“What did she say to her?”
“Don’t know. I just heard her through the open door. She stopped when we came in and started talking about that sickly fern you’ve got. She talked on for a good five minutes before we could drag her away. Then I went to the Laundromat and Sebastian came up here to wait till I was done.”
“How did Linnea act while Molly talked about the fern?”
“She was kind of snuffling and sulking, but she said goodbye pleasant.”
“Hmmm.” I was silent for a moment.
“You worried about your friend?” Gus asked.
“A little.”
“You should be,” he said sagely. “Next thing you know, she’ll turn into another Tim O’Riley.”
I suppressed a smile, comparing the petite Linnea to burly Tim, but, unfortunately, there was some truth in Gus’s statement. And, even after years of steady beer-guzzling, Tim handled his alcohol far better than my friend.
Gus came forward with the cardboard carton. “Everything’s in here except the litter box. It’s got to be cleaned, so I’ll bring it down later.”
Good lord, I thought. A litter box. The poor cat had been cooped up since last night without one. I hoped Linnea had had the sense to... No, of course she hadn’t. I’d be lucky if she hadn’t thrown Watney out, thinking he’d wandered in by mistake. It was time I went down to check on both of them.
6
When I opened the apartment door, the cat leapt out at me. He charged toward the little bed of blue pebbles and plastic flowers that was the owner’s idea of lobby decoration and began to root enthusiastically among the fake geraniums. I smiled, remembering that Tim’s pet peeve was the inability among felines in the building to distinguish between this synthetic jungle and the out-of-doors. Well, at least Watney had waited until I got home.
I leaned against the door frame, suddenly tired and looking forward to a cool glass of white wine. The cat approached tentatively, glancing up at me with wide yellow eyes before he sidled inside and slithered down the hall. Apparently Watney, with some reservations, had accepted his new home.
I followed him, looking into the bathroom and frowning at the wet, crumpled towels strewn on the floor. Blond hair clogged the basin, and the mirror was speckled. The main room was dark, my new draperies drawn tightly across the bay window. I jerked the cord, half expecting to find Linnea curled up in the bed, but the light revealed only twisted quilts. My friend must have taken my advice to get out of here, and with good reason: Clothes were draped over every available piece of furniture, glasses stood on the shelves and table tops, ashtrays overflowed. Surely the place hadn’t looked as bad this morning!
I sighed and went into the kitchen in quest of wine. Dirty dishes stood everywhere, some on the floor. I’d been busy the last few days and hadn’t had time to wash them. But then, I hadn’t been home long enough to dirty them either. I shoved aside a greasy frying pan and set down the carton of cat supplies, then opened the old electrified icebox that was built in to the wall and stared glumly into its depths. Besides every dish in the house, Linnea had used up all the wine.
“Jesus Christ,” I said wearily. I shut the icebox and, after dishing out some food for the cat, went back to the main room. After a feeble attempt at straightening the disordered bedclothes, I picked up my purse and left.
I got as far as the front steps before I realized I didn’t know where to go. There I sat, chin propped on my hand, watching the buses disgorge rush hour crowds at the corner stop. I should think, I told myself. I should think.
But what was there to think about? Linnea Carraway, my oldest friend, had turned into an obnoxious, self-centered bitch. And, in her post-divorce depression, she had veered so far off course that I could half-seriously entertain thoughts like those about the drapery cord. Not even my fondest memories of the days when we were growing up together in San Diego could change the fact of Linnea’s drastic deterioration.
Still, the memories came rushing back as I sat here on the steps. Linnea was my friend from the days when we had asked the cards a question and, deep down, I still loved her.
Even now, my mind traveled to San Diego, to my bedroom in my parents’ old, rambling house, to a younger Linnea sitting crosslegged on the floor as she dealt out a single game of solitaire. Her wheat-colored hair would be hitched up in horsetails on either side of her head, her pretty face pinched with concentration as she sat in the lamplight, her eyes pleading with the cards to make the game come out.
That was the trick: You asked the cards a question. If the game came out, the answer was “yes.” If the cards stuck, the answer was “no.” And the question, more often than not in those days, was: “Does he love me?”
Well, the “he” of Linnea’s questions had loved her, for a while. He’d married her, given her two children, and left her for someone else, all in five short years. When the divorce was final, Linnea had left the kids at her mother’s and come to me, her best friend, for sympathy and help in pulling the pieces of her life together. Dammit! How could I let her down?
Contrary to our younger days, I was now the strong one, the one who’d made the kind of life she wanted for herself. And Linnea: She had a broken marriage, two preschool kids parked with Grandma, and a full-blown nervous breakdown over the prospect of her spousal support running out in three years when, by the court’s reckoning, she should have become self-supporting.
For weeks now I’d told her: “Look, three years is a fantastically long time. By then you could have gone to law school, or become an accountant. Hell, you could even have become a cop!”
But to Linnea, accustomed since her marriage to having her plans made for her, three years was all too short. She never disagreed with what I said, but she would sit there, staring at me as if I were speaking in tongues, and then reach for whatever liquor bottle was closest to hand. She went her sodden way, dropping her clothes on the floor, burning cigarette holes in the furniture, and in general playing havoc with my life. I couldn’t understand what had happened to my gutsy, independent friend.
Linnea had always been a leader, one of those people who got things done with fanfare and flourish. In high school, she had hitchhiked to Los Angeles one weekend to see a rock star — and convinced him to come to San Diego for a benefit concert for our class’s senior trip. She’d been the first in our crowd to backpack alone in the Sierras, to try skydiving, and to get a prescription for the Pill. While the rest of us went from school to dull jobs as secretaries or sales clerks or, in my case, security guards, Linnea wangled a job as a receptionist at a local TV station. In two years, she had become their first female news commentator. Her reportage, like her personal style, was decisive, forthright and determined.
When Linnea met pro football player Jim Carraway, we all approved of the match. Jim was as strong and lively — a trifle domineering, though — as Linnea herself. The cards said “yes” about Jim, and Linnea married him.
And now, five years later, she had emerged from the marriage bedraggled, indecisive, and afraid of her own shadow. She searched the mirror for nonexistent wrinkles, talking of how she — at one hundred pounds — was “fatter and dumpier” than Jim’s new woman. She complained of how her little girls loved their father more than her and would elect to live with him as soon as they reached the age when they could choose. She agonized about ever finding a job — who would hire anyone as “stupid” as her?
In the last three weeks, convinced there were no solutions to her problems, Linnea had begun to immerse herself in alcohol. Hours of drunkenness would alternate with periods of manic activity. She refused my help, refused professional help, and I didn’t know what to offer next. So I let her walk all over me, feeling angry and guilty at the same time.