Bad People (4 page)

He heard the TV blaring too; it’s a wonder no one had complained. But then again the neighbors all watched TV all the time too; to them it sounded normal. They probably couldn’t get to sleep without it. Like Ardiss.

He went in. She
was
asleep, boots up on the futon like he hated, and mouth open on the pillow where a puddle of drool was collecting.

The TV had some infomercial on. Luke unplugged it and began wrapping up the power cord. He allowed her to watch it when he wasn’t home, it was her TV, but his rule was that, the rest of the time, it stayed in the closet. Ardiss woke.

She rubbed her face and smiled at him, then threw her arms across her eyes to hide from the light.

“Bill Gates doesn’t have a TV,” said Luke. “Not one, in his whole house.”

“Who got voted off?” she asked.

“What?”

“Did you see who got voted off tonight? The show.”

“The show!” He slammed the closet shut.

She sat up, opened her eyes again. “You’re all wet. You’ve got paint or something on your sideburn.”

“It’s been thundering.” How could she sleep through that?

He pulled off his shirt. “Sarah Jessica Parker, is a television actress, but she was raised in a home where television was banned.”

“How do you know who Sarah Jessica Parker is if you don’t watch TV?”

“The point is she’s a success in her chosen field, and she doesn’t fritter her time away.” He took off his shoes and pants, and gathered all the wet things together and took them into the bathroom. He clean the paint out of his sideburn.

“No television at all,” she called after him, in her patented mixture of sarcasm and credulousness.

“They were allowed to watch PBS and educational stuff.” Pulling his red terry robe on, he returned to the bedside.

“How do you
know
that?”

“I know things. Please don’t put your boots on the bed.”

She sat up grumpily and pounded each foot to the floor. She ripped through her laces, then kicked the boots off. When they didn’t fall hard enough to satisfy her, she picked them each up again, and threw them harder to the floor.

She pulled a sheet over herself and flopped down.

“That’s it? That’s all you have to say to me? ‘You’ve got paint on you, now tell me who won my game show.’”

“Nobody
won
, somebody got voted off. That’s the terminology. Guess you didn’t know
that
!”

He sat down on the bed and she kicked him and pushed her lower lip out. That was all he would take and he yanked the sheet away. She sat up with a start.

“The thing about you, Ardiss, is that you are ordinary. Underneath the ridiculous tattoos and clown hair, and the fake name, you are a nothing.” If he were a less in control person he would have had to slap her know. Somebody should, and someday somebody would, but he didn’t need to. He stared at her.

She looked down and covered her arms.

“You have no self-esteem,
Tiffany
,” he added. He used her real name sometimes when he hated her.

She turned her back to him, her shoulders shook as she sobbed.

“Ardiss. Ardiss!”

She pretended to ignore him. He touched her but she jerked away again.

She lay back down and he let her go on bawling for a bit, then climbed alongside her.

After a moment she let him put his hand on her shoulder.

“Now whose shoes are on the bed?” she asked him snidely.

He chuckled.

“Your hair’s wet,” she told him. “You’re messing up the sheets.”

“They’re my sheets.”

“Oh fine, I’ll sleep in the closet then. With the fucking TV.”

“I’ll look up your program on the web, see who got knocked off.”

“Voted off. Can’t use the internet, phone and DSL is shut off.”

“Since when?”

She shrugged. “Since I checked.”

“I’ll go down there in the morning.” Right after receiving the balance of payment from Barry.

“A thing came for cable.”

“What do we need with more TV?”

She reached under the bed, retrieved a large post card and dropped it on him. “Cable
internet access
. The first three months are free. Free if you get premium cable too, that is, but you can cancel anytime.”

He looked at the flyer. “What’s
Discovery
? What’s
Starz
?”

“Just channels. You could
watch
baseball instead of just hearing it on the radio.”

“I’m done with baseball. But, maybe we could do this.” He stroked her neck and traced a circle around the little symbol at the nape. A cross with a loop above the horizontal line. “What’s this called again?”

She said something. It sounded like
Annansate cross
.

“What kind?”

So she over enunciated. “
An
AN-sate
cross
.”

“That’s right.”

“Thought you hated tattoos, anyway.”

“I never said that.”

“You said something.”

“Tell me when this was.”

She turned around and looked at him, her eyes still wet. “Always. Fucker.”

He’d had a bad night, and he hadn’t been as even-tempered with Ardiss as he could have been, but that was over now. Tomorrow he’d have five thousand dollars again. The first five he hadn’t managed very well, it had all gone in four months. This time he’d do better. He’d pay off the phone, give Ardiss fifty for using the car. Pay the rent early. Those were valid business expenses. Cable TV and internet would be their treat. The rest was capitol.

Luke closed his eyes.

In a few moments Ardiss asked him if he was asleep.

“Not yet. But I’m dreaming.”

Chapter 4: Connie, Barry

Many months earlier, Connie was in Barry’s parents’ house with him. The day he found the cash. She had come to help him pack up some of the things in his parents’ home.

Barry’s mother had followed his father into death at an interval of five months. Barry had bore his father’s passing easier than his mother’s—as an end to long suffering. They had never been close to understanding one another. But his mother’s death stunned him.

Now Barry was going to move into their house, and had sold his own townhouse. Connie was packing decorative plates, taking them carefully out of the dining room display cabinets. She asked Barry how old his Mom had been.

“Just seventy. Alzheimer’s killed her too,” he said, sounding like he was blaming his father, not his father’s disease, for her death.

“She was a great one, your mom. A great lady.”

“She always liked you.”

“I liked her too. Both of them.”

“Forty-nine years together, you know. “

“You came along late.”

“I suppose I was an accident,” he joked. “They didn’t need anyone but each other to be happy.”

“A real love story.” Connie smiled slightly and wiped her brow.

Barry expelled an empty laugh.

They had run out of platitudes.

Connie had tied a bandana over her hair. “You look like one of those sexy housewives in a Pledge commercial from the seventies,” Barry said, from nowhere.

“Oh, great compliment.”

“We still expecting Stephen-David?”

“Change of plans. He’s helping his Dad today. He got a traffic ticket for running a stop sign. We took his keys for a week.”

“Well, one ticket…”

“This is his
second
. He hasn’t had his license all that long.”

“Kids will be kids.”

She didn’t respond.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to butt in.”

“Oh no. You’re like family. “

“
Like
family?” he joked. “Only a life-long friend and years-long business partner.”

“You know what I mean.”

“It’s always been the three of us. Absolutely,” she said. She folded down the top of the last box, and sighed. “I think we’re done in here.”

“You waited too—to have Stephen-David,” he ventured. “Was that because of the business? If you don’t mind my asking.”

“No. I don’t mind. We can start on the upstairs now.”

“I’ve been dreading that. What does one do with old people’s clothes.”

She frowned and shrugged. “Donate them maybe?”

“But who would wear deceased people’s clothes?”

“Well they didn’t pass away in
all
of them, Barry.”

“I realize that, but it feels like they should be burned or something. Seems grim to take money for all this. Or a write-off.”

“They are just
things
, Barry.”

“I don’t
have
to take a write-off.”

“Of course not.”

“That seems so empty a gesture though. Forgoing a tax benefit.”

She took pity on him, put a hand on each of his shoulders and squeezed once. “Don’t work yourself up, Barry. Let Robb and me handle the rest of these details. We want to help.”

“I know,” his voice sounded thick.

“Barry,” she said. She slid her arms around his shoulders and pulled him to her like a child. He put his arms around her too and squeezed. He drew in breath and she suddenly felt the beginning of a knot in her stomach.

Barry was smelling her neck. She patted his back formally and tried to break away. His hand went to her bandana and pulled it off, letting it fall to the floor. He opened his mouth.

Connie wrenched back and put her hand atop her head all in one motion. She looked at him, her cheeks burning. She forced herself to smile pleasantly, then squatted to pick up the bandana. “My gosh! How did that happen?” Pretending it had fallen off by accident.

Barry looked disgusted, but not with her. “I’ll be upstairs,” he said.

“Barry…?”

“Thanks for your help today, Connie.”

He went upstairs and she didn’t follow. She stood in the foyer a few moments to see if he would come back down. Then she called up, because she couldn’t stand leaving it like this.

“Barry. We’re all emotional.” Though she didn’t even know herself who she meant by
all
. “It’s an emotional time. It’s…” She was making it worse.

She went out on the porch and sat in the sun. She used to play jacks on this porch. Through random bad luck, there had been no girls her age in the neighborhood, and Barry didn’t mind playing jacks with her, as long as no other boys were around to see. What a long time ago. And a few years after that, when they were twelve, they were up in his room, flipping through his stacks of contraband
Penthouse
s and
Playboy
s and ended up playing doctor a few times. All that must be coming back for him. She was never shy around him, it was like being along with another girl almost. Easy, funny, yet with no spark or thrill, no
danger
at all. That had been the good part of her childhood. Later came the other part, Portland, and then Hollywood Boulevard at fifteen. She returned home and by seventeen everything had been okay again.

She had to go back inside and talk to Barry, even though she preferred not thinking about that part of him, preferred to think of him as her surrogate best girlfriend at nine-years-old, but she couldn’t leave things this way. They had to work together, and if she didn’t deal with it—or if Robb found out—then she’d have
two
wounded males to contend with.

Connie went inside and called up to Barry from the base of the staircase. He didn’t answer. She called again.

“Come on up,” she heard him say finally. His voice was distant and muted. She climbed the stairs.

She went down the hall to his old bedroom. The hall was dark but his bedroom door was cracked. She pushed her way in. Barry was sitting on the bed, his back to her.

“Remember the last time we were up here?” he said.