On the Edge of Dangerous Things (Dangerous Things Trilogy Book 1) (19 page)

Thirty-Four

Turkey buzzards floated in the air above the Intracoastal like cinders bursting from the inferno of the setting sun. Al and Hester sat in beach chairs at the water’s edge. They sipped their drinks while watching the birds circle and dive for dead rodents between the condos on the opposite shore.

They were discussing what kind of new refrigerator they should buy for their trailer—their old one just conked out. Hester had seen a retro one by Smeg in
Coastal Living
. It was expensive, but she loved it. Al wanted to buy the cheapest one they could find, since the place might be sold, which Hester reminded him was not a fact yet. But Al hammered his point home, “It’s not up to me if this place sells or not. Everyone gets a vote, and right about now, I’m pretty sure which way it’s going to go, so I am sure as hell not going to sink a lot of money into 23 Fish Tail Lane, Hester. Get your head out of the sand. Stop living in denial. All these people want is money.” He took a sip of his Corona.

Hester watched the lime slide down inside the neck of the bottle, wondering if her husband was shifting his allegiance to the pro-sale faction. The thought made her blood turn cold. Maybe if she could convince him to buy the pricey fridge, he’d be more committed to not selling. How much beer would Al have to drink before she had a snowball’s chance in hell of getting her way?

Simon Cartright came along with his chair, and his gin and tonic in a plastic coffee to-go mug. He didn’t wait for an invitation to join them, shook his folding chair open, and started talking about his friend Larry, who had a checkup that morning, his doctor wanted him to try some new drugs to shrink his prostate.

When neither Hester nor Al spoke, Simon shut up, and the three of them stared silently at the parasitic birds.

Eventually Al said, “So, Simon, you’ve been at Pleasant Palms longer than anyone else, since the late sixties I’ve been told, so are you going to vote to sell or what?”

Not this again!
Hester was sick of all the talk. As bad as things had been these past months for Hester, they could be worse. She thought of Rosaria. Would she have to borrow the woman’s yellow buckets? Would she have to buy a chainsaw to saw Nina up into manageable pieces? The police hadn’t arrested Rosario. Perhaps they never would, all the evidence having been devoured by the local barracudas. Officer Alvarez interviewed Hester again after her phone call. She told him what she saw on the dock, though she hadn’t seen anything clearly, the sun not even completely up yet.

“Well…” Simon hesitated. “Well, Larry and I have been here more than thirty-six years. Larry in his place, me in mine.” The man’s glassy eyes shifted quickly left, right, left like he was in a foxhole and bombs were bursting all around him. Dee had told Hester the men were partners, but there was a stupid, at least to Hester’s way of thinking, park rule: only married couples could cohabitate. But Simon and Larry worked around the rule. They both owned their own units and alternated nights between Simon’s place on Screw Pine Way and Larry’s on African Oil Lane. Overnight guests were allowed.

“Well…” He started again. “I will vote yes. I love Pleasant Palms, but a million dollars in my pocket means I won’t have live the way other people think I should. And that will make the few years I have left, a whole lot happier.”

“And what about Larry?”

“Oh, we are on the same page, as always.”

“But what if we don’t get a million dollars each for our units?”

“But that’s the deal on the table, and I trust Sea to Sea Development. They are a Fortune 500 company, solid. Larry checked them out on the Internet. You can trust them. We’ll get that million each.” Simon stared at Al as he took a sip of his drink. “What about the two of you? How are you voting?”

“I didn’t want to sell at first, but now that I’m talking to people I’m starting to feel a little better about the deal. Yeah, a million dollars would be nice to have, wouldn’t it?” Al looked at Hester with a gleam in his eyes, and her heart sank. God, she hoped it was just the beer talking.

Thirty-Five

One evening, Al was still at school, and snow was falling more heavily than it had all that winter. When the doorbell rang, it startled Hester. She dropped the knife she was using to cut up the chicken for dinner and hurried from the kitchen into the hallway. Through the lace curtain on the door window she saw Nina standing on the porch without a hat. Her hair hung in wet clumps on her shoulders, and her nose was running. She wiped it on her glove, inspected the mucous, and began rubbing it into her jeans as Hester let her in.

“Nina, you must be so cold. I told you not to bother to come over, not on a day like this.”

Nina said nothing. She followed Hester into the living room, took off her gloves and coat, and plopped them on the coffee table. Hester picked the things up. “I better hang these in the cellar way, they’re soaked.” When Hester came back, Nina was in the hallway looking up the stairs.

“Mr. Murphy’s still at school, Nina, if that’s who you’re looking for.”

“Oh no, Mrs. Murphy, I was just noticing how nice your house is, really nice. It must be nice to live here. I’ve always lived in apartments, small apartments. Even my aunt’s house is small compared to your house.”

“Nina, you’re acting like you’ve never been here before.”

“No, it’s just that every time I am here, I see something I didn’t notice before. Like I never noticed that picture over there before.” Nina turned and pointed at a painting over the sofa.

“Don’t you just love it?” said Hester. “Charles Ames did that painting. He’s got a good reputation. Al, I mean, Mr. Murphy and I found it at the Golden Nugget Flea Market and had to have it. It’s the Prallsville Mill, up the river in Stockton. Don’t you think it looks wonderful over the sofa?”

“Yeah, it looks nice.” Nina walked over to the painting and leaned over the sofa to get a closer look. With her back to Hester, she said, “When will Mr. Murphy be home?”

“I have no idea.”

“Do you have to go out anywhere?”

“Who, me? Not in this blizzard!”

“Oh, it’s not so bad out.”

“It’s bad enough. But we’ll worry about the weather later. You, young lady, need to get your paper done. I’ll put the chicken in the fridge and be right back.”

“Maybe when I’m finished writing, I can help you make dinner? Or something?” Nina shouted after Hester.

Hester hesitated. If Nina helped her with dinner, she’d want to stay. Maybe that wasn’t a good idea. What would other students think if Nina told them she’d stayed for dinner with the Murphy’s? What would their parents think? Helping Nina catch up academically one or two afternoons a week was one thing, but spending the entire evening with Al and her—well, that seemed like too much of a good thing.

When Hester first thought about tutoring Nina at their house, she ran the idea by Al. She wanted to make sure she wasn’t putting either of their careers in jeopardy.

“Just invite her over, Hester, and don’t worry about it,” Al said.

“But am I crossing a line with her?” Hester persisted.

“No.”

“I just want to be sure I’m not making a mistake,” Hester said, then added, “we’re not making a mistake.”

“Trust me. Don’t be so paranoid, Hester.” Al was cleaning dirt from under his fingernails with a toothpick. “I’m the VP. Nobody’s got the nerve to say anything about my wife, do they? Besides, Nina’s a girl, you’re a middle-aged woman. It’s not like you’re going to seduce her or anything.”

“Al!”

“You want to seduce her, don’t you, Hester?”

“Stop that!”

“Can’t you tell I’m joking?”

“Al, you are not funny.”

“What the hell happened to your sense of humor, Hester?”

“I have a great sense of humor. It’s just that what you are saying is not funny.”

“Oh yes, it is, and you know it.” His voice was gruff. 

And, as if on cue, Hester did start to laugh a little.

“Look, see I am making you laugh.” And Al laughed, too.

“Al, be serious for a minute. What I’m trying to say is that Nina was in my sophomore class last year, and she’ll probably be in my senior class next year. I don’t want anyone to think Nina will have an unfair advantage if she’s at our house all the time and I’m helping her. Some parents will definitely think I’m playing favorites if they find out.”

“Don’t worry. You’ve gone out of your way to help Nina catch up. Hell, you’ve gone out of your way to care about a student no one else seems to care about. That’s all we have to say, Mrs. Murphy.”

“Got it, Mr. Murphy.” Hester smiled gratefully at Al and turned to leave the room. It was time she got started on their dinner.

“One more thing, Mrs. Murphy.”

Hester stopped and turned back. “And what might that be, Mr. Murphy?”

“Before I eat dinner, I want dessert.”

“You want the cake before the raviolis?”

“No, I want you before the raviolis. Fuck the cake.” Al was out of his seat, and Hester was in his arms laughing like a school girl. See, she did have a great sense of humor.

At first, Nina came to the house twice a week, but as her junior reading selections grew more difficult, she seemed be around almost every night. Once in a great while, Hester went out with some people in her department and Nina still came over and Al worked with her. Before the end of the first semester, Nina was at the top of her class. If Hester had been her natural-born mother, she couldn’t have been more proud.

Now it was second semester, the dead of winter. Nina stood by the sink in the kitchen rinsing the potatoes. “Please, Mrs. M, can I stay?”

Hester put the chicken in the oven, smiled at Nina, and gave in. “Sure, honey, you can stay for dinner, as long as it’s okay with your aunt. You better call her now, in case she’s expecting you.”

“I don’t have to call her.”

“Yes, you have to call her, or you can’t stay.”

“But, Mrs. Murphy, please, she’s probably not even home.”

Hester handed Nina her cell phone. “Call her now, Miss Nina.”

Nina took the phone and tapped in some numbers while she stared into Hester’s eyes with a hangdog expression on her face as if to say, okay, you satisfied. “Hello, Aunt Caroline, it’s me, Nina…” She kept talking as she turned away from Hester. “Okay, okay, okay…”

Hester looked over and saw Nina’s thumb on the End Call button. Hester said nothing as the silly child pretended to be chatting while she followed Hester into the dining room.

What a little actress,
thought Hester.

Thirty-Six

The Pleasant Palms auditorium was filled beyond capacity, standing room only, and Alma Alvin was in all her glory. Eve, Marvin, and Hester couldn’t get away from her. She was telling them about her young podiatrist who said for seventy-five, she had amazingly young-looking feet. He checked them from all angles, even put them up by his face and seemed to sniff them. Too bad about the one bunion that had become infected, because now he had to remove her little toe, which would ruin the symmetry of her nearly perfect feet.

“If I’d been born in China, he said, the Emperor’s eunuchs would have chosen me to have my feet bound.” Alma spoke without taking a breath. “My mother would’ve been instructed to start binding them when I turned seven and to continue tightening the binding until all of the small bones of my feet were crushed, and they curled up like lotus blossoms. And if my feet turned out right the Emperor would marry me. I wanted to ask Dr. Ying why men wanted women to have such tiny feet, but I didn’t. Then Dr. Ying said that even though my feet are too big, they do remind him of lotus blossoms. I was so…”

Hester glanced down and saw Alma’s gnarled toes as she made her way through the crowd to find Al. She’d be able to pick him out because lately he started wearing clothes in wild colors, things like flamingo pink polo shirts and royal blue shorts. And lately, she started wearing just the opposite, dark somber-looking tops, black pants, a black hat. As flamboyant as Al’s fashion sense was getting he still didn’t look as ridiculous as Ralph Trotman, the president of the board of directors, who sported a green madras jacket, a yellow shirt, and robin’s egg blue slacks. His comb-over in place, he approached the podium and started the meeting.

“It’s Tuesday, February twenty-eighth, 2004, the day of reckoning for Pleasant Palms Trailer Park. For close to eighty years, our small community has worked to create our own little heaven on earth, but it  may be time for us to move on to an even better way of life. Secretary Hal Mason and Manager Reed Rush are the only ones who know the results of yesterday’s vote. I see they are smiling, so let’s turn the meeting over to Hal Mason and end the suspense.”

Applause echoed through the auditorium, and from where Hester stood, she watched Clayton’s grin widen. Al shifted his weight from his leg with the bum ankle to the other one and mumbled to himself, “Idiots. I’ll bet they fucking sold the place.” And Hester realized that it had been the beer talking the other night with Simon. She felt relieved to know Al voted against the sale, because yesterday she didn’t believe him when he said he did.

Hal with his hanging sack of neck flesh looked in profile like a pelican with a fish in his gullet. He was wearing a flashy Hawaiian shirt.

“Well, here it is…” He waved a large white envelope in the air. “The official results!”

He fumbled trying to open it, and it drifted to the ground like a gliding egret. The manager snatched it up and handed it back to Hal.

“Thank you, we sure don’t want anything to happen to this.” He pried open the back.

“What the hell is taking the old geezer so long?” Al spoke loud enough for more than a few people to hear.

“Give the guy a fucking break, Murphy.” Steve Bearing from over on Screw Pine shot Al a dirty look.

Hal finally got the paper out, shook it open, and spoke into the mike, “There are three hundred shares in Pleasant Palms Trailer Park. Each of the three hundred units has one vote. In order for the sale to take place, eighty percent of the shareholders would have to vote to sell. Two hundred and forty is the magic number, folks.” He paused. His eyes skimmed the crowd. “The official tally is two hundred and forty-two for the sale and fifty-eight against! We did it! Congratulations, fellow millionaires!”

Al muttered something Hester didn’t hear. The crowd was cheering. Hester moved closer to Al, panic rising in her chest. She gulped for air. It felt like someone was stepping on her windpipe. Al yelled, “What are they thinking? I am so disgusted with this whole place. These people are stupid, stupid fucking idiots.”

What the hell am I going to do now?
Hester’s mind was in a tailspin.
These people are going to dig this whole place up, and I can’t stop them.

Al was still hollering, “Wait until they see what happens! Wait until they don’t get half what they think they will!”

Hester was afraid he was going hit somebody, “Calm down, would you, Al? Try to think positively. Look, I’m not happy either, but at least we’ll have a million dollars.”

“Hester, you are dumber than all these people put together. Didn’t you listen to what I said, we’ll be lucky if we get half that!” Al pushed his way through the jubilant crowd. His head was down, his hands shoved in his pockets, his limp more pronounced than ever before.

She watched him retreat and his words echoed in her head, “…you are dumber than all these people put together.” Al wounded her before and even rubbed salt in those wounds, but he never before called her dumb. And she was only trying to calm him down so he wouldn’t go off and hit someone. She didn’t give a damn about a million dollars, no amount of money was worth what she was going to have to do. And she didn’t have a plan yet.

Al put the last straw on the camel’s back. Hester couldn’t take anymore. She stood stock still in the midst of the celebratory bedlam and lost it. She imagined herself in the ladies room on the hundred and tenth floor of Tower One. She was washing her hands, admiring her reflection in the mirror. A good hair day, nice job on her make-up, maybe after work she’d go shopping for a…suddenly there’s a crash, a rumble, and the whole building is collapsing, she’s going down with it, it is taking her down, she’s better than already dead.

Yes, everyone around her was cheering, but she felt dead. Yes, she was “dumber than all these other people.” Hadn’t she proven it by trying to protect Al’s sorry ass.
Now there was a dumb thing to do if ever there was one.