Matchpoint (8 page)

MY TEARS dried up just as suddenly as they began. I pulled back out of Spencer’s embrace and punched him in the arm.

“Where were you?” I demanded. “You didn’t answer your phone. You didn’t come with the cops. You weren’t at the police station.”

Spencer ran his hand through his thick, dark hair. “I told you, I’m lying low. I’m on a leave of absence. They know not to disturb me, no matter what.”

“Is this about your penis?” I asked, pointing at his crotch. “Your out-of-control, roving, happy-pants penis?”

“Gladie, you make it sound like you’ve given a lot of thought to my happy-pants penis.”

“Only enough to stay clear of it,” I said. “Besides, it probably has spots on it, or worse.”

“Would you like to check it to make sure?”

“You are five years old,” I said.

Spencer smirked his annoying little smirk. “You’re wearing my workout clothes. My wifebeater shirt has never looked better.”

I looked down at my braless chest and covered myself with one arm. “I didn’t know they were your clothes,” I said. “What do you mean, don’t bother you no matter what? You’re not going to get involved with this murder case?”

Spencer looked down at his feet. “I’ll keep tabs on it from afar, but I’m not going out there.”

“You mean out there where your Facebook friends are? Spencer, aren’t you taking this a little far?”

“Trust me, Pinkie, hell hath no fury.”

My body sagged. I closed my eyes and swayed in place. “I’m tired,” I said, more to myself than to Spencer.

Without hesitating, he swept me up in his arms, and I
laid my head on his shoulder. “Then rest, Pinkie. Rest,” he said.

Spencer took the stairs two at a time. He laid me down gently on my bed and closed my bedroom door. Turning out the light, he settled in next to me and drew the covers up over us.

“Stick to your side, Spencer. I don’t want Mr. Happy Pants near me. I haven’t forgotten what a disgusting player you are.”

“Don’t worry, Gladys, I’ll stick to my side,” he said.

“Don’t call me Gladys,” I said, but I was already half asleep. Spencer gathered me to him, spoonlike, and draped his arm around me. Lying in his warmth, I fell asleep.

THANKFULLY, I didn’t dream. I slept as if in a coma and woke up fourteen hours later. Spencer was sitting up in bed, watching TV.

“What is that?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Spencer said. “It’s some show about how we’re all going to die young if we don’t drink kale juice. It was either this or four women talking about Botox. Daytime TV is crap. Why do people watch this stuff?”

“No,” I said. “I mean what is that? I don’t have a TV in my room.”

Spencer flipped through a few channels, settling on an infomercial with a muscly man talking about working out ten minutes a day for bodybuilder results. “I brought it in. I figured I would need it if I’m going to hide out here for a while.”

“What on earth did you do to those Facebook women?”

“Whatever I did, it didn’t deserve the response I got,” he said.

“What response? What did they do?”

“I’m not going to get into it with you, Pinkie. Let’s just say I have my reasons for hiding out in your bedroom.”

“How are you going to eat?” I asked. “Don’t expect me to wait on you. If you do, you are sadly mistaken.”

“You grandma is waiting on me. She likes me being here. I guess she’s not keen on Neighbor Boy.”

“She’s keen enough,” I said. “Why wouldn’t she be? He’s perfect.”

“How do you know? You don’t know anything about him.”

Spencer knew how to stop a conversation cold.

“Your grandmother is keeping my whereabouts secret, and I expect the same from you, Pinkie,” he said. “She’s got so many people coming and going that I’ll have to be up here most of the time.”

“This is a cosmic joke,” I said. “How long do I have to suffer through this?”

“Not long. I have a plan.”

“Says the man watching teen reality shows.”

“I’m glad your hair is back to normal,” he said. “You’re not the sleek and styled type.”

My hands flew to my head. “What?”

I ran to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. It was like the Ecuadoran Erect never happened. My hair was a giant frizzball.

I stood at the foot of my bed. “It was supposed to last four months,” I whined. “I spent my last dollar on it.”

“You must have superhuman hair,” Spencer said, never taking his eyes off the television.

“It was the blood,” I said with sudden realization. “Dr. Dulur’s blood did something to the Ecuadoran Erect.”

“Don’t blame Dr. Dulur,” Spencer said. “He’s had a bad week.”

AFTER SHUTTING Spencer in my room with a ten-year-old baseball game on one of the sports channels, I stood at the top of the stairs and listened. Quiet. Grandma’s house was usually busy in the afternoon, but she must have shooed everyone away. She could be very thoughtful. Obviously, she wanted to give me time to heal after last night’s ordeal without the spotlight of the entire town on me.

It was good to be in the sanctuary of my grandmother’s house. I felt safe. And hungry. There were toaster waffles in the freezer calling my name. I bet there was also chocolate milk in the fridge. The perfect late-lunch meal, as far as I was concerned.

When I got to the bottom of the stairs, Grandma was waiting for me. She wore her favorite Jean Paul Gaultier–knockoff cocktail dress and Louis Vuitton shoes. My antenna shot up. She only wore that outfit when company was coming.

She took my hand and pulled me toward her. She looked up into my eyes and studied me for a moment. “You’re fine,” she said like she was telling me the weather. “You’ll have nightmares, mostly next week, and again in two months—those will be the worst—but you’re fine. You’re healing. It didn’t get you inside where it counts.”

I realized I was holding my breath and exhaled. It was good to know I was all right.

“Everyone’s on their way. They’ll be here in a couple minutes,” she said.

“Who’s everyone?”

Everyone meant everyone.

Within minutes, Grandma’s house was invaded by at least thirty people, most bearing foil pans filled with food. I scooped up some mashed potatoes and a burrito and fielded questions about Dr. Dulur.

“Yes, I’m sure he was dead,” I answered. Lucy, Bridget, and three of Grandma’s friends sat with me at the kitchen table. The rest stood around us, holding plates of food. The police had released precious few details of what happened the night before, and so they were trying to suck the nitty-gritty out of me. I wasn’t ready to give them all the details. I wasn’t ready to relive it all.

“Oh, honey, you are a magnet for death,” Lucy declared. “Like you’re the Pied Piper of corpses. Last month and now this.” The month before, I had seen some dead people, but they all had faces.

“What are the odds that the moment you work up the courage to see a dentist, he gets murdered?” Bridget asked.

“Has to be astronomical,” said Lou the mechanic. “Gladie’s seen more dead people than me.” Lou was rumored to have a checkered past as a member of a notorious gang in L.A. The room started chewing furiously, probably thinking about me being a badass gangbanger.

“Did you see the killer?” Meryl the librarian asked. She leaned forward, her mouth open. I hadn’t seen her this excited since the library almost booked Janet Evanovich for an author reading.

“I was under the gas, asleep,” I said. “I didn’t see anything until it was over.”

Meryl whistled. “I bet it was the pagans. I bet those freaks did it.”

The chewing stopped. It was as if the room’s atoms rearranged themselves.

Meryl took a breath to say something more but was interrupted by the slamming of the front door.

“Zelda! Zelda Burger, don’t worry. I’m here,” Mayor Robinson announced. He made quite an entrance, pausing at the kitchen doorway, his arms outstretched like he was doing a benediction, dressed in a black suit with a silk scarf around his neck. His shoes were polished to a
brilliant shine. He took in the crowd in Grandma’s kitchen and seemed to gain energy from it. Smiling wide, he focused in on me. “Gladie, my darling,” he said, edging Bridget out of her chair and taking the seat next to me.

“You have my word that we will find the perpetrator of this heinous act,” he said, patting my hand. “You can call me anytime.” He handed me his business card.
COMMUNICATOR IN CHIEF
was written in raised gold lettering with a cellphone number.

“Wayne, what are you doing about those murderous pagans?” Meryl asked.

“Now, Meryl, we don’t know for sure the alien worshippers killed Simon Dulur,” he said.

He turned to me. “Does my breath smell?” he asked, exhaling sharply in my face.

Bird Gonzalez, the hairdresser, appeared suddenly in the kitchen with her hair unusually messed. “You have to roust the bastards,” she said, out of breath. “The heathens vandalized my shop. I don’t care if it’s the end of the world or not, we need to pack up their yurts and get them the hell out of town. Gladie, what on earth happened to your hair?”

IT TOOK two gin and tonics to calm Bird down and to get her to tell us exactly what the end-of-worlders did to her shop. In the end, it wasn’t really vandalism, just a lot of flowers thrown around and what could be described as an incense bomb by a group claiming that all those with permanents had to make way for the Arrival. Obviously, they weren’t aware that permanents were not in style.

It was a toss-up which made Bird more upset: the so-called vandalism or my hair. The failure of her Ecuadoran Erect was more than she could bear at the moment. “The world is all topsy-turvy,” she said, her
lower lip quivering. Evidently, I was the first human to defy the straightening effects of the Ecuadoran Erect. She offered to try it again, but the consensus at the table was I was more like me, albeit less attractive, with curly hair and should stay like I am. Bird kindly refunded my money.

I almost wept seeing the cash in my hand. I could now pay my cellphone bill and the minimum on my Visa, and have enough left over to buy lattes for the week. I was thankful for my superhuman hair that defied styling. Now I was almost flush.

Despite having no evidence of the pagan cult’s guilt in Dr. Dulur’s murder and despite Bird’s rather weak charge of vandalism against them, the group in Grandma’s house was up in arms. With murmurings about the Manson Family, they decided to make a show about the town’s pious nature and intimidate the end-of-worlders into leaving. After a cursory meeting in Grandma’s parlor, they went out to implement their plan with the mayor’s blessing.

Grandma, Bridget, Lucy, and I were left alone at the kitchen table. I took second helpings. Grandma was sipping a Coke. She had been uncharacteristically quiet during the whole meeting.

“It’s never what you think in this town,” Lucy said. “It all looks like pretty antique shops and pie houses, and then a war starts with alien lovers. You couldn’t get me to move out of Cannes with a crowbar.”

“I think I know who killed Dr. Dulur,” Bridget said, making us jump. The conversation had steered so far away from the murder that I almost forgot it had happened.

“All this talk of murder and violence,” Grandma said. “It’s not good for the love business. I only know love, and murders just mess with my sight.” She meant her third eye, which was great for love and daily activities
but seemed to be myopic when it came to murder and mayhem.

“This is right up your alley, then, Zelda,” Bridget said. “I think the police chief’s girlfriends murdered Dr. Dulur.”

The mashed potatoes went down the wrong way, and I choked. I hacked and sputtered, trying to breathe. Grandma handed me a glass of water, and I took a sip.

“Why do you think that, dear?” she asked Bridget.

“You haven’t heard?” Bridget’s eyes grew enormous, and her glasses slid down her nose. “Chief Bolton has disappeared. At least a half dozen women in this town are looking for him in order to skin him alive. Some say they’ve already done it, and he’s lying dead somewhere in the apple orchards.” Bridget looked at me for confirmation.

“I don’t know about every death,” I said, affronted. Sheesh, a woman sees a few dead bodies, and suddenly she’s the go- to person for finding corpses.