Forty-Four Box Set, Books 1-10 (44) (158 page)

In that moment, finding the gun in his hand, Dr. Mortimer had realized that it was up to him. He knew that his brother would never stop unless someone stopped him.

I was in no position to judge Dr. Mortimer and what he had done. Mostly I felt sorry for him, that it had been left up to him to decide and that he now had to carry such a terrible burden.

I watched the Audi reach the front of the line, Native American flute music leaking out from its windows. Another man sat in the passenger’s side, talking and gesturing, and both of them were dressed in scrubs. Dr. Mortimer nodded and smiled at the barista behind the counter.

His smile reminded me of the good times we all had long ago. I was glad he was back.

CHAPTER 3

“Hey, Kate.”

“Hey, Abby. Sorry, were you sleeping? You sound tired.”

“Nothing that a few yawns won’t cure,” I said, rubbing my face. “How are you doing?”

“Good,” she said. “I just got back from D.C. and thought I’d give you a call.”

Kate had been working on something big and very hush-hush for several weeks and had refused to give me too many details.

“How’s the story coming alon—” I said without thinking. “Wait, no, don’t tell me. If you did, you’d probably have to kill me, right? Pretend I didn’t say anything.”

“Hey, I hear the fire there is pretty bad.”

“Yeah, the wind shifted again and we’re getting a lot of smoke. They evacuated some neighborhoods near the front lines and turned that elementary school near the gym into a shelter. It’s pretty crazy.”

“Oh, I meant to tell you to check the roof for needles, especially near the back of the house, you know, under the big pine tree. Those things are like tinder. You can probably use the hose to spray them off. Because if there’s any ash blowing into town, there could be embers, too. It’s critical to keep a line of defensible space around the house.”

“I’m on it,” I said.

Since the fire broke out, she had been texting me twice a day with chores to make the house more fireproof. It was all enough to make me hear Hector’s voice in my head and what he had said about his brother and older siblings, but I chalked it up to the fact that Kate had once dated a firefighter and that she meant well.

“Okay, enough nagging,” she said. “You know I had dinner with David the other night. He’s crazy. He actually told me it was okay for me to sleep in my own bed and use my own room when I visit.”

I laughed.

“Well, he did pay rent for the next six months,” I said.

“What? Why?”

“He said he didn’t want to lose the room even if he can only get back to town once in a while. You know how you can’t find any rentals around here anymore. And he said he was worried that Ty would move in and take over. He’s even keeping his car here in the garage as kind of a placeholder. At least he took Sebastian with him. That turtle, boy. I tell you what.”

“How many cars does a guy need?” Kate said. “Did he tell you he bought that Mustang he’s been talking about? He likes to park outside my apartment and rev it up until I go to the window. He’s going to get me thrown out of my building.”

“Well, say hi for me if you see him again. We keep missing each other’s calls.”

“Then you probably didn’t hear that after the filming here he’s heading to Hollywood for a month. He landed a small part in a movie.”

“Wow, no I didn’t know. That’s great, but now his head is going to get even bigger.”

“Is that even possible?” Kate said.

“Let’s hope not.”

CHAPTER 4

I had invited Paloma over to watch a movie.

She brought the tequila and I made some Rick Bayliss-inspired fish tacos using scallops.

“These are right, girl,” Paloma said.

I had to agree. When I watched him make the recipe on TV he had said he could live on these. Biting through the fried corn tortilla and into the grilled scallops smothered in a green chili sauce and
queso fresco
with a splash of lime juice, I didn’t doubt it. There was a simplicity to them that was sublime. The only thing involving any degree of difficulty was not overcooking the scallops.

Paloma stopped eating long enough to pour us some shots.

“How’s the new job?” I asked, wincing as I downed my drink.

“I’m liking it.”

“What do you do exactly?”

“Whatever needs doing, I guess. The boss lady’s event planning business has taken off, and she can’t handle it alone. So that’s where I step in. I order flowers, food, chairs, make sure shit’s on time. That kind of stuff.”

“Sounds vaguely familiar,” I said, thinking about the restaurant.

“I needed a change, you know, a long vacation from the drunk and the cheap,” Paloma said. “And if it doesn’t work out, I can always go back to bartending.”

“Or dancing.”

“No. No more dancing.”

When I met her, Paloma had been a dancer at a sleazy club. She had come to me for help with a ghost. He ended up doing a number on both of us, and it was good to be able to laugh about it now. Neither one of us had done much laughing back then.

“How’s that Meg thing working out for you?” Paloma said.

“I’m sweating trying to keep up with the orders, but it’s a different kind of sweat than when they ask you a question in class and you don’t know the answer. It’s the kind of sweat that helps you sleep better at night.”

“You know we don’t have to wait until all the men are out of town to do this,” she said.

“You’re absolutely right.”

A couple of the 10 Barrel drivers had come down with the flu so Ty offered to pick up the slack and was on a delivery trip to Portland. Lyle was on a bean-buying trip to Costa Rica because Mike had shredded his ankle playing basketball. And David, of course, was back in Portland shooting his TV show.

The more we knocked back shots, the more random the conversation became.

“What’s with you and these old movies?” Paloma said as I turned on the TV.

“At first it was the black and white thing that drew me to them. After I stopped being able to see colors, I felt like I was missing out. But with the old movies I got to see everything that was there originally. Plus the stories are good. Not all of them of course. Some of them are horrible. But the good ones… There’s nothing like ’em.”

Robert Osborne came on the screen and began to introduce the movie.

“Wait,” Paloma said. “
Touch of Evil?
”

I paused it.

“You’ve already seen it?”

“No, just heard of it. The one where Charlton Heston plays a Mexican?”

“I think that’s the one. Orson Welles is in it, too. And Janet Leigh.”

She shook her head.

“It’s supposed to be a classic,” I said.

“According to a lot of old white guys, no doubt.”

“Maybe so, but if this guy can play Moses, why can’t he play a Mexican?”

“Well, I never met Moses, but I know a few Mexicans,” she said, looking down at the back of her hand for a long moment. “And he’s not one. Plus, whitey’s taking jobs away from my people.”

“That’s a good point. But look at all those actors from England and Australia dropping their accents and playing Americans. Is that wrong? Would
Twilight
still be the same without RPat? And I can’t imagine
L.A. Confidential
without Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce. If actors could only play themselves, movies would disappear and all we’d have is Kardashian TV.”

Paloma was quiet for a while, staring off in space somewhere past my right ear.

“That happens sometimes.”

“What happens?”

“When I drink this stuff too fast, sometimes outrageous shit almost starts to sound, I don’t know, plausible.”

“C’mon, you know it’s true. Let’s just start it and see what happens.”

“Whatever,” she said, nodding at me and then in the vague direction of the screen.

The opening credits began to roll and I sat back.

Clearly, I was in over my head. But part of me could identify with Charlton Heston, or at least the idea of what he had been asked to do, to play a role that didn’t come naturally, that perhaps he wasn’t meant to play. I felt that way a lot. The first year of culinary school had left me feeling like that for sure. And then, of course, there were the ghosts.

I had somehow been cast into the role of someone who saw ghosts and was supposed to help them. Most of the time I felt overwhelmed. It was like life’s casting director had gotten it wrong. Way wrong.

More than ninety minutes later we were sleepy and more than a little drunk, but we were still watching.

“Okay, I’m no expert,” I said as the closing credits came on. “But I agree Charlton Heston wouldn’t know a Mexican from a—”

“Well, of course,” Paloma said. “But this movie kills. It’s so good I don’t even mind Chuck in it.”

“I’m glad you liked it. It was good, wasn’t it?”

She nodded and smiled.

“This was fun,” she said and yawned.

“You wanna take David and Kate’s bed?”

“I don’t think I can move,” she said, sliding down in the sofa. “I’ll be good out here.”

I got her a blanket from the closet.

“Okay, good night, Paloma.”

“Hey, Abby, you ever worry about disappearing?” she said in a voice drunk with sleep and other things.

I looked at her. I wasn’t sure how she meant it. I had disappeared before. I had disappeared at the bottom of that lake.

“How do you mean?” I said.

“I mean, like all those people in the movie. The sheriff and his wife, the bad guys, the director, the guys who worked the lights, the ones who took out the trash, the stars and the extras. They were all walking around for however many years they were around, right? And then one day, poof,
they were gone. I mean like that.”

“I guess,” I said. “I think and worry about a lot of things when I can’t sleep.”

“Yeah, most of the time I believe in a plan, you know, where there’s a Heaven at the end of it. But like you say, sometimes late at night, it’s almost the opposite of when I was a little kid. Instead of being scared that
el cucuy
is under the bed, I worry that nothing is under the bed. And that that nothing goes on forever.” She curled up into a ball and moaned softly. “Okay, that was all.”

“I’ll see you in the morning, Paloma.”

It was sort of comforting knowing that I wasn’t the only one who was scared of things that go or don’t go bump in the night.

CHAPTER 5

Ty called me from the road.

“I should roll back into town late tomorrow afternoon. Are you free?”

“Wait, let me consult my schedule,” I said, pretending to flip through the pages of an imaginary notebook. “Let’s see. Let’s see… No, I’m afraid not. Tomorrow won’t work. I’m seeing someone named
Ty
.”

“Lucky bastard.”

“You can say that again.”

“Lucky bastard.” I could hear him chuckling above the sound of music coming off his radio. “That’s too bad, because there’s supposed to be a meteor shower tomorrow and I was hoping we could go out to the Badlands and check it out. You know, just you and me and the stars and a blanket. It’s going to be a cosmic event.”

“That does sound awesome,” I said. “I wouldn’t want to miss a cosmic event. Let me see if I can reschedule Mr. Lucky Bastard and I’ll get back to you.”

“What the hell.” I could hear the smile in his voice over the pretend sigh. “Bring him along.”

I hung up and got chills. I could almost feel the coolness of the desert at night, the fleece blanket on my skin, Ty’s arms wrapped around me, and the racing of my heart.

***

With Lyle out of town and Mike on one leg, we were shorthanded over at Back Street to say the least. I had already pulled a killer eight-hour shift at Meg’s, but when Mike called at the last minute to see if I could help Mo close that night, I didn’t hesitate.

“I’ve hired a couple of new people this summer,” he said. “But they’re not at the point where I can fully trust them, if you know what I mean.”

I had met one of them and I thought I could read between the lines of what he was trying to say. The guy seemed like a Grade-A flake.

“I’ll be there.”

I had been up since four in the morning, but Mike had always been good to me and I was happy to help. I just hoped I could stay awake.

“Look what the cat dragged in,” Mo said when I staggered in.

“Hey, Mo.”

She gave me a slight head nod.

“Been a while, Craig. I know Mike will appreciate you checking yourself out of the morgue to be here.”

“What?” I said. “Oh, that bad, huh?”

She didn’t bother to answer.

I thought about how this might be my last summer working at Back Street. When I graduated in May, I would look for a full time position in a professional kitchen. Hopefully, I could stay in Bend. But I’d go with the best job I could get.

Miguel, my friend from school, was working at an upper crust French restaurant in Napa for the summer. He told me he was doing some serious networking there and already had a few offers. One place didn’t even want him to finish the program. They were ready to snap him up now. He said that wherever he got in, he would try to land me a job as well. If I couldn’t be the next big thing in the culinary world, it was nice to be friends with the next big thing, but part of me wanted to succeed on my own skill and not because of who I knew. Ty said that I should keep an open mind and that he would trade beer country for wine country if it would help my career.

A woman in her mid-thirties who looked even more exhausted than I felt walked in at some point. I swirled in a happy face with a little cocoa powder on top of the foam of her cappuccino. She almost didn’t see it but then nodded and smiled.

“Thanks, I needed that,” she said, stuffing a bill and some coins in the tip jar. “It’s been one of those days.”

We had a few busy bursts but for the most part it was slow going. That was all right by me. I poured myself a second cup of strong black coffee and did a little sweeping, mostly on the theory that it was harder to fall asleep on your feet. I was afraid to sit down.