Eve's Rib, page 16
Two more people came up on stage to talk about Dylan, a guidance counsellor and Shannon Dempsey herself. She kept talking about what a great guy Dylan was and how much she’d miss him. She never mentioned the beer cap, or how she dropped him like a social-pariah rock after that. Everyone was pretending like they knew Dylan so well. But if that were true, they’d have known he was about to blow his head off with a shotgun, now, wouldn’t they? Although I don’t know if anyone could have seen that coming. I certainly didn’t. Selena and I wouldn’t have sent the poems if we had. But like I said, you can’t blame us for that. It was just a joke. It wasn’t our fault the guy was messed up.
I heard his art teacher might have been close to him. There was talk that she was making a showcase of some of the work he’d done in her class. But the school had put a stop to it. You could tell why. I’d seen some of his stuff when they put it on display in one of the windowed boxes in the hallway. He made these dark face masks out of plaster of Paris. They had huge white eyes shot through with bumpy red veins. Crazy wet tongues stuck out of them through the yellowed molars he’d embedded in their mouths. Each had a different twisted expression. They looked like those Greek drama faces, except there was more than just comedy and tragedy. I’d heard he’d used his own baby teeth for the project. His mom had saved them. Like I said before, the guy was really messed up.
Once the Dylan show was done, Ashley Stravinsky gave an update on Selena. I suppose they chose her because her dad was the doctor who treated Selena at the scene. You’d think they’d have asked me. But I guess I don’t have enough credibility as only her best friend. My dad’s not a doctor. Or my mom for that matter. Ashley didn’t have anything new to say anyway. Just that Selena was stable, and we should all pray for her, which we already had.
The principal, Mrs. Anderson, came out on the stage at the end of everything. She made a speech about sticking together and the importance of communication. She told us her door was always open. We’re here for you, she kept saying, and those dumb therapists, including Mom’s, kept nodding over and over like a bunch of hipster bobbleheads. The principal actually had tears in her eyes. What a performance. I doubt she even knew Dylan Penske. Although she does know Selena. She’d made a big deal when she awarded her the Good Citizenship Award at our last assembly. As if citizenship counted for anything these days, except maybe in an election where half the people vote for the wrong people anyway.
It’s all bullshit, all this hand-holding and open doors. Their doors are only open for the good citizens, the ones without any dirty secrets. No principal or teacher wants to hear about the darker stuff. It might tarnish a school’s reputation, like those football players last year from that stuck up private academy. They’d raped a cheerleader after a homecoming game while everyone looked on and cheered. That shit was trending online for a week before anyone called the cops. The school knew about it but did nothing. We’re here for you, my ass.
As we filed out of the auditorium, the therapists on stage started talking among themselves, all except for Hello, my name is MARK. I caught him checking me out when I turned around to tell Alana Byles that I wanted to skip Chemistry and I needed her notes. Bastard didn’t even turn away when I stared right back at him up on the stage. The fucking pervert. Like I said, this stupid Catholic school-girl kilt is nothing but a freak magnet. But no one wants to know about that either.
The truth is, no one wants to hear you speak aloud about any of the dark stuff. Not the gnome lady, not the principal, and definitely not my mom.
She’s got enough dark stuff of her own.
Twenty-One
Richard ended up staying at the hospital a whole lot longer than he’d expected. The police showed up soon after the Patels, looking to speak to the man who’d travelled with Selena in the ambulance. He’d almost made it out the fire exit door when the nurse in the blue scrubs outed him, pointing with her tatty Band-Aid finger. The two detectives interviewed him in the same room where he’d been told the news about Michael. Five years hadn’t changed the surroundings or the ineffectual desk, although the walls had been painted — a calming aquamarine blue. The police asked him where he’d bought the health food drinks, and why he’d been driving Selena to the basketball game. They wanted to know how long he’d known her, and where he worked. Afterward, the two of them went out in the hall and left Richard to sit alone in the aquamarine, like a fish they weren’t finished reeling in yet. When they finally returned, the senior detective told him he could go, but not to leave town, just like in the movies.
Richard hadn’t left town, but he did go to work the next day. Monday morning, he sat at his desk, trying to deal with the fallout of a scathing email from Mueller. He guessed they must have had Wi-Fi at the airport. The German had taken extreme offence to Richard’s attempt to offload half the overspent budget on him. There had been escalations. On Sunday afternoon, when he’d been busy with Selena, the Patels, and the police, the forwards and replies had copulated and multiplied in his inbox like a teeming mass of virtual rabbits. He’d had to drop everything to deal with the fiasco, cancelling all of his meetings. He’d even closed and locked his open door. Scanning the numbers of the dreaded spreadsheet again and again, he tried to find a way to make things add up the way he wanted. But the lined rows and columns mocked him with their cold formulas, refusing to bend to his wishes. His foremost wish being that he wouldn’t come off looking like an incompetent asshole.
Richard leaned back in his chair and rubbed the back of his neck, stiff from spending the morning bent over his laptop. Looking out the interior window of his office, he could see that the coat hook over the wall of Julia’s cubicle was empty. She always hung her blazer over that hook when she was in the office, donning it only if a client came in and she needed to look more professional.
But there were no clients in the office, so the missing jacket meant there was also no Julia. She was usually in early, at least an hour before Richard arrived. He’d always had a problem with arriving late, often running an electric razor over his chin while he parked the car in the company lot at ten after nine. Sometimes Julia would take a couple of hours off in the morning to hit the doctor or the dentist. But it was almost noon and there was still no sign of her. Richard opened up the drawer on the right side of his desk and verified again that the damning burner phone was gone. He had just returned to the abhorrent spreadsheet when his legitimate cellphone rang with a call.
“Richard, this is Devon.” The chief information officer didn’t need to announce himself. Richard could see his boss’s name on the call display. Nobody used the landline anymore, even for internal calls. Richard’s office phone sat under a pile of hanging folders next to his abandoned desktop computer. He peeked around the dusty hardware to look across the floor at Devon’s corner office only to find his boss looking directly back at him. He hoped Devon hadn’t seen him cringe before he picked up the call. He leaned back in his desk chair, exaggerating a relaxed posture for effect.
“Hi, Devon, how are things?” Richard knew how things were. They were not good. The board of directors had seen the spreadsheet. They were worried about how their shareholders’ investments were being managed. Devon, in turn, was worried about his bonus, already spent on a shiny new Mercedes to go with the shiny new girlfriend he’d met at Bar None. Devon was smart enough to have a degree from MIT and young enough to still be paying off the student loans from it. Like a lot of high-achieving young men, he had decided to overcompensate for his age by behaving like a grumpy old man.
“I’d like to talk to you, Richard. In my office.” Richard swore he could hear an adolescent voice crack beneath the gruff request.
“Sure, Devon.” Richard clicked on the spreadsheet tabs, hoping something would jump out of the tumbling figures and save him. “How about three o’clock? I was just crunching the numbers on this budget, and I should be able to give you an update by —”
“Now, Richard.” Devon hung up the phone. Richard knew this because he could see him from across the floor, glaring at him through his open door.
* * *
“LISTEN, DEVON. I DON’T APPRECIATE being called in like a schoolboy here. I said I’d get the budget worked out for the end of the day and you need to trust me on that.” Richard stood in Devon’s office with the door closed. But the horizontal blinds on the window to the rest of the floor had been left open. Richard’s call to the mat was on public display, clear for all his co-workers to see.
Devon sat behind his executive-sized desk with a deep frown. This was his usual facial expression, only varied on occasion with the wide, offended eyes of annoyance. “It’s not about the budget, Richard. Take a seat.”
Richard plunked down in the visitor’s chair. It had been artfully designed so that it sat lower to the ground than the one that housed the shorter man behind the desk. Devon was well under Richard’s six feet.
“Then what is this about, Devon?”
“It’s about Julia McCabe.”
Richard felt the wind go out of his righteous indignation sails. But he was an experienced enough seaman not to let his rigging hang out.
“What about her?” he said, narrowing his eyes, attempting to betray nothing, especially himself.
“Word is you’re banging her.” Straight to the point, fucking Devon. Richard felt his sails go completely slack.
“Who the hell told you that?”
“Does it goddamn matter, Richard? Are you screwing your project coordinator, or not?”
Richard held his hands in tight fists, wishing he could reach across the desk and pummel Devon’s perpetually cranky face. The guy wasn’t even thirty. What did he know about pain and death and family and the lure of a tantalizing pink tongue that wanted to lick the cream out of your middle-aged churro.
“I think we should have Human Resources in here, if we’re going to discuss this any further.” Richard was calling Devon’s bluff but hoped he didn’t take him up on it. Marjorie Howard, their assigned HR contact, was three years past retirement. Her HR degree had been issued when men still kept full bars behind their desks and referred to the secretary who stocked them as “girl.” She looked like Richard’s aunt Shirley, and he had no desire to discuss Julia and her churro-licking capabilities with her in the room. Luckily, Devon ignored his request, as well as his protestations.
“Julia’s not in the office, Richard. She didn’t call in either. Word is the two of you might have had a bust-up.”
What the fuck, thought Richard. Who the hell knew about that? He was shocked by how much the office busybodies seemed to know about his personal life. He and Julia had been so careful, meeting only in secluded spots where they wouldn’t be seen. Had someone been following them? Were they there Friday night? The idea made his balls sweat uncomfortably in his boxers. He had more than one secret to hide. He decided to come clean on the affair, hoping the rest of his dirty laundry would remain off the line.
“We did have a thing, but it’s over. I don’t know where she is.” Closing his eyes, he leaned his forehead into his hand, rubbing at the lines that had started to develop there. “It’s been a rough weekend, Devon.” He paused. “My daughter. My daughter’s friend …”
He saw Selena so clearly on the blank canvas of his closed eyelids, bent over with the vomit and the blood pooling in front of her. He rubbed his forehead some more, hoping to massage the image away. But it was replaced by Abbey standing beside him in the kitchen with the spoiled fruit on the floor, her eyes holding back the tears he’d put there. In his memory, the kitchen walls were painted a gut-wrenching aquamarine. Sitting in Devon’s office, a single tear leaked out of the corner of his eye. He whisked the wetness away with one hand, as Devon got up from his desk. Opening his eyes again, Richard straightened up in the diminutive chair, getting a hold of himself and the situation. Devon walked behind him and pulled the horizontal blinds down.
“Richard.” Devon had dropped the old-man edge from his voice. This might have been how he spoke before graduating MIT, when he was just a geeky brainiac playing Dungeons & Dragons in his dorm room with friends. “I heard about what happened yesterday at your daughter’s basketball game. The police called here. Hell of a thing, Richard.”
“The police called you?” Richard felt the comforting warmth of anger bloom inside him again, replacing his sadness. First, people were following him to rat about his affair, and now the police were hounding him. It wasn’t enough that the cops made him feel like a goddamn criminal for buying Selena and Abbey a couple of drinks. Now they were invading his workplace. Was nothing bloody sacred?
“Yes, Richard. They called.” Devon returned to his chair behind the desk. “They said you took the girl to the hospital. That your own kid could have been involved.”
“She was not involved.” Richard raised himself to his full height in the visitor’s chair. “She just gave her friend one of her fucking drinks, Devon.”
Devon tilted his head, evaluating. It was only then that Richard realized he’d shouted as well as sworn at his boss. The blinds might keep out prying eyes, but the walls of these offices were one step above particleboard. The rest of the floor would have heard his outburst. More fodder for the office gossip mill. Now they’d be saying he couldn’t control his temper or his libido.
“I meant that your daughter could have been a victim as well, Richard.” Devon’s speech was even and controlled, making Richard’s blow-up seem all the more inappropriate.
“Yes,” Richard said, “I understand that.” He wasn’t shouting anymore, but he was still pissed off. Bust his balls about the budget, fine, but he didn’t need his personal life raked over the coals. Devon should back the hell off and let him do his job. He was horrified to think he’d actually cried in front of this overeducated little twat.
“Richard.” The grumpy old man voice had returned. “I want you to take a couple of days off.” Devon shifted his focus to the screen of his laptop. It had recently pinged with an incoming message. He began to type as if Richard had already left. Richard stared at him in disbelief.
“Are you shitting me?”
“No,” Devon said, still typing. “You’ve got a lot going on.” He looked up from the keyboard. “It’s not a request, Richard.”
“What about the budget figures?” Richard couldn’t believe Devon was benching him. Jesus. He’d made a mistake with Julia, he knew that. But he’d rectified it. It wasn’t like these things never happened at the office. He bet Devon had even dipped his own pen in the company inkwell once or twice. The guy always seemed a little too chummy with Jessica in Accounting.
“I’ll take care of the budget,” Devon said, dismissing Richard with a swishing hand gesture, as if the budget could be swept away, perhaps under a carpet. “You can take the rest of today off as well. Come back on Thursday. Maybe even Friday.” Devon returned to his laptop. Richard sat fuming in the visitor’s chair, listening to the click-clack of his boss’s keyboard, feeling like a rube.
“Fine,” Richard said, fed up. He got up to leave. His hand was on the door handle when Devon spoke to him from behind his desk.
“So, you sure you don’t know where Julia is?”
Richard paused with his hand on the doorknob. He could feel the round metal go sweaty in his palm.
“No.” He kept his face turned away. “I don’t.”
Richard opened the door and stepped out into bright fluorescent light. He strode across to his office, his gaze focused straight ahead so he wouldn’t have to see his co-workers watching him. Powering down his laptop, he packed it into a leather case with his cellphone and office keys and walked swiftly toward the exit for the stairwell.
As he passed, he saw Julia’s coat hook hanging over the cubicle wall, still empty.
Twenty-Two
Eve was searching Abbey’s room when she got the call Monday morning.
“Where the heck have you been?”
“You know me, sweet Eve.” Janet gave a tired yawn, even though it was almost eleven o’clock. “I like to follow my nose, see where it leads me.”
Eve picked up a book from Abbey’s clear glass work desk. Sense and Sensibility. She held open the front and back cover, shaking out the pages over the bed. A receipt from the school library fell out. Eve picked it up from where it had landed on her daughter’s puffy turquoise duvet as she cradled the cellphone to one ear. According to the faded slip, the book was two years overdue.
“And where has your nose led you since Friday night?” Eve grabbed another book and repeated the same procedure.
“Into the bed of a highly accommodating trapeze artist with a penthouse overlooking the river.”
“I didn’t think circus performers made that kind of money.”
“They don’t,” Janet said. “She’s house-sitting for a friend.”
“In between circus gigs?”
“Yes.” Janet sighed and yawned again.
Eve didn’t make a habit of invading her daughter’s privacy, despite her occasional peek into her thoughts. She felt like a burglar, robbing her daughter of her right to personal space. Eve could still recall her own horror as a teenager when she’d discovered her mother had snooped in her room. It hadn’t been much of a covert operation. Her mother had used a red pen to correct Eve’s grammar in her diary, unable to resist the lurid sin of poor verb conjugation. But despite this memory, Eve found herself declaring household martial law today. Her daughter’s civil rights were being revoked, at least until Eve could convince herself that she’d had nothing to do with what happened to Selena at the basketball game.
“It’s Monday. You’ve been gone for two whole days.” Eve wasn’t going to let Janet off the hook after she’d left her dangling all weekend. She picked up the books she’d discarded on the bed and carefully put each one back on the desk exactly as she’d found them. Abbey watched for that sort of thing. Eve had gone into her bedroom once to retrieve a sweater she’d borrowed and been caught out later when Abbey returned home. Her daughter had forced a slip of paper into the doorjamb and it had fallen to the floor when Eve entered, a primitive but effective form of perimeter surveillance. The resulting meltdown after Abbey discovered the breach in security had left Eve shaken for days.
