Vows, Vendettas And A Little Black Dress
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Dena raised her eyebrows. “So what you’re saying is you had another argument earlier today.”
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I was getting off course. “Anatoly and I love each other and we’ll work it all out. But as for marriage…it just isn’t our thing. You’re different, Mary Ann. You were meant to be a bride with a killer dress and all the rest of it. Don’t you think, Dena?”
Dena took Tinker Bell into her hand and ran her finger over each of her curves and angles as if searching for some clue to her magic. “It took me thirty-three years to find the willpower to limit myself to two men,” Dena said slowly. “And there are days and nights…lots of nights, when I wonder if I’m going to be able to keep it up without throwing some new guy into the mix. So marriage…” She sighed and cast a dubious glance at Shamu. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to fully wrap my mind around why so many people think it’s so friggin’ fantastic. But if it’s what you really want—”
“More than anything,” whispered Mary Ann.
“Well, that’s something I can celebrate, a woman getting what she wants. Particularly if that woman is you.”
“Have I ever told you that you’re the best?”
Dena smiled. “Not even once. Can we drink now?”
Mary Ann bounced up and down on her toes as if she was preparing to jump off a diving board. “I have a bottle of champagne chilling in the fridge.”
“I’m on it.” I went into the kitchen and quickly found the bottle and within minutes we were standing around Shamu with our champagne flutes raised high.
“Cheers to Mary Ann,” Dena said. “May your marriage be…highly sexual in nature. I’m serious, Mary Ann. Don’t turn into one of those weirdos who would rather watch American Idol than play ride the orca with your husband.”
“I’ll try not to,” Mary Ann said solemnly.
We drank and then I raised my glass again. “My turn. This is to all of us. Three strong women who know how to make our very different dreams come true.”
Both Dena and Mary Ann broke into huge grins and our glasses came together in one clear clink.
We spent the next hour listening to exactly how Monty had popped the question. We marveled that he had taken the trouble of flying to Palm Springs in order to get her father’s blessing. We laughed at how Mary Ann’s blue-collar, pragmatic father must have reacted to Monty, who had undoubtedly described his love for Mary Ann with all the flourish of a sommelier describing the floral notes of a wine. A few days later, when Mary Ann had been at a hotel dusting color on the pale face of a bride, Monty used the key she’d given him to slip inside her apartment and place a gift in almost every room. When she got home he acted as her guide, leading her to one whimsical treasure after another. The last present had been placed in her bedroom. Mary Ann recalled sitting on the edge of her bed, unwrapping the Tinker Bell figurine, her shoulders hunched over as she carefully peeled the tape away from the metallic silver paper. She had been totally mindless of Monty, who had knelt on the floor beside her…until she found the ruby of course. It was then that she realized that Monty wasn’t just kneeling; he was on bended knee.
Eventually I excused myself to the bathroom and Mary Ann went to her room where she was going to retrieve the bridal magazines she had already begun to collect. Dena stayed in the living room hoping that another glass of champagne would help make the pages of flouncy white gowns and ruffled bridesmaid dresses more tolerable.
I was washing my hands when I heard…something. A high-pitched pinging sound followed by something falling. It was heavier than the thud of a dropped book and much more substantial than the sound of a broken glass. I couldn’t even begin to think of what it was that had hit the floor, but for reasons I couldn’t begin to explain the sound of its fall had frightened me…and not just a little bit.
I opened the bathroom door at the same time Mary Ann stepped into the hall, balancing what looked to be twenty or so magazines in her arms. She looked at me questioningly. “Did you hear that?”
I nodded and looked toward the living room. “Dena?” I called out. “Everything okay?”
Mary Ann and I both waited for a response. The only sound was the rush of the heater coming on.
And all of a sudden something shifted. It wasn’t tangible and I couldn’t put a name to it but somehow the consistency of the air changed. It took on weight and it rushed down my throat and pressed anxiety into my lungs. Something was wrong.
Mary Ann dropped the magazines and I was at her heels as we raced out into the living room.
Dena was on the floor. One hand was grasping the corner of Mary Ann’s basket weave rug.
Both of us lunged to Dena’s side.
“Dena?” Mary Ann cried. “Dena, what happened to your back?”
My eyes immediately zeroed in on the small but growing circle of blood underneath her shoulder blade.
“What?” Dena managed, her eyes moving back and forth between us. “What?”
I had seen that kind of wound before. Not there, not in the back…but I had seen the wound. I had seen it in the chest of an attacker…right after I shot him. My eyes jerked up toward the front door. It was open.
“Don’t move!” I demanded in a hoarse whisper as I carefully scanned the room. There were no heavy curtains to hide behind. But the kitchen…could he still be in the kitchen?
“I can’t,” Dena whispered back. “I can’t move…my legs are cold! Sophie, why can’t I move my legs!”
And with those words the air grew even heavier. I heard myself make some kind of strangled cry but that was all I could manage. It hurt to breathe. I choked back my rising panic as my eyes darted around the room in search of something that would work as a weapon. There was a heavy vase, a letter opener, perhaps the poker by the fireplace…
But what good would any of those things be against a gun?
Our best bet was a quick response from 9-1-1. Mary Ann didn’t have a landline, only a cell.
“Dena, where’s your BlackBerry?” I forced myself to ask.
“In…my bag.”
“And yours?” I said, glancing at Mary Ann.
Her eyes went over to her own purse. All of our cell phones were in our handbags and our handbags were on the chair nearest the kitchen.
From my place on the floor I raised myself to a low crouch and went for the poker.
“Dena, please tell me what happened!” I heard Mary Ann say.
“Apply pressure to the wound,” I said urgently as I moved toward the kitchen. “And stay down.”
Mary Ann asked a question…or maybe she just whimpered, I couldn’t tell. My ears were clogged with the ringing sound of my own fear.
In one move I grabbed my handbag, threw it in Mary Ann’s direction and jumped around the corner swinging the poker wildly in hopes of knocking someone over before they had a chance to pull a trigger.
But the room was empty. We were alone after all.
And the shooter had gotten away.
I turned to see Mary Ann pressing buttons on my cell. Her fair skin was even whiter than normal.
And the circle of blood continued to grow.
CHAPTER 2
Too frequently grief is nothing more than a pathway to anger.
–Fatally Yours
Sunday, May 6th, 9:00 p.m.
I have never hated the police as much as I did that night. Yes, there were questions to answer but they should have been asked in the ambulance. They shouldn’t have kept me away from my best friend. And Mary Ann…her screams had started less than a minute after she had gotten through to 9-1-1. And they kept coming. Mary Ann’s screams became a continuous soundtrack to the horror movie I was living in.
But what really scared me was Dena’s silence. She had to feel pain. The blood coming from under her shoulder blade was proof of that. But after her first few panicked whispers she had become deadly quiet, only opening her mouth long enough to answer the urgent questions of the paramedics.
And then they took her away and I was left with police questions that I had no answer to and Mary Ann’s ceaseless screams.
I needed to get to Dena. But it was Anatoly who got to her first. When he called to smooth over our latest quarrel I told him what had happened. He wanted to come to Mary Ann’s apartment and stand by my side while I answered the impossible questions, but I didn’t let him. I told him to go to the hospital and to tell the doctors that they had to fix her.
That they had to make her talk again.
That they had to bring the warmth back to her legs.
When Anatoly told me that he didn’t have any control over those things, I started screaming, too. He stopped protesting after that and went to the hospital. The next to call was Monty. I didn’t hear his part of the conversation but he somehow managed to quiet Mary Ann’s cries to gulping sobs.
And the police kept asking questions. When exactly did we hear the pinging noise? Did we hear footsteps? Was the door locked before the intruder came in or had we forgotten to lock it? Did we know of anyone who wanted to hurt Dena or anyone else in the room? I didn’t have answers. I didn’t even really have thoughts. I just had a need to get to my friend.
The clock told me that the police kept us for just over an hour but I was sure that God had somehow squeezed a year into that hour, and when I finally got Mary Ann into my car it was everything I could do to keep myself from running every red light as we zoomed toward USF Medical Center.
And when we arrived everyone was there. Anatoly had called each member of my nonbiological family…Dena’s family. Her boyfriend, Jason, had just finished doing three laps in the JCC pool when he heard his phone ringing by his towel. Dena’s other boyfriend, Kim, was backpacking across Nicaragua with Amelia. They couldn’t be reached. But Marcus was easy to find. He had been on his way to Napa for a short spa getaway. He had been singing along to Madonna when Anatoly brought him into the chaos.
No one spoke when Mary Ann and I entered that waiting room. Anatoly just looked at me and slowly pulled his hands out of the pockets of his motorcycle jacket and I fell against him. Nothing could make me feel better, but at least I knew he would hold me up.
“She’s in surgery,” he said, his voice low, his slight Russian accent much more soothing than his words. From the corner of my eye I could see Marcus turning away. “They said the bullet hit her spinal vertebral casing, the bony spinal column, and pushed a fragment of bone into her spinal cord.”
“What does that mean?” I asked. The fluorescent lights were too bright and bringing unwanted attention to the ugly pattern on the gray carpet and the cheaply upholstered red chairs. Mary Ann was now sitting by Monty’s side. He was just kissing her hair as she cried.
“It means,” Anatoly explained, “that she’s going to live. They have the head of neurology working on her and we’re in one of the top hospitals in the country.”
“So she’s going to be okay? Her legs are going to work and everything?” I asked.
Anatoly pulled away slightly, his brown eyes held me as if trying to steady me for the impact of a shot of bitter realism. “It means,” he said slowly, “that she has the best chance possible. It means we have the right to be optimistic.”
“But not certain,” I said angrily.
“Sophie, there is no such thing as certainty. It’s as fictional as human perfection.”
Marcus put a hand to his stomach and dropped his People magazine onto one of the dusty brown side tables. “I do believe I’ll be throwing up now.” And with that he quickly exited the room.
Jason burst into laughter. It had a dark, hysterical quality to it and I saw Mary Ann instinctively pull closer to Monty.
“All this time I thought I was jaded and fucking cynical,” he gasped. “I thought I saw through all the phony middle-class idealism. I thought I understood brutality!”
I studied him quietly from my place in Anatoly’s arms. Jason’s jeans were torn and his T-shirt depicted a pre-World War II campy B-movie poster with the words Assassin of Youth printed in bold white letters. The slightly smaller print and pictures made it clear that the phrase was a reference to the dangers of marijuana (which Jason wore sardonically) but still the words made me cringe.
“But now I know I was as delusional as any of the fucking suburbanites I condescend to.” He wasn’t laughing anymore. He looked frightened. Maybe even terrified. “I thought…I thought…”
“What did you think?” Mary Ann asked, her voice hoarse.
“I thought this couldn’t happen. I thought some things just didn’t happen. I’m not cynical at all. I’m fucking naive. Even now I can’t accept this. I don’t understand brutality at all!”
Mary Ann pulled away from Monty and offered Jason a shaky hand. “We have to pray.”
“I don’t believe in God,” Jason choked out.
There was a moment of quiet as we all paused to take inventory of our own personal beliefs.
“I believe in God,” Anatoly said slowly, “but not divine intervention. I’ve seen too many good people suffer to believe in that.”
“So what do we do?” The note of desperation in Jason’s voice was harsh and unsettling. “Shit, I always thought my atheism was so fucking liberating but now…who do I pray to? Who can I rail against? What am I supposed to do?”
“What you do,” Anatoly said thoughtfully, “is believe in Dena.”
“Yes,” Monty said, finally joining in the conversation. “Like Tinker Bell.”
Jason did a quick double take. “What?”
Monty drew himself to his full height. He had the black hair and coloring of his Mexican father, the delicate, almost aristocratic features of his French Canadian mother and the blindingly bright, optimistic energy that could only be cultivated in America. “We all remember Peter Pan, don’t we?” he asked. “Tinker Bell came back to life because those who loved her believed in her.”
“Dena,” Jason said between clenched teeth, “is not some kind of insipid, weak-ass little fairy! Dena is…”
“A fighter,” Monty finished. “Tinker Bell drank poison to protect Peter Pan and then right before collapsing she called him an ass for not taking care of himself. That’s not Dena?”
Jason hesitated a moment before looking away. “I didn’t realize that Tink was so cool.”
“Well, she is,” Monty said determinedly. “And Dena’s cooler and I do believe in her so…” He raised his hands in the air and clapped.
Anatoly’s grip tightened around my waist as he saw my hands clench into fists. “You are not seriously clapping because you believe in fairies!” I hissed. “Not while a team of people are working on my best friend’s spine in the next friggin’ room!”
“I believe that the magic of positive thinking can help,” he said as his open palms continued to slam into each other. “At least it can’t hurt.”
Jason shook his head like a wet dog and walked to the other side of the room. “This is insane.”
“Exactly!” I said, finally pulling away from Anatoly.
“If only I was a vampire,” Jason moaned. “Then I could give her the gift of eternal life.”
I closed my eyes and counted to ten. Dena didn’t like normal guys. She liked kindhearted freaks like Jason. For her sake I had to suppress the urge to whack him upside the head.
“Monty,” Mary Ann said softly, quieting his hands by taking them into hers. “I love Tinker Bell, too, but right now I need someone to pray with me.”
Monty sighed in what sounded like mild disappointment and kissed Mary Ann on the forehead. “Of course I’ll pray with you, sweetie. It’s just that Tink is so much less complicated than God. I thought it would be easier to appeal to her spirit than that of the Holy Ghost.”
I sat down on one of the unsightly chairs. “I’ll pray with you, Mary Ann.”
Mary Ann whispered her words of entreaty to God, each one coming out with more force and urgency. And then, when she could think of nothing else to say she whispered, “Amen,” and leaned her full weight against Monty. “I have to call her parents.”
I looked up at the ceiling and tried to imagine how this call was going to go. Dena’s parents had retired to Arizona almost ten years ago. They were both very active in their church. Dena’s mother, Isa, was once a nurse practitioner but now toured the high schools and various junior colleges in her personal mission to preach abstinence for unmarried people. And Dena owned a sex shop. It was unclear if Dena’s need to make a career out of the oddities of human sexuality was an act of rebellion or if Dena’s parents’ escalating crusade against immorality was a reaction to their daughter’s eccentricities. Either way it made for a contentious relationship.
But still, Dena was their daughter. They had the right to a phone call.
Mary Ann took her cell phone out of her purse and stared at it for a beat. “I think I’m going to take this outside. I’m going to need the fresh air.”
“I’ll come with you,” Monty said, wrapping his coat over her shoulders and leading her out of the room.
Anatoly sat down beside me. “Sophie, can you tell me exactly what happened?”
I shook my head. “God, I wish I could but I don’t really know. Everything was fine. We were all fine and then Mary Ann went in her room for a few minutes to get something and I went to the bathroom. There was a sort of a high pinging noise I think…I can’t even be sure of that, it happened so fast and it wasn’t very loud…then there was the sound of Dena falling….” I shook my head fiercely. I couldn’t repeat it again. The words were like small fish bones scratching against my throat.
“Yes, you told me that much over the phone,” Anatoly said. “Whoever shot her must have used a silencer. Do you need a key to get into the building or just the apartment?”
“Both the building and the apartment…but I guess it’s possible that we didn’t lock the apartment door. Mary Ann was kind of distracted…. Did I tell you that she just got engaged to Monty?” It seemed like such a stupid thing to say, so totally out of place with what was going on at that moment.
Anatoly only gave a nod of acknowledgment and pressed his hand against my knee. “Dena was shot in the back so I’m assuming she was facing away from the door, right?”
I shrugged. It was one of the million things I didn’t know.
“Is there any chance that it came through a window?”
“I would have heard the glass shatter.”
Anatoly shook his head. “One bullet wouldn’t break a window, just make a hole in it, and you probably wouldn’t have heard it.”
I tried to think. Had the police looked at the windows? The windows facing the street couldn’t be opened so the shot would have gone through the glass. Plus we had been on the third floor, so the shooter would have been in the building across the street.
But most importantly, the door had been open when I found Dena. Someone had opened the door, stepped into Mary Ann’s living room and with one tiny move of their finger shattered my world.
“It came from the doorway,” I said definitively. “I’m sure of it.”
Jason scanned the beige windowless walls. “Whoever did this isn’t going to get away with it. The police are going to catch this fucker and put him away.”
I sucked in a sharp breath. Jason had considerably more faith in the police than I did, which was surprising since he was the one who claimed to be an anarchist.
But if Jason saw the irony of his statement he made no indication of it. I watched him as he ran his hands through his hair and then used his jeans to dry them. “I’m going to get some water. Anyone else want water?”
Both Anatoly and I shook our heads so Jason just left the room, leaving us alone.
I shifted in my seat so I could look Anatoly in the eyes. “You know,” I said slowly, “I can’t just sit on my ass and pray that the police make this case a priority.”
“Sophie, I’m going to look into this and find out what I can, but Jason’s right. The police are likely to catch this guy and make an arrest.”
“We don’t know that. And besides I want to find him first. I want him to try to hurt me. I want him to give me an excuse to give him what he really deserves.”
“You do understand that you can’t hunt down and kill the person who did this?” Anatoly asked.
I didn’t answer right away. I turned away from him and took a fresh look at the room. Why were we the only ones in the waiting room? Was Dena really the only person with loved ones to get hurt tonight?
Then again, the room wasn’t really empty. My anger was making good use of the space. It was seeping out of every pore, crawling up the walls, its vengeful energy mingled with the hum of the florescent lights. My anger owned that room.
In fact, it was taking up way too much space to make room for Anatoly’s logic. “Prison,” I said stiffly, “isn’t enough. This SOB shot Dena in the back! He could have killed her! Or ruined her life!”
“Sophie, have you ever visited a maximum security prison? That ruins people’s lives. And considering the crime the shooter isn’t going to get away with a couple of years. Even if this is his first offence he’s still looking at ten years minimum.”
“Ten years?” I whispered. And then, as if propelled by an outside force I shot out of my seat, my feet pounding into the thin gray carpet. “You think ten years are going to make up for this? Ten years can go by like that!” I snapped my fingers in his face. “Hell, I was graduating high school ten years ago and it feels like yesterday!”
“Sophie, you graduated high school over ten years—”
“Shut up! My alternative-reality high school will always be ten years ago. Don’t think you’re going to trick me into acknowledging my age just because I’m flipped out over what happened to my friend!”
“I see,” Anatoly said slowly. “Then, by your reasoning, ten years is an eternity.”
I hesitated and felt my lips coming close to what could have been considered a smile. “She’s my best friend, Anatoly,” I said, a slight quiver returning to my voice.
“I know.” He stood up and took my face in his hands. Anatoly had wonderful hands, big, strong, and a little rough. I wanted those hands to hold me. I wanted them to rub up and down my back over and over again until my shivers finally went away.
And then I wanted those hands to crush the shooter’s skull.
“You want me to help you find this guy, am I right?”
I nodded.
“Fine. We’ll find him together. And when we do I will investigate every moment of his life. I’ll make sure the police not only have evidence enough to convict him of this crime but any other crime he’s even thought of doing since he reached adulthood. I’ll give the D.A. what they need to put this guy away for as long as possible, but that’s it, Sophie. There isn’t going to be any vigilante justice.”
“But you will help me find out who did this and catch him, right?” I pressed. “We’re not just going to leave this up to the police?”
“Yes, but I want to hear you say it, Sophie.”
“Say what?”
“You know what.”
“Nope,” I said, casually looking down at my gladiator sandals. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“No vigilante justice, Sophie.”
“You know, Robin Hood was a vigilante and everybody loves him.”
“Robin Hood was a communist.”
“Not in the Disney version of the story. Ask Monty, he’ll tell you.”
Anatoly tightened his grip on my hands. “Sophie. Will you just promise not to kill anyone?”
“I promise not to kill anyone…unless they try to kill me first.”
“Everybody tries to kill you.”
“Well, that’s not my fault, is it?”
Anatoly groaned and turned away from me.
I hesitated a moment and then sighed and rested my head against the back of his neck. “I’m not going to do anything illegal…at least not anything that’s likely to get me thrown in jail for more than a couple weeks.”
Anatoly groaned again but I remained undeterred. “I know my being put away won’t do anyone any good, least of all Dena. If you promise to help me find out who did this then I promise to…well, to behave as well as I normally do.”