122 Rules (8 page)

Susan shook her head. “I suppose not.”

“That’s what I’m talking about. Now let’s go.” She ushered Susan out the door.

8

For the tenth time since returning from her makeover, Susan examined her reflection in the small mirror. Heavy powder, dark eye shadow, bright-pink lipstick, big hair.
Gawd, was Lisa’s goal to make me look like a 1980s prostitute?
She nabbed a couple of her boss’ cosmetic remover cloths and began to wipe the worst of the residue from her face. She glanced at the clock. Ten to three. If she started her makeup over, she’d never be able to put herself back together before Peter returned. Best to go natural rather than look like she earned extra scratch by turning tricks.

But by three thirty, he still hadn’t shown up. At least his tardiness had given her time to apply a light layer of makeup. Sighing, she tucked the cursed mirror into her desk drawer and focused on the jumbles of paper before her. To keep herself busy, she caught up on some filing she’d meant to do. By four, that task had been completed, and she sat doodling on a pad.

Lisa had given Susan some parting instructions before leaving for the afternoon to give her privacy. “Lock up when you go. Have fun, and don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. Oh, and I expect a full report.” She’d winked and headed out into the sultry afternoon heat.

Susan sighed. It wasn’t as if they’d set up a date and Peter had stood her up. She’d always been the one to call the shots, making the man wait for her. She hadn’t been with a lot of men, but in her former life could have—and in Tom’s case, had—gotten what she wanted and only given back what she chose. Yet now she found herself wondering when and if Peter would return. She glanced at the clock again. The closer it got to five, the more likely she’d be spending her first evening of freedom alone.

At half past four, she heard the rumble of a motorcycle and dared to allow herself to hope. As he pushed through the office door, Susan pretended to be sorting a stack of documents while her heart picked up its cadence. She shot a disapproving look at his smile in an attempt to cover the effect he had on her.

“Thought we agreed on three?” she told him.

“Sorry, traffic was a bitch.”

Had he no shame? Waltzing in like he didn’t have a care in the world. Although, something may have come up. She would give him this pass and see if he explained it later. “Yeah, well it
is
rush hour, so next time you have an important meeting scheduled, please plan for extra travel time.”

“Noted. So, I guess I missed my time slot. Can you look at your calendar and see when the next available appointment is?”

“Hmmm,” she said as she flipped the pages on her all-but-empty day planner. “Wow, I’m just not seeing anything. How about next March? Yeah, no, sorry, nothing sooner. Can I put you down for, say, three? Oh, wait. It’s you. Best make it four thirty.” She allowed herself a grin.

“Cute. Unfortunately it means I’ll miss out on the once-in-a-lifetime rental that…ummm…what’s-his-face is offering me. It’s probably gone by now anyway. Snatched up by the Florida couple.” He sighed. “Guess I’ll have to keep looking.”

“That would be Bobby, and yes, your tardiness has probably cost you the bungalow. So sad. It would have been nice having someone new in town.”

“Maybe it’s not too late? If I buy you dinner, can you fit me in then?”

“Are you bribing me or hitting on me? Maybe I should be recording this…” She started looking through her desk drawers as though searching for a hidden a tape recorder.

“Oh, no, no, no.” He held up his hands. “I’m a law-abiding citizen! I’m just seeing if there is a way to work something into your schedule. Besides, you need to eat.”

“I don’t know. This is a very small town, and as soon as Mary Beth gets wind of it, word will be all over.”

“Yes, but she was trying to pair us together to begin with.”

She folded her arms, trying to appear relaxed though an electric current zinged through her body, making her nerves tingle and dance. “True, but I think you understand the need for discretion. We are trying to run a respectable business. You are a client after all.”

“Add to that, I don’t want to give that old busybody the satisfaction of being right. We’d never hear the end of it. Tell you what, how about I make you dinner? I couldn’t stand the thought of eating whatever roadkill the diner has on its menu. I picked up some supplies, and there’s more than enough for two.”

What exactly had Mary Beth said? Oh, that woman was infuriating! Susan suspected her own network of being monitored by the FBI, so she went to the little coffee shop to use the free WiFi for a modicum of privacy. But the little know-it-all waitress used the opportunity to bombard her with questions. Susan replied to these inquiries with polite, but succinct and evasive, answers.

She had wondered if Peter would ask her out but hated that Mary Beth had been the one to arrange it. Maybe she should say no just out of spite? He’d offered to make dinner too, and that alone warned her away. But then she thought of this man wielding a pan and spatula, and a little thrill ran through her body. She didn’t know him, but she could handle him if need be. Ask Crew Cut. “So, there are some problems with that. The first is that I don’t even know you. You could be a lunatic. A girl needs to be cautious.”

The timbre of his laugh strummed delicious rhythms across her eardrums. Each pulse caressed her, sending little jolts of electric pleasure to every fiber in her body. “Well, I suppose I could be a lunatic. What does your intuition tell you?”

Even though she’d already made up her mind, she made a point of looking him over. “That you probably
are
crazy...but not dangerous.”

“What’s the other problem?”

“You’re looking for a place to live and thus are probably staying in a hotel. The out-of-towner accommodations in this shitty little burg leave something to be desired.” She touched her chin with her fingers. “And though I haven’t personally stayed at any, I’m pretty certain that none of them have kitchens. I feel quite sure that you have missed out on the rental, so no luck there. And even if you
did
have the new place, did you also pick up pots, pans, plates, and so on?” She leaned across the desk and cocked her head at him. “You look like a smart man, so tell me, where exactly were you planning to cook? Really, Mr., ummm…what was your name again—Morrell—what is your agenda?”

He held up his hands. “Very well reasoned, counselor. You’ve got me. I don’t have an agenda, per se. I was just hoping that someone might let me use their kitchen. I really am a good cook, and I clean up after myself. You won’t even know I was there.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Really? And so you thought, ‘Oh, small-town hospitality and all. Surely someone will invite the handsome stranger into her house.’ Is that pretty much it?”

“So, handsome, huh?”

“You’re avoiding the question, Mr. Morrell,” she admonished while heat bloomed in her cheeks.

“Well, everyone seems so friendly, I thought surely
someone
would show some small-town hospitality. Maybe I’m wrong. Perhaps I should just go down the street, get a cat burger, lie in my hotel room, and listen to the sound of it clogging my arteries. Such is the way of things.”

“Gross.”

“Tell me about it. Have you seen the menu at the diner?”

She looked at him for a drawn-out minute, even though she already knew what she’d say. “So, you do the dishes?”

9

Monica lay in bed and tried to ignore the rowdy laughter coming from the front room. She didn’t know the hour—either very late or very early. Her Mickey clock hung on a wall, too far away for the light from her reading lamp to penetrate the thick shadows hiding the mouse’s circling arms. One thing she did know for certain: she hated the sound of her mom’s obnoxious, drunken conversations and loathed the men she had them with.

For the millionth time, her gaze flicked from her paperback’s acid-brittle pages and came to rest on the nightstand picture. In the black frame, whose plastic corners didn’t quite mesh, a slim man knelt, his arm wrapped around his pig-tailed date. In the image, a twelve-year-old Monica held a glutton-sized bag of carnival cotton candy and a just-won-for-me stuffed animal of indiscernible species, while in the background a Ferris wheel forever lit up a dark summer sky. Captured by a willing passerby, the identical hazel eyes and matching, ridiculous smiles beamed from the final image, taken just hours before a teen, glancing down to adjust his radio, crossed a pair of double yellow lines.

The distracted boy had hobbled away from the carnage on route 70. But the kind man with the hazel eyes and easy laugh had left in a somber, silent ambulance, destined for his new residence at Alabaster Cove Cemetery.

Another round of raucous laughter.

Monica sighed. The inebriated couple may as well be in the same room with her for all the good the thin walls did to filter out their conversation. The man said something she could not make out, and her mom laughed loud and long. It sounded like screaming, on the verge of hysteria.

Monica wrapped the blankets tighter around her narrow shoulders and rolled onto her side, trying to focus on her book. After a while, the words pulled her in, and she found solace in the story.

She flipped the page, starting a new chapter, and had only read the first passage when something caught her attention. At first, she couldn’t figure out what had interrupted her concentration, but then her mind registered the quiet. Not even the rhythmical moaning and squeaking of bedsprings that echoed through the apartment on so many nights disturbed the heavy stillness. The ominous silence caused the hairs on the back of her neck to stand on end, and she turned over, staring at the ceiling, waiting for something to happen.

She didn’t have to wait long. Heavy footsteps echoed just beyond her door. They stopped. Cheap hinges squeaked, a quiet grunt, a latch clicking shut, and then the footsteps resumed. In the center of the narrow, three-door hallway hung a single bare bulb on a short, kinked wire. She imagined the man as he walked under that light, the chain Monica had to stretch on tiptoe to reach brushing his shoulder as he passed beneath it.

The light from the naked bulb spilled under her door, creating a luminescent mat that quickly faded to darkness as it misted across the grimy linoleum. Two heavy shadows that could only be a pair of very large feet broke the illumination.

Monica moved to the far side of the bed, back against the wall. She shut her eyes and willed him to move on down the hall, out of the apartment, returning to whatever rathole he’d crawled from.

It didn’t work.

The cheap brass handle rattled then turned. As her door eased open, the quiet screech of unoiled hinges echoed louder than anything she’d ever heard in her life. Amplified a thousand times over by her electrified nerves, the sound screamed through her head, so loud it muffled the rapid beat of her heart.

She opened her eyes. The large man stood backlit by the bare bulb on the thin, kinked wire. The face, cast in shadows, had no distinguishing features, but she didn’t need to see it to know what it looked like. She’d seen it a thousand times before in the line of empty-eyed men her mother paraded through her life. Each of them bore the same knowing, lecherous grin of a predator making an easy score with the pretty widow.

The faceless man stepped across the threshold and closed the door behind him. The quiet
snick
of the latch in the jam resonated as ominous and final as the sealing of a sarcophagus. She didn’t know what he wanted, but her mind offered up a half dozen possibilities, not one of them a day at Disneyland.

Time slowed to a gelatinous pace.

She looked deep into the gloom, but no matter how hard she peered, the blur refused to focus, as if he were not a man at all, but the
idea
of a man. As if the artist of this image, unsure of how to accurately reproduce the intricate contours and angles of the human face, instead chose to leave the details vague. The man’s eyes, the mere intentions of orbs, lacked definition, but nevertheless, their cruel intent was implicit as they gazed out of the dusty light, watching her.

Just as she started to wonder if maybe his perversion stopped at the observation of children as they slumbered, time slipped forward, making up for its previous sluggishness, and he appeared at the edge of her bed. He hadn’t taken a single step, but the ghost now solidified and towered above her.

It invaded the small circle of light cast by her gooseneck reading lamp, and the man’s features came into focus—long, greasy hair pulled back in a thin pony tail, three days’ of scruff flecked gray on a weathered face. He wore a workingman’s jacket, ironic since he probably hadn’t had a job in years, and a pair of dirty jeans held up with an oversized Texas Rangers belt buckle. The textured gold star glimmered and flashed as it caught the weak light.

“You need to leave,” Monica said, her voice no more than a whisper.

“You look just like your mom, only younger and prettier. Not all used up.”

Even from a distance, she could smell the booze on his breath as he swayed ever so slightly. She tried to yell, but her dry throat refused to function properly. “Mom!” Her voice rasped in a high-pitched wheeze as though she were asthmatic.