Cube Sleuth (17 page)

“I used to be a beat cop back in the day. You’re snooping around, huh? He was your friend?” He smiles, or at least shows me his teeth.

“Yes, very good friend. You think he could’ve been killed?”

“No. No reason to think that. Simplest explanation is usually the right one. You know of anyone who’d want the guy dead? Want it bad enough to plan a big thing to make it look like he offed himself?”

I shake my head no.

“There you go. You got no motive, you can’t go anywhere in a homicide case. Very rarely does someone kill another human being for no reason. Stupid reasons, sure. Killed for pocket change. Killed over an insult. I once got called to a bar where a guy stabbed another guy in the back six times because the victim was rooting for one team and the stabber had money on the other team. But there’s always some reason. No one took your friend’s money or his Jeep, so…”

“Ok. I see what you mean.” And I really do. But if a homicide detective’s gut didn’t stop my investigation, a Paine-Skidder’s security guard’s gut sure wasn’t going to, even if he did use to be a cop.

Living with a girl who has an eating disorder is like having a sneaky raccoon in your apartment. You never see the food disappear, it just does. A full row of spiced wafers, a whole bag of Smartfood; gone. Late at night, when you shower, when you go to poker night with your brother, the food vanishes.

Nancy lived with me the summer before I started sleeping with Eve. My apartment is a studio converted into a small one-bedroom. The bedroom has no window; the bathroom’s sole window lets natural light into both rooms. My air conditioner is in the “sunroom,” an extension of my living room. In the summer, I keep the bedroom door closed and sleep on the futon in the living room because the cool air never quite makes it as far as the bedroom. So, for those three or four months, I live in one room.

I’m claustrophobic. When I get MRIs for my chronic migraines (my mother works for a neurologist, so I have one once a year), I have to take a valium. Living in one room for three months is stifling enough, but adding Nancy into the equation resulted in frequent panic attacks.

Nancy’s parents divorced when she was still in puberty, and ever since she has spent her life living out of an overnight bag. For most of our relationship, she lived at college, with her dad, with her mom, and with me. So when circumstances made the most practical option that Nancy live with me for the summer, she was ecstatic about having one home for a while.

But while she was happy, I felt cornered.

I would come home from my soul-sucking job needing to stew in my miserable juices for an hour, and instead be tackled by my smiling young wife. Only we weren’t even married.

She loved to take care of me, even before we lived together. Pluck my eyebrows, shave the back of my neck between barber visits. Clip and file my fingernails and fix my cuticle bed (her nails were always chewed off, one of many nervous habits). She’s also an excellent cook. I usually liked all the attention she gave me, but during that summer I felt smothered.

Nancy makes her own jewelry. She has a great aesthetic and can really express herself in her pieces. However, the little beads she used would always end up hidden in my carpet and I’d constantly step on them in my bare feet. It hurt.

Once Nancy moved back to school, I savored my alone time like it was spent talking to God. I withdrew a bit, which made Nancy insecure and clingy. Which made me withdraw further. Which made her more insecure and clingy. We ran that cycle for months, and then Eve put her hand on my hard-on and I leapt at the chance to escape.

The Friday I’d spent my lunch stroking Eve’s lustrous red locks while she stroked something else, Nancy and I had made plans to see a movie. Here’s what happened instead (Spoiler Alert: this is the part where she dumps me):

I call Nancy after work and pretend to be sick. I know I can’t look her in the eye and lie to her while my sin is still so fresh. I honestly believe that by Saturday evening, I’ll have practiced the lie enough to be able to sell it to Nancy.

My imaginary illness puts me out of commission Saturday night as well. I spend both nights feeling sorry for myself for ruining the only good thing in my life and punishing myself with terrible poker play.

The fake fever breaks on Sunday. Nancy drives over from St. Joe’s.

I cover my mouth when she tries to kiss me hello, saying I think I might still be contagious. She gets close enough for me to smell her cotton candy breath. She chews gum perpetually to trick her body into thinking she’s eating without getting any calories. She swallows the gum when it loses flavor and immediately pops in another piece, like a chain-smoker. Cotton candy is her favorite flavor. I hate the way the gum tastes, but I like the way it makes her breath smell.

Nancy sits across from me on the futon, legs folded in front of her, one bare foot on my lap, telling me about her weekend. She wears one of the necklaces she made, strands of royal blue beads and canary yellow beads twisted together with a matching canary yellow smiling sun pendant at the bottom.

Her childlike, animated face usually makes me happy, but today it fills me with pity. Her voice seems far away, like I’m in a wind tunnel. My eyes focus on the top corner of the flickering TV instead of making eye contact with her. I realize that I won’t make it through this conversation without confessing.

During a lull in the conversation, I blurt out my transgression like a loud burp in church. “I cheated on you.”

“What?” She thinks this is another one of my elaborate jokes. I used to tell her ridiculous lies with a straight face and see how long it took her to realize I was full of shit. She hated that game because when I actually
was
serious, she thought I was kidding.

“I… did some stuff with a woman at work.”

“If this is, like, a joke, I’m not laughing.”

I look at the floor in shame.

“Bobby, I’m not kidding. Don’t mess around about something like this. It’s creepy.”

“I’m not. I really did it. I’m sorry.”

“Who?”

“Her name is Eve. She’s older. I’ve probably never talked about her before.”

“What stuff did you do?”

“You know…”

“You had sex?”

“No. She…You know…”

“Tell me.”

“She… you know… she used her… mouth.”

Nancy sits forward on her knees and screams at me, crying, her eyes and nose dripping, her arms violently gesticulating. “You’re never gonna find someone like me again! You had a chance at a happy life and a great family and you threw it away! You’re a selfish fucking child.”

And then she punches me in the face. Three times. Her ring cuts my cheek on one of those hits. I absorb a few body blows before hopping up and fleeing to the safety of the alcove I call my “kitchen.”

“Go for a walk. I’m gonna find everything here that’s mine and pack it up. I’ll let you know when I’m gone.” Her eyes make her look deranged.

It’s a week before Christmas, two months before Ron’s death. I step into the cold afternoon with a shiver; I forgot my coat. I let my cheek sting, let the trickle of blood from my nick dry, and cry in the street about breaking my best friend’s heart.

I console myself with the knowledge that I did Nancy a favor. Not by cheating on her, but by forcing her to break up with me. Nancy is too good for me. I
am
a selfish fucking child who will never mature into a husband-father type. She can only do better with some other guy. Unless she ends up with a drug addict who beats her and gives her Chlamydia, she’ll easily find a guy who is way less of a jackass than I am.

She texts me when she’s on the road back to St. Joes, and I come home to find her spare keys on top of a note that reads DON’T CALL ME – EVER. My apartment seems so empty. I feel like I was robbed, and everything was taken except my valuables.

I sit in the dark for hours. The sun is still out, but I close the blinds.

I don’t think of ways to kill myself. Not specific ways, anyway. But I do wonder whether or not the life insurance policy from Paine-Skidder would pay off if I do commit suicide. If it does pay off, I’ll be leaving a nice trust fund to my three-month-old nephew. If not, I’ll be leaving my poker debt to my brother.

* * *

The night after I talk to Keith and the Paine-Skidder security guard, there’s a knock at my apartment door. I assume it’s Helen. The only person other than Helen who knows the key code to the lobby door is Nancy. I prepare to fight with Helen and tell her I never want to see her again, but I’m excited by the brief prospect of company.

Opening the door, I see Nancy’s smiling face. She looks amazing. Gorgeous. Her skin has the glow of a pregnant woman or a woman who just had a potent orgasm. Time away from me has done her well. She also has a new haircut—not drastically different, but she has bangs now and they make her face look new. She’s been tanning. She wears a low-cut top and her cleavage looks absolutely delicious.

Nancy stares at me, beaming, unsure of how I’ll react to her surprise visit.

I stare back, not sure if I’m smiling. Lust consumes me. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted someone more than I want Nancy at this moment. She’s beautiful, always was, much more so than Eve or Helen. And more my type. My waning libido at the tail end of our relationship was purely a matter of the monotony of monogamy.

Nancy has found a way to do the one thing I thought no woman could ever do: she’s become someone else. She’s new. Mysterious. Who knows what or whom she’s done in the months we’ve been apart. Is she single? I’m dying to know, but I stand there, transfixed. Words escape me.

She eventually breaks the silence. “Thanks for the flowers. They made my day.” She giggles nervously.

“You’re… um… you’re… you know.”

“Welcome?”

“That’s the one.”

She cracks up. Without thinking, I move forward and wrap my arms around her. She matches the pressure of my embrace, the nostalgia and longing. My head on her shoulder, I feel ready to cry, so I pull back, holding her shoulders and looking in her eyes. “You look incredible. Sorry that I look like this.” I look down at my mesh shorts and stretched undershirt with mild shame.

“You look great. You look like you.” She gets a good look at my cheek. At this point the bruise Theo left is greenish-yellow and almost gone. “What happened to you?”

“Eh. Long story.” I let go of her shoulders and walk backwards into my apartment. “Come in, come in.”

She steps softly, as if afraid to disturb the carpet, and looks around as if with fascination, familiarity, or both. “I miss this place.” She sighs, her eyes drifting across every detail of my shitty apartment as if it were the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

“So, did you just drop by to say thanks for the flowers?” I don’t know what answer I want to hear, though part of me hopes it involves the phrase “craving your cock.” Not that Nancy talks like that. Or any woman who isn’t being fed lines by a porn director.

“Well, and to see how you’re doing.”

I sit on the couch and she sits close to me. She wears one of her creations, a single strand of gumball-sized black beads with a big, tarnished brass owl pendant. She has on matching owl earrings.

“How’re you doing?”

I consider giving her the old company line about how business is booming, but I know she’ll see through it.

While I weigh my words, she puts her hand on my knee. “I heard about Ron’s suicide. It’s awful. I wanted to go to the funeral, or at least call you, but I—”

“He didn’t kill himself.”

“What do you mean? I read about it in the paper.”

“He was killed.”

“Are you serious? Do they know who did it?”

“
They
think it was suicide. I’m the only one who doesn’t buy it. I think it was someone at work.”

Nancy cocks her head to the side like a puppy. She thinks I’m doing that thing again where I lie with a straight face to see how long it takes her to call “bullshit.”

I prove that I’m telling the truth by showing her my notes. She flips through them in disbelief. When she asks me why I think it was murder, I tell her about Helen and Not For Mixed Company. She asks if I’ve gone to the cops; I tell her all about Capillo.

She hands me my notes with an amazed
huh
. “Well. I wish I could say my life has been this interesting since we broke up. It’s been classes, internship, parties, trying to find a job for after graduation. Getting ready for real life. That kinda stuff.”

“Are you with someone?”

“Nope… So, what happened to your face?”

“The girl I was telling you about, Helen, we started dating after Ron died.”

Nancy looks like she wants to vomit. “Helen? What happened to Eve?”

“She broke it off not long after you dumped me. Right after Ron died. And then I started hanging out with Helen because we both missed Ron. And we ended up together. Big mistake.”

“What did you do to make her punch you? Did you cheat on her too?” Her bitter laugh stings, but her assumption amuses me.

“No.
She
cheated on
me
. With her ex. And he beat her up, cracked her ribs—”

“He beat her up?”

“Yeah, he’s a real peach. I went to his house and smashed his car with a bat. Then I smashed his hand with the bat, but not before he got in one good shot.” I tap the bruise.

“You didn’t do that. That’s not you.”

I feel mysterious now, too. “I wish I were lying. It’s
not
me. But lately,
I’m
not me.”

She doesn’t question me on this. “Are you still with this Helen girl?”

“After she cheated on me, I heaved that ho.”

“And then you sent me flowers.”

I nod. I don’t intend to crawl back to Nancy now that Helen’s gone, but I know it looks that way from where she sits. “I’m not trying to get you back. I went through what you went through with me, and it made me want to apologize to you again.”

“Do you want me back?” Nancy leans in close enough to kiss me, but doesn’t have an I’m-about-to-kiss-you look in her eyes.