CoverBoys & Curses

Chapter One

3
Women & a Funeral

THEY
SAY WOMEN DON’T KILL themselves with a single bullet to the head.

They’re
dead wrong.

The
entire funeral screamed of blasphemy. Payton Doukas’s father, of fierce Greek
Orthodox persuasion, insisted that viewing the body was a necessary ritual in
the institution of a proper burial. As self-proclaimed host of the event, he
was none too thrilled that his daughter had decided to blow her brains out. In
compromise, Payton’s casket commandeered a corner of the chapel veiled behind
cranberry colored sheers. I kept trying to peer through the fabric while
knowing I would avoid any sight of what might be left of my best friend.

Divorced,
Payton’s mother left a much different thumbprint on her daughter’s final
service. She did this theme thing. The altar in front of me brimmed with potted
plants, buckets of cut daisies, and an odd assortment of gardening tools,
sunbonnets, gloves, and clunky looking black rubber shoes. I guess it could
have been nice if Payton had lived to love the garden, but she couldn’t sustain
the life of a Christmas cactus. I knew better. If Payton had a theme it was the
little foil package of not-so-clunky black rubbers, also known as condoms, she
kept tucked inside her fake crocodile purse.

I hadn’t
spent much time in the desert. It must have been Payton’s final laugh to go and
kill herself in Tucson in June. At 109 degrees, the historic church didn’t have
air-conditioning. A few floor-stand fans blasted out hot air. The tired looking
surroundings offered a splintered cross, suspended above the altar and
impressive in size. It seemed to be the only adornment other than the temporary
garish gardening exhibit and those wretched cranberry sheers.

Carly
Posh sat next to me. A gifted Los Angeles interior designer, she preferred to
dress as if she’d just returned from some combat boot camp. Always organized
and in control of both body and mind, Carly was the fine stitching that kept
our tapestry of friendships woven together.

To the
left of Carly, Sterling Falls constantly adjusted the miniskirt that seemed to
be sticking to the wooden pew. Late to arrive, she’d wedged her slim body
toward Carly from the opposite side of the church. I didn’t see her face, but
there was no mistaking who she was. Sterling’s trademark wardrobe was skimpy
and bright, but not as shiny as her long lacquered fingernails adorned with
even brighter gemstones. Her fingers looked like popsicles with giant chunks of
lime and cherry ice swirls clinging to the sticks. When her dad became the
legendary jeweler to the stars, Sterling was quick to partner up with him.
Their sign on Rodeo Drive simply read, ‘Falls & Falls’. Falls of cascading
diamonds, rubies, and emeralds, that is. Fair to say that Sterling was the
shellacked gold threads embedded in the fabric of our friendship.

Payton’s
father rose to the altar and conveyed his final goodbyes to his
Petroula
—Payton’s
given name and one she loathed. The heavy Greek accent made his words difficult
to understand. Instead his grieving eyes, red and swollen against an ashen
face, communicated his story of deep loss.

I had
been witness to this type of grief far too many times. I admit my mind was
drifting from the service when Sterling shoved the latest issue of my magazine
across Carly and into my lap.

The sound
of her voice carried loud enough the family members in the pew ahead of us
turned and shook their heads in disapproval. “What’s up with this, Lauren? Are
you asking for death threats? These types of stories are going to get you
killed.”

I
shrugged my shoulders in an attempt to shun the conversation. Between the glossy
images of male models, my articles solicited an abundant readership of both
sexes.
CoverBoy
would become known,
if not respected, for presenting in-your-face current world events based in fact
not commonly known or believed, or even conceived. The stories pushed the edge
and this time, maybe, I had gone too far. A death threat is pretty far.

Who
knows why I loved Sterling. She fell into the obnoxious and self-centered and
rich and drop dead gorgeous category. She was just pissed to be the last one to
know I was moving my magazine to Los Angeles. And that meant I was moving, too.

We were
four. We had become friends when we were only eleven years old. Now we were
three, and I wanted to be alone. I wanted to be one. I wanted to sit in the
back of the church away from everyone and out of earshot from the minister’s
words and all the other people that had to stand up and drone on about
something irrelevant regarding my friend behind the cranberry sheers. I’d feel
safer in the back
. Safer? Safer if you’re
a bowling pin, maybe.

Who
needed protection? Not me. But anyone and everyone who had ever loved me had
died. My loved ones were not safe. This much I knew. And apparently I was not
safe either, but I hadn’t mentioned this to my friends. I hadn’t mentioned it
to my own self.

Chapter Two

An
Empty Pew

THE
DARK AND HANDSOME man had a spy planted at the services. Just to make certain
all the details were neat and tidy. A mere kid, but good at blending into any
crowd of mourners. Dressed in black. Good boy.

 
FOLLOWING THE SERVICE we moved across the
church grounds to a noon gathering of Greek food. The three tables offered
grape leaves,
moussaka
,
unidentifiable fish replete with metallic eyeballs, and flaky baklava dripping
with golden syrupy butter.

Sterling,
lanky and lithe ever since I met her in fifth grade, devoured her second chunk
of baklava. Between gulps she asked me, “So, what gives? Why the tell-all story
on one of the most famous ballplayers in the country?”

Why not,
I thought, even though I felt the knot in my throat pulsing while knowing
someone out there was ready to kill me over it. “I stand by my work,” I said. I
had the facts. Steroids. Steroid sales. Steroid cancers. One could call it an
old story, but I took a spin on it with the big money bribery.

Carly
looked on and attempted to hide the concern that seized her eyes. She tried to
blink away the tension.

Oblivious
to Carly, Sterling changed the subject. “What do you say we ditch this place? Go
back to the resort and splash around in the pool. Hang time. Payton would have
wanted that.”

Sterling
was right. But it didn’t feel right.

“You
guys go ahead. I’m going to stick around here for a bit. Maybe take a walk,” I
said.

Sterling
tossed her long blond hair to the side, “Yeah, right. 109 degrees and Lauren
wants to take a walk.”

I
grabbed a bottle of cold water from a nearby barrel. “I’ll catch up with you
soon.”

I walked,
all right. Right back into the already emptied church. Where had all the
mourners gone? And Payton’s casket? The flowers, the tacky garden crap, even
the cranberry sheers were gone. I took my preferred seat at the back of the
church.

And I
made the mistake of turning my phone back on and checking messages. Three of
them were from the identified person in my article accepting bribes. One was
from the identified briber. All were irate. Screaming they were going to get
me. Shit.

I’m
twenty-nine and I’ve lost too much, too soon. My mother died of a heart attack
when I was away at university. My father and my fiancé perished together in the
family jet that was bringing them to me the day before my wedding.

And now,
Payton. She’s one of my best friends. Why didn’t I see this coming? Suicide? Could
it be I had no idea that Payton was suicidal?

Distance
separates no one in today’s world of instant communication. Sure, Payton and I
talked. Phone, emails, texts, even webcam chats, but over the years I admit the
contact became less frequent. We sold out to careers and endless promising futures.

Yeah,
right. Futures. Mine was just as secure as any futures market. Nothing but
speculations and hedging bets. Who would start up a glossy magazine when they
were folding like origami and sinking like forgotten treasure chests in
reckless seas? My future and my past seemed to die and I couldn’t let go of the
bullet. Perhaps that’s why I still held on to my own box of the dead—the first
thing I had packed to make the move from Chicago to Los Angeles.

Tucked
inside the box, I’d wedged the envelope in between a copy of
The Prophet
and a box of tattered and
fading family photographs. The gold ribbon on my own wedding invitation stuck
out, curling around the top of the box like golden angel hair growing out of a
hastily covered grave. The very good and the very bad. My own personal
dichotomy of life.

 
I grew aware of the stale air in the church
and took a deep breath. Almost historic and in need of restoration, I thought.
Aging wood bled of life from the rays of sunlight streaming in from the
clerestory windows, I watched dust particles sway and settle in the unseen
movement of space.

Remorse
and regret overwhelmed any grief. An old familiar guilt consumed me. Payton Doukas
died because I loved her too much. The Lauren Visconti Curse. But there was a
different feeling this time. A certain angst that went beyond the shock of an
unexpected death.

They
found Payton at her home and slumped over her computer soon after she hadn’t
shown up for work. Her method of choice, the .357 Magnum, had fallen to the
tile floor. The pooled blood had been tracked through every room of Payton’s
house by the tiny paw prints of her cat, Teddy.

I wasn’t
the last person to see Payton alive, but I was the last one she had emailed.
She was my best friend, and yet her typed words made no sense to me.

Saguaro National
Forest. CAC. 3 Skeletons. Import

Chapter Three

Case
Closed

DEATH
IS ABRUPT. ALWAYS. It is impossible to digest. Even though it may lie in propinquity
to your heart because of some terminal illness—a death expected, even then
after any attempt to prepare for it—there is still no reconciliation of lost
time. It is always stolen from us.

           
As for the unexpected, is it worse?

Two days
after Payton’s funeral my phone rang again. The caller had identified himself
as a detective. I was stupefied.

“Is this
Lauren Visconti?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“I’m
from the Pima County Sheriff’s Department.”

“Pima
County?” I asked.

“Southern
Arizona,” he said. “Tucson.”

My palms
grew moist. “This is about Payton?”

The
detective told me he was just wrapping things up. He wanted to know what
Payton’s final email to me might mean. I told him I had no idea and asked him
why.

“Just
routine when someone so young dies. We never found a suicide note. Would you
know anything about that?”

I had
never thought about
that
.

“Nothing
to worry about, I’m sure,” he continued. “It happens more often than you think.
Some people get so wrapped up in their final intent they actually forget.
Sometimes they just have nothing left to say. It’s when we get a case of a female
with no suicide note, and—,” he cleared his throat, “—well, her means of
death.”

“You
mean a gun?”

“Yes,
ma’am. Firearms aren’t usually used in a female suicide. There’s no need for
alarm. We did the background work and everything is as it appears.”

“You mean
the suicide?”

“Ms. Doukas
had no enemies and not too many friends, either. She worked for some national
lecturer. She worked out of the elderly man’s home with his wife of almost
fifty years. Not exactly any love triangles going on. Doesn’t seem she dated
much. Besides a nine-to-five job in a quiet home she lived almost like a
recluse. Does this seem about right to you?”

Sadly,
it did.

“And
there was no evidence of a forced entry to her home. We want things nice and
tidy before we close the case.”

I didn’t
know there was a case. And now it looked like it was closed.

Why
didn’t Payton sign the email to me? She always did. A joke of the day, usually.
And then her trademark way of signing off. BFF, I love you. Payton.

It was a
bad case of nerves, I told myself. The rash extended down my inner arms and the
back of my legs. What did I expect, for
crisakes
? I
had just returned from a funeral.

HARLAN
COAL WAS ANYTHING but satisfied. He was so close. He could smell it. He could
reach out for it. He could grind his molars on it and taste the juice, but the
meat and cartilage remained just outside of his clenched jaw.

Coal
studied his image in the mirror while adjusting his
Brioni
tie, appreciating the fact his looks opened doors for him. He was those three
little words. Tall. Dark. Handsome. At six-foot three he towered over most
people. His frame was slim but athletic. He used his physique to his full
advantage, not unlike most Hollywood types on the big screen or not. He had
perfect white teeth. Coal’s imposing smoky eyes hosted deep crevasses at each
side making it appear as if he had a friendly wink and a perpetual smile. His
hands were gentle, but with a firm handshake he’d practiced over and over again
before he was even twelve years old. That was after his mother’s boyfriend
du jour
told him he had the grip of a
limp pussy.

Beyond
his good looks, Harlan Coal knew his mind would keep those doors open just as
long as he didn’t make any more mistakes. He’d earned his way. A Rhodes
Scholar, he was so much more. Coal had a rigid plan that would launch him into
fame and fortune. He was well on his way to becoming the leader of a
revolutionary frontier in psychotherapies.

He
thought himself to be a patient man who simply used his resources to his
advantage. Resilience was his next-of-kin. When things didn’t work out in New
York he was quick to relocate to Tucson. The incident there wasn’t really his
fault. Perhaps he let his desires put him in harm’s way when it came to getting
caught. He would not let that happen again.

Coal was
smart enough to pick-up and move, again, to Los Angeles where the pulse of the
city was hard and fast and no one ever really knew what was beating.