Cracked (4 page)

I was a freak already. I could handle it.

* * *

Ginger was alive, and on the plane with us. She kept grabbing at my glass of wine and taking swigs, laughing, holding it out of my reach. It was very important for me to get that glass back. No one else was on the plane, just Ginger, Darren and me. Ginger and Darren were playing hangman, rapt, which confused me, because I’d never seen them doing anything together with such concentration. I looked at Ginger and told her I loved her, even though she was a smart-ass and too perfect to live. Those were the words I used, “too perfect to live.” Ginger shook her head at me and took off a white scarf that had appeared around her neck. Her neck was bright red and purple and mottled. I felt sad for her, that it must hurt, like a bad splinter.

“No, Danny, no one is perfect,” dream Ginger said sadly. “That’s always been your problem.”

Then Ginger and I lit up a crack pipe and I inhaled and inhaled and got nothing. I was in a rage of frustration, especially when I saw that she had taken a hit and was holding it in like it was the last breath she would ever take.

* * *

Darren was squeezing my hand. “We’re landing, drooler,” he said. He grabbed a tissue from his jeans pocket and wiped my face. “You’re quite a picture.”

“Fuck you very much,” I said. I rubbed my eyes like a three-year-old, then remembered that I’d actually put eye makeup on this morning. Great.

“You okay?” he said, pushing his chair back to its upright position for landing.

“Crack dream,” I said. “Had them before when I’ve stopped.”

“How long do you keep having them?”

“Until you start smoking crack again, I suppose,” I answered. Darren sighed.

“Darren,” I said slowly. “Ginger didn’t kill herself. She didn’t.” It had been tugging at my faulty brain since I listened to Fred’s voicemail message. No way. Not with her boys to look after. Not Ginger.

Fred had said she was found hanging from a shower rod in a motel. Hanging. The image, the thought of it, was seared into my brain and the only way I knew to remove it was to smoke it away.

Darren looked at me, surprised. “Of course she didn’t, Beanpole. No fucking way.”

We were silent for a bit.

“Why do you think she was at a motel?” Darren told me Ginger’s body had been found in some sleazy dive called the Sunny Jim Motor Inn.

He shrugged, staring straight ahead.

“What are we going to do?” I asked. I looked up at him, my little brother, and saw a coldness I had never seen in him before now.

“We’re going to talk to the police,” he said slowly. “We’re going to find out exactly what happened.” He tapped a beat on his knee, something only he could hear.

“And if they don’t believe us? If they don’t help us?”

“Then we’ll find out what killed her.
Who
killed her,” he answered. He was looking straight ahead.

“And when we find them?”

Darren squeezed my hand again. “What do you think, Danny? What do you want to do?”

I looked him in his cool blue eyes. Mine were reflected in his. “I don’t know about you, but I’m going to kill them.” I hadn’t thought about it, just said it. But as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I knew it was true.

I felt my heart race in my chest like I had just taken a hit. Yes. This was right. This was what had to happen. Wasn’t this the natural order of things? I had travelled so far down the rabbit hole that contemplating – actually planning and contemplating killing whoever was responsible for Ginger’s death – seemed more than plausible. Why not? Whoever they were, Ginger was worth ten of them, a thousand of them, a million. And if I destroyed myself in the process? Well I was pretty nearly there already. I took a deep breath, and felt an odd peace settle over me, a feeling I hadn’t had in recent memory. This could be the end, then. I would do this thing, and I would do it well. And after that, whatever happened to me didn’t matter.

Darren leaned past me and looked out the window at sunny California.

“No,” he whispered, his eyes trained on the ground. “
We’re
going to kill them.”

I looked at Darren quickly. My sunny blond brother had a look on his face that I had never seen before. His eyes looked like mine, at that moment. Calm and decided and yet not quite present. He was somewhere else, somewhere where he could do serious damage to anyone who got in his way.

“We’ve lost too much,” I said. “Right?”

“You are right,” Darren said, leaning back into his seat and closing his eyes. “Right the fuck on.”

But I knew that when push came to shove, I would do this alone. Darren had a life. He had a great, sprawling, messy adventure of a life to look forward to. And as much as he loved Ginger, she was my twin. My other half.

This was my job.

* * *

It was only seven-thirty p.m. in California when we landed, and even inside the airport it felt hot. Hot and dry.

“Santa Anas,” Darren explained. “There are probably going to be fires again.”

“Thank you, Mr. Weather Channel,” I said. Probably his only truly geeky habit, an obsession with weather patterns had been with him since he was a kid looking forward to snowstorms and hurricanes in Maine. If I let him go, he would explain the meteorological reasons for such climate patterns, and I would keel over from glassy-eyed boredom. Standing by the luggage carousel waiting for bags to start spitting out, I had a sudden and intense craving, so profound that I wanted to lie down on the spot, curl up into the fetal position, and wait for it to go away. It had been something like twenty-six hours since I last smoked. The longest I’d gone without a hit in ten months. And while I had what I needed tucked safely between my legs, even I wasn’t about to try to smoke it in a public washroom in LAX.

“There’s my bag,” I said, pointing to a lime-green suitcase coming around on the conveyor. “Bathroom.”

I hurried to the ladies’ room and thanked the toilet gods that it wasn’t crowded. I locked myself into a cubicle and threw up, every ounce of meat and wine violently splashing all over the floor and walls. It wasn’t a neat endeavour. It continued until I had nothing left, and I leaned against the wall for support. At home, I would have slumped down to the floor, but by this point there was far too much of a mess for that. I felt sorry for the poor washroom attendant who had to face this. If I could have tipped her, I would have. I felt as empty and hollow and in as much pain as I ever have in my life. I closed my eyes. If it weren’t for this, the vomiting that always overtook me for a couple of days after the crack was leaving my system, I might have been able to quit. But anytime I started to feel like this, I would pick up the phone and call D-Man on my speed dial, and within a couple of hours all would be just fine. It wasn’t just the vomiting, it was the constant nausea and diarrhea, which lasted even longer. Note to self, I thought: buy water.

I spent a few minutes at the sink trying to clean myself up. I was in a white t-shirt and pale, ripped blue jeans, and both were now brilliantly stained with bright red vomit. Mascara had smeared under my eyes, my skin was gray under the fluorescent lights, and my lips were chapped and bleeding from chewing them, another habit I subconsciously took to when I was without my drug.

Where were the model talent scouts when you needed one?

When I exited the bathroom, Darren was chatting it up with a paunchy guy in a black suit who was wearing a spiffy cap. He was holding a sign.

“Here she is!” Darren said, very hail-fellow-well-met. He was another one in the family who made friends wherever he went. “Look, Danny!” He held up a sign that read “D and D Cleary.”

“D and D,” I said. “Drunk and Disorderly.”

“Dungeons and Dragons,” Darren said.

“Dumb and Dumber,” I shot back.

“Dark and Demented?” Darren tried.

“Weak,” I said. “Bitch, please.” The driver was looking at us, an uncertain smile on his face. He was probably in his fifties but he had the red nose and beer gut of the experienced drinker. Ex-cop maybe? Couldn’t have a drunk driving record if he worked for a car service though. I might be an addict myself, but I ranked drunk drivers with pedophiles and serial rapists – bad, bad news.

“Danny Cleary,” I said, shaking the man’s hand. Being around my family always made me want to improve my manners. I was the one with the street skills, not the social ones. Division of responsibility and all that.

Both the driver and Darren were looking at the stains on my clothes, and the ashen, makeup-smeared face. They both looked appalled. I really know how to make a great impression.

“So,” I said brightly. “Who sent you, Mr. Driver?”

He snapped his eyes away from my t-shirt. Or was it my breasts? If it was, he’d have to look pretty hard. I still had them, but everything I owned was two sizes too big for me now. “Mr. Lindquist,” he answered. “He sent me to come and fetch you up.”

Fred had sent him. He must be in rough shape if he didn’t come himself. “Well, fetch away,” I said. “Take me to your leader.” Driver looked uncertainly at me. I motioned for the door. “You know – let’s go. Let’s blow this pop stand. As it were.”

Darren nudged me as we trailed behind the man out of the terminal. “Be nice,” he hissed. Then, slightly louder, “Did you puke, or what?”

“No, I just grabbed somebody else’s off the floor and rubbed it on myself.”

I rooted around in my bag for an Altoid. “Why do you think Fred didn’t pick us up himself?” I wanted to know.

Darren shrugged. “His wife just died, Danny. He’s got a funeral to plan, two boys who just lost their mother, and a house full of relatives on the way.” I nodded. We were quiet for a minute, and when we left the airport, the driver indicated that we should stay put and he’d pull the car around. I could get used to this, I thought.

“I don’t know how he’s going to live without her,” Darren said.

“And the boys,” I said. “Oh God, those poor boys.”

“Fred told me that the funeral will be closed casket,” Darren said. I nodded. I hated open casket funerals. “I have to see her,” he continued.

I took a deep breath. Crack, crack, crack, crack. Crack, please.

“Me too,” I said.

“We’re family, they have to let us,” Darren said. “Don’t they? By law or whatever?”

“Fuck the law,” I said, nodding at nervous-looking No-Name Driver as he opened the back door for me to get into a gaudy stretch Hummer limo. Liberace would have been at home in here. Or Elton John. “We’re going to see our sister.”

* * *

Rush-hour traffic was still heavy, and Darren and I sprawled in the back of a car that was bigger than my apartment. Smelled better, too.

Darren was examining the crystal decanters thoughtfully provided by the limo company.

“Scotch,” he said, smelling one and making a face as he put the stopper back on. “I hate scotch.”

“What’s that one? Vodka?” I pointed to a decanter filled with clear liquid. Darren smelled it.

“Gin,” he said.

“Yuck,” I said. “Find me the vodka.” It was too surreal. It was sunny, even through the tinted windows, and three hours earlier. My twin sister was dead. I was going to kill someone.

That was the only thought that gave me any peace.

Darren gave me a raised eyebrow, but he smelled another clear decanter, and rooted around in a little fridge until he came up with something to mix it with. As we cruised slowly through the SoCal evening, past the palm trees and strip malls that I hadn’t seen in three years, Darren fixed me a vodka and cranberry. It was heavy on the cranberry, light on the vodka. I took a sip and looked meaningfully at Darren.

“You just puked, Danny,” he said. “Think you might want to take it a little easy, get some more food in your stomach?”

He was right of course, and I chose not to give him a tart reply. I held on tightly to my heavy crystal glass and looked outside.

We’d left the 405 and were heading to the Pacific Coast Highway.

“Scenic route,” I said. Darren nodded.

“I wanted to see the ocean,” he said. I looked at him. He was wearing his sunglasses, and I realized he must have had a word with the driver. This was as hard on Darren as it was on me, and I had to remember that in the days to come. I leaned over and grabbed his hand, squeezed it, and said nothing. We sailed through the beach communities Ginger had loved. I took a big swig of my drink and tried to think of nothing.

We drove through Huntington Beach and didn’t stop.

“Hey. This isn’t the way to Fred and Ginger’s,” I said.

“They moved, brainiac. A year ago. Remember?”

Vaguely. Something about a new house in Newport? Close to the country club?

“Have you been down?” I asked him.

He hadn’t. I watched as we passed some of the bars I remembered down here, places that tried on the outside to look like friendly little crab shacks but there were more Rolexes inside than in all of Geneva.

I was nervous, and I could tell Darren was too. I hadn’t seen Fred or my nephews in close to three years, and who knew what state they were going to be in. Matthew and Luke were eleven now, twins like Ginger and me. And like us, not identical – Luke was blonder and had Ginger’s glow about him, where Matthew was a bit darker and more pale. More like me, as I recalled, but I hadn’t seen them in a long time.

And look at the state I was in. I debated getting the driver to pull over so I could pull a clean t-shirt from my suitcase in the trunk, but even the little bit of vodka I was drinking had put lead into my thighs. I didn’t want to move.

The driver took a hard left and we wound our way through streets with houses you couldn’t see from the road, with huge private gates and lush bougainvillea along the side of the road. Eventually, we pulled into a driveway with a huge gate in front and with a click on something on his visor, the gates smoothly pulled open.

Darren and I looked at each other. The driver hadn’t buzzed the security panel outside the gate, he had his own clicker.

“This is Fred’s car,” I whispered. “This isn’t a limo service.”

“He can’t hear you,” Darren said, indicating the privacy glass separating us from the driver.