Vows, Vendettas and a Little Black Dress Page 14

“Why? Because she was worried about me?” Dena asked. “I find that hard to believe.”

  “She thought whoever did this had succeeded in martyring you,” Tim explained. “She thought that if you died or were seriously hurt everyone would see you as the good guy, the one who needed to be taken care of and she thought…she thought…” His voice faded off and he stood up and turned slightly away from Dena.

  “She thought what, Tim?”

  “She thought that it would make you want to settle down a little. She thought you would finally want to be with me…and not just as a lover. She thought you might want me as a caregiver and…and maybe even a husband. She thought I’d finally have the incentive I needed to leave her. Of course,” he said, finally turning back to Dena, “she doesn’t know that you would never want me in that way or in any other way ever again. Isn’t that right? You’re really through with me.”

  “Tim, we never had anything in common. We met at a bar, you showed me how you could flip your tongue all the way over and I decided that was something I could work with for a few nights. That was the beginning and the end of it. You can’t base a relationship on tongue tricks.”

  “Yeah,” Tim said wistfully. “Those were some fun nights though. Remember on our last date you had me lick your patent leather thigh-high stiletto boots?”

  “Oh, yeah!” Dena smiled at the memory. “You really shined those suckers up!”

  “I’ll lick your boots again if you want me to.”

  Dena’s face tightened and she looked down at her lap. “I think my stiletto heel days are over.”

  “But you’re not going to be in the wheelchair forever, right?” Tim asked, suddenly alarmed. “You will walk again?”

  “With a cane if I’m lucky,” Dena said sullenly.

  “A cane?” Tim repeated. He blushed again and looked down at the floor. “That is so hot.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Things aren’t always as they seem. For instance people often tell me that I seem like a quiet and contemplative person when the truth is that I’m just really spacey.

  –Fatally Yours

  Tim left shortly after the boot-licking stroll down memory lane and I left only a minute or two after he had made his exit. If Dena was going to stay with me I had to get things ready. I was going to have to rent a portable wheelchair-accessible shower for the downstairs bathroom and there are a couple of stairs that lead up to my house—we would need a ramp for that.

  But as the elevator lowered me to the main floor I couldn’t help thinking about the nature of Dena’s fear. In high school Mary Ann was smacked by some guy she had the misfortune of going out with. It had only been one time but when Dena found out about it she had gone into a fury. She actually hunted the guy down and broke his nose. A few people (including me) saw her do it, and since everyone agreed he deserved it, no one reported her. Later those witnesses would talk about the courage it had taken for her to physically challenge a man who was almost twice her size. But I knew that part of what was motivating her was fear. Fear that someone might have the power to really harm someone she loved. She hated that guy for introducing her to fear as much as anything else. I still remember the look of hate in her eyes when she watched him bleeding and hopping around in pain. It was the same look she had now when she looked at her legs.

  I stepped off the elevator and walked outside. Dena wasn’t the only one who was having a hard time. My heart really went out to Amelia. Relationship problems sucked. I thought about my conversation with Anatoly. I knew deep down in my gut that Amelia would never hurt Dena. I stepped to the side of the front entrance as a couple of teenagers bounded up the stairs and into the hospital. I pulled my cell out of my bag and called Anatoly.

  All I got was a voice mail but that was good enough. “Hey, it’s me,” I said as I shooed a fly away from my jacket. “I ran into Amelia a little while ago. Anatoly, I know in my heart of hearts she would never shoot anyone. Particularly not Dena. She honestly cares about her so…” I took a deep breath. “Could you trust me on this? I need you to do that.”

  I winced at my own words. I was pleading to his voice mail. How pathetic was that? “Anyway, I’m really calling to tell you that when Dena gets out of the hospital in a couple of days she’s going to be staying with us for a while,” I added quickly. “That’s it. Okay…bye.” Yeah, I’m really smooth today.

  “Sophie!” I looked up to see Mary Ann coming up the sidewalk toward the hospital. “Are you leaving or coming?”

  “Leaving,” I said with an apologetic smile as she came up to me. “I have a lot of stuff I have to do. The doctors say Dena will be released in a few days and she’s asked to stay with me for a little while so…” I stopped short as I saw the expression on Mary Ann’s face change.

  “She asked…to stay with you?” She placed a hand on her chest. “I thought…I mean I knew she was going to have to stay with somebody for a while but…” She turned around and took a few steps away from me.

  “Mary Ann, I don’t think this is her way of choosing me over you. You live in a one-bedroom apartment and that’s not going to work.”

  “I’ve decided to give up my apartment,” Mary Ann said quietly. “I’m moving in with Manny and he has a one-story four bedroom in Forest Hill. I told Dena that this morning. I told her that she could stay with us when she got out of here.”

  “Oh.” It would have been nice if Dena had clued me in to that little bit of information.

  Mary Ann turned back around and tried to smile. “It’s okay. If she wants to stay with you then that’s how it should be.”

  “Are you going up to see her?”

  Mary Ann looked up as if she could see through the wall into Dena’s room. “I was but…” She looked back down. “You want to go for a walk?”

  “Around the neighborhood?”

  “I guess…or maybe somewhere quieter.”

  “Like a park?”

  “A park? Oh, you mean Buena Vista Park, right? I forgot that was so close to here and it’s only a couple blocks from your house, right? That would be nice. I haven’t been there for a while.”

  Actually I hadn’t been thinking of Buena Vista Park at all. It was close by but it had been quite a while since I’d hiked it. It was filled with dense vegetation and was highly secluded…a bit too secluded for my tastes. People went there for privacy. Sometimes they needed privacy to conduct illicit liaisons. The last time I had been there I had stumbled upon a blubbery naked man getting a blowjob from a woman wearing nothing but a hot-pink corset. That of course explained my reasons for staying away for a few months. But really, that could have happened in any park in San Francisco.

  “Shall we meet at the entrance on Buena Vista and Upper Terrace?” Mary Ann asked as she pulled her keys out of her purse.

  “We’re taking two cars?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “Well, it’s like two blocks from your house and you were going home. No point in you taking me to the park and then back and then going home. That would be inconvenient wouldn’t it?”

  “A bit,” I admitted. What I wanted to say was that I had shit to do. I had to prepare my house for Dena, and having never before purchased supplies designed to make a home wheelchair accessible I kind of assumed it was going to take some research. But how could I say this to Mary Ann right now when the very thing that I was preparing for was the thing that was making her upset? “I’ll meet you at the entrance,” I said with what I hoped looked like an enthusiastic smile.

  I decided to drive to my house and walk to Buena Vista thus sparing myself a hunt for parking. That meant that Mary Ann would have a few minutes to herself while she waited for me, but perhaps that was a good thing. With luck she’d come up with an acceptable non-insulting reason for why Dena had snubbed her.

  When I got to the park Mary Ann was standing on the sidewalk texting Monty. She slipped the phone in her purse when she saw me and the two of us walked a ways up the unpaved paths avoiding the main staircases and more populated p
aths.

  “Everything good with Monty?” I asked.

  “Fine. He was just texting me some ideas for the wedding.” She sighed as she stepped over a root protruding from the dirt. “He also wanted to know if Dena had accepted our offer…about temporarily moving in with us that is. He knew how important that was to me.”

  “You know, Dena doesn’t know Monty that well,” I pointed out. “She’s at a very difficult place in her life and she might not feel comfortable sharing that with him yet.”

  “Right. So you think that if it was just me she’d agree?”

  I quickly looked away. There was no doubt that Dena loved Mary Ann like a sister, but she probably wouldn’t want to be her roommate. I understood that. I loved my sister but I’d rather take up residence in Siberia than live with her.

  Mary Ann didn’t ask me why I didn’t respond. She knew. For the next few minutes we continued our walk in relative silence. The trees around us soared up into the sky and the thick brush rustled with wildlife…although there was always the chance that some of that rustling was being caused by a homeless person taking a nap. I assumed it wasn’t anything more perverted than that. People who are in the middle of oral sex moan a lot but they don’t usually rustle.

  “I would like to take care of her,” Mary Ann finally said. “The way she has taken care of me so many times in the past.”

  A squirrel scampered across our path, apparently unconcerned with the hawk that was circling nearby. “I don’t think Dena wants to think of herself as being taken care of,” I suggested.

  “No, I guess she wouldn’t.” She pushed a stray curl away from her forehead. “Dena told me about your talk. The one where you told her to embrace her anger.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’m not usually a very angry person,” Mary Ann said thoughtfully.

  “I’ve noticed.” I also noticed that the hawk was diving down to the earth. If I were a squirrel I’d be freaking out about now.

  “But lately I’ve been angry,” she continued. “I think I want to embrace it, too.” She pounded her fist into her hand. “I am embracing my anger!”

  “Oh, well, that’s great. Good for you!” I let about half a minute go by before asking, “What exactly are you angry about?” The obvious answer to this would be that Mary Ann was angry that someone shot Dena but I suspected there was more to it.

  “Lots of things,” Mary Ann said vaguely. “I’m angry that someone hurt Dena but I’m also angry that she won’t let me help her! I was trying to cheer her up this morning by talking to her about my wedding plans. I told her we were having it at Disneyland and she practically threw me out of the room.”

  “Yes, well, that might be one of the reasons she doesn’t want to live with you right now. It’s hard to embrace your anger while discussing a wedding that will be held at the Happiest Place on Earth.”

  Mary Ann stopped. “I don’t understand that slogan. If Disneyland is the happiest place on earth then what is Disney World?”

  “Um…”

  “And which Disneyland is the happiest place? The one in Anaheim? What about the one in Tokyo? Or the one in Paris?”

  “Not the one in Paris,” I said quickly. “No way can the Parisians be the happiest people on earth.”

  “But you see the problem,” Mary Ann said.

  I didn’t see the problem unless the problem was that we were standing around debating Disney slogans.

  “I keep telling Monty that it should be the happiest places on earth. Or maybe they should rotate it, like this year Disney World could be the happiest place on earth and Disneyland could be, like, the really cheery runner-up.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “But he says I’m being too literal.”

  “No!” Another squirrel came onto the path. He stopped a moment to stare at us and I felt almost certain that he rolled his eyes before moving on.

  “Yes! And he thinks that even my bringing it up is some kind of…of hairy C!”

  “A hairy C?”

  “You know, like when you say something mean about the king?”

  “Heresy.”

  “Yes, that’s what I said. He thinks I’m committing hairy C against Mickey Mouse, but I’m not! I love Mickey and everything Disney! I totally want to be a princess! I just think they should put an S at the end of place!”

  “Mary Ann, are you and Monty having problems?”

  Mary Ann bit down on her lower lip. “We’ll work it out,” she said softly. “I think I’m just having a hard time dealing with all this new anger. But when I learn to embrace it properly everything will be better, don’t you think?”

  I wasn’t at all sure if Mary Ann understood the concept of embracing one’s anger but I decided it was best not to question her. “Let’s keep walking.”

  Mary Ann agreed and we continued on the path. The trees parted to let the sun beat down on us and I raised my face skyward to receive the warmth.

  “Do you still think Chrissie did it?”

  “It looks that way,” I said, easily following Mary Ann’s train of thought despite the ADD nature of the conversation. I told her about everything I had learned about Chrissie and her myriad vendettas.

  “Wow,” Mary Ann breathed once she had been filled in. “She really does put a lot of planning into everything. She must have spent months putting MAAP together just so she could stick it to Dena and put her husband in an awkward situation and then she waited…what did you say? A month? She waited a month for someone willing to hit her hard enough to give her a big bruise so she could get her husband arrested.”

  I gave Mary Ann a funny look. “What are you talking about?”

  “Well, that’s why she didn’t call the cops on him right after the French maid thing, right? She didn’t have a bruise. Just a twisted ankle that she got when she tripped over a gym bag. That’s not a very convincing case for domestic abuse. So she must have waited until she found someone like you.”

  “Someone like me?”

  “Yeah, someone who she could make so mad that they’d hit her really hard. Then she had the bruise she needed and if the police asked Tim if he ever hit her he couldn’t exactly say no, could he?”

  I stopped in my tracks and stared at Mary Ann. Just when I thought she didn’t have a brain cell left in her head she would make some kind of ingenious observation that I had totally missed.

  “I want to help you catch Chrissie,” Mary Ann said definitively. “That way I can help Dena and embrace my anger all at the same time.”

  “Mary Ann, I’m not sure you have quite enough anger to embrace.”

  “Sophie, I swear I am angrier than I have ever been in my life.” She glared down at the plants that lined the trail. And then, inexplicably she broke into a huge smile. “Hey, look! A ladybug! It’s so cute!”

  I sighed and leaned my back against the wide trunk of a large tree as Mary Ann knelt down to gaze adoringly at the insect. Angry people do not stop to admire ladybugs. I was pretty sure of that.

  Out of the blue there was a sort of muffled high-pitched pinging noise. I looked up just in time to see what looked like my eye-rolling squirrel fall out of a tree with a thump.

  I knew that pinging noise. I had been having nightmares about that exact noise. It was the noise of a gun with a silencer. It was the noise that I heard right before the sound Dena’s body made when she fell to the floor.

  Immediately I yanked Mary Ann to her feet and pulled her behind the tree with me. “Don’t move,” I hissed.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, apparently more concerned with my change of mood than the sound of the gun.

  “Mary Ann, didn’t you recognize the sound?”

  Mary Ann wrinkled her brow in confusion. “You mean the—”

  “Shh!” I squeezed her wrist so tightly it was possible that I was cutting off her circulation. But squeezing the hell out of her wrist was the only way I could keep my hand from shaking as badly as the rest of me.

  We were on a hill and it had
sounded as if the shot had come from above us. But where above us was impossible to tell. There was too much foliage and too many trees. Of course if they stayed up there the tree would probably act as a pretty effective shield. But eventually we’d have to move. Our potential assailant had all the advantages of a rooftop sniper and I had no idea what to do about it. I felt the sting of bile as it rose up in my throat. I could die here, only a few feet away from where I had seen a three-hundred-pound man receive fellatio. That just couldn’t happen.

  “Sophie, really, what’s going on?”

  “Shut up,” I snapped in a whispered voice. I couldn’t explain. I had to use all my mental energy for thinking up a plan of escape. I had my cell phone with me but even that presented a problem. Buena Vista wasn’t exactly the size of Golden Gate Park but at just under forty acres it wasn’t small either. If I called the police I wouldn’t be able to tell them exactly where in the park we were and by the time they came…

  I heard the pounding of feet hitting the ground at a running pace. Oh, God, this was it. Still holding on to Mary Ann’s wrist, I dragged her into the brush and forced her to stay low.

  The footsteps came closer…and I was beginning to suspect that I wasn’t just hearing one person. I looked around me. There was nothing to use as a weapon. Our only hope was that we could successfully hide or, if necessary, run.

  Mary Ann was breathing heavily. She was finally getting scared.

  And the footsteps kept getting closer. Yes, it was definitely two people coming our way. Their feet hit the ground like one beat superimposed over another.

  And closer. Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God…

  And that’s when I saw them. The tennis shoes, the muscular calves…the neon running shorts…they didn’t seem to be looking for anyone. In fact now that they were closer I could hear that they were talking to each other about…Pilates? Wait a minute.

  The joggers moved past us without so much as pausing.

  “Wait!” I cried. I pulled Mary Ann out onto the path again. The man and woman who had been running snapped their heads around at the sound of something coming out of the bushes. “Muggers!” the woman cried and just like that they were off at top speed.