“My cousins are busy wrenching on their cars or making Jell-O salads or crocheting incredibly ugly afghans. You know, normal.”
He was so tall, even sitting, that the ceiling’s proximity made his hair all staticky, standing up so it stuck to the headliner.
I put a hand on his elbow. “What if it was Rotten Charlie?”
“R.C.?”
Dean’s right-up-the-road first cousin, so named to distinguish him from his father, Just Plain Charlie.
“If it was R.C. . . .” he said, reluctant. “Okay. I’d probably wait until I knew.”
“Of course you would,” I said. “You guys’d be doing bong hits in his parents’ shed and practicing New York Dolls riffs and figuring out how to sneak him into Mexico. . . .”
Dean closed his eyes and started rubbing his temples.
“And I, as your loyal wife,” I continued, sensing weakness, “I would totally respect that. I’d make goddamn sandwiches for the trip. Iced tea. I’d probably end up driving.”
“You probably would.”
He tried to stop himself from smiling at that image. Couldn’t do it.
“So you just need to lay off me for a minute,” I said, “while I figure this out.”
Dean glanced up at the ceiling for a second, resigned, then turned his head away from me and nodded, giving in.
It took a second before I realized that I hadn’t wanted him to, after all.
My stomach felt like one of those fruit-punch dispensers they used to have on Woolworth lunch counters—a flared aquarium down whose walls you could watch the bright icy liquid cascade endlessly, in sheets.
CHAPTER 15
I was cranking out the food piece for Ted the next morning—“Eating Your Way through the New York State Fair: A Greasehound’s Guide to the Midway.”
My writing was shit. I was too rattled about Sembles. Wondering who the hell Struwwelpeter was.
The name tugged at me. I’d heard it before. It gave off this little nagging blip of familiarity, but every time I tried to zero in on a context, the teasing spark of recognition darted to the periphery and winked out.
I kept typing.
You’re probably under the illusion that you go to the State Fair to win a Kewpie doll, dunk that stupid clown who makes fun of your shorts, scream your lungs out on the Cortina Bob, or eyeball Li’l Muffin, World’s Smallest Horse. But let’s face it: When you come home at the end of a long day on the midway, what you spent most of your shekels on was food—and lots of it.
Dreck. I needed more coffee. I stood up, about to grab my mug for a refill, but then just stood there with my hand on the back of my chair.
Struwwelpeter. The answer was so damn close, right on the tip of my brain. Somebody Kenny’d mentioned? But if I’d heard about the guy at the Crown, if he was a local, wouldn’t Dean have remembered, too?
I looked at the phone. He was working at the farm today. I could call, could run it by him again.
Just thinking of Dean’s voice made me realize how quickly he’d be gone—so soon I felt lonely already, and here I was stuck at work. Not like he had time to just kick back, but I wanted to be hanging out with him, even if all I got to do was sit there watching him weld trapezoids to each other.
Maybe I could run out there during lunch, bring him a sandwich. Ask him about the stupid name.
Who the hell was it? I shut my eyes, trying to think back over how things had unfolded with Sembles. There was no logic to it, the way he’d reacted. So much easier to admit he remembered the girls, and leave it at that.
If he’d done that, I would have figured he was a dead end, a source already milked of insight and possibility. Instead he thought I was checking up on him for someone else, making sure he still abided by whatever promises he’d been threatened into keeping. I wanted to believe that identifying Struwwelpeter, the source of that threat, would put Lapthorne in the clear. I wanted to believe I had the name of the killer.
I could ask Kenny or anyone at the paper if that name rang a bell. But what if Struwwelpeter wasn’t the killer? Sembles got freaked out when I mentioned the police. What if it was a cop trying to cover things up? What if Struwwelpeter was the other soldier? What if asking about it led to finding out that Lapthorne was involved after all? That he’d been right at the heart of everything . . .
Well, fuck it. Then he’d deserve no protection. He’d deserve whatever happened, the very worst outcome, and I’d help make sure he got nailed, with all the trimmings.
But what if he wasn’t involved?
Until I figured out who this Struwwelpeter was, figured out one way or the other whether that knowledge could drag the still-entirely-possibly-innocent Lapthorne into this mess for no reason, it didn’t change shit for me.
I could ask Dean. I could run the name by Kenny. I could try looking the guy up in the phone book. I didn’t want to ask Wilt, or anyone else here in the office. Not straight out. Not yet.
I shuffled over to the coffeemaker.
Wilt was watching brown elixir drip into a glass Bunn pot. He was wearing a tie three feet wide, peace signs all over it.
“Reaganomics trickles down with greater speed,” he said, by way of good morning. “How was the fair? You get to see Jerry Lee?”
“The fair was the fair. Jerry Lee was hugely lame up until the last possible moment, then he was great.”
Wilt nodded, eyes still locked on the carafe.
I hesitated, suddenly wanting to reveal my little nugget of dirt, to find out whether he’d ever heard the guy’s name.
Same stupid rock. Same stupid hard place.
But if I kept it looser? Didn’t mention Struwwelpeter specifically?
I twisted the mug in my hands. Cleared my throat.
Wilt looked up at me.
“So, um . . .” I said, tilting the mug so I could stare into its depths. “I did see this . . . you know . . . guy.”
I lifted my eyes.
He smiled, waiting for me to continue.
No sound but the drizzle of coffee.
I checked the bottom of my empty mug again, hoping to find some dregs of reassurance. “Someone you quoted in your Rose Girls article.”
“Yeah?”
“You remember that guy Archie Sembles, who does the silhouettes?”
“Sure,” said Wilt. “See him at parties every couple of years—gala- event-type deals. New Years. Always brings this, like, booth. Sets up in a corner. Freaky little dude.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Kind of nervous.”
Wilt nodded. “So, d’you talk to him?”
“While he was doing my silhouette. A little.”
“Ask him about the Rose Girls?”
“I did. Yeah.”
“Story’s got you going, huh?”
I shrugged. “My father-in-law was talking about it a while ago. It just got stuck in my head, you know? Morbid curiosity.”
“That’s the kind that haunts you. Keeps working you over.”
“Exactly,” I said.
“You should write about it. A follow-up piece—nineteen years and still no answers . . .”
“Wilt, I write about, like, collecting old hubcaps . . . 1,001 ways with chicken wings . . . hot drinks for winter . . .”
Wilt patted my head. “Don’t sell yourself short.”
“I just . . . I don’t really like interviewing people. Phone calls, beating the bushes . . . all that hard-nosed investigative stuff you’re good at. I get serious agita when I have to order a pizza. . . .”
“You’d pick it up, though, Maddie. A little practice, you’d be fine. You’d start to dig it.”
“That’s, like, ulcer material. Just talking about it with you. Remember when Ted made me write that piece on couples who’d met through the personals ads? It was supposed to be a nice sweet little fluffy thing for Valentine’s Day?”
He nodded.
“And then I kept getting phone calls from wackos for months afterwards—that guy who became a transvestite in p
rison and wanted me to write his life story, how he wore pink satin hot pants and toenail polish and curled his hair? I mean, he wanted me to call him Betty Lou over the phone and he started breathing all heavy. . . .”
The coffee was done. Wilt filled his cup. “You get used to it. Couple of times more, nothing would faze you.”
“Wilt, all those manila envelopes I got in the mail, filled with clippings from the National Enquirer and toilet paper coupons, for God’s sake? With little notes on scrap paper wondering did I ever notice that after playing tennis for an hour a woman’s breast on the racquet side gets bigger. . . .”
“This is different,” he said, pouring coffee into my mug.
I shook my head. Not different at all. My sorry-ass performance with Sembles last night proved it.
He laughed, put the carafe back on its warming plate and then tapped one long finger against his temple. “Trust an old hippie.”
“I’m way way way too wussy.”
“This whole thing’s got its teeth sunk in you good and deep, Madeline. I recognize the signs.”
“It’s not like that.” I gripped the mug tighter, so he wouldn’t see my hands shaking.
“It is like that. This kind of shit’s a virus, not a choice. The Rose Girls, they’ve got you all infected with their story. . . . They’re going to keep pushing at you until you go after it, egging you on, poking their heads into your thoughts whenever your guard is down. Only gets worse. Why else would you be questioning this fair guy, for chrissake?”
“Questioning who?” asked a small voice behind me. I jumped, squeaking.
I turned around. “Jesus, Simon. You almost gave me a heart attack.”
“You’re ready for this, Maddie,” said Wilt, “and I’m telling Ted to give you the assignment.”
“Really, Wilt,” I pleaded, “don’t.”
“What assignment?” asked Simon.
“The Rose Girls,” answered Wilt. “Redux.”
“Oh, I think that’s excellent,” said Simon, with a shy smile of encouragement. “It’s always good to push yourself, Madeline.”
Easy for him to say, I thought, he gets to hide behind a camera.
By the time I was finished with the fair piece, Wilt had run his inspiration by Ted, who gave me a great lizardy leer and told me he thought it was a great idea. Yeah, goddamn brilliant. I wanted to get home early, since Dean was leaving the next morning, but Ted called me into his office to hammer out the details.
“You’ve got a lot on your plate . . . those book reviews and the apple festival and your thing on the Adirondacks . . . so I’ll give you until Novemberish for this. I would have run it as an anniversary piece, but it’ll be good around Thanksgiving. People always want a little morbid pull on the heartstrings while they’re suffering through their own family get-togethers. Couple of dead chicks . . . just the ticket.”
Asshole.
“Wouldn’t you rather just have a nice piece on stuffing recipes?” I said, grasping. “A history of green bean casseroles with mushroom soup and canned fried onions on top? Nice tongue-in-cheek illustrated evolutionary sidebar . . . I mean, Ted, this is just not my line of country, you know?”
“Of course I know,” he said, rocking back in his chair and folding his arms behind his head, practically flicking his tongue in reptilian glee, “but what have you done for me lately?”
I went back to my desk. Could have puked all over it, frankly.
Why the hell had I mentioned Sembles to Wilt in the first place? Idiocy.
I dialed the number for the workshop out at the farm. There was still time to get out there with a sandwich for Dean, even if I couldn’t imagine eating anything myself.
The phone rang and rang and rang.
As I cradled the receiver in defeat, I started obsessing again about Struwwelpeter.
Inspiration. Eureka. Yee-ha.
I pulled open the bottom drawer of my desk and took out the phone book.
For all I knew he’d be listed, and I could just call up and say “Listen, you annoying nemesis bastard, I want to know what the hell you did to freak out the silhouette guy and then I want you to tell me my cousin had nothing to do with the dead girls.”
And of course then he would and my conscience would be clear and I could just write about potholders instead of murders, because that’s exactly how perfect my life always turns out, since I am the silver-lining poster girl champion. Not.
I flopped the directory open and snapped through pages . . . Sargent, Siemanski, Smith, Smith, Smith . . . but on the Stokely-to-Suma page I found exactly nothing. Not a single murderer-to-solve-all-my-problems between between Strunk, Larry D., and Stryker, Patrick, DDS.
And it was only then that I realized how crazy it was that I knew how to spell “Struwwelpeter” in the goddamn first place.
That’s why its initial consonant’s mushy Teutonic sibilance didn’t prompt me to look first under S-H, why I knew perfectly well there were two w’s, and that there was no point in backtracking to “Streww . . .” or any other variation.
Because I’d seen it, not heard it. Only I couldn’t remember where.
Photogenic voodoo, biting me in the ass.
Dean was exhausted that night. I wanted to tell him about the Rose Girl assignment, but over dinner he started describing how he’d done some work down at the Speer-O-Matic shop and the union guys tried to light him on fire.
He’d been lying underneath a tank car, welding, and someone poured gasoline into one of the steel tracks crisscrossing the concrete floor, so that it flowed across the room and down near his head. A spark from the welder ignited the stuff, but he rolled away fast and grabbed a fire extinguisher.
My hands started shaking. “Did you see anyone?”
“I think I heard a truck pulling out of the lot, but after I put the fire out there was no one there . . . just wind blowing through the yard. Scary as shit.”
“Is it worth it? I mean, last time you were there they’d spray-painted ‘scab’ all over everything, and now they’re starting in with the flammable liquids. Are you sure you want to do this?”
“It’s an open shop, says so right there in the contract. This isn’t work they can do, and they’re trying to screw me out of a living. The union can suck my dick.”
I wanted to weigh in with Cesar Chavez, the Haymarket riots, to point out that unions benefited us all, raised the bar for everyone. But I knew part of my vehemence was family guilt for screwing over “the working man” in the abstract, while here was an actual and specific working man who had an opinion of his own, thank you very much.
Plus, we’d had the same argument like twenty times already over the years, starting with a heated dinner conversation on our third date.
So I just carried the dishes to the sink, not even turning on the kitchen light. And then I started to cry because what the hell was I pissed at him for, when he could have been hurt or even died—the stupid heartrendingly dear scab fascist shithead.
The worst possible thing. Even the idea he was in danger, at risk of any kind of harm . . . and I wondered if that same feeling was making him stonewall me, talk me out of pursuing this whole deal with Lapthorne. So I started crying harder, feeling guilty but maybe also deeply cherished, getting my face all snotty and everything.
Dean came into the kitchen and stood behind me, in the dark. Wrapped his arms around my shoulders and pressed his chin down on the top of my head.
“If anything ever happened to you,” I said, my voice all weird and gummy, “anything made you get hurt . . . I would just roll up and die.”
“Anything? Like a hangnail anything?”
“If it was a hangnail anything, I’d punch you really, really hard first. Before the whole rolling-up-and-dying part.”
“You could just punch me, skip the rest of it. I’d be cool with that.”
“Yeah?”
I thought he’d keep going, say something nice back, but instead he went, “Ewwww . . .”
�
�‘Ewww’? You’re kind of sucking the romance out of the moment, here.”
“Well, you’re kind of dripping snot on my arm.”
“Oh,” I said. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay. Probably some kind of Eskimo foreplay, if you think about it.”
“Only among extremely depressed Eskimos.”
“Best kind,” he said.
“Sure,” I said. “Famous for having constant rad sex.”
“Exactly.”
“So, look, Dean—promise you won’t die, okay? Don’t let anyone light you on fire. Stuff like that.”
“You promise first.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Okay,” he said, digging his chin a little harder into the top of my head. “Then there’s something I should tell you. I wasn’t sure, but since you’ve promised not to die it’s probably safe.”
“Is this about Eskimos?”
“No.”
“About what, then?”
“Struwwelpeter.”
“You found out who it is?”
“I knew.”
“Last night?”
“Pretty much.”
“You suck,” I said.
“I was worried. I am worried. This whole deal . . . I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“Okay, I’m sorry. You suck slightly less.”
“Thank you.”
“But you still have to tell me who it is.”
He sighed. “It’s not exactly a person.”
“Shit,” I said. “Shit shit shit shit.”
“It’s a book.”
A book someone had given us in a box of discards when I was a kid.
“That creepy German thing with all the poems about what happens to children who misbehave,” I said.
“Yes.”
“I am so fucking stupid. The thumbs . . .”
Dean pressed his chin down again. Tightened his arms around me.
“In one of the poems,” I said, “this kid’s mother tells him not to suck his thumbs. He starts up as soon as she leaves, so a crazy tailor with giant scissors runs in and cuts them both off.”
A Field of Darkness Page 11
