Base Notes, page 22
“What about the detective?”
“Don’t worry about him.”
“You know how I feel about ‘don’t worry.’” Grave, but familiar. Better than the brusqueness she’d been using earlier. Was she coming around? If so, I had to be better than Beau on this score.
“I’m worried enough for both of us. But I’m planning to do something about it.” I heard the door upstairs squeal. “Call me later. Let me know if he shows up or not.”
“Okay,” she said, sounding uncharacteristically unsure.
“It’s all going to come off without a hitch,” I said. “I promise. You’ll do great.”
She made a noncommittal noise. There was an awkward moment of silence, a void where some other pair of people might have inserted an endearment.
“Um,” I said, and was immediately embarrassed.
“Bye, Vic,” she said, slightly strangled. Then she hung up.
“Bye,” I said, into the silence.
“Who was that?” asked Barry, and I nearly pissed myself. The cheap wine had made its way into my bladder, and the pressure was exacerbated by my nerves. How long had he been standing there? I had heard the door open and shut after we got through unpleasant necessities, which meant he only could have caught the end of the conversation.
“A friend,” I said, and immediately realized I had made a mistake.
I should have said a client. A creditor. The bank. Anything else. When had I ever spoken to a friend on the phone? When had I ever mentioned having one?
Barry’s eyebrows hit his hairline, and he tucked his chin in campy disbelief. “Same one?”
Oh. The Instagram messages. Goddamn it.
“I like this for you, Vic. You need something besides the hustle. Somebody.” His eyebrows came down and he started smiling and nodding, full of himself and his opinions. “I worry about you.”
I laughed abruptly. “Really? Why?”
“All you do is work!” he said. “The juice is all you care about.”
“You care about it too,” I said. “Or you wouldn’t be working for me.”
“Sure,” he said. “But I have friends. I party. I do dinner with my mom. I volunteer at the community fridge! What do you do? Nothing. It’s fucked up; you shouldn’t be so lonely.”
Barry had only come on board after Jonathan’s death. He had never seen me willingly spend time with another human who wasn’t on my payroll, paying me, attempting to extract money I refused to give, or vice versa.
Barry would have called Jonathan a fuck buddy. A friend with benefits. A bad idea. I don’t know what I would have called him. Probably not a friend. Yes, we spent hours together outside of work. There were certainly benefits, over and above the sex (though that was not to be discounted). I didn’t trust him, but . . . do you need to trust a friend?
I trusted Jane. Instead of unpacking that thought, I said, “I’m going home early. You can too, if you want. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Barry was still looking at me funny. “Tomorrow’s Saturday.”
“Oh.” That was convenient. I could sleep in after a busy night.
Maybe Jane would stay with me. We could go for breakfast after.
I had to call Giovanni.
For this, I waited until I got home. And before I got home, I stopped at the overpriced but surprisingly well-stocked liquor store at 145th and St. Nicholas to replace the Longrow that had been missing from my bar since November. Medicinal, for me. And if Jane stayed over . . .
But I was getting ahead of myself.
Black bag in hand, I climbed up Sugar Hill into the beginnings of a slush storm. Icy pellets stung the back of my neck and whispered against the windshields of parked cars. Bad weather for driving. But wasn’t Jane from somewhere in the Midwest? She’d know how to handle it. Though that was no guarantee of safety, if everyone else was sliding and spinning out around you.
Giovanni’s cell phone rang and rang and eventually went to voice mail. I hung up rather than leave one and sat on my hands waiting for him to call me back. I didn’t want to leave a suspicious call log. Just in case.
After sixteen and a half minutes—reheating leftover curry in a pot at the stove made staring at the clock unavoidable—my phone rattled against the countertop and displayed Giovanni’s name.
“Hello,” I said.
“What do you want?” he asked, and his voice had the shape of a cleaver: flat with resignation, honed at the edge by hostility and resentment.
“Has Pearson made an appointment yet?” I asked.
Silence, as if he dearly wanted to tell me no. Then, buckling: “He’s on the schedule for next week.”
Damn. “Not soon enough.”
“Sorry,” he said, not sounding it. “That’s when he’s coming in.”
“Call him,” I said. “Tell him it’s tomorrow.”
“What?”
“You do reminders,” I said, putting the plan together as I talked. “Every time I have a cut, your receptionist calls me the day before to confirm. So have her call him tonight. Tell him his cut is tomorrow. You think he pays attention to his calendar?”
“Yes,” said Giovanni.
“No,” I said. “He pays someone for that. And the blame will fall on his assistant for getting his schedule wrong. Call him. I need it done.”
“Oh, you do?”
“As I established, yes. And you need to do it. Sooner rather than later. Tomorrow, ideally. Tonight would have been even better, but I’m trying to be realistic.”
A taut pause, in which our mingled breath made the connection crackle with static. And then he started laughing.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” he said, and kept on going.
“Tomorrow?” I said. “Like we talked about?” I had given him an abbreviated version of the spiel I’d laid on Beau and Jane: no dinner, no poison, no bloodshed.
The laughter spun down slowly, reluctantly. I was taking this seriously, and soon he would have to take it seriously as well.
“I’m never cutting your fucking hair again,” he said.
“I hope you’ll reconsider.” A thin thread of spicy smoke smell rose from my pan of oxtails, and I yanked them from the orange electric burner.
“Fuck you,” he said, and hung up.
Lashing out like this was childish and unattractive, and I was faintly embarrassed for him. But I pitied him too. The man loved what he did, found purpose in it. If I could empathize with anything, it was that kind of passion and commitment. Yet I had pulled it all out from under him so he would fall into place as it pleased me. I might stand to gain from this deal with Eisner, and save myself from losing much, much more. But I would lose a barber, even if I came out on top in every other way. And a good barber who would cut my hair the way I wanted was no small thing to lose.
22
Notes de Tête: Coffee
Notes de Cœur: Camphor, Menthol
Notes de Fond: Mildew and More Shit
The early part of the evening passed like hot tar, slow and acrid. The Scotch had been a sound investment. Not only did its profile match the tenor of the evening perfectly, but it kept me from wearing through the linoleum with my pacing. After two helpings of two fingers each, I would much rather sit in the armchair and clench my teeth. Besides, it kept my sparkling wine hangover at bay.
Would Reg show up tonight? Would I have to wait two nights? Three? What if Jane and Giovanni showed up on the same night? Could I handle two corpses at a time? Could I handle both of them at once? They were both angry at me; what would happen if we all ended up in the same room?
The Scotch meant these anxious suppositions took on the languor of inevitable despair. While this was preferable to heart-pounding terror, it was still deeply unpleasant. I was about to turn to my tried-and-true soporific of entrepreneurial podcasts when my phone buzzed on the bedside table. I sat up to grab it so fast I put a crick in my neck.
Jane. What are you doing later?
A fantastic pressure built and burst in my chest. Elation and panic and relief. Despite a deep breath, my fingers were still numb and shaky as I replied.
Nothing. Come over?
A long pause, a test of faith. And then, ten minutes later:
Another thumbs-up.
I went limp all over and lay heavily on my bed, podcasts forgotten. For two hours I slept the sleep of the just, or at least the dead, and didn’t wake up until Jane called to say she was upstairs.
She didn’t show up in the same vehicle as Beau—she had rented a Zipcar after signing up for a free trial with a coupon code. Her idea. “You don’t want the same car showing up both times,” she had said, and I agreed.
When I came up to street level, she was still sitting in the driver’s seat, tight-lipped and pale. Her ragged bangs swept across her forehead, pressed over her eyebrows by the brim of a knit cap. Somehow, she had found a proper parking space, on the curb, at a legal distance from the hydrant. Her breath clouded the inside of the windshield.
I knocked on her window and she jumped before she realized it was me. I tilted my head toward the trunk, and she nodded.
The sleet had become small snowflakes: dense chips of ice that fell fast and didn’t glitter in the streetlights. Her car door opened loudly in the late-night quiet, and she slipped on the asphalt. I felt the impact of her elbow in my palm before I realized I had moved to help her.
I saw her inhale, as if she would speak, and braced myself to scold her as I had Beau. But all she released was a sigh. It curled up into the cold air, so slowly I could have cupped it in my hands and caught her exhalation against my gloves as it condensed into water droplets.
Of course she understood she could not speak. Against whatever better instincts I might have had, I leaned forward and pressed my lips against hers. The skin was chapped and tasted like blood and Carmex.
She did not kiss me back. All of my earlier excitement withered. In its absence, I felt like a used balloon: stretched out and wrinkled, my skin left cold after rapid contraction.
She was still angry with me. What had I expected?
Reg was trussed up like his father before him, covered by a cheap fleece blanket we ended up using as a sling. Even with Jane helping, the sleet made things difficult. I nearly bought it on the icy stairs. The Scotch had dulled my reflexes, though I didn’t feel drunk. Maybe it was Jane’s unmoving lips driving me to distraction. Their apathetic yielding underneath my own.
“Okay?” she asked. I thought of the first time she had come home with me, how she slipped down the stairs, and I caught her, and we kissed in the portico.
I nodded and shut us into the darkness of the basement. Again, a little light from my apartment showed the path from front door to back. With heavy breathing and the odd curse, we got Reg into one of the newer tubs. The cinder blocks beneath it made ominous grinding sounds, but ultimately held. Sweating, I leaned back against the crowded workbench, dared myself to meet her eyes and gamble.
“Want a drink?” It was hard to sound nonchalant while whispering.
She made a face and looked back at Reg. “What about him?”
It was true I should deal with him first. But I wanted her to stay. I wanted her to kiss me back. “He’s going to take a few hours. I don’t want to keep you.” But I did. Oh, I did.
“What do you do to them?” she asked. The tarp-covered tub that held his father was conspicuous if you knew what to look for, which by now she would.
It was a bad idea to offer. What was this supposed to prove? But still off-balance, still wanting, I asked her back: “Would you like to help?”
It is a testament to some aspect of Jane’s character that she said yes, and that, once she understood what helping would entail, she didn’t back down. I don’t think it was tenderness toward me. If anything, the opposite. Some drive to prove that she could do anything I could. That she was capable and cold and not on the verge of cracking. The affection that had bloomed from my pity evolved into admiration. Perhaps into pride, which was as patronizing as pity in its own way. Embarrassing, in retrospect. She deserved better.
In her snow boots, with her sleeves rolled past her elbows and her watch cap pulled low over her shag, Jane was grim and tidy and suddenly butch. I could picture her twenty years ago: a middle-school tomboy. Volleyball, fistfights, hopelessly in love with an oblivious best friend and trying desperately to impress her.
She was trying to impress me now, and I was not oblivious: I was more than willing to be impressed.
There was a force and economy in Jane’s motions that reminded me of her bartending. I would have thought she felt no more for Reg than she did for an old-fashioned served up, except that whenever her gaze strayed across his face, or her hands had reason to touch his skin, the small muscles of her face gave her away.
She hated this man, and she was glad that he was dead.
Still, the grimness lingered. And by its lingering, I identified its most likely cause as guilt. Or if not guilt, then fear. The longer we worked on Reg—cleaning him out, sealing him up, dousing him in alcohol, and finally mopping up the mess his body had made—the deeper Jane descended into her dour mood. I became obsessed with her frown, and the way it made her lower lip plump and pouty.
We worked mostly in silence, but I knew I should speak beyond orders, advice, instructions. She wanted . . . what? Reassurance? No. That was Beau. Jane only needed an opening.
After the last gallon of alcohol went into the tub and the final length of plastic wrap was pulled into place, I peeled off my gloves and threw them into the battered paint bucket that served as my garbage can. Jane stood at the side of the tub and looked down through the layers of cling film. The liquid and the overlapping plastic turned Reg into an abstract painting: flesh tones and reflected light.
I didn’t know how to provide a gentle entrée. What did she want me to say? She was the one who had shut the door in my face. She had scorned me and was waiting for me to make amends. I should be piqued. Instead I wanted to appease her. And that wanting piqued me in its turn. When had I lost the advantage of condescension? Probably around the time I began to focus on her frown. Had Jonathan ever felt this way about me? An upsetting thought.
Finally, confounded by subtlety and fearing the consequences of further silence, I asked, “Do you feel guilty that you’re glad he’s dead?” She flinched, but I pressed on. “Or are you just worried you’ll be caught?”
Rubbing her gloved hands together as if she could clean them—Out, damned spot! Out, I say!—she was silent a long time. And even when she drew a breath, her answer was its release. In the delicate pause between, her gloves squeaked against each other.
“Jane?” I asked. Alcohol fumes made it painful to breathe, and I felt light-headed. “Which is it?”
Before she spoke I saw her reconstruct herself, reassemble her armature, buckle on her pads and armor. She didn’t even want to impress me anymore. She just wanted to take the hits and stay standing.
“I don’t know, Vic. Why not both?”
What could I say to that?
“You said you figured out how to do all this by accident?” She wiped her forehead with her forearm—a gesture I had first seen her use behind the bar, to keep her hands clean for work. Now she was trying to keep her face safe from her hands. “What the fuck kind of accident taught you this?”
She watched me struggle to dredge something up. When nothing came, she finally took pity on me and said, “I guess I’ll have that drink.”
“If you don’t mind,” I said, stopping at my threshold. “Just . . . I’d rather clean up first.”
Jane looked down at herself, made a face.
I opened the washing machine that backed up against my exterior wall. But she didn’t move and instead looked at me. So that was how it was going to be. Fair enough.
I stripped efficiently, having worn clothes that were quick and easy to get out of: old black jeans and a black T-shirt that wouldn’t show stains. No undergarments. I hadn’t wanted to get my fingers so close to my skin, no matter that my hands had been in gloves the whole time. Tarquin Winot’s comments on the hand that has touched the abject surfaced briefly in my mind. I thought of Jane wiping one yellow rubber palm against the other, then one after another across the opposite knuckles.
Naked, I shivered in the basement chill.
Satisfied that I was vulnerable and she had the upper hand, Jane peeled off her flannel shirt and the black V-neck beneath it. White crusts of simple syrup flaked off the cotton as it stretched over her head. She kicked off her snow boots and peeled black leggings away from her skin. The seams had left red indents behind. Goose bumps came to life along her arms and thighs.
I plucked the delicates bag from my hamper just inside the door and held it open for her lingerie. Surprisingly fine stuff, worn under her work clothes. But then, don’t we all draw confidence from secret luxuries like that? It’s a sense of superiority worn close to the skin, hidden from all but our intimates. The band of her bra had been taken in, close to the hooks and eyes—she had owned it long enough to stretch out the elastic.
She hesitated before removing this final layer, fingertips poised but held in check.
“You can use my shower,” I said. A moment more of hesitation, and then she slipped her hands between lace and skin.
The pipes banged when the washer started. I shut us away from the sound, away from the scene of our handiwork, into the cold and humid quiet of my studio. Careful not to touch the rug, the walls, the shelves, I led her to the bathroom and shut us into a smaller, colder, damper room.
The tile bounced our own stink back to us: ethanol and sweat, Jane’s coconut body lotion, the remnants of Reg’s shit. Despite my dousing it regularly in store-brand bleach, the grout still exhaled a faint scent of mildew. I found it almost comforting in this context: it was the smell of my space, and Jane was in it.
The floor was cold. I cranked the water as hot as it would go and waited for steam to start rising before I pulled the shower curtain back and gestured Jane in first. Her shivering had spread and intensified, and now her teeth began to chatter. She had held it together much longer than Beau, but under the hot water she started to come apart.
