One Hot Mess (16 page)

“D's a friend. From Chicago,” I yammered. “Just in town for a couple of hours before his—”

“How good a friend?” he murmured, and lowered his hot-tamale eyes to mine.

I was breathing hard. There was a dark chemistry brewing between us. It may have been toxic and deadly, but it was also hopelessly alluring.

“We met years ago when—”

“How good a friend?” he asked again, and seared me with his eyes.

I felt the draw of him like a fist around my senses, squeezing me close, stopping my breath, but I fought the weakness. He had given up on me, walked out, quit the fight when I was just gearing up for battle.

“Who the hell are you to ask?” I gritted.

He jerked his head toward D but never dropped my gaze. “Who the hell is he?”

“You made it pretty clear you weren't interested.”

“That doesn't mean you have to—”

“Are you or aren't you?” I snarled.

A muscle jumped in his jaw. He fisted his hands, controlled his breathing, then lifted his attention with slow
deliberation from me to D. Their gazes struck like lightning. “If you hurt her, I'll carve my name on your fucking heart,” he said, and, turning, stalked away, Rockette bounding along beside him.

The world returned to normal by slow increments. My heart was thudding heavily in my chest. Harlequin was still slobbery, and D was grinning like an ecstatic monkey.

“Well,” he said, “that went better than expected.”

HE SEPTIC GUYS began digging up my yard the next day. It was Friday. I pretended my life wasn't a wasteland, woke early showered, washed my hair, and artfully applied half a dump truck of makeup. After that I carefully dressed in a mulberry skirt and an ivory blouse with a little ruffle down the front.

I looked good. And why shouldn't I? There was no telling who I might see today. Maybe a mob boss. Maybe a senator with presidential ambitions. Maybe a rabid lieutenant who made me hot and angry and psychotic all in one fell swoop. Or maybe I'd meet someone normal. Stranger things have happened.

As far as I knew, D had returned to Chicago, but I didn't
know much. We'd parted at the dog park after our surreal meeting with Rivera, and I hadn't heard from him since.

I can't remember which clients I saw that day. I can only assume I spoke to a few and didn't screw up their lives any worse than they already were, but my mind was scrambling. Every spare second, I was on the Internet, researching recent California deaths.

There was a buttload of them.

By the time my final client left, I felt like my mind had been run through a Cuisinart.

“You okay?” Shirley asked as I staggered out of my office for the final time that day. The Magnificent Mandy had been kind enough to remain bedridden. “You look a little punch-drunk.”

I took the chair not far from her. “Do you believe in coincidence, Shirley?”

“Coincidence?”

“Yes.”

“Like, every time my ex had a poker game with the guys, it just happened to be the same time that tramp Malika was in town?”

I gave that a moment of judicious consideration. “Yes,” I said finally. “Like that.”

She sighed heavily. Her majestic bosom heaved. She crossed her arms over it and narrowed her eyes. “I maybe used to believe in coincidence. Sometimes bad things just up and happen. But more often than not, I think bad things happen 'cuz somebody somewhere's been taking them for a ride on the stupid express. Why do you ask?”

“I don't know.” I leaned my head back against the chair. “Maybe I'm just searching for the meaning of life.”

She made a
hmmmfffmg
noise deep in her chest.

“Do you think there is one?” I asked.

“Sure there is.”

I perked up a little. Which means I managed to lift my head. “Do you want to share it with me?”

She nodded. “It's chocolate,” she said.

I wasn't really all that surprised. I just hadn't heard it verbalized with such succinct eloquence before. “Chocolate?”

“Yeah. Chocolate and babies and the kind of dark jazz that makes your toes curl up in your shoes.”

“Jazz.”

She lifted her heft out of the chair and rounded her desk. “It's the good things in life, honey. The things that make you happy way down in your humming place.”

I straightened a little. “I'm not sure I have a humming place.”

“Oh, you got one. Maybe you just ain't heard from it for a while. I been around a long time, and I figured out this much: It ain't the big things that count. Not fame or bank accounts or who you know. It's those little moments when you smile to yourself and you don't really know why. You find a few moments like that for yourself or someone else and you got it all.”

She shooed me out of the office a few minutes later. I draggled home like a lost puppy. There was a mound of dirt reminiscent of the Sierra Nevadas in my backyard, suggesting bad things for future showers and the contentment of my bladder, but I strapped on my running shoes and took Harlequin for a jog. It was getting dark by the time I got home, and I was dripping fluids from every pore.

“Miss Christina.” I glanced up. Mrs. Al-Sadr stood on the opposite side of the fence. Below her long paisley
skirt, her grass was as uniform and green as outdoor carpeting. “Your yard is ugly mess.”

In all the time I had lived on Opus Street, I hadn't exchanged more than two sentences with Mrs. Al-Sadr, but I had to admit, five truer words had never been spoken.

“Yes, sorry about that,” I said.

She shrugged. “A neat yard, it is the concern of husbands, yes?”

Having neither a neat yard nor a husband, I had no idea. I nodded and turned away, but she spoke again.

“Do you bath?” she asked.

“What's that?”

She was silent for a moment as if searching for the right words, then motioned, indicating me or the dirt mound or both. “You have need of bath.”

Ten minutes later I was gathering up my toiletries. I didn't know the proper etiquette for using other people's water, so I packed my own bathroom condiments and trekked down the sidewalk. Mrs. Al-Sadr greeted me at the door with a shy smile. I schlepped past two solemn-faced, dark-eyed children and in moments found myself in heaven.

Their bathtub was one of those Jacuzzi types. I washed my hair, soaked, and found that I was smiling as I shaved my legs. Who would have suspected I would find my humming place in someone else's tub?

Finally, squeaky clean and as sweet-smelling as cookie dough, I pulled on sweatpants and T-shirt, then wandered, wet-headed, out into the living room.

Ramla, as she had introduced herself earlier, was reading a newspaper called
Al-Ayyam.
No one else was in sight.

“Thank you,” I said, and hugged my damp towel to my chest. “That was unusually kind.”

“I have the halvah,” she said.

I raised a brow or two. “What?”

“Come.” Folding her paper neatly, she stood up and traipsed past me into the kitchen. An oblong table boasted a pan of bars sprinkled with powdered sugar. “I have made the halvah. But I have no sisters with who to share.”

In the end, we sat eating a foreign ambrosia that had apparently been created in her very own kitchen.

“Are you not lonely?” she asked finally.

I glanced up. The remainder of the bars were calling to me with buttery goodness, making me wonder a little obsessively if it would be rude to grab the pan and make a dash for my front door. “Lonely?” I asked.

She pursed her lips and studied her fingers, entwined upon the tabletop. Shame crossed her pleasant features. “I have the guilt,” she said.

“It's going around,” I admitted, still eyeing the bars.

“My husband says I should be in the song.”

I tried to understand her meaning, but the bars had almonds and sugar, and did I mention butter? I love butter more than I love François.

“He say I am the lucky woman. My children are healthy. There is food.” She motioned to the table.

It seemed like the perfect time to segue into a request for more heaven in a pan. In fact, I was choosing my next piece of ambrosia when I heard a strange, strangled noise coming from the far side of the table. Wrenching my gaze away from the dessert, I saw that Ramla was crying.

Now, I'll be the first to admit that if anyone is comfortable
with tears, it should be a psychologist, but I'm from Chicago, where we only cry when the Bears lose and/or we run out of beer.

“Mrs. Al-Sadr?” I ventured, voice tentative.

“My sister, she is troubled,” she said.

I nodded and listened.

t was fully dark when I left her house and trekked up the crumpling walkway to my front door. Harlequin did a few prancing leaps to demonstrate his happiness, and I smiled. Loneliness is a funny thing. Sometimes abated by nothing more than a flop-eared dog the size of a small satellite. Sometimes not abated at all.

aturday arrived right on schedule. Not wanting to overuse the peeing privileges at my neighbors', I walked down to the nearest Exxon to use their restroom, then had a bowl of cereal in lieu of nutrition and spent the remainder of the day at my computer.

I had promised Ramla I would do what I could. Her sister, it seemed, was in a bad marriage with a bad man in a bad part of Yemen, so I Googled immigration laws and settled in.

By five in the afternoon my bladder was making believable threats about implosion. Latching on Harley's leash, I popped into the Saturn, peed at Vons supermarket, then filled a cotton tote with groceries and headed back home.

Sunday went much the same, except that I had fresh milk and bagels in the fridge.

My Internet system is slower than an Ashtanga yoga
master, but I eventually learned that immigration possibilities were grimmer than I realized. By comparison, my little corner of the world seemed relatively placid, but hate crimes were hardly unheard of. A Muslim man had been shot in Detroit for no known reason other than his faith. A woman in Atlanta had her burka torn off while being chastised for wickedness.

The Moral Majority seemed to be having a field day with us imperfects lately: the gays, the …

My mind fumbled off on a tangent. Both Baltimore and Casero had, at least by some standards, wandered off the straight and narrow. One was a lesbian, the other an alcoholic. Did that suggest a trend, or was the majority of the population on a broader, curvier path?

Back to my investigation, I Googled odd deaths again. A rock climber had died while rappelling down a cliff in New Mexico. Authorities believed he died of an internal hemorrhage. A woman in Minnesota had been killed by a moose. The moose in question had declined comment. Chances were good, however, that he was disgruntled about human encroachment. But as far as I could discern, neither the victims nor the moose had any connection with Senator Rivera.

The rest of the reports were both revolting and mesmerizing. I stared at my computer screen, Google-eyed, and narrowed my search to
deaths and Rivera.
Salina Martinez popped up in a thousand formats. There were photos and accusations and long-winded stories concerning her job, her acquaintances, and her pulchritude. I moved on. I knew who had caused her death. In fact, the memory of an old man with a poker made me check the
locks on my doors before settling back in my thumb-size office.