Flamethrower (7 page)

“Any idea why your shrink’s husband is selling that colt?” he asked.

“What?” Ruby feigned complete ignorance.

“I saw Violet earlier. She was acting mopey and didn’t want to tell me why. I finally dragged out of her that she’d just finalized a sale on Fearless Jones. I asked her why the hell Jody’s husband wanted to sell the horse, but Violet didn’t seem to know.”

Ruby worked at looking stunned and disappointed. She was all that and more. And on the verge of telling Ed about The Psychiatrist and the leg when Ed reached up, pulled her to him, and kissed her deeply. The Psychiatrist’s story could wait.

ED WAS LONG GONE
when Ruby woke up the next morning. She fed the cats then read a few pages of
Rats
while sipping a cup of very black coffee. Once the caffeine hit, she rolled out her mat and did forty-five minutes of yoga. At the end, she sat in lotus attempting to meditate. But all she could see was Jody’s husband’s leg floating before her eyes, bloody and ugly. She gave up on clearing her mind, untwisted her limbs, and went into the bathroom to shower. She got dressed for work and pulled her wet hair into a high ponytail in spite of the fact that wearing her hair that way seemed to inspire more catcalling than usual from teenage boys and construction workers, who apparently equated ponytails with slutdom.

Outside, the sky was teal blue and the air smelled salty. Ruby wanted to walk onto the beach and put her feet in the water. She looked at her watch. Seven minutes to eleven. She had time. Sort of.

She crossed Surf and saw Guillotine, the kiddie-park operator, walking his pack of dogs. The Frenchman had three pit bulls, an Australian cattle dog, and a balding Chihuahua.

“Guillotine, hi.” Ruby nodded at him.

Guillotine glanced up and grunted. He had grown a beard over the winter. Long gray and ginger hairs curled and swooped all the way to his collarbone. He was thin and unhealthy looking and his blue eyes were small. Still, Ruby was curious about him and sometimes wished he’d talk to her. Not today.

Ruby walked onto the beach. A few old white guys were
wading into the water. A jogger with headphones was running along the shoreline. Some kids were swimming, their mothers sitting on the beach smoking cigarettes. They looked as though they were really enjoying the cigarettes, and it made Ruby want one. She’d been working on a wad of Nicorette gum all morning, aiming at getting through the day without a smoke. But smoking looked so lovely just then. Ruby stared at the pack of Marlboros right there on the beach towel. She hoped one of the women would notice her staring and offer her a smoke. This was a ludicrous fantasy considering the price of a pack of cigarettes.

One of the women felt Ruby’s gaze and glanced up. It wasn’t a friendly look. Ruby moved on. She walked to the water, took off her red sandals, and waded in. The sea was warm and soft. Ruby saw several Styrofoam peanuts floating nearby and it depressed her. She figured trash was like rats. If you saw a little, it meant there was a lot lurking under the surface. Ruby took her feet out of the water and walked barefoot on the sand for a few paces. After narrowly missing stepping on a shard of glass, she put her sandals back on.

The beach at Coney Island had never been clean, but it seemed to be getting dirtier. Since the zealous Republican mayors of New York City had managed to reduce crime and eradicate the overt sale of drugs in neighborhoods where white people lived, surely they could do something about Styrofoam peanuts in the sea.

Ruby glanced at her watch. She was now ten minutes late for work. She didn’t think her boss, Bob, would mind. But she was wrong.

R
uby climbed the stairs to the museum and found Bob standing in the middle of the darkened front room, frowning. At his feet were dozens of boxes filled with books and Coney Island souvenirs.

“Hi. Sorry I’m a little late.”

Bob lifted his frown and aimed it at Ruby.

“Hi,” he said without cheer.

“What’s wrong?”

“Is there something you’re not telling me?” Bob asked. He looked angry. He’d shaved his head recently and his skull was bullet shaped. He usually looked pleasantly deranged, but today he looked frightening.

“Something I’m not telling you about what?”

“You got money problems?”

Ruby squinted. “What? What are you talking about?”

“You know you can be honest with me. I can loan you money if you need it.”

“What? Why are you bringing up money?” Ruby glanced down at her clothing, wondering if she suddenly looked impoverished.

“I’m gonna be all right on my own today,” Bob said then. He’d stopped looking at Ruby.

“On your own what?” Ruby asked, confused.

“Working. You can go home.”

“Go home?” she asked, bewildered. “But we’ve got that shipment to unpack.” Ruby motioned at the boxes.

“It’s okay. I’m fine here on my own,” Bob stated.

“Why are you asking me about money, Bob? Is there money missing or something?”

He still wouldn’t look at her.

“Just go on,” he said, waving her toward the door.

Normally, Ruby would have had some fight in her. But not after what had gone on in the last few days. She stared at Bob. He glanced at her then looked away.

“Okay. I’ll go.” Ruby paused, expecting Bob to recant. He didn’t.

“You want me to come in tomorrow?” she asked.

“I’ll call you.” He turned his back to her.

“Bob.” She tried one last time. “What the hell is going on?”

“Just go,” he said in a small voice.

“Fine,” Ruby said. “If you decide to tell me what’s wrong, you know where to find me.”

She slowly walked down the stairs, waiting for Bob to call her back. He didn’t. She continued down and out to the street. The sky was too blue and the carousel’s organ was screaming.

Ruby let herself into her building and climbed the stairs. Ramirez and Elsie’s door was open, and she braced herself for interaction. Neither of them was in the kitchen though. Ruby unlocked her door and went inside her apartment. Stinky didn’t even come to greet her.

Ruby sank onto the couch and put her head in her hands.
She really needed to talk to Jane. But Jane was presumably sound asleep behind a swath of mosquito netting in her room in Mysore, India. Living without a phone and glad for it.

Ruby toyed with the idea of calling her mother. Her mother didn’t believe in psychiatry, analysis, therapy, or even doctors, and though she’d never say it aloud, she’d think it was all Ruby’s comeuppance for going to a shrink in the first place. She would listen to Ruby, but she wouldn’t know what to say and would be vaguely appalled at the whole thing. And then feel guilty for being appalled. Make a stab at being solicitous. They would both hang up feeling guilty for not better understanding each other.

As soon as Ruby decided not to call anyone, the phone rang.

“Hello,” Ruby said, making it sound like
What the hell do you want?

“Ruby.” Jody Ray’s voice sounded lifeless.

“Oh. Hello,” Ruby said.

“I need help,” Jody said.

“You’re not the only one.”

That shut her up. But she didn’t ask Ruby what was wrong.

“This is absurd, Jody. You ask me for help then you kick me out.”

“I’m sorry I’ve been irrational. You’ll admit that under the circumstances, it’s understandable.”

Ruby did have to grant her that much.

“Will you help me look for Tobias?” Jody asked.

A mosquito had gotten in through one of the defective
screen windows and was buzzing near Ruby’s head. She started swatting it with last month’s
Velo News
. There was almost nothing Ruby hated more than mosquitoes.

“Ruby?”

“There’s a mosquito,” Ruby said. She knew it sounded crazy. But no one involved in this particular conversation was in a position to judge levels of sanity.

“I’m not sure,” Ruby added when The Psychiatrist failed to offer sympathy over the mosquito.

“Not sure about what? About helping me look for Toby?”

“Right,” Ruby said. She saw the mosquito land on a
Daily Racing Form
on the end table. She swatted it with
Velo News
but missed.

“All right. I understand,” Jody said in a tiny, weak voice.

“What do you want me to do?” Ruby was angry, but she was curious too.

“Help me.”

Ruby paused. “Yeah, okay, I’ll do it.”

“You will?”

“Why not?”

“Well, there are a thousand reasons why not,” Jody said.

Ruby interrupted: “It was a rhetorical question.”

“Oh. Right.”

“What do I do?” Ruby asked.

“You’re familiar with the Rockaways?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“I need you to go there.”

“You think Tobias is in Rockaway? Where?” Ruby saw the
mosquito again. Back on the bike magazine. She decided to tolerate it and its horrible little disease-carrying body.

“He seems to have bought a house there. I found the deed and some other papers in his safe-deposit box at the bank.”

“And why can’t you go?”

“I imagine he’ll be keeping an eye out for me. Providing this is in fact a self-orchestrated kidnapping. And of course if he has not had himself kidnapped, if this isn’t some idiotic scheme, then he won’t be in Rockaway at all.”

Ruby couldn’t think of a single reason not to report her psychiatrist to the relevant governing bodies. Nor could she think of any reason to do what Jody was asking.

The mosquito was still on the magazine.

“Okay. Give me the address,” Ruby said.

Lulu, the calico cat, strolled into the living room and flopped down on the floor, exposing the spot of orange fur on her otherwise impeccably white belly.

“Just a moment,” The Psychiatrist said.

Ruby heard Jody shuffling papers. Lulu was staring at Ruby, apparently expecting a cuteness award.

Jody recited an address on Beach Seventy-ninth Street. Ruby pictured stubby buildings close to the water. Boats and couches in front yards. The kind of trashy, wild neighborhood that reminded Ruby of what New York City had been like fifteen years earlier, when it was still irreverent and untamable, before Times Square became Disney World, Manhattan a shiny plaything for Young Republicans.

“Are you there?”

“Oh. Yes,” Ruby said. Normally, this bitterness over the taming of New York would have been exactly the kind of thing she’d have discussed with her shrink. Not now though.

“You’ve never been to this Rockaway place?” Ruby asked.

“Been there? I didn’t know the bastard owned this dump.”

“It’s a dump?”

“A hundred and fifty-two thousand does not buy much in the city of New York in this day and age.”

Ruby agreed that it did not.

“Why would he buy something out there?” she asked.

“How should I know? He’s nuts,” Jody said.

“‘Nuts’ is better than ‘mental defective’?”

“Yes,” Jody said. “It’s a little less jarring.”

“Ah,” Ruby said.

“Shouldn’t you be at work now?”

“I should. But I’m not. It’s a long story.”

“You didn’t do anything rash, I hope.”

“No,” she said, “I didn’t.” She saw no point in telling Jody about what had happened with Bob.

Ruby wrote down the address in Rockaway and told Jody she would go over there.

“And you’ll have your cell phone?” Jody asked.

“I’ll have it. I’ll call you when I get there.”

“Thank you,” Jody said.

“Yeah,” Ruby said, “you’re welcome.”

She hung the phone up. Lulu was still lying there exposing the spot on her belly, but when Ruby tried to rub the belly, Lulu hissed, got up, and ran away to the shoe closet. Lulu had
been a stray who’d come in Ruby’s window a few years earlier. For months Lulu wouldn’t let anyone touch her. She’d eventually gotten more trusting, especially of Ruby, but still wouldn’t stand for humans taking liberties like touching her stomach.

Ruby went into the bedroom to put on clothes she could bike in. She loved the ride over to Rockaway, even if, in this instance, it was under peculiar circumstances. Ruby owned full-on bike-geek gear, including bike shorts, space-age stiff-soled biking shoes, a helmet that made her head look like a red acorn, and several brightly colored bike jerseys, but she only wore it when she was going for an all-out training session on her racing bike. For short-distance commutes and pleasure rides, she wore normal human clothing. She put on a pair of cutoffs and some sneakers.

Twenty minutes later, Ruby was about to roll the bike to the door when something made her pause. There was a bad feeling down her spine not unlike the one she’d had moments before finding Tobias’s leg in the fish tank.

Ruby went to the living room window and glanced out to the street below. She didn’t know what she expected to see, but nothing unusual was going on down there. Some kids were skateboarding across the street. A man and his pit bull walked by.

Ruby took a deep breath, then hoisted the bike onto her shoulder and carried it down the stairs.

It was a lovely blue day for a bike ride, and within a few miles Ruby had almost forgotten this was no ordinary bike ride. She was focusing on keeping a steady cadence while avoiding
potholes and rogue pedestrians crossing against the light. The car and noise levels intensified when she reached Emmons Avenue in Sheepshead Bay. She glanced peripherally at fishing boats bobbing on the water, old people walking hand in hand. She pedaled.