Alligators in the Trees (19 page)

Their light, cordial conversation rapidly evolved into sharing the first table that became available. The blonde, whose name was Eva, allowed Tobias to buy her another martini. Tobias switched from beer to Bushmills, neat, and from that point on, things quickly heated up. After a mere hour in her company, it was plain she was leaving the next move up to him.

As much as he appreciated her attentions, and as tempting as it was to whisk her back to his suite at the Amsterdam, something was preventing him from capitalizing on this delightful opportunity. A cloud had settled over his mind, giving him an uneasy feeling, as though he were afraid that he was being spied on. As gallantly as possible, he said goodnight, leaving Eva the Beautiful with a perplexed expression on her exquisite face.

Though he initially wanted to walk in order to clear his head, Tobias, who had become quite aggravated by his uncharacteristic behavior, grabbed a cab to the hotel. He showered himself with recriminations and unflattering assessments as he rode the elevator to the top floor.

By the time he unlocked the door to his suite, he was fuming and hell-bent on ridding himself of Priscilla’s bothersome clutter. Whatever weird impulse had prompted him to get involved in her private affairs had passed, and now all he wanted was to be done with it.

As superstitious as it seemed, he was certain this cumbersome pile of papers had put him in a mental funk. Intent on dragging the whole mess to the hotel garbage chute, he wedged the boxes under his arms and grabbed as many of the bags as he could get his hands on. Unfortunately, one of the bags ripped down the length of its seam, spilling the entire contents at his feet, causing him to stumble and drop the other parcels.

“Goddammit! Shit!” he swore, as he kicked ineffectually at the mounds of clutter. Thoroughly disgusted with himself, and certain that he was coming unhinged, he held the sides of his head while he attempted to bring himself under control. He went into the kitchen and came back with a large bottle of mineral water, which he drank in big swigs as he surveyed the damage.

“What the fuck am I doing?” he asked out loud, though even he wasn’t sure exactly what the question was meant to address. He sank to the floor, resigned to the situation in front of him, and began to reassemble the notebooks in a haphazard pile. As he gathered them together, he was assailed by an impulse to flip through them one last time. Grudgingly, he grabbed the closest notebook and cracked it open to an random selection.

“Mind over Matter”, he read, chuckling harshly. “I guess I could use a dose of that philosophy right about now.” He read the words silently. Then, as their impact set in, he read them out loud to test the fluency of their sound.

I kept my good eye trained

On the grey sky out the window

Watching the rivulets of rain

As his voice turned me hollow

If it were my decision

I wouldn’t be here at all

But it’s one small incision

And there’s really no time to stall

Deliver me

Save me from the saviors

Hold them at bay

Spare me their kind favors

If this is final

Why can’t it just be done?

I don’t need your pity

I just want to be left alone

Save your wisdom for

Some other sorry individual

And leave me to my

Private, custom-made hell

I closed my eyes real tight

Though it took a while

Everything turned white

I couldn’t help but smile

I hadn’t believed him

Yet the feeling was so light

The world seemed less grim

So I just gave up the fight

I let the drops of rain wash me away

Tobias sat for several minutes in reflective thought, as his instincts for tune and melody toyed with Priscilla’s lyrics. He personally enjoyed creating unusual patterns that defied conventional methods, which is why this particular piece interested him. Though it didn’t follow any standard for either song structure or verse, he had little difficulty picking up its natural melodic rhythm.

He turned to the next page, where he found a more traditional structure. Feeling that his instincts had been right, he turned the page again and found one of a completely different style from the previous two. He read through it quickly, daring the words to disappoint him, but they didn’t. Once more, without effort, Tobias fell into the seductive cadence of her words.

We knew the rains would come again

Yet we acted so surprised when they did

Laughing and running

Papers over our heads

Scrambling for refuge

A small, crowded bar

With few empty chairs

I stepped out of time

To join your fantasy

When all along

I thought you’d joined mine

If I had seen it coming

I would not have run

For nothing tempts us like

Life come undone

I see now the flush of excitement

Was caused by the circumstances

And not by me

The charged atmosphere

Of the hostile locale

The afternoon cocktails

Prescribed by the heat

I stepped out of time

To join your fantasy

When all along

I thought you’d joined mine

If I had seen it coming

I would not have run

For nothing tempts us like

Sins we can’t out-run

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said, resting the booklet against his crossed legs as he thumbed through the rest of the pages. It was all good, respectable stuff—not a trite word or cliché phrase in the lot. What had seemed to him earlier in the day as predictable and sentimental, had taken on an entirely new tone.

It was the seeming innocence of each piece that had initially fooled him. He was also pleased to discover that each page seemed to possess at least the basic elements for an interesting tune. He glanced around him at all the similar notebooks, once again overcome by the sheer volume. He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes and sighed, then reached without looking for the closest unread edition.

Tobias squinted his eyes shut after opening them to a sun-filled room. He groaned as he brought his watch close to his face, cautiously easing one eye open to read the time.

“Ten-forty-three? Christ Almighty,” he yelped, as he awkwardly raised himself to an upright position. This proved to be a costly move, for his equilibrium was not quite up to the task yet.

He held his head until the room stopped revolving. Slowly, he tested his vision again, this time with better results. He emitted a series of grunts and complaints as he turned over on his knees and raised his aching body off the floor with the assistance of the end table.

Once semi-erect, he hazarded a glance around the room, which could have doubled for a disaster site without any difficulty. It was more damage than he could undo in his current condition. The most he could manage was picking up the empty scotch bottle, an effort that made his stomach lurch.

“I’m too old for this shit,” he rightly assessed, as he moved like a zombie to the nearest telephone. “Coffee—black. A large pot. And toast—nothing on it. What? Oh…umm…rye,” he said weakly into the handset. “Do you have any applesauce? No, forget it—I don’t want a baked apple…but maybe a grapefruit—cold, please. Very cold. Yeah, that’s all.” He replaced the receiver with exaggerated care and staggered toward the nearest shower.

By the time he had eaten his Spartan breakfast, his mind and body were in a less egregious disposition. He still didn’t quite have the wherewithal to properly tackle any housekeeping chores, but he didn’t like the idea of the maid rifling through those valuable notebooks, especially since he had spent more hours than he’d care to think of segregating them into distinct categories: those that had lyrics that were so-so, those with real potential, and those he hadn’t gotten to yet.

He had meticulously dog-eared every page that caught his fancy, hoping to further distill the group later on. With less skill than was required, he haphazardly shoveled the few notebooks that didn’t interest him into the shoeboxes, depositing the more promising ones and the unread ones on the sofa, as if that somehow got them out of harm’s way.

It was almost noon before Tobias was able to focus sufficiently on the day’s agenda. The primary event was meeting Priscilla at her depressing digs at three. He needed to get his act together quickly if he were to pull that off. After a few minutes of intense concentration, he had worked out a plan to help him make his deadline.

“This would be a whole lot easier if she had a phone like a normal person
,”
he groused. But then he was forced to concede she was anything but normal. Priscilla Vanderpool was one of the most prolific and gifted lyric writers he had ever encountered, and in his experience, gifted people were seldom normal.

That was certainly the case with her, considering she slung hash for a few bucks a day, instead of capitalizing on her abundant writing talent. He shook his head as a long wheeze of a laugh escaped him. She was an eccentric, that’s what she was. So eccentric, in fact, she nearly tossed her life’s work into the incinerator. It gave him pause to think how close she had come to destroying this amazing body of work.

Tobias picked up the phone and got down to business. After much wheedling and cajoling, his attorney agreed to have a release form drawn up and delivered to his hotel by 2:00. His next call was to the manager at his bank, informing him that he was issuing a check to one Priscilla Vanderpool for fourteen-thousand-three-hundred dollars. It was Tobias’s guess she would rush to the bank to cash it.

After those two important details had been handled, he called and arranged for a car to pick him up at quarter to three. Although he had his own car and driver on retainer, he wasn’t about to put the wife on alert that he was holing up in some hotel less than two miles from home. He was pushing his luck with this disappearing act and soon he would need to come up with a more permanent fix. But one task at a time, he cautioned himself, mentally dragging himself back to the issue at hand.

“Okay—release form, money, driver…I guess it’s all settled.”

It was only quarter to one by this time, and now he had the formidable prospect of trying to fill the next two hours. He was too strung out from his all-night read-a-thon to face any more of Priscilla’s lyrics, and he didn’t really feel like hanging out in his spacious yet suddenly claustrophobic suite until the car came to fetch him. Out of habit, he camouflaged himself per the usual and left the hotel, merging seamlessly into midday Manhattan.

Priscilla had lain awake the entire night, tossing and turning. The events of the past two days had left her far too agitated and confused for sleep. As the sun rose, she drifted into a tormented slumber, which lasted a little more than an hour and left her feeling drained and disoriented. It chagrined her that Brawny had figured prominently throughout her brief spells of sleep. Groggy and out of sorts, she swung her legs out of bed in preparation for getting up. But she found herself just sitting there, lacking the required impetus to get on with her day.

She rubbed her temples as the same thoughts that had stolen her sleep mounted a fresh offensive. Her apathy made her vulnerable to the demons currently hounding her, and one by one, or sometimes in combination, they pranced through her brain, each vying for the chance to drive her mad.

Every issue was a valid concern that she going to have to face, sooner rather than later. Giving in, she shuffled her quandaries as if they were a deck of cards, trying to put them in some hierarchal order, a task that made her feel like a cat chasing its own tail.

“All right,” she said, hoping that hearing the words out loud would give them more clarity. “There’s moving to Florida, right? Ugh. There’s Phil. Double ugh. And there’s the matter of selling all my songs for enough money for a good start in my new life. Okay, that all works, in theory. Except for the Phil part, and the fact that I sold my most personal thoughts to a famous stranger.”

On top of those minor glitches, there was the nagging suspicion that she didn’t possess the resolve to forge a new life. Such a brave move would require making decisions and having the commitment to carry them through, two attributes she could hardly claim as her strong suits. She rubbed her eyes vigorously, then began madly scratching herself as though she had fleas.

“When Tobias Jordan comes today—if he comes today—I’ll just tell him that I’ve changed my mind and I want my stuff back. I’ll have to return the money he gave me, of course. Damn, I wish I hadn’t spent so much on that dress. I wonder if I can return it.”

She reached for the dress and inspected it for damage, sniffing the armpits for obvious odors. It was in fairly good shape, a little wrinkled, but she could fix that. She hadn’t taken the tag off, the fear of something like this forcing her to endure the scratchiness of it on her back throughout her evening with Phil. But it was a good thing she hadn’t cut it off, for she could hardly afford those kinds of splurges if she was going to run off to the Florida Keys without Tobias Jordan’s money.

But concern number one had a sub-dilemma: was she really ready—mentally and emotionally—to abandon everything and everyone she knew in favor of a complete unknown? It didn’t take long to answer that. There was no person, place or thing that she wasn’t ready to say goodbye to forever, nor did she think there was anyone who would be devastated by her departure. Except maybe Phil.

Priscilla sighed heavily and lurched off the bed, padding into the kitchen on bare feet, unrealistically hoping to scare up enough coffee grounds to make a decent cup of coffee. Her findings were even more disappointing than she had suspected, as she had somehow blotted out the clean sweep she had made of the apartment the day before. She flung open each cupboard, confirming that she had tossed out everything, right down to the salt.

“Crap,” she groaned as she sank onto the battered chrome and vinyl dinette chair, burying her head in her hands. “Well, I guess moving makes sense,” she said with a sad laugh. She idly toyed with the ends of her hair as her ever-present thoughts began needling her again.

“So, fine—I’m moving to Florida. What other plan do I have? Okay, that’s settled. So, what about Phil?” She sighed. Thinking of Phil always made her sigh. “That should tell me something,” she said, nibbling on a well-chewed nail.

She became aware of a persistent urge lurking on the periphery of her mind. Out of habit, one ingrained in her since youth, she cast about for a pen and notepad, the way a smoker searches for cigarettes and matches, slavishly bending to corporal needs. She caught herself as she stood, irked by her slip. She felt the impulse to vent her frustrations, but there wasn’t a single scrap of paper remaining in the apartment.

She lowered herself back onto the chair, feeling vaguely alarmed by the corner she had painted herself into. What had she done? Was her subconscious systematically trying to sabotage every aspect of her life?

Why shouldn’t she continue to write songs? Everyone needed some sort of outlet. Was there really any harm in what she had been doing all these years? No, there wasn’t. So why had she been seconds away from destroying the work that had kept her sane for so long? She didn’t like the implication.

“Maybe I should just quit,” she said glumly, though surviving the mother of all nicotine withdrawals would’ve been easier.

For all the time spent trying to make sense of her actions over the past forty-eight hours, she had only come up with two concrete resolutions: moving to Florida, and returning the expensive dress, though she still didn’t feel one hundred percent sold on the former. She was consoled by the idea of calling off her deal with the roving rock star, though she was half afraid she wouldn’t be given the chance.

In the event that he was a no-show, she’d have to try and come up with some scheme to get her lyrics back. But how the hell could she track them down living in Florida? She lowered her head to the table top, banging it slowly against the hard Formica surface. All this round and round was making her feel crazy. After the last bounce, she turned her head and let her face rest against the cool tabletop.

“Okay, no point sitting around this place till three o’clock,” she said, pushing herself up and staggering to the bathroom. After a quick shower and a reassuring recount of her nest egg, Priscilla bagged the expensive, slightly used dress and left the apartment.

“Didn’t like the way it looked on me when I got it home,” Priscilla told the clerk with deliberate casualness. She took the cash refund and stuffed it into her pocket, feeling better already. Now she could return all of Tobias’s down payment in exchange for her lyrics, and she no longer felt as though she had squandered any money on her miserable date with Phil.

Exiting Bloomingdale’s, she was forced to concede that her experimental ‘non-date’ with Phil hadn’t really been so terrible. It definitely had its moments, but as she thought it over, she found she actually enjoyed seeing a different side of him. There was really only so much you can learn about a person while serving them plates of eggs or waffles.

Without their previous roles of waitress and customer to define their conversations, she had been able to think of him as something other than a man with a high tolerance for bad food. At least he hadn’t mooned over her all evening, which was a tremendous improvement. Aside from the gushing compliment in the beginning, he had managed to keep a leash on any unwarranted flattery.

With that kind of distraction out of the way, Priscilla was able to get a better idea of what lay beneath his cultured exterior. Until last night, she wouldn’t have believed it was possible to ruffle his precisely arranged feathers.

Though she felt cruel admitting it, she had actually enjoyed seeing his anguish over the collapse of his famous project. Expressing his anger and shame over the much-publicized event brought him more on par with mere mortals like her.

It was also refreshing to learn that the light of happiness did not always shine brightly in his hopeful eyes. She had never fully trusted anyone who appeared forever cheerful; it just didn’t seem natural. She’d take someone with a few dents in their chrome over a pristine model any day of the week, not that she was in the mood to ‘take’ anyone at the present, least of all Phil.

Now that her first minor hurtle of the day was behind her, she finally rewarded herself with a blueberry muffin and a cup of coffee at the closest bakery. While consuming her paltry breakfast, she mapped out the rest of her day. There really wasn’t much she could do before Tobias came, but she had to find some way to occupy herself until then.

Just the thought of actually getting on the train—make that bus, now that she was set on rejecting Tobias Jordan’s ludicrously large offer—made her go all fluttery inside. She couldn’t remember the last time she felt such anxiety. But she had to go to Florida to start a new life; nothing else held any promise for her. She couldn’t stay in her rundown, depressing apartment any longer, living off her savings while she searched for another unfulfilling job.

No, she was long overdue for a change. She had entertained leaving several times over the years, but then she’d end up meeting some down-and-out underachiever like Brawny or Ryan or Nick—colossal wastes of time, all of them. It irked her to think of the years spent in stupid, nowhere relationships with stupid, nowhere men.

Priscilla shook her head in disgust. She would be more selective in Florida, she promised herself. In fact, she might even give herself a fictitious husband to keep would-be romancers at bay. She congratulated herself on her very sound idea and turned back to her more immediate needs: how to fill the four and a half hours until she was to meet Tobias Jordan.

It occurred to her that checking out departures and perhaps purchasing her ticket in advance would be a wise move, that way she could get out of town by nightfall, before her nerve faltered and she again found herself trapped in a whirlpool of indecision.

“Excellent thinking,” she said out loud without realizing it. This talking to herself thing was getting out of control. She scarcely glanced at the curious faces around her as she grabbed her bag and headed out the door. She ducked into the nearest subway station, where she studied the train routes before purchasing her token.

After two transfers and twenty minutes, she reached the Port Authority Bus Terminal. She questioned her choice of transportation while she stood in line with less than savory characters—some offering her lascivious smiles, some eyeing her with maladjusted contempt—as they waited an inordinate length of time to buy their tickets to various obscure destinations. She felt almost affluent and glamorous by comparison as she stepped up to the window and asked when the next bus left for Key West.

“We’ve got one leaving at 1:42, arriving at 11: 32 pm on the 20
th
. The next one departs at 9:00 this evening, arriving at 11:30 am, May 21
st
. The fare’s $159, one way.”

Just as Priscilla was about to purchase a ticket on the evening bus, she thought of one conflicting detail she had managed to overlook. She had been thinking she could return Tobias’s deposit and get her lyrics back, but it wouldn’t be as simple as that, would it?

If he were coming to pay her the balance of what he had offered her, he certainly wouldn’t be lugging around that ragtag collection of boxes and bags. She would have to go to wherever he had them stashed to collect them… and then what? Was she really going to lug them down here? Wasn’t that the reason she had decided to burn them all in the first place?

“Did you want to purchase a ticket for either of those departures?” the clerk asked, breaking into her internal conflict.

“Uh…” she stalled, as she tried to weigh the facts.
If he hadn’t appeared when he did, all that crap would have gone into the incinerator. Either way, I’m free of it. The only difference with selling it to Tobias Jordan is I’ll have a hell of a lot more funds to start a new life. Plus, I wouldn’t have to worry about dragging all that shit across the country.

“Yes or no?” the clerk asked, growing more bored and impatient, if that were possible.

“Hang on a sec,” Priscilla said, while she dug through her bag in another effort to stall her decision.
So, if I have fifteen thousand in addition to Phil’s three-something, then I don’t have to ride with a busload of miscreants for thirty-plus torturous hours.

“Look, either you need to buy a ticket or you need to get out of line. I got customers here.” Priscilla slung her bag onto her shoulder, gave the clerk a nasty look and told him to forget it.

“Why do I get all the loonies?” she heard him grumble as she wove her way past the impossibly long line.

Once out in the fresh air, she was grateful she had come to her senses in time. At least that little exercise had convinced her to not renege on her deal. She had solved two critical problems and it was still early. Now she needed to decide which mode of transportation she would prefer to take to her new life: plane or train. The bus idea was definitely out.

Her first inclination was to head to a travel agent and book a flight, but caution tempered her impulse. If she didn’t buy an advance purchase ticket, they’d charge her an arm and a leg. There was no way she could hang around the city another week just to get a decent fare.

Besides, what if Tobias
didn’t
show up as promised—then what? She could not afford such extravagance on Phil’s money alone. Of course, she’d still have Tobias’s seven hundred, but that would go pretty quickly.

The train was the obvious solution, and it thrilled her that she had overcome so many obstacles with such determination and reason. She was facing tough decisions like a pro. All of the sudden, she filled with the kind of optimism she’d only witnessed in others. The more she thought about it, the more convinced she became that everything was going to work out just fine.

Since it had turned out to be a beautiful sunny day, Priscilla chose to skip the subway and walked the dozen blocks to Penn Station. Another wave of expectation swept over her as she descended into the station, the atmosphere frenetic with hundreds of people coming and going, all with an air of distracted purposefulness. Again a long wait.

There was a train departing at 5:35, an express to Miami, sleeper compartments—what the agent referred to as “roomettes”—still available.

“How much?”

“Roomette, Penn Station to Miami—$732,” the agent said, without batting an eye.

“What?
That’s outrageous! I could fly for less than that. I thought taking the train was meant to be economical,” she argued.

The agent remained unmoved. “That includes meals and bottled water, newspapers and turn-down service.” Pricilla was not impressed. “A view seat is only $217,” he said.

Priscilla thought of sitting in a worn seat for over a day. It would save her over four hundred bucks, but her body would be ruined.

She was tempted to walk away and check airfare prices, but she really wasn’t keen on the idea of flying to Florida. Three hours in the air, then she’d be wandering the airport without a clue of what to do next. At least if she took the train, she’d have ample time to plan her next move. Plus, if she chickened out, she could always bail somewhere along the way.