Garvey was shredding a paper napkin into a little pile in front of him. “I think you’d be surprised at what goes into the building process. Everything follows a plan. Water, sewer, gas pipes have to be laid down. Houses have to be wired for phone and electricity.”
He pushed the torn bits of paper onto his palm, then dumped them in the unused ashtray. “I don’t know if I mentioned it but I’m taking classes at night in architecture at UNLV.”
Madison murmured a polite response.
“My dad’s cement company has the contract for a new housing tract up in Roma Hills. Want to go there with me this weekend? Maybe if I explained the construction process to you, you’d better appreciate it.”
Madison stood up abruptly. “We’ll see. I’ve been busy with a project at home. You have my cell number. Why don’t you give me a call Saturday or Sunday?”
She was gone before he could respond. Back at the condo, Madison looked around the combination living room/dining room with sudden distaste. Unopened copies of the
Las Vegas Review-Journal
were scattered about. An assortment of gym shoes and dirty socks lay abandoned near the couch and around the base of the dining room table.
She went to her messy bedroom to change into sweat-pants and a T-shirt. Madison had long ago given up the habit of making her bed in the morning. The project she’d told Gar-vey about lay in bits and pieces on her dresser. Madison swept everything onto a tray and carried it to the living room. Her stomach told her it was dinnertime, but she knew that if she drank lots of water and got busy with her hands, she could put off the inevitable for another hour or so.
Madison had taken up beading as a hobby. She would sit, focused for hours, stringing different shapes and shades of glass and crystal beads along thin wires. She made necklaces, bracelets, and earrings. Bit by bit, piece by piece, she created objects of beauty. Strands of sparkling cosmetic jewelry were strewn all over the condo; they hung from the windows; they lined the counters and tabletops. They were in the bathroom, in the shower, on all the doorknobs.
They reflected light just like her first and only formal gown at her lavish bat mitzvah. Louie Feldon had been louder than usual that night. The party wasn’t so much about presenting his young daughter as it was about showing off his wealth. The rite of passage and elegant celebration had been a blur to Madison. She was severely anemic at the time, but no one was aware of it.
When she could no longer ignore the hunger pangs, Madison set the beading aside. She didn’t even bother to open the refrigerator. She went straight to the pantry and pulled out a can of powdered whey protein.
Breakfast is the only importantmeal of the day. Carbs at night are unnecessary. Carbs and caloriesmake you fat.
Louie’s voice was loud in her head. Of course, it wasn’t really her father’s voice. Louie Feldon wasn’t talking to anyone these days. Louie Feldon had died of a massive heart attack a few months after Madison fled the family home and moved out to the suburbs.
“He ate and drank himself to death,” Madison told the unconcerned reporter on the television. Her mother, Rachael, had seemed unfazed by the passing of her husband. But then, she’d had a lover keeping her company during her thirty-five-year marriage: Prince Valium and his court of Soma, vodka, and prescribed diet pills.
With Louie gone, Madison’s mother no longer had to keep her diary updated.
It had been Rachael’s assigned duty to keep a daily record of every morsel Madison put in her mouth. It was also her job to report nightly to her husband every act of misbehavior on their daughter’s part. Whether it was that Madison hadn’t used her napkin properly, or that she’d sat with her legs slightly apart and not crossed at the ankles, Rachael had logged every malefaction.
Garvey phoned Saturday while Madison was at the gym with a client. Madison left the messages, unheard, in her voice mailbox. The construction behind her condo seemed to have increased in urgency. The crew was working night and day in a frenzy to complete yet another high-rise condominium complex.
Madison had called the county office to complain. She was told the developer had a permit to work at night. She quit grinding coffee beans in the morning. The grating sound of the blades reducing the hard little beans into fine grounds seemed to be a mocking echo of the outdoor machinery shredding her nerves.
Madison noticed Sunday afternoon, when she began to work on a necklace for Garvey, that she’d developed a tremor in her hands. She’d never designed a necklace for a man, and she’d been looking forward to the challenge. However, instead of gliding onto the long wire strand, the black and silver beads rolled from her useless fingers and onto the mottled carpet.
Madison’s cell phone beeped incessantly in the background. Her mother could go for weeks without contacting her daughter, then she’d get manic and speed dial Madison. In a salute to the departed Louie, Rachael would demand to know Madison’s weight and if she were sticking to her diet.
The doorbell rang and Madison froze. Aside from the occasional annoying salesperson or Jehovah’s Witness, no one came to 5555 Silver Springs Road. Madison looked through the peephole. She was fisheye to fisheye with Garvey Kendall. Should she pretend she wasn’t home? Should she step outside and send him away? Should she, could she, would she just let him in?
Madison opened the door a crack.
“Hey, Maddy, I hope I’m not bothering you, but you haven’t answered your phone and I was wondering if you’re all right.”
That shy smile and those cocker spaniel eyes.
“I’m fine, Garvey. How’d you know where I live?”
“I saw you turn in here after we left Starbucks the other day. Your name’s on the mailbox ledger.”
Thoughts and images raced through Madison’s mind. Louie, Rachael, Mrs. Anson, and Bradley all vied for her attention. She jerked her head as though to fling them out of her consciousness. Finally, she opened the door for Garvey to come in. He didn’t seem to notice the dirt and the clutter. Rather, he noticed immediately the strings of scintillating beads that adorned the small condo. The sunlight seemed to capture and magnify the many facets, sending little rainbows dancing around the drab interior.
“Nice. Did you make all of these?” His voice was admiring.
Madison nodded. She offered him a bottle of water. They talked for some time about the role of progress versus environment. Garvey shared with Madison some of the conflicting thoughts she had inspired in him regarding his father’s livelihood and its impact on the Las Vegas Valley. Garvey took one last swallow of water and stood up.
“Do you still want to go out to the site with me?”
He may as well have been asking a much younger Madison if she wanted to sit on her abusive father’s lap. Her lip, her eye, even her shoulders began to twitch.
“What’s wrong?” Garvey looked at her in alarm. “Madison, what’s with you?”
“Nothing, nothing. I’m just a little anxious. Look.” She bent over and picked up a length of twisted wire and a few black and silver beads. “I was making you a necklace, Garvey, but the noise out back began bothering me.”
Garvey stepped closer. He took Madison’s face in his hands. “You’re such a different kind of girl.”
Was it her imagination or did his eyes flicker on her flat chest?
“Madison, your face is like one big teardrop just waiting to fall.”
She pulled back abruptly.
Teardrops, fear drops.
So, it showed. Her life was written all over her homely face. Out in the open for everyone to see. Something inside of her burst like a festered boil. She could actually feel all twenty-six feet of her intestines relax. Madison smiled at Garvey with a look of gratitude.
“I’m going to finish this necklace for you. Turn around so I can measure your neck.”
That night Madison made dinner. She set the dining room table with linens, her mother’s fine bone china, and candles. It didn’t matter that the baked potatoes had wormy little sprouts poking out of their fat, warm skins. It didn’t matter that the salad leaves were black and slimy.
Madison began to carve the slightly warm meat. The sharp knife slid cleanly through tissue, then gristle, then bone. She was a vegetarian, but that didn’t matter. Madison wasn’t about to partake of this feast. This was the feast of atonement. This was the blood sacrifice for sin. Just as her Hebrew ancestors centuries ago had offered up the blood and flesh of goats, so too was Madison going to petition God for His mercy. This was Madison’s Yom Kippur.
The knife grated on something hard. Madison sighed in exasperation, then plucked a silver bead from the gory mass in front of her. Everything was in order. It was time for her to go. Carefully, she began to roll bits and pieces of Garvey into remnants of the filthy carpet she’d also sectioned up. There were six construction sites in her neighborhood alone.
Madison had to make four trips to her BMW. Two legs, two arms, one torso, the surprisingly heavy head. The midnight sky reflected the beam of the giant Luxor pyramid thrusting its shaft of light heedlessly through the dark womb of stars and galaxies above. Madison drove out of the parking lot without thought, without feeling.
Early morning found Madison not far from her condo. She didn’t remember where she’d been, but she knew she had one last stop to make. Madison stood among broken soil, a heavy blood-sodden lump of carpet cradled in her arms. The eastern sky was beginning to brighten into a jaded pink. The lights of the Las Vegas Strip seemed to wink at her.
Madison was poised before a slab of semi-hardened concrete. Silent pieces of heavy equipment surrounded her: hulking dark masses that loomed against the backdrop of the dawn sky. Reverently, she knelt on the cold foundation and laid her burden down. Madison wondered briefly if the cement contractor would appreciate the sacrifice his son had made.
From the valley below, the slow hum of machinery warming up began to fill the air. Bit by bit, the thriving city came to life. Madison rose to her feet and picked her way carefully back to her car.
Safe and secure in her condo, she began to methodically gather every strand of jewelry she’d ever made. Piece by piece, Madison fed the necklaces, earrings, and bracelets into her garbage disposal. Perhaps now the tics would stop. Perhaps now Madison Feldon could move beyond the shadow of her bullying father.
Madison was training one of the tennis women she so admired from afar when a detective came to see her the following week. Detective Nick Latkus’s face looked like an orange that had been left too long in a fruit bowl. His freckled skin hung in folds of crepe around his deeply lined mouth. His hair, mustache, and eyebrows were a faded red. Tall, thin, and stoop-shouldered, the only remarkable thing about the man was his eyes. Beneath droopy lids, they were as green and knowing as a feral cat.
He waited patiently for Madison to finish with her client, then asked where he could speak to her in private. Detective Latkus followed Madison upstairs to the club café. After exchanging a few pleasantries, the detective abruptly asked her if she was aware she was missing a client. The local media had been in a frenzy for the past week over the discovery of body parts at construction sites throughout Green Valley. The victim had been ID’d as Garvey Kendall; Madison’s client.
Even a seasoned veteran like Latkus would never forget, when he arrived at the first crime scene, the agonized mask that was Mr. Kendall’s face. The cement contractor was actually cradling the severed head in his arms. He’d refused to relinquish what was left of his son, his only child, until the screams of the newly arrived Mrs. Kendall pierced the air.
“Ms. Feldon, we traced several calls from Garvey to your cell phone last Sunday. He was first reported missing the following morning when he didn’t come home. Did you see him that day? Mind telling me what you talked about?”
Madison looked steadily into the detective’s eyes. Nothing twitched. Not her eye, not her lip. Even her heart felt as though it was on standby. She was as placid as the waters of Lake Mead in the early-morning stillness of high summer. Madison sighed.
“Garvey was a true loner, detective. He had a serious self-image disorder. And that’s why he came to me.” Madison shook her head in much the same manner as her mother would after one of Louis’s tirades. “Garvey was obsessed with his diet. He wasn’t comfortable in his own body. He wanted me to help him reinvent himself. He was also consumed with a need to impress his father.” Madison smiled sadly. “I did see him Sunday, detective. He came over to tell me that he’d had an epiphany.”
“An epiphany?” Nick Latkus’s splintered alley-cat eyes bored into the dull brown of Madison’s.
“Yes.” She dropped her eyes to the stubby fingers that were folded primly in her lap. Madison noted her ankles were neatly crossed; her mother and father would have approved. For the first time ever, she felt composed, assured, and completely in control of her environment. “He told me he knew he could never measure up to family expectations.” Madison leaned forward and looked earnestly into the detective’s face. “Garvey realized he had to stop his father’s madness. He simply needed someone to show him the way. There had to be atonement, you see. Garvey was special. He was worthy of sacrifice. I set him free.”
Latkus snorted. “So you decided to cut this young man up into bits and pieces as a
favor
to him?”
Madison nodded. Her eyes seemed to glaze over. She had no doubt she would soon be behind bars. Only she was aware she would be in a reverse form of prison. Madison was already dreaming of the indulgences behind thick concrete walls, away from prying eyes and nagging voices. Three hot meals to be eaten every day. No digital scales to haunt her. No construction noises to interrupt her sleep. Madison arose, and like a small child, obediently allowed the detective to escort her to his unmarked white car.
After all
, she thought, gazing out the window as the tree-lined streets of Green Valley flashed by,
once I get some timeby myself to pull myself together, there’s always the possibility ofparole.
A cloud of dust from a back loader drifted across the road. Madison Feldon smiled.