Deadly Dues (12 page)

Later, I sat on the floor in front of my fridge, reduced to eating a barely defrosted plastic container of what I thought might have been lentil stew in its first incarnation.

As I sat on my glistening white tile floor (installed in the Bow Wow Days), I sighed and wondered if I had a stray bottle of wine lurking in a cupboard. Sometimes I hid them, just in case Geoff or Bent came over and started scrounging in the refrigerator. They would drink anything, even Kummel liqueur. The upside of this was that I could unload any foul bottle of liquor or wine on them. I usually had a decent Chardonnay on hand, but the events of the day—and my bank balance—had precluded any useful errands, like grocery shopping.

Geoff occupied a strange area in my life. He was a friend. He was a mooch. (He had at least three ex-wives, and he had cheated on every one of them. He was a louse. A gorgeous louse. Young women with two-digit IQs often found him irresistible, especially when he was the lead in a TV movie and they had one line. I, however, had a three-digit IQ, and a very impressive resumé, and so managed not to be overwhelmed by his roguish charm. Oh, but that charm, I mused. It was powerful. I wondered whether it ever got him into trouble (other than problems with irate boyfriends and homicidal husbands, at which point, Geoff usually managed to find a role in a low-budget film in the Bahamas or the Philippines that kept him away until things cooled down.) I was smart enough to know that if I ever succumbed to his best efforts, I would regret it forever. Fun with a big price tag, from heartbreak to humiliation.

Nevertheless, sometimes one can put those judgments aside and be willing to be friends with a lovable rat. My terms were that he never came on to me (or more realistically, that he limited his efforts to frivolous flirtation), that he never dated a minor and that he always paid back any money he borrowed from me. Strangely, we remained friends on these terms. I sometimes wondered what Geoff did in his lonely hours. There were only so many models an aging hunk could pick up. But he seemed to manage.

My friendship with Bent was based on his loyalty and my gratitude, no matter how weird his behaviour was at inappropriate moments. I really wish he hadn't bared his teeth at that Doberman in the back of the pickup truck last year, just as we were walking by. Luckily, I only had to take the Prozac for two months and then I was back to normal.

Gretchen was a friend and an enigma.

Pete was my tried and true, old-time, go-to friend for everything. He was reliable and comforting, except for unfortunate moments when he talked about pedicures in the Cayman Islands enjoyed by the people who had ruined my career.

I pulled open the door of the refrigerator and found an old bottle of Mogen David, dating from the days when I could afford a cleaning lady, which meant it would probably kill me if I drank it. I unscrewed the top, sniffed, recoiled, grabbed a Waterford Crystal glass (three fifty at Value Village) from the counter, sloshed in some of the odious mutant sugar and grape, scrunched up my eyes and downed about two ounces. This no doubt marked the beginning of the end for my little liver. I had drunk more in the past two days than I had in the past month. I love Chardonnay, but not to the point of saturation. And now I was drinking desperation booze. Lulu Malone of Bow Wow Dog Food one year, Loozie Boozie of Mogen David the next, I thought, as I raised the glass, held my nose and swallowed another mouthful.

I sat on the floor for a long time, wondering if I were dead, an instant diabetic or just in a coma. My mind drifted around the highlights of the past twenty-four hours, and I handily managed to avoid dwelling on the most repugnant parts. Mostly, I thought that I just wanted to go to sleep and wake up and find that I was still the star of Doggie Doggie Bow Wow, and that I had money and maybe a nice stuntman in love with me. And that I could afford brand new Manolo Blahniks in my size.

The doorbell rang. I thought about it for a while. Did I want to answer it? Not after last night. I was never going to answer my door again. Ever. That sweater was a write-off. To say nothing of the rug and the loveseat. And my stomach still hurt.

The doorbell rang again. It made me want to cry. I thought that maybe if I just sat very still, holding the bottle of Mogen David to myself as if it were a protective talisman, whoever it was would go away.

I waited. Whoever it was had given up. Good.

I settled back against the cupboard. I needed something to overcome the taste in my mouth. I had twenty-seven different kinds of exotic tea turning into aromatic dust in my cupboards. Yes, that's it. Tea. Soothing. Pure. The sort of thing that heroines in mysteries drink. Nobody who drinks tea ever gets bumped off. Look at Miss Marple. I rest my case.

I turned and reached up toward what I called my tea cupboard, but what was really my cracker, cookie, spiced almond and cashew cupboard, with packages of ancient tea shoved into crumpled heaps in the back. I propped myself up, leaning on the counter, thinking about how pathetic I had become, thanks to murder, mayhem and general confusion. I leaned over the sink, facing the window overlooking the pathway. I glanced out at the view, hoping the sight of autumn leaves would comfort me. Only there was no view. Just a face staring back at me.

I screamed. And knocked the Mogen David off the counter. Damn. Right on my foot. Then I sort of slumped down and relaxed.

• • •

I was dreaming about Godiva chocolates. I was swimming through a vat of Godiva chocolate and trying to kick aside various nuts that were in my way. I kept sinking back into the dark, black richness of the chocolate, and then I would float back to the surface.

Even though I just wanted to float with the chocolate, there was an annoying voice trying to bring me to the surface.

“Ms. Malone? Louise? Lu? Lulu?”

My parents had never called me Lu. They had insisted I stick with Louise. I had adopted Lulu when I was a silly grown-up, thinking it might help my brilliant career. My parents still thought of the comic strip when they heard the name, and worried I might have a boyfriend called Tubby. Sometimes, after a few martinis, they even asked about him.

“Ms. Malone?”

Oh, that sounded more adult. Maybe I should address this.

I came up through the dark chocolate and saw a familiar face. It looked like—
oh no
—Ryga.

I was lying on my sofa, and Ryga was trying to pour something down my throat. Truth serum, I bet. I spat it out, right onto his cashmere sweater.
Whoops
.

“Thanks,” he said, and walked into the kitchen.

I felt very glamorous, lying there on the sofa, emanating Mogen David, which I had just elegantly spat up. Luckily, Ryga was not on my list of potential boyfriends. This was because I did not have a list of potential boyfriends. Women who drink Mogen David do not date, I decided. They just doze in a netherworld of sweet wine, until one day they wake up in a dumpster.
Reminder: send cheque to homeless shelter. Fast. Before I get there.

Ryga came back, brushing at his sweater with a faded tea towel. He was wearing well-worn grey cords and a light grey sweater, which, to my relief, I noted was even more worn. At least I hadn't ruined this year's Ralph Lauren. But, I reasoned, it would have been his fault anyway, for surprising me like that.

“You fainted. Sorry,” he said, still mopping his sweater.

“I did not,” I said. “I do not faint.”

He just looked at me, deadpan.

“I am an actor,” I said grandly. “We faint publicly, for money, frequently. But we never actually faint.”

His mouth went into a strange squiggle, which could have been anything from gas to a repressed guffaw. I immediately realized how stupid I sounded and decided to shut up before I pontificated any further. I also wondered if I had really fainted. How strange. Was that what it was like to faint? Was this a sign of a major health problem? Would I be able to afford treatment if the Bow Wow royalties never appeared? I'd have to sell my condo and I would never be able to afford a pair of Louboutins. Life would be horrible. I would lose my job as a highly paid staff member at McDonald's. And—oh my goodness—I had totally forgotten to check in and tell them I was indisposed. Maybe I just wouldn't call them at all. Maybe I just wanted to die right now, in front of Ryga. It would serve him right.

I hadn't realized that I was crying. I think it was the shock of the face in the window.

Ryga turned and walked away. Totally revolted by my lack of cool. No man is comfortable with tears, especially the messy, hiccupy tears I was spewing. Tears in movies are fine, the sort that I had let dribble from my velvet eyes on camera in my younger days, when reviewers described me as “poignantly sensual.” Right now, I was revoltingly real.

Ryga returned from the kitchen with a box of tissues, and swung it under my nose. I hauled out a handful, and hiccuped.

He dropped it on the floor beside me, lowered himself into an armchair and looked at me intently.

It is always comforting to know that new humiliating moments in one's life are just around the corner.

I decided to take an aggressive stance.

“Policemen shouldn't lurk around people's—
hic!
—homes,” I said, with great dignity. “It—
hic!
—frightens them.”

“I apologize for the lurk,” he said. “I saw the lights were on, rang your doorbell and, when you didn't respond, thought I should check to make sure you were okay.”

“Oh.”

I paused for a moment. Damn. If only he had argued. I could have got—
hic!
—some wind up. Instead, I didn't have anybody—
hic!
—to fight.

There was a long pause, while I tried not to hiccup and he watched me.

“Why are you so nervous?” he asked.

“Because a ten-foot-tall maniac tried to kill me last night?” I said. “Is that good enough?”

“Sorry,” he said. “Although, realistically, you do realize that he was not ten feet tall, only about six foot four? You need to keep these facts straight.”

I made a face, then closed my eyes and pretended to suffer. What I was really doing was trying to cement into my mind what I could and could not say right now. Anything to do with Stan was a no-no. But Mr. Size Twenty I could fall apart over.
Damn, it was hard to keep the lies straight.

That is why I generally disapprove of lying, aside from the basic ethical issues. Of course, I try to avoid it for moral reasons. I don't like people who adopt lying as a way of life, and profess astonishment when they encounter a person who chooses not to lie. Somehow, in their lives, the lights never went on in the area of honesty, trust and integrity. Total dimness there.

The exceptions in this dim area of untruthfulness are the lies in crucial situations—for example, when, the day before her wedding, your best friend shows you her balloon-shaped wedding dress, which she has just paid ten thousand dollars to have sewn by French peasants who charge five dollars a stitch, and which makes her look as if she weighs five hundred pounds. In these situations, lying is an act of kindness and is perfectly acceptable, in my moral code. But in other situations, which range from banking to yearly physicals to less crucial things like being interviewed by police officers, once you start lying, you are zigzagging down a path of anxiety. And maybe down the road to hell.

“You're very quiet,” said Ryga.

“I was thinking about wedding dresses.”

I mentally smacked myself on my already tender forehead for the banality of the text and the delivery. Luckily, Ryga didn't seem to be much of a critic in that department. He looked at me steadily.

I met his gaze and managed not to look nervous, guilty or flustered. I was too old to be flustered.

Somewhere inside my convoluted and demoralized self, I found the few pieces of chicken bone to rally. I was, after all, not a kid anymore. Not a senior either. But at least a person with enough life experience not to be falling apart just because I was surrounded by dead bodies and, for the first time in a few years, in close proximity to a really live body. A really live body who seemed more suspicious of me than sympathetic.

How could anybody look at me and think murder? I'm adorable. Then I began to muse that perhaps Ryga had watched,
Darling
,
Detective
way back when and subconsciously was associating me with murder. Didn't he know that writers wrote this stuff and actors spoke the words, and it didn't mean that any of them actually went around killing people? This led me into a further internal riff about how too many people attribute the brilliant words characters speak to the actors who have interpreted them. As an actor, I know that the words would drop to the floor like dead locusts once they came out of my mouth if I didn't have the skill to make them real, but I am also old enough and experienced enough to know that the writers make the words magic and right. We rely on each other to make it work.

“Are you still with me?” he said.

“Of course I am,” I snapped. “I'm thinking.”

His eyes almost crossed, which made him marginally less attractive— for about five seconds.

“You've been doing a lot of that in the last five minutes,” he said. “Any meaningful results? Anything you would care to share?”

“You scared the hell out of me, lurking at my kitchen window,” I said. “You're lucky I didn't drop dead of a heart attack, and then my estate would sue you.”

“I was worried about you.” He looked annoyed, and it occurred to me that perhaps he was off-duty, which was,
tee-hee,
flattering. I decided to regroup and turn feisty into forlorn.

“I'm sorry. I've had a rough day,” I said. “I'll never get that carpet clean. Do you know how much orientals cost?”

“I just bought one at an auction.”

“Maybe the one I just consigned. Hope you paid a mint.”

“It was a deal.”

“Damn.”

I had been selling off bits and pieces of my Bow Wow loot to pay the condo fees and assorted credit cards. The BMW was the first to go. I almost wept when the carpet, a beautiful pink, peach and brown dream, had gone out the door, but at least I still had a roof over my head.