What I Remember Most

  I dumped the bags in my car, then ran back in; turned off the lights; grabbed my jacket, laptop, and purse; and ran back out.

  My hands were shaking as I tried to lock the door to the house. I dropped the keys, dropped them again, dropped them a third time, then finally locked the door. I sped off, as if the snake could follow me, my whole body racked with snake shakes.

  I did not sleep for one more minute that night. I rocked back and forth in my sleeping bag trying to get the feel of a slithery, giant black snake off of me. I waited in the McDonald’s parking lot for them to open, then ordered a large coffee and collapsed in a booth.

  I didn’t think I’d ever sleep right again.

  I decided to clean up my “home” to distract myself so I didn’t become a self-pitying mess. I made sure all my earthly belongings were as organized as they could be: All the clean clothes were folded into my duffle bags and a suitcase. My wet towels were spread out to dry out, although I knew that was doubtful in this cold, damp weather.

  I rearranged canned foods in one box, dried foods like bread and peanut butter in another, my toiletries in another. I folded the blankets and put them at the end of my sleeping bag.

  Then I tried to do something pretty.

  I picked up my sketch pad and three colored pencils: magenta, lavender, and orange. I tried to draw, but I couldn’t. Not one line, not one curve.

  I took the lid off a bottle of buttons.

  I tried to lay them out in a pattern on my sketch pad to spark my creativity. No sparks.

  I grabbed a box of art supplies with sequins, scraps of famous quotes, and lace, and tried to arrange those, too.

  Nothing. No pretty.

  I climbed into my sleeping bag. I would not be able to work unless I had a nap. I tried not to sniffle like a whiny thing, but I had wanted a bed so much. And a toilet. And heat. But, daaaaang. That had not worked.

  Ah, well. I had not been bitten by a snake.

  That was something to be happy about.

  I had also not been wrapped in a deathly hug.

  Yet another thing to be happy about.

  Death by snake is not the way I want to go.

  I woke up at four o’clock in the afternoon, cramped and cold. I went back into McDonald’s, peed, cleaned up with my wet washcloths, brushed my teeth and hair. I changed into clean clothes and bought another coffee.

  While I was there I read the paper.

  Buried in the back was an article that I didn’t want to read, but I read it anyhow.

  My fury flared. My desire for revenge about knocked me over. He was way worse than the snake I’d slept with.

  “Hello, Grenady.”

  “Oh. Hi.” I stopped on the sidewalk near the library and stared up at Kade Hendricks. He smiled. It made him look less like he could knock my teeth out with an expert whack. “How are you, Mr. Hendricks?”

  “You can call me Kade, and I’m fine. How are you?”

  “Good.” The flu was gone. I had received a bone-chilling call from Covey, from a number I didn’t recognize, but I was trying to get my courage back. “How is your day going?”

  “Busy. I was at work at six, and now I’m starving and need to eat. Want to come with me?”

  “Sure.” Heck, yeah. Maybe I could impress upon him my faux-wonderfulness and get the receptionist job if he hadn’t hired someone else by now.

  “Let’s go to Bernie’s,” he said. “He makes some decent sandwiches.”

  “Okay. Thank you.”

  I was going to lunch with Kade.

  I felt overwhelmed by the man, but he could employ me, so I’d take the chance and try not to say anything inane.

  “How do you like Pineridge, Grenady?”

  “I like it.” I would not say: It’s a nice place to hide pre-jail. “I like the mountains, the weather, the town, the people.” It would be better with my own toilet. “Have you lived here long?”

  “I grew up in California and moved here in my twenties. So about seventeen years.”

  “Family here?”

  “No. I read about it, then drove up.”

  “By yourself?” Now that was prying. I knew he wasn’t married, Tildy had told me, but he could have been then.

  “Yes. By myself.”

  “I drove out here by myself, too.” He already knew that. I don’t know why I repeated it.

  The waitress brought us our sandwiches. I was so hungry I could have eaten a horse and another horse.

  “And you had no family here, right?” he asked. “No friends when you arrived?”

  “No, I didn’t know anyone.” I smiled so as to look cheerful and adventurous, not friendless. “Did you have friends here when you arrived?”

  “No. I didn’t know anyone, either.”

  We had something in common. I took a bite out of my sandwich. It was like eating turkey heaven. I tried not to inhale it and make moaning sounds. I searched around for something to say to change the subject. “So, tell me something. How do you make your furniture? How do you build, say, a desk?”

  He smiled slightly at me across the table, and it softened that face up, but I knew he knew I was changing the subject. He explained how he made a desk. He was patient. He answered my questions about the design, the construction, the woods he used, the saws. I asked how an armoire was built, and he told me. I could sense his enthusiasm, his passion for his work.

  Then I wanted to know about his carvings, what tools he used, how long it took, did he draw it onto the wood first? Furniture building, as Kade did it, was art. I like art, so I was particularly interested.

  “You ask in-depth questions, Grenady.”

  “Oh no. Is this annoying?” We’d finished eating an hour ago.

  He shook his head. “Not at all. I’m glad you’re interested. How’s your work at The Spirited Owl going?”

  I laughed, rolled my eyes. I soon had Kade laughing when I talked about some of my customers. One who fell right off his stool when a pretty gal walked in. Another who was so drunk he pitched a dart at his friend’s head and it stuck. A third who always wore a hat with a Santa on it. Seven days a week. “Something new whenever I walk through those doors.” I leaned back. “I should let you go. I’m sure you have to get back to work.”

  “I’m not in a rush. I know you’re an artist. Tell me about your studio.”

  I told him about my studio, but not the one I’d had in a spare bedroom at Covey’s. I told him about my true studio—the one I’d had in my little green home with the turquoise bookcases, the jars of treasures, the long tables, the stacked-up canvases, the red chair to sketch in, the piles of art books, paints, colored pencils, and all of my collage supplies: the buttons, sequins, glitter, newspapers, miniature toys, dice, fake stones. He asked a lot of questions.

  I told him about teaching kids art at my home and at their school as a volunteer. He seemed truly humbled by that. “Very generous of you, Grenady.” He asked about the kids and their families, and I told him about their home situations, some of which were not happy.

  “Don’t you have to go?” I asked him. It was almost three o’clock. We’d been talking for two and a half hours.

  “Almost.”

  “Almost?” I laughed. “I suppose your boss won’t be upset.”

  “No. He lets me get away with what I want.”

  He smiled again. It was a friendly smile, sexy. A little flirty? No, that couldn’t be.

  “Where did you grow up?”

  I studied the saltshaker. I didn’t like that question. “A lot of places.”

  “Moved around a lot?”

  “You could say that. And you?”

  “Los Angeles. Hard to move around a lot as a kid.”

  “Yes, it is.” A few graphic images skittered on through. Not pleasant ones. I took a deep breath and pushed them out of my head. They nudged back in. I fiddled with my napkin, then willfully shoved them back out again.

  “A conversation for another time?” he asked.

  “I
think it’s a conversation I would rather skip altogether. I’d like to hear your story, though.”

  “I’m afraid it’s not pretty.”

  “Mine isn’t either, Kade.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry for you, too.”

  He shrugged. “It’s the way it is.”

  “Yes, it is. But I’m still searching for the pretty.” I smiled at him. I couldn’t help it. And, holy Mary, his smile came back again. The mafia man was still there, but it was a gentler mafia man now.

  He picked up the check. I went for my purse. “Grenady, please. I have it.”

  “Thank you.”

  We stood up, and the owner, Bernie, tall and lanky, came up and shook his hand. “Kade, how are you?”

  They chatted for a minute, then Kade introduced me to Bernie. We exchanged the usual pleasantries. The waitress said good-bye to us as we left.

  “Thanks for having lunch with me, Grenady.”

  “Thank you for asking. It was fun.” I shook his hand.

  He held my hand, longer than he should have.

  I tingled, which surprised me, as I hate men currently. But I liked him. I hoped he would hire me.

  I called Chilton.

  “I slept in your guest bedroom, Chilton.”

  “My what? Whaddya say, Gren?”

  “Your guest bedroom. The one across from your bedroom. Where guests sleep when they come over. I slept in it.”

  “The one across from mine? A guest room? Don’t got a guest room. When my brother drinks too much and passes out, he lays himself flat on the couch. My hunting buddies don’t sleep in that room, either.”

  “No? But there’s a bed in it.”

  “Comfy bed. Nice new bed. Cost me fifteen hundred dollars. You didn’t sleep in there, didja, Gren? I thought I told you not to sleep in there.”

  “Yes, I did.” I felt the slinky snake on me again. “You didn’t tell me not to.” Now I sounded accusatory, ungrateful. “I mean, maybe you did and I forgot. I think I forgot.”

  “Oh no, sugar. Rats! Guess I forgot to tell you that part, now that I’m remembering. Double rats! I’d had a beer that night. Beer always plays with my memory. I think it’s the hops. They get in my mind and hop around and make things confusing and fuzzy.” He cleared his throat. “Darlin’, that room is not for human sleepers. That room is for Hog.”

  “Hog?”

  “Hog the Snake. He eats like a hog, so I call him Hog. That’s his room.”

  Hog the Snake had his own room. His own fifteen hundred dollar bed. I had washed Hog’s sheets for him.

  “You slept with Hog, Gren?” Chilton asked.

  “Only for a few hours.”

  Chilton laughed. “Rats! I bet you scared the living daylights out of poor Hog.”

  “I did, I surely did. Probably gave him a heart attack.”

  Chilton laughed again. “I’m sorry, Gren. Now ya know. That be Hog’s room. You can have one of the other bedrooms or the couch by the garter snake village. If you see a mouse, try to catch it and toss it into one of the snake’s cages.”

  “What?” My voice was a hoarse whisper. “Catch a mouse?”

  “I’m kiddin’, sugar, I’m kiddin’.” He laughed. “I’d never have a lady catch a mouse, no, ma’am, specially not one lovely like you.”

  I thought of Hog the Snake on top of me. I was almost his dinner.

  I would brave the weather, marauding scary men, the cramped conditions, and no toilet.

  I could not possibly sleep with snakes.

  The next morning I woke up nervous. Alice, My Anxiety, does that sometimes. It’s as if she can’t wait to start shaking me down. I grabbed a sketch pad and charcoal pencil with hands that trembled so much, they might have been electrocuted.

  I drew a girl in a kennel, skeletal, eyes closed.

  I drew her running down a dark road, mouth open, trees looming.

  I drew her sitting alone in a classroom, at the back.

  I drew her sleeping in a car, in an alley.

  It took an hour.

  My tears blurred the charcoal as I pushed the past back.

  “Phone call, Grenady.” Tildy tilted her head toward the back of the restaurant. I never received calls at work. Who would call me?

  It had been three nights since the snake adventure, and I’d had a busy shift. We’d had a group of Red Hat Society ladies come in and sing songs. One was about a woman who kicked that man right out of her house, “’cause he was a gosh darn louse, with a stick like a mouse,” and another was about a lady pirate who rode the seven seas and had seven lovers. They particularly liked that one.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, sweetheart,” he said.

  Not him. Not now. “What do you want, you son of a bitch.” “Let’s not talk about my mother that way.”

  I hated his tone: Reasonable. Rational. As in, don’t get hysterical, hormonal woman.

  “I can’t believe what you’ve done to me, Covey. I know you’re all lawyered up with Goldman and Skiller, but tell the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the FBI that I didn’t know about your crimes.”

  “You want something from me but you’re not willing to give me anything, Dina. That’s selfish.”

  “Selfish? I’m selfish?” My voice pitched like a banshee cry.

  “Tell the truth. I could go back to prison because of you.”

  “If you cooperate with me, you won’t. Goldman and Skiller have a plan, it’ll work. They’re going after the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s evidence. They’ll shred it, not allow it into court, get us off on technicalities, entrapment, false arrest, blah blah blah, something like that.”

  “No, they won’t, you brainless cow. Do you understand that the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the FBI, the IRS, and even the mail fraud unit of the postal service have been investigating your company, us, for months? Months. That’s what my attorney told me. One of your clients, Tore Shales, wanted his money and you didn’t give it to him promptly, and he called the FBI. They started interviewing people. They started following the money, the bank accounts here and offshore, your company, your trips to Vegas, your shell companies, your fake investments and fake accounting sheets.” I teared up. I was scared down to my toes and livid. “Tell them I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “I can’t do that, darling. My attorneys will prove that we’re innocent. Sometimes investments go bad, and that’s what happened here. Stock market risks. Real estate collapse. Economic meltdowns. Not my fault. I’ll get us out of this, sweetheart, don’t worry your pretty head.”

  I wanted to hit him so much, my fists were tingling. “I don’t deserve this.”

  “Yes, you do.” And there went the reasonable, condescending tone, as icy rage took its place. “You left me. A marriage is forever, no matter what. Times get tough and you leave.”

  “Times get tough? You are a criminal who is dragging his soon-to-be ex-wife into this mess. How could you?”

  But I knew how he could do this. It was a control thing. Covey had sensed in the weeks leading up to this that I’d had enough and was going to leave him. We had been fighting ferociously. He was livid that he couldn’t spy on me anymore with the GPS and cameras. His toy and possession, me, was breaking away. His own abandonment issues were flaring like a bonfire in his sick brain.

  By not exonerating me, he had control over me, now and in the future.

  I did not completely trust Covey when I married him, but I thought that was because it was not innately in me to trust the vast majority of people on the planet. I never expected him to do this.

  “You get yourself and that rack of yours home, trailer lady.”

  “Don’t ever call me that.” Trailer trash lady. That’s what he meant. It only came out when he was steaming at me, his ability to control me slackening.

  “If you don’t come home and it looks like I’m going down, I will tell the prosecutors about your role in this.”

  I sucked air in, my body instantly cold, cold, cold.
“What are you talking about?”

  “You helped me plan all of this, Dina. You were the mastermind. The brains behind it all. I couldn’t have done this without you. We went to parties together, even when we were dating, and you met people. The country clubs. The golf club. You smiled sexy, walked sexy, talked sexy. You brought men to me. They followed that rack around wherever you went. We wined and dined them together, then they invested in our company. You were the sales and delivery person.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but no words came out. I felt like I’d been hit with a stun gun. “That is not what happened.” My whisper was strangled.

  “We made the perfect team. Perfect couple. Without you, Dina, I wouldn’t be half the man—no, not even a quarter of the man I am now. You were key to the success of Hamilton Investments.”

  “That’s a lie, Covey.” I slumped against the wall. The room actually wobbled, as if two giant hands had tipped it back and forth. “Why would you lie about me like that? What did I ever do to you?”

  “What did you do to me? Ah, you left me. That’s what you’ve done. And I’ve got a whole stack of papers here from that bitch, Cherie Poitras, saying you’re divorcing me.”

  I heard that sharp edge in his voice, his obsession, the possession.

  “You’ll get nothing if you divorce me, Dina, nothing.”

  “There is nothing. We have nothing. Everything we have will go to your ripped-off clients. We’re bankrupt.”

  “Divorcing me will be a long and torturous process. Your legal fees will hit fifty thousand before you blink.”

  He would do that. I would have to make payments to Cherie and pay court costs for years to come. He knew exactly how much money I had. He had to win. That’s what he wanted. To win. When I was broke, when I was smashed, when I was in jail, he would back off, but first he had to punish me for leaving.

  “You had me sign those papers to frame me.”

  “Not to frame you. But to make sure you saw the value in staying with me. I will never give in. I will never let you go, Dina.”