Authors: Matthew Crow
“How’s Eve?” she asked as I took my seat.
“You mean Doris? She’s just swell. Off to bump into her latest beau with some homemade cookies.”
Miss Jemima swivelled towards me on the hump of her skirts. “You come for your money?”
“I’m doing the rounds. Eve told me to catch hers too, said given the choice between love and money she’d pick love any day of the week.”
Miss Jemima reached into a fold of her skirts and pulled out two rolls of notes, bound individually with a bow of red ribbon. “Won’t pay the bills though.”
“Eve lands on her feet no matter how high she’s thrown.”
“Like all the best dancers.” Miss Jemima pulled back her shoulders as out of nowhere a waiter conjured two glasses of crème de menthe. She picked up her glass and knocked it
against mine. “I do hope you girls stay for a while. Life’s more interesting since you came along.”
“I could say the same about you,” I said, taking a tiny drop of the too-sweet liquor, which disappeared in my mouth before I had a chance to swallow.
“More profitable too, you’re our star attraction you know. I put in an extra few dollars, to show my gratitude.”
“You’re too kind.”
“Kindness has no place in business. I like to think of it as a shrewd investment.”
“Truth be told I’d do it for free now I’ve got the taste. Which I suppose is the wrong thing to say to an esteemed businesswoman such as yourself?”
Miss Jemima laughed and tipped the glass towards her lips. By the time it hit the table it had shed its green entirely like trees in fall. “We’ll make a corporate mistress of you
yet.”
“Here’s to hoping.”
“To hoping. You take care. And if there’s anything you ever need, just you say.”
“I will. Oh and Jemima, what did you mean, sending us that gun?”
She spread her fan and blew three cool drafts across her face. “Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies. Be prepared for any eventuality, that’s my motto. You girls just
make sure you look after one another,” she said as her protégées began to flutter back onto the stage.
Back home our front door was closed. This struck me as odd as whilst resigned to life as an eternally single female, and all the fastidious security checks that it entails, Eve
was more free spirited on matters of home safety. Lamps would be left on at all times, taps left running. Once I came home to find a smoking blender still spinning a margarita as Eve sprawled on
the bed, unconscious and suckling the teat of a tequila bottle. She felt that to shut the door was rude.
‘What if someone wants to come by but thinks we’re busy?’ she’d ask, tacking the door wide open with a piece of g-string elastic.
‘They could always try knocking. Besides no-one ever just drops by these days, except Doloris, and then you hide under the bed, so you can cut the Stepford Wives routine.’
‘That was once! Besides people don’t like to knock. Best this way then everyone’s happy.’
Eventually I managed to ease her in principle on the subject. Of course she agreed with me in theory, yet the practice still eluded her despite her promises that she would try her best.
Obstinate to the last she still recoiled in horror on the occasions I suggested actually locking the door as we left.
Inside all was quiet save for a rustling in the bedroom, like a groundhog scurrying across dry leaves. “Hello?” I called, on the off chance our visitor held the
gift of speech.
The scurrying grew quicker, more hurried. I called again but there was no answer.
“Is anyone in there? I got a gun,” I said, my voice bending in the middle as I spoke.
As the rustling grew quieter I slid my feet towards the bedroom door, keen not to alert any intruders with my clod footsteps. With my ear pressed against the door I stopped breathing. The sound
had died down, and all that was left was the final reveal.
I flicked the handle and kicked the door with all my might.
It flew open and revealed an empty room. I felt my body relax when a figure burst from behind the door and smashed me onto the floor. I fell backwards with it on top of me and flung my fist into
its face.
Eve jerked backwards with a scream and began crawling on her elbows towards the farthest edge of the bedroom. Her eyes held in them a fear so succinct it made me dampen with a feverish sweat. I
would see that terrible look once more during our time together.
“Oh... ” she said, holding her hand to her face as she relaxed onto the floor. “Verity, you scared me half to death. God damn it I thought my days were over.”
“Eve, what the hell are you doing? I thought you were trying to kill me!” I rushed over to her and dragged her to her feet. She crumpled onto the bed, her arms wrapped tight around
my waist, as I stroked her hair and examined what, I am slightly pleased to relay, was a rather impressive shiner below her left eye.
“Sorry for scaring you,” she said.
“You’re the one looks like you’ve seen a ghost. What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking I got to sort out my problems before they get to be yours too,” she started to cry. “You’re the best friend I ever had, and I can’t even be straight
with you.”
“What you talking about, Eve?” I said, wiping away the tears with my bloodied fingertips. “There’s nothing we can’t fix.”
“You’d be surprised,” she said through gentle sobs. “Look.” Eve nodded towards the bathroom door.
I laid her head gently onto the mattress and stood up, again noting how my bones now jarred with each exertion, as though already I was the type of lady who could be rendered incompetent for
days after one measly fall. “Nothing going to jump out at me from in there is there?” I said only half joking. Eve shook her head and then buried it into he blankets.
The bathroom was as it should be which in itself seemed suspicious. After such a dramatic build-up I expected a porthole to another dimension, or at very least a maimed corpse
to verify my worst fears.
As it was everything was in its place. The sink was caked with eye make-up and the wastebasket overflowing with the red-ends of Q-tips and the dead ends of lipstick. Bottles of scent and suds
lined every upright surface and a vanity case sat on the window ledge, open, like the window itself. I was about to turn back to Eve and ask where exactly my attentions should be focused when it
caught my eye.
Beneath the window, surrounded by its own halo of lunchtime light, the bathtub was full. Eve’s suitcase was open. This I could only tell by the leathery tips of its edges jutting out from
the deluge. For surrounding it the entire tub was full of dollars - twenties, tens, the occasional five - scattered and unfurling like we’d reached the end of the rainbow.
I closed the door and sat back down on the bed. “Eve... Eve, quit playing the ostrich and look at me will you.”
She shook her head at first and eventually rose to my level, her face red and her features hidden beneath smudged lipstick and puffed skin.
“Eve, there isn’t anything you and I can’t work out. But you’re going to have to talk to me, okay?”
She nodded.
“So why don’t you go bring us a fresh bottle, and we can start from the beginning.”
I heard the clink of glass against glass as Eve tried to situate a bottle that hadn’t been skimmed or outright downed by either one of us. I felt my knee twitch and my
head moving towards the bathroom door despite my best attempts to maintain a steely and proper pose. But I’m nothing if not a slave to curiosity and before I knew it was back outside the
door, gently peeling it open to make sure that in my surprise my mind had not magnified the true extent of our riches.
Fortunately there were no such worries on that score. And as I surveyed the thousands upon thousands of dollars growing damp in the un-wiped bathtub of my comfortable little trailer I felt a
smile trace across the length of my face.
With love,
Always,
Verity
Dear Verity,
It seems that you are not the only one to be presented with death in such elaborate form.
It began three days after my meeting with Michael. I had decided, en route to Caleb’s, to stop for early morning coffee to try and extract any further information Mary may hold on Levi. I
had scanned his books in the library. And, as foretold, in each novel a stranger appears, initially glimpsed from behind - the way Levi might have seen me as I sat at the counter while he scribbled
in his log - before taking centre stage to the cookie-cutter dramas that unfolds.
The circumstances shift from book to book, but whether he’s the traveller, or the salesman, the charlatan, or the thief, the climax is always some passionate embrace in the most unlikely
of surroundings. A kitchen counter, the backseat of a car, billiards tables, alleyways, the forest floor. In the most memorable - and least likely, I have to admit - this very character tail ends a
novel by ravishing mother and daughter on separate occasions at two otherwise nondescript family funerals. The things I’ve gotten up to would turn your hair white, I can tell you. I skimmed
the novels for the bare essentials, as to get a taste of what exactly all the fuss was about. I suspect they were crafted with little more ambition than as a stopgap between domestic chores for the
bored and lonely and, on the whole, female readership. I personally wouldn’t use them for kindling, so decided against checking any of his tomes out of the library lest they mar what is up to
now a somewhat impressive anthology.
The car lot was empty. The sign had been turned to open, yet the door was jammed shut. I peeked through the gaps in the dusty window assuming that Mary had skipped the most
basic of tasks in favour of more strenuous activities such as mixing the batters and patties that she would spend her day flipping and frying.
I knocked twice and there was no answer.
The windows were fogged from the inside and something was steaming on the hob. I moved round to the side entrance where floor-length windows dressed in red lettering flanked the family tables.
Between two letters I pressed my head to the glass. A coffee pot was cracked and spilled on the counter. Two pans smoked, one blew steam gently from its copper base, the other a more choking fog
that rushed towards the ceiling and bloomed towards each corner of the room. The after-hours lights shone just enough to allow visibility, though I couldn’t say what I was staring at until I
caught sight of a small patch of white at the foot of the counter, from which a bloodied hand curled tightly around itself.
I returned to the front door and kicked as hard as I could. The doors dented but gave nowhere near enough to enable me to enter. Towards the back entrance a muddy dollar bill lay trampled into
the concrete and a chain had been bolted around the interlocking handles. Again the door wouldn’t budge so I ran back to the side of the building and selected the smallest window I could
find.
My foot passed through the glass with ease though the jagged edge cut straight through my jeans and gifted my ankle with a near perfect bracelet of ruby dots. I kicked the most threatening
shards from the empty void and made my way inside.
The air was hot as hell and slick with oil. I leapt over the counter and turned off the gas, which provided a minor respite. Broken plates scattered the floor and were drizzled with red like
some intricate art installation. Mary lay on her back, her arms outstretched, her apron pulled up over her head. Dark red had begun to pool around her. I knelt down and pulled the cloth from her
face.
How long she had been dead I can’t say. And details within the press are being kept to a minimum while investigations are ongoing. I made my way behind the counter,
trying not to slip on the blood and scattered sugar that coated the floor, and managed to call 911.
I sat alone with Mary while we waited for the police. All the while she seeped gently further and further across the floor, her Technicolor diminishing with each passing moment
in a tidy circle, which shifted in size and hue like a slowly turned kaleidoscope.
The usual questions were asked. Initially with sympathy, then with a thin air of suspicion, before eventually the two officers arrived at a tone somewhere between officious and
jovial. “You did everything you could, sir, I’m sure,” they said, I assume taking my naturally distant demeanour for some sort of emotional response to the morning’s
events.
“Everything except get here five minutes earlier,” I replied.
Back home I turned the faucet to its most scalding setting as I worked the suds into my skin. Scouring red welts that lingered long after the blood, which I so desperately
wanted to be cleansed of. As the water dripped slowly to a stop and all that was left was steam, I found myself playing over the previous months in my mind, considering the catalogue of minor
incidents that had dominated the town’s gossip in the preamble to Mary’s murder. Whether or not I can fairly blame Michael for each crime I do not know. All I can say is that despite
the heightened vigilance of the usually lax policemen, a sense of unease pervaded the town as a wave of similar incidents took hold. Bricks shattered shop fronts. Lone women arrived home tearful
and shaken after being trailed by dark, driverless cars. A fire engulfed the school kitchen though only after the majority of its supplies had been relieved. Two masked gunmen took the day’s
takings of a small but profitable hardware store and a pellet from the window of a passing car had blinded Maxwell in one eye mid-speech. His sight could have been saved, they said, had his
writhing not been initially ignored as his tendency to reiterate utmost devotion by speaking in tongues.
I did manage to make it into work that day. A little after twelve, but present all the same.
“We were beginning to worry, boy,” said Caleb as I made my way to the workshop at the farthest edge of his garden. “Thought we’d scared you off.”
“Just been an odd morning is all.”
I told him about the diner, and about Mary’s murder. The whole time he sipped from his coffee cup, immune to the horror.
“Well, aint life a bitch,” he said as I finished and had changed into my overalls. “Chances are we’ll be full to bursting come the day of the funeral. Folk like to see
off those that make the news. Can’t say it’s right. But facts are facts and coverage makes custom, chances are you’ll be drafted in to make her coffin too... ”