Close to You (8 page)

Now an annoying newcomer to the bar was asking him how he had come to be called Meat.

“It's a nickname I got in junior high,” he grumbled.

“Because of your size, I guess,” the unknowing customer supposed, eyeing the beefy arms protruding from the striped polo shirt.

“Yeah, that, and because my last name's Bacon.” Meat turned back to the television set. He wasn't going to be telling the clown that he had been relieved when he was christened “Meat” by the guys on the JV football team. He hated his real first name, couldn't stand it all through grammar school when the nuns insisted on calling him Cornelius even though he had repeatedly asked them to call him Neil. In a classroom filled with Johns, Josephs, Kevins and Tommys, the kids teased him mercilessly about his weird, old-fashioned name, but his mother and father, always the cowards, weren't about to go into school and chastise the sisters.

Meat chuckled to himself. Cornelius Bacon Sr. was dead now and his son hadn't shed a tear. He had despised his father for his timidity with the outside world. Always playing
by those pathetic rules of his that never got him anywhere. Back and forth, back and forth every day to that job at the post office, always insisting that while a government job may not make a man a millionaire, he would have a good retirement and medical insurance for the rest of his life. But the joke was on the poor slob: he dropped dead of a heart attack two months before he was set to retire.

The good thing about it was that his mother didn't have to worry about money now, and that meant she wasn't looking to him to kick in to support her. She got enough from the government each month to cover her needs and go to bingo at the church twice a week. She was satisfied with that.

She wasn't satisfied, though, with the way her son made his living. Tending bar was not respectable as far as she was concerned. She nagged him about it whenever she called him. He should get a solid, dependable job with benefits.

“Not for me, Ma,” he droned time after time. “I don't want any suits bossing me around.”

A man should be a man, and set down his own set of rules.

 

Eliza looked beautiful as always, but Abigail Snow detected something different about her eyes tonight. There was a sadness to them and Abigail ached to reach out to her.

Leaning back in her chair in the promotion office, she told herself again that she had to get over this obsession with Eliza. It wasn't healthy. Abigail had stopped talking to her therapist about it, sensing that Dr. Flock was beginning to think she was really going over the deep end in her wishful relationship with Eliza. But with no other woman in her life, Abigail's fascination with Eliza grew and grew.

It wasn't that Abigail wasn't trying to meet someone else. But it was difficult. She had posted her picture and biography on
PlanetOut.com
, one of the Web sites featuring gay “personals,” and she had received many responses. But when she actually took the step of meeting the women for
dinner or drinks, she was always disappointed.

A soul mate was hard to find.

Abigail thought about her last girlfriend, Cosima. The year they had been together had started out wonderfully. They shared the same love of the outdoors, spending weekend afternoons hiking out in New Jersey or cycling and Rollerblading in Central Park. In the winter, they had driven out to the Poconos to ski or stayed in the city, catching a movie or just staying in together, Abigail reading while Cosima cooked delicious Greek meals. Abigail had reveled in those long, leisurely, companionable Sunday afternoons.

Abigail had cared about Cosima, but Cosima had found someone new.

The lesbian community was a small world. Everyone seemed to know who was with whom. Abigail had heard from her friend Shannon, who spent July and August in Sag Harbor, that Cosima was totally in love with the woman for whom she had left Abigail. Shannon had seen them, hand in hand and inseparable, at several parties during the summer. It was clear they were mad for each other.

Abigail's sadness only deepened when Shannon well-meaningly suggested they go together to the Chubby Hole some Friday night. It would be a kick, Shannon said, to go to a lesbian strip joint. Fun to have a few drinks and watch the G-string-clad women dance. According to Shannon, Abigail needed to get out and have some laughs.

Abigail doubted that erotic dancers would make her feel better. She wanted someone to love, someone with whom she could have an emotional connection.

Someone like Eliza.

Each time their work put them together, Eliza never disappointed Abigail.

Eliza was her dream woman. Intelligent, witty, beautiful and so feminine. Abigail, who had long ago come to grips with the fact that she was butch and preferred taking the more aggressive role, fantasized nightly about making love to Eliza.

She had to get over it! Accept the fact that Eliza Blake was not gay. She had been married and had a daughter. Everyone around KEY News was aware that she and Mack McBride were romantically involved.

But Abigail still held out hope. After all, she had been married once herself. Many lesbians she knew had been in heterosexual relationships before they realized and accepted that they were gay. Maybe that could be the case with Eliza.

Paige found an excellent agency that sent in a half dozen potential housekeepers for Eliza to interview. Three of them seemed like they would be the type of people Eliza might be able to trust her child with and feel comfortable having in her home. But one of them stood out and Eliza, after checking her references, hired her.

The one hitch was that Carmen Garcia couldn't start until the middle of September. She insisted that she had to give notice at her current job. The family she had been employed by for eight years was relocating to the West Coast and Carmen had promised she would help them get ready for their move.

“How do you think you'll be able to deal with helping me get settled in my new home, coming right off of packing up another?” Eliza asked with some concern as she interviewed the Guatemalan woman in her office.

“It is fine, senora. I like to get things in order,” Carmen answered, clasping her hands across her ample lap. “The Howards are very good to me. They help me get my green card. But their children are big now. They have no toys to pick up, only laundry now. The family goes out to dinner
all the time. I like to cook and I miss having
una niña
to take care of.”

This was too good to be true.

“Do you have your driver's license, Mrs. Garcia? There will be lots of chauffeuring my daughter to do.”

“Yes. I know how to drive, but I do not have my own car.” Carmen looked worried.

“No, you don't have to have your own car. I will have a car for you to use. But you must have your own way to get to work in the morning and someone to pick you up at the end of the day. I can drive you in a pinch but, as a general rule, I don't want to have to build time into my schedule to do that.”

“Of course not, senora. I know you are very busy. I will have my daughter or a friend drive me.”

“You have to know that sometimes I get home late, Mrs. Garcia. If there is a breaking news story or if I have a professional obligation at night, I have to know that it will be no problem for you to stay.”

“It is no problem, senora. I live with my grown-up daughter and her family in Westwood, just ten minutes away from HoHoKus. My other children are back in Guatemala, so there is no need of me to take care of them. If you can't come right home after work, that is okay, because no one is waiting for me.”

The woman had come dressed for her interview in a flowered shirtwaist dress and wore a double strand of costume pearls at her neck, and round pearl button earrings. Her low-heeled, black patent-leather pumps, while undoubtedly purchased at a discount store, looked like they were brand-new. Eliza sensed that Mrs. Garcia had made a special effort to make a good first impression.

“Do you mind my asking how old you are, Mrs. Garcia?” Eliza knew that at KEY she could be sued for asking a prospective employee that question.

“Fifty.”

“You look much younger.”

Carmen Garcia may have been a little older than Eliza
would have preferred, but Eliza liked everything else about her. There was a certain loveliness and modesty and formality to her. She expected that Janie would like her too. A bonus would be the chance for Janie to pick up some Spanish.

As Mrs. Garcia left the office, Eliza heaved a deep sigh of relief. This was the job she had been dreading, finding someone she could trust enough, feel confident enough about, to leave her daughter in her care. Her instincts told her that this woman was the right one to watch out for her little girl.

Thank God, one huge thing off the list.

Now she had to get through saying good-bye to Mack

“Once I get the lay of the land over there, I'll be able to tell when I'll be able to come back for a long weekend. It shouldn't be too long.”

Mack was trying hard to sound positive as they sat, arms wrapped around each other, in Eliza's moving-crate-strewn living room. This would be their last night together. The transatlantic flight schedule meant that Mack would be in the air tomorrow as Eliza was anchoring the news. It was just as well, Eliza rationalized, to say their good-byes here tonight, privately, rather than bid farewell at the crowded British Airways terminal at Kennedy Airport.

Eliza stared silently into her wineglass as she swirled the deep red Merlot inside. They both knew it was going to be extremely difficult for either one of them to get away for a long weekend anytime soon. She had been anchoring
Evening Headlines
for less than two months, there was a presidential election coming up, and she didn't feel comfortable taking time off yet. She was certain Range wouldn't appreciate it.

Mack was even less likely to be able to get away. As the chief London correspondent, his beat was all of Europe. Any news event, election, war or disaster, natural or manmade,
was his to cover. He had to be available, ready to go anywhere at anytime.

They would be lucky if they saw each other at Christmas, Eliza thought glumly.

Snap out of it!
Was she going to spend their last hours together drowning in sadness, whining and worrying about what was to become of their relationship? She didn't want Mack to remember her like that. She wanted him flying away tomorrow with peace of mind yet aching to be together again. She wanted to feel that way herself.

Be brave. Have some style.
She tried to rally.

“More wine?” she offered, too brightly, eyeing his empty glass. She emptied the rest of the bottle into both their glasses and took a long swallow. A droplet escaped from the corner of her mouth and Mack leaned over and tenderly kissed it away.

She responded to his lips hungrily, inhaling the familiar, wonderful smell of his aftershave and feeling overwhelmed with desperation. She wanted to wrap herself around him and never let go. She wanted Mack to be with her now and, she hoped, always. They needed more time together.

Why was it that every man she loved was taken from her?

Before pulling the cream-colored Lexus onto the hydraulic lift, Augie sorted through the keys on the silver ring. He slipped off the three that looked like house keys and put them in the top pocket of his overalls.

At lunchtime he told the mechanics he was going to the bank. And he did, but first he drove out to the Home Depot on Route 17. There, he had copies of the keys made. Augie rarely got the same guy twice at the giant supply center. If he routinely brought in keys to be copied at the small local hardware store, the owner would surely become suspicious.

The Lexus was back in the Palumbos' long driveway by four o'clock. Augie rang the doorbell and handed the complete key ring to Mrs. Palumbo.

“Thank you so much for squeezing me in on such short notice, Augie. We're leaving for Point Pleasant tomorrow and I really wanted to have the car gone over before we go”

“No problem, Mrs. P. Happy to do it Mr. Palumbo can settle with me next time he stops in for gas.”

He smiled and shook his head as he walked down the driveway to the truck that had followed him over so that he would have a ride back to the station.

God, people were stupid. Trusting, but stupid.

Joe Connelly remained in his small office adjoining the main security room at the Broadcast Center later than usual that evening, entering the newest data into his
ABERRANT BEHAVIOR
computer program. He currently had sixty cases in his computer culled from mail and telephone threats coming into KEY News headquarters and KEY affiliates around the United States. Some of the cases were simple. Some were extremely complex.

Eliza Blake received lots of odd correspondence, but not all that many threats. Most of the letters that came addressed to her were more persistent nuisances than anything truly alarming. After years of experience, Joe had learned what to dismiss and what to take notice of.

The ordinary letters, those commenting on stories or asking for a signed photo of Eliza, went to KEY Audience Services. The scary stuff was sent to security. As Joe typed in a fresh entry about this clown Meat's latest letter, he marveled that Eliza's new assistant had such a knack for separating the wheat from the chaff.

In Connelly's experience, on-air women got more letters than on-air men. Female correspondents, especially at local stations, bore the brunt of the nut mail. Joe thought it was
because the women gave off a more approachable aura on the screen. It wasn't a function of how cutesy they were. It was because they looked open and welcoming.

For Eliza Blake, the same qualities that made her popular with the sane viewing audience made her vulnerable to wackos.

The trick was to tell how bad the threat really was. And to decide when to intervene and with what. If he intervened prematurely or inappropriately it could exacerbate the situation.