Death in a Funhouse Mirror (15 page)

My mother worries about me being alone in the office late at night, but I like it. The phone doesn't ring, no one stops in to ask questions. I can do as much work in three or four hours at night as I can in a whole day, sometimes more. I like my office. Early on, I realized that I was going to be spending a lot of time there and figured it was worth spending some money to make it comfortable. I have a little portable CD player and desktop speakers, with good old friends like Jackson Browne and Linda Ronstadt to sing to me, or Tom Petty to get the blood humming, or Vivaldi and Albinoni, if I'm feeling moody, and the Gordon Bok disc from Andre, which reminds me of some of our good times. I have a wonderful oil painting of a rocky beach in Maine on the wall, and a wacky and wonderful Art Deco lamp. My desk chair is extremely comfortable. Suzanne refuses to let me get a couch. She says if I had one, I'd never go home. She worries about me sometimes, which is silly, since she's a workaholic too.

By 10:30, I was ready to hit the road. I wrote a quick memo to Suzanne, feeling a creepy twinge as I remembered Valeria accessing our files and leaving her little “bombs” among our messages, and was grateful for Karla Kaplan and my dad's computer forensics expert. After I sent the message, I sat staring at the screen, thinking about Valeria. Suzanne and I hadn't discussed it, but it seemed like a good idea to talk to some of her former employers. Not by phone, it would be too easy for them to be unavailable if they were reluctant to talk about her. Better to simply drop in and surprise them. I got her resume and reference letters out of her personnel file and coaxed duplicates out of the copying machine. The machine, like a one-man dog, worked properly only for Sarah. It hated the rest of us and showed it in a multitude of infuriating and nefarious ways.

I stuffed the copies in my briefcase and left, dropping a small stack of work on Sarah's desk on the way out. I didn't want her to feel underutilized.

The ride home was pleasant. I was tired enough to avoid obsessing about work and the workout had left me feeling good. There was time enough to worry about tomorrow's problems tomorrow. Sometimes I wonder if I lack a thirst for living. I don't feel a need to see a lot of movies, or go bowling, or drink with my friends, or even to veg out in front of the television. Mostly I go to work, I go to meetings, I come home, do some more work, and go to bed. I like my work, that's why I do it. I tried some other things, right after college. Social work, because I wanted to work with people, but it was too depressing, and working as a reporter because I like to write, but that was even more depressing. Now that I'm living at the ocean, I've added walking on the beach.

And there are my weekends with Andre. Or there were. I wished I felt more optimistic about that. I knew he'd been badly hurt by his failed marriage even if he never talked about it. I wasn't the only one with emotional baggage that tended to pop open at the thought of weddings. I just wished we could talk. Nothing infuriates me more than stubborn silence. But tonight I was feeling good. I was not letting him get to me.

I drove through the soft spring darkness with the music turned up loud. Road music. Springsteen, Bob Seeger, Cyndi Lauper. Blondie. Heart. Guys and gals to rock me home.

My answering machine squatted mute and unfriendly on the counter, its unblinking red eye glowing in the darkness. I marched past it. Who cared if Andre hadn't called. I had more important things to think about, like sorting the mail and hanging up my clothes before they got irretrievably wrinkled. My mother the compulsive neatnik had trained me well. When I die, they will find my clothes on hangers and my papers sorted into piles. And I won't be around to be embarrassed by the amazing variety of molds in my refrigerator or the sticky bourbon glasses on the coffee table or the pile of shoes under my chair.

I threw my balled-up workout clothes into the hamper and put my suit on a hanger. It was only as I closed the closet door that I realized I hadn't seen my pin on the jacket. I pulled the door open and checked. Nothing on the lapel. I searched through the bag, and it wasn't there, either. There were so many places it might be. It wasn't that it was valuable. It was just a simple silver pin. But it had come from David. A finely etched woman's face with fine features and a cloud of curly hair. He said he'd bought it because it reminded him of me. When I wore it, it brought me luck and this was no time to lose my luck. I kicked my shoes—my expensive Italian shoes—into the closet, mangling my toe in the process, and hobbled into the bathroom to find a Band-Aid and brush my teeth.

The woman in the mirror looked the same as always. A pale, heart-shaped face with straight dark brows, wide cheekbones, too much mouth and a determined chin. She didn't look worried or unlucky, just solemn. "A lot you know," I told the mirror. "Show a little emotion." The face tried to smile, but I could see her heart wasn't in it. "Oh, forget it," I muttered, and stomped off to bed.

I was tired but sleep was a tease, lingering just beyond my grasp, too close to let me get up and read, too far away to seize. I curled up, hugging my pillow tightly, and tried to clear my mind. I'd just managed to crawl to the edge of sleep and slide over when the phone rang. I fumbled for it in the darkness and pulled the receiver to my ear. "Hello?"

"Thea? I'm sorry. Were you asleep?"

Andre. "Yes. Just."

"I'm sorry," he said again. "I just didn't want to leave you hanging. About the weekend." I should have hung up right then. I knew from his tone what he was going to say. I could even see his face, hard and angry, the way it got when he had to say something he didn't want to. "I'm not coming to the wedding. I can't. I'm sorry I left in such a hurry on Sunday. I guess I should have stayed and talked about things."

I wanted to tell him to stop, that I wanted him to save that deep, resonant voice for words of love, or for trivial, time-passing things, but part of our contract is that we're honest with each other. I wasn't sure how much honesty I could handle right now. "Andre..." I began.

"Please, Thea, let me get this out. It isn't easy, you know. I don't want to hurt you. I don't want to disappoint you. If I could come and just walk through it, I would. I tried to imagine doing that, after you said it was no big deal, just something that a polite grown-up ought to be able to do. And maybe you're right. Maybe it is, in which case I guess I'm not a polite grown-up." He paused and this time I didn't interrupt. You can't value a person for their honesty and then refuse to let them be honest. "I guess that if I were a true romantic I'd show up and be there for you no matter how much it bothered me, since I know that you'll be sad going by yourself. But we both know that what you'll be sad about is not being there with David, not being married to David. If I'm there, it will be easier for you not to think about that."

"But if you're there, I wouldn't be thinking about David."

"Maybe not," he said, "but I think you would. Listen, I'm not trying to be melodramatic, but it took me hours to get up the courage to make this call. I have a whole prepared speech to deliver."

"I'm listening."

"It's not that I think we should be married or anything. I'm no more ready for that step than you are," he said. "All I know is that I want... no, that I need... something more than this casual, good-times-when-our-schedules-permit thing we have now." He sighed. "I wish I were there, so I could see you. I thought this would be easier by phone. I wasn't brave enough to tell you in person that I wouldn't come to Suzanne's wedding. I was afraid I'd back down. But now I wish I were there. Damn. This is hard. I'm usually the one trying to get someone else to talk. I really said it all on Saturday. I need you around, to come home to. To anticipate. To offset the bad stuff. I need more of you in my life. I know it sounds childish, but if I can't have more, I don't want any. I'm not the type who is satisfied with just a bite of the cake. I want the whole piece." The perfect analogy, given how he felt about cake.

"But what is it that you want? Are you saying we should live together? Or spend all our weekends together, or what?"

"I know. I know." He sighed again. "I shouldn't get into it if I don't have the answers. If I don't have a plan, right? But I don't have a plan. I just can't go on like this. It's not good enough."

"It's been awfully good for me." I really didn't know how to respond. This wasn't a conversation to have over the phone. Or when I wasn't awake. He didn't know what he wanted, and I'd been content enough with what we had not to bother to analyze where it might be going. As he talked, I was waking up fast. The relaxed state I'd finally achieved was gone, anxiety creeping through me like an internal fog bank. "I don't know what to say, Andre. I guess I don't know what you're saying. Is this an ultimatum? More or nothing? Are you trying to tell me we shouldn't see each other anymore?" There was silence on his end, but in the background I could hear some sort of commotion. "Where are you? At work?"

"Where else?"

"So even if I was there, sitting in some apartment waiting for you to come home, I'd still be alone."

"You'd be closer. Besides, you haven't been sitting at home. I called three times, earlier, and you weren't there."

"I'm not a pet, Andre, sitting at home, waiting for her master's return. I was at work just like you."

"Goddamnit, Thea, I know that! You aren't going to make this easy for me, are you?"

I thought of that day last fall when he'd told me, brutally and explicitly, how Carrie had died. I'd hated him then, raging out of his office physically sick and emotionally devastated, only to have him show up on my doorstep with a bag of groceries. Ignoring my hostility, he'd cooked me dinner, overcoming my dislike and resistance with his surprising candor and kindness. Since then he'd seen me at my worst, and I'd seen him through some pretty bad times, too. We had a lot of history, and even when I didn't like him, I loved him. This relationship wasn't something to be discarded like worn-out socks.

"Honestly, I'm not trying to be difficult, Andre, you know that. I just don't know what to say. Or what to do. Or even what we could do. We both have our jobs. You have to be in Maine, and I have to be here."

"You could get another one."

"So could you, probably more easily than I could, but that's not what either one of us wants to do, is it?"

The commotion behind him got louder. "Hang on a minute," he said, and I could hear the buzz of low voices. When he came back on, it was to blurt out an anguished, "I've got to go. I'll call you."

"I've heard that one before."

"Thea..."

"I'm sorry. I know you have to go. I'll be here. Call me. Anytime. Day or night."

"As soon as I can." He was gone in a click. Inert, I sat clutching the phone as the silence became a buzz, and then the buzz became an officious recording informing me that if I wanted to make a call I should hang up and dial the number. God how I hated those smug prerecorded voices. They reminded me of the worst kind of elementary school teachers, the kind that treated students like idiots. Maybe the phone company knew the truth and the majority of people really were idiots, but I hated being patronized by a recording. I dropped the phone forcefully back into its cradle and went to find the bourbon bottle.

 

 

 

Chapter 9

 

My friend Jack Daniels and I were sitting out on my deck, listening to the sound of the waves. Jack was wearing a smart black label, tight fitting, simple and smooth. I was wearing a black velour robe, also tight fitting, simple and smooth. Overhead, the sky had cleared and the stars were winking at me knowingly. Jack was trying to persuade me to let him take his hat off so we could get to know each other better. I knew what Jack wanted. What all the guys want. To get inside me and make me feel good. But Jack doesn't know me as well as I know him. In the morning Jack would have his hat back on and would be sitting around contentedly awaiting his next encounter, maybe a little drained, but still full of heat and vigor. I'd have a headache, bad breath, a full schedule, and the unpleasant awareness that Jack was another thing I had to deal with.

Sometimes Jack could be a good friend, but in a crisis he usually did the wrong thing, or provided the wrong insights, and left me worse off than if I'd never gotten together with him. Still, his approach was so smooth, his warmth so inviting, I had to struggle to resist. Finally my sensible side won out over the weak, sensuous side of my nature. I grabbed Jack by the neck, dragged him inside, and shut him up in the closet. I got a bottle of seltzer and poured it over the disappointed ice cubes. They like Jack as much as I do.

Eventually the steady sound of the waves, combined with satisfaction from my victory over Jack, lulled me into a more placid state. I lay back in the lounge chair, sipped my seltzer, and looked up at the stars, trying to clear my mind. I'd managed to put Andre and work out of my mind, but I wasn't having the same success with Eve. She'd always had that effect on me. I thought back on our long friendship. When she wanted something from me, a conversation, help in sorting out a problem, or even to borrow a favorite piece of jewelry, all she'd had to do was lurk there on the edge of my consciousness until I gave up and dealt with her. Eve suffered from the only child's fallacy of assuming she was the center of the universe. A great friend and a good roommate, but also person who wouldn't be ignored. Sly as a weasel while appearing perfectly innocent. She wasn't even here tonight and I still felt her bright eyes watching me and the pressure of her expectations. Trying to get her out of my head was like sweeping down a big cobweb and then trying to get rid of it. The little sticky bits cling and won't be swept away.