Cube Sleuth (18 page)

“No. Yes, but no. I can tell you now that I’ll probably never be happier than I was with you. You’re everything I want.”

“So why don’t you want me back?” Her face is still close. I smell her hair, her piña colada body lotion, the cotton candy bubblegum.

“I wanna be with you but I don’t want you to be with me. You deserve someone way better. A guy who would never cheat on you. I hoped you’d be with someone else by now and you’d get the flowers and think it was a nice gesture and get some closure. And then go tell your great new guy all about it.”

Her lip quivers. I guess this isn’t what she wants to hear. Does she really want to give me another try? I never thought of her as that much of a glutton for punishment.

Knowing a person will stay with you no matter how lousy you treat them makes it harder to treat them well.

I put my hand on her cheek. My senses don’t seem to understand that she’s not mine anymore. “Are you dating at all? Any good prospects for Mr. Right?”

She leans her head toward my hand, her face in a state of pained-looking bliss. “No good prospects. I’ve dated. I’m not dating. College guys are…college guys. You know? I need an older guy.”

“Older doesn’t mean more mature. I’m proof of that.”

“You’ve kept the same job for five years. You pay your own rent, have your own car. If you’re not mature, you’re at least responsible.” She pecks my cheek, then jumps up to get a drink. “How’s poker?”

“Abysmal. It’s just more proof that I’m irresponsible.”

“Go easy on yourself, Bobby. Nobody’s perfect.”

Nancy hands me a glass of iced tea and sits down sipping her ice water. We talk about what she’s doing for senior week. What her ideal first job would be. Where she’d like to live once she can afford her own place. Her family. Her roommates. It seems like eons since I’ve seen her, but she’s able to catch me up on everything in a surprisingly short time. Either she’s become more stable without me or I’ve grown stranger in my solitude, but compared to me she seems so normal now.

She’s lost a little weight, weight she didn’t need to lose. I hope she’s eating enough and not exercising too much. She looks healthy now, but I’ve seen this progression in her a few times before and I know where it can lead. I decide not to address it, and she doesn’t bring it up. The notion that I’m not able to help her anymore stabs at me.

When we were together, I made sure she ate. Whether she threw up her meal or exercised every calorie off was beyond my control, but I always knew she ate.

When we were together, it helped both of us to stop focusing on our own compulsions so we could help each other. On the surface she seems together, but I wonder if she’s as crazy as I am when she’s alone.

During our conversation, Nancy yawns dramatically and rests her head on my shoulder. My spine tenses. As usual, I’m torn between my brain and my wiener. And this time, also between my brain and my heart. I love Nancy. I need her. But she’s better off without me.

My will is usually no match for my desire, but right now I’m confident I can control myself. I won’t sleep with a girl if I know it’ll break her heart. I’ve turned down sex on four occasions, and all four times for that reason.

I put my arm around Nancy and rub her shoulder in a friendly, soothing motion. She picks up the remote and turns on the TV. In minutes, we’re both hypnotized into pretending that I never cheated on her, that we never broke up, and now we’re just curled up on the couch watching reruns like any other happy couple. A calming fantasy that slows my respiration, like a glass of wine before bed.

Nancy swallows and I’m close enough to her throat to hear it. I tell her to stop swallowing her gum, reminding her of my old warning that all the gum she’s swallowed over the years is forming a massive gelatinous tumor in her intestines. She laughs at my unsound scientific theory and pops another piece into her sweet mouth.

When Nancy sits up and takes my face in her hands, I’m paralyzed.

When she tells me she loves me so much, I’m mute.

When her cotton candy breath rises in my nostrils, I lose my sense of smell.

When her lips press against mine, I go numb.

But when her lips part, when her soft wet tongue tries to part my lips, my senses rush back and I pull away. “Don’t do this. I can’t put you through this again. Through me.”

Her eyes fill with tears. “We can try. We can give it another chance. I’m ready for that.”

“I don’t want to hurt you again. And I think I will. I think we’ll end up back where we were.”

“I know you love me. I always knew, even when you cheated. You always had a lot of love to give me. If you had any to give yourself, we could be happy.”

Nancy’s ability to sum me up in so few words impresses me. She seems wiser after what I put her through. But not wise enough to stop herself from coming back to me.

I kiss her cheek and hug her close. With her tears dripping on my shirt, I say, “I want to be friends. I want you in my life forever. Can you do that?”

“Do you think you could consider giving us another try?”

I know my answer instantly, but I wait a while to make it seem like I’m mulling it over. “Yeah. It’s possible.”

“When?”

“Nancy…”

“I’m just looking for a timeline, that’s all.”

“How about this: take six weeks. Put yourself out there. Give yourself a chance to find someone better. If you do, great; you have me as a friend for life. If you don’t find anyone, we’ll go on a date. I didn’t really spend more than a week being truly single, so I could use the time to sort my head out.”

I’m still finding ways to keep Ron alive, reliving what Helen said to him the night they kissed. Now
I
can plan a unique first date (only it’ll be a re-first date). This thought makes Ron’s absence feel like cement poured into my lungs.

Nancy lifts her head from my shoulder and looks at me with hopeful eyes. “Really?” She sounds like a little girl whose father just told her he’s taking her to Disney World.

I nod with a smile, thinking that I’ll need every second of the next six weeks to sort my head out.

* * *

I spend the next night, a Friday, alone in my apartment. I keep music or the TV on constantly to shield myself from the silence. Summer is a few weeks away, and the thought of not having anyone to go on vacation with makes me sullen. Half a dozen times, I start to call Nancy. I read
Contact
by Carl Sagan to pass the time.

I used to be very good at being by myself, used to like it that way. But it isn’t by choice anymore, and that makes it unbearable. I feel like a loser for having nothing to do on a Friday night. High school revisited. Back then, I had braces and a pubic pompadour on my head, and the only one who found me attractive was my own hand.

In high school, I pretended to be a musician. I wrote four-chord songs on the guitar and made up lyrics that sounded cool and meant nothing. I did this so I could have an archetypal identity: the “singer-songwriter.” I wrote lyrics in the back of my copybooks, drew treble clefs in the margins. I couldn’t read music, and had no idea what a treble clef meant. I still don’t.

Now I’m 27, and pretending to be a detective. My new archetypal identity.

The next afternoon, I drive to Helen’s apartment building and park in a spot where I can see into her place. I need to rule her out as a suspect, and I also don’t want to spend Saturday alone in my apartment reading.

Helen lives on the third floor, and her blinds are open, so I have a clear view into her place. She stands in front of a full-length mirror in her bedroom practicing a sleight of hand with one of her clove cigarettes. The unlit cigarette appears, disappears, reappears, and changes hands with quick, confident waves and gestures. I watch her practice the same three or four motions a thousand times and each time seems identical. From my profile view I can sometimes see the vanished cigarette sticking out from beneath one of her slightly cupped palms.

My eyes glaze over from the repetition. After more than an hour, she lights the cigarette and leaves the room. I keep my binoculars aimed at her bedroom window until I see the front door of her building open. Helen moves with purpose toward me, thin twirls of smoke clawing at her face.

I panic, drop the binoculars, release the backrest on my seat and lie flat, knowing that if she’s seen me, this won’t help at all. I close my eyes tight, an invisibility technique that only works for three year-olds.

Instead of an angry tap on my window, I hear an engine turn over. Poking my head up, I see that Helen’s car is parked two spots in front of mine. She pulls into traffic. I fumble for my keys and pull out a few cars behind her.

Keeping up with Helen from three cars back proves easier than I thought because of the stop-and-go city traffic. After fifteen minutes, I start to recognize the street names. Then Helen turns into the cemetery where Ron is buried. I drive past the entrance, then make a U-turn and follow her inside.

I can’t remember the layout of a place I’ve been to less than six times, so I can’t remember where Ron’s plot is. I idle through the cemetery until I see Helen’s car. Parking well out of sight, I grab my binoculars and inch across the silent graveyard, crouching down between headstones.

From about a football field’s distance I watch Helen perform her sleight of hand for the plain wooden cross that marks Ron’s grave. It’s too soon for grass to start growing on the dirt, too soon for a headstone.

I watch Helen talk to the stupid cross like it’s a person. She laughs, smiles, shrugs, but doesn’t cry. I want to go sit with her, put my arm around her. If we hadn’t tried to fall in love with each other, we could have been friends.

I wish I had a parabolic receiver so I could hear what she’s saying, but I can’t afford one, and Cody would probably have gotten ahold of it somehow and sold it on eBay. She can’t be the killer; she loved Ron too much. But maybe only someone who loved him that much could also hate him that much.

I wish I could hear what she’s saying.

“What the hell are you doing?” It’s an old woman’s voice, but it might as well have been a gray hand grabbing me from under the grass, the way I jump.

“Holy shit!” I momentarily forget cemetery decorum.

The old woman stands with her hands on her hips. She wears a housedress and has a wreath tucked under her arm. “What are you doing?”

I had anticipated someone asking me this. “Bird-watching.” I look back to see if Helen has spotted me; she hasn’t.

“In a cemetery?”

I didn’t anticipate this very obvious follow-up question. “My mom and I used to bird-watch. And now she’s here. Here in the cemetery. She died and she’s buried over there.” I point to the other side of the yard. “So I come here and it’s like we’re bird-watching together. I just had an oriole—a Baltimore oriole—in my sights. They’re rare in these parts. Usually you only see them, uh, up in Maryland. You scared him off.”

The old woman’s face slumps into a frown. “Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—It’s so nice that you used to do this with your mom. You’re a good boy.” She pats my shoulder. “Sorry I scared off your oriole.”

“No problem.” I walk off in search of another Baltimore oriole, maybe a Toronto blue jay. When I look back at Ron’s grave, Helen is gone. I look to the road and see her driving away.

I slowly make my way to Ron’s grave. The dirt in front of the cross is so soft that I feel like I could fall through it. I picture myself landing on the lid of Ron’s coffin and trying to dig my way back to the top, dying with my arms stretched above my head like a surfacing swimmer.

I try to think of something to say. Nothing comes to mind. I keep picturing Ron in his coffin, in a suit, head taped and glued back together, arms folded across his chest, his young skin still perfectly preserved by embalming fluid. In less than a minute, I shuffle back to my car, nodding to myself like a crazy person, binoculars swinging around my neck.

* * *

The more I think about Ron’s suicide note, about how someone must’ve handed him a fake form to sign, the more I think about Keith. He was the last person to talk to Ron before he died. They were at Paine-Skidder after hours with no one around but Mumbles, the cleaning crew, and the security guard. I have a feeling that Keith can’t stomach the sight of blood, but I could be wrong.

Of course, I have absolutely no reason to think that Keith would want Ron dead, but motive has become such a big hurdle in this investigation that I have to sidestep it. Ron defied murder victim protocol by having no real enemies, no dark secrets, no dangerous information, no mistress, and no money. If the killer was just a lunatic, then why not Keith? He really loves working at Paine-Skidder—that’s insane in and of itself.

Keith always shows up for work before me and usually leaves after me, so I’d have to wait him out to get a chance to snoop around his office. If the security guard catches me in there, I’ll be scrambling to find a new job before my rent is due. Too risky.

I decide to resort to a police detective’s go-to desperation move: put pressure on a snitch. Corporate workplaces don’t have snitches, but they have plenty of gossips, and since Paine-Skidder is mostly women, it has more than its fair share. Since I don’t have a badge and the gossips don’t have criminal records, I can’t put any actual
pressure
on them, per se. But I can try to bribe them.

Fortunately, Stella Kruger is most susceptible to the kind of bribe I can afford: food. Like Harry Brody, Stella is an office vulture, rushing toward free food the way a normal person would run after a Brinks truck spilling thousand-dollar bills. She knows everything about everyone, and she’s been with the company 25 years, so that includes people who worked at Paine-Skidder when
Quincy
was airing new episodes.

Stella’s round face is weathered but not wrinkled, so her age is hard to determine. I would guess she is between 55 and vampire-who-has-walked-the-earth-for-centuries. With her ruddy complexion, matching chocolate brown eyes and hair, and two cavernous dimples in her puffy cheeks, she reminds me of an over-sized Cabbage Patch Doll. Maybe a fairy made her into a real-live girl and forgot to tell her that grownup dolls must live with the bitterness of never again being as adored as they were as toys.