Mystery Man

  “I’m here,” I said quietly, “and I’ll do you that favor.”

  “Thanks, Sweet Pea,” he said quietly back.

  “My girlfriends are coming over later, is that cool with you?” I asked.

  “Yeah, babe.”

  “Elvira has decided she’s my girlfriend,” I shared.

  “No surprise,” he replied.

  “Do you need to get reoccupied?” I asked even though he wasn’t giving me an impatient or preoccupied vibe but I was guessing if he was forwarding his calls, he did it because he was in the middle of something important that required his full attention.

  Attention he shifted for me.

  Shit.

  “Yeah,” he answered.

  “Okay, I’ll let you go.”

  “Later, babe.”

  “Later, Hawk.”

  Dead air.

  I flipped my phone shut and gazed unfocused into his lair.

  Then I flipped my phone open again and called information to get the number for my insurance agent because I needed to report my drive-by.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Queen of Crash and Burn

  “Ohmigod! This place is so cool!” This was Tracy, who was sashaying into the warehouse looking around like she just hit the candy garden with chocolate stream at Willy Wonka’s. Her eyes caught site of Elvira who was in the kitchen. “Hey girl! What’s up?”

  “Job satisfaction, beanpole, what’s up with you,” Elvira replied on a huge smile thus taking the sting out of her nickname for Tracy (I hoped).

  If Cam was yin to Tracy’s yang, Elvira was yang to all of our yins. She had to be no more than five foot four. She was round. Her skin was smooth, perfect mocha. Her hair was cropped at the back and sides but there was a thick, heavy bang at the front with blonde streaks in it. And she was so far from wearing commando gear it wasn’t funny. If Hawk’s dress code allowed Elvira’s outfit, I wanted a job there. Short, mustard yellow sweater dress, off the shoulder neckline and thigh-high, spike-heeled, fire engine red suede boots.

  Elvira was in the kitchen creating what she declared were “boards” except she was creating them on Hawk’s big, square, midnight blue plates. She was doing this because she came into the warehouse laden with bags from Crate and Barrel and Fresh and Wild, places, she informed me, she took off work early so she could pay a visit. These bags contained brand new martini glasses (a set of four, long stemmed, ultra sleek), a martini shaker, a mammoth wedge of brie, a French baton, grapes, apples, assorted olives, gherkins, red onion marmalade, assorted crackers, assorted chocolates and an enormous chunk of pâté.

  Oh, and she brought the ingredients for cosmopolitans.

  She had me at the martini glasses. The rest of it made me declare my undying love for her and I told her she’d officially been accepted into my girl posse.

  No joke.

  When I did this, Elvira just laughed and I figured she just laughed because she already thought she was in my girl posse or intended to be.

  “Good God, this is where he lives?” Cam asked, wandering in behind Tracy, also looking around with surprise and a small but unguarded hint of wonder.

  “He likes space,” I answered.

  “He’d have to,” Cam replied.

  “Who’re you?” Elvira demanded to know, eyeing up Cam and Cam looked at her.

  “Gwen’s best friend,” Cam answered.

  Tracy had made it to the bar and she leaned both forearms into it, saying to Elvira, “We share that title.”

  Elvira looked over her shoulder at me where I was positioning myself at the back counter.

  “If that’s true, girl, you better make up your mind ‘cause you can’t have two maids of honor. I got a friend, she tried that shit, did her head in. Those two competed for everything. Sure, first it seems all good, two bridal showers, two bachelorette parties, two women bent on givin’ you your every whim. But that shit turns nasty. They all ended up fightin’ and by the big day, no one was talkin’ to anyone else. It was a disaster. I had to step in and the dress didn’t fit. They had to lace the fucker together with a shoestring at the back. You can’t walk down an aisle and hide a shoestring. So I scooted in from the side. Looked funny. I don’t like lookin’ funny. Now I don’t talk to her either but it ain’t because of the shoestring. It’s because she works my last nerve. She always did but I guess I’m just too nice, that is, until I don’t feel like bein’ nice no more.”

  I was stuck back on “you can’t have two maids of honor” and therefore fighting back hyperventilation at the same time flashing pictures filled my head of a commando-style wedding; Hawk in black cargos, me in a white flak jacket festooned with lace. The picture of me carrying a bouquet of flowers and Hawk carrying an automatic weapon. The picture of me admiring Hawk’s huge-ass hunting knife. The picture of Hawk carrying me out of the reception in a fireman’s hold while bullets flew and flames caused by Molotov cocktails danced on the dance floor.

  Tracy was stuck on it too, her flashing pictures way, way different than mine, and therefore she clapped and shrieked, “There it is! Elvira’s the insider and she says this is going somewhere!”

  “Oh God, I don’t even have my ass on a stool and I already seriously need a cosmo,” Cam muttered.

  “Well get yo’ ass back here and man the shaker, girl,” Elvira said to Cam and then looked at Tracy. “As for goin’ somewhere, I don’t know if Hawk’s the marryin’ kind and, you asked me a week ago, I would have said, ‘hell no’ but a week ago he also wasn’t the shoe-buyin’ kind so right now, my guess is, anything goes.”

  “Cam, hurry, cosmo,” I whispered.

  “I gotcha covered, babe,” Cam muttered.

  “Well, I see good things but I always saw good things,” Tracy declared, hitching her ass up on a stool and leaning forward to grab an olive off Elvira’s board.

  The breadknife Elvira was using clattered to the counter and Tracy bought her hand a quick, sharp slap.

  “I’m not done,” Elvira declared when Tracy snatched her hand back and held it with her other one, staring at Elvira in shock. “It’s about presentation. Don’t mess with my presentation.”

  “Okay,” Tracy whispered, her eyes sliding to me, I pressed my lips together and Elvira went back to work and, scarily, she also went back to talking.

  “Boys at the base, not big on gossip, it’s frowned on, doin’ anything too girlie or sissy, and I say frowned on in the sense that, you do that shit, you court bein’ water boarded.”

  Holy crap!

  Elvira went on. “They might share whose ass they’ve tagged but that’s pretty much it. Worst part of the job. Who ever heard of a job where there’s no gossip? But I can tell you this,” she turned to me and jabbed the breadknife in my direction, “you been an object of fascination for a good long while.”

  Oh shit.

  Elvira went back to her bread. “No talk. No whispers. Hawk would freakin’ go psycho badass on their ass and Hawk’s badass enough, goin’ psycho, no one wants to go there. But that don’t mean looks weren’t exchanged and a look sometimes says it all.”

  In order to steady my breathing, I looked to Cam who was the steadiest person I knew. Cam was coming back to the counter with a shaker full of ice and she was biting her lip.

  Oh shit.

  “Cam?” I called.

  She stopped biting her lip but kept her eyes to the martini shaker when she replied, “Yeah, babe?”

  “Do you have something to say?” I asked.

  “Sho’ she does,” Elvira put in. “I heard the reports. I know the names of your girls. Camille. She works dispatch. Dispatch is at the Station. Cops, they don’t mind gossipin’ so she knows the shit went down today.”

  I was leaning against the back counter but at this, I moved to the horseshoe, positioning myself beside Elvira to get a closer look at Cam.

  “What shit went down today?” I asked.

  “You didn’t tell me about any shit in the car,” Tracy put in, her eyes on Cam
.

  Camille poured vodka but Camille did not speak.

  “Cam,” I prompted.

  Cam put down the bottle of vodka and looked at me.

  Then she declared, “I don’t want to like him.”

  I felt a flutter in my belly.

  Elvira reared back, her eyebrows shooting up. “Why not?”

  “He’s…” she trailed off and reached for the cranberry juice.

  “Cam,” I repeated.

  She put down the cranberry juice and looked at me. “Okay, well, Leo called, told me what happened. He told me what happened right after it happened because he was there. In fact, he couldn’t wait to call.”

  “What happened?” Tracy asked.

  “Hawk Delgado went psycho badass, that’s what happened,” Elvira answered.

  “He what?” I whispered.

  Cam nodded. “On Jerry Travers.”

  “Who’s Jerry Travers?” Tracy asked.

  Cam looked at her. “As far as Cabe Delgado could trace it, he’s the guy who started the shit about Gwen being filler.”

  Oh boy, I said in my head but in my belly there was another flutter.

  “Oh boy,” Tracy whispered out loud.

  “Oh boy is right,” Elvira confirmed.

  “What happened?” I asked Camille.

  “Well, Leo says Delgado isn’t stupid enough to walk into a police station and assault a police officer. That doesn’t mean he couldn’t make his displeasure clear and he did, crystal, and he did this public.”

  “I love this,” Tracy breathed. “How did it go down?”

  “Leo says he got in his space, got in his face and tore him a new one right in front of everyone,” Cam answered and my belly graduated from flutter and started getting squishy. “And that new one he tore him is wide and gaping. Everyone’s talking about it.”

  “Really?” Tracy whispered.

  Cam nodded then looked at me and her expression was embattled. She didn’t know what to make of this. “Leo was overjoyed. He even used that word, overjoyed. That man has never used the word overjoyed. Firstly, he’s not a big fan of Jerry Travers because Jerry Travers talks trash about you and because he’s an ass. I know Jerry. This is true. He is an ass and he didn’t say that shit to me because he knows we’re tight. I just know he’s an ass. Secondly, Leo thinks you’re the shit, you know that, girl, and Delgado walkin’ in there to lay down the law about trash-talkin’ you, well, he thought that was a little bit of all right.”

  I thought it was a little bit of all right too.

  I looked down at the boards.

  “Hurry, Elvira, if you don’t, I’m breaking out the cookie dough,” I told her.

  “Cookie dough is for heartbreak and sister trouble, why would you break out the cookie dough?” Tracy asked.

  “Cookie dough has many functions. It isn’t just for heartbreak and sister trouble. It’s also for when you’re freaking out about your love life,” I replied.

  “I’ll tell you this,” Elvira announced, fanning out little slices of French baton on the plate next to fanned out little slices of apple all surrounding a gleaming, clean bunch of succulent grapes in the middle, “Hawk put me on radar, watched my every move for a year and a half and activated the troops when I caught trouble, there’d be no cookie dough in sight. I’d be on my knees next to the bed prayin’ to the good Lord, thankin’ him ‘cause he heard my words. Then I’d put on my little teddy, the purple one, looks good against my skin, and I’d get in bed and count down the minutes until he got home.”

  “I wear nightshirts to bed,” I informed her. “Though, I do have a sexy caftan.”

  Elvira twisted her neck to look at me. “Saw that caftan, hon, in your laundry. It was pretty nice. But Hawk strikes me as a satin and lace man.”

  Hmm. It appeared Elvira was thorough when she went through my stuff to pack my bags.

  “Is he a satin and lace man?” Tracy asked.

  “No, he’s a take it as it comes man,” I answered. Or, more accurately, take it off because it’s in the way man.

  Elvira grinned huge. “Mm hmm.”

  I looked at Cam. “Camille. Cosmo.”

  Cam lifted the stainless steel pitcher and started shaking.

  “All right, I’m just gonna say things might have started out a bit slow,” Trace began with a screaming understatement, “but sometimes it takes men a little while, you know, to understand they want commitment.”

  “Tell me about it,” Camille muttered, yanked off the top of the martini shaker and started pouring.

  I bit the side of my lip and slid my eyes to Tracy.

  Then I said, “Leo’s committed to you.”

  “Unh-hunh,” Cam kept pouring.

  “He totally loves you,” Tracy put in.

  “Mm,” Cam mumbled, putting down the shaker and starting to hand glasses around.

  “You got a man with commitment troubles, girl?” Elvira asked, plopping the wedge of pâté in the middle of some fanned out crackers.

  “Five years together, four in the same house,” Camille answered.

  “Oh boy,” Elvira muttered, using the breadknife to attack the wrap on the brie.

  “I see good things, I see them soon, I feel it in my bones,” I quickly announced, taking my cosmo. “He’s close, Cam, I know it.”

  “I know it too!” Trace added but Elvira was looking at me.

  Then she looked at Cam. “I read people,” she stated, lifting the breadknife to her face and circling the blade an inch away from her skin as I held my breath. “Faces. They tell no lies. Like that TV show. I got the gift. And your girl here, she tells no lies. I ain’t one to blow sunshine, seein’ as I’ve known my share of commitment-phobes, so many I could write the Denver Directory of Commitment-Phobes, but she sees good things, she feels it in her bones, she’s your girl, she’s tellin’ no lies which means,” she stuck the breadknife in Cam’s face, “you give this boy some time.”

  After Elvira laid down the law and Cam was staring at the knifepoint two inches from her face, I reached out, wrapped my hand around Elvira’s wrist and pulled her hand and the knife down. When I did, her eyes swung to me.

  “Hawk has a rule about proper usage of knives in his house,” I muttered.

  “I bet he does,” Elvira replied. “He got a rule about the proper usage of ninja stars?”

  “Probably,” I muttered because this was actually probably true.

  “Can I have a cosmo?” Trace asked and Cam finished handing them out.

  “Boards’re done,” Elvira announced, plonking the brie next to the grapes. “Let’s retire to the sittin’ room.”

  The girls grabbed the big plates of food and I went to the shelves to get little plates and we all moseyed over to the seating area. Cam and Tracy took recliners. Elvira and I sat at opposite ends of the couch. The food sat on the coffee table in front of us and we all stared at it partially because no one wanted to touch anything without Elvira’s consent and partially because she was right, it was about presentation and she definitely had flair. The food looked great. Good enough to be photographed for a magazine.

  “Well?” Elvira asked. “What you all waitin’ for? Dig in.”

  We all fell on the food like vultures.

  I was shoving a slice of French baton smothered in red onion marmalade, pâté and topped with gherkin slices into my mouth when Elvira observed, “I shoulda bought some of those little spreaders. With the fancy handles. Crate and Barrel had some good ones. You got brie and pâté and kickass stoneware, you need fancy-handled spreaders.”

  Hawk’s cement, iron and brick warehouse lair could handle slim-stemmed, sleek martini glasses but I figured it would expel fancy-handled spreaders.

  I didn’t tell Elvira this.

  Instead, I asked the room (which meant Tracy and Camille since Elvira didn’t really know me), “Do you think I live in my head?”

  Tracy and Cam instantly looked across the coffee table at each other.

  “That means y
es,” Elvira translated through a mouth full of brie and apple wedge.

  I looked at Trace then I looked at Cam. “You do?”

  “Girl –” Cam started.

  “It’s okay,” Tracy said quickly. “We all do what we need to do to protect ourselves and you need to live in your dream world.”

  “I don’t live in a dream world,” I said but this wasn’t true. A lot of the time I did. It just wasn’t all of the time. “I live my life. I go out. I have fun. I put myself out there.”

  “Leo calls you Queen Crash and Burn,” Cam announced and my eyes went to her.

  “What?”

  “Queen Crash and Burn. You get all dressed up, go out, smile, chat, flirt… then it’s all, ‘Hey! Great talking to you! Later!’ No number. No nothin’. They think you’re into them and they’re gonna get them some and off you trot and you don’t look back. Queen Crash and Burn.”

  Uh… wow.

  “I do that?” I asked but I knew I did. I didn’t know I did until just then, having it pointed out to me, but when it was, I knew I did it.

  “Totally,” Tracy confirmed on a whisper.

  “Did Delgado say you lived in your head?” Cam asked and I nodded. “Why?”

  “We were having a… discussion. I told him I needed to think about what he’d said and then he said I didn’t need to think, I live in my head, I shut things out. He says I haven’t given him me. He says I have a hand held up, fending him off,” I answered.

  Tracy and Camille’s eyes went back to each other.

  “See you do that too,” Elvira noted.

  “I’m open and friendly!” I declared.

  Cam sighed, sat back and took a sip of cosmo.

  Preparing me.

  Oh shit.

  Then she stated, “Babe, I know you’ve had a lot goin’ on the last week but have you had a chance to think about what’s gone down with you and Delgado?”

  “Yes,” I replied instantly. “I think about it all the time.”

  “And what you come up with, hon?” Elvira asked.

  “I don’t know, I have to think about it more,” I answered, Elvira rolled her big eyes and she did this at Tracy. Tracy giggled.

  Crap! I was living in my head again.