Gin and Toxic (Swan Song) (3 page)

Chapter Five

I drop my clutch and keys loudly on the floor.

“What?” I ask shakily.

Rosaline shakes her head, her eyes wide as saucers. “She’s dead, Adrian.”

“Are you sure?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know. I can’t go back in there.”

“Where’s Lucy?”

“In the bathroom throwing up. She checked on her a moment ago and… Oh God, Adrian. Her eyes.”

I push past a shaking Rosaline to hurry into the bedroom. We have two beds set up in here. One larger bed to fit two of us, usually Alice and Rosaline, and one small, cramped one for myself. Alice is on my bed lying on her side facing the rest of the room. I know she’s dead the moment I see her. There’s vomit on the floor beside her and she’s curled into the fetal position, her skin sharply white and tight over her bones. But it’s her eyes that let me know she’s gone. They’re colorless and empty, staring off into the distance blindly.

“Shit.” I mutter. I can feel panic rising inside of me. I need to squash it down, to be smart. I need help. “Tommy.”

I run out of the room, making a beeline for the window facing out over the street. I yank on the frame of the window, fighting against the frozen wood and cursing over and over again. Finally it gives way and I’m able to lean out just in time, just as I see Tommy stepping back into his car.

“
Hey, handsome!” I cry, careful not to use his name. My voice sounds shaky, horrified. His head snaps up to the window immediately.

“
Adrian?” he calls back, using a much more subdued tone than mine. “Are you alright?”

“I—Yeah. I don’t know. I changed my mind. About the nightcap? Will you come back up?”

I can’t see his face in the dark at this distance but I can tell he’s confused.

“It’s late.”
he argues, staring up at me.

“It’s almost early.” I tease shakily. “Come back up. Please.”

It’s the please that does it. He knows something’s up. He walks hurriedly back across the street, disappearing into the building entrance below me. I slam the window shut and hurry to the door. I have it open when he comes bounding up the stairs, his face a dark mask of concern.

“What’s happened?” he asks immediately. When he walks in he takes one look at Rosaline and gets the idea. She’s started crying silently, her face glistening with tears and her hands twitching at her sides. “Where?” he asks me gruffly.

“In the bedroom. Through there.” I whisper.

“Shut the door and keep quiet.” he tells me as he disappears into the bedroom.

When I shut the door Rosaline grabs onto me and buries her face in my shoulder, silent sobs racking her body. I don’t say a word and I don’t hug her back. I just stand there going numb, shutting down.

I hear Tommy curse from inside the room then he reappears, his expression all business.

“How long ago?” he asks sternly.

Rosaline ignores him and continues to weep into my shoulder. I have to shake her to get her attention.

“Rose. How long ago?”

“Um,” She sniffs, standing up straight and wiping her eyes. “Not even half an hour.
She was here with Lucy when I got home from the club a couple hours ago. She, um, she was weird. Acting looney.”

“What do you mean?”

Rosaline shakes her head faintly. “I don’t know. She was saying crazy things. Talking to people who weren’t there. Calling Luce and I by the wrong names. She called me by your name once, yelling at me about some number she didn’t want to do. It was like she thought she was still at the club.”

“Mickey said she threw up in the car.” Tommy says. “And she threw up in there but is that it?”

“Yeah. Yeah, just those two times.”

“Alright, you girls go sit on the couch.” He glances around suddenly, looking alarmed. “Where’s the other one? There are four of you, right?”

“Lucy.” I confirm. “Rose said she’s in the bathroom.”

“I’ll get her and bring her in here. Stay together and stay quiet. I gotta find a phone and call the doctor.”

“But she’s dead… isn’t she?” Rosaline asks weakly, sounding hopeful that maybe she’s wrong.

Tommy looks her hard in the eyes. “She’s gone. But we need the doc to tell us why.”

“Should we call the police?”

“Are you simple?” he asks her harshly.

I put my hand up and glare at him. “Easy. She’s upset, give her a break. I’ll talk to her. Just go get Lucy.”

Tommy storms out of the
room in search of the bathroom while I sit Rosaline down on the couch. She slumps down hard, the wind entirely out of her sails. I gently brush her brown hair out of her eyes as her tears start up again.

“We can’t call the cops until we know what happened.” I tell her softly, hoping I won’t have to repeat this for Lucy. “We need to know if it has something to do with the club or with the Outfit. If it does, it’ll be handled privately.”

Rosaline looks up at me with worried eyes. “You won’t let them just dump her body, will you? What if they want to put her out in the woods somewhere or sink her in the river? You won’t let them, right?”

I stare back into her pleading eyes and know I can’t promise her that. So I give her what I can.

“I’ll sure try.” I whisper.

Rosaline nods then leans over to lay her head on my shoulder again. I take her shaking hands in my own shaking hands and together they feel somehow solid. Steady. As though their
mutual fear cancels each other out and we’re stronger because we both feel it.

Lucy comes walking into the room looking like a ghost. Her face is pale, her white nightgown flows around her with each step, but her ey
es are hard. Rosaline and I are shaken up, but Lucy is different. Lucy, much to my surprise, is fightin’ mad.

“Scoot over.” she commands us. “Your boyfriend told me to sit down and shut up.”

“I’m sorry, Luce.” I mutter, not sure what I’m apologizing for. About Tommy being harsh with her? About Alice dying so young? About bringing Alice into the club in the first place, putting her in harm’s way? I don’t know, maybe all of it.

Lucy sits down and waits beside us. We all
fall silent, the only sound Rosaline’s occasional sniff. The small apartment smells uncomfortably of vomit and the inside of an outhouse. It’s wafting out of the bedroom and filling the space with death and decay. With the entire contents of Alice’s body that she left behind when her soul vacated the space. That bed will have to be burned and then what? Do we get another bed? Another roommate? Do we try to cover rent and expenses just the three of us?

I decide to wait for the dead body to be cleared out of the apartment before I go thinking about bringing someone new in.

Tommy eventually returns with the familiar face of the German doctor on his heels, the same one who attended to Eddie when he was shot last month. I nod hello to him when he enters but he ignores me. Instead, he follows Tommy straight into the bedroom where I hear him plunk his black medical bag down and begin muttering indiscernibly. I hear Tommy’s voice every now and again, low and rumbling, impossible to understand from here but somehow still reassuring. Eventually Rosaline stops sniffing and I wonder if she’s fallen asleep. I wish I could. Though considering what’s happened in that bedroom I don’t know how I will.

“Was she taking anything?” Tommy asks loudly, startling us all.

He and the doctor are standing in the room now, their tall, shadowed figures looking down on the three of us.

“I don’t know.” I answer. “I don’t think so.”

“A sleep syrup.” Rosaline says, sitting up straight. “I don’t know what kind but it’s in the kitchen cupboard. Brown bottle.”

“You mean zis?” the doctor asks, holding up a brown bottle with no label and a small cork in the top.

“That looks like it, yeah. Where did you find that?”

“Under the bed.” Tommy says darkly. “It musta rolled under after she drank it.”

“Do you know how full ze bottle vas?”

We all shake our heads. No one knows. I didn’t even know she was taking it.

The doctor nods thoughtfully, looking at Tommy. “She must have procured it from another doctor. I did not prescribed her zis.”

Tommy nods in agreement. “Nick. His doc.”

“Zis vas her boyfriend?”

“Yeah.”

“Nick who?” I interrupt. “This is the second time I’ve heard that name tonight. I don’t think she was even dating anyone.”

“Yes
, she was.” Lucy says harshly. When I look at her in surprise, she’s glaring at me. “She was dating some big shot named Nick. He drove her home in limos all the time. Bought her clothes. Took her out to the theater. How did you not know that?”

“That’s what I’m wondering.”

“She kept him a secret.” Rosaline says, sounding tired. “Lucy only knows because she was here in the evenings when he picked her up. You and I were usually still at the club workin’.”

“
How did you know about him?”

“
She tried to keep him a secret but how could she? I think everyone knew. I mean, it’s Ralph’s cousin, for God’s sake.”

“Whoa.” I whisper.

“That
doesn’t matter.” Tommy interrupts. “Here’s what happened. Alice has been seein’ someone. He got her knocked up. She demanded he marry her. He’s already a married man with three kids so he says no fuckin’ way. She gets sad and scared. She gets a little too drunk, takes some sleep syrup to try and forget her troubles and BAM!” All three of us women jump in surprise. “Lights out. Permanently.”

Lucy glares up at Tommy. “You want us to say she committed suicide?”

“No. I want you to agree she took the wrong drug with her hooch and it killed her. You can call it an accident if you want, I don’t care, but that’s what happened. Some guy, you don’t know who,” he says pointedly, making eye contact with each of us, “Broke her heart and she made an emotional mistake. It happens a lot. It’s a damn shame and a terrible loss, but it is what it is.”

There are a lot of problems with this story. Problems like how drunk Alice was at the club
before
she took the sleep syrup. Like the fact that I don’t believe for a second that Alice was pregnant. Like the fact that she and I had the same headache and nausea symptoms just a couple weeks ago.

“Tommy, can I talk to you? Alone?”

Tommy shakes his head. “I don’t got time to listen to you cry over your friend, Adrian. There’s a lot still to do tonight, like call the cops and that chaps my ass.”

“Just for a second. With the doc
tor?”

Tommy frowns at me but then gestures for me to lead the way into the kitchen.

“What’s this about?”

“I don’t believe she killed herself.” I put up my hands asking them to wait when both men begin to speak, to tell me that’s the story and I need to stick to it. “I’ll say she accidentally did, that’s fine. Don’t worry about that. But she and I were both having headaches back before Thanksgiving. We were both feeling like throwing up then too. She actually did a couple times.
Then we felt better around Thanksgiving but then, for me at least, it started back up again.”

“What’s your point?” Tommy asks impatiently.

“My point is, I’m worried.” I look to the doctor. “Could it be something else that killed her? Could I be sick with it too?”

He eyes me shrewdly, looking me over for signs of
something I don’t understand. “Vhat are ze symptoms? Nausea? Headache? Is zis all?”

“I get dizzy sometimes too. It gets hard to focus.”

“Vhen do you feel zis vay? In ze morning? Afternoon? Evening?”

“Always in the evening, always after I’ve been at the club for a while.”

“Hmmm. And you are a performer? Up on ze stage all night?”

“Almost entirely, yes.”

“Alice was too.” Tommy tells him. “She was in the chorus.”

The doctor puts his hand on my throat and begins prodding gently. “You eat at ze club?”

“Sometimes.” I say with a shrug. “But not always.”

“Has anyone else complained of zese symptoms?”

Tommy shakes his head. “Not that I’ve heard.”

“Ze bright lights? Do zey hurt your eyes?”

I nod emphatically. “Yes.”

“Uh huh.” he removes his hand from my throat and steps back, speaking to Tommy. “It is headaches. A very severe headache can cause nausea, dizziness, ze sensitivity to light.”

“That’s it?” I ask, feeling annoyed. “You’re diagnosing my headaches as headaches?”

“Severe headaches.” he corrects, ignoring my to
ne and digging around in his bag. He hands me a brown bottle, one that looks eerily similar to what they found under Alice’s bed. “Zey could be brought on by ze lights or made vorse by zem. Ve don’t know. But I vill give you laudanum. It vill help. You take one dosage before you start vork. It vill keep ze headaches avay.”

“For how long?”

The doctor shrugs. “Maybe alvays. Or until you do not need it.”