Just Kill Me (34 page)

“So you know her?”

“Yeah. She's awesome. And she won't stop asking me about you. I didn't even ask her to come that second night.”

“Seriously?”

“She's basically nocturnal, too. She'll still be up.”

Cyn drives along through the streets and I try to process this. I've had plenty of dreams and fantasies about Morticia. She's the crush I've focused on to get over Zoey. I keep checking my e-mail, hoping she'll track me down. The only thing is that I didn't want another long-distance relationship.

Magwitch Park isn't too far away, though.

I text Rick:

MEGAN:

YOU KNEW MORTICIA?

RICARDO “THE RASCAL” TORRE:

Ah! That's the trip! Yeah, I thought it was a lame stunt.

RICARDO “THE RASCAL” TORRE:

But yes, she's great. And I guess you're “in” enough now to know all the secrets. Tell her I said hi. Her name's Enid, by the way.

Enid. It really is Enid.

How charming and old-fashioned.

My knees start to shake, and a kaleidoscope of butterflies take up residence in my stomach. That's what you call a group of butterflies. A kaleidoscope.

I wonder why they didn't come clean on this before.

“Will she be okay with my stories?” I ask. “And . . . what goes on in them?”

“She can outdo you. Trust me. You won't freak her out.”

While I'm thinking, I notice a newsletter for the nursing home on the floor and catch a stray item about their beloved receptionist, Shanita, dying.

“Wait, Shanita died?”

“Yeah,” said Cyn. “Couple weeks ago. It was quite a shocker.”

“You didn't tell me?”

“We've been so busy, I forgot.”

Cyn steers the truck out of Humboldt Park and turns on the radio. I'm actually—and I hate to say this—sort of relieved. I liked Shanita. But she knew way too much about what we were doing. It makes me nervous that anyone knows anything.

I'm excited, but at the same time I'm feeling bad about Shanita and worried that maybe Enid will find out about my stories and stuff and decide to stay away from me. And a bit upset that Rick and Cyn tricked me and didn't let me in on the secret until just now.

So much at once. My brain is totally puddled.

But maybe I can make it all work.

Lately I feel like I can do anything.

Cyn gets off at the LaSalle Street exit, rolling right into Lincoln Park and the Gold Coast.

“This isn't the way to Magwitch Park,” I say.

“I just have one thing to take care of first.”

The bare branches of the ancient trees that line the street reach for the sky like chimney smoke. They rattle like bones in the night as she steers us down Dearborn. We'll be going right past Bughouse Square in a few blocks.

Some of the townhouses have gone all-out with their decorations. Orange lights and spider webs are everywhere. One house has a full-size mummy on the porch. Another has an old-fashioned coffin. It's wonderful.

The jack-o'-lanterns are in bloom, laughing at death with their glowing smiles as we drive into the Halloween night.

Just to clear things up a bit:

Most of the historical stories in the book are real; the main exception is the stuff about Marjorie Kay Stone and Finders of Magwitch Park (Magwitch Park isn't even a real town, and you can't really make your own ghost by punching people in the brain, so don't come running to me if you try it and get suspended or something). People and businesses mentioned in the book are a mixture of real people and fictional ones. Mysterious Chicago Tours wasn't real when I started working on the book, though it is now!

Lillian Collier was a real person in Chicago—Megan found out what became of her after 1924 a lot faster than I did. She was a mystery to me for years until I started work on this book, decided to buckle down and clear it up, and found that
Times Herald
article that gave me her maiden name, which opened up the rest.

As to whether she and Virginia Harrison were a couple, I really don't know. Lillian's son, Frank, doesn't know for sure, either, though he says they “might very well could have been.” “She was never very upset when I told her I was gay!” he says.

I asked Frank to write a brief note about his mother:

My mother, Nellise Child, (pronounced Nell . . . eese, as in peace, accent on the second syllable), was born in New York. Her parents, being Russian Jews, came to New York around the turn of the century. With only a high-school education she simply read everything she could get her hands on. She knew from an early age she wanted to be a writer. She was a member of the New Dramatist's Committee, so between 1948 and 1962, we got to see nearly every play on Broadway. She published two novels,
Wolf in the Fold
in 1941 and
If I Come Home
in 1943, as well as two mystery novels in the early 1930s. Soon after that her play,
Weep for the Virgins
, was produced on Broadway, by the Group Theatre, in New York. She was a great cook and entertainer. My father and I were very lucky to have known her!

Several plays Lillian wrote are still on file at the Library of Congress, and her books can be tracked down without too much trouble. For a time she worked as a writer for the
Herald-Examiner
under the terribly patronizing byline of “Our Little Girl Reporter,” but I've only ever found one of her articles; she later recalled assignments such as fainting in the street to see what happened. Efforts are underway to make more of her work available online.

As a side note, I've never found any more information on Virginia Harrison. One paper said that her real name was Jean Lawrence, which is a good clue, but both names are common enough to make her hard to trace, and it's possible that neither was her real name. As Ricardo said, “there are some mysteries you just never get to solve.”

A
LSO BY
A
DAM
S
ELZER

Play Me Backwards

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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2016 by Adam Selzer

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First Edition

CIP data for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-1-4814-3494-2 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-4814-3496-6 (eBook)