Deadly Dues (16 page)

I didn't like Stan. I had fantasized about various ways to get him out of my life. But I never seriously wished him dead. In a way, I understood that Stan had been playing out his role. I was a supporting player in his life. He had probably never thought deeply about me or how his actions had changed my life. He didn't even know that his passing had started me twitching. I held my breath until the twitching stopped. I was pretty sure it was a temporary condition that would probably only resurface when Stan's name was mentioned.

I used logic.

“We are in a delicate and extremely vulnerable position,” I said. “We need to maintain a carefully constructed public persona while being constantly aware of the repercussions of the eventual discovery of the extremely dead body we discovered, without revealing that we were the first people to discover it.”

There was a long pause.

“That was really good, Lu,” said Geoff. “You could maybe get a grant out of that.”

“Are you crazy? No way can I get a grant after this! I—and the rest of you—will be lucky not to end up in jail after this!”

My outburst had a sobering effect on the assembly, and we all sipped our drinks while thinking about our respective futures. I know I should have been thinking about jail, but I was actually thinking about the shoe sale at Step Out, just two blocks away. It wouldn't start until the next morning, but it wouldn't hurt to look in the windows tonight.

I took a moment to regroup my thoughts. Shoe sales aside, I had spent some time thinking about Stan. Sure, he was a total louse, but did he deserve to be impaled on his desk, a ten thousand dollar item, which my dues had helped buy?
Whoa, Lu.

I hesitated for a moment. Would Geoff, Pete, Gretchen and Bent think I was selling out if I said I felt sort of sad for Stan? I decided to risk it.

“Stan was a snake—” I began.

Gretchen clutched her tiny pointed chest in horror. “How can you say that? It is so disrespectful!”

“—nevertheless—” I continued.

“Have you no decency?” said Geoff, his eyebrows moving upward into his white waves of hair.

“Oh, good grief!” I hissed. “You hypocrites! He was a creep and a thief and a blackmailer and a harasser and a louse! We all know it! Spit the pablum out of your mouths and admit it! But even if he was a horrible human being, we should take a moment to regret that he died a horrible death. Nobody deserves that.”

There was a sobering pause.

Then Gretchen raised her head from examining her empty glass and whispered, “Do you think they still use fresh maraschinos here, or do they keep them hanging around in the cooler for months? You never know. I hate food poisoning.”

Wally chose that moment to swirl by with our next round, and there was a suitably subdued silence as he plunked our drinks on the table. We pretended Gretchen hadn't spoken.

“All right,” said Geoff, after Wally had gone on his way. “It was awful. I don't want to think about it. And I really don't want anybody to think I had anything to do with it. Discretion is the key word here.”

“Ditto,” said Bent. “We need to agree on this. No loose lips.” He looked meaningfully at Gretchen, who pointed her lips at him.

“Yeah,” said Pete. “And, not to beat the poor old horse, should we revisit the fact that it really looks as if one of us bumped him off?”

• • •

It might have been an unoriginal phrase from film noir, but it effectively brought the conversation to a stunning halt, much like a freight train in enemy territory with the armed rebels ahead and the renegade army behind.

A long silence blackened the air, so long that we each had time to look into the dregs of our drinks and order another, just by limply raising our hands in unison. Wally knew our routine. In the past, this would have been post-audition, post–bad review, post-show or post-breakup, but in this case, it was post, present and future trauma.

Why did Pete have to ruin it? Or had he posed the question just to deflect attention from himself? I had brought up the same topic earlier, but it was more in the category of random theorizing on my part.

I had trouble looking at anybody. I am not a suspicious person. I have dimples. I have a cheery outlook on life. But now I was wondering if Gretchen or Pete or Bent or Geoff could have killed Stan and was simply pretending to be as confused and surprised as I was. Maybe the thought had lurked in the back of my mind, but I wanted it to stay there, unaddressed.

I took this tense intermission to contemplate my companions. Yes, they were my oldest compadres in my often challenging profession. But whom did I trust?

Geoff I trusted in some ways but not in others. He was unreliable in romance (hence his violent parting from Gretchen) but he was essentially a good-hearted, albeit shallow, soul. He just had trouble differentiating between what was good for Geoff and what was good for the universe.

Then there was Pete, who was one of the most honourable and kind people I had ever known. But how well did I know him? There were flashes of rage that were unexpected, which I had chosen to ignore. And the overwhelming bitterness at living alone in a home without Sally's smile or his kids' laughter.

What about Bent? He was a total wild card. He was crazy. Everybody knew that, and nobody could decide whether he was a great undiscovered talent who was moonlighting as an acting coach, or a sociopath waiting to commit serial murders. I personally never supported the latter theory, although I knew several actors and crew members, even Teamsters, who quickly pushed the automatic lock on their car doors if he came near.

I couldn't dismiss Gretchen, who was blonde, beautiful and enigmatic to the point of being weird, and who apparently thought she was my best friend. And yet I was terrified of her at times, so what does that say?

I was the first to speak.

“So, if one of us bumped him off, using your retro phrasing,” I said, “why would we be sitting here instead of catching a bus to Yellowknife?”

Pete looked at me as if I were an idiot. “Because we wouldn't want to draw attention to ourselves.”

Gretchen suddenly put her little claws over her face and started to cry. Little squeaky sounds that were embarrassing and triggered whiplash throughout the bar. It was so awful that it must have been real. Gretchen would never have looked that pathetic and mousy on purpose. I exchanged an uneasy glance with Geoff. I started to move closer to Gretchen so I could give her a hug (while trying not to get jabbed by any of her points), when our table went black. The shadow over our conversation was now literal as well as figurative.

Sherilyn Carp leaned over the table and hissed at Gretchen, “You stupid bitch! Can't you behave in public?”

Gretchen peeked up at Sherilyn, gave a little squeak, shrank back into the booth and cried even more, tears squeezing out from between her claws and trickling down her hyper-made-up face. She must have used products that cost more than my monthly condo fees, because not a bit of pointed black mascara or chiselled blush dislodged from her lovely angular beauty. I tried to get closer to her in a show of support, but all her points got in the way. Her elbow jabbed me in the chest and I recoiled, still sending reassuring noises in her direction. She was weird as hell, but she was still my friend.

Sherilyn Carp, with bouffant blonde hair, pale pink lipstick and hard black eyeliner (the sort of makeup that can be wildly appealing to some men, especially if the cleavage is as defined as Sherilyn's), leaned further over the table, her face a few inches from Gretchen's. Geoff, Pete and Bent swooned at the view.
Men.

She was wearing a black tank top cut almost to her navel, black pants that should have got her arrested for indecent exposure, and sky-high Manolos. I could feel my heart tinkle into nasty, envious little pieces. Sherilyn, the untalented, the mean-spirited, the polyester princess, was wearing brand new, this season's Manolos. I tried to hide my Salvation Army Nine West loafers under Geoff's boots. (He looked at me as if I were trying to make a pass at him and then, seeing my eyes glued to Sherilyn's feet, put the deuce together and obligingly stepped on my feet.
Ouch
, but necessary.)

“You little slut! Shut up!”

I was astonished. It was now even more clear that they had some sort of relationship, but civilized people simply don't behave this way in public, unless they are onstage in front of a rapt audience and making a nice salary for their troubles.

“Hey, Sherilyn,” I said, using my calm, deep power-voice, the one I used as the Oracle of Delphi in that weird sci-fi series. “I think you are out of line here.”

Sherilyn stood back, and snarled. I ducked instinctively. All those years of improv paid off. Her Kenneth Cole bag swung around in an arc and would have given me a magnificent black eye, except for my extraordinary reflexes. Unfortunately, my reflexes had neglected to take into account the hardness of the table, which was incredibly painful when applied to a rapidly descending face, and I had a slight woozy moment. When I came to, Sherilyn was gone, with the boomerang Kenneth Cole bag. Gretchen had disappeared in a poof of whisper. Geoff and Pete were applying ice cubes in napkins to my eye. Bent was ranting about decadent, nouveau riche women who used high priced purses as deadly weapons, when the working poor had to sleep on the streets. I decided that, as far as I was concerned, I was going to forget about knocking myself out. The story would be that Sherilyn had attacked me with a Kenneth Cole bag. If I had money for a lawyer, I would sue. But since I didn't, I could relax and enjoy the solicitous attention.

This was good. At least the evening had ended well. I am such a Pollyanna.

Later that evening, I lay on my bed with an ice pack on my face, listening to Charlie Haden and wondering if it is such a good idea to come to the defence of friends who disappear the moment you are attacked with a Kenneth Cole bag. Luckily, my nose wasn't broken and my dimples were intact, but I had a heck of a black eye and a killer headache. Charlie Haden is a cure for all woes. I listened to his soothing bass, and slowly my muscles began to unknot.

I adjusted the ice pack. I didn't need to worry about losing any gigs, because my engagement calendar was blank except for my Big Mac shifts (a gig I had no doubt lost) and lunches with Mitzi, two realities which were about as far apart as you could get (although Mitzi did admit to the occasional Big Mac Attack). And—oh no—that charity fundraiser. It was going to take an entire tube of Elizabeth Arden to cover up the damage. I had so effectively blocked the fundraiser from my memory that I wasn't entirely sure where I was supposed to be, or when. Once I became vertical again, I would trudge into my den and check my e-mails, so that I would know where I was supposed to show up, pretending to be rich and famous, in order to seduce the truly rich and famous into giving money to a good cause.

Despite my good intentions, my mind veered back to the revelations of the day, especially Gretchen's surprising relationship with Sherilyn. I had never understood why anybody took Sherilyn Carp seriously. She had always seemed to me to be a shallow, nasty young woman. Obviously, some people, mostly men with more hormones than brains, thought otherwise. Perhaps Gretchen, with all her elegant points, found Sherilyn's voluptuous vulgarity appealing, in a replay of the old opposites-attract scenario. Or perhaps Sherilyn had played on Gretchen's insecurities, promising her roles and a career renewal. Maybe Sherilyn had tired of Stan and found Gretchen's sharp delicacy intriguing.

To me, Sherilyn was pathetic, an unaware woman who flaunted her sexuality in an embarrassing series of just slightly outdated styles—pink lipstick, big blonde hair, low-cut tops. Was her style deliberately blatant and coarse? But then I had to recognize that in my youth I had dressed inappropriately on too many occasions. Perhaps I was not in a position to pass judgment. However, I smugly reminded myself, once I had become what I like to think of as a grown-up, I no longer bared unappealing or intimate parts of my body in public. At least, not deliberately. The unfortunate dance with Greg Halligan at the wrap party for the sci-fi series was something I was trying to forget. So I decided to cut Sherilyn Carp some slack in the fashion department.

Sherilyn had become a producer very suddenly, with Stan's help. As soon as she started handing out business cards, with Stan at her side, beaming in what was more a lascivious than solicitous manner, the integrity of the union was compromised. It was hard to tell if there was any underhanded pressure to work with Sherilyn, but unfortunately, whether there was or not, a cloud of malaise permeated the union. Stan had made it clear that Sherilyn's production company was the favoured child: the best agreements, the secret deals, everything that steered all work her way. The standards that Katrina had maintained had disappeared out the window when she took her first maternity leave. Without Katrina to rein him in, Stan had become a man befuddled by pink lipstick. Katrina was strong. Her ethics were unquestionable. But her defection into the land of motherhood had left us with Stan as an interim leader. I am not philosophically opposed to children, but at times I really wished that Katrina had been a bit more considerate in her multiplying. Lorraine was tough, but there was only so much she could do to keep Stan in check without losing her job. Sylvia, at least, scared Stan enough that he had to keep his sexist comments to a minimum. I once heard her tell him that she had run into tougher characters in prison, and she had rearranged their anatomy very effectively and would be glad to do the same for him if he ever touched her again. Only she didn't say it that politely. I had to look up some of the words she used on the Internet, and was shocked.