She grabbed hold of a lamp from her bedroom and headed into the living room. Something jerked back her arm like she was being grabbed. A jolt of terror hit before she realized the thing jerking her back was just the power cord. She kneeled down and pulled the plug before advancing again, the twelve-dollar piece of pottery and pressed steel a pitiful little cudgel.
More knocking.
“Who the hell is it?” she said, gripping the lamp more tightly.
“It’s Justin,” came the voice. “Justin Chase.”
She lowered the lamp and leaned her back against the door. “I know your last name, Junior. What do you want?”
“There’s something I need to say.”
“Then say it.”
“Through the door?”
“Sure.”
“Let me in, Annie.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No. We both had our fun, and you made yourself perfectly clear that all you wanted after was to get the hell away and stay away. I understand, it’s a characteristic of the species malepenus stupidius. And you’re right, we can both do so much better. It turns out I have a date tonight with that guy who you let buy me a drink. We’re going ballroom dancing.”
“I didn’t know you liked ballroom dancing.”
“I don’t, but he’s an investment banker. Do you know how much he makes?”
“No.”
“Enough for me to spin like a top if that’s what he wants.”
“Come on, Annie. Open up. I don’t want to make a scene for the neighbors.”
“They’re used to it by now. I could set up bleachers, sell tickets.”
“Okay, you’re right. I’m an asshole.”
“A pretentious, self-righteous, narcissistic asshole.”
“Exactly.”
“Say it.”
“I’m a pretentious, self-righteous, narcissistic asshole,” he said. “Not to mention the king of the bullshitters. I pretended to see the world more clearly than everyone around me when all the time I was the world’s biggest dupe, a Zen faker who was twisting ancient kōans to convince himself of the virtue of taking the easy road out. Which makes me a fraud and a coward too. And I sing like a hoarse crow. Do you want to hear?”
She could feel herself weaken with every word, every confession. Even if it was only a new line of patter, it was having an effect, but then the best lines of patter always do.
“I wouldn’t say you were the king of the bullshitters,” she said through the wood as she pushed herself off the door, turned around, twisted open the bolt. “More like the idiot prince.”
She heard the knob turn, and slowly the door opened, and then there he was, so close it was almost shocking. He was big, bigger than she remembered, and strangely disheveled. It wasn’t like him to look so unkempt, as if he had been run over by a huge animal. She watched him stare at her for a moment, and then his gaze drifted slowly downward.
“It works better if you plug it in,” he said.
She followed his gaze and noticed the lamp in her hand. She had forgotten she still was holding it. The reality of it, the hard feel of the pottery, brought her out of some sort of trance and back into her situation.
“I was taking it with me to the bath,” she said. “It puts a sizzle into the enterprise. What do you want, Junior?”
He stepped through the door, closed it behind him and stared at her, stared so closely it was like he was peering through her flesh.
“Is there something on my face?” she said.
He stepped toward her and put his thumb on her lip, and she felt a spark jump between them. He rubbed her lip gently with his thumb and then, with the same hand, he caressed her cheek. She wanted to be immobile, as still as a statue, not even dignifying his unsubtle attempt at seduction with a jerking away, but her neck betrayed her and bent into the touch. His hand slid from her cheek into her hair and he gently held her in place as he leaned toward her and kissed her.
He kissed her and something went weak inside. Her eyelids fluttered, her bones wobbled. She sagged into his hard body and let go of everything.
Crash.
The shock of the sound pulled her away. She looked down. The lamp lay in shards about her. She stared at the ruined lamp for a long moment, trying to piece everything together, and then she looked up at him, tilting her head.
“So that’s what this visit is all about. A little breakup sex, huh, Junior? You’re all pathetic, the whole lot of you.”
“No, you’re wrong. Not about us being pathetic—we are, me especially—but about why I’m here.”
He stepped forward and kissed her again, hard, and she responded, again. She closed her eyes and felt his lips and his tongue, his teeth, his hand on her back. And she felt the sun on her face, the wind in her hair, the foamy surf roll over her feet, and then, above the roar of the ocean she heard his voice: This is from the gentleman over there.
She jerked her head back and pushed him away. He stared at her, looking drowned-rat miserable, some strange pleading in his eyes. She had seen that before, the pleading stare, and it only left her cold. Next thing he’d be on his knees begging for one more night in paradise. Men were such predictable shits.
“Go to hell,” she said, “and on your way close the door behind you.”
“My father’s probably getting out of jail,” he said, in a flat, soft voice.
“I know, Junior. I found that woman’s body, remember.”
“How do you feel about that?”
“What do I care, really? If he didn’t do it like you were saying, then he should be out. I know you were pretty happy about it.”
“I went to see him after that cop came to the house, and he told me he wants you back.”
She thought about it, the timing, the meaning, everything. She thought about it and ran it through her processor a couple of times. “Ahh, yes. Of course.”
“I wasn’t going to—”
“Step on your father’s toes? What are you, his wingman? Or are you his pimp? Either way, you make me sick, the both of you. I suppose you two put your heads together and decided the way it was going to be. Like two guys at a bar sizing up the opportunities. You take the brunette, and he gets me?”
“It’s not like that. It’s just—”
“What the hell are you doing here?”
He kissed her, but she didn’t respond; she wasn’t going to respond until she figured out what was going on. She stood there and let him kiss her while keeping her lips as immobile as marble. And beyond strange, it felt good, it felt great, way hotter than tonguing. She could stay there for hours and let him kiss her marble lips, her marble neck, her hard marble breast. It should have been her who pushed him away, but he was the one who stopped, who took hold of her biceps and held her at arm’s length, shaking her back into the moment. She was such a sucker.
“If he gets out, what would you do?” he said. “Do you want to be with him?”
“That ship sailed long ago.”
He kissed her again and the marble cracked.
“Are you sure?”
“You want me to show you?”
“How?”
“Stay.”
“I can’t.”
“Fuck you.”
“Not yet. Look, I learned something that has made me question everything.”
“Everything?”
He kissed her quickly, familiarly. She leaned into it and they kissed again, longer. What was she doing? She didn’t care. She just wanted him to kiss her and kiss her. And it wasn’t the vodka making her lose control like this, his kisses had burned the alcohol right out of her. She kissed him until he pushed her away.
“Maybe not everything,” he said. “But him. My father. I’m questioning what everything that happened really means. And what I’m going to have to do about it. I need to find out more and I think I have a way to do just that. I don’t want you to be part of it. But I want you to wait and let me learn what I need to learn and do what I
need to do. And then, whatever happens, I’ll come back for you.”
She felt woozy, drugged, and because of it she didn’t have any biting comment to throw in his face. All she could do was repeat his request.
“You want me to wait,” she said.
“Yes.”
“For how long.”
“I don’t know.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“That’s what I said, Junior.”
“Okay.”
“So get the hell out of here and do what you need to do.”
“Okay,” he said. He looked her up and down. “Were you really going dancing with that investment-banking asshole who was trying to pick you up with a goddamn Champagne Cocktail?”
“He was just being polite.”
“Like a piranha.”
“You brought it over. My gosh, Junior, I’ve never heard you so acidly judgmental before. It exposes a flaw in your character. I like it.”
“Are you still going out with him?”
“Do you want me to?”
“No.”
“Then I won’t.”
“Good.” He tossed her a lopsided smile that was entirely too damn charming, and then backed toward the door. “I can ballroom dance if that’s what you want.”
“I bet you can, Junior.”
“Is that what you want?”
“Please, no.”
“Thank God.” He turned to open the door and stopped with his hand on the knob and then turned back to her. “One question. Outside the Moss house you said something.”
“I said a lot of things.”
“I asked why you had come and you said something didn’t make sense to you. But you wouldn’t tell me what.”
“You were so jazzed about your father, I didn’t want to get you thinking.”
“Too late for that. What was it?”
“It was the letters that were written to your mom. They were very sweet, but there wasn’t any sex in them. And just in the way that Janet Moss talked, I don’t think she had much sex with her husband either. She even said it was never really right what they had between them. Whatever was going on between the three of them, it wasn’t about sex.”
“What was it?”
“I don’t know. I was going to see if I could get something out of her without that awful man around.”
“You were trying to help my dad?”
“I was trying to help you.”
“But if Austin Moss wasn’t screwing my mother, then why would Janet Moss hire anyone to kill her?”
“Good question,” said Annie.
He thought about that for a moment, looked at her, then came over and kissed her again.
After he left she cleaned up the mess of the broken lamp before going back into her bedroom. The suitcase was still there, half-full. Piece by piece, she took her clothes out of the suitcase, folded them neatly, and put them back into her bureau. At one moment she heard a peculiar sound and stopped to try to identify it.
It was a song, a stupid Beatles love song. And strangely enough, she was humming it.
58.
TEZÓN AÑEJO
Justin was setting up the bar at the beginning of his shift when Frank walked in.
The hour was more contemplative than exuberant; the couple drinking at the wood seemed to be there out of quiet celebration rather than frenetic need. It was Justin’s favorite time at work, the expectant stillness before the coming rush. You could feel it in the very air, the Pavlovian salivation as the minute hand rose, the thirst from a thousand office cubicles about to descend upon a hundred different bars, the concoctions about to be mixed, the eyes about to be gleefully glazed, the soul-crushing compromises of the day about to be frantically drowned. It was all coming, the whole wholly misnamed happy-hour thing, only not just yet. Just yet was the calm.
“What can I get you, Frank?” said Justin to his brother. “Wine again?”
“I think we’re beyond wine right now. Maker’s over ice.”
Justin checked his watch.
“Shut up, little brother. I have your money, now pour me a drink.”
Justin nodded his head some, like he was thinking about it, and then did what he was told. When he pushed the drink forward, Frank returned the gesture, pushing forward a thick white envelope. Justin slipped it behind the bar without looking at it.
Frank raised his glass. “To Dad,” he said before taking a slurp. “Yabba dabba doo.”
“Thanks for this,” said Justin.
“It wasn’t so easy grabbing hold of it all.” Frank swirled his glass a bit so that the liquor wobbled. “This is about as liquid as we get these days. But there were some escrow accounts that were just hanging around.”
“Escrow? You can’t touch escrow accounts, they don’t belong to you, they still belong to the customers.”
“Between you and me, Justin? No one’s looking.”
“Frank.”
“No one will know.”
Justin took the envelope from the shelf where he had slipped it and slapped it on the bar. “Put it back.”
“You said you needed it, right?”
“That’s what I said, but things have changed a bit.”
“You’re not buying drugs with it, are you?”
“No.”
“Too bad,” said Frank before draining his drink. “You can make a killing selling drugs. I should have been a pharmacist. You get to wear those nice blue shirts, and you can always give fifty-nine instead of sixty pills and bank the extra.”
Justin looked at the envelope for a moment, thought about what he had still to do. An instant later the envelope disappeared again beneath the bar.
“I’ll get it back to you,” said Justin.
“Sure you will,” said Frank.
“Sooner than you think. I thought I’d have to spend it, but I think now it’s just going to be a temporary decoy.”
“Either way,” said Frank, circling his finger around his now-empty glass.
Justin pulled the bottle and filled the glass. “Go easy on that.”
“Why would I want to do that?”
Just then Cody stepped in the door, hitched up his pants, looked around nervously before heading to the bar and hopping onto one of the stools. Justin slid over to him.
“You’re in early.”
“I got a game to watch and could use a little courage.”
“You won’t get it here.”
“You never know, it’s a pretty important game. If it turns out right, I’m off the hook. If it turns out wrong, I’m going to have to work out what I owe. Something over time, maybe paid with services of a discreet nature to be rendered on request in the future. Fortunately, I now have a card to play.”
“I didn’t know MasterCard made deals like that.”
“Which is why I’m cuing the courage.”
“What can I get you?”
“That thing you were making me the other day.”
“Sidecar.”
“Yeah, that’s the ticket.”
“Right away,” said Justin. He grabbed his tin, poured in the brandy and Cointreau, started in on the lemons. “You see Larry around? He wasn’t in yesterday.”
“He took a trip,” said Cody. “To Pittsburgh.”
“Good for him.”
“It won’t work out, it never works out. Life doesn’t let you have happy endings.”
“You never know,” said Justin, sliding a scoop of ice into the shaker. “Maybe your bet will come in.”
“Truth is, Justin, I expect to lose. I always do. And life seems eager to exceed my expectations.”
When Justin finished mixing the drink, he rimmed a glass with sugar, cracked open the shaker, and poured. He slipped an orange twist on the edge and slid it to Cody. “One Sidecar.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t leave until I talk to you,” said Justin.
“Sure thing.”
“I’ll be back in a sec.”
> He gave the couple another round—Vodka Martini for him, Cosmo for her—and then went back to his brother, who had finished his second already.
“What say one more?” said Frank.
“Did you drive here?”
“Just pour.”
Justin refilled the glass. “I’m visiting Dad tomorrow.”
“You and he are suddenly getting quite chummy.”
“I’ve only visited a few times.”
“Chummy, chummy, chummy.” He emptied half the glass. “Such chums you’ve become.”
“You actually sound jealous.”
“No, just curious. All the time growing up it was like we had picked teams, you and Mom versus me and Dad. And at the trial, it was exactly the same as you worked to railroad him into jail.”
“Railroad?”
“But now, suddenly, you’re like Dad’s new best friend.”
“Mom always loved you.”
“Fuck you. You don’t have to tell me that.”
“Not because you were her son and she had to,” said Justin. “It was more than that. But she was concerned that you were too close to Dad, that he was unduly influencing you. She always hoped you would end up teaching, like you once said you wanted to.”
“I was kid when I said that.”
“And she was sad when you ended up working for him.”
“What’s your point?”
“That maybe you don’t need him like you think you do.”
“He’s our father.”
“Yeah, but just the idea of him getting out is causing you to throw more and more of that crap down your throat.”
“I’ll have you know Maker’s Mark is not crap, it’s actually quite tasty.”
“And it’s not making Cindy so happy.”
“Neither do I, so Mark and I, we console each other.”
“Have you ever thought, Frank, it might not be the worst thing if it doesn’t work out like we think it might.”
“He’s getting out, Justin. He’s coming home. And you’re the one that did it. You’re the hero.”
“I’m no hero.”
Frank started laughing. He finished off his drink and slammed it on the bar. “I’m your brother,” he said. “You don’t have to tell me that.”
Justin watched Frank lumber out of the bar with that sad, too-careful step Justin had seen so often after first slipping behind the wood in Reno, and he suddenly envisioned how poorly the endgame would affect his brother. Justin had become so self-absorbed he had bumbled on this dangerous path without worrying how his bumbling impacted others. Typical. And whatever he had done so far would taste mild as club soda when compared with what was to come.
The Barkeep Page 31
