The Night's Legacy (7 page)

“You’ll be the first to know.”

She opened the garment bag upstairs.  The dress was bright red and cut so that most of her back was visible.  It was big enough that the skirt went down to her ankles.  A little more modest than she intended, but it would work.  She did what she could with her hair and put on a little makeup.  She didn’t want to put on too much lipstick for when she kissed Tony.

She stopped in the kitchen to write a note in case Mom woke up during the night.  The note said she had gone out for a drink and would be back in a couple of hours.  That way Mom might not call the cops to have them start looking for her.  With a sigh she left the note on the table and then hurried out the door.

* * *

Her cab dropped her off in front of a warehouse with a rusty roof that looked ready to cave in.  The only sign was the faded one for Bernstein & Sons, who had previously owned the warehouse.  This was probably one of the many illicit nightspots in the city that operated without a license and long after legitimate clubs closed. 

She found Tony sitting on an old crate, smoking a cigarette.  He was dressed similarly to the night before, only with a dark purple shirt, black pants, and no sport coat.  He grinned at her and said, “Someone better tell Mount Olympus there’s a goddess missing.”

“Nice line.  Where’d you get it from?”

“Here and there.”

She did a turn for him.  “You think it’s all right?  I had to borrow it from
Melanie.”

“
Melanie?  You didn’t tell her—?”

“No, I didn’t tell her it was you.  You take Mom’s no fraternizing policy seriously?”

“I just don’t want Melanie getting jealous.”

Lois
rubbed up against him, sticking a hand inside his shirt.  “You afraid she’s going to go all
Fatal
Attraction
on you?”

“I wouldn’t put it past her.  She’s a little messed up in the head.”

“Seems pretty harmless to me.”

He shrugged.  “Screw it, let’s go inside so everyone can see how smoking hot you are.”

“Sounds like a plan to me.”

The moment Tony opened the door, loud techno music assaulted
Lois’s ears.  Tony reached into his pocket to hand a twenty to a black man about the same size as Miguel who was obviously the bouncer.  She leaned in close to Tony, letting him clear the way through loitering and dancing couples to the bar. 

The bar was made up of old crates stacked on top of each other.  The bartender was about
Lois’s age or maybe a year younger, though tall and blond like Melanie.  Lois couldn’t hear what Tony ordered over the noise, but a few minutes later he was pressing a glass into her hands.  It tasted like a martini, only fruitier.  “Blueberry martini,” he said into her ear.  “You like?”

“It’s not bad.”

They finished their drinks and then he pulled her into the fray.  Dancing wasn’t really her thing, but her martial arts training gave her the reflexes to keep up with the other women nearby.  Tony didn’t do a lot of dancing; he mostly bobbed in time with the beat while she moved around him.  It was hard to tell when one song ended and another began, so she just kept going until her entire body felt slick with sweat.

Tony finally put a hand on her shoulder, giving her a subtle push back towards the bar.  “I’ve got to use the can,” he said.  “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“Take your time.”

He leaned down to give her a long kiss on the mouth; she grabbed a handful of his hair to keep it going.  “You are so fucking hot,” he whispered in her ear before hurrying away.

She ordered a run and Coke to sip while she waited for him to come back.  Looking around, she wasn’t sure where the restrooms were.  Maybe everyone just went outside and pissed into the harbor.  She was glad she didn’t have to go.

When she finished the drink she checked her watch.  Fifteen minutes had gone by so far.  Where the hell was he?  Was the line for the men’s room really that long?  She signaled for another rum and Coke and then made herself as comfortable as possible on a discarded pile of rope.

When an hour went by without Tony showing up, Lois decided to go look for him.  “Where’s the bathrooms?” she asked the bartender, having to shout the question three times before the woman understood and pointed off to a far corner.

There was no line, at least not for the men’s room.  Son of a bitch, she thought.  She kicked open the men’s room door and then stomped inside.  “Tony?  Are you in here?” she called out.

“I’ll be Tony if you want,” someone said from inside a stall.

“Shut up, perv.”

She bent down to check out the feet beneath the stalls.  None of them were wearing Tony’s shoes.  To be sure she kicked open the doors of the empty stalls.  No one hiding inside.  She kicked one of the doors out of frustration. 

The bastard had stood her up!

Out front she saw a girl passed out.  Lois reached into the girl’s purse for her phone.  While she was at it, she found the girl’s driver’s license too for her address.  No good would come for her lying around here with a bunch of drunk, horny perverts.  With the phone she called for a cab to take them both home.

On the way home,
Lois thought of what she would do to Tony tomorrow.  She could give him a chop to the throat and then a nice swift kick to the crotch for starters.  She would make him beg for forgiveness and then for his life.  Did he think she was just a whore he could cast off whenever he felt like it?

The unconscious girl beside her stirred.  She blinked a few times, her eyes focusing on
Lois.  “Who are you?”

“I’m just sharing a cab.”

“Cab?”

“You’re going home.  Don’t you remember?”

“No.”

“Yeah, well, go back to sleep until then,”
Lois said, not feeling the least bit sociable at the moment.  She had been stood up before back in college.  A fraternity at Northwestern had made it a rite of passage for new members.  Every pledge had to ask the pimple-faced fourteen-year-old kid out on a date.  She had been stupid enough to take the first two seriously. 

Those boys had seemed so earnest and she was so young and stupid she thought they were serious.  The first had left her stranded at a rest stop outside Chicago, without so much as cab fare.  She thought they had been stopping to use the bathroom, but when she’d finished, he was gone.  She had to hitch a ride back to campus.  The second got more creative.  They broke into the campus pool and gone skinny-dipping.  While they were swimming, his buddies were locking the doors.  He asked her to stay in the water while he fetched a condom.  But he hadn’t come back and when she finally got out of the pool, she found all of the doors locked from the outside.  The girl’s swim team had found her the next morning, huddled in a corner and using a life preserver to cover herself.

Her subsequent spray-painting curse words all over the fraternity house had gotten her kicked out of the school.  She had been more careful after that, avoiding the college jocks like Red and Blue T-shirts in Durndell.  She had thought Tony was different.  He wasn’t.  He was just like those boys at Northwestern, except she wasn’t fifteen anymore.  She was a grown woman and she was going to show him a grown woman’s revenge.

When she got home, she hoped Mom would be up to comfort her.  But the note was still on the table, seemingly untouched.  She wadded it up and then went upstairs to Mom’s room.  She listened at the door for her mother’s snoring.  Hearing nothing, she opened the door.  The bed was empty and unmade.  Mom had disappeared again.  Was she looking for
Lois?  But the note didn’t look touched.  Maybe she was sleepwalking or something.

With a sigh
Lois went back to her room and took off Melanie’s dress.  She threw herself on the bed, but didn’t cry into her pillows as she’d done when she was fifteen.  Instead she looked up at the ceiling, thinking of that kiss again even as she plotted her revenge.

Chapter 6

Lois woke up again to Mom shaking her.  Just like the previous morning, Mom was already fully dressed and ready to go.  “Time to get up, sweetheart,” she said, not sounding the least bit tired.

“Yeah, great.” 
Lois crawled out of bed and headed straight for the bathroom.  A lukewarm shower helped shake away some of the cobwebs.  While she did her hair, she thought of the night before.  That jerk Tony had ditched her at the club and then she’d gotten home to find Mom out of the house again.  She frowned into the mirror, determined to get some answers on both fronts.

Mom had two bagels and a dish of cream cheese sitting on the table for her.  “I know you don’t like pancakes,” she said.  “Are bagels all right?”

“It’s fine.”  Lois sat down, watching her mother closely.  Mom took her protein shake from off the counter and then sat down across from her.  “When did you buy bagels?”

“They were in the freezer.” 
Lois studied her mother’s face for any indication that she was lying, but there was nothing.  “We’ll have to do some grocery shopping soon.”

Lois
took a bite of the bagel.  Cinnamon raisin, her favorite.  How long had Mom kept these in the freezer?  They tasted fresh enough, so not too long.  Maybe she kept a few on hand just in case Lois came back.

When Mom raised the protein shake,
Lois saw an angry purple bruise.  “What the hell is that?”

“Language.”

“Don’t give me that.  Where’d you get that bruise?”

Mom set the shake down and then rolled up her sleeve.  “This?  I slipped in the shower a couple days ago.  It’s nothing serious.”  This time her mother’s voice sounded strained and her eyes twitched to the right for just an instant.

“I didn’t see it yesterday.”

“Yesterday was pretty hectic.  You probably didn’t notice.”

“I can tell you’re lying.  I’m not a little kid anymore.”

Mom Glared at her.  “You shouldn’t talk to your mother like that.”

“Don’t try to confuse the issue.  I’ve seen the way you shuffle around, how it hurts you getting up and sitting down.  And now that bruise?  I want to know what’s going on.”

“There’s nothing going on, sweetheart.”  Mom reached across the table to pat
Lois’s hand.  “It might be hard for you to accept, but I’m getting older.”

“You’re only fifty.”

“I know that, dear.”

“Well the way you look and the way you walk you seem more like seventy.”

“It’s just stress.  I have a lot to deal with.”

“I know.”

“How could you know that?  You haven’t been around in seven years.”  The way Mom said this was with more scientific curiosity than spite.

“Dr. Johnson told me.  So did
Lorna.  They’re worried about you.  So am I.”

It would have been easy for Mom to throw
Lois’s absence in her face, but she didn’t.  Instead she gave Lois’s hand a squeeze.  “You don’t need to worry about me.  I’m fine.”

“If that’s true then let’s go to Dr. Pavelski—together.  I want to hear it from her.”

“Lois, please, there isn’t time for that today.”

“Then make an appointment.”

Mom stared at her for a moment and then nodded.  “I’ll have Lorna set something up for next week.  Is that fine?”

“Yes.  Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, sweetheart.”  Mom checked her watch.  “We’d best get a move on.”

* * *

Tony and Melanie were already upstairs when Lois entered the gift shop.  Her eyes narrowed at Tony.  “Melanie, could you go check on those new magnets?” Tony said.

“Sure,” she said. 
Lois passed the garment bag to her before she could scurry away, sensing that something was wrong.

“
Lois, I can explain—”

She stabbed a finger into his chest.  “You’d better.  And it had better be good.”  Looking into his eyes, she could feel the anger draining away.  She latched on to her bad memories from Northwestern like a life preserver to rekindle her rage.  “I thought you were different from the others.  I thought you actually cared.  But you don’t.  You’re a jerk like all the rest.”

“I deserve that,” he said.  “And a lot more.  I’m so sorry, Lois.  I didn’t mean to leave you there.  I went to the bathroom and there was a guy I know there, an old college friend.  We got talking and by the time I got back to the bar, you’d already gone.”

“Horseshit.  I looked all over that place for you.”

“We must have missed each other.”

“No, I missed you.  You didn’t give a damn about me.”

“Lois—”

“I think it’d be better if you work in the back today. 
Melanie and I can handle things out here.”

“Now look, I’m your boss—”

“If you want to keep being my boss then shut up and go count magnets or whatever.  Otherwise I’m going upstairs and telling my mom what we did in the backseat.”

“You don’t need to threaten me.”

“Maybe not, but I want to.  Get lost.”

Only after he was gone did she sink beneath the counter and cry.  She felt
Melanie’s hand on her shoulder.  Melanie was a lot smarter than she sounded sometimes; she had already put two and two together.  “You went out with Tony last night?”  Lois nodded, her throat too choked with sobs to say anything.  “What happened?”

“He ditched me at this club,”
Lois managed to get out.

“Oh my God, that is so awful.  If I’d known what a creep he was, I never would have salivated over him like I did.  I totally put the thought in your head.  I’m such an idiot!”

“You didn’t do anything.  We met the night before I started working here.”

“You did?”  The light bulb went on over
Melanie’s head.  “Oh my God, he was the one you were talking about last night!”

“Yes.”

“Ooh, he’s such a jerk!”  Melanie pounded on the counter, which seemed ludicrous compared to how sunny she usually was.  “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.” 
Lois wiped at her eyes.  “Let’s just get to work.”

“Sure.  We can think of how to get back at him later.”

Lois nodded, but she knew no petty revenge scheme could really make things right.

* * *

Tony risked sticking his head out of the stockroom three hours later.  “Lois, could you come back here?”

Before
Lois could say anything, Melanie shouted, “No way, Creep-O.  She doesn’t want to have anything to do with you, right?”

“Right,”
Lois said.

“See?  So you can go get bent, jerk.”

Tony stepped out of the stockroom, a piece of paper clutched in his hands.  “I made this for you,” he said.

“She doesn’t want it,”
Melanie snapped.  “She doesn’t want anything from you and neither do I.”

He held up the paper and
Lois saw it was covered in Egyptian hieroglyphics.  “I spent all morning on the phone with Dr. Johnson to write this.  You want to know what it says?”

“No, and you know what you can do with that paper,”
Melanie said.  She took a step towards Tony, but Lois grabbed her shoulder to hold her back.

“Fine, what does it say?”
Lois asked.

“It says, ‘I’m sorry about last night.  I never wanted to hurt you.  I really care about you and I would do anything if you’d forgive me.’”

Lois squinted at the paper.  “It doesn’t really say that,” she said.

“Well, you might have to use your imagination a little, but that’s the gist of it.”

She looked into his eyes, trying to gauge how sincere he was.  She took the paper from him and then growled, “I’ll forgive you this time.  But this is your last chance, got it?”

“I got it.  And I really am sorry,
Lois.  You’re a very special girl—”

“Save it for later,”
Lois said as a customer sauntered in.  “We’ve got work to do.”

She tucked the paper into her pocket for later.  Once Tony had returned to the stockroom,
Melanie sighed like a romantic heroine.  “That was so cute,” she said.  “I wish I could find a man like that.”

“I thought you said he was a creep and a jerk,”
Lois said with a smile.

They laughed until the customer gave them a funny look.  Once the customer bought a T-shirt and porcelain bell,
Lois and Melanie laughed some more.

* * *

The next time Tony appeared it wasn’t anything romantic.  It was time for Lois to go on lunch break.  Seeing no one else around, she kissed his cheek and whispered into his ear, “I’ll see you later.”

Instead of going down to the cafeteria,
Lois went upstairs to the fourth floor.  Mom’s door was closed and Lorna stood up to bar the way.  “She’s in there with a donor,” Lorna said.

“Oh.  I was just going to see if she wanted to get lunch.”

“I’ll tell her you stopped by.”

“Thanks.” 
Lois turned to go but then stopped.  She turned again to face Lorna.  “Did she tell you make an appointment with Dr. Pavelski for us?”

Lorna
stared at her.  “No.  Should she?”

Lois
clenched her fists.  “That lying bitch!”  She glared at the door, expecting it to open, but apparently the donor inside was too important.

“
Lois—”

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to break in there.”

Instead she turned on her heel and stormed back to the elevator.  She took it to the first floor, stomping past the cafeteria and through the front doors.  She had to wait a few minutes to flag down a cab to take her a dozen blocks down the road to Dr. Pavelski’s office.  The office was still on the sixth floor, just as it had been when Lois first went there for her vaccinations.  She couldn’t remember that day, but Dr. Pavelski had frequently raved about how good Lois had been.

She threw open the door to the doctor’s office.  There were a half-dozen young to middle-aged women sitting inside.  Dr. Pavelski was primarily an OB/GYN, but for Mom and
Lois she had made an exception.  Lois marched up to the reception window, where a fat woman looked up at her with a smile that made Lois want to punch her.  “Hi, Lois.  Lorna said you might be dropping by.”

“Where is she?”

“In her office.  She can make a few minutes for you.  Go on in.”

The friendliness of the receptionist didn’t disarm her initial anger.  She redirected some of it at
Lorna for stealing her big entrance.  She was supposed to barge into Dr. Pavelski’s office to demand answers about Mom’s health.  They had turned it instead into a somewhat routine visit.

Dr. Laura Pavelski sat behind her desk.  Her dark hair was pulled back so tightly it looked as if
it might tear right off her scalp.  Like Dr. Johnson she had aged gracefully, just a few silver strands cropping up in her ponytail and a few new laugh lines when she smiled at Lois.  “I heard you were back in town.  You’re looking good.  A lot healthier than I would have expected.”

“Yeah, well it was touch-and-go a couple of times,”
Lois said.  The first couple of years she’d gotten so skinny that her ribs had shown through her skin.  A couple of times she got so ill from eating out of the trash that she had to be hospitalized—under a fake name of course.  But eventually she managed to get the hang of living on the run.

“What brings you here today?”

“I’m sure Lorna already told you.”

“She just said you wanted an appointment for you and your mom.  Ellen can take care of that up front.”

“Don’t patronize me.  I want to know what’s going on with Mom.  She’s hiding something from me.”

“You know I can’t disclose her medical history without her consent.”

“Has she told you about the bruise on her arm?”

“No, but most of my patients don’t tell me about every little boo-boo.”

“What about the way she shuffles around like a ninety-year-old?  You going to tell me that’s normal for a woman her age?  Or that she stays out all night?”

Dr. Pavelski sighed.  “I’ll admit she’s not an ordinary case for her age.”

“You’re worried about her too.  So is everyone else, but she keeps saying she’s fine.”

“She can be stubborn sometimes.  Like someone else I know.”

Lois pointed a finger at the doctor.  “Don’t joke with me!  This is serious.  I’m worried that she’s—” she had to force the last word out of her mouth, “dying.”

“She’s not dying.  I can tell you that much.  She had a mammogram two months ago.  Everything came back normal.  So did most of her other tests.”

“Most of them?”

“Her bone density is low.  I’ve told her to take some calcium supplements.”

Lois glared at the doctor, trying to summon Mom’s authority as she did so.  “There’s more, isn’t there?”

“You know I can’t tell you—”  The phone on the doctor’s desk rang.  She answered it and listened for a few seconds.  “I know.  She’s right here.  No.  If that’s what you want.”  Then she hung up the phone.