Sliding Past Vertical Read online

  The anticipation of sex dragged her up. She fixed her hair and makeup in the cracked, smoke-fogged mirror. She swiped on some extra lipstick and went out to watch Jay do what he did best.

  * * * * *

  The house lights came up. Although it was after last call, Jay plopped two Bass Ales on Sarah’s table, swung a chair around and sat in it backward, imprisoning her between his long legs. He shot a murderous glare over her shoulder—cobalt lasers. She turned. A young guy at the bar studiously ignored them.

  “What?” she said.

  “I don’t like the way that asshole’s been staring at you.”

  They had so little time together and she didn’t want trouble. “I’m sure he’s harmless.”

  His eyes remained locked on the bar as he started to untangle himself. “Right. Uh-huh. Stay here, baby.”

  “Jay, no.” She grabbed both his thighs.

  For the moment, she had his attention.

  The truth was that she’d barely noticed the guy at the bar, even when he’d offered to buy her a drink. She’d been too entranced with Jay, channeling Jagger in the band’s cover of “Ain’t Too Proud To Beg,” which made her want to tear his clothes off.

  She leaned in and brushed her mouth against his, the tip of her tongue tracing a slow path along the top of his lower lip. A moan rose from his throat, and he palmed the back of her head, drawing her toward him for a long, beery, tobacco and peppermint kiss. By the time they stopped, her hands had slid a few inches north, and two androgynous strangers were sitting at their table. She whipped her hands off him and straightened her clothing. They seemed to know Jay, and they looked like zombies, but that could have been the light, or the hour, or the fact that they were in black from head to toe, complete with matching eyeliner and lipstick. And they just…sat there, creeping her out.

  “Are we going to the hotel soon?” she asked Jay.

  He hesitated. Another bad sign. “See, here’s the thing. We’re crashing with some friends of mine tonight.” He introduced Mr. and Mrs. Night of the Living Dead. They grunted in unison. “They got a foldout in their living room.”

  “I thought we were staying at a hotel,” Sarah said under her breath.

  “I owed somebody.” He shrugged. “I had to give them everything on me. Tomorrow, I want to…you know, go in clean. No debts, no baggage.”

  A tentative smile oozed across his face and he ran a finger up her arm. The nail scratched lightly. She shivered, wishing she had enough money for a room. But she’d need every cent in her purse for her bus ticket home; she didn’t have a license and couldn’t take his car back to town. With fading hopes of ever sleeping with him again, she thought about her paycheck, forgotten in the top drawer of the utility cart beside her drafting table, along with the fifty bucks her boss had given her as a birthday bonus. She’d planned on giving it back to him. It was too much money and Jimmy had a family to feed, but at the moment, she would have spent it all—plus her bus money—for five minutes alone with Jay.

  He threw back the rest of his beer, winked at the female bartender, and asked for another, with a shot of whiskey.

  “You mind giving up on the hotel thing?” he asked Sarah. “I’ll make it up to you, I swear.”

  His eyes were beginning to glaze.

  “I guess.” Sarah let out a long breath. She knew that glaze. Five minutes was probably all she would have gotten.

  They followed the pair back to a ratty apartment and didn’t unfold the foldout until three thirty. Jay snored beside her. At 4:23, Sarah still couldn’t sleep. She rolled onto her stomach, her back, her side. The metal bar in the thing tortured her in every position. It was hot in the decrepit place, and the sheets reeked of stale pot and unwashed bodies. Plus, there was a giant bloodstain on one of the removed sofa cushions, which disturbed her so much that she had to get up and turn the stained side toward the wall.

  Then her mind opened a door she thought she’d locked tight. What if the rehab doesn’t work?

  Emerson hadn’t been too optimistic.

  “People don’t change that easily,” he’d said. “Especially if they don’t want to. From what you’ve told me, it doesn’t sound like Jay wants to.”

  She’d quarreled with Emerson, then. Accused him of hating all of her boyfriends on general principle. Accused him of being sanctimonious and smug, that he’d been projecting his own experience with his alcoholic mother on her.

  But what if he’d been right?

  Chapter 4

  The next day, fuzzy-headed and blinking away dreams of whomever or whatever might have left those bloodstains on the sofa cushion, Sarah bid farewell to her equally bleary and oddly silent boyfriend. “Checking him in” amounted to nothing more than watching him sign some papers, receiving an afterthought of a kiss, and being shown the door by a dour, unfriendly nurse.

  The deed done, Sarah watched Jay lope down a long corridor with his guitar and overnight bag, and there was nothing left for her to do but leave.

  She took the bus from Springfield to the T station in Newton and then waited for an inbound Green Line trolley. Joining her on the platform were about a couple dozen obnoxiously cheerful suburbanites, who, judging from their smattering of “1986 AL Champions” T-shirts, would be spending the afternoon at Fenway Park, probably getting drunk and calling for Bill Buckner’s head on a platter. A few of them even had homemade signs to that effect and argued vociferously with the fans who said that in a pressure situation, anyone could have let a World Series-losing grounder roll between his legs.

  In my next life I’ll be able to afford a car, she thought, glaring at two little boys screeching at each other while sword fighting with two outsized foam “GO SOX” fingers.

  It had to be at least a hundred degrees. The heat and the previous night’s beers made her mouth dry and sticky, and after the T reached her stop at Reservoir Station, she’d still have to walk five blocks in the beating hot sun up Chestnut Hill Avenue to her apartment, carrying a bag that contained too much for one night.

  Then, with a sigh, she remembered her promise to work that day. Might as well not even go home, she thought, as an empty trolley squealed up to the platform and she claimed a seat. Just stay on the T until Brookline and get it over with. Maybe it wouldn’t be so horrible. Maybe the air conditioner would be fixed. Maybe Jimmy would be around, catching up on paperwork. He was usually in a good mood on Saturdays, although lately, he’d been such a bear. She could change that. Joke around with him, run out for bagels and iced tea. When she finished her paste-up jobs, she could organize the colored paper racks and create a new window display. He liked the shop tidied up for Monday morning’s customers, and he especially liked not having to remind any of the employees to do it. Emerson often said doing something nice for someone else made him feel better. After leaving an uncommunicative Jay at a rehab center that might or might not work and limping through this brutally hot morning on an hour’s sleep, she wouldn’t mind feeling better.

  When Sarah got off the T, she hauled her bag higher on her shoulder and walked down Beacon Street, vowing never again to drink nor have a boyfriend she had to check into rehab. She didn’t handle alcohol well. She got too drunk too fast and the next morning felt like someone had set the volume of all of her senses on “stun.” Her current hangover was no different. The sun shimmering on the trolley tracks and storefront windows gouged her eyes. A softball game was in full, maximum-decibel swing on the Reservoir field. The slap of the ball against leather gloves sounded like cannon fire; the ring of the aluminum bats made a retort so sharp, she wanted to cover her ears.

  Underneath her inflamed senses lay a killer thirst. Two college girls passed by, cool and pretty, carrying giant iced coffees in plastic cups. Sarah fought the urge to mug them for their drinks. Her mouth felt like sand as she walked by the bank. Just a bit farther and around the corner and she’d get to the Copy King. With the fifty from her drawer she’d get iced teas, one for her and one for Jimmy, give him back the change, an
d sit in the hopefully repaired air conditioning and cool off.

  Just beyond the bakery, though, she smelled something burning. Immediately she thought of barbecues and imagined overpaid twenty-five-year-old investment bankers in overpriced Brookline Hills condos, drinking this week’s microbrew and flipping free-range steaks on mesquite grills: all things she’d read about in Boston magazine yet couldn’t afford on her hourly wage. But this smell was stronger than a backyard cookout; it was the sharp sting of chemicals and melted plastic.

  Sarah hurried down the block, following the acid reek of smoke, her thirst and the weight of her bag forgotten. She’d call the fire department from the shop. Someone must have called already. Or not. It could just be her sense of smell, sharpened to animalistic acuity like her other senses, so perhaps she was the first to know, the only one who could save whatever was about to burn to the ground. She raced on. Past the pet store, the deli, the Greek restaurant. She rounded the corner and, eyes watering, reached for the door of the copy shop.

  But there was no door. Only hastily nailed wooden planks and yellow warning tape, spanning the space where the Copy King used to be.

  For a long time she could only stare, until an old man in shirtsleeves wandered by, a newspaper under his arm. He stopped next to her and shook his head. “Damn shame. Went up just like that.” He snapped his fingers, making a papery sound.

  “When…when did it happen?”

  He scowled, looking deep in thought. “Last night, ’round about eleven or thereabouts. Those sirens could have woken the dead.”

  She’d left at eight. Jay picked her up at eight thirty. “I was out of town.” She gaped at the burned-out hulk, unable to fathom what had happened. “I…I work here.”

  The old man chuckled softly. “If I were to venture a guess, I would say that you don’t anymore.”

  * * * * *

  As she rode an outbound trolley back to Reservoir, Sarah tried to remember everything she’d done leading up to closing. She’d been pasting up résumés. That meant waxing the back of a rectangle of typeset copy, squaring it up onto a piece of white card stock with her T-square and triangle, and affixing it with a firm swipe of her latex roller. She repeated the process until she had a stack of camera-ready art for the pressman. Worried about meeting Jay on time, she sped through her work and even chipped the crystal vase a couple more times with the butt of her T-square. Jimmy came out of his office at seven thirty and set his briefcase on the counter. He looked awful. So bad she stopped filling the old electric hand waxer and stared at the dark bags under his eyes. His complexion resembled the color of the wax. She was about to ask if he was all right when he cut her off.

  “You’ll be okay alone here if I go?”

  “Sure,” she said. “I’ll close up. Go home and get some sleep.”

  He sighed. “From your mouth to God’s ear.” He crossed to the cash register, opened it, stuck in a check and withdrew a stack of bills. Jimmy frowned at the contents of the drawer for a long time before closing it.

  Then he peeled off a fifty and handed it to Sarah. “A little something for your birthday.”

  She stared at it, thinking what an extra fifty dollars would buy, and glanced up into his earnest face. He couldn’t afford to give her cash she hadn’t earned. While business hadn’t exactly been slow, the bread-and-butter jobs weren’t rolling in like they used to. Competition from shops with in-house typesetting machines squeezed them. Equipment desperately needed upgrades. And Jimmy’s wife was pregnant. For the fifth time.

  “I don’t need the money,” she said.

  He dropped the bill on the edge of her table. “Consider it a bonus, then.”

  She was aware of his eyes on her as she rolled melted wax onto the back of another slice of typographic paper. When she looked up, his lips curved into a sad smile before he turned away and picked up his briefcase. “Don’t work too late, now.”

  She hadn’t, because Jay didn’t like to be kept waiting. Sarah continued replaying the closing sequence in her head, ticking tasks off on her fingers as she turned the corner from Chestnut Hill Avenue and walked up her street. Switched off the lights in Jimmy’s office, his coffee pot, his adding machine. Shut down the copiers, the stupid air conditioning, the light over my drafting table. Got my purse and—right, the videotape. Had to return it, couldn’t afford another late fee and the store closed at eight. Shut the rest of the lights, locked the door. Forgot the fifty. Forgot my paycheck…

  With a small gasp, she buried her face in her palm.

  Forgot to unplug the waxer.

  * * * * *

  An irate Dee Dee, broom in hand, met Sarah at the door to their apartment. She was wearing a pair of bicycle shorts, an apricot facial mask, and a New England Patriots jersey tugged off one shoulder in that stupid Flashdance style Sarah hated. Platinum-blonde hair dribbled from a lazy ponytail atop her head. From the back bedroom, Dee Dee’s parakeet chirped its beak off.

  “Where the hell were you? Do you have any idea what’s been going on around here? Little Petie’s having a nervous breakdown.”

  In a daze, still processing her error, Sarah brushed by her roommate. “The Copy King…burned down…I just saw it.”

  “Yeah, so did the cops. They were here, by the way.” Dee Dee’s eyes were raccoon huge inside the giant holes in her mask. “Getting dirt all over the goddamn floor. They had badges and guns and shit.”

  She shoved a dog-eared business card at Sarah. On it was an officer’s name and phone number. “They were looking for you.”

  Chapter 5

  “Maybe Jimmy torched the place,” Emerson said.

  “Why would he—his own business?”

  The reasoning occurred to Sarah at the same time he started to say, “For the insurance money, of course. You said he’s been under a lot of financial pressure. How convenient for the place to burn down, and convenient about the waxer. Then he can blame it on you and call it an accident.”

  She didn’t want to think this about Jimmy. Feeling numb, she plopped onto her futon. Maybe that’s why he isn’t answering his phone. “You think…you think that’s why the police want to talk to me?” She’d held on to the detective’s card for days, too afraid to call, too afraid to say she’d been stupid enough to leave an ancient, rewired hand waxer plugged into an overloaded outlet before heading out to meet her drug-dealing boyfriend. “They think…he did it?”

  “Or they think you know something. You were the last one out of the building. Maybe you saw someone suspicious hanging around.”

  “But I didn’t, I—” Then she remembered. As she’d raced up to the video store, she’d noticed Jimmy’s car still parked on Beacon Street. But that wasn’t unusual. He often stopped at the neighborhood dive for a beer or two before heading home. Was that why he’d told her not to stay too late? Had he planned on coming back?

  “Sarah?” Emerson said. “Did you see something?”

  She could barely squeak out the words. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Then you should talk to the police.”

  “He needs the money, Em.”

  “You’re going to take the fall for him?”

  “Take the fall for him?” A nervous laugh escaped her. “It was an accident.”

  “It’s potentially arson. If they find evidence. And collusion, for you. Did he offer you money?”

  “A check for two weeks’ salary came in the mail today. With a note. He said he wished it could be more…” So did Sarah. She thought again of the paycheck and cash she’d left in her drawer and that the rent was due soon.

  “Maybe he was making a vague promise of a future bribe so you wouldn’t say anything bad about him to the police. Or so you wouldn’t testify against him if—”

  “Em…please. You’ve been reading too many crime novels.”

  He sniffed. “I just think that if someone does something wrong, it should be his own neck on the line, not anyone else’s because she was being nice and trying to protect him.”<
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  “Too nice, you mean.”

  He said nothing.

  They’d had that argument too many times.

  “He’s not a criminal,” she said, her voice softer. “For all we know it was the waxer and my fault. And if Jimmy decides to take the money, then he should be able to do that. His family comes first.”

  “What about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “You’re out of a job.”

  She sighed. She’d spent the last three days trying not to think about that. “I’d be out of a job if it was arson or the waxer or freaking Godzilla that burned the place down.”

  He took a frustratingly long moment before answering. She imagined Emerson, vexed at her sarcasm, his lower lip tightening. “But if you’re out of a job and charged as an accessory to arson, you could be out of a job for a very long time.”

  “So I’ll become a writer.”

  He ignored the comment. “You should do the right thing.”

  Smug. Sanctimonious. “I am doing the right thing.”

  “Covering for him isn’t right.”

  “Morally, it’s right.”

  “Legally and ethically, it’s wrong.”

  Sarah wanted to throw the phone across the room. Except it was Dee Dee’s, and Sarah couldn’t afford to replace it. “I remember somebody sold the same story to the same magazine twice, only changing the woman’s hair color and nationality.”

  “Sarah. That’s hardly on the same level. That was fifty dollars, not a felony.”

  * * * * *

  After Sarah hung up the phone, she stuck her tongue out at it. Emerson had no right to tell her she shouldn’t help Jimmy, who’d treated her like family for the past eight years. True, the twice-told sex tale was small potatoes. But what about Emerson’s mother? Had he done the right thing by her? Covering for her all those years when she drank so much, she couldn’t take care of his baby brother? Leaving the job to Emerson, a boy who should have been out playing baseball and chasing girls, not raising a child. Not putting his mother to bed. How long had Emerson made excuses when she couldn’t show up at her various jobs, at parent-teacher meetings, even the custody hearings when his father returned to take Thomas away?