chapter one

Waking to a heartbeat louder and faster than normal, then abruptly, damn, it stops. A ticking clock kind of silence, why am I still breathing? Without the beat? Then the beating resumes, no, it’s a tapping this time, sitting up and realizing where I am just as the tapping stops and the front door opens a crack and I hear my name called out from a soft voice just above a whisper.

I’ve never been the neighborly type. I’ve always had secrets I didn’t want neighbors to know and a life I didn’t want them to pay attention to or be involved in. It’s always been that way, everywhere I’ve ever lived. But, there are fewer secrets now, or maybe the secrets are just better hidden, invisible to the neighborly eye. And I’m tired of moving around. I’ve been too many places too many times. And this seems like a friendly enough place and I’m further insulated by being the venerable loner among the young and the coupled. I’m tucked away back here with only a façade in plain view and that only adds to the mystery. I use mystery to hide my scars and intrigue to cover up the lies I’ve told. I think the women like me because I’m not their husbands and the men do because my life isn’t theirs. Neighborly, that’s me, and I can do host and do it well and I enjoy letting them peek around the misty edges of mystery. I pour drinks and eke information and I learn more than I divulge, always.

A good time was had by all, a better one by some than others, and a thinning crowd leaves the hangers on to let some air out and toss back another drink, or two, and toss out another inhibition, or two. This time of the evening reminds me of the end of a business dinner after some have excused themselves and the rest want to make sure you know how much they know. Another place I learned about eke and flow. The ekers generally come out on top and the flowers wonder how the hell the cat got out of the bag they’re left holding. The listener runs off with the spoils and the talker doesn’t even notice in the fog of his stoked ego. I’ve honed speak when spoken to into a sharp edged tool and have always believed knowledge is power. It’s not so much I have to have the power but it comes in handy when control is an issue and with me it is. I like to measure my chaos and while I may not need for any given situation to be under my control I want to know I can quickly find the reigns and whoa up should the need arise. I find need fascinating also, much more so than want. Want can easily be exploited but need is a deed to someone’s soul. Where want is wistful and dreamy, need will sit you up in the middle of the night or keep you from coming home and it can make the best of people gutter crawl. Want builds and creates, need shatters relationships, loses wars and lives and pock marks the earth.

And so I hosted and listened and spoke only when spoken to and ticked the want and need boxes of the boozy talkers and kept mental score for no reason other than it’s what you do with games, you keep score. I don’t care that much about winning but I want to make sure I don’t lose. I like ties the best these days, everyone leaves happy. All this sounds calculated and cold but it really wasn’t; there was warmth and a comfortable ease and an overall contentedness and anything wiley or competitive was buried beneath the tinkling of glasses and conversation. It was young and sporty and the men were relaxed in their logo-ed best and the women were lean and bare bellied tight jeaned and well coiffed and scented. Only one was too loud but I was focused on the one who was too quiet and she was now at my door, no, just inside my door.

“I’m sorry, I thought you might still be up, the light was on.”

“No, no it’s fine, I was….still up, well not exactly awake, but still up.”

“You sleep standing up” she grinned a grin as soft as her tapping at my door and her voice calling my name.

“Well no, but if I’m not in bed, I still count it as being up. And if the lights are still on, that’s still up too. So see, I’m still up and I’m standing funny like this because my foot is asleep, even though I’m not”.

“Did you forget something?” I said finally clear headed enough to notice that she had changed into black sweats and her dark hair was pinned on top of her head instead of curling at her shoulders like it was earlier. She was barefoot but considering she only lived two houses down, and given the hour, I didn’t find that odd at all. I did find it endearing however, I don’t know exactly why, but I did, this too quiet girl standing barefoot in my entry in the middle of a promising but still coolish spring night. But I knew she didn’t forget anything and I knew she wasn’t here to seduce me as much as I would have liked to believe that she was, enough so that I would probably give that some thought later when I really did go to bed. Maybe even before.

“No, no, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be bothering you late like this. And I wouldn’t, really, and I don’t know you, at least not until now. No, that’s not right either, I do feel like I know you, or at least can trust you or that you’re different…..really I don’t know, I just don’t have anywhere else to turn, I mean nowhere else at all, not with this, nowhere.”

She turned as if to go but her movements were tentative as if she really didn’t want to leave or maybe she was waiting for my “it’s ok Lauren, really, it’s not a problem, really, come on in, you want something else to drink?”.

“No, nothing please. I think Craig had enough for both of us. He’s out like a light, snoring as soon as he hit the bed. I just need someone to talk to…..and you….well, it would be different with you, not knowing me and all”.

She looked down and said “maybe it’s more like, you don’t know me, you don’t know how I am and don’t expect me to be a certain way. Like everyone else does. And I mean everyone else.”

"Can you come in, sit down? I don't want to be the cause of any trouble, you being here this late, or just being here at all."

If you can chuckle sadly, she did, more of an ironic sigh but the corners of her mouth did turn up and when they did I could see lines in her face, especially around her eyes, that I didn't feel were there until recently. Lines of new worry, old ones are more deeply etched and become part of the expression. It's impossible to hide an emotional wallop from anyone paying attention and I knew from watching her earlier in the evening she was troubled. I just missed the tense.

"I'm in trouble" she said walking over to sit on a leather ottoman next to the dying fire. It wasn't really cold but trouble is chilling and I think she was hoping to warm it away. Or maybe just disappear into the few remaining curling blue flames. I picked up the last log from the sling next to the hearth, silently, giving her time to decide how much she wanted to tell me or if she wanted to tell me anything at all. I laid it down on the embers and we watched the nearly burnt blackened shell break apart and spark and then settle into a layer of orange with renewed flames licking around the front of the log I had placed on top. I brushed my hands together and pulled the screen closed but left the glass doors open so she could draw the heat. As quiet as the fire was before the new wood caught it was the only sound in the room. I had turned off the background music I had on during the evening, one of those music channels on TV where you pick the genre and they show you what selections they’ve made for you.. Something about the way she said trouble reminded me of how, not that many years ago, when a young single girl got pregnant it was said that she got ‘in trouble’. A term you really don’t hear in that context anymore but young and single and pregnant is just as difficult as it’s always been no matter how you phrase it. But this wasn’t a case of an unmarried pregnant girl.

“In trouble” I repeated, not a question, she said she was and rarely does someone in trouble exaggerate, why would you? Absorbing her words, acknowledging.

She was visibly more relaxed than I had seen her all evening, maybe from making the decision to share the nature of her burden. Trouble is considerably more daunting when you’re all alone with it. I had no doubt she was alone with hers. Coming to see a relative stranger in the middle of the night wasn't exactly an appointment covered by her husband’s insurance and she was carrying the weight of a quiet desperation. This one wasn’t bent toward hysterical behavior or visible panic, but then I don’t suppose she could be, it was apparently something she had to contain.

She looked up, steeled herself, resolutely looked me in the eye and just came out with it.

“I’m being blackmailed”

I let the words settle and busied myself poking at the fire and gave her a moment to deal with saying it out loud. I stood up, hung the tool back on its hook and turned toward the kitchen.

“You sure you don’t want something to drink?

“Maybe if you’re having something, I’ll just have what you’re having, anything would be fine”

“You sure this is OK, seems like the last thing you would need is more trouble, I mean you’re welcome here of course, I just don’t want to add to your woes”.

“Craig wouldn’t wake up if the house caught on fire, not when he’s been drinking like that, and even if he did he would just think I was at Rona’s house”

“Ah, Rona, the too loud one. She doesn’t know about this?” I already knew the answer to that but I asked anyway.

“Oh God no, never. She is loud isn’t she? No, not a soul…..until now……well, except for…”

“Right, except for the one causing you the trouble, and now me. It stays with me by the way. You don’t have to worry about that”

“If I didn’t already know that I wouldn’t be here, God, I can’t believe I’m here anyway”

“I have coffee left, with a splash of Bushmills maybe?

“Perfect, plus, if anyone were to show up it looks a lot more innocent than if we were throwing back shots” she said trying to make light of the moment. I gave her style points for that one.

“As if anyone would suspect me of anything anyway, I could be in the shower here and people would believe there was a perfectly plausible explanation” I let that one go.

She smiled a weary smile and watched me take two cups from the cabinet, pour them half full of coffee and reach for a bottle on a ledge above the same cabinet and plop some golden brown liquor into each cup.

I carried the drinks and we sat on stools at a pub table that is a transition place between kitchen and great room and still close enough to the fire for warmth. I gave her the seat closest to the now flickering flames, lifted my cup toward her and said “Here’s to solutions and resolutions”. She clinked my cup with hers and tried to smile but it barely made an appearance.

“So, blackmail, you don’t hear that term everyday. I must say it was probably the last thing I expected to hear.”

“I know, I can barely fathom it myself, If I weren’t in the middle of it I wouldn’t believe it”.

“Let’s start simple” I said. Someone has some knowledge about you, or your husband, and it’s something they think you wouldn’t want disclosed. That’s pretty much blackmail 101. And they want money?”

She took a sip for either confidence or to buy time, or both, and god bless her heart looked me straight in the eye, no furtive glances or downcast eyes, straight on, and said “No, not money. I almost wish it was about money. I think I could deal with that. Certainly better than….this”

“This”, I repeated, again not a question, “is about something other than money. Well that certainly puts us outside the precepts of beginning blackmail.”

“I guess you could say it’s not textbook blackmail, if there is such a thing, god, I don’t know it’s all just so tawdry and I’m such a fucking fool, just the biggest fool.”

“Well welcome to the world of fools, you’re in good company. OK, not money. But someone wants something from you in exchange for their silence.
Something like that?”

She snaked her fingers, then unwound them and wrapped them around her cup to give them something to do and continued to look me dead in the eye, a good sign, strength, you need that when you’re being blackmailed.

“It’s me” she said. She nodded as if to convince herself it was true, saying it aloud for the first time. “I have to give him me. And so far I have been. And I want to stop”.