The Barkeep (24 page)

Which was why Annie was standing in the parking lot of an Applebee’s on some trite suburban boulevard, the restaurant flanking the one road leading into a subdivision with bright, tasteless houses all lined up in a row. The kind of dreary subdivision she had always expected she’d end up in, married to some charmless stiff like Brad, with kids pulling at her hem and calling for her attention as she drank herself into a regular afternoon stupor. Sometimes the sad fact that her dreams were no less mind-numbing than her reality was all that kept her going. She was standing there, waiting for Justin Chase to arrive, so they could both meet this Austin Moss, who had taken her tiresome suburban dream and made it his own.

For Austin Moss, Eleanor Chase’s apparent lover, was not just Annie’s mirror image, but possibly the instrument of her exorcism. In her own bitter way, that woman at the bar at the Bellevue had made it clear to Annie exactly who she had been betraying with every adulterous kiss. And the woman on the receiving end of each of these betrayals, in Annie’s mind, had always been Mackenzie Chase’s wife. That was why the murder of Eleanor Chase had haunted her so: it was the physical manifestation of each of her betrayals. But if Mackenzie and Eleanor truly did have an arrangement—a line he had given Annie but which she had never quite believed—and if Eleanor was finding love and solace outside her marriage, then there was no betrayal there. And maybe, God, maybe, all those silent specters would just fade away, leaving her with the possibility of a future free of ghosts.

“Where have you been?” she said to Justin when he climbed down off his motorbike. “I’ve been standing here like a streetwalker for half an hour.”

“You make any money?”

She was about to take his head off for that crack, but his smile was so good-natured that she just shrugged into it. “Enough for an Applebee’s lunch,” she said, “so long as I don’t order a drink.”

“How could you bear an Applebee’s lunch without one?”

“Good question.”

“I had an unexpected visitor,” said Justin.

“Anything interesting?”

He looked at her for a moment and she could see him thinking about something. The way he was thinking and looking at her at the same time made her feel strange. What was she doing, blushing? Christ, she was. Where the hell did that come from?

“How would you feel if I could prove that my father didn’t kill my mom?”

“Relieved. Thrilled, actually.”

“It would wipe out all remnants of the guilt, I suppose.”

“Uh, yeah.”

“But how would you feel about him getting out of prison? Coming back into your life?”

“I hadn’t even thought of that. I don’t know. I think we’ve both moved on.”

“But he’s still sending you letters.”

“What’s going on, Justin?”

“I don’t know. It was a strange morning. Are you ready?”

“Are you?”

“Sure, I think,” he said. “The last address I had was 1350 Mantis Drive.”

“It will be that way,” said Annie, pointing up the street. “When you told me to meet here, I figured it had to be that development. I scouted it out. Just a loop and a cul-de-sac, with no connecting streets. There’s only one way in. And as far as I can tell, one way out, too.”

“Inside a coffin?”

“It is the suburbs.”

“The address is a couple years old, but nothing else came up on the Internet. He’s probably not there.”

“Probably not. But you never know.”

“No, you never do,” said Justin, looking at her more closely than she was comfortable with. “Come on then. Let’s see what my mother’s lover has to say.”

36.

RUSTY NAIL

T
he houses on Mantis Drive were all alike, two-level tract homes built to sell when tract homes were still selling. The driveways were wide, the lawns green, the trees remarkably uniform, as if they were all planted at exactly the same moment in time, which they were, about a decade and a half before. The house at 1350 was like the others, only better tended. The trim was freshly painted, the lawn freshly mowed. A battered white van was parked in the driveway, and a thin man in ragged jeans was high on a ladder set by the front door, laying a fresh coat of beige on a window frame.

“Can I help you two?” he said from the ladder after Justin and Annie had made their way down the driveway and then along the path that led to the front door. The man kept on working as he spoke, and from the angle, Justin could only make out an unshaven jaw.

“We’re looking for Austin Moss,” said Justin.

“Good luck with that,” said the man as he smoothed on a swath of paint. “Seeing as he’s been dead for about three years.”

“That’s too bad,” said Justin. “How’d he die, do you know?”

“He got hisself run over. Right on the street. Which happens sometimes when you’re walking around drunk as a
skunk. I always thought if you got to be drunk, it’s better to be it behind the wheel than out in the open without no protection.”

“An accident, was it?”

“Some say.”

“What do the others say?”

“Oh, folks are always saying.”

“Does Mrs. Moss still live here?”

“That she does,” he said as he leaned forward and worked on a corner of the sill. “What kind of business you got with the missus?”

“Are you her painter or her social secretary?” said Annie.

“I do more than just painting around here,” said the man, without stopping his work. “I cut the lawn, do the plumbing, clean them gutters, keep the weeds in check. I guess you could say I’m Mrs. Moss’s handyman.”

“I can’t imagine a place like this,” said Justin, “with a house this new, provides much work for you.”

“You’d be surprised at that, you would,” said the man as he carefully dipped his brush in the paint can hanging from a hook on the ladder. “They put these things up in a hurry, and that’s the way they seem to want to come down. The name’s Eddie, Eddie Nicosia of Nicosia Home Repairs. Like on the side of the van. You got any drains need unplugging or a tilting deck, I’m your man.”

“We’ll let you know if anything comes up, Eddie. Is Mrs. Moss in?”

“She expecting you?”

“Not exactly.”

“Fair warning then,” said Eddie from up high. “Janet don’t like no unexpected visitors.”

“I guess we’ll just have to take our chances,” said Justin.
He looked at Annie, who curled the edge of her lip in amusement at the nosy handyman and then knocked on the door.

Rap rap. Rap.

As they waited, Justin glanced up at the man on the ladder in time to see him carefully place his paintbrush on the edge of the can and start climbing unhurriedly down the ladder. There was something disconcerting about him, the way he slowly yet menacingly descended the ladder, the note in his voice that was sure of way too much. When he reached the ground, he pulled a rag out of his pocket and started wiping his hands, all the while watching as the door opened.

“Well, well, what have we here?” said the woman who answered the door.

“Mrs. Moss?”

“Oh Christ, and I thought the election was over,” she said, her voice slightly slurry. “No, I’m not going to vote, I never vote. On principle.”

“And what principle is that?”

“I don’t give a fuck. How’s that?”

“Pretty good, actually,” said Justin.

The woman in front of him was tall and thin and seriously unsteady, standing in the doorway with one hand braced against the doorframe, the other holding a cigarette. She had a weathered face that had once been quite pretty and a voice as leathery as her skin. She swayed slightly as she stood before them in a loose sweater over a pair of jeans.

“Don’t tell me you’re selling magazines for college. You two are a little old to be undergraduates.”

“Do you have a moment?”

“Not really,” she said before pausing to suck the half-life out of her cigarette. “It’s Saturday, which means I’m scrapbooking.”

“You’re into scrapbooking?” said Annie, with a false
enthusiasm.

“No,” said Mrs. Moss. She slowly turned her attention to Annie and stared for a bit, as if it took a moment for her lidded eyes to focus. “Do I know you?”

“I don’t think so, Mrs. Moss.”

“Yes, I do, and call me Janet. Mrs. Moss was my mother-in-law. If I ever grew into her, I’d slit my throat. No, I know you, I just don’t remember yet from where. But it will come to me, it always does, only usually too late to do any good. So what do you two trespassers want?”

“We were actually looking for your husband.”

“You’re a little late. Did he owe you money?”

“No.”

“Good, because I don’t have any. Who are you again?”

“My name is Justin Chase.”

“Chase, huh?” she said, tilting her head and staring at him for a long moment while her mouth slowly turned down, as if she were slipping back through the turbid currents of her life into bitter memory. “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“You’re the son. The one that found her. And now I recognize you,” Mrs. Moss said as she slowly wagged her cigarette at Annie. “From the newspapers. Don’t you two make just the cutest couple? I mean, considering. Is she, like, your mom now?”

“Can we come in, Janet?”

“I suppose you two got something on your minds.”

“That we do.”

She slowly lifted her chin and narrowed her eyes until they were almost closed. “What exactly?”

“I’d like to talk to you about my mother.”

“It was a long time ago, and a lot of water has rushed
through the basement since then.”

“And your husband.”

“Also dead.”

“But still. And I have something you might want to see.”

“What could you possibly have that would interest me?”

“Can we come in?”

She stared at the two of them for a moment more, passing her gaze from Justin to Annie and back again.

“Why’s she here?” she said, pointing her cigarette at Annie.

“Solace,” said Justin.

The woman stared at him for a moment longer without an ounce of amusement on her weathered face. “That’s a good one,” she said, almost collapsing backward as she stepped away from the doorway, inviting them into the house.

37.

CAN OF BUD

I
f Annie Overmeyer knew anything in this world it was that men lied. They lied about their wives, their money, their emotions, the size and dependability of their cocks. The outright inevitability of their lies was one of the things she liked most about being with men, besides the sex and the drinking. Who doesn’t like having her vision of the world confirmed night after night, in one bar after the other, one bed after another?

But still, she couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed when she caught Justin Chase in his first lie. She was sitting with Justin and that drugged-out Janet Moss in the horrid living room of her horrid little tract house. You could tell the room once had looked okay, in a Seaman’s-discount-furniture sort of way, but over the years a cancerous clutter had taken hold. When you live in a place, things dropped here or there cease to register and, after a while, take on an air of permanence. Little knickknacks, piles of magazines, a broom in the corner, a jacket tossed on a table. The clutter in the Moss house had metastasized. And it smelled like bird poop.

“I like your home, Janet,” said Justin, which, considering the size and simplicity of his own house, could not possibly be the truth.

“We bought it when it was still spiffy and new,” said Janet, sitting deep in a greasy old easy chair. “As was our marriage at the time. Would you like something to drink, the two of you?”

Justin glanced Annie’s way and then said, “No, thank you.”

“That’s good,” said Janet Moss as she lit another cigarette, “because I didn’t really want to get up again.”

In a black cage hanging from a stand in the corner of the room, a small yellow bird spread its wings, jumped from one perch to another, pecked the air, let out a series of satisfied chirps, dropped a small white load.

“How did you meet your husband?” said Annie.

“Pure chance,” she said. “I had just happened into a bar to meet a friend—I’ve never been much of a drinker—and there Austin was. I liked his looks right off, and he must have seen something in me.”

A desperate lush, thought Annie, nodding with sympathy.

“Neither of us were exactly young when we met,” said Janet. “We had been around the block a bit, so we both knew how lucky we were to find each other. And then we found this house, bigger than we ever expected, and out of our price range. But I loved it, and they almost threw the mortgage at us. We were giddy, we felt like we had been pulled out of something and saved.”

“Pulled out of what?” said Annie, suddenly curious.

“Out of the muck our lives had become, I guess. Walking into our house the first time after the settlement, it was the richest I had ever felt. It didn’t last.”

“What happened?”

She took a deep, noisy drag from her cigarette. Rising smoke curled in front of her eye as she tried to sort out her past. “What always happens,” she said finally.

Just then, Annie heard the sound of a refrigerator being opened in the kitchen, a rattle of cans, the exhale of carbonation
when a pull-top was popped. The canary rustled excitedly in its cage.

“Is somebody here?” said Justin.

“That’s just Eddie,” said Mrs. Moss. “He helps me out. He’s been doing that for five or six years now. It’s good to have someone.”

Annie leaned forward and looked hard at this woman sinking into the chair as if it were swallowing her whole. “It must have been a shock when your husband died,” said Annie. “We heard it was an accident.”

“It was something,” said Mrs. Moss. “We’d been having our problems, that was no secret. We’d been having our problems for a while. That was just the end of them, I guess. It let me keep the house, though.”

“How?” said Justin.

“I had lost my job, and the mortgage had adjusted up. But after the accident, with the insurance and all, there wasn’t really a problem anymore.”

“I guess it all worked out that way,” said a voice from the kitchen. Annie looked up and there was the handyman, that Eddie Nicosia, leaning against the doorframe with a can of Budweiser in his hand, and his hips thrust weirdly forward. He was thin and sharp-faced, with twisted teeth, and his very posture was of a belligerent alpha, which seemed a bit strange seeing as it wasn’t his house to alpha in.