Deadly Dues (23 page)

Faithful, faithless. Life seemed a little unbalanced in that department right now.

I stood up, trying not to let my eyes fill up (I could only cry so much before I got dehydrated) and headed for the door, then had second thoughts, and returned to the table to grab the last of the parsnip pie. I wrapped it in a paper towel and stuffed it into my Kenneth Cole bag.

As I muttered my way to my car, I heard Pete's voice plaintively calling after me. “Lu, you don't understand.”

I turned the key and cursed the Sunfire into life, then pulled out onto the road, grabbing another piece of parsnip pie and stuffing it into my mouth. I chewed it furiously as I wheeled my loser car onto Sloan.

For a year, we had been united in our disdain of Stan and Sherilyn, our determination to stand fast, do the right thing. No matter how tough things were, no matter how many nasty missives from Stan's office or from Sherilyn's minions, we had our moral superiority. And now I find out that Pete, the one of all my friends I had envisioned with ethics galore, had cheated on his wife with Sherilyn, the woman who was the root of our problems?

I wondered if Geoff or Gretchen or Bent knew, but I didn't have the desire to call any of them up and say, “Oh, by the way, Pete's ethics are in his pants.” Or something equally unfair and distasteful. I must be better than that. I determined to try to see things from Pete's point of view. But no matter how hard I tried, I kept seeing things from his pants' point of view. I tried again and realized that, like many actors, he might have been feeling insecure, and that perhaps Sherilyn (hard as it was to believe) might have bolstered his ego. Maybe there were problems in his marriage with Sally about which I knew nothing. Hey, what the hell, as long as I was in fantasyland, why didn't I just imagine him bumping off Stan?

Well, that was easy. Now I could go home and get a good night's sleep.

I stuffed another handful of parsnip pie into my mouth and took a wild left onto Rutherford. Then I saw the flashing lights behind me. I pulled over, trying desperately to chew down the pie, but I must have found the King Kong parsnip in there, because it wasn't going away. I kept chewing frantically, even as I saw the dark-clad figure approach my car door.

The officer who appeared at my car window looked about fourteen years old. This is what happens after you pass thirty. Everybody you meet looks like he or she just got out of kindergarten and needs your advice. I was just about to tell him that he should get some highlights and pluck his eyebrows, when it dawned on me that I should just keep my mouth shut.

Which was a good idea, as I was still chewing on the parsnip pie.

The child officer looked at me patiently as I chewed. The aroma of the unknown spices must have nearly knocked him over.

“What are you chewing, ma'am?”

Oh, that “ma'am” hurt.

“Poosnip pie.”

A long pause as he translated that. I lifted the paper towel with the remnants of the pie and showed it to him. He looked at it longingly.

“And where are you going, ma'am?”

Ouch again.

“Home.”
You annoying little twerp,
I wanted to add.

“That's good,” he said. “Detective Ryga just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

Thank you, you sweet little boy, and I bet your mother is proud of you,
I mouthed as I drove away, trying not to make too big a deal out of it, although maybe I shouldn't have given him what was left of the pie in gratitude.

I parked in the garage, after an overdone visual sweep of the street and yard. I had hoped Mrs. Lauterman would be on guard duty, but her windows were dark.

This time I was ready. I edged up the walk, my keys in my hand, in the same stance I had taken in the self-defence video I had done a few years ago (in the pre–Bow Wow days). Nobody leapt out from the shrubs, which I thought was a good sign. The police had taken away the garden gnome, so I didn't have that for comfort, but I reminded myself that all was well. As defence, I had my keys, my high-powered voice (four thousand dollars in vocal training) as a warning siren, and my intense desire for self-preservation, backed up by all the varied moves I had learned over the years, which included a weird
Om-KICK! Om-SCREAM! Om-CHOKE!
that I had never really mastered.

I berated myself for not using these skills earlier, and congratulated myself for at least remembering snippets of my experience on countless film sets. Where was the reality? When had I actually fought off an attacker, except for the unknown assailant at the shoe store and the kid with the Crocs? My performance with Mr. Size Twenty—pardon me,
Zonko
—had been pathetic. My life experience seemed pretty minimal compared to my film experience.

I put my key in the lock, slipped inside with more speed than I thought possible, closed the door and turned the deadbolt. I tried not to think of this as all there was between me and the great Green Room in the Sky.

Then I checked the patio doors. If that idiot crybaby could make it through those doors, breaking in would be a piece of cake for any wandering eight-year-old criminal, to say nothing of anybody older and in a more sinister mode. I wedged a long wooden spoon into the slot between the doors and hoped for the best.

I stood for a moment, wondering how I was going to sleep. Why was my life so different from great film noir where the heroines had Alan Ladd, Humphrey Bogart or Robert Mitchum, however jaded, at least marginally interested in their well-being?

Who was interested in my well-being? I thought about this, as I climbed the stairs and indulged in a lavender chamomile bath.

I decided that Mitzi, Mrs. Lauterman, Pete and Jerome were the most involved in my well-being. Jerome was in Alaska. If he had been in town, I know he would have roared over with a bottle of gin, a stash of makeshift weapons and his DVD of
The Party
. My parents cared, of course, but they were thousands of miles away trying to kill people with croquet balls. My other best friends were sprinkled around the continent on film shoots and tours, and I knew that however much they loved me, not one was going to tell the director that they couldn't play the death scene (the one that might win them the Oscar) the next day because they were needed back home with a friend who was trying not to play a death scene for real. I didn't blame them. Actors understand priorities.

I knew I had friends, but how could I call anybody and beg them to come over? I hated the thought of sounding needy.

If Horatio were here, he could offer comfort, even though he had proved himself useless as a bodyguard.

I was alone, achingly alone.

Then Hollywood saved the day.

After my bath, I went to my den and found the dusty jars with my marble collection (acquired in my youth and augmented over the years with flea market finds). I sprinkled the marbles liberally around my front door and the patio door in the den. Thank you,
Home Alone.

They looked so beautiful, their colours softly gleaming in the dim light from the hallway. I was devaluing them, leaving them around on the floor. I wondered where I had put my most valuable marble, the sulphide with the clown inside, and hoped I had stashed it in a drawer for safekeeping.

Silly me. What was I thinking? Nobody was going to break in. I should just gather them up (especially the latticino swirls) and go to bed. But I was so tired that I decided to leave my beloved marbles by the doors and deal with them in the morning.

I was awakened by the sound of horrendous cursing and crashing. I am familiar with the F-word, but not in as many varied and loud emissions as I heard in the middle of that night.

I bounced out of bed, realized I was wearing Donald Duck pajamas, made a quick executive decision that this didn't matter, grabbed the rolling pin and ran downstairs.

I wasn't too frightened, given that the sounds I had just heard were similar to the agonized crashing of small trees, which led me to believe I was more likely to find bodies on the floor than bodies brandishing weapons.

I followed the sound of the groans and curses, rounded the corner to the den, flipped on the light in a nanosecond with my elbow (thank goodness for that electrical company commercial that had required thirty-seven takes before the sound guy got it right) and jumped into a pose vaguely related to “Om-KICK!” My foot hit a marble and I skidded a few inches, but found purchase and stayed in pose, rolling pin aloft.

The patio door was open. The wooden spoon was in three pieces.

I registered this with the actor's peripheral vision, finding it hard to concentrate because of the distracting animal sounds coming from the floor.

The kid with the blue Crocs was lying on the floor on a bed of marbles, moaning.

Oh, don't let him die. I couldn't take another dead body in my condo. And he looks so pathetic.

I guessed he had hit the little guys, gone up in the air and landed flat on his back on several hundred marbles. It must have felt like a shiatsu massage from hell.
Ha ha. Oh, Lu, don't be so mean.

“Holy shit!” he gurgled. I took this to mean he wasn't dead.

Holding the rolling pin ready for action, but relaxing my kung fu ridiculousness, I looked at him.

“Are you hurt?”

“Of course I'm hurt! It's like hundreds of marbles stuck in my backside! I won't be able to sit down for weeks, months maybe,” he whined.

Then he started to cry.

I handed him a tissue and he snuffled into it.

I kicked a few marbles out of the way, pulled over a blue velvet footstool (one dollar at a garage sale) and sat near him, just far enough away that he couldn't reach me, but close enough that I could bonk him on the head (or elsewhere) with the rolling pin if he started to get a second wind. Which looked extremely unlikely.

“Do you have anything to drink?”

“I'm not falling for that again.”

“For real, I need something. I'm not going anywhere. I won't be able to move for at least twenty minutes.”

I looked at all the marbles surrounding him and decided he would make so much racket getting up that I could manage it. I needed something myself. I was shaking.

I heaved myself up again, went to the refrigerator and grabbed a bottle of Chardonnay and two wine glasses (Czech crystal, best estate sale ever). A shame to waste them on a home invader, but they were the only ones handy.

He was staring at the ceiling when I returned.

“You know,” he said glumly, “I shouldn't be doing this. I have potential. It's not fair.”

I looked at him and wondered, unkindly, what potential he thought he had—perhaps a step up to parking lot mugger? Then I mentally chastised myself and remembered that everybody had potential, waiting to be discovered and utilized.

I sloshed some wine into a goblet, then hesitated.

“How old are you?”

“I'm old enough.” He sounded aggrieved.

I handed him the goblet. He looked at it suspiciously.

“You don't have beer?” he said incredulously.

“This is not a beer house,” I snapped. “If you want beer, go break into the Mortons' across the street. They knock back several cases a week. You're awfully picky for a petty criminal.”

He looked at me, hurt.

“I was only asking.”

“You were not just asking. You were whining. Whining is not appealing. And it will not get you what you want. Which leads me to my next question.” I waved the rolling pin over him. “What do you want?”

He raised his head, groaned in pain, glugged half the glass of wine, and collapsed back onto the rug, staring at me.

“Well?”

I shook the rolling pin, trying to look dangerous.

He kept staring at me, his eyes glazing over. What? He was such a cheap drunk he was going to pass out after two ounces of wine?

“Come on!” I hissed, trying to look demented.

His eyes got bigger and bigger, and then, slowly, terribly, I began to recognize the look.

“It's you! You!” His face broke into an incredulous broken-toothed smile.
This boy needs a dentist, I thought.

And then he did it. “Doggie Doggie Bow Wow!” He sang it almost perfectly. I was impressed.

And then he did it again. “Doggie Doggie Bow Wow!”

“I get it. You recognize me. You watch a lot of television.”

“Holy shit! I never thought I'd ever, like, actually meet you. Wait'l I tell the guys at the bottle depot.”

He took a deep breath and I could tell he was revving up for another go at Doggie Doggie Doodoo.

“Stop it!” I shouted. “Stop that right now. You are not going to tell any guys at the bottle depot, because I am going to slug you with this rolling pin and then you are going to wake up in jail, where large men who smell bad will want to be your boyfriend!”

That stopped him, mid-Doggie. He thought for a minute. “Would these men be attractive at all? I could maybe handle that.”