The People Next Door Read online

  Are you insane? Do you want to have a

  stroke? Get your ass home now.

  ‘Right,’ Mick said to his phone. When he looked up, the newspaper man was exiting his booth, two tables behind Sapphire. Mick had forgotten the guy was still here, and now all he caught was a head of slick blond hair above a plain black suit. Had he been listening in? Was he some kind of bill collector, maybe an agent from the IRS? It seemed uncanny the guy had sat in the Straw for almost three hours without Mick ever getting a good look at him. He caught one final glimpse of the shoulders pushing through the doors, and without knowing why, Mick was up out of his booth, giving chase. His forehead felt like molten iron as he burst through the front doors.

  But when he scanned the sidewalks, the patio seating area, and the parking lot beyond, there was no sign of the stranger. The dozen or so cars in the Straw’s corner of the lot were empty. The man had vanished into the night.

  Someone grabbed his arm and Mick jumped, cocking a fist.

  Sapphire reared back. ‘Easy, easy. Jesus, Mick.’ Mick deflated. ‘Sorry, I thought you were … you see that guy sitting behind us? Blond hair, the suit?’

  ‘No, I did not.’ Sapphire looked at his watch. My God, the man wanted to go home.

  Mick’s eyes darted around the lot. ‘It’s like he’s been waiting for me. I know him from somewhere. He wants something …’

  ‘Mick, listen to me.’ Sapphire wagged a finger. ‘You’ve got to stop this. This anger. You’re wrong for it, and you need time to get back on your feet. You’re a parent, a man in the community. This stuff happens. Even the best businessmen don’t always see it coming. You want to do your father proud? Go home. Talk to your family.’

  ‘About what? How do you do that?’

  ‘Focus on what comes next. You need an idea. I can help you form a new plan around something. But you need to start looking at this as a blank slate.’

  Only now did Mick grasp that tonight was the talk, the moment the surgeon comes out of the theater and informs you he has done everything in his power. The Straw was no longer on life support. It had been pronounced.

  The reality staggered him. ‘I could pull some money out of the house …’

  Sapphire tsked behind his long graying teeth. ‘You go to the bank with a personal guarantee, they attach you to the note, and everything the note’s attached to is now attached to the rest of your life. Your residence, all of your personal assets as well as Amy’s, would no longer be exempt. Keep your home out of it. At all costs, Mick. Pay your mortgage first, keep a roof overhead. Everything else is secondary.’

  ‘Goddamn it. This wouldn’t have happened to them. Dad might have missed the signs, but Mom would’ve sniffed it out. I killed it, Gene. I killed my parents’ restaurant.’

  ‘Sometimes a thing has to die before it can be reborn.’

  ‘What the fuck does that mean?’

  ‘We’re living in a different world. They had their battles, believe me.’

  ‘Yeah, but they won. My dick’s in the dirt here.’

  The accountant nodded. ‘Boulder is brutal on restaurants. There’s money here, but it’s fickle. Pete Pomfrey couldn’t make it in this town and he pulled two of the best seafood capers I’ve ever dined in. Restaurants don’t last, champ.’

  Champ. Sapphire knew Mick’s father had called him that.

  ‘What does, old man?’ Mick said. ‘Tell me. I really need to know.’

  ‘If I knew that, young man, I wouldn’t be an accountant.’ Eugene Sapphire clapped him on the shoulder and –

  Flashes of orange strobed behind Mick’s forehead and he was free falling, plunging into the water. The sun was blinding and the scent of mildewed astro-turf wafted over from the dock and the lake cupped around his eyes and he went down into the darkness. There, in the cooler depths, where the green-blue surface gave way to deep brown and then black, and the temperature dropped ten degrees, and the silent murmur of the lake tightened in his ears, he saw –

  Hands. An old man’s hands. Liver spotted, arthritically gnarled, with thick green veins. A black trench coat, the hands unbuttoning this garment from the throat down. The coat draped over a chair, the water pattering to the wood floor. In a room both familiar and secretive, a large wooden desk with a green leather top and all the implements and tools that bespoke the workspace of an important man, a trusted man, a banker or lawyer or councilor of some kind.

  The old man sat in a large leather chair with cracking seams and brass wheels, rolling himself tight against the desk. He opened a ledger and made a few notations in fine black ink, numbers with a series of initials, then withdrew a check from his breast pocket, inserted this into the ledger, and wheeled himself backward with expert control and bent to open a low cabinet door.

  Inside the cabinet, a safe.

  A black numbered dial, the small door gunmetal gray. The old fingers with yellowing, almost feminine nails, ran the dial back and forth too fast for him to read the combination. The safe door opened and there were shelves, and he heard the old man grunt with the effort of bending to insert his ledger. Inside, on the bottom shelf, were stacks of tightly banded new bills, hundreds, tens of thousands in Benjamin Franklin paper all bricked up, two of the stacks plastic-wrapped. On the top shelf sat a piggish gun, short and black, as well as three inches of Wells Fargo statements bundled with a thick blue rubber band.

  The safe door closed, the dial spun, the cabinet door closed, and then he was looking over the old man’s shoulder as he turned at his desk and looked up, to the door. The office door opened and a woman in a blue flannel bathrobe entered with a tray set for tea: a steaming silver pot, two small china cups on their saucers, a short jar of honey with a wooden swizzle with a beehive tip. The woman’s gray hair was thick, middle-parted, falling to her shoulders. Sad, Jane Goodall eyes that were still lovely. Her lips were moving but the sound was muffled, as if they too were underwater. Each rose from their chairs and walked out, the old man’s arm around her waist, the office door closing.

  Mick churned beneath the water, lungs tight, blood surging as he kicked to the surface, toward the light of a new day.

  My father’s best friend.

  The one man with the inside line to my entire operation.

  I trusted him and the filthy old bastard bled us dry.

  He broke through, gasping, and found himself standing in the Last Straw’s parking lot. For a moment he was shocked to find himself dry, standing on wobbly legs, out of breath. His arms felt loose. He blinked, searching the parking lot for Sapphire and his powder blue Lexus, but the accountant was gone.

  He had left right after patting Mick’s shoulder. Is that when it had happened? Had the old man’s touch set off some kind of vision? Did I come to this realization on my own, or did the insight come from something else?

  What the hell was happening to him?

  He didn’t know. What he did know was that his headache was gone. In its absence there was dull anger and tired depression. Years this man had worked for his parents. He tried to imagine his mother, who kept track of everything in her leather-bound pencil ledgers, missing this parasite’s tricks. He couldn’t fathom it. He had thought it a lapse of inventory control, then theft at the hands of Greg and Leslie, his former head bartender and his waitress-girlfriend. He’d caught them comping drinks to friends, pocketing cash, hiking a case of champagne and a prime rib out the back door one New Year’s Eve. It seemed to fit, though he’d never uncovered a real trail of evidence. But of course now that seemed stupid, too piecemeal. An accountant, though, a man you trusted, that was a man who could do some real damage, and disguise it cleverly.

  This was why he had felt the need to stay tonight. His accident on the lake had shaken something loose, if only his complacency. Maybe that was it. Or maybe he had a new edge going on here, something altogether more powerful. If so, what else could he do with it? The questions left his hands shaking with the possibility of life-changing payback.

  22


  This is not my daughter. It’s an alien life form. A minion of Satan.

  ‘Where’s Daddy? Where’s Daddy! I want my Daaaaaaaaa-ddeeeEEE!’

  If it was her daughter, she would know how to make it stop screaming.

  ‘Lemme go! Lemme go! Daddy, you have to bring Daddy home now!’

  Amy’s body was being used as an ultimate fighting ring for B, who was shaking, slapping, kicking and burning hot with the fire of her shrieking. For the past ten minutes, she had been using her Soothing Mommy voice, but if this went on much longer she thought she might be justified in breaking out her Thermonuclear Mommy voice, and quite possibly the soft end of the pink leather belt laced through her daughter’s Gap Kids skinny jeans. But the mere thought of hitting Briela made Amy feel sick, so goddamn her husband for putting her in this position.

  ‘Daddy’s on his way home, sweetie. Listen, listen to Mommy, Briela stop, stop it, would you please stop. He’ll be here soon.’

  ‘No-no-nunh-nunh-nunh,’ Briela said, the argument grinding out from her belly. Her stringy blonde hair whirling, blue eyes rolling, spittle flying. ‘He’s not, he’s not coming home! You have to make him, makedaddycomehomenow!’

  ‘I’m trying!’

  Briela’s patent leather Mary-Janes – the ones with heels like sharpened hockey pucks – began chorus-line popping up at Amy’s chin, so close she could see the surprisingly thick sweep of blonde hairs on the fleshy caps. A heel stamped down on Amy’s shin, the plastic edge biting into the bevel of tibia and muscle before scraping out and continuing down with a knife-like swipe.

  She howled and lost control, jerking away. She meant only to release her daughter as she hopped to her feet, but wound up knocking Briela back. The girl snagged a heel on the thick carpet and slumped into a wailing pile of defeat.

  ‘Goddamn it, B, you hurt Mommy bad. Jesus Christ, what is wrong with you!’

  Amy barely recognized her own voice, and this scared her. She limped a few paces and rolled Briela over, checking her for welts or scrapes just in case, but there were none. Briela jerked away, downshifting into a quieter series of sobs and soon would be empty chuffing herself into sleep.

  Enough. Enough for now. She had to deal with her leg. She couldn’t talk any more, even if she thought talking might help. But after fits of this magnitude, Briela never remembered much of what had triggered them, let alone the softer cooings that brought the proceedings to a close. Amy hobbled to the door and looked back.

  ‘I don’t give a shit how upset you are. Daddy working late is no excuse for this behavior. It’s not okay to lash out at Mommy. Never, ever …’ At which point she hated the petulant, playground inflection in her voice and left.

  In the kids’ bathroom, she dragged the small first-aid kit from under the sink and sat on the toilet, resting the leg along the edge of the tub. She rolled up her pant cuff and gritted her teeth. The gash was less than an inch from end to end, but deep, not so much a cut as a disturbing dent that had probably bruised the bone. She rubbed it weakly, bandaged it.

  First she imagines a wolf-boy and throws a fit at the ice-cream shop. Now she’s in a state because her father – who almost drowned yesterday – is working late. That had to be it. Briela was processing her father’s accident, and his old work habits were no longer acceptable. Well, that makes two of us who are fed up with it.

  She stood over the sink and dumped three ibuprofen into her palm, but did not swallow them. She was numb, she realized, and she almost wished she could feel the pain. She dropped the pills in the trash and stared at herself in the mirror. Her mascara had run, her face was pale, blotchy and bloated, and Pillsbury orange cinnamon roll frosting – tonight they had tried baking together, but when the rolls were finished Briela spat hers out and said it tasted like toothpaste – was smeared into her hair like highlights from the Special Moms Only salon.

  She limped into the hall and poked her head in Briela’s bedroom. The girl had fallen into a deep sleep. Amy scooped her daughter up and set her on the bed, blanketing her to the shoulders.

  Back in the kitchen, she searched for the magnum of pinot she was sure she had stashed in the Sub Zero, but it was not on the bottom shelf. Or on any of the shelves. The crisper. The door.

  ‘Damn it!’ Amy slammed the fridge. She thought of running to the liquor store in Gunbarrel, which was only five minutes away, but she looked like hell and it was late. She grabbed her car keys, halted, set them back on the counter.

  She looked at the tray of cinnamon rolls on top of the Wolf range. She moved to them. Inserted her pointer finger into the center of the spiral. Still warm. She really shouldn’t. But before she realized what she was doing, the finger was in her mouth, the orange-flavored sugar crackling on her tongue. She closed her eyes and swayed. Pushed her tongue against the roof of her mouth, smearing the glaze around, biting into another piece of the stiff-edged dough. Oh. Oooooh.

  Mick, she decided, was going to pay for this night in a novel way. He was putting his health in danger and by extension putting them all in danger. What would be his excuse? The usual. Had to cover a shift, babe. It’s a restaurant. What do you think my job is, anyway? I fill the holes.

  Question was, why were there so many holes? He’d spent half his life in the Straw and still didn’t know how to be a manager, let alone hire one. He was too nice, too soft on his staff. And, though it gave her no pleasure to think so, her husband was a shitty businessman. He had no sense of numbers, spreadsheets, budgets. Worse, he seemed to know this and yet he never changed, never sought to improve his skill set. He was still the carefree boy who had been born into a flourishing family business. But, once his parents gave him the keys, was he content to stick to what had worked for twenty-seven years? No, he had to remake the Straw in his lost jock-stud image. Out with the family buffet, in with the raucous sports bar. Obscene portions, wall-to-wall hi-def displays, the trend of the new millennium.

  Well, the millennium was a little too excited for its own good. After all this time, he still didn’t grasp that owning a restaurant was Darwinian bloodsport, not a place to park your ass in a corner booth with the sports pages and a bottle of scotch as you regaled college students with tales of your glorious youth.

  True, after his father died in ’04, he’d finally knocked off the two a.m. benders, folding the Straw’s softball team and other sponsorships in favor of college savings accounts for the kids. But how much had he really changed? Amy knew his friends too well, the other Rogers in town, fortysomethings twice divorced and still hustling ass fresh out of grad school. Boulder was a utopia, a place you went to college or retired to. A fantasy playground of ski bums, trustafarian students, and cashed-out tech wealth. Mick bitched about working late, but he didn’t want to let go of the bar life. As long as he was in it, he was still Mickey Mouse, Fun Mickey, Mick the Swinging Dick.

  Her husband, her oldest son.

  She took another bite of the cinnamon roll. God, the orange frosting was a little like toothpaste, but the artificial flavoring only made it better, like some kind of new chemical substance, a Pillsbury anxiety pill: now available in chewable, lickable, nom-nom-nom-able.

  She stared at the window over the sink, across the long lawn of the backyard, considering the guest house on the other side of the pool. It was a ramshackle shed of a cabana they used mostly for garden storage, but it had possibilities. Two rooms plus a loft, the suggestion of an apartment.

  Apart. Ment.

  Apart.

  The thought came to her like an unexpected kiss. Once he gets better, Mick could move in there. She stared at the guest house, imaging the first step to something new. Not freedom. She wasn’t that naive and wouldn’t give up her children. She would always need Mick … in some capacity. But something new was out there. Starting with that pool-guest-house-apartment.

  Amy turned away from the window. She stared at the baking sheet, pressing the back of her hand to her smeared lips. There was only one roll left. A few minutes ago there h
ad been eight of them. A quiet moan of disgust escaped her. No, no way. She remembered chewing one of them, savoring every crumb. She had not gone hog wild, devouring them like one of those Japanese kids in the hot-dog-eating contests. She couldn’t believe that, refused to believe that. And yet: Briela was sleeping, Kyle was out for the night to stay with his friends, so who else could it have been?

  Her tummy made a swamp sound, a little BP spill down in there in the Gulf of Amy. She felt high, her head spinning from the sugar.

  I’m a beast, I need help …

  She took a glass of water out onto the patio, tottering along the flagstones. She found a ceramic pot and removed her secret pack of Capris, then used the burner on Mick’s six-thousand-dollar Alfresco grill to light one. The gleaming silver cathedral to meat seemed to hiss at her, mocking her in some way, and she resented him for spending their money on crap like this, even if he had gotten it at a restaurant auction for half-price. Tomorrow she would put this monstrosity on Craigslist, and maybe Blue Thunder too, right next to the boat. Sell the truck right out from under him. He had no business owning a forty thousand dollar truck in times like these. They needed to hunker down, start squirreling away some nuts.

  She settled into one of the padded loungers beside the limestone-ringed firepit. It was a summer darkness, palpable and solicitous. She smoked greedily, as if the nicotine would curb her appetite for the next month and erase the little hit job she’d just put on that tray of cinnamon rolls. A hundred feet east stood the palazzo’s perimeter wall, its white flank soft in the open field. Her eyes wandered to the pool house, tracing the border between the two properties.

  A shadow peeled away from the pool house and moved across the yard, stirring like a small tree coming to life. It went ten or twelve paces in an animal crouch and stopped at the property line, between two blue spruce pines as if hiding.

  Hiding, or just waiting for her.