Death Will Help You Leave Him (10 page)

I shoved the bag of balls back into the closet and put my shoulder to the door until I got it closed. I shook off a staticky athletic sock that clung to my pants leg like a scared kitten in a tree and picked my way over to where she stared at a drawing on the wall. It seemed to be a signed Picasso.

“Original?”

“Of course.”

I already didn’t like Mac. Now I hated him.

Laura turned away and started rummaging among the tangled covers on the bed.

“What are you doing?”

“I just want to see— oh!” Her face tightened into a grim frown. “Damn!”

“What’s the matter?”

She ignored me. She yanked back the covers. The incriminating evidence lay on the sheet: an extremely wispy pair of feminine bikini panties and a barely-over-the-nipples lace bra. Laura ground her teeth.

“Not yours, huh?” Considering how blithely she’d jumped into bed with me, I didn’t quite see the problem.

“Idiot!” That must be me. “Bastard!” That must be him.

“I’m going to pee,” I said.

The bathroom hadn’t been cleaned in a while. An open bottle of aftershave, a brush clogged with tufts of graying hair, and a box of condoms sat on the edge of the sink. The toilet seat was up. I unzipped with one hand and swung open the medicine cabinet door with the other. I’m always interested in pharmaceuticals, even now when I can’t perform any hands-on research. The guy had a lot of unlabeled pills. He probably bought them off the Internet. I would take a closer look in a minute. I was about to flush when I heard an elevator ping beyond the wall. Then a heavy door slammed. Uh oh. We were busted.

I lowered the toilet seat and lid in soft slow motion. Hastily zipped up, nearly pinching off a capillary in my finger. Tiptoed to the door. I eased it open just a crack. No point in calling attention to myself.

Mac’s angry voice carried fine. I needed to take my eye from the crack and put my ear to it to make out everything Laura said. The cringing, little-girl tone shocked me.

“Mac, please don’t be mad at me. I need you— I needed to know.”

“I’ve warned you before, Laura. What I do is not your business.”

“I can’t not care. Please! I love you so much. Don’t you love me just a little? Don’t you like it when I do this? Or this?”

Now I cringed. She was coming on to him.

He didn’t buy it.

“Ow! You hurt me!”

“I’ll hurt you a lot more if you come snooping again. I said stop it! Stop it!”

Laura’s anguished wail tore me up. What was he doing to her?

“You will listen to what I say!”
Slap. “
You will not stick your nose in my business!”
Slap.

Oh, shit. I couldn’t cower in the bathroom and listen to this. I had to do something.

I pushed open the door and marched out, hoping I looked tougher than I felt. From the hall, I could see both the entrance door Mac had come in by and the open bedroom window. I wanted to make a run for it. But I couldn’t leave Laura there getting beaten up.

As kids, Jimmy and I had fought like puppies. We’d tumbled and snapped but never really hurt each other. In my teens, I’d been in plenty of fights. I had a scar or two and memories of a few close calls when I’d been lucky not to get killed. But all my berserker recklessness had come straight from Jack Daniel’s. In sobriety, I’d discovered my inner wuss. Too bad. I squared my shoulders, visualized John Wayne, and swaggered into the living room.

Mac was big. Not square and solid like Jimmy, but tall and broad and thick like the Hulk.

He loomed over Laura, arm raised to begin a backhand swing he had probably perfected on the tennis court. She cowered before him, face averted to avoid the blow. My stomach clenched.

One of the knuckles poised to swipe wore a big, ugly ring with corners on it.

“Hey! Now wait a minute!”

Both of them froze. Then Mac swung around without lowering his arm.

“Who the hell are you?”

I stood my ground.

“You leave my wife alone.”

Mac laughed, a bark with a growl in it like the Hound of the Baskervilles.

“The drunk? Hey, bud, you’re trespassing in my apartment. Or does it bother you if I say
Bud?
” His mock-solicitous tone oozed contempt. “And I do believe you mean your
ex.
”

I ground my teeth. I felt my jaw joint slip a notch with a little click.

“Leave her alone.”

“Why?” Mac laughed again. “I’ll do anything I damn please with
my
girlfriend in
my
apartment.” He reached out and drew her to him, flinging a heavy arm around her shoulders. You could have sawed enough planks for a picnic table out of it. “Wanna watch me fuck her?”

Rage propelled me forward. I sprang toward him with both fists clenched. A deep growl rumbled in my chest. I felt like a bantam in the ring with an ostrich, but I couldn’t help that. I didn’t even bother to curse. He could have the F word. I’d have his heart and liver out. I’d kill him.

“Laura!” It came out like a battle cry. Like Lancelot yelling, “Guinevere!” Like Tristan screaming, “Isolde!” Even though I didn’t love her any more.

I hope for Lancelot and Tristan’s sake that those ladies didn’t do what Laura did. When Mac put his arm around her, she’d plastered herself to his side as if she’d been glued there. Now she broke free and leaped in front of him. She crouched in a defensive stance, hissing like a pissed-off cat. At me.

I skidded to a stop.

“Laura?” It came out in an incredulous screech.

“Go away, Bruce! You’ll ruin everything.” She stamped one blue ballet slipper.

Me? Ruin what? A perfect
pas de deux
? An expert beating?

“But…but…but….” I sputtered like a Harley with a bad load of gas.

“Don’t be an idiot,” she said.

Mac said nothing. He folded his arms like Mr. Clean and looked sardonic. He did it even better than me.

I reached out across what felt like the Grand Canyon and tried to take her hand.

“You’re getting hurt,” I said. “You deserve better than this. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

She swatted my hand away and stepped back. Mac moved in to meet her, a solid wall at her back. Her flyaway blue curls only came up to his chin. He put both arms around her waist from behind. His thumbs just brushed her nipples. With a malicious grin, he locked his gaze on mine and gave each of them a tweak between thumb and forefinger. She let him.

“Let’s get out of here,” I repeated, because I had to try.

She wiggled her butt against what I bet was a Hulk-sized hard on. I thought her eyes were sorry.

“Just go. Please.”

I looked from the bedroom with its open window to the door Mac had come in by. I weighed the loss in dignity climbing back out onto the fire escape against having to march past them to exit by the door. Steps up to the gallows or dead man walking down Death Row? At least the door wouldn’t break my ankle. They watched in silence as I left.

“She let me walk away!” I banged my fist on the nearest hard surface. A big glass vase rattled on the coffee table. Barbara removed it.

“Hey, that’s Lalique,” she said. “My father bought it for my mother in Paris on their honeymoon.”

I had dropped by to pick up Jimmy’s printouts from the funeral website and let off steam. Impotent rage still roiled my gut.

“I know it hurt, baby,” Barbara said, “but you and Laura aren’t married any more. She doesn’t owe you anything, and she’s not your burden.”

“She was scared of him!” I pounded the table again. This time a glazed ceramic pot bounced. “Sorry. Take the pot away too. I’m so mad.”

“That’s okay,” Barbara said. “My sister made that one in arts and crafts when she was thirteen. You can break it if you like.”

“Thanks.” My sense of humor will always trump my inner drama queen, and Barbara knew it. She’d always thought Laura’s craziness had doomed our marriage as much as my drinking. I folded my arms, tucking my fists into my armpits where they couldn’t do any more damage. “The guy’s an eight-hundred-pound gorilla, and she snuggled up to him like what’s-her-name and King Kong.”

“What do you expect in an addictive relationship?” she said. “He’s like her drink.”

“She wasn’t like that with me,” I objected.

“So she wasn’t addicted to you the way you were to her,” Barbara said.

“She always pretty much led you around by the dick,” Jimmy added.

They both looked sorry for me. I couldn’t have that.

“Thanks a heap.” I cocked a finger and shot at Jimmy. He fired back. The imaginary recoil nearly knocked him off his computer chair. I clutched my chest and staggered. Ham on wry, that’s me. “Can we please change the subject?”

“Murder,” Barbara said. “Luz and Frankie were a lot like Laura and Mac.”

Hell, I was just starting to feel better.

“Don’t say Laura and Mac, like they’re a couple. Let’s go to dinner at Laura and Mac’s. Let’s watch Mac slap Laura around. Though slap is a euphemism. The guy has hands like nine pound hammers. He doesn’t have to make a fist to have a fist.”

“You can’t save her, Bruce. But Luz has got a chance, now Frankie’s dead— if she doesn’t end up convicted of his murder.”

“Okay, okay. I said I’d help.”

Half an hour later, I took the Christopher Street subway stairs two at a time and plunged into the maze of Greenwich Village. The Village had been a kind of Mecca for Jimmy and me when we were spaced out adolescents trying to transcend the neighborhood. Before we got old enough for bars, we’d hung out in pizza places and hamburger joints where they’d sell us a pitcher of beer. The toughs we usually hung out with in Carl Schurz Park wouldn’t be caught dead downtown among what they called fags and weirdos. To feel sophisticated, we only had to take the subway. In fact, we used to get girls by inviting them downtown on dates. It didn’t take much to thrill a Catholic girl who thought patent leather shoes were sinful.

The Village had changed a lot since we were kids. The starving artist scene had moved to cheaper neighborhoods. Many of the kinky little shops had gone, though tattoo places and cheap jewelry stores where they’d pierce any body part you wanted were enjoying a renaissance. Shoe stores and four-dollar cups of coffee had crept in. But I enjoyed feeling nostalgic about those early walks on the wild side.

As he’d promised, Jimmy had done some homework on the program guys we’d met at Frankie’s funeral. Kevin, the runty little Irish guy, was gay. He’d said so up front when he asked Jimmy to sponsor him. Kevin had mentioned that our old friend Mars swung both ways and sometimes went to gay meetings with him. I didn’t remember Mars being bi back in our TC days. Traditional therapeutic communities are heavy on testosterone. Barbara says their idea of sensitivity to sexual orientation nowadays is to put all the gay guys in a gay men’s group so everybody knows who they are. If Mars was already into boys, he probably kept it to himself.

So here I was, walking in the door of a gay AA meeting. I felt a tad self-conscious. But it’s not like I thought some guy in eye shadow would put his hand on my crotch.

The meeting was big even by New York standards, where fifty passes for a medium-sized group. It was held in a big chapel on the ground floor of the church, rather than in the basement. Hanging scrolls of the Twelve Steps and the Twelve Traditions blocked most of the stained glass windows and the giant cross in the front of the room. Tactful.

The qualification had just started when I walked in. The pews all faced front, so my chance to see if I could spot Frankie’s rehab buddies wouldn’t come till the break. I sat down near the back. I felt uncomfortable, but no more than at my usual meetings. My eye fell on Tradition Three on the right-hand scroll: “The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking.” Gay meeting or not, I had a right to be here.

The speaker didn’t look or sound particularly gay, if you think all gay guys flop their wrists and call each other Mary. His heavy drinking started when he came out to his family and they threw him out. He had a partner named Herb. Otherwise, it was the same old story. Partied hard, fucked things up, hit bottom, came to AA kicking and screaming, gradually began to like it, slowly got his act together. Wouldn’t trade a single day. Grateful. It all came down to that. Grateful and humble. Those words still made me squirm. But in some corner of my cynical heart I aspired to them myself.

As the speaker wound up and they started passing the basket, I craned my neck, trying to spot the rehab guys. That bald head, shiny as honey and about the same color, might be Mars. When he stood up, I saw the tattoos. And when the fellow next to Mars turned his head to talk to him, I saw it was Kevin. They squeezed out of their pew and joined the flow toward the coffee, cookies, and donuts in the back. I didn’t want to be too obvious. So I got my caffeine fix before I positioned myself so our hands would meet over the Krispy Kremes. Mars and I both went for the last one in the box. Perfect timing. We checked, fingertips hovering above the box, and made eye contact.

“Go ahead,” I said.

At the same time, he said, “No problem.”

Our hands dodged a bit, like two people trying to pass each other on a narrow street. I let him get the donut.

“They didn’t tell me sobriety would turn me into Miss Manners,” I remarked.

“Sure do need that sugar we used to drink without even noticin’,” Mars said. “Just got outa rehab, and seems like I can’t get enough a that sweet stuff. Bruce, right? Saw you out in Brooklyn the other day.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I had been watching Kevin pile cookies on a napkin. At Mars’s words, he looked around.

“Jimmy’s friend,” he said.

“And you’re poor Frankie’s friends from rehab,” I said, as if I hadn’t been stalking them. “Sad thing, huh? If he felt half as bad as I did coming off the booze, it’s a shame he bought it after all the trouble and before he got to enjoy any of the benefits.”

“How long are you clean?” Kevin spoke thickly around a mouthful of donut.

“Almost ten months.”

“That’s fantastic,” Kevin said with evident sincerity. “I’ve never gone that long. What’s it like?” I didn’t want to talk about me. But the admiration felt good. I hadn’t had anything you could possibly call an achievement in a long time.