The Best of Sisters in Crime (46 page)

Because he had
no one but his Mommy and his Mommy had no one but him. Which is so lonely.

Because I had
gained seven pounds from last Sunday to this, the waist of my slacks is so
tight. Because I hate the fat of my body.

Because looking
at me naked now you would show disgust.

Because I
was
beautiful for you, why wasn’t that enough?

Because that day
the sky was dense with clouds the color of raw liver but yet there was no rain.
Heat lightning flashing with no sound making me so nervous but no rain.

Because his left
eye was weak, it would always be so unless he had an operation to strengthen
the muscle.

Because I did
not want to cause him pain and terror in his sleep.

Because you
would pay for it, the check from the lawyer with no note.

Because you
hated him, your son.

Because he was
our
son, you hated him.

Because you moved
away. To the far side of the country I have reason to believe.

Because in my
arms after crying he would lie so still, only one heart beating between us.

Because I knew I
could not spare him from hurt.

Because the
playground hurt our ears, raised red dust to get into our eyes and mouths.

Because I was so
tired of scrubbing him clean, between his toes and beneath his nails, the
insides of his ears, his neck, the many secret places of filth.

Because I felt
the ache of cramps again in my belly, I was in a panic my period had begun so
soon.

Because I could
not spare him the older children laughing.

Because after
the first terrible pain he would be beyond pain.

Because in this
there is mercy.

Because God’s
mercy is for him, and not for me.

Because there
was no one here to stop me.

Because my
neighbors’ TV was on so loud, I knew they could not hear even if he screamed
through the washcloth.

Because you
were not here to stop me, were you.

Because finally
there is no one to stop us.

Because finally
there is no one to save us.

Because my own
mother betrayed me.

Because the rent
would be due again on Tuesday which is the first of September. And by then I
will be gone.

Because his body
was not heavy to carry and to wrap in the down comforter, you remember that
comforter, I know.

Because the
washcloth soaked in his saliva will dry on the line and show no sign.

Because to heal
there must be forgetfulness and oblivion.

Because he cried
when he should not have cried but did not cry when he should.

Because the
water came slowly to boil in the big pan, vibrating and humming on the front
burner.

Because the
kitchen was damp with steam from the windows shut so tight, the temperature
must have been 100°F.

Because he did
not struggle. And when he did, it was too late.

Because I wore
rubber gloves to spare myself being scalded.

Because I knew I
must not panic, and did not.

Because I loved
him. Because love hurts so bad.

Because I wanted
to tell you these things. Just like this.

Back to table of
contents

In “One Hit Wonder,” a
has-been recording star tries for a comeback and rebounds into a situation he
never bargained for. Gabrielle Kraft, whose Jerry Zalman is featured in several
novels, including Edgar nominee
Bullshot, Screwdriver,
Let’s Rob Roy,
and
Bloody Mary,
has been an executive story editor
and story analyst at major film studios. From the safety of the northwest, she
has written about the wages of pride and the struggle for power in LaLa Land.
She describes her short stories
as “. . .
the dark side of the
Zalman series; if Zalman’s is a lollipop view of L.A., the stories are sour
pickles.”

You probably don’t
remember me, but ten years
ago I was very big.
Matter of fact, in the record business I was what we call a one hit wonder. You
know, the kind of guy you see on talk shows doing a medley of his hit? That was
me, Ricky Curtis.

Remember “Ooo
Baby Oooo”? Remember? “Ooo baby oooo, it’s you that I do, it’s you I truly do?”
That was me, Ricky Curtis, crooning the insistent vocal you couldn’t get out of
your head, me with the moronic whine you loved to hate. Big? Hell, I was huge. “Ooo
Baby Oooo” was a monster hit, triple platinum with a million bullets. That was
Ricky Curtis, remember me now?

My God, it was
great. You can’t imagine how it feels, being on top. And it was so easy! I
wrote “Ooo Baby Oooo” in minutes, while I was waiting for my teenage bride to
put on her makeup, and the next day I played it for my boss at the recording
studio where I had a job sweeping up. He loved it. We recorded it with some
girl backup singers the next week, and it was alakazam Ricky.

For one long,
brilliantly dappled summer, America knew my name and sang the words to my tune.
People hummed me and sang me and whistled me, and my voice drifted out of car
radios through the airwaves and into the minds of the world. For three
sun-drenched months, I was a king and in my twenty-two-year-old wisdom I
thought I would live forever.

Then,
unaccountably, it was over. Because I didn’t have a follow-up record, I was a
one hit wonder and my just-add-water career evaporated like steam from a cup of
coffee. I was ripped apart by confusion and I didn’t know what to do next.
Should I try to write more songs like “Ooo Baby Oooo”? I couldn’t. Not because
I didn’t want to, but because I didn’t know how. You see, I’d had visions of
myself as a troubadour, a road-show Bob Dylan, a man with a message. A guy with
heart. I hadn’t envisioned myself as a man with a teenage tune wafting out
across the shopping malls of the land, and “Ooo Baby Oooo” was merely a fluke,
a twisting mirage in the desert. I was battered by doubt, and so, I did
nothing. I froze, paralyzed in the klieg lights of L.A. like a drunk in a cop’s
high beams.

The upshot of my
paralysis was that I lost my slot. My ten-second window of opportunity passed,
and like a million other one hit wonders, I fell off the edge of the earth. I
was yesterday’s news. I couldn’t get arrested, couldn’t get a job. Not even
with the golden oldies shows that go out on the tired road every summer,
cleaning up the rock-and-roll dregs in the small towns, playing the little
county fairs, not the big ones with Willie and Waylon, but the little ones with
the racing pigs. I was an instant dinosaur, a joke, a thing of the past.

It hit me hard,
being a has-been who never really was, and I couldn’t understand what I’d done
wrong. I’d signed over my publishing rights to my manager and dribbled away my
money. In my confusion I started to drink too much—luckily I was too broke to afford
cocaine. I drifted around L.A., hanging out in the clubs nursing a drink,
telling my then-agent that I was “getting my head together,” telling my
then-wife that prosperity would burst over us like fireworks on the glorious
Fourth and I’d have another big hit record any day now. Telling myself that I
was a deadbeat washout at twenty-two.

Fade out, fade
in. Times change and ten years pass, and Ricky Curtis, the one hit wonder, is
now a bartender at Eddie Style’s Club Dingo above the Sunset Strip, shoving
drinks across a huge marble bar stained a dark faux-malachite-green, smiling
and giving a
c’est la vie
shrug if a
well-heeled customer realizes that he’s a guy who had a hit record once upon a
sad old time.

But inside, I
seethed. I smoldered. I didn’t know what to do and so I did nothing. You don’t
know how it feels, to be so close to winning, to have your hand on the lottery
ticket as it dissolves into dust, to feel the wheel of the red Ferrari one
second before it slams into the wall. To smell success, taste the elixir of
fame on your tongue, and then stand foolishly as your future rushes down the
gutter in a swirl of brown, greasy water because of your inability to make a
decision.

So I worked for
Eddie Style. I had no choice. I groveled for tips and tugged my spiky forelock
like the rest of the serfs; I smiled and nodded, but in the abyss I called my
heart there was only anger. My rage at the crappy hand I’d been dealt grew like
a horrible cancer eating me alive, and at night I dreamed of the Spartan boy
and the fox.

I’d wake up
every morning and think about money. Who had it, how to get it, why I didn’t
have it. In this town, the deals, the plans, the schemes to make money mutate
with each new dawn. But I said nothing. I had nothing to say. I smiled, slid
drinks across the bar and watched the wealthy enjoying themselves, waiting for
crumbs to fall off the table. In a joint like the Dingo where the rich kids
come out to play at night and the record business execs plant their cloven
hooves in the trough at will, a few crumbs always fall your way.

Like when Eddie
Style offered me a hundred thou to kill his wife.

Edward Woffard
Stanhope III, known as Eddie Style to his friends and foes alike, owned the
Club Dingo, and he was also a very rich guy. Not from the Dingo, or movie
money, not record business money, not drug money, not at all. Eddie Style had
something you rarely see if you float around the tattered edges of L.A.
nightlife the way I do. Eddie Style had inherited money.

Edward Stanhope
III, aka Eddie Style, came from a long line of thieves, but since they were big
thieves, nobody called them thieves; they called them Founding Fathers, or
Society, or the Best People. Eddie’s granddad, Edward Woffard Stanhope Numero
Uno, known as “Steady,” was one of the guys who helped loot the Owens Valley of
its water, real
Chinatown
stuff. You know Stanhope Boulevard over in West Hollywood? Well,
Eddie Style called it Me Street, that’s the kind of money we’re talking about
here.

Trouble was,
Eddie Style had bad taste in wives. He was a skinny little guy, and he wasn’t
very bright in spite of the fact that the accumulated wealth of the Stanhope
family weighed heavy on his narrow shoulders. Plus, he liked tall women. They
were always blond, willowy, fiscally insatiable and smarter than he was.
Chrissie and Lynda, the first two, had siphoned off a hefty chunk of the
Stanhope change, and Suzanne, the third blond beauty, had teeth like an
alligator. At least, according to Eddie. I didn’t know. They’d only been
married two years and she didn’t come around the Dingo. It was going to take
another big slice of the pie to divest himself of Suzanne, and Eddie was
getting cagey in his old age. After all, he wouldn’t come into any more dough
until his mother croaked, and she was only fifty-seven. He had a few siblings
and half siblings and such scattered around, so a major outlay of capital on a
greedy ex-wife didn’t seem prudent.

So, one night
after closing, he and I are mopping up the bar—I’m mopping up the bar, he’s
chasing down mimosas— and he starts complaining about his marital situation,
just like he’s done a thousand nights before.

“Suzanne’s a
nice girl,” he sighed, “but she’s expensive.” His voice echoed through the
empty room, bouncing off the upended chairs on the cafe tables, the ghostly
stage and the rock-and-roll memorabilia encased in Plexiglas.

“You don’t say?”
In my present line of work, I’ve learned that noncommittal responses are the
best choice, and I switch back and forth between “You don’t say” and “No
kidding” and “Takes all kinds.” Oils the waters of drunken conversation.

“I
do
say. Ricky boy, I’ve been married three
times,” he said ruefully, “so I ought to know better by now. You see a girl,
you think she’s . . .” He narrowed his eyes, looked down the bar to the empty
stage at the end of the room and gave an embarrassed shrug. “I dunno . . . the
answer to a question you can’t quite form in your mind. A hope you can’t name.”

“Takes all
kinds.” I nodded and kept on mopping the bar. Like I said, the Dingo was empty,
Eddie Style was in a philosophical mood, and I had a rule about keeping my trap
shut.

But he wouldn’t
quit. “You get married and you realize she’s just another broad who cares more
about getting her legs waxed than she does about you. I can’t afford a divorce,”
he said, pinging the edge of his glass with his forefinger. It was middle C. “I
don’t have enough money to pay her off.”

I felt my brain
start to boil. He didn’t have enough money! What a laugh! Isn’t that the way
the song always goes in this town? I love you baby, but not enough. I have
money but not enough. To me, Eddie Style was loaded. He owned the Club Dingo,
he drove a classic Mercedes with a license plate that read STYLEY, he lived in
a house in the Hills, he wore Armani suits for business and Hawaiian shirts
when he was in a casual mood. Oh yeah, Eddie Style had it all and Ricky Curtis
had nothing.