No Sleep till Wonderland Page 8

  “He thought the amphetamines would improve my narcolepsy. He was trying to help. Not so famous last words.”

  “Did they help?”

  “No. I mean, I don’t know if they would’ve. I didn’t take any.”

  “Right.” She gives me a half sneer, half smile. It’s a look that doesn’t have a very high opinion of me. “So you told the police that Gus was buying drugs even though he was just trying to help you? Some friend you are.”

  J’accuse! “Slow down. I didn’t ask Gus to buy me anything.” I’ll never know if that’s true, not that it matters. “And, I only told the detective that I didn’t buy the amphetamines from anyone, that some nameless client of mine did. I never told him Gus’s name. I keep all my clients confidential.”

  “How did the police find out about the amphetamines, then?”

  I sigh. That never works. “It’s complicated, unflattering, and not all that important.” Having had the weight of my dignity removed, I feel lighter in the papasan chair.

  Ekat returns the sigh, pumps it up with some extra juice, throws her hands up, and sits back down on the futon couch. She finds her beer and attends to it, finally.

  I say, “How well does Gus know Eddie?”

  “You know Gus. He’s friends with everyone. Never says no to a favor or an odd job. He’s been working with Eddie at the Abbey for about a year now. I guess he knows Eddie as well as he needs to.”

  I yawn but cover it up with another sip of beer. Falling asleep, in this position, has great appeal, more appeal than continuing this interview. I guess the papasan chair is comfortable despite its thoroughly designed attempts to be otherwise.

  I say, “How about you? Did you give Detective Owolewa Gus’s name?”

  “What? No. Why would I?”

  “Detective Owolewa didn’t ask you who hired me to watch you last night?”

  She looks away, down into her bottle. “He did. And I told him I hired you.”

  Interesting lie, one that’ll impact my relationship with Detective Owolewa seeing as I told him my friend hired me, not Ekat. We were only in the get-to-know-me phase, too. I say, “What exactly did you tell the good detective?”

  “I talked about the Eddie story…”

  “You and your stories. What’s the Eddie story?”

  “You already know it. I went to the Abbey with friends for a few drinks. Eddie was the bouncer and wouldn’t leave me alone until I poured a beer on his head. Then Eddie left me threatening phone messages at work. I told the detective that I hired you to watch me at the Pour House last night and then follow me home.” Ekat talks with a calm and even rhythm. It’s natural or practiced to the point of being rote.

  “You’re protecting Gus or trying to. Why?”

  “I could ask you the same question, Mark.”

  “You’re right, but I asked first.”

  “Obviously I’d heard about the fire and that Eddie was a suspect. The detective told me about you and a so-called friend and Eddie and drugs. I didn’t know what to think, and I just panicked, and decided not to tell him about Gus. I didn’t want Gus to be in any trouble or get him into trouble.” She pauses. Silence always has meaning. “He’s not exactly new to drugs. He’s been selling joints to friends, same shit he did in high school, but that’s just a stupid, little, juvenile thing, you know. Something to brag about, make him look cool. But he’d never do anything big stupid.”

  Sounds fishy. Or maybe it doesn’t. My sincerity radar is off tonight as both Eddie and Ekat seem to be telling me the truth when both can’t be. I know which person I want to believe, though.

  Ekat piles onto my hesitation with “I mean, come on. Gus has been my best friend since middle school. I’m not going to do or say anything that gets him in trouble. You’d have said the same thing for a friend if you were in my shoes.”

  I did do the same thing for the same person, but I can’t explain why. I say, “Style’s okay, but my feet are too small for your shoes.”

  She ignores my attempt at the funny. “Gus does well enough finding trouble on his own, anyway.”

  “Have you talked to Gus since last night?”

  “No. Have you?”

  I shake my head, and there isn’t anything in it. “Eddie says he’s looking for Gus too.”

  “You talked to Eddie?”

  “Not voluntarily.” I give her a brief account of slamming into Eddie outside of Gus’s empty apartment, his denials and alibi and threats to me and Gus.

  Ekat holds her head in her hands. She doesn’t want it to fall off. “Wow. I called Gus three times today, and nothing. I’m really getting worried now. I never realized how dangerous Eddie was. What do you think, Mark?”

  I don’t say anything and just stare. My stare turns into another yawn. The yawn could continue down the darkening path if I’m not careful.

  She says, “Maybe Gus and Eddie had a falling-out because of the whole stalking-me thing. Gus said he was going to talk to Eddie last night, tell him to leave me alone.” Ekat chews her nails. “You said Eddie threatened Gus too, right? Maybe Gus somehow found out or knew Eddie was going to set that fire, and now he’s laying low, hiding out.”

  I say, “Gus never struck me as the type who sleeps with his head under the covers.”

  “You might be right. I don’t know. There’re a thousand places he could stay in Boston, and he’s pulled disappearing acts before with angry girlfriends.” Ekat’s legs bounce up and down.

  There’s no air-conditioning in the apartment; the ceiling fan is threatening to go on strike. She says, “Something must’ve happened to him. Maybe Eddie or one of Eddie’s lowlife friends did something to him.”

  I’m getting the sense that Gus was closer to Eddie than he’d let on. I have an idea, and it’s a pretty good one if I don’t say so myself. “Mind if I call Gus?”

  “Please do. Call him.”

  “How about with your phone?”

  “What?” Ekat’s brow knots up and mutates into a question mark, then she says, “Oh, sure.”

  Ekat returns to the kitchen, comes back with her phone, and hands it to me. It’s sleek and black, a piece of the future. I find Gus’s name in her contacts list and dial him up. Four rings and straight to voice mail. I’m a little surprised and disappointed. My considerable gut was telling me that he’s ignoring my calls, but hers he’d answer.

  “No go, but let’s try again.” Not ready to give up on her phone. Maybe she and Gus have a pick-up-on-the-second-call system. There’s no answer to call number two. “Mind if I have a peek at your incoming and outgoing calls list?”

  “You think I’m lying to you about Gus?”

  “I think everyone lies to me.”

  “Go ahead.”

  I check. In the last twenty-four hours the only incoming calls were from Mom and her bar. There were three outgoing calls to Gus’s number, but she’d told me that. There’s no way to tell how long she was on the phone with Gus as it’s just a list of numbers and times, a call log. I fold the glowing flower of her phone back up and toss it to her.

  She says, “Am I all clean?”

  “For the moment.”

  “Wonderful. What do we do now, Mr. PI? Are we worried that something happened to him? Should we call the police and tell them Gus is missing?”

  I can’t tell if she’s serious about involving the police, or if it’s some kind of call to my bluff. I say, “We’re going to have another beer and see if Gus calls you back. I have a feeling he might.” The waiting game isn’t a real strength of mine, but I don’t have a whole lot of other options. That, and I can’t get out of the papasan chair.

  “Fine by me.” She goes to the kitchen and comes back with two more bottles.

  “Mind if I smoke?”

  “It’s a nonsmoking apartment, stipulated in the lease.”

  “Don’t you just hate overbearing, manipulative, I’m-gonna-rule-your-life landlords? Maybe it’s just me.”

  “Maybe you need a new landlord.” Eka
t opens the beers and spreads the wealth. “How’d you meet Gus? Wait, let me guess: a bar.”

  I’m too tired to put up a front. I can only muster the ability to answer her with ugly, unprotected truth. Hope no one gets hurt. I say, “Our first date was at a bar, and he even bought me breakfast the next morning. But we met at group therapy down on D Street.”

  “That’s right. I almost forgot he’d joined another group. Which one of you is getting the lobotomy?”

  “We’re going to flip for it.”

  “Sorry, that wasn’t very nice of me.” She says it, but I don’t think she means it.

  “Do you know why Gus sought out the group?”

  “He likes to share his deepest and darkest with strangers. He’s needy and an extrovert. He had a tough childhood, like everyone else. Who knows? I’m his friend, not his shrink.” She laughs, at me, I think. “Why do you go? Why does anyone go?”

  “I go because my mother makes me.”

  Ekat covers her mouth with the back of one hand and laughs all over it. She thinks I’m joking, but the joke is on me. There’s a big difference between the two.

  We go back to our corners and our beers, waiting to hear her ring tone. I’m still surprised that Gus hasn’t called back. If pressed to choose, I’d now place his folder in the something-happened-to him file.

  The weight of my fatigue is increasing. The fatigue, it’s always there, like walking around in wet clothes that don’t dry. Need to keep talking if I’m going to stay awake. I say, “So. Seeing anyone, Ekat?”

  “You’re not good at small talk, are you, Mark?”

  “No such thing as small talk. Just details.” Wow, even I have to admit that sounds as lame as I feel.

  I didn’t notice before, Ekat has multiple thin rubber bands on her wrist. She picks at them, absently, and says, “No one at the moment. Been on a bad luck streak, thanks for asking. Anything else you want to know about me?”

  “Sure. What’s life after bartending going to look like?”

  “I don’t know. I thought I wanted to be a lawyer, but I dropped out of Suffolk Law School like five years ago, been bartending ever since. I’m waiting for a spark, something to excite me, I guess. I’d make a great writer or an artist if I was creative.”

  I try to smile politely. It’s what I’m supposed to do. I can’t say what I really think: that an early-thirties bartender who drops out of law school doesn’t have an apartment in Southie like this unless she’s living off Mommy and Daddy’s trust fund. Might be an accurate assessment, might not be, and never mind being fair. And I think it like I’m some working-class hero who isn’t living off his own mother. My situation, my case is different. It just is.

  She says, “Every once and a while I think about going back to school or going off in some whole other direction, like living in the Ca rib be an or Mexico or something, but I’m not there yet. Not really motivated for some big jump. I like what I’m doing, who I work with. It’s easy, and I’m mostly happy.”

  “You could always become a private investigator. The pay sucks, but the respect the occupation engenders is worth all the toil.”

  “I bet.” Our second beers are quickly becoming thirds and more.

  It’s probably rude of me now that we’re chummy, but I’ve got another curveball to throw—a twelve-to-six bender. I ask, “Did Detective Owolewa see the suitcase?”

  “What suitcase? Oh, you mean the one next to my bed.” She doesn’t hesitate, and her answer is no quick and easy denial. My curve didn’t have as much break in it as I thought.

  “Yeah, that suitcase. The one cowering under your covers.”

  “I don’t know if he saw it. He didn’t ask about it.”

  “I’ll ask. Why’s it out?”

  “I was sitting here alone last night, and Eddie and his call to my work was really getting to me, scaring me, and I started thinking about calling in sick to work, then staying at my parents’ house in Hull for a few days. I got as far as taking the thing out of my closet, but staying at home would’ve been too much of a headache.”

  “Sounds like it would’ve been a good plan.”

  “I know, but I didn’t do it. It probably sounds silly, but I didn’t want that fucker to think he could change how I lived my life with a phone call.”

  “That’s not silly.”

  “Cheers, then.” She drinks and says, “So let’s hear it, how did you become a PI? Me and my stories, right? What’s the Mark Genevich story?”

  I’m learning to hate the word story, especially when applied to someone’s life, especially my own. There isn’t enough gravity, not enough weight to the word. It’s disrespectful, borderline demeaning. Stories are simple, silly, for bedtime. Stories aren’t reality. Stories have good guys and bad guys, morals, inspiring plots. Stories are what you tell kids because they don’t know any better. Stories are what you tell kids because you don’t want them to know any better. Stories hide the truth. Stories…

  “Yo, Mark, you still there?”

  Ekat is standing, bent over, and snaps her fingers in my face. She tries hard not to laugh. I don’t know if I should be mad at her or thank her.

  I say, “I’m fine. Just a quick recharge of the batteries.”

  “Good. Let’s hear it, then.” She sits back down on the futon and holds her beer up in a silent toast, presumably to me.

  Here’s mud in her eye. Mud being my story, the highlights and lowlights. I find it less inspiring in the retelling and rehashing. I tell her that my father died when I was five, and Ellen and I stayed on the Cape. I tell her that I was beautiful and everyone loved me. I tell her that, somewhat like her, I left school. After three semesters at Curry College, my best friend, George, and I left to start our little businesses. I tell her about the van accident. George was driving us back from the Foxwoods casino. I don’t know how it happened exactly, but the van found a drainage ditch and rolled all around in it. George died, and I was left broken on the outside and the inside. I tell her about the arrival of my narcoleptic symptoms shortly thereafter, the stork dropping the cute, fuzzy bundle into my unsuspecting lap. It all happened millions of years ago, the Jurassic age of me, but the expanse of time doesn’t make talking about it any easier.

  She says, “That’s terrible.” What happened to me is terrible, or my story is terrible. There’s no difference, really.

  “I’m sorry about your friend.”

  I could tell her more about George. I could tell her the worst part is that he has ceased being a person and become an unattainable ideal of “friend,” as if our relationship had never had an uncomfortable moment and we were always good to each other.

  I say, “So am I.”

  “So you didn’t start experiencing your narcoleptic symptoms until after the van accident? Huh. I didn’t think it would work like that.”

  And just like that, she questions who I am. But I know who I am. I do. I’m Mark Genevich, the one who lived, he who emerged from the van wreckage as the monster, the misfit, he who sleeps alone, and my clock always strikes twelve. But is that right? Thinking back to preaccident and postaccident is suddenly difficult, almost impossible to remember. My Jurassic age has giant gaps in the fossil record. Am I remembering what actually happened or remembering some previous retelling or reshaping of what actually happened? My life as a game of telephone where the original message was lost and screwed up eons ago.

  I think I’ve had too many beers. I say, “It does work like that. Trust me. I’m an expert.” My words come out loud and dangerous.

  “Whoa, big fella, I didn’t mean anything by it.” She stretches a leg out, kicks the base of my chair, and laughs.

  I don’t laugh. I pout. It’s my narcolepsy, and I can cry if I want to.

  “I’m sorry. That was rude of me. Hey, I don’t know anything about narcolepsy; I was just asking. I believe you, Mark.”

  She believes me. Do I? Doesn’t matter, ultimately. I’m done with the past. There’s nothing left there for me. My here an
d now is already confusing and surreal enough. Who I am now is who I’m stuck with.

  I say something like “No worries,” then add a flurry of words, some joke about her running the group therapy circle, but it makes no sense, so I mumble and trail off, fade out. I cover it up with a yawn and stretch as big as the room.

  She asks, “Am I boring you?”

  “That’s an awful line.” I check my watch. Quarter of eleven. Gus hasn’t called back.

  “Shut up. It wasn’t a line.” Ekat chucks a throw pillow and connects, mashing into my face and hat, and everything goes dark. I take the pillow off my face, fix my hat, and when I look up Ekat stands in front of me and the papasan chair. Her arms are out in front of her chest, and it looks like she’s shaking hands with herself, but she’s not. She fidgets with the rubber bands on her wrists. She smiles an odd smile, one I haven’t seen in a long time, so long as to be unrecognizable. Some PI I am.

  I ask, “What’s with the rubber bands?”

  “Oh, you finally noticed. It’s my thing.” She sounds a little tipsy; the s in it’s blends into the rest of the sentence. Ekat takes the rubber bands off her wrist, one at a time, and snaps them audibly. “I’ve been collecting them since I was a kid.” She grabs my right hand and holds it up. Her fingers are cold and strong. She molds and kneads my flatbread skin and slowly rolls a rubber band over my fingers and onto my wrist.

  “What am I, a lobster? Ow!” I flinch as the tight band yanks out some hairs, but I don’t take my hand away.

  She laughs at my pain. Someone else’s pain is always funny. “The fun part about my rubber band collection is that I leave them in odd places, places where people wouldn’t find them.” She does the same to my left hand and wrist. Her fingers are still cold, but I’m warming up. This second rubber band she puts on me is thick and green. I don’t match and am off balance. “Or if someone does find them, they’ll wonder how the hell the rubber bands got there.” She alternates putting each of her rubber bands on my wrists. “I’ve put one inside a concert piano, on the back leg of my old neighbor’s annoying dog, buried one in some random apartment’s flower box on K Street.”

  I say, “And now my wrists.”