Into the Inferno (4 page)

“You asshole,” she said. “You dirty coward.”

Stan Beebe was on the other side of the rig. I could hear him chuckling.

6. SISTERS OF JILTED WOMEN CASTRATING MEN

Until she was ten feet away, I believed the woman coming at me like a missile was Holly Riggs, my former lover. I also believed I knew what she was going to say.

That I was a jerk. That I’d behaved badly. That I deserved her hatred. Most of which was no doubt true.

Although this woman was trim, short, pretty, and impeccably groomed, she was not Holly. For one thing, she was feistier. For another, she had a mouth on her like a snakebit sailor.

The fine lines around her eyes and brow suggested she was around thirty, maybe three or four years younger than me, the same strawberry-blond hair as Holly, though I’d never seen Holly band hers into a ponytail. I couldn’t figure out what she was doing with Holly’s car until her pale dusty-blue eyes focused angrily on me.

“You bastard,” she said.

“Don’t turn on the charm machine just for me.”

“I saw you running away from me in the parking lot.”

“You must be Stephanie, Holly’s sister.” It was a stupid remark, given their resemblance and the fact that she was driving Holly’s car, but it was all I could think of.

She’d moved closer now. We were almost touching, hate emanating off her like steam off a racehorse. To make matters worse, she was wearing the same brand of perfume as Holly. You can’t blame me for thinking of sex when I smelled it.

“I didn’t run.”

“The hell you didn’t. You thought I was Holly.”

“But you’re not.” This was so typical of me. One incredibly scintillating comment after another.

“You thought I was. You led her on and then didn’t have the decency to admit what you’d done. This innocent act of yours doesn’t surprise me. She said you could be dumber than a bag of hammers when you wanted.”

“Holly said that?”

“You don’t even want to know what Holly said.”

“What do you want?”

“I guess I came to see what a dirtbag looks like.”

“Okay. You’ve seen me.” She didn’t move, just stood close and stared into my eyes. After a few moments, I said, “I didn’t lead anyone on. And I don’t see what business it is of yours anyway. Holly and I dated for a while. Then we broke up. People break up all the time.”

For a moment, my words gave her pause. I wasn’t particularly quick-witted and almost never thought up a reply to this sort of thing until my opponent was long gone, but, damn it, she didn’t know anything about my relationship with Holly.

By now Karrie was laughing on the far side of the rig along with Beebe.

“She thought you wanted to marry her.”

“It was never even on my mind. I mean, think about it. Who gets married after a month? You know as well as I do, one person in a relationship always takes things more seriously than the other. Believe me, I never did anything to make it turn out that way. I felt as bad about the breakup as Holly.”

“You think so?”

“Look, I’m on duty and we’re not exactly having the best day around here. Why don’t you come back to the station and we’ll talk over coffee? Out of the sun.”

“It’s taken me all morning to corner you. I’m not going to let you slip away now.”

“Come back to the station and we’ll talk. How is Holly?” When I saw her eyes relax, I said, “Where is she?”

“As if you cared.”

“I’ve always wanted her to be happy. Holly’s a sweet person. She deserves the best.”

“Which was definitely not you.”

“I never pretended it was.”

She waited a few beats and continued. “When was the last time you saw my sister?”

“I don’t know. Somewhere around the first of May.”

“When was the last time you spoke?”

“She called once after that.”

“Try six times. She called six times after that. She caught you home twice, and the other calls were never returned.”

“There was nothing left to say.”

“You don’t know where this is leading, do you?”

“No.”

“Holly said you weren’t too bright.”

More laughter from behind the truck.

Stephanie was a little taller than Holly—prettier, angrier, crueler. Even at her angriest and most heartbroken, Holly had never shouted at me. Holly was a whiner, a weeper, and, in bed, a moaner—the best sex ever—but one thing she never did and never would do was make a scene in public.

Across the street, two of McCain’s neighbors came outside, attracted no doubt by the flashing red lights and our large lime-green truck. “You’re even more of a coward than I thought you were,” said Holly’s sister, who then climbed into the Pontiac and left.

You can understand I didn’t like getting braced by this pugnacious woman while two of my coworkers hid on the other side of the rig sniggering. I was a firefighter and had been for twelve years. My family and friends thought of me as a regular guy. There were even times on the job when people thought I’d displayed some bravery. Still, it was going to be a while before they stopped joking about this around the station.

When I climbed into the rig next to Karrie, my hands were trembling.

7. WELCOME TO THE CASTRATI

It was after dinner and I was driving to Tacoma, switching the truck radio between talk shows to keep myself distracted, when I noticed my hands were trembling again.

It had happened three times today, and each time Stephanie Riggs had been at the root of it, which made me wonder about her. You meet a woman and your hands start shaking, was that the same as chemistry? There were a lot of reasons why nothing would come of our meeting tonight. First of all, she was Holly’s sister. Second, she was a ball-buster. The original ice queen. And the worst part of it was that she was a whole lot smarter than I was.

My standard operating procedure was to shun smart women. It only made sense.

North Bend to Tacoma. An hour each way, the two-way trek would consume the meat of the evening. It was Monday night and I had to work again in the morning, had been putting in seven days a week since Joel McCain’s accident, and I didn’t need additional distractions. Neither did my daughters, Britney and Allyson, who were used to having me home in the evenings and begged me not to make this trip.

I was retracing the same route I’d used for a month in the spring when I was seeing Holly, who lived in Tacoma and who, from the beginning, had required more attention than a naughty kitten.

With luck I would get back in time to play a board game with the girls. Currently they were hot on Monopoly, which, for them, was a blood sport. It was an unusual game when I didn’t go bankrupt first, rarer still when either of my lovable little connivers showed me any mercy.

The phone call had come while I was preparing dinner. “Who?” I said.

“Stephanie Riggs.”

“Oh, yes. Weren’t you the one called me a bastard? No, wait. That might have been the lady at the bank. I get confused.”

“I called to apologize.”

“For telling me I was a bastard or for making me a laughingstock at work?”

Britney looked up at me with her brown eyes and said, “Somebody said a bad word.” I kissed the top of her head and put my finger to my lips.

“I’m sorry for all of that. I’ve had a difficult visit, and I’m scheduled to fly back home day after tomorrow.”

“Gee, we’re going to miss you.”

“You’re not making this easy.”

“Sorry about that. I had a tough day. I met the original she-bitch from hell.”

The line was silent for a moment. “Okay. I deserved that. I was wondering if you could come to Tacoma so we could talk.”

“We’re talking right
now
.”

“I’d come back up there, but I’m stuck at work. There are some issues I need to go over with you. In person. Please?”

“I don’t even know you, lady.”

“You knew my sister.”

“That’s over with.”

“Just please come?”

“She going to be there?”

“My sister won’t even know you were in town.”

“Okay. Sure. Maybe we’ll videotape it for when I have friends at the house. Some of my pals missed your remarks this afternoon.”

“This morning when I saw you, it surprised me. Holly said you were a nice guy.”

“I thought she said I was a bastard.”

“I’m so
not
like today. I couldn’t even believe I said those things.”

“Neither could I.”

Despite everything I was feeling, her conversation had the hint of promise to it. I couldn’t tell whether she was flirting or I was only imagining that she was flirting. In the past I’d thought women were coming on to me when they weren’t. As outlandish as it may sound to you, I found myself entertaining lascivious visions of a summertime fling with my ex-girlfriend’s sister. Was this an invitation, as in
invitation
, or was this a setup so her favorite rugby team could knock me down and put the boots to me?

“You really took it well, I thought, considering. You were a darling.” The word oozed out of her mouth like maple syrup.
Darling
. Next to
cute
or
sweet
it was one of the major tip-off words that a woman liked you. I didn’t know much, but I knew that.

“I suppose I can drive down,” I said, mentally kicking myself for being a sap.

“I’m at Tacoma General until midnight. On the third floor.”

As I was on my way out the door, Allyson said, “Is she foxy, Dad?”

“This is business.”

“Oh, yeah? So her house is on fire?”

“Okay, she’s foxy.”

“That’s what I thought.” The girls exchanged looks while the baby-sitter put on a mood like a coat. My girls had solved the conundrum I couldn’t solve: why I was wasting my time.

All day I’d fumed over Stephanie’s verbal assault. It didn’t help that Click and Clack had gotten wind of it—Ian Hjorth and Ben Arden reporting to work that afternoon to take up the slack after Stan Beebe went home sick, sick of heart over our friend Joel. Click and Clack commentated on my love life with remarks that alternated between the lewd and the hilariously lewd.

Normally they were a positive addition to the atmosphere, poking fun at everything, including themselves. But their favorite target was my love life. To hear them rehash it, my tongue-lashing at the hands of Holly’s sister was the funniest thing ever. At one point, Ben got a sympathetic look on his face, turned to me, and sang to a melody of his own invention, “Somebody got a spanking.” Ian laughed so hard, his knees buckled. I suppose after what we’d learned about Joel McCain, our department needed a diversion.

Downtown Tacoma sat on a hill overlooking Commencement Bay. On top of the hill, a block or so from Wright Park and fronting Martin Luther King Junior Way, stood Tacoma General Hospital.

It was almost eight o’clock and still light out when I approached the nurses’ station on three. A barrel-chested woman with eyebrows plucked too thin gave me a questioning look from behind the counter, then reached over to thumb the intercom. She drew her hand back, glanced past my shoulder, and said, “There she is.”

She wore clogs and hospital scrubs with a stethoscope draped around her neck, her hair shoulder-length and loose. She wasn’t wearing a name tag, and it was a split second before I remembered how proud Holly had been of her older sister.

“You’re a doctor,” I said.

“Don’t act so stunned.” Any hint of flirtation in her demeanor had vanished.

“Holly said you worked back east somewhere.”

“Ohio. I’ve been volunteering here for a few weeks.”

“Terrific. Most people on vacation would never think of volunteering.”

“No, I suppose they wouldn’t.”

Holly had been proud of her older sister, said she was smart as a whip, had graduated from high school a year early and did the same in college, even though she had to work the whole time because their parents were dead. Their mother died of cancer. Six weeks later Holly came home from middle school and found their father hanging by his neck in the garage. Stephanie had been in her last year of high school.

Turning away from me, she said, “I have a patient to check on. Come along?”

“You sure it’s okay?” She walked away without replying.

When I caught her, she said, “Funny how all hospitals are pretty much alike. Don’t you think? You get inside and you could be in New York or Toronto or Timbuktu.”

The breeze from our pace brought tears to her eyes. She stopped at a patient’s room, glanced at the chart on the wall, pushed the door open with her fingertips, and went in. After a moment alone in the hallway, I followed.

It was a small room with one bed, the foot toward the door, a dark television high on a bracket on the wall. The only light was provided by the evening twilight whispering in through the blinds. The patient was silent and motionless. From where I stood, I could see only a swatch of lusterless hair on the pillow.

“I’d better leave,” I whispered.

“No. Stay.”

“You sure I’m not . . . ?”

“Take a look. You don’t recognize her?”

“I don’t know anybody in Tacoma.”

“Oh, I think you do.” It was at this point I realized all the sweet talk on the phone had been part of a ruse. I was always slow on the uptake, which explained why I was attracted to dim females, females who couldn’t fool me, but I’d never been this slow. On the drive down, I’d alternated between euphoria and apprehension, seesawing between the thought that she’d summoned me either to slake her lust or to de-man me with a scalpel. I could tell now by the sudden edge in her voice I was scalpel-bound. “Step around here. You’ve seen patients before. You’re a big brave fireman. Take a look.”

She moved aside to make room for me. It was a woman, older, faded, devoid of makeup, her features flavored with that lack of vitality a long-term patient acquires, her body so tiny and frail and motionless, I had to look twice to be certain she was breathing. When I turned to Stephanie, her eyes were like blue lasers.

“You don’t know her?”

I turned back to the patient. “I don’t think so.”

“Look again. Sometimes it’s difficult to recognize a person when they’re horizontal. But you’ve seen her on her back before. That was the whole point, wasn’t it? Getting her horizontal?”

It was with a queasy feeling that I realized we were standing over Stephanie’s sister, Holly. I’d cherished Holly, made love to Holly, woken up beside her, and yet I barely recognized the skeleton she’d become. “Oh, God.”

“Her doctors don’t think so, but I believe she hears everything around her. I believe she’s listening to us right now. You know how a stroke victim can hear what you say but can’t respond. You ask them to move their hand, their brain sends the signal, but the signal never arrives. It’s got to be the most frustrating feeling on earth.”

“What happened?”

“A cerebrovascular accident, although so far nobody’s been able to figure out exactly what caused it. We think she had an aneurysm.”

“This is incredible.”

“Is it?”

“She’s the second person I’ve seen today in basically this same situation.”

“I’m sorry you’re having such a bad day.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know what you meant.”

“I don’t get it. She’s twenty-eight. People her age don’t have strokes.”

“Not unless there are special circumstances. I was hoping you might be able to shed some light on what those circumstances might have been.”

“That’s why you came to North Bend? If I’d known she was sick, I never would have . . . Holly was in perfect health the last time I saw her.”

“Perfect mental health?”

“What are you getting at?”

She reached under the blanket for her sister’s hand. “We think she tried to kill herself. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”