But for a flat-chested woman to keep a man interested, there had to be more to it. Which got me thinking. Would I be yearning as much for Nick if he didn’t have the rock-hard pecs, six-pack abs, and quarter-bouncing ass?

  Yes. I would.

  His awesome body was merely the icing on the cake … a cake I longed to taste.

  I could be myself with Nick, completely, without feeling judged or embarrassed or ridiculous. I could be completely honest with him, too. He was an old soul who’d seen a lot, perhaps too much. I loved that he let me see his vulnerabilities, even if he didn’t want to acknowledge he had them. And, heck, it was fun kicking ass together on behalf of Uncle Sam.

  Had staying with Brett been a bad decision?

  Christina came out of the dressing room, dressed as a sex kitten.

  “Ooh, daddy like.” Ajay stepped toward her, wiggling his fingers. “Here, pussy, pussy.”

  “For the love of God,” I told Christina, “take him to the vet and get him neutered.”

  We went back into our dressing rooms, emerging a minute later in our next selections. Despite the low neckline and short skirt on the pirate wench costume, I failed to look like a “yo, ho, ho, and a bottle of rum.”

  Ajay took one look at Christina in the Pocahontas costume and groaned sensuously. “Me pay lots of wampum to make papoose with squaw.”

  She looked in the mirror, turning first one way, then the other. “I don’t know,” she said. “Does the fringe make my butt look big?”

  We tried on our final costumes. The pink and green fairy costume looked cute on me, and at least it wasn’t obvious that I was supposed to look sexy in it but had fallen short. Plus, I liked the sparkly wand. It made me feel powerful, as if I could simply swish it through the air and make everything right. If only.

  “Wow,” Ajay said when Christina emerged in the cheerleader costume. “I’d like to put my balls between your goalposts.”

  Where’s a penalty flag when you need one?

  As we made our way to the cash register, we wound through a display of assorted odds and ends. Colored makeup. Plastic vampire teeth. Glow-in-the-dark necklaces. Wigs.

  I stopped, Christina and Ajay slamming into my back.

  Oh, my God.

  I’d found it.

  The holy grail of wigs.

  Perched in front of me, on a black Styrofoam head, was a pinkish-orange beehive, complete with a yellow and black bumblebee tucked among the locks.

  I grabbed the head and held it in front of me. “This is it!” I cried. “Christina, look!”

  She stepped around me. “It’s perfect,” she agreed.

  Lu would be thrilled.

  Maybe the wig was a sign. Maybe things were starting to turn around.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Bullshit from the Pulpit

  Lu squealed with delight as she took the wig from me. “You found my hair!”

  “I promised I would,” I said. “Surely you didn’t doubt me.”

  The Lobo smiled, her l
ips quivering and tears forming in her eyes. “I can’t tell you what this means to me, Tara.”

  I was glad to have brought some brightness to Lu’s day. She looked like death warmed over. Her skin bore the same sickly shade as the zombie masks in the costume store and she had much more scalp than hair these days. She’d lost more weight, too. The belt on her robe wrapped twice around her now.

  She gave me a quick hug, stepped to the mirror in her hallway, and slid the wig on. She squealed again, clapping her hands in front of her like an excited child. “Look! It’s me!”

  When she reached for her can of hairspray, I backed away and pulled up the neckline of my shirt to cover my mouth and nose. She pushed the nozzle, thoroughly coating the wig from all directions. I had no doubt the spray would live up to its claims to “make big hair not move” and provide “much strong extra hold.”

  She took one last, happy look at herself in the mirror and turned to me. “I’m feeling great! Let’s go out for breakfast.”

  Half an hour later, Lu and I sat at a table at a nearby IHOP. She’d gone all out, dressing in a groovy purple minidress and her cork platform heels, putting on her orange lipstick, blue eye shadow, and false eyelashes. She’d ordered the Rooty Tooty Fresh ’N Fruity breakfast. I hoped she’d be able to keep it down. I’d opted for a Belgian waffle with blueberry goop on top.

  “Lord, it feels good to get out of that house,” Lu said between bites of pancake. “Those walls were closing in on me.”

  “I can imagine.” I took a sip of my orange juice.

  “Nick came by my house last night,” she said.

  I involuntarily froze for a moment, then took another sip of my drink, trying to appear casual. “He did?”

  “Poor guy,” she said. “He must be awfully lonely if he’s got nothing better to do than spend time with an old woman like me.” She scooped up a forkful of scrambled eggs. “He needs to find himself a woman. I told him so.”

  I chewed a bite of waffle, having a hard time swallowing. “What did he say to that?”