Trying the Knot (11 page)

When Ben felt he could not endure cruising
Main any longer, he drove to the newspaper building and parked the
bike. There was no one at the front desk, and so he ventured to the
back room where monstrous piles of barbaric printing equipment
loomed as far as the eye could see. He had never been inside the
Porthole building before and had no idea where to find Thad.

“Looking for someone, Benny?” a female voice
asked.

Startled, he turned around to find Nick’s
beautiful sister, Nanette Paull. She was dressed in an all-black,
body clinging dress. She ran her fingers through her flowing, henna
dyed hair, and she feigned wanton surprise by placing a hand over
her augmented breasts. Her dagger-like fingernails were painted the
same blood red as her full, pouting lips.

Ben flashed a look of confusion. He did not
recall her having a silver nose ring, and her chest seemed larger.
Nanette lived life in designer limbo, scrambling after whatever
upscale thrift store items crossed her path.

“Is Nick here?”

She shook her head and flashed him one of her
perfectly deviant smiles that made him forget his own name. “No,
but if you happen to run into him, tell him his big sister is in
town for the nuptial festivities.” She leaned back against the
counter and inspected her long nails as if waiting for someone in
particular. “Thad’s upstairs. He’s a little drunk.”

Benjamin nodded and backed away.

“The stairs are to the left,” she called
after him.

Ben found Thad poring over clippings laid out
onto an illuminated glass newspaper page. With a cigarette dangling
from his lips, he cut and pasted the newspaper columns while
muttering to himself. When he became aware of Ben’s presence, Thad
motioned him to sit down and pour himself a drink.

“Vodka, man, isn’t that a job hazard?” Ben
asked. “What’s up with Nanette’s funeral garb?”

“It’s a new Goth look to match her trendy new
name.”

“Morticia?”

“Tristana,” Thad corrected, lighting a
cigarette. Ben’s arrival was as good of an excuse as any to take a
break from working.

“What’s she doing here?”

“She’s waiting for the illustrious editor and
chief – Seth Poole – while he explains to the wife and kiddies why
he has to work late again. You know newspapers, it is one
late-night deadline after another,” Thad ranted.

“No way.”

“Way. Eventually, they’ll end up back here
snorting white powdery stuff and engaging in sordid sex acts until
dawn.”

Ben laughed, “What a twisted imagination you
have.”

“Who said anything about make believe?” Thad
asked, and he took a sip from his vodka pint. “Don’t look so
shocked.”

Thad knew the intimate details of everyone’s
life, and Ben hoped Thad was oblivious to his own secrets. “You
know too much.”

“Yeah, well, maybe that’s what happens when
you don’t have a life.”

“Portnorth’s very own Kitty Kelly,” Ben said,
referring to slash and burn celebrity biographer. “Plan on writing
a small town tell-all anytime soon?”

“Nope, but I can probably tell you a thing or
two about yourself.”

“Real comforting. What’s up with the
lunchtime cocktail?”

“I dragged Chelsea up here and poured a drink
down her throat, to calm her down after she exploded all over
breakfast. Actually, you just missed her,” Thad said, and Ben
sighed with relief. Thad continued working on the newspaper layout
as he nodded facetiously to the beat of some pre-Mellencamp, John
Cougar song.

“What’s her deal? I couldn’t believe how bad
she lost it,” Ben said as he fished a foreign object from a shot
glass.

“I guess the tighter you’re wound, the more
likely you are to go berserk.”

“Yikes, don’t go postal on us,” boomed a loud
voice. “Coastal postal, get it?”

A man who could only be described as an oaf
clomped down the steps as he descended from the third floor attic.
He wore a short-sleeved pink dress shirt with gray slacks, and a
cheap tie was flung over his hulking shoulder. Everything he said
was a proclamation. Typically, he flaunted his less than in-depth
knowledge of every conceivable topic.

Running his fingers over his graying blond
beard, Seth Poole cleared his throat and instructed, “Go ahead and
grab lunch, Thad.”

Ben picked up a pair of scissors and twirled
them around his index finger. He put the shears to his shirt and
snipped away at the remaining Polo horse he had begun mutilating at
breakfast.

Poole grunted at Ben and said, “Easy there,
tiger, we don’t want anyone committing Harry Carry around here.” He
lumbered away hiking up his pants and called over his shoulder,
“Lock up shop when you go to lunch.”

Near speechless, Ben managed, “Gross, Nick’s
sister is sleeping with him?”

“And you heard it here first,” Thad said. He
pasted a newspaper column in place and puffed away on a cigarette.
“You know, Chelsea didn’t mean the things she said earlier. Don’t
be so hard on her right now.”

“I’m sorry, but she’s a mega bitch.”

“She can’t understand why Vange did what she
did.”

Flushed with animosity, Ben asked, “What
makes her so special? We’re all having a hard time dealing with
this.”

“She’s struggling with personal
problems.”

Ben snorted as if he did not believe perfect
Chelsea could allow herself such a human pastime as personal
problems. “More like inner demons.”

“I think she wants to quit law school and run
away.”

“Oh, how practical,” Ben said sarcastically.
“Who does she think she is, Thelma or Louise?”

“It’s a phase I guess.” Thad threw up his
hands as if to say he was ready for lunch. “She’s suffering from a
prolonged adolescence.”

“Whoa, I wish I had the luxury of dropping
out of law school.”

“You dropped out of a community college or
wasn’t that luxurious enough?”

“Don’t even start. What will she do now?” Ben
asked.

“She’ll probably turn on, tune in, and drop
out and become obnoxiously hip.”

“It’s totally whacked, we’re all
quitters.”

“Speak for yourself.”

“All of us except for Nick and Kate, of
course, and just look at them – getting hitched and settling down.
He’ll become a doctor, and she’ll teach elementary school,” Ben
pondered aloud. “Sound like the all-American dream.”

“Sounds like a nightmare, if you ask me.”
Thad poured himself another shot and toasted, “To the
newlyweds.”

“Yeah, right.”

Thad could not help but think about Chelsea,
and how she had sat on his desk earlier and spouted her case why he
should tell Kate about Nick’s fling with Vange. Because he was
unsure what to do, he decided to approach the subject with Ben for
his input. “You know, Chelsea thinks I should say something to
Kate.”

“About?”

“Um, Nick and Vange.”

“Seriously? You’re not thinking about it, are
you?”

“Considering Kate is my cousin,” Thad
reminded him needlessly, “don’t you think I owe her at least that
much?”

“What good could come of it? It’s none of
Chelsea’s business. Just because her life is miserable, she wants
to ruin everyone else’s,” Ben said, not entirely convinced of his
own logic. “She’s always hated Nick.”

“So it seems, but it still doesn’t excuse me
from telling Kate. She has a right to know, I saw Nick with
Vange.”

“So what, they were making out.”

“It was way more than making out.”

“Trust me, Kate doesn’t want to know.”

Thad stubbed out his cigarette and shrugged,
“If I do tell her, it has to be before the wedding or not at
all.”

“Not ever.” Ben checked his watch and
commented Thad had less than twenty-four hours to make up his mind.
He lifted his feet up off the desk and drew his knees to his chest.
Spinning around on the swiveling chair, Ben asked, “Want to get
high?”

“Here?”

“Good a place as any.”

“Sure, but let’s go upstairs,” Thad
whispered.

“You mean, the love nest?” Ben asked, and he
puckered his lips and made a long smooching noise. When they paused
on the stairs, he pinched Thad’s butt.

“Try and control yourself,” Thad said dryly,
and he lifted the door leading to the third floor attic, the site
of the Portnorth Porthole editor’s lust-fueled affairs.

Ben settled in on a rickety old office chair
and started rolling a joint. Near the huge dirty window overlooking
downtown, Thad gazed silently out at Portnorth’s only traffic
light. The most congested time for traffic was weekdays at three
o’clock when the local schools set free their captives, or when the
churches released their Jesus devotees on Sunday mornings. There
was no actual rush hour because the town’s only industry, the
quarry, worked its employees in shifts around the clock.

At the gas station across the street, Ginny
Norris sat in her white Mustang convertible. Her wispy short blond
hair blew in the wind, and she looked carefree as ever. Her
sparkling blue eyes fixated in the direction of Ben’s motorcycle
and a dreamy expression befell her face. Even from the distance of
three stories, she radiated a delightful vitality that was
pleasantly intoxicating.

“Thad, man, if you’re going to stick around
this fall, you should join the bowling league,” Ben suggested.

“I don’t think so.”

“It doesn’t matter if you bowl like a girl,
everyone’s usually too drunk to notice,” Ben said, running his
finger along the edge of the paper to secure the joint.

A loud voice startled them from behind. “Hey!
What’re you cats doing up here?”

Both Ben and Thad bolted upright, but they
laughed with relief when they noticed it was merely Nick. Satisfied
he had sufficiently startled them, Nick jokingly taunted, “Ah-ha,
caught in the act. Wouldn’t this make a nice headline?”

“I can think of a few more scandalous ones,”
Thad said under his breath.

As Nick pulled up a chair, his easy-going
nature remained unaffected; he ignored Thad’s remark and its
obvious implications. In spite of everything that had transpired
since morning, Nick was in too good of a mood. It was as if he
believed hard enough, then his wedding would unfold as perfectly as
Kate imagined.

Nick asked jovially, “Enjoying the view of
the sprawling metropolis?”

“Sure thing, man,” Ben said. He attempted to
secure the joint Nick had all but wrecked by scaring the hell out
of them.

Thad withdrew from their casual banter, and
he returned his attention to the scene unfolding across the street.
He managed to catch a glimpse of Chelsea in the middle of her daily
run. Smiling proudly, Ginny Norris offered her daughter a friendly
wave, but Chelsea failed to notice. Thad wondered if she was
thinking about Evangelica too.

With a little wink, Ginny paid the gas
station attendant and drove off as if without a care in the world
because for the most part, it was generally the case.

The languid air was gentle and warm against
Chelsea’s skin as her feet pounded their way into its caresses.
Most of her chin-length blond hair was pulled away from her
distinctly angular face. Her thick bobbed hair was her crowning
glory, and she proudly advertised it had only ever been home permed
once in her lifetime, back when she was a misguided eighth grader
who sported an unfortunate butch mullet. Her face was a series of
angles. Everything about her suggested a square, from her
cheekbones to her disposition.

Back in high school, she had been a record
setting distance runner, the volleyball captain and all-around
overachiever. Her accomplishments had made her cover girl of the
local newspaper. For more than four years, barely an issue of the
Portnorth Porthole did not contain her name somewhere multiple
times. Her mother kept a scrapbook documenting her accomplishments.
But overnight, college had transformed her into a mere nobody among
a swarm of materialistic snobs raised on the New Yorker, L.A. Times
or Chicago Tribune. The shock proved too jolting, and she felt
washed up at twenty-three; she never anticipated she would rack up
her greatest achievements before the age of eighteen.

Although Chelsea spent her college years less
than half an hour away from the largest metropolitan city in the
Midwest, she squirreled her time away holed up in a studio
apartment maintaining a 3.9 GPA, too afraid to step outside. What a
waste, she thought now. But she never felt wasted when in her
adopted hometown. Like Nick, Chelsea readily enjoyed being a big
fish in a small pond, someone else’s pond she easily conquered and
made her own.

Her parents originally hailed from
Southwestern Michigan, which was overpopulated and dominated by
Dutch Reformed locals and wealthy upper crust conservatives, the
same type of people she grew to despise at the University. Her
father returned there after divorcing her mother. In Portnorth, on
the sunrise side of Michigan, she felt like a lucky alien
transplanted to the ideal place to carve out her own unique
niche.

Chelsea let her feet carry her along the
highway parallel to the shoreline leading away from Portnorth.
Today she felt like an extra strenuous workout, in order to prepare
her for the crowd of people she would face later at the church
rehearsal. She was beginning to find the whole wedding tiresome.
Any joy accompanying the festivities would be forced now that a
bridesmaid lay in a coma.

No matter what mental games Chelsea played to
distract herself, Evangelica’s face materialized like an
imperishable hologram. Even while running, Chelsea could not help
but wonder what it must have felt like to consume all those pills,
one after another, knowing all the while each swallow was a little
taste of death.

When her legs hit the sand, they were not
prepared for the shock, but she trudged onward barely breaking her
stride. She ran along the blue water stretching outward as far as
she could see. The water was like an infinite blanket beckoning her
to submerge herself in its cooling depths.