Pretty Girl Gone Page 6

  She said, “But it could have been worse.”

  “It could have been Deadwood,” they both said in unison.

  “I definitely need new material,” I told them.

  “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Rushmore.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Just call him McKenzie,” Nina said. “He doesn’t like Rushmore.”

  “Who can blame him?”

  Everyone seemed to be having a wonderful time at my expense.

  “It is good to meet you,” Barrett said. “Lindsey said you were one of her most trusted friends from the neighborhood.” He took my hand and gazed directly into my eyes, and in that instant I felt as though John Allen Barrett had attended this ridiculous, self-indulgent ball for the sole purpose of meeting me. I couldn’t explain it. Or why I felt a pang of jealousy when he released my hand and directed his attention to Nina.

  “What you played reminded me of the blues you’d hear in Chicago,” Barrett said, as if he was continuing a conversation already in progress.

  “Some of it was,” Nina said. “Otis Spann and Meade Lux Lewis were from Chicago. Lewis used to play boogie-woogie piano at rent parties when he was a kid and Spann probably did, too. The first bluesman I played, though—Jay McShann—he came out of Kansas City in the thirties. Charlie Parker used to be one of his sidemen.”

  “I didn’t know that.” Barrett spoke in a way that made me believe that freely admitting ignorance didn’t faze him a bit. It was a small thing, yet filled with courage, and suddenly Barrett seemed less wealthy, less intimidating, less like the improbable icon I had been researching all afternoon.

  “I presume you play professionally,” Barrett told Nina.

  “Goodness no,” said Nina.

  “Yes,” said I.

  “I used to play a bit when I was a kid,” Nina added. “Not so much anymore.”

  “What do you do now?” asked Barrett.

  “I have my own club.”

  “Really? Where?”

  “Rickie’s on Cathedral Hill in St. Paul.”

  “I’ve been there,” Barrett insisted. “It has two levels, a kind of lounge on the first floor and a restaurant on the second.”

  “That’s right,” said Nina. “You should come again. We’ll take good care of you.”

  “I have an idea. I have a radio program for an hour on WCCO Friday mornings. I’m going to give you a call—not this week, but the next. We’ll talk about your club on the air.”

  “That would be wonderful.”

  Barrett smiled at Nina like a doting father praising his child. I watched him smile. His unexpected interest in Nina reminded me of something—a sentence, a phrase, a fragment of words that I had heard or read when I was younger. Except it stayed tantalizingly out of reach and I gave up the struggle for it, and then there it was, a line of Wordsworth from a long-ago English Lit class:

  That best portion of a good man’s life; His little, nameless, unremembered acts Of kindness and of love . . .

  “Jack,” said Lindsey.

  She had appeared behind Nina and crossed in front of her to reach Barrett. She wore the regal and slightly forced smile of a homecoming queen and if she felt any anxiety over seeing her husband conversing with Nina and me, there was no sign of it that I could detect.

  Barrett’s eyelids pricked up like an animal’s ears when he heard his wife’s voice, and he reached for her the way a child might reach for a butterfly. He took her hand, nodded toward me, and announced, “Look who I found.”

  “McKenzie,” Lindsey said and kissed my cheek. “But I saw him first. We danced together earlier.”

  “Yes, I noticed,” Barrett said. “Danced awfully close, I thought.” To me, he added, “You’ll be getting a call from the Minnesota Department of Revenue in the morning.”

  “Hey,” I said. “Look at the time. We should be going.”

  “Don’t even think about it,” Nina told me. “We’re going to dance.”

  “Forgive me,” said Barrett. “Lindsey, this is Nina Truhler.”

  “Nina, I enjoyed your performance very much,” Lindsey told her as they shook hands.

  “Thank you,” said Nina.

  “What a lovely gown.”

  “You’re very kind.”

  “I’m also very tired,” said Lindsey. “Excuse me, but we’re heading home.”

  “We are?” said Barrett.

  “Jack,” Lindsey said. “You made me promise to drag you home before midnight no matter how much fun you were having.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Because you’re flying to Washington in the morning.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Let’s dance.”

  Lindsey turned to Nina and me.

  “You kids,” she said. “I bet you could dance until they rolled up the floor, go out for a nightcap, maybe a moonlit walk . . .”

  “Hummida, hummida,” I said.

  “And still get up at the crack of dawn and be fresh as a daisy.” She turned back to her husband. “Remember when you could do that?”

  “Are you calling me old?”

  Lindsey crossed her arms over her chest.

  Barrett sighed. “Message received,” he said. “Good night, Nina. McKenzie. And hey,” he added, looking first at Nina and then glancing at me, “do the right thing.”

  I felt my body stiffen at the phrase and then go soft as I watched John and Lindsey Barrett disappear down the corridor beyond the bandstand. It can’t be, my trusted voice announced. There is just no way. Followed by, What the hell is going on?

  “Mac, are you okay?”

  I took Nina’s arm and pulled her close. She rested her head against my shoulder.

  “Mac?”

  “I’m okay. A little dizzy. I had some bad chardonnay before.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  The orchestra returned to the stage and Nina asked, “Would you care to dance?”

  “Yes,” I told her.

  And we did, until they rolled up the floor.

  At 1:15 A.M. it was actually warmer in the parking lot of the International Market Square than it had been when we arrived, such was the weather in Minnesota. My arm was around Nina’s waist and her arm was curled around mine, and we walked slowly and silently as lovers do toward my Audi. We had arrived late, so the car was parked in the farthest, darkest corner of the lot. The lot had been plowed down to the asphalt and the heels of Nina’s boots made nice clicking sounds as we walked.

  I was escorting Nina to the passenger door, car keys in hand, when a voice called out.

  “McKenzie.”

  We stopped in front of the car. I edged Nina behind me, shielding her with my body.

  “Who is it?”

  “Is that your girl? Nice.” The voice came from out of the darkness between the two SUVs parked directly in front of me. It was masculine. Disguised. Unsettling.

  “What do you want?”

  “To give you a warning. To give you both a warning.”

  “What’s that?”

  “There is nowhere you can run that I can’t follow. There is nowhere you can hide that I can’t find you.”

  “You’re telling me this—why?” I moved my thumb over the key chain.

  “Barrett cannot be allowed to run for the U.S. Senate.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I said so.”

  I pressed the red panic button on my key chain. Immediately, a loud, piercing alarm reverberated across the parking lot. The Audi’s headlights flashed on and off, illuminating the space between the two cars. The man standing there brought his arm up to guard his face. It wasn’t necessary. His face was encased in sheer nylon and I couldn’t make out his features. He screamed an obscenity and started running in the opposite direction. He was wearing a brown leather coat instead of the blue jacket worn by my assailant on the skyway. I watched him hit the street, turn right, and disappear down the block.

  I wonder who he work
s for?

  I turned around and embraced Nina. I searched her face for a suggestion of fear or anger, but there was none.

  She said, “Governor Barrett is running for the Senate?” over the noise of the car alarm.

  “Shhh. It’s supposed to be a secret.”

  Nina had nothing to say during the drive home, which I took as a bad sign. It meant she wanted to have a serious conversation and was just waiting for the right moment to begin. I pulled into her driveway and put the Audi into park, letting the engine idle.

  “Would you like to stay the night?” Nina asked.

  “Isn’t Erica home?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then, no.”

  “I have to think Rickie knows we’re sleeping together.”

  “Maybe so, but that’s a lot different then seeing me in her mother’s bed when she’s getting ready for school. It’s tough enough raising a teenage daughter, teaching her the things she needs to know, without explaining that. Besides, it’s like what my dad used to say. ‘The best lesson is a good example.’ ”

  Nina leaned across the seat and kissed me.

  “I knew you were going to say that,” she said.

  “That’s because I’ve said it before.”

  “I like constancy in my men.”

  “I have to tell you, that dress you’re wearing makes me consider the virtues of inconstancy, if you get my meaning.”

  “I take that as a compliment.”

  “Please do.”

  “How long have we been together, Mac? Fourteen, fifteen months?”

  “Closer to sixteen.”

  “In all that time, we’ve never discussed the M word.”

  “Do you want to discuss it now?”

  “Do you?”

  “You’re the one who brought it up.”

  “We make a terrific couple.”

  “You said that earlier.”

  “But I don’t want to get married.”

  “You don’t want to marry me?”

  “I didn’t say that. I said—I’ve been married. It wasn’t fun. Even now I think about it and my hands begin to tremble. Look.”

  Nina held her hand flat in front of me and it was trembling.

  “I’m not your ex-husband,” I reminded her. “It wouldn’t be the same.”

  “I know but—Listen, you don’t want to get married, either.”

  “I don’t?”

  “No. I don’t need to be married. I’ve been married and I learned the hard way that I can be happy without a ring on my finger. You’re the same way.”

  “I am?”

  “Most men, they need to be married. They need someone to take care of them. When they’re kids, they have their mothers. When they get older, they find wives. That’s why when a man and women get divorced, the man usually remarries within a year or something like that. It’s because they can’t be alone. They can’t take care of themselves. My ex-husband—Well, enough about that. But you, McKenzie. Your mother died when you were very young, so you and your dad, you guys took care of yourselves and did a pretty nice job of it, too, if you ask me. You’re the best cook I know who doesn’t do it for a living. You don’t need to be married.”

  “There’s needing and then there’s needing.”

  “I know. Only we haven’t reached that point yet.”

  “Speak for yourself.”

  “C’mon, McKenzie. Think about it.”

  “I think you don’t want to marry me and now you’re trying to convince me that I not only don’t want to marry you, I don’t want to get married at all.”

  “Do you want to marry me?”

  “I’ve thought about it.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  “You’re starting to annoy me, Nina.”

  “Why can’t you just say it? You don’t want to get married.”

  “I don’t want to get married tonight.”

  “Neither do I. So, we’re both on the same page. What’s the problem?”

  “I might change my mind tomorrow.”

  “If you do, let me know. We’ll work something out.”

  “What happens in the meantime?”

  “Nothing happens in the meantime. We just keep on going the way we have been.”

  This is a good thing, my inner voice told me. You don’t want to get married. The beautiful, intelligent, successful woman you’ve been sleeping with doesn’t want to get married, either. Yet she still wants to sleep with you. Most guys would kill for a relationship like this.

  So why was I angry?

  Despite her protests, I insisted on walking Nina to her door. I stood back while she unlocked it and slipped inside.

  “Come in for a moment while I disarm the security system,” she said.

  A few moments later she returned. She had removed her overcoat and her red velvet dress shimmered in the light behind her.

  “Thank you for coming,” I told her.

  “Thank you for inviting me.”

  I hesitated for a moment.

  “When you played piano, tonight—that was for me, wasn’t it? You were performing for me.”

  “I just wanted to remind you that I was there.”

  “I’m sorry I left you alone for so long.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “I should have been more attentive.”

  “Yes, you should have.”

  Nina stepped forward and kissed me. The kiss was warm and moist and lasted a long time.

  “I should go,” I told her.

  She held open the door and I stepped through it and made my way to the Audi. I had just about reached it when I turned. She was watching from the door. There was considerable distance between us now and she had to shout.

  “I said I didn’t want to get married and I meant it, but . . .”

  “But what?” I shouted back.

  “You’ll never find anyone better for you than I am, Rushmore McKenzie. Never.”

  I lay in my bed a long time yearning for sleep that did not come. My brain was convulsed by too many thoughts and images that made me toss and turn and twist and continually flip my pillow to the cool side. The incident in the skyway. Do the right thing. Wasn’t that a Spike Lee film? The parking lot. There is nowhere you can run that I can’t follow. There is nowhere you can hide that I can’t find you. If that wasn’t a line from a movie, it should be. Jack and Lindsey Barrett, Donovan, Muehlenhaus, and the others. Nina. Maybe I didn’t want to get married, but what the hell! Who could sleep though noise like that?

  Eventually, I gave it up and padded in bare feet down the stairs and into my kitchen. In the freezer compartment of my refrigerator I retrieved a half-filled bottle of Stolichnaya. I poured two fingers of the icy vodka into a short, squat glass and took a sip. It was so cold it made my teeth ache, only, Lordy, it went down nice. I returned the bottle and glanced about. The kitchen appliances on my counter gleamed in the moonlight that filtered through my windows—blender, espresso machine, bread maker, ice cream churn, microwave, pasta maker, George Foreman grill. My sno-cone, mini-donut, and popcorn machines were stored in boxes on my kitchen table—I reminded myself to take them to the Dunstons.

  I took another sip of vodka and drifted to the breakfast nook. I sat at the end of the table, surrounded by eight windows arranged in a semicircle, each window with a view of my backyard. The pond had been frozen over since early December; the ducks that lived there had been gone since late September.

  Nina.

  The first year there had been seven ducks, Tracy and Hepburn and their five ducklings that I named Shelby, Bobby, Victoria, and Katie, after the Dunstons, and Maureen, after my mother. Victoria and Katie returned with their mates the next year and had nine ducklings between them that I named after an assortment of friends. Yet I had never named one after Nina.

  Why not?

  The phone rang before I could answer the question.

  “There is nowhere you can run that I can’t follow,” a voice told me.
“There is nowhere you can hide that I can’t find you.”

  The voice startled me. The malice it conveyed was unmistakable and I had to remind myself that it was merely a voice on the phone. It can’t hurt you. Besides, I had heard it before.

  I turned on the light to read the number in my caller I. D. attachment, but the field was empty.

  “Did you hear me?” the voice asked.

  “There’s nowhere I can run that you can’t follow, there’s nowhere I can hide that you can’t find me. Anything else?”

  The voice hesitated as if it was unsure of itself. “John Barrett must not be allowed to run for the Senate,” it replied in a rush.

  “Okay. Thanks for sharing.”

  A moment later, the connection was severed, leaving me staring at the silent receiver.

  This is what happens when you agree to do favors for old friends.

  4

  The difference between five below zero and five above is mostly in the mind. The odds that your car won’t start are just as slim at either temperature; the likelihood that your water pipes might burst is just as high; the danger of frostbite, of numbing death from exposure, is just as real. Yet there was something joyous in the fact that the Twin Cities had finally crept into positive digits. I could see it in the robust gait of pedestrians who no longer felt as anxious over the climate as they had the day before and I could hear it in the voices of the customers at the Dunn Brothers coffeehouse where I had stopped for a mocha. It made me glad to be about with a job to do and a heart for any fate, as the poet once wrote. I didn’t even mind that the early morning rush hour traffic had forced me to rein in the 225 horses beneath the hood of my Audi as I made my way to Merriam Park. For once the prevailing traffic laws seemed perfectly reasonable to me.

  I had moved to the suburbs. It was an accident. I thought I was buying a home in the St. Anthony Park neighborhood of St. Paul, but after making an offer I discovered I was on the wrong side of the street, that I had actually moved to Falcon Heights, though I won’t admit it to anyone but my closest friends. Bobby Dunston, you couldn’t get out of the city, not with a crowbar. He purchased his parents’ home after they retired and was now raising his children in the house where he was raised directly across the street from Merriam Park, where he and I played baseball and hockey and discovered girls.