Cool Shade (13 page)

"Maybe you shouldn't." Cutting ties. It might be for the best.

"I'll be out here. If you need me, I'll be listening."

"Where do you live?" she asked, suddenly afraid he would hang up for the last time. "I don't even know where you live."

"Hang a right past Mars."

~0~

Maddie signed off at six-thirty, then dragged herself home. Or rather to Enid's. But was it Enid's anymore?

Enid was gone, maybe dead.

Eddie had loved her and left her, love being a euphemism.

And now Jonathan had deserted her.

All things considered, the last twenty-four hours had really sucked.

She unlocked the front door and elbowed her way inside.

The place had been trashed.

Her first thought was of her cat.

"Hemingway!"

She dropped her bag and ran through the house, stepping over couch cushions and pillows, over papers that had been pulled from drawers and dumped on the floor. "Hemingway!"

She heard a faint meow coming from the direction of the upstair's bedroom.

"Thank God." She wasn't aware of moving, but suddenly she was on her hands and knees, looking under the bed. His eyes were shining in the dark.

He meowed again, this one kind of a tentative question that seemed to ask if it was okay to come out now.

"Poor baby."

He wasn't going to budge, so she squeezed herself under the bed, close enough to reach him. She pulled him out and hugged him to her, dust bunnies and all. "Poor, poor Hemingway," she said, baby-talking to him. With the cat in her arms, she surveyed the room. The closet had been emptied, every article of clothing now on the floor.

There wasn’t much doubt in her mind as to the identity of the perpetrator.

Eddie Berlin.

Still looking for whatever it was he thought she'd taken from him.

She'd had enough. He could treat her like shit, but when he barged in and scared poor Hemingway to death… well, that was too much. Way too much.

The Downward Spiral

Enraged, feeling used and hurt, Maddie jumped in her car and headed for Eddie's.

He wasn't home.

Either that, or he simply wasn't answering the door.

Her anger at the boiling point, she dug through her car, cursing under her breath as she searched for paper. She tore a piece off a brown grocery bag. Using the hood of her car as a desk, she scratched out an angry message.

NICE ONE, SCUMBALL. YOU COULD HAVE AT LEAST STRAIGHTENED UP WHEN YOU WERE DONE TRASHING MY PLACE. Signed: Maddie a.k.a. I AM NOT A DOORMAT

She grabbed a package of gum from her purse, unwrapped a piece, shoved it in her mouth and chewed as fast and as hard as she could. Then she marched across the yard, up the front steps. She took the wad of gum from her mouth and shoved it against the door. With her palm, she slapped her message to the gum, then stood back to survey her work, hands on hips.

It sufficiently conveyed the depths of her anger.

She marched back to her car and took off.

She would have liked to peel out, but she was lucky whenever her car started at all.

Normally she crept up the lane, careful to avoid as many holes as she could. This time she flew, bouncing madly along, her head hitting the roof, her shoulder crashing against the door. She slowed, but not before she heard a deafening roar, not before she felt a vibration under her feet.

She looked in the rearview mirror.

Her muffler was lying in the middle of the lane.

She braked. Reversed. Braked. Got out.

She grabbed the muffler. Hot! She screamed and let it go.

She opened the trunk and pulled out an old musty towel. Using it as a giant hot pad, she picked up the muffler, dropped it in the trunk, slammed the lid, and was on her way.

That night, she called in sick. She had important stuff to do. Like guzzling the bottle of wine she'd found in the closet.

She thought about Enid.

She supposed no news was good news.

She thought about Eddie, that son of a bitch. In her mind, she pictured him finding her note. Maybe the word scumball had been too mild. Maybe she should have used something stronger like asshole.

~0~

Eddie and Jason walked side by side up the levee, fishing poles over their shoulders, both of them whistling the Andy Griffith Show theme song. They'd caught some pretty good-sized catfish, plus a couple of small bluegill that they'd put back. Jason had enjoyed himself.

People were always saying that they didn't want to grow up. They didn't mean it. Couldn't mean it. Jason would never grow up.

They cleaned the fish, then Eddie handed the bucket to Jason. "Don't forget to either put these in the refrigerator right away, or have Adel cook them."

"Okay." Jason held the bucket tight in both hands, shuffling his feet. "Why don't you come and eat with us?"

Eddie thought about the times, years ago, when he'd sat at their kitchen table. He shook his head. "No, not today."

"Sometime?"

"Yeah. Sometime."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

Eddie watched Jason pedal down the lane on his bike, then he turned to go in the house.

A note. On the door.

He grabbed it, and something pink and gooey stretched from the door to the paper.

Gum.

At first, he laughed.

Was she ever pissed.

Then, he started thinking about the bad locks on her doors. If he hadn't broken in, who had? And would they come back?

~0~

Maddie carefully slid the mousetrap inside the plastic cassette tape holder. On the outside of the case, in magic marker, she wrote the word scumball.

That should attract his attention, she thought, putting the case in the middle of Eddie's kitchen table. He wouldn't be able to resist a temptation like that….

Her head. Her head was killing her.

Maddie groaned and rolled over, hugging the pillow to her, trying to return to the dream, unable to do so because of a throbbing headache. Why'd she drink the whole bottle of wine?

"Maddie. Wake up."

Enid. In her dream.

I've been looking for you
, Maddie told her.
Wondering where you'd gone
.

"Maddie."

Maddie came awake with a start, or at least she thought she was awake.

"Enid?"

"Hello, Madison."

Maddie sat up, blinking at the dark shape near the end of the bed.

She switched on the bedside lamp.

Enid stood there in all her glory, looking tacky with her overbleached hair, her thick makeup, her mile-long nails. She smelled like a combination of expensive perfume and an ashtray full of cigarette butts on a humid day.

What a relief. "Enid. My God."

Maddie felt a rush of kinship, of sisterly affection that caught her by surprise. She scrambled off the bed, took three steps toward her sister, then stopped.

Enid didn't seem as thrilled with the reunion.

"I thought you were dead!" Maddie said, trying to make Enid understand what she'd been going through. "I thought you'd been murdered. I thought you'd been in a plane crash."

Her head took that moment to remind her of her recent overindulgence. Her brain felt swollen, her thoughts muddled.

Enid.

Alive.

"I want the tape."

No "Nice to see you, sis. How ya been?"

"What are you talking about?" What was all this about a tape? The whole thing made Maddie's head hurt even more.

"The demo tape. Where is it?"

Enid's voice was rougher than Maddie remembered, more gravelly. Hard living. It did that to a person.

"I've turned this place upside down and couldn't find it. What did you do with it?"

"You ransacked your own house?"

"That reminds me. What did you do with my VCR?"

"I hocked it."

"I want it back."

So very Enid in her reaction. "Let's see. You stole my car and wiped out my bank account if I remember correctly."

"You were fair game. You've always been fair game."

"Why didn't you just ask me if I had your precious tape?"

"I didn't want anybody to know I was in town. I owe a lot of people money. I wanted them to think I was dead."

"
I
thought you were dead."

Enid shrugged. “It's not like we've ever been close."

Maddie's thoughts shifted. In her mind's eye, she visualized the note she'd left for Eddie.

Whoops.

Enid made a disgusted sound. "You've screwed everything up."

"I came here because you were missing."

"I was supposed to be missing. That was the idea. Now give me the tape, and I'll go missing again."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"I sent it to you. When you were in Arizona."

Maddie shook her head. She wasn't getting any of this.

Enid began to pace back and forth, talking with her hands. "I used a fake name and sent the tape to you in Arizona. But when I went all the way out there to get it, you were gone."

"It took you two months to get to Arizona?"

"I was busy trying to find a buyer for the tape. There’s so much involved when you do something of this magnitude. I even bought myself a new identity, but I'm not telling you what it is. I wanted Enid to vanish. I wanted to be presumed dead. That was the whole idea. I didn't want anybody looking for me. The tape, Maddie. I have somebody willing to pay me a quarter of a million for it."

"What could be worth that kind of money?" Maddie asked, more to herself than Enid.

"'Cool Shade.'" Enid smiled, proud of herself.

It made Maddie think of times when they were little and Enid had done something bad. She'd never seemed to feel remorse or guilt, only self-satisfaction. Enid had worried her then, but Maddie had hoped with time, her sister would develop a conscience. It looked as if it hadn't happened. An interesting case study. A possible answer to the age-old question of whether or not a person is born with a sense of right and wrong.

"You took the tape from Eddie’s house," Maddie said.

"He was passed out. I wasn't expecting to find anything like that. I was looking for some pot or crack or something. Anything. What I found was the tape."

She plopped into a chair, crossing her bare legs, swinging a foot with red toenails and strappy sandals. "Eddie Berlin." She gave her head an indignant toss. Her eyes hardened.

A woman scorned.

"That asshole. He didn't want me. He called Al for a hooker, and when I got there, he looked at me, then told me to leave! To leave! And then he passed out."

"And that's when you found the tape."

"I needed some kind of compensation, something for my trouble. I should have kept the tape myself, but I panicked. I thought he'd notice it was gone and put it together. So I mailed it to you. I wasn't worried about you playing it. In your letter, you said you couldn't play music with words at that piddly little station." She let out a bitter laugh. "I should have kept it. He never even missed it."

Until yesterday.

"Where's the tape, little sister?"

Maddie rubbed her head, trying to stall, trying to think.

"A quarter of a millions dollars," Enid said, as if her words might help Maddie remember.

"The tape isn't yours to sell." Why did she bother trying to appeal to a conscience Enid didn't have?

"I'll give you a fourth of the money."

Enid thought everybody was like her, they just didn't know it yet. And that someday they would come around, realizing what fools they'd always been by clinging to ideals that got them nowhere.

Enid jumped to her feet.

The longer Maddie stalled, the angrier Enid became. "You were always so goody-goody, so Miss Perfect."

She stepped closer, the light falling across her face, a face that looked older than it should. Her inner arms were bruised. Junkie.

"That's a lovely shade of purple there," Maddie said blandly, all the while a black despair sinking into her heart. How did a person come to this?

"Shut up and get me the tape."

Maddie grabbed her jeans and put them on, slipping them under the oversized T-shirt. "I can't believe I wasted my time coming here," she said, zipping her pants, shoving her feet into a pair of clogs.

"All of our lives are a waste, no matter where we are, no matter what we're doing," Enid said. "Don't you get it, Maddie? What have you accomplished in your years of self-righteousness? Found a cure for cancer? How about AIDS? Or even the clap?"

"We don't have to all be stars," Maddie said quietly, more to herself than to Enid. She had to believe that every life was important. If not, she couldn't exist. Couldn't live. "We can cherish the quiet moments. We can live day to day."

Enid let out a snort and shook her head. "You haven't changed. You're the same fool you always were. This is it. All there is. People scrambling, scraping, getting what they can while they can."

"I'd rather be a fool than a vulture feeding off other people." Maddie walked toward the door.

Enid jumped to her feet, putting her arm across the opening. "Where are you going?"

"To get the tape. It's outside. In my car. In the glove compartment."

Enid laughed, a gust of cigarette breath hitting Maddie in the face. "You always thought I was an airhead, didn't you? You wait here." She left, running down the steps.

By the time Maddie got downstairs, Enid was rushing in the front door, tape in hand.

"I'll get my things and go," Maddie said, anxious to get out of there before Enid tried to play the tape.

"Don't you want to hear it?"

"No."

But Enid was already in front of the stereo. She pushed the power button and slipped in the tape.

At first it was just the hiss of the tape moving over the pickup.

Then voices.

People talking, muttering, like far-off crowd noises.

Enid frowned and turned it up.

That just made it hiss more. She pushed the Fast Forward, stopped it, then listened again. More distant voices, like something picking up the wrong track, or like a tape that had been erased but not erased completely.

Frantic, Enid fast-forwarded to the end, flipped it over, and tried the other side.

Blank.

Enid was about to lose it. "The song. The song is gone!"

Maddie shrugged. "Cassette tapes don't last forever. Maybe the heat in the car fried it."

Enid let out an enraged shriek. She'd always been a screamer, always had a temper, but still, Maddie was unprepared for her next move.