PARKER
Parker’s ears were ringing from all the wine, and since Cleo had fallen silent, he felt the need to put on music. His stereo was in the living room. “One sec,” he said, and went to find a good classical music CD. He popped in jazz instead, Miles Davis. He came back to the kitchen to see Cleo smiling with her eyes closed. He said, “You like the music?”
“Love it,” she said. “I needed to hear some music. All these days, and no music. Makes me chill out.” She was slurring.
“So what happened after that?” he asked as he uncorked the second bottle of wine.
“You wanted the story of why I was homeless, and now you know it.”
“You never went home?” The cork came out with a bloop.
“Never.”
“But what happened with all of the Beacon people?” he asked as he poured them both some wine.
She opened her eyes. “We continued on with our improv-ing, different people bringing alcohol. We moved around a lot. But the sad news is that Nikki was eventually convicted. He died in prison.”
She had said it so casually that Parker, in his drunkenness, had almost missed it. “He went to prison and died?”
“I don’t want to talk of all the details of how his trial went. It was sad, but Diane’s family thought he did it, too, and had his assets frozen, so Nikki didn’t get the best defense he could. I never saw him again, except in newspaper articles about the trial. I guess D.D. had some information that only the killer would know, things the police hadn’t told even Nikki. I wondered sometimes if she had channeled it from Diane’s spirit somehow, maybe she had actually gotten in touch with her when all the rest of us never could through some master. We all watched religiously for news about him. He didn’t die until a couple of years ago. Heart failure. I imagine that it was a broken heart that killed him, and I know he knows I carried on the Beacon’s tradition.”
“So you did talk to him,” Parker said, sitting down next to her.
“Not in this life, but once he was gone, we conversed quite a bit.”
Parker took this in. His inner skeptic was crying out in pain, but he said, “So where have you been for the last twenty years?”
“I’ve been spreading the word to cities all around the country. There are little Beacon communities everywhere, each group improv-ing and keeping the spirit alive.”
“What about your family?”
“They kept looking for me, but nobody I had contact with and who recognized me would ever tell. It’s very underground, I guess you could say.” She rubbed her forehead as if it hurt.
“Need some water?” Parker asked.
“No, no. I just need to use the restroom again. I’ll be back in a moment.” She drank the whole glass of her wine in a few swallows and almost fell when she stood. Parker jumped up and helped her to the bathroom, hoping that as she closed the door she would be okay.
He went back to the kitchen, wondering about the story he had heard over the last few days. It was more than he could ever have hoped for and he realized that Loretta Jones must know about this “underground” that Cleo was talking about. He remembered what Kindred had said about her, that people wanted her to write about them. He thought about the name Kindred, and was certain it was an improv name.
He remembered the beating he got in the Knockout Alley, and thought they must have been people protecting Cleo…But where did Parker really fit in? She had woken past dawn in his car and now was spilling her guts to him? Something didn’t work, but then he heard her retching in the bathroom. He felt a pang of guilt for getting her so drunk. He had merely been sipping all night while she downed the drink between moments of her life revealed. The guilt was both that he took advantage of her alcoholism to get her to talk, and that he wanted more of the story still. Maybe he was as ruthless and reckless as Missy thought he was.
He wondered to himself, did he really believe in the supernatural existence that was Cleo’s life? He had all the usual questions about the unknown as the next person, but he didn’t think that Cleo was a medium, or that there were such things as mediums, right away. He usually thought that psychics were delusional at best, con artists at worst, but Cleo seemed to really believe what she said. He wanted more for the end of his story, and he needed it tonight before Loretta Jones tried to steal it from him tomorrow.
Was he ruthless? He did care about Cleo and didn’t want anything bad to happen to her, but his style was to report unbiased. That is what, he believed, made him a popular writer. He portrayed things without a slant to the best of his abilities. He wanted to keep that up with this story, but he felt crunched at the moment. If Loretta got his story, she would make it all the ways it wasn’t. She would use the poor, crazy woman angle. Or the amazing power of one woman to change the homeless people’s lives angle. There would be some angle. Even the rich people’s schizophrenic kid found angle. He didn’t know what the media leech would do. He didn’t want her to have any bit of it, but he was realizing that she did have at least some of it somehow.
He heard Cleo turn the shower on and Parker felt another pang. Was she okay? Maybe she’d gotten puke on herself. Maybe she just needed to bathe after talking about all that stuff. He probably shouldn’t have plied her with so much booze, he thought again, and his own head spun a bit. He was more of a one or two drinks a night kind of a person. But he was also a do whatever it took to get a story kind of person. He had been shot at, had his car vandalized, and lost in a jungle for different stories in the past, and it seemed like giving Cleo booze wasn’t a big deal comparatively. Now he wondered. Had he done something inherently bad?
He sipped on his wine, trying to write sentences in his head about what Cleo had told him. He thought of some good ones, accenting her experience, but then he felt bad exposing her. He needed to know why she had come to him, he decided as he emptied his wine glass. How had she found his article so fast? Sure, she was a magazine reader when she lived with Cecil, but was she still? Then he wondered about her power with these underground Beacons. Maybe they had all been on the lookout for her. His imagination ran wild.
The shower was still running after thirty minutes and he started to worry. Had she fallen in the shower? He looked at the cat curled up next to the pantry. Jack was sound asleep.
More time passed and Parker decided to go check on Cleo. He went to the bathroom door and knocked, but got no response. “Cleo?” he called out. Nothing.
He turned the knob, grateful that it was unlocked, and opened the door to the smell of feces and the sight of a human combusted.
Her jeans were on the floor in a hand towel, both covered with shit. There was crap all over the floor in little diarrhea puddles around the toilet and running over the tub rim. The smell was noxious, like a clogged sewer. He covered his nose and breathed through his mouth. The toilet was covered in dark red puke strewn from the lid to the base of the thing.
The shower curtain was half drawn, and he could see Cleo’s legs at the end of the tub. She was lying down inside. He delicately stepped through the feces and pulled the shower curtain back.
Cleo was on her back, shirt still on, but without pants or panties, and the water was washing her belly and legs. Her eyes were closed.
“Cleo,” he said loud enough to be heard over the sound of the shower. “Cleo, you okay?” He knew she wasn’t, it was just the first thing he thought to say.
She didn’t even stir. Parker looked over her legs, seeing little spots of dark matter on her thighs. He grabbed a washcloth and began to wipe her down until she was clean. He turned off the water and grabbed a towel. He paused, then pulled off her shirt and threw it in the pile where the soiled jeans and hand towel were. He turned off the shower.
“Cleo,” he said, “Sit up.”
She moaned, but did nothing.
“Cleo, please, I need to get you to bed.” He tugged on her arms. She slowly rose from the pressure and folded her naked legs under her. Parker dried her off as well as he could, and took special care wiping
around her closed eyes. He then grabbed her under the arms and hoisted her up to a standing position.
“Open your eyes and watch where you step,” he said as he guided her feet over the rim of the tub. She acted like a puppet and followed his commands, eyes slit downward as she tried to avoid the piles of human waste on the floor. He led her from the bathroom to the second bedroom and told her to sit up on the bed. Her naked body slid to the side and she closed her eyes again.
Parker dug through Missy’s clothes in a dresser and found a pair of loose flannel bottoms and a T-shirt with the tower of London on the front. He held her up as he slipped the T-shirt over her head, pulled her wet curls through the neck hole, and strung her arms through the sleeves. Then he dragged the pants up her legs and lifted her up against his body as he yanked the flannel over her butt.
Once done, she slumped back to her side, mumbling something that he couldn’t understand. He dragged the quilt from under her limp body and covered her with it, then put her head on a pillow. He took a deep breath as he looked down at her, all safe and warm. Did she have alcohol poisoning? Should he call an ambulance?
He decided that she had most likely been this way before and that there was no need for such action. He felt yet another touch of guilt in realizing that it was his need of an ending to his story that kept him from taking medical action.
He cracked the bedroom door when he left and went to work on cleaning the bathroom. It took him thirty minutes to finish it all, and it was a nasty task. She had obviously shit herself when puking.
He deserved cleaning duty, he thought as he climbed down the fire escape and dropped the trash bag full of the soiled clothes and paper towels into a neighboring brownstone’s trash bin.
It was hard to climb back up, but ever thoughtful of Loretta Jones’ watchful eyes, he would take no other course.
He peeked back in on Cleo to see if she was okay. She was on her side, breathing easily. That didn’t satisfy him, and although he had already had too much to drink, he poured himself another glass of wine and sat on the couch. He sat in silence, since the CD had stopped playing, and sipped. Jack hopped up on the couch and curled up next to him. Parker, anxious over the night’s unfolding, grabbed Missy’s picture from the mantle and set it on the coffee table. He knew Cleo would never wake and he could talk freely to her photo.
He said, “Maybe I went too far this time, Missy. She’s a good person. I’ve enjoyed our time together. But what do I do with it? Do I write the story? How can I let her out, seeing what she did tonight…to my bathroom, to her body?”
Jack perked his ears up to Parker and gazed at him with round eyes. Missy’s beautiful face did not reveal any answers.
“I have this Loretta Jones breathing down my neck. I hate over-used metaphors, but she’s doing it.”
He sipped as the phone rang, and he jumped, sloshing some wine onto his coffee table. He ran to the phone, worried that Cleo might be startled and start puking again.
“Hello?”
“Parker.” It was Missy.
“I was just thinking about you,” he said.
She said, “I called you earlier today.”
“I wasn’t home.”
“She answered.”
“She?” he asked, confused.
“That woman. Who is she?” Parker could hear barbwire in Missy’s voice, and it quickly came to him that Missy called when Parker was at work. Cleo must have answered the phone.
“Oh,” he said, not wanting her to think he had another woman, but also not wanting Missy to know he was housing a homeless woman in the name of a story.
“Who is she?” Her voice sounded tired and worried, like she had spent all day thinking about it.
“Why did you call earlier?” Parker asked.
“Does it matter?” Parker could imagine her pointy chin poking out as she tried to contain her anger, and he felt a thrill. She was jealous. That was good news for him, wasn’t it?
“I’ve been drinking tonight,” he said, not knowing why that was his answer. He figured that it was to explain the sound of his voice, which must be different than usual.
“With her?” Missy said. Her tone was tight.
“Yes,” Parker said. “I was drinking with her. But it’s a story. Missy, I really need to talk to you about all of this. I need your advice.”
“Who is she?”
“What did she say to you when you called?”
“She said you were her portal. What the hell does that mean?”
Parker rubbed his lips. “Will you help me figure out what to do?”
Missy paused, then said, “Okay,” in a tight voice, like she didn’t believe him.
Parker told her a short version of what happened, spending the most time on how he needed to protect Cleo from Loretta Jones, and wrapped it up with her defecating and puking all over his bathroom. He finished with, “I don’t know what the right thing to do is.”
Missy said, “You know what I think?”
“What?”
She sighed. “Parker, I was really jealous when she picked up.”
He felt a grin creep over his lips, but he covered by saying, “I’d love to know what you think I should do.”
“She’s in need of help. Call the daughter.”
“What?” Parker’s smile ebbed.
“She can’t take care of herself. Call the daughter and tell her what’s going on.”
Parker sipped his wine and fought the urge to explain how that would make him have to drop his story, but then Missy surprised him.
“I know you want to have the story, but think. If you can reunite them, then there is a good story for you.”
“I’m not into a story with an end that I made happen,” he said, meaning it.
“It doesn’t end there, for them. Just for you. And that will come through in your story.”
He thought about this for a moment. It was true, he decided, and he said, “I have the daughter’s phone number at her hotel.”
“I know. You already told me that.”
“I did?”
“Parker, just call her. Tell her to come over early tomorrow. There will be some discomfort, but if this Cleo is as whacked as you make her sound, then maybe she needs help.”
“She isn’t whacked.” He thought of her shitty handprint on the wall of his bathroom as he scrubbed it off.
“You should help her. That’s all I’m saying. And it will still be a story of you helping her.”
“Dammit Missy. I don’t want to write that I’m some hero. I just want to –”
She cut him off, saying, “To hell with what you want to do to make some art in writing. She’s sick and you need to help her.”
“Then why did you say it would be a story of helping her?” His voice sounded harsh even to his own ears.
“I said that because she needs help and I thought that was what would get through to you, Parker.”
He sat down on the couch, closing his eyes. “You think I’m so shallow about my job that you had to use my wanting to get a story to make me do the right thing? I know the right thing, Missy. I know it.” He hung up on her.
He held the phone, hoping she’d call back. She didn’t, and he leaned back on the couch. Jack gave him more curious eyes, and Parker dug in his pocket and pulled out Belle’s card. How could he let Cleo go back on the streets after what he’d seen?
He read the number off the back of Belle’s card out loud, as though that would make a difference. He dialed the number, thinking of how Cleo’s legs looked sticking out from behind the shower curtain. How could he let her go with any conscience?
A sleepy voice said, “Hello?”
“Belle,” he said. “It’s Parker.”
“Parker from the magazine?” Her voice sounded more alert.
“Yeah.”
“What are you calling for this late?”
“I want you to meet me at my place at seven in the morning. I’ll have Cleo here.”
He could
hear her shock. “At your place? You have her?”
“Not now,” he said, “But I will by that time.”
She paused, and said, “You will?” in a weak voice.
“Why do you want to find her so badly?”
“She’s my mom. I need to…see her, talk to her.”
“Be here at seven.” He gave her his address, and after he hung up, he felt relieved. Had he done the ever-elusive right thing?
Parker looked in on Cleo one more time before going to bed. She was still lying on her side, sleeping deeply. He said to her, “I hope you don’t hate me tomorrow.”
He went to his own bed and couldn’t fall asleep. She might leave. She had told him what he wanted to know. She might be embarrassed by her performance in his bathroom. He decided to go back out to the living room and sit on the couch. Once there, he thought to turn on the TV, but he didn’t want to wake her. Now, sound seemed more delicate, like he was dealing with a baby. He went to the kitchen and made some coffee, and once it was done he poured a cup and sat on the couch and read his thriller. At every unexpected turn of the novel, he checked in on Cleo, and she was asleep. He was still nervous, and after drinking one pot of coffee, he made another.
Around four in the morning, he wanted to call Missy and apologize for hanging up on her. He fought the urge, but he knew she was right about what he should do, and that was why he was doing it. He checked in on Cleo again, and she was snoring softly, like how Jack purred.
Jack was interested in why the person was up all night. He kept wandering around and coming up to Parker on the couch, giving him a rumbling “mah,” then rolling around on the floor, purring. Parker kept reading his thriller throughout, but couldn’t follow it. The coffee was making him edgy. It was four, shouldn’t Cleo be awake?
Just before sunrise, he heard her groan from the second bedroom. He sat at attention, like a soldier waiting for a war call. He waited, but Cleo went to the bathroom first and spent a long time in there. He hoped she wasn’t giving an encore of last night’s performance, but as the sky lightened, she came out and walked into the living room, rubbing her eyes. She was wearing the clothes she had come in, the long, black skirt and purple sweater with the brightly colored fish on it.
“Reporter,” she said, “What are you doing awake?”
“Couldn’t sleep.”
“That wine get you like it got me?”
“I can’t go to sleep when I’ve drank too much,” he said.
Cleo sat next to him on the couch and he scooted over. She slung both arms around the back of the couch and said, “Jack must have been very curious about a house with a person awake in it all night. Did he keep you company?”
“Him and the book I’m reading.”
She eyed his coffee cup. “I need some of that. To be honest, I don’t remember anything but you helping me to the bathroom.” She rose slowly and went to the kitchen, like a sick sloth, Parker thought. He wondered if she remembered more than that, but he wasn’t going to call her on it. She came back with a steaming mug and sat next to him, saying, “I forgot to tell you. Your woman called yesterday when you were gone. I could tell she didn’t like the sound of another woman in the house.”
“She called late last night, too.”
“That really why you’re up all night?”
“She has that affect on me,” he said.
“Patrick kept me up a lot of nights, but oddly, when I was thinking of him, I never could sleep, yet felt rested in the morning.”
Parker was exhausted, but didn’t say so. He answered with, “I talk to her picture. That one, there.” He pointed at the photograph that he had put back on the mantle.
“And she called you last night,” Cleo said. “She must have known.”
“She sounded jealous that a woman answered the phone yesterday. Why did you answer my phone?”
“I thought it was you calling.”
“Why?”
She seemed stumped to answer and after a moment and a sip of coffee, she said, “You seemed a lonely fellow.”
“I’m not lonely,” he said as quickly as he thought it. “Just miss her.”
Cleo looked at him with red-rimmed eyes. “And did you tell her that?”
“No,” he said. “I hung up on her.”
“Why?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You said you’d spill your secrets once I’d told you my story. Now it’s your turn.”
Parker glanced at a clock on the mantle. It would be fifteen minutes until Belle came. He said, “I write stories. I try to write them without a slant, without bias.”
“I would think you are still drunk.”
“I don’t usually drink as much as we’ve been doing.”
“What are you hiding?” she said, touching her hair.
“You don’t remember anything about last night before you passed out?”
He saw her wrinkled skin turn a darker hue. “I know you saw me naked. Believe me, a woman my age doesn’t want to be seen naked by a young man. Not only is it embarrassing, but it will disillusion you as to what will come to pass for you when you are my age.”
He wondered if she remembered anything else about it. He recalled the smell, that awful smell, and didn’t feel bad anymore. He said, “Make another quiche, Blue Pen.”
She grinned, then laughed, holding her belly. “You call me the Blue Pen? That is just great, I have to tell you. But I can’t make another quiche. There aren’t enough eggs,”
He glanced at the clock. “I’m hungry, woman. You’re a good cook. Anything you can make?”
“Let’s go have some breakfast somewhere.”
This wasn’t what she was supposed to say. She was supposed to be excited about cooking something. Parker told her, “Nah, I don’t want to go out. Let’s just sip coffee, then.”
Cleo’s blue eyes changed like a shutter had been put over their color. “Something is different.”
“What do you mean?”
“You keep looking at that clock. Now you want me to cook.”
Parker looked at the clock again, but there was a knock at the door. Belle was early.
He touched her shoulder and said, “It’s what I think is for the best, Cleo.”
Her lips parted, but the question never came.
Parker went to his door and opened it to a perfectly groomed Belle wringing her hands and biting her lip. She said, “Is she here?”
Parker gestured to Cleo, who had stood up and had covered her cheeks with her hands.
Belle took one step inside, but stopped, like she’d been pushed from moving further by a strong wind. “Mom?”
Cleo started swaying and Parker grabbed Jack as he made a run for the open doorway. He held the gray as it twisted and purred. He closed the door.
The two women stared at each other until Cleo broke the tension by walking over to Belle and touching her hair. “You’re more beautiful than in pictures,” she said.
“What pictures?” Belle said.
“In the paper last time I was in Philly. All that work you do for the homeless.” Cleo let go of Belle’s hair. “With him.”
“With Dad?”
Cleo’s sense of wonder dried up and she turned to Parker, her face filling with rage, like he had tried to choke her.
“Why did you do this to me?” She hissed out the words. “This isn’t how it was supposed to go. You were supposed to help me.” She looked like she had when he insulted her in his car that first, unforgettable morning.
“I am helping you,” he said. Jack went completely limp, purring stopped, and he watched Cleo.
Cleo pointed at him, fingernail almost hitting his nose. “You don’t know what you’ve done.”
“Mom,” Belle said, “You are with me now. It’s safe. You need to come with me.”
Cleo turned back to Belle. “With you? Where? Why would I do that?”
Belle was a little taller than Cleo, and she held her mother’s shoulders and l
ooked down into her eyes. “Please, I’ve been looking for you for years. I’ve heard about you, but could never catch up. Nothing bad will happen if you just come with me, please. Mom?”
Cleo bowed her head and rubbed her eyes, and Parker could see dampness on her cheeks. She shook her head, muttering, “Not like this. I was never supposed to see you again.” She pulled back from Belle and glared at Parker again. “Look what you’ve done. This isn’t what was supposed to…” She sniffled and rubbed her eyes again.
Parker let Jack slip out of his hands. “What was I supposed to do, exactly?”
Cleo’s hands shot out, but didn’t touch him. “Not this!” she yelled, her voice coming out scratchy and hoarse, like she had used every bit of fight in her to explain with those simple words.
Belle took Cleo’s arms again and said, “Come on, Mom. We have to go.”
“Have to?” Cleo asked, the fight going out of her as fast as it came.
“Yes, I have a car outside. Come with me, please. You’re safe now.”
“I’ve always been safe,” she said.
“Come.”
Cleo lowered her head and allowed herself to be led out into the hallway. She looked back at Parker with one last expression of hatred. He had completely betrayed her confidence.
Parker was beat, wondering if he had done the right thing, after all. What had Cleo really wanted from him?
He took the dirty brown blanket Cleo had come with off of the chair back in the kitchen and almost threw it out, but decided to toss it in the washer, instead.
He went to bed and fell into a fitful sleep.
When he awoke at two in the afternoon, Jack was rumbling by his feet at the foot of the bed. “Cat,” he said, his voice sounding strained.
He got up, Jack trailing after him, and made some coffee. The gray begged him with loud, “Mah-Mahhhh,” for food, and Parker gave him half a can of tuna.
He couldn’t keep this little beast, and he got Belle’s number again and called her.
“Parker, hi,” she said, answering on the second ring and recognizing his voice.
“How is she?”
“I can’t really talk right now.”
“She left her cat here. Can you pick it up? Or should I bring it to you?”
She said, “Oh, that little gray kitten? I can send a driver to pick it up, sorry about that.”
“Nothing to apologize for.”
“Okay, I’ll send him now. Thanks again, you have no idea what this means to me.”
A man came about twenty minutes later and Parker handed over the wiggly cat. The man said, “No carrier?”
“No, she brought it as is.”
The man perched Jack in the crook of his arm and said, “Have a nice day,” sounding displeased that he had to chauffer a loose cat.
It was close to three, and Parker remembered that Loretta Jones was expecting him at four. Now, he thought, came the fun part.
He called the network she worked for and asked to speak with her.
“What is this regarding?” the woman asked.
“I’m supposed to be interviewed by her today. Name’s Parker Townes.”
“One moment.”
He waited, listening to some awful music, and then Loretta’s voice came on the line.
“I hope you’re not calling to bail out on me, Mr. Townes.”
“You’re a mind reader.”
“You know what this means. I’m calling the daughter if you’re not here. I meant my threat.”
“Already did that for you, Ms. Jones.”
Silence on the other end, then, “What the hell are you talking about?”
“We had a nice little family reunion this morning. Surprised you didn’t know about it already.”
More silence. “I’m still doing the story.”
“Good luck with that,” he said, hanging up on her. It was his day to hang up on women, he thought, as he whistled to his empty apartment. He grinned as he stripped off his clothes and took a shower. He’d be going into the office late to get started writing the story, but there really was no time like the present.