Chapter Thirty-Eight
When she made her way back through the narrow alleyway and onto Queen Street, there was someone waiting for her.
“So, this is where it all happened, huh?”
Anton Felski stood on the sidewalk, his ear muffs clamped to his skull. He put his hands on his hips and framed his swollen belly. “Ol’ Dodge braved the flames and rescued a handful of junkies.” He shook his head. “Too bad about that little boy, though. Guess you can’t win ’em all …”
Dame’s head started to pulse again. “Why are you still following me?”
“How about this” — he put a cigarette in his mouth and tried to light it, but the green Bic only sputtered and sparked — “you tell me all of your secrets and I’ll tell you mine.”
“Forget it, Felski.”
“Look, I just thought I’d stop and be collegial. See what kind of luck you and Dodge had with that domestic.”
The pulse started to pound. “That’s none of your business.”
“Well see, it was my business, until you stole it from me.” Felski finally got his cigarette lit. “Come to think of it, you’re getting pretty good at stealing things, aren’t you, Dame?”
Her head dull-thudded like a drum. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I think you know exactly what I’m talking about.” Felski took a step toward her. “And I think that, maybe this time, you’ve bitten off a little more than you can chew. So as a professional courtesy, I’m going to make a suggestion.”
“Can’t wait to hear it.”
“Walk away, Dame. Walk away from all of this.”
Dame shook her head. “You know, I’ve been hearing that a lot, lately.”
“It’s good advice.”
“You know what Dodge used to say when someone told him to walk away?”
“No. What did the Great Dodge Polara say when someone told him to walk away?”
“He knew he was getting close.”
“Sounds like something he’d say.” Felski sighed. “The truth is though, Dame, some people just don’t know what’s good for them” — he conjured a loogie in his throat and spat it on the ground between them — “even when it hits them right over the head.”
He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Speaking of which, send my regards to your friend Lewis. I heard he had a little accident.”
Dame’s fingers curled into fists.
“Sounds like maybe you and your pals need to be more careful.” Felski turned and made his way down the sidewalk.
By the time Dame got home, all she wanted to do was lock the door, crawl under the covers, and go to sleep. But when she walked into her little kitchen, she realized she wasn’t alone.
“Where have you been?” Ray was sitting at her kitchen table, drinking her El Silencio.
“Jesus Christ.” Dame switched on the light. “Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”
Ray stood up and steadied himself against the chair. His long hair was dishevelled and he was drunk. “You leave me a message saying you’ve got ‘something’ and then you don’t answer any of my calls?”
“I got robbed, Ray.” Dame swung a gesture around the room. “My friend was assaulted. Does any of that ring a bell? The cops may have mentioned it, you being the landlord and all.”
“I don’t —” Ray swatted at the air between them. “I don’t care about all that. Just tell me what’s going on. Tell me the truth.”
Dame took a glass out of the cupboard and emptied the rest of the bottle into it.
“You want to know the truth, Ray? The truth is, I don’t have any evidence that your wife is cheating on you.”
He stared at her, uncomprehending.
“The truth is, she’s not cheating on you.” She took a slug of the mezcal. “Not the way you think, anyway.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you don’t know who your wife is, Ray. You never did.”
“You’re full of shit.” He took a step backward. “Your father didn’t have anything to do with this case, did he?”
Dame shook her head.
“You’re even worse than Anton Felski, you know that?”
Ray stumbled out of the kitchen. She heard him zip up his coat in the front entrance. “Deal’s off,” he said. “I’m not paying you another dime. And you’ve got forty-eight days left to vacate the premises. Feel free to consult your precious Landlord-Tenant Act.”
Dame expected to hear the door slam, but true to form, Ray didn’t even bother to close it. She waited for a minute and then gently pushed it shut herself. In the silence that followed her landlord’s departure, she felt an unexpected finality. For a moment, she was reminded of her last argument with Adam before they split for good. There had been other arguments, times when she screamed and wept and threw things, but this one had been quiet and cold. A polite disagreement between two people completely resigned to their own separate fates. She couldn’t even remember what they argued about.
Dame walked back into her ruined kitchen and sighed, knowing full well she’d never be able to sleep surrounded by this kind of chaos. She dug a broom out of the closet and got down to it. She hung up the shirts that sprawled on her bedroom floor like chalk outlines. She threw out the trampled papers, the broken picture frames, the crushed lampshade. When she got as far as the back porch, the little room was freezing, and the floor was carpeted with the contents of boxes she’d been too afraid to open. The prospect of reorganizing all those ancient artifacts was exhausting. Dame picked up the white leather wedding album and then dropped it back onto the pile. The hell with it.
She grabbed garbage bags from under her sink and started stuffing them full. The wedding mementos went first — photographs, invitation mock-ups, the tiny idiots who once stood together on top of that mountainous cake — gone. The Adam ephemera was next — postcards, movie tickets, the little notes he’d written her when they were first together — also gone. And then there was the baby stuff. Ovulation charts. What to Expect When You’re Expecting. Her first positive pregnancy test. She hesitated for a moment. Then, it too was gone.
She managed to shove the whole of it into six garbage bags. A bag for every year she’d spent with Adam. More bags than would fit into the bins outside, but fuck that, too. The raccoons could have their way with it for all she cared.
First comes love, then comes marriage — the grotesque nursery rhyme squirmed in her brain.
Standing there, staring at the trash heap of her former life, she knew she was done with it all. And not just Adam and Rachel. She was done with the West End Fertility Clinic. Done with needles and cold metal tools inside her body. Done with the endless waiting room her world had somehow become.
When she came back inside, Dame saw the copy of Wuthering Heights she’d left on top of her bookshelf. She grabbed it and started to take it to the trash as well, but something made her stop. Instead, she flipped to the back page and pulled the library card out of its little pocket. Aki’s signature was the slow, careful work of a child, and Dame understood that whatever this book had once meant, it wasn’t her place to throw it away.
Dame sat down on a blanket in the empty spare room and opened the novel to its first chapter. She laughed a little when she realized it was a story about a bad landlord.