The Haunting of James Hastings (16 page)
Read The Haunting of James Hastings Online
Authors: Christopher Ransom
Tags: #Fiction, #Action & Adventure, #Suspense
The truck bed was loaded with trays of flowers and vegetable starters, more plants in plastic pots, annuals of every color, plus bags of mulch and fertilizer. While her driver-helper (she told me later his name was Mel Larkin, a chemistry teacher turned casualty of the California budget crises whom she’d hired in the Lowe’s parking lot) unloaded these to the back patio and skirt of gravel around it, Annette returned to the Mustang’s trunk and began unloading the hardware. A shovel, a spade, a rake, hoses, sprayers, feeders - everything you would want if you woke up one morning and decided to create an instant garden.
‘Chicks dig flowers,’ I said to the window. ‘It’s like a domestic spring fever.’
Two days later she had cut a twenty by ten square in the grass, tilled and mixed the soil, put everything in, then roped it all off with green mesh and wooden stakes to keep the vermin out, the woman gone territorial.
In the evenings, we waved and made faces at each other from our front porches, she on the phone, unwinding with wine, me smoking or grabbing the mail. We had entered a test of will power. Come see me anytime, but don’t pressure me. I need to settle in, you need to sober up. Here’s a plastic box of leftover lasagna for you - eat up and think of me. Yes, that was me who trimmed your juniper bushes yesterday while you were out shopping. Thank you. Don’t mention it, I hated the fucking things. I see you, I want you, but I’m not going anywhere, and neither are you. You’re watching me? Or am I watching you? Goodnight, sleep tight, don’t let the Kenneth bear bite.
I slowed my drinking to a trickle.
I got nervous again. I wanted her, I feared her. Push-pull, push-pull.
Why had I let myself get into this again? The point where you don’t know how much is too much, too little. Is this what regular people go through in regular life, all the time? No wonder people snapped it off the minute it got difficult. Breaking up is easy. Sticking around after the quick score is hard.
I was falling, but was I falling for her or the idea of her?
After a week of this dancing around the obvious, I went back to her. She answered the door in the same cut-offs and paint-stained t-shirt she usually wore. She looked piqued. I had intended to invite her to lunch, but seeing her in the same clothes and this sad little house gave me an idea.
‘Are you busy?’ I said.
‘Not really. What’s up?’
‘I thought you would like to come to the Farmers’ Market with me for lunch.’
‘Oh, I just had a sandwich,’ she said. ‘But I’ll keep you company.’
‘What kind of sandwich?’
‘Bologna and mustard.’ She forced a measure of enthusiasm. ‘My favie.’
My favie. That was one of Stacey’s. Not the bologna sandwich. The childish way of abbreviating things. She was always ending words with -ie, and sometimes -y. When I cooked pork chops, they became porkies. When the house got cool in winter and she wanted me to fetch her sweatshirt, she would say, ‘Honey, will you grab bluey on your way back from the kitchen?’ This is how we came to name our house. We were the only white couple on the block, the house was white, Stacey named it Whitey.
‘We need a break from this scene,’ I said. ‘Come on, let’s get some dessert.’
She grabbed her purse and slipped into a pair of sandals. We took the Audi up Arlington, through Hancock Park, then over to 3rd. We parked and waded into the patchwork maze of tents and shops and restaurants that make up the odd mecca next to CBS Studios known as the Farmers’ Market. It was a weekday, which one I am not sure, but I could tell by how little foot traffic was there. I bought a cheese crêpe at the crêpe stand and Annette ate most of it, as I’d guessed she would. She looked a little gaunt from her gardening, but she seemed happy, grateful to be out doing something. There were a lot of trinkets and tourist t-shirts, not much in the way of good shopping. While Annette perused a newsstand I bought a large iced tea and a gyro at another counter. We shared the pita sandwich as we walked from the Farmers’ Market into the more upscale, adjacent Grove shopping promenade.
‘Are you looking for something?’ she said. ‘Or are we just walking?’
‘Just walking.’
We were holding hands and it did not feel awkward to do so in public. Up ahead, the fountain spurted in synchronization with piped music and a dozen or so people watched it as if it were Old Faithful. A man in plaid shorts and a yellow piqué shirt took a photo and urged his children closer, as if he wanted them to climb in and bathe with the coins glittering beneath the pool’s surface.
The Anthropologie store was coming up on our right. I used to call it the Apology store, thinking they should apologize for charging $350 for a blouse. But their bohemian couture interpretations never seemed to go out of style and made just about any woman look good. I thought Annette would not be able to resist slipping in to browse. Stacey hadn’t been able to, and as we neared it I couldn’t help feeling like the goose walking over Stacey’s grave.
Annette hadn’t noticed the store, but at the last second she turned toward the window displays and her pace slowed considerably. She stopped. She made a little sound like a purr crossed with a sigh.
‘You want to go in?’ I said.
‘Do you mind?’
‘Not at all.’
She let go of my hand and was swallowed by the colorful fabrics. I walked aimlessly while she dug through racks of dresses and blouses. The details changed but the fashions had not. Everything seemed to be of the same calculated vintage on display two years ago. I thumbed a beautiful pair of gray huaraches on a pedestal, the leather wraps thick as rulers. The tag said $650.00. I walked on.
I circled around the cashwrap counter and glanced back at Annette. She was holding up a yellow sundress with blue and pink flowers on it and I could almost see her through it. She looked at the tag, threw her head back and returned the dress to the rack. I sidled up to her testing bolero sweaters in front of a mirror.
‘See anything?’
‘Plenty,’ she said, dropping two hangers on a stack of leather books. ‘Ready to press on?’
‘You liked the dress.’
She gave me a questioning look. ‘James, no. Let’s go.’
‘I want to.’
She protested but I won. We couldn’t find a sales-woman, so I pushed her into an unlocked dressing room. I stood outside while she put it all together. She exited in a pink camisole beneath the yellow sundress, the sweater on top, the huaraches below. While she was inside, she had let her hair down and fluffed it loose, messy.
She posed, doing a side-to-side runway move. There was a gentle fear in her eyes. ‘Well?’
‘Leave the cut-offs here.’
She laughed. The total at the register was north of sixteen hundred. She carried her raggedy clothes in the bag and we stepped into the sun.
We were seated on the patio at the patisserie across from the Grove Cineplex, sharing a bottle of French wine. We nibbled at a croissant and shared another bottle of French wine. The sun was low enough that most of the promenade was in shadow, and the air was perfect. We watched couples and families walking by and she thanked me for her new clothes every fifteen minutes. After Anthropologie, I’d bought her a cheap pair of black sunglasses from one of the cart kiosks. They had little fake diamonds on the rims and she didn’t want to take them off.
‘Do I look famous?’ she said.
‘Better than,’ I said. ‘After we finish this wine I’m going to take you home and . . .’
‘And what?’ She leaned into me, biting my ear.
I was distracted by a couple walking toward us. I sat forward.
‘Hey, it’s Trigger.’
‘Who’s Trigger?’ Annette said.
‘My manager. One sec.’ I half stood, bumping the table in my excitement. ‘Trigger! Yo!’
Annette’s grip tightened on my hand as Trigger glanced around, looking right over us. At six-six, two-forty, with curly brown hair that he allowed to grow dangerously close to a white-man’s ’fro, Travis Metzger was hard to miss in any crowd. My manager was based in Austin but came to Los Angeles for meetings every couple weeks. I hadn’t spoken to him in months. The last time we had talked he said all I had to do was pick up the phone, he’d find me something, anything, to get the ball rolling.
He leaned toward a jewelry cart and tugged a woman’s sleeve. She turned, and I recognized her as Blaine, his wife. She was a striking brunette with locks that fell in oiled curls. She had a deep Texas tan, and - per Trigger’s hook ’em horns
modus operandi
- naturally large breasts. She had appeared in the
Playboy
Girls of Starbucks issue while in college; that’s how Trigger found her. He was getting his hair cut one day, saw her photo, called her agent and closed another deal. The only time Stacey and I had them over to our house, Blaine had still been a marketing major at the University of Texas, which made her almost ten years Trigger’s junior. Despite their age difference, she and Stacey had hit it off. I hadn’t seen her since the memorial service, but she was a sweetheart through it all.
modus operandi
- naturally large breasts. She had appeared in the
Playboy
Girls of Starbucks issue while in college; that’s how Trigger found her. He was getting his hair cut one day, saw her photo, called her agent and closed another deal. The only time Stacey and I had them over to our house, Blaine had still been a marketing major at the University of Texas, which made her almost ten years Trigger’s junior. Despite their age difference, she and Stacey had hit it off. I hadn’t seen her since the memorial service, but she was a sweetheart through it all.
‘I guess you should invite them over for a glass of wine,’ Annette said, releasing my hand. I sensed a resignation in her withdrawal.
They were finishing her purchase. ‘Trigger, over here!’
I felt several of Hugo’s patrons turning to see what I was shouting about. Finally, he saw me, smiled, and pulled Blaine away from the jewelry cart. They cut across the flow of pedestrians. I kicked out two chairs and sat down. Blaine wore a leather jacket and translucent t-shirt above blue jeans fashionably sandblasted white. She was attempting to install the bracelet she had just bought and her head was down until they arrived at the short canvas and steel rail fencing Annette and me in.
Trigger flashed his smile. ‘Ghost Dog, my man, look at you.’
‘Thanks for calling to tell me you were in town, you bastard,’ I said.
‘Spur of the moment, cheem. How you livin’?’
‘Good, man, good. Trigger, this is Annette. Annette, this is the man who makes sure I don’t starve.’
Blaine got the bracelet to click and looked up, already beaming her big white smile. Annette stood to shake hands and Blaine’s eyes darted from me to Annette.
Blaine screamed.
She caught herself before it became a real scream, covering her mouth as she wobbled on her heels and fell into her husband, but it was loud, a shriek that made everyone around us jump. The color drained from her face and her lower lip quivered.
‘Are you okay—’ I started to say.
‘Whoa, girl, easy.’ Trigger did a double-take at his wife, then looked at Annette and he saw it too and his smile faltered.
‘Pleased to meet you, Trigger,’ Annette said without enthusiasm.
Trigger bobbed his head. ‘Likewise. This is my wife . . .’ He was still staring at Annette, his cheeks puckered.
‘Blaine,’ I prompted.
‘Excuse me,’ Blaine said, shaking her head. ‘I wasn’t paying attention.’
Trigger and I exchanged the kind of hopeful and scared look men share when they don’t know if their wives are going to hit it off or tear some stockings.
He recovered first. ‘So, what are you two up to?’
‘A little shopping, a little wine,’ I said.
‘James spoiled me,’ Annette said, thumbing the strap of her dress. She leaned over and kissed my ear. ‘Num num num. Didn’t you? Didn’t you?’
I grinned, stealing at glimpse at Blaine. She was looking away, too uncomfortable to even participate in the conversation.
‘Sit down,’ I said. ‘Let’s order another bottle of wine.’
Blaine shot her husband a nasty look.
‘Ah, no can do, partner,’ Trigger said. ‘We’re late for a dinner as it is. But I’ll call you tomorrow. We got to put you back to work.’
‘That’d be good,’ I said. ‘I’m ready.’
Blaine was still pretending to be interested in the Puma store display windows to our right. Annette was staring at Blaine’s waist or stomach with . . . interest.
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