Читать книгу Vows, Vendettas And A Little Black Dress - Kyra Davis - Страница 11

My ex-boyfriend is kind of like a cold sore. He’s always popping up at the most inconvenient times, he’s hideously embarrassing, and it takes forever to get rid of him.

–Fatally Yours

The person in the hospital bed was totally unfamiliar to me. I had expected to see a wounded Dena but this was a…a…girl. Not a woman. Without styling products, her thick, dark hair flopped carelessly around her face. There was no burgundy lipstick or meticulously applied eyeliner. Without the help of her powder foundation you could make out the beginnings of a pimple right on the bridge of her nose. The only things that hadn’t changed were her eyelashes. Naturally dark, curvy and thick, Dena had never seen a reason to coat them in mascara. Now, without the competition of all the other expensive cosmetics, those lashes seemed to dominate her features. The sexy dark lashes of a seductress mistakenly placed around the eyes of an uneasy child.

“You brought me flowers,” Dena said, but there was no appreciation in her voice. Just the quiet notation of fact.

“They’re kind of from Amelia,” I said as I placed them on the bedside table beside her.

“I thought she was in Nicaragua.”

“No, Kim went, she stayed behind.” I had forgotten to ask for a vase…but shouldn’t Amelia have thought of that? This couldn’t be the first arrangement she’d ever made for a hospital room.

“My parents are in town.”

I pulled a wooden chair up to the side of the bed. “So they’ve already been here this morning?”

Dena shook her head. “I guess they were here last night but I was out of it. Monty’s putting them up. Mary Ann’s going to be staying with him, too, for a little while.”

“She doesn’t want to stay in her apartment,” I said slowly. “God, of course she doesn’t. I should have asked her if she wanted to stay with me.”

Dena looked away, choosing not to comment.

I gently fingered the petals of a downy orchid. I had a lot of questions but I wasn’t at all sure I wanted the answers.

Dena stroked the blanket that covered her legs. Her nails were painted with OPI’s “I’m Not Really a Waitress” red. “I can feel them,” she whispered.

For a second I didn’t understand. It wasn’t until I noted the way she was staring at her legs that I got it. “Oh! That’s wonderful!”

“Wonderful?” she repeated. “Wonderful that I can feel a part of my body? We’re supposed to be able to feel our legs! We’re supposed to be able to USE them! But I can’t do that, can I? Maybe, someday if I’m lucky, I’ll be able to walk a block in less than ten minutes!”

I drew away from the orchid. “It’s not going to be like that.”

“NO?” She spat. “This morning I talked to my doctor about walkers and braces. WALKERS and FUCKING BRACES, Sophie!”

Outside the room we could hear the high-pitched sound of nurses laughing as they walked down the hall. Dena winced as if their merriment was a personal insult. “He did say that with intensive physical therapy I might get to the point where I can walk with only a cane,” she continued, “but I shouldn’t get my hopes too high. I shouldn’t expect to be able to walk as well as my fucking grandmother, right? I mean who do I think I am? A healthy thirty-two-year-old woman? A woman who hasn’t had everything taken away from her in five fucking seconds? Is that who I think I am?”

“You don’t need to get your hopes up,” I said. Every muscle in my body was tensing and I pushed myself to the edge of the chair. “This isn’t about hope.”

“You know, Mary Ann spent the night here and Jason was here a little less than an hour ago. They were both trying to fucking coddle me,” Dena went on, apparently not hearing me. “Hugging me all fucking morning. I don’t need sympathy and cuddles. I need to be okay again but that’s never going to happen!”

“Shut up,” I whispered. The muted pastel tones in the room were blurring together as I stared hard at my friend.

“What did you just say?”

“SHUT UP!” I was louder this time and my heeled boots pounded against the linoleum floor as I jumped to my feet. “You’re pissed off? Fine, great, I am, too. But don’t just roll over! You don’t roll over for anyone! You’re a friggin’ dominatrix for God’s sake!”

Dena recoiled slightly, her head making wrinkled patterns in her paper pillow case. “Sophie—”

“I’m not done talking. See, this is how it’s going to go. You and I are going to take all this anger and we’re going to channel it. We’re going to find this guy who shot you and we’re going to fuck him up big-time. And then you’re going to take the rest of your anger and you’re going to use it to fuel your recovery. You’re going to walk again without ANY help—just to spite your attacker. This isn’t about keeping hopes high. This is about kicking ass and making the asshole who did this cower and beg for mercy and YOU know how to do that!”

Dena stared at me for a moment as I tried to steady my breathing. “Was that a pep talk?”

“God, I don’t know. Aren’t pep talks supposed to be more…peppy?”

Dena’s lips curved into the tiniest of smiles.

“You’re right,” she said, softer this time. “I do want to stay angry.”

I sat back in my chair. “It’s an awesome emotion.” I blinked my eyes until the room came back into focus. “Where would you and I be if Susan B. Anthony hadn’t gotten pissed off? Hell, our whole country owes its existence to the temper tantrum a bunch of moody Bostonians had over some tea.”

“You have a point.”

“Don’t I always?”

“No, not always.” A small flock of birds could be seen from the window and Dena followed their path with her eyes. “There’s more, Sophie. My doctor told me…he told me that sex is going to be…different. He said that after an injury like mine some women have reported that they are no longer able to have orgasms. He said that some of the women started experiencing pain when they had sex.”

I felt my heart go into free fall. This was worse than losing the use of her legs. This was like blinding an astronomer or cutting off the hands of a pianist.

Dena grabbed my wrist. “Promise me that it was more than just a pep talk, Sophie. Promise you’ll help me make the guy who did this pay.”

And at that very moment Mary Ann’s ex-boyfriend, Rick Wilkes, stepped into the room.

It took us both a split second to recognize him. His hair was shorter than the last time I had seen him and he was wearing a suit that seemed way too formal, not just for the hospital but for the city as a whole. But what really threw me off was the fact that the bottom half of his face was hidden behind a bunch of tulips. He must have brought two dozen of them and they were all carelessly crammed together in a small vase.

“What,” Dena said in a tone of utter disdain and impatience, “are you doing here?”

“I heard what happened.” He lowered the tulips slightly and gave me a small nod of acknowledgment. “I thought I’d come by and…” His voice trailed off and he thrust the flowers forward to demonstrate the point of his mission.

“You’re not family,” Dena said evenly. “And we’re not friends. What made you think you owed me flowers?”

“I didn’t think I owed them to you.” Rick put his bouquet next to mine. My black orchids seemed all the more dark and moody now that they glared up at Holland’s national flower. “Besides, we are friends. We were practically family for a while there.”

“Are you kidding me?” Dena tried to raise herself up on her forearms, and when the pain from her wound stopped her she settled for making her automated bed lift her into a sitting position. “You’re here to score points with my cousin?”

“That’s not what I said!”

“You might as well have! We were practically family,” she mimicked. “We were never anything close to family, snot-face!”

Rick gingerly put his hand to his nose as if he thought the insult might be literal.

“But here you are,” Dena continued, “hoping that if you show up with some ugly ass flowers Mary Ann’s going to see how sensitive and considerate you are and fall into your arms!”

“That’s not true! And these flowers aren’t ugly!” He picked his bouquet back up and shoved them in her face. “They’re tulips! You love tulips!”

“I hate tulips!” She smacked the flowers aside and glared as a dislodged petal floated down onto her sheets. “Mary Ann is the one who gets all Holly-Hobby-giddy over them—but that was the point, right?”

“Listen, we were watching the news,” Rick said in a rush. “I heard what happened and I thought, well, I should be here. I should be here to support Mary Ann’s cousin.”

“We?” Dena repeated.

“Right…er…” He put the flowers on the side table again and became very involved in fluffing them back up.

“Rick, baby, don’t leave me hanging,” Dena jeered. “Who’s we?”

Rick’s hands fell to his sides. “Well, if you must know, Fawn was with me, but don’t take that to mean… We were just watching television after all.”

“So you’re not with her anymore?” Dena asked, although she didn’t sound as if she cared all that much.

“No…we are… I had to get on with my life after all. Mary Ann told me she’s getting married and, well… I mean if I had reason to think she was having second thoughts… She’s not, right?”

“Get. Out!” Dena hissed just as the door opened again.

This time it was a nurse. “Miss Lopiano, I’m supposed to run some tests…”

Dena raised her hand bidding the nurse to wait and turned to Rick. “Why are you still here?”

“I could just wait in the corner,” he said hopefully. “Wait until she…um, your family shows up.”

Dena gave me a meaningful look. I got to my feet and took Rick by the arm. “We’re leaving.” I pulled him through the door and down the hallway.

“I’ll wait here then,” he suggested once we had reached a vending machine.

“For Mary Ann?” I asked. “Really? What do you think is going to happen?”

Rick pulled away from me and looked up at the ceiling. “I know you and Dena hate me. You have the right to but—”

“Rick, someone shot Dena. Right now all my hate is reserved for the guy who pulled the trigger. I don’t have room in my mind to hate you. I don’t have room for you period. And neither does Dena and neither does Mary Ann.”

“I just want to talk to her.”

“Not today. She’s got enough to deal with.”

Rick reached out and grabbed my arm but his grip was much tighter than mine had been on his. “I am not something that Mary Ann has to deal with. I’m here to comfort her. I understand her, she can talk to me.”

“No,” I said, peeling his fingers away. “She can’t. You severed whatever special connection you had with Mary Ann when you decided to stuff your weasel inside Bambi slutty taxidermist.”

“Her name is Fawn.”

“Whatever. You’re being a burden, Rick. Accept it and move on.”

Rick’s eyes flashed in what could be either anger or pain. He leaned forward and for the first time I became aware of his height. Rick wasn’t very muscular but he had to be at least six foot three.

“Rick? Is everything all right?”

We both turned to see a woman in a bright orange belted sheath dress coming out of the elevator. The vividness of her clothes seemed to clash with her reddish-brown hair which was gathered up in a cheap plastic clip.

Rick immediately pulled away. “Everything’s fine,” he said. I have never seen a man look more guilty. “I didn’t expect—”

But the woman cut him off by turning to me. “You must be a friend of Dena’s. I’m Fawn.”

She extended her hand to me but I just stared at it. Fawn read my reticence correctly and quickly pulled her hand back. “I guess you’re also a friend of Mary Ann’s,” she said quietly. “We didn’t mean to cause any trouble. It’s just that after seeing it on the news Rick thought we should come…he did know Dena after all and he’s had nothing but nice things to say about her.”

“Dena doesn’t want to see Rick,” I said coolly. “And you…well, she doesn’t even know you.”

“Right, I’m sorry.” Fawn shifted from foot to foot. “We’ll go…or I’ll go wait in the car if you want to stay a little longer, Rick.” She looked up to Rick in a silent request for instructions.

“Rick doesn’t need to stay,” I said shortly. “You can both leave.”

Rick crossed his arms across his chest and for a moment it looked as if he was going to stomp his foot in protest, but instead he nodded to Fawn, who quickly fell behind him as he strode toward the elevator. Fawn turned to me and mouthed “sorry” as Rick jammed his finger against the call button. She didn’t protest when he pulled her inside as the doors parted.

It hadn’t been that way when Rick had been with Mary Ann. He had doted on her. Once, after consuming one too many glasses of scotch Rick had told her that she owned his soul. But men were always making wildly romantic declarations to Mary Ann. Just last month Monty had thrown rose petals at her feet and pronounced her to be queen of his heart. Anatoly didn’t do stuff like that. Thank God.

In what couldn’t have been more than ten seconds later, the bell of the elevator rang again and this time it was my sister, Leah, who walked out holding what might have been the biggest gift basket I have ever seen. She had to strain her neck to see over the large purple-and-white ribbon. She raised her eyebrows up and down in what could only be described as a facial wave when she saw me.

“I think I just saw Rick Wilkes getting out of the elevator while I was getting on,” she said once she had made it to my side.

“Yep, you did.” I sighed. “He’s such a jerk.”

“We were at his house last year for Mary Ann’s surprise party. You appeared to like him well enough then.”

“That was before I knew he was a cheater.”

“That’s right, I forgot about that,” Leah said in a voice that implied she wasn’t all that interested in remembering. “Anatoly told me I’d find you here. What did you bring Dena? It wasn’t spa products, was it?”

“I brought flowers,” I said as I tried to count the myriad number of spa products in the leather basket. “But I forgot to bring a vase.”

Leah rolled her eyes. “Typical. You know what else is typical? It’s typical that I had to find out about this through Anatoly. Of course I was listening to Mornings on Two while making breakfast this morning and they reported that someone in the Lake Street area was shot last night, but they weren’t releasing names and it never occurred to me that I might know the victim! Why didn’t you call me, Sophie?”

“You don’t even like Dena.”

“I disapprove of her,” she corrected. “There’s a big difference.”

“Is there?”

“Absolutely. I can honestly say that Dena is the only brazen hussy I have ever genuinely liked.”

It was a joke meant to lighten the mood but the worry in her eyes undermined it. Even her most recent Botox injections couldn’t hide her distress.

“Look, Dena’s getting examined or something right now. Why don’t we grab a cup of coffee down in the cafeteria?”

“I don’t eat in hospital cafeterias,” Leah said distractedly. “Is there a waiting room around here? We could talk there.”

A little shudder went up my spine as I remembered last night, sitting in that awful room waiting for news on Dena. “There’s a Starbucks a few blocks away.”

Leah sighed. “You can’t expect me to lug this all the way to Starbucks. Which one is her room?”

“That one but—”

Leah marched over and used her foot to knock on the door. I watched as the nurse opened the door and then after a moment let Leah in. I hesitated before approaching the door myself, but Leah walked out before I got there.

“The nurse is about to help her to the bathroom,” Leah said, her voice slightly less assured than it had been a minute ago. “And after that she’s going to be meeting with a physical therapist.” She looked down at her hands. “Why don’t we go for a walk? We need to talk.”

When we got outside I noticed that a slight wind had picked up and I had to work to keep my hair out of my face as we walked down the sidewalks of Parnassus. Leah’s hair, which was plastered with God-only-knows-what hair products, stayed stubbornly in place.

“Where’s my favorite nephew?” I asked. Four-year-old Jack was my favorite as he was my only nephew. I’d love him more if he would just stop trying to kill my cat.

“He’s at a morning playdate right now. I’ll pick him up in an hour.”

“Nice that you get a break.”

Leah stopped and turned to me. “Are you all right?”

“I wasn’t the one who was shot.”

“You could have been.” She reached over and plucked out a small leaf that had secretly blown into my hair. “You were so close, Sophie. Only a room away!”

“I might as well have been in another city. I didn’t even see who did the shooting.”

Leah hesitated and then seemed to decide this was an acceptable enough answer and started walking again. A passing truck driver called out something suggestive but neither of us bothered to turn our heads.

“We could walk to your house from here,” she noted.

“We could. But I’d rather not, seeing that both our cars are in the hospital parking lot.”

Leah nodded and picked up her pace, forcing me to do the same. It was a few more minutes before she spoke again. “What if I told you that I might know who did this?”

“What?” Now it was my turn to stop.

“I don’t know for sure,” Leah said quickly. “It’s just a possibility. An unlikely possibility at that.”

“Leah, what are you talking about?”

Leah hesitated and then pointed to the Starbucks across the street. “Maybe we should get coffee after all.”