Mysterical-E

He Said, She Says

Blowback

by Vinnie Hansen

Emily clipped dead cosmos blossoms. Retired, she now had time for such things. A breeze ruffled her stained tee shirt and she cinched her battered gardening hat. It was gray canvas and made her feel like Indiana Jones.

Her raised flowerbeds burst with purples and pinks, —except for the white mums, beginning to bloom. Those she grew for Roger. To remember. Because forgetting would be disloyal.

A chilly gust, so common in San Francisco, blew scraps of litter into her yard from the school at the end of the block. She weaved among her six flowerbeds and picked up a sticky wrapper from an ice-cream bar and a folded yellow Post-It with a note in elementary-school-teacher printing: Call Krystal’s mom re: inappropriate touching.

Emily could never have taught elementary, all the parent involvement and laborious printing of everything. Teaching high school English had allowed her to scrawl comments and to pepper them with sarcasm.

En route to the garbage can, Emily spotted another bit of white paper plastered against the foundation of her house. As she bent over, a little grunt broadcast her age. She doubted anyone under forty groaned to stoop down. Certainly kids didn’t. She thought of a handsome freshman named Marcos snatching Brianna’s pink ribbon. The girl chased him, a primitive mating ritual. Laughing, Marcos leaped over the desks.

Students had been living oxymora—paradoxes. They had both endowed her with life and exhausted her. She didn’t miss the bureaucracy of education, the merry-go-round of administrators, each with a new pet project. But she missed the excitement of starting a new year, of walking into a room of fresh faces. You never knew what might happen.

The piece of paper she had plucked from the concrete declared in masculine, forceful caps: RENDEZVOUS. LOLA’S. 10:00. A phone number. Wednesday’s date. She dumped the trash and closed the brown plastic lid. But as she walked toward the house, she abruptly switched directions, returned to the garbage can, and fished out the piece of paper.

Rendezvous.

Fate dropped like a heavy fruit from her heart to the soles of her feet. Why had this paper flattened itself against the foundation of her home?

Rendezvous. She trilled the “r” and gave the “v” verve, like vibrato, or viva, or vixen. It was an exciting, sophisticated word. She liked a man who would use it.

Lola’s was a well-known bar—sleazy, but hip. She’d never been inside, but one night after a movie she had passed through its noisy blast of fumes. A transvestite in red, puffing a cigarette in a holder, had lounged against the pink exterior. Emily had stopped to peer in, but her friend Barbara had pulled her by the arm.

“Don’t you read the papers?” Barbara said.

“That girl was thirty-eight. No one pays any attention to women our age.”

A social studies teacher, Barbara was fond of warning, “Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.”

Surely, Emily thought, as she stood in her yard, some history bore repeating. RENDEZVOUS. LOLA’S. The lack of names. Everything about the note enticed her.
She entered her house, a San Francisco over-the-garage affair—a tunnel with no side windows—two bedrooms, one bath shared with an old tabby, Maxwell. Roger’s allergies had been their go-to explanation for separate domiciles. But really, they had both treasured their independence, their individual schools and discrete lives. Work consumed their time, and not wanting children of their own, they’d never seen any compelling reason to marry, even after ten years together.

Besides both houses were small. His was remodeled and minimalist. Hers was cozy and modest with linoleum in the kitchen and a shower in the bathtub. But it was clean and neat except for the deluge of books in the office—literature with a healthy dose of murder mysteries—a spinster cliché, she thought. She set the retrieved paper on the kitchen counter and scrubbed her hands at the sink. Then she picked up the phone and punched in the number.

“Hans Holding here.” The voice boomed, sonorous and bold.

Emily sucked in her breath. She’d called the number as a kid might ring a doorbell and run. She had not expected the person to answer with a name she knew!

This name stirred emotion, building, rising, growing, like a wave that wouldn’t crest, a tsunami, a wall of movement. She couldn’t breath. The phone stayed clutched in her rigid hand. Hans Holding had been the principal at Roger’s school. He had never done anything to stand up for Roger. But then, neither had anybody, really. She croaked: “Yes. My name is Emily. I found something that belongs to you.”

“Oh?”

She imagined him patting the pockets of his suit, because Hans Holding wore tailored, expensive suits. He’d risen to the county level in education. A well-known silver-haired fox, he drove about San Francisco in a smooth black Lexus.

Her heart hammered even as her tumult of feeling whirled disappointment into the mix. She had hoped for mystery. “I think you might want it back,” she said.

“Well,” he chuckled, “it couldn’t be anything too important because I don’t know it’s missing.”

The wall of movement hit her, knocked into her. As she swept back into pain, she felt angry at his ease, at his success, at his life. “It’s a note.” And the need to give a phone number implies a fresh affair. A dangerous time. The thrilling brink.

The line stayed silent. But after a moment he said, “Who did you say you were?”

“My name is Emily.” She had been one employee in a huge high school in a huge district. She felt confident that he had never noticed her.

“What kind of note?”

“A personal one.”
“Read it to me.”

“Why don’t we meet at Lola’s and I’ll show you.”

“Lola’s?” Another pregnant pause. “Is this some kind of shake down?” he sputtered.

“Shake down?” The words conjured an image of dollar bills dropping from a tree. Money had never motivated Emily—she was, after all, a teacher—but the idea of shaking Hans Holding and scooping up his precious fruit held enormous appeal.

“I don’t know,” he said. “It sounds like you are trying to blackmail me or something.”

Hans Holding did not have a reputation for brilliance, but he was bright enough to realize his mistake. He’d implied that blackmail could be possible. He sighed. “When did you want to meet?”

“What about tonight?” Emily felt certain he was deft at making up excuses to his wife. His third one, if she remembered right. “Let’s say eight. I go to bed early. Don’t worry about spotting me; I’ll recognize you.”

She hung up, pulsing with her scheme. She had only one thing to wear—a somewhat short, sleeveless black satin cocktail dress. She’d purchased it at a Ross ten years ago, when Roger was alive. A wash of sadness came with thoughts of Roger and the irony of his death. He had liked to state that his student Melissa Coverly would become a brilliant physicist if he could keep her alive. She wondered if Melissa Coverly could still be alive. The police had never found a body. Roger, for sure, was dead.

Emily tipped the dress from its hanger and held it before her slim body as she struck poses before the full-length mirror. She dressed it up with pearls for those rare occasions when she went to a theater production. Accessorized differently, it would serve, but there was a lot of work to do.

Suddenly reality touched her with his cold fingers. She hurried back to the phone and called her friend Barbara.

###

“I would need a disguise,” Barbara said as she leaned against her kitchen counter.

“Then you’ll do it?”

Barbara thought of people in terms of historical figures, and she attached Emily to Amelia Earhart. Beyond the similarity of name, Amelia, like Emily, had possessed strong opinions about education and how it divided students into “little feminine and masculine pigeonholes.” Both Amelia and Emily had their heads in the clouds, too.

Emily’s current plan was beyond dreamy. It was crazy and delicious. Maybe Agatha Christie was a better correlative for Emily.

“You think Hans would recognize you?” Emily asked.

“Hah!” Barbara couldn’t help herself. She had put her whole life on the line for Hans—her reputation, her husband, the esteem of her only child. And Hans had thrown her over for an eighteen-year-old. Thankfully, no one ever had a clue, especially not Emily.

Barbara cleared her throat. “We’ve met.” She sipped an iced tea. “Teacher of the Year Ceremony, remember?” Barbara sure did, the way Hans had tried to smooth everything over with a stupid award that should have gone to one of those “dedicated” teachers like Emily, the kind of teacher students believed evaporated into the pencil sharpener at night and reappeared at dawn.

Barbara plucked the lemon slice from the side of her glass and squeezed it into her drink. Well, Hans had gotten his just desserts when Melissa Coverly vanished. As far as Barbara was concerned, Emily’s plan could serve as a crowning maraschino cherry. Now that her daughter was grown up and her husband had left her anyway, she didn’t have to worry about collateral damage.

###

Shadowy figures hunched at the stools and smoke filled the bar in complete disdain of the city ordinance. From a back room, music blasted and pulsating figures strobed. Emily scanned the tables. In a booth, Hans slouched like an angry teenager, smoking in jerks, eyes flicking about the room. His amber drink glinted in the flickering light.

As she approached, he stubbed out the cigarette on a cocktail napkin. His gaze took her in.

That one look paid for her hectic, expensive afternoon—the new nylons with seams, the trip to her friend’s to borrow her dangling phony diamond earrings, and the emergency appointment with her hair stylist, where she had demanded “something modern and exotic.”

Jeanne had been cutting her hair for fifteen years. “A date?”

“Sort of.” Emily refused to say more. She had emerged with her red hair cut short, spiked and highlighted.

She slid into the booth at a right angle to Hans Holding, waved over a cocktail waitress and ordered a shot of Centenario tequila with a beer chaser. She had dabbed her neck with Femme, a perfume that smelled better with each beat of her heart.

As she had expected, Hans ordered another whiskey. Neat.
Lovely.

“So, Emily, what about this note?” He leaned back and smirked. “Supposedly you have something you think I really want.”

As a teen, Emily had known how to flirt. Even when she’d met Roger, she could command innuendo. And at moments, when not faced with the incontrovertible evidence in the mirror, Emily felt like the same lively young woman. “Yes, I believe I do.”

The drinks arrived. With fresh red fingernails, she dipped into her tiny beaded purse on the table. Hans paid, but kept watching her hand, as though expecting it to withdraw the note.

“Thank you.” She snapped shut her handbag, downed her shot, and slammed the glass on the table. She smiled, almost laughed.

Hans Holding warily regarded her, as one might a mythical siren. The sensation was utterly delightful. She sipped her beer.

He took a long swig of whiskey.

“The note?”

Emily unsnapped her purse, again, extracted the piece of paper and smoothed it on to the table, keeping a hand planted on either side.

Hans bent close to see. “So?”

“Balls of steel.” She tucked the note away. “My kind of man.” But if he were really so nonchalant about this note, his willingness to meet with her suggested other, more incriminating notes floated about in the universe.

Hans smiled slightly. Looked at her. Knocked back more whiskey. “I don’t kiss and tell.”
He eyed her empty shot glass. “Care for another?”

“Sure.”

He beckoned the waitress and ordered her brand without inquiring what it was.

“But how about you?” Emily nodded at his half-empty glass.

He hesitated, then added a whiskey to the order.

“So you’re a discreet man,” she purred, glancing up from under lowered lids. “Such a refreshing quality.”

He reached across the table and tipped up her chin with a powerful forefinger. “Listen, doll, what are you up to?”

Her resolve melted toward her toes. She’d never had a courageous heart, the ability to follow up and follow through. Even at Roger’s death, she had bent under the weight of the assertions that she was naïve. Hans Holding may have typified a C student, and he may have had a weakness for women, but he hadn’t risen to the county office without shrewdness. “I just wanted to meet you,” she stammered.

He sat back, his eyes calculating. He had ego enough, and she was past her prime enough, to make the equation work. “I like your style,” he said. “Intriguing.”

Style. Intriguing. She gulped. This was a different, and much more dangerous, attack on her resolve. The words tumbled her core. Hans appealed to her in a way Roger never had. Neat, predictable Roger who had arranged everything right down to the white mums for his funeral.

Thank God for the arrival of the drinks. She picked up her shot. “Excuse me. I’m going to say hello to someone.”

She crossed the room, pretended to gulp the drink, and placed the full glass on the bar.

“Geez, it’s about time,” Barbara said. “This smoke is burning my eyes. When are you going to lure him outside?”

“I don’t know about all this.”

“I’ve been standing in this place for an hour nursing a warm beer, and you’re not sure.”

In a sleek black wig and heavy-framed glasses, Barbara didn’t look like her friend. Although striking in her costume and ten years younger than Emily, Barbara disappeared in a bar full of trendy types, all vying to be noticed and admired.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“You have to do better than that. If you’re not hanging all over him, preferably with his hand some place it shouldn’t be, the photos will be worthless.” Barbara hissed after Emily, “Think of Roger.”

Emily returned to the booth, slid in beside Hans, and smiled.

Hans squinted across the room, his eyes finally a bit rheumy with drink. “Isn’t that Barbara Morrissey?”

Emily jolted. How could he have recognized her in a disguise and all the way across a dim room? “You know her?”
“A Teacher of the Year.” He held up his drink in a mock toast to Barbara’s back and jealousy stabbed into Emily. She had been a much better teacher than Barbara. “Of course I know her.” He stared at Barbara as though willing her to turn around. Or perhaps he was admiring the ample butt packed into jeans. “What is she doing here? And what’s with the wig?”

“Meeting a former student.”

Hans sloshed his drink. His dark brows shot up. They accented his silver hair like exclamation points on the word handsome. “What? You chatted with her for two minutes and she confided that?”

“I know Barbara,” she said vaguely.

“Well I guess the student is of legal age or he wouldn’t be able to come in here. So it’s nobody’s business.” He took a swallow of whiskey. “It’s always the last people you expect, though, isn’t it?”

Emily bit her lip. Her spontaneous lie about Barbara’s rendezvous offered the perfect segue. She marveled for a second at the workings of the subconscious. “Yes. That's true. Do you remember Roger Trebling?”

Hans straightened. He put down his drink. He shook his head. “That was a sad affair. Tragic.” He regarded her warily. “Are you a teacher?”

“Retired.”

“You look too young.”

She smiled, but the atmosphere had shifted. Tension fell into the narrow space between them like a tangible curtain. “I left at fifty-five.”

Hans Holding grew still. He sat his whiskey glass on the table and surrounded it with both palms. His prominent nose sniffed twice, like an animal sensing danger.

She sipped her beer and waited, hoping the mood would dissipate, but Hans had pulled into himself. She’d seen the body language before; it was that of a man plotting his escape.

She scooted nearer. The warmth of his leg permeated his slacks and pressed through her hose. She leaned against his shoulder. A musky cologne emanated from his neck. “That tequila went right to my cerebellum,” she murmured, so the final mmm sighed against his skin.

His back bolted upright. He twisted in his seat, put a hand on each of her shoulders and pushed her back into the cushion. “What are you trying to pull?” he snarled.

Emily’s eyes flew frantically about the room, but no one paid any heed. What did she expect? A young woman had walked out of this bar to her death without any reliable witness.

She felt like a girl in a swing, flying so high the chains popped at the top of the arc. She was suspended in that moment of decision, to leap, to pump higher, or to drag her feet on the drop.

She couldn’t let go or stop. Her hands flew up. They looped behind his head and pulled his lips to hers.

Light flashed. She clung hungrily. His lips locked in indecision and then relented slightly. Her tongue flicked. Light flashed.

Then he pushed her away hard so her fingers snapped free and her head jerked backward.
His body pushed the table back and he glared drunkenly up at Barbara. “Give me the camera.”

She shook her head and backed away.

“I don’t understand, Barbara,” he said softly. “I thought there were no hard feelings.”

Emily’s eyes whipped between the two. What was this? What a fool she had been. Barbara and Hans. Well, why not? It made perfect sense. Hah! In spite of the way Barbara had acted that night at the movies, she’d probably been in Lola’s before. She had pulled Emily away from the door to avoid memories, or perhaps to dodge Hans Holding himself.

Hans Holden rose from the booth and squared off with Barbara. Emily had become a mere spectator. This would not do. She slid out the opposite end of the booth.

“It’s not like the note and photos are all I have,” she said.

But Hans’s eyes riveted on Barbara. Emily read Barbara’s lips more than heard her speak. She would not have understood the words if the name did not live inside her, coursing through her veins.

Melissa Coverly.

Gorgeous, gifted, buxom, screwed up Melissa Coverly. Emily had never believed the rumor, and nothing had ever been proven, because instead Roger wrote a tidy will leaving her everything, and then blew off the back of his head.

Barbara swung the old Instamatic from its strap and hit Hans in the face.

“What the fuck!” He held up his hands to shield another blow.

The excitement drew patrons. They ringed the couple, but a beefy bouncer pushed aside their bodies and latched on to Hans Holding. Hans tried to shrug away. The bouncer was immovable as a tank. A lightning bolt zig-zagged across the enforcer’s shaved skull.

“She,” Hans aimed a finger at Barbara, “attacked me.” He pointed at the witnesses. “Ask them.”

The bouncer didn’t glance, didn’t even blink. With a bulky pivot, he faced Hans toward the door. “Sir, I am asking you to leave.”

Hans stared coldly at Barbara. “I’d start looking for another job.”

She dangled the camera. “Do you think so?”

The bouncer released Hans, who shrugged into his suit and headed toward the door. The gawkers dispersed.

Barbara put a hand on Emily’s shoulder. “You look shaken.”

“I could use a drink.”

Barbara escorted her to a stool. Stunned, Emily sat. Barbara ordered victory cosmopolitans, drew deep breaths of smoky air, and ignored the still curious.

When the drinks arrived, Emily whispered, “You were unbelievable.”

“The whole thing is unbelievable,” Barbara said. She sipped the red liquid.

“This feels like payback,” Emily said. “He’s a snake. I’ve never liked him.”

“You could have fooled me there for a minute.”

“Jealous?” Emily enjoyed the tangy lime underpinnings of the cosmo concoction.

Barbara heaved a sigh and tugged on her blouse, throwing her large endowments into relief. “Our fling was a long time ago.”

“Roger was a long time ago, too. Some things you don’t get over.”

“That’s true.” Barbara spun the old-fashioned instamatic on the counter.

“It’s not just that Hans didn’t step up for Roger,” Emily mused, “it always seemed to me like he fanned the flames—going on about how dedicated Roger was, all the long hours, the special interest in students. Even if Roger was involved, which I don’t believe he was, Melissa Coverly was eighteen. It wasn’t even prosecutable.”

“You don’t understand,” Barbara said calmly. She polished off her cosmopolitan. “This isn’t about Roger.”

Emily stared at her friend on the bar stool—the unassuming blouse and jeans, the wide-set pretty eyes. Everyone liked Barbara. She liked Barbara. “What’s it about then?”

“Me.”

“You?”

“Oh, Emily,” her friend sighed. She patted her mouth. “You’ve always been so involved in the plots in your head, that you don’t see those before your eyes.”

The rush of feeling was like a hot flash. Or an orgasm. An uncontrollable hormonal blast. “I get that you and Hans had an affair,” Emily snapped. None of this was right. She was older than Barbara, but prettier. Smarter, too. And more interesting. How did Barbara keep grabbing the spotlight?

“Hans is not the type to leave one honey pot until he has another,” Barbara said.

The bits dropped into place: Barbara’s willingness to participate in her escapade. Barbara’s mouth wrapped around that name, Melissa Coverly. Hans had dumped Barbara for Melissa Coverly. Barbara wasn’t avenging Roger; she was avenging herself.

Emily snatched the leather strap of the camera. She raised the camera above her head and hurled it against the concrete floor.

Nearby patrons stared. Barbara didn’t flinch. “I’ve been wanting a digital camera anyway.”

Emily’s eyes welled with tears.

Barbara patted her shoulder. “You can’t change the past.”

“Gatsby thought you could.”

“Doesn’t Gatsby end up dead?”

Emily nodded numbly. The photos didn’t matter. Barbara was right. They couldn’t change any of it. Melissa Coverly disappeared. The girl had kept a journal, full of lurid accounts about an unnamed man. Rumors swirled about Roger. Her Roger. The man for whom reputation as a teacher meant everything. Roger blew out his brains. Emily planted the white mums. End of story. History. Not worth reliving.

Barbara hugged her. “Hey, we had our own little moment tonight, though. Hans must be shitting bricks.” She flagged the barmaid. “Two more cosmopolitans!”

But Reality sat next to Emily, turned on the stool like the wheel of fortune, and whispered in her ear.

Emily asked her friend, “Why didn’t you ever tell me about Hans and Melissa?” More to the point, why had Barbara allowed the whole world to believe in the myth of Roger and Melissa?

“Oh my poor dear. Where do you think Hans got the idea Melissa Coverly might be ripe for the picking? That she would go for an older man?”

Emily stared, barely noticing the soft thunk of their arriving drinks.

Barbara shoved forward money. “Keep the change.”

“What are you implying?” Emily croaked.

“Hans had barely met the little hussy. She was just moving on to greener pastures. Maybe she wanted someone richer. More . . . ”

“More, what?”

Barbara ignored the question and took a sip of her cosmopolitan. “Then poof.” Barbara’s hands flew up as though detonated. “Melissa jilted Roger. She disappeared. And Roger killed himself. Connect the dots.”

Emily scrutinized her friend the way she would a student who swore she had not cheated. She listened for the false timber. “You think Roger . . . ?” She choked. Her friend’s previous betrayal was like a puff of air compared to this suggestion—that Roger had consorted with Melissa Coverly. That Roger might, after all, have had something to do with the girl’s disappearance.

“All those days of tutoring? The suicide rescues?” Barbara smiled grimly. “You thought all that was teacherly concern?”

In her false black wig, Barbara looked like a witch. Emily picked up her cosmopolitan and splashed it into her face. “Yes,” she said. “I do think that. Some teachers are really like that.” She slid off the stool, collected her purse, and leaned close to Barbara’s dripping ear. “We were both better teachers than you’ll ever be.”

Her high heels tapped across the barroom floor. Emily did not look back.

In the moonlight Emily’s black cocktail dress shimmered. She stood before the mums and ran shaky fingers along the fringed leaves. Tears drizzled down her face.

I could rip them out by the roots.

Instead she plucked up a bit of brown paper caught in a leaf juncture and chose the pure white remembrance of mums.

END

Vinnie Hansen is guilty of writing genre fiction in the form of the Carol Sabala mystery series available in trade paper or e-book form. A finalist for the Claymore Award, the seventh book in the series, Black Beans & Venom will be released from misterio press in January, 2015. Also watch for her short story Novel Solution in the mystery anthology, Fish or Cut Bait, due out in May, 2015, from Wildside Press.
The author of many published literary short stories, Vinnie lives in Santa Cruz with her husband, artist Daniel S. Friedman. For more information please visit www.vinniehansen.com