Love You to Death Read online

  “Chaz wants his time with me alone.”

  “Tarzan speaks.”

  “He thinks you may be a bad influence on the boy.”

  “Neanderthal brain.”

  “When Chaz came out from his shower this morning, Tobias tried to look under his towel.”

  “So?”

  “So what’s he looking for?”

  “I should think that’s obvious, doll.”

  Nicole’s eyes were furious.

  “Nikki, he just wants to make sure he’s the same as other men.”

  “The difficulties don’t stop there. We took him to the zoo. You know how children are supposed to like the zoo?”

  I nodded and anticipated what she was about to tell me. “And the animals put on a floor show for him?”

  “No, it was worse. He found some stones and was throwing them at the lions. It was pandemonium. The roaring was horrible. Finally, the guards ordered us all out.”

  “Poor Charles. He must have been mortified.”

  Nicole glared at me. “Stanley, even I was disturbed by the boy’s behavior, and I’m certainly no animal lover.”

  “Nikki, Tobias is angry about what’s happening to his mother. It’s better for him to release the anger than to suppress it.”

  “That’s bosh. He’s an ill-mannered little monster.”

  “He’s only four years old. You can’t expect him to be a paragon of etiquette.”

  “Chaz thinks the corruption is irreversible, and he believes that you are partly responsible.”

  “That’s absurd.”

  “Maybe not, Stanley.”

  Silence. Puff-puff. Smoke screen.

  “Whose side are you on, Sis?”

  Nicole faltered for just a second. “There are no sides. Chaz is a very satisfactory lover, Stanley, despite what you perceive to be flaws in his character.”

  “He’s trying to cause a rift between us, Nikki. Homophobes tend to do that, and the educated, clever ones do it sneakily, the way Charles does.”

  “Stanley, I don’t want to lose him. Not just yet. And at the same time I don’t want to have to choose between the two of you.”

  “How do you think I feel? Do you think I like being pitted against an Olympic rug-muncher?”

  Nicole crushed her cigarette carelessly, not with the usual delicacy. “You have a way of debasing everything.”

  “It clears the air.”

  “It’s coarse.”

  “Everything is, at the bottom.”

  “You sound just like a man now.”

  “I am a man.”

  “Yes, I sometimes forget that. Well, I can no longer help out with caring for the boy. He’s all yours, Stanley. And if you can’t handle it, then the courts should take him.”

  Cripes, even if Tobias was somewhat disturbing to our pretty little lives, a foster home certainly wasn’t the answer, not when Nikki and I could offer him friendly, familiar places to stay. Besides, I’d promised Laurett that I’d take care of him. Of course, that had been under the assumption that it would be for only one night.

  “Nikki, I’m not going to give the kid up until the police come and take him from me.”

  “Suit yourself.” She latched her purse forcefully and yanked it up over her shoulder. “And as for your shirking your duties today—I’m not asking for your keys, but consider yourself on probation for a month.”

  “But—”

  Nicole raised her hand to silence me, much the way Branco had at the party the other night. It made me wonder if my lying to her earlier about being on probation with Branco had caused it to become a reality now with her. He-said-she-said. Were they in cahoots against me too?

  Nicole spoke as if announcing a corporate policy change. “Ramon has proven that he’s perfectly capable of managing the shop. If you don’t want the responsibility, he’ll gladly step in.”

  It was happening again. Ramon was displacing me. Damn conniving little liar. I never trusted him or his story. He was supposedly from Paris, and he’d wormed his way into Snips by dropping some names that Nicole recognized from her modeling days back there. But I reasoned that if a young man knew people from her generation so well, he was probably a clever opportunist who traded on his youth and looks. Nicole insisted that he was simply cultured. Ramon also claimed to be bisexual, which was a kind of fashion statement for him, and which also seemed to increase his tips. But what I really mistrusted him for was his interest in my client list and my expert technique. He had few clients of his own and he envied my position as Snips’s lead stylist. Besides, Ramon was hatefully good-looking and suave, which really grated on and exposed my blue-collar background.

  “No,” I said sharply in my best all-male imitation.

  “Then grow up, Stanley, and do your job.”

  She left the back room abruptly and continued on right out of the shop, even before putting on her coat.

  Nikki and I had fought before. During our worst one, I’d actually quit and gone to work in another salon. Those six weeks were hell for both of us. I even considered returning to my first profession as a psychologist. But fortunately Nikki and I made up, and we promised that we’d never get that angry again. Yet here I was being punished like a naughty boy. What had I done that was so wrong?

  When I came out from the back room a few minutes later, Tobias was standing outside. “Uncle Stan, should I go away?”

  He’d obviously overheard everything.

  “No, Tobias. I’m just not used to having a boy around. Give me a little time, okay?” How could I explain to him that the best way he could help me would be to show me where his ON/OFF switch was? That way I could put him on a shelf, then take him down again whenever it suited me. Parenthood and I were obviously incompatible.

  Back to work it was. The one remaining name on my book was a new customer. He was a good-looking man, rugged and muscular, probably in his late twenties. He told me he was an actor and was in town for the tryouts of a new show. While I was cutting his hair, he asked me if I’d like to go to the theater with him that night, since he had tickets. I figured Rafik must have activated my pheromones, because I don’t usually get such easy invitations from such hunky men. Regretfully, I had to say no, since I’d be playing my own role of Daddy again that night.

  With the work day over, Tobias and I headed back to my place. I asked him, “Are you ready for supper?”

  He nodded vigorously.

  “How about soup and sandwiches?”

  Negative.

  “Pizza again?”

  Equally strong negative.

  “Then what, Tobias?”

  “Burgers.”

  So much for the diet. We headed for the downtown branch of Acme Burgers. Yes, there is such a place, and it’s hamburger heaven. I knew they had deluxe salad plates for the chic, slender crowd, of which I seemed destined to be a nonmember. And once inside, the smell of grilled burgers and onions and fries convinced me that fifteen, make that twenty, extra pounds on a five-foot-ten-inch, long-limbed Slavic frame wasn’t really a serious problem. I had more important matters to contend with. Like attempted murder.

  11

  A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS

  THE NEXT MORNING I ARRIVED AT SNIPS with Tobias in tow. The shop was open and I assumed that Ramon was already exercising his new-found keys and privileges as salon manager, however long they lasted. I greeted Nikki nonchalantly, as though my recent deposition didn’t faze me.

  “Morning, doll. Am I forgiven for yesterday?”

  “Forgiven, yes, Stanley, but not reinstated. You have a nine o’clock appointment, and after that you’re booked solid.”

  “Sounds like all work and no play today.”

  “Unlikely for you.”

  I looked around the shop and didn’t see my rival.

  “Where’s swivel-hips?” I asked.

  “Who?”

  “Ramon.”

  “Poor thing called in sick, so you’ll have to shampoo for yourself too.”

 
“The heir apparent crumbles under the yoke—”

  “Just get to work, Stanley.”

  Nicole then presented Tobias with a large gift box wrapped with expensive paper. His little fingers tore into it like a puppy’s paws on a chow bag. Nestled inside was a big, plush teddy bear imported from Germany. For all Nikki’s complaining about the boy, her actions proved that she cared about him. “Nonsense,“ she remarked when I commented on her generosity. “I just want to keep him out of our way.”

  My first customer of the day was my friend Kris, a free-lance production assistant in Boston’s theater world. He said he needed a big change—what we call a new look—something to lift his spirits out of the winter doldrums. I suggested color work, specifically, a halo highlighting, where two or more separate colors are skillfully interwoven with plain, bleached hair to achieve a glowing “crown” effect. The complexity of the idea appealed to him, and I launched into the challenging project. The first step was to separate the hair into sections along its natural growth patterns.

  Since theater was Kris’s world, I asked him if he’d heard about the play I missed last night, the date with the hunky actor I’d had to turn down because of my recent parental charge. Kris laughed.

  “Phone sex,” he replied.

  “A play about phone sex?”

  “It should have been more than that, but our local dramaticos ruined it by focusing on porn instead of the characters and their conflict. And the cast—well, I would have loved to run the auditions. Forget acting, boys, just show me your stuff. Ergo, it became a play about phone sex. Too bad.”

  Perhaps I hadn’t missed much with the hunk after all.

  On Kris’s sectioned hair, I wove out selected strands and painted them with one of the two colors, or with the bleach. Then I wrapped each treated tuft in a separate, color-coded piece of foil. By the time I finished applying all the color, Kris’s head resembled an Aztec pyramid of fluttery, multicolored foil. When he saw his reflection in the mirror, he exclaimed, “I look like a Vegas show girl.”

  While the colors cooked in Kris’s hair, I had just enough time to perform the weekly trim on the virile head of a popular television newscaster—a regular appointment that kept him looking perfectly groomed without looking recently cut. Thirty minutes later, Kris’s color work was ready for finishing, which I did with him facing away from the mirror, to intensify the dramatic effect when it was completed. After my last masterful touch, I turned his chair around to face the mirror. He seemed awestruck by the effect: The two shades of blond along with the bleached hair blended into his former mousey brown head made it seem to glow from within itself, really like a halo. He didn’t say a word, so I supplied my own compliment.

  “I like it,” I said. “That’s all that matters.”

  By late morning, Tobias had become restless from being in the shop, so I took a short break with him and went for a walk in the Public Garden, which is only half a block away. Once in the garden, Tobias ran full speed toward the snow-covered banks of the Swan Pond. He tumbled down into the snow and rolled himself like a big snowball toward the empty lagoon. When his small body came to rest, he played dead in the snow, facedown. I knelt down over him and gently tickled him. I could see him tensing up and refusing to laugh, but I persisted until I overcame his resistance. He rolled onto his back and faced me, now laughing loudly and flailing about in the snow, tossing some of it up onto me until I had to pin his arms down to stop him. But the physical restraint only caused him to laugh louder.

  “Want to make snow angels?” I asked, crouched over him.

  “Is that like making love?”

  “Tobias, don’t talk like that.” I feared that passersby might overhear and get the wrong idea. Why was this kid so insistent on proving me a pederast? “No,” I said. “It’s like doing this.” I rolled off him and lay down in a clean patch of snow and made the requisite motions with my arms and legs. Then I stood up and showed him the splendid angelic form I’d created in the snow, a kind of reverse bas-relief.

  Tobias studied the neatly depressed snow, then remarked, “Why is it wearing a dress?”

  “That’s a holy robe.”

  “I’m going to make a bum-angel,” he said and started to unfasten his pants. I realized instantly what he was about to do, so I snagged his little arms.

  “No you don’t, young man. Not with me.” I quickly halted his imminent exhibitionism, but it was too late. People had already seen and heard enough to wonder what a red-haired man in his early thirties was doing diddling with the trousers of a blond-haired brown boy of four. “It’s all right,” I heard myself begin to explain aloud, but I realized that explanations only sounded defensive. I dragged Tobias out of the garden and headed back to the shop. Once inside, he grabbed his new teddy bear and fell asleep on one of the big cushioned chairs in the waiting lounge. I wondered how the little monster could appear so peaceful and harmless in sleep, while awake he challenged mind, body, and soul.

  I was checking the book to see who my next customer was, when the phone rang. The receptionist answered it and told me, “It’s for you. Personal. She sounds pretty upset.”

  I took the phone, prepared to hear some customer complaining that her hair didn’t look the same as it had after my recent ministerings. But it was Liz Carlini, and she was frantic.

  “Vannos, thank god you’re there. I don’t know who to turn to.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Something horrible has happened.”

  “Are you okay, Liz?”

  “I’m not injured, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Then what happened?”

  She paused, then spoke as though she was telling a group of stockholders that there’d be no dividends this quarter. “Someone tried to shoot me.”

  “Did you call the police?”

  “Of course. They’re on their way.”

  I wondered why she’d called me then. I got my answer fast. “Vannos, can you come here now? I’m at home.”

  “I’m working, Liz. It’s—”

  “Oh, please. I need someone I can trust here with me.”

  I didn’t answer her. I couldn’t.

  She continued with a slightly calmer voice. “I hope you’ve forgiven me about yesterday. I was a perfect fool.”

  “Those things happen,” I replied, but I wondered why she wanted me there with her instead of her husband.

  “Vannos, please come. Take a cab, I’ll pay for it. Just hurry.”

  She seemed awfully eager to see me. Then, too, maybe I’d find out something by going.

  “All right, Liz. I’m on my way.”

  I hung up and went to Nicole’s table. She was trimming thick cuticles from the clawlike nails of a Beacon Hill dowager. “Doll …?” I asked tentatively.

  “No, Stanley,” she replied, her attention still focused on her surgery.

  “But Liz is in trouble.”

  “So are you, Stanley. You’ve already taken an unscheduled break, and your next client is waiting.”

  What could I do but get back to work? Fortunately, it was a no-frills wash-and-set. I’d have her in and out of my chair in fifty minutes, just like a real shrink. Ordinarily I would have lingered and fussed with her hair, cultivating a stronger bond between client and stylist. But I had more pressing concerns than nurturing my clients now.

  When I finished, I announced to Nicole, “I’ve got to go. It’s an emergency.”

  “Fine, Stanley. Leave. I suppose you expect me to baby-sit Tobias while you’re gone?”

  “Would you?”

  Without a word, Nicole wrote something down in a small leather-bound ledger.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “I’m keeping an account of all the favors I do for you.”

  “Since when?”

  “It’s a little survey Chaz suggested. And now I’m curious myself to find out just how much time and energy I spend on you. There’s a column here for the favors you do for me as well.”
r />   “Why keep track, Nikki? With friends it all comes out in the wash.”

  “We’ll see, darling. Now just toddle off on your white knight’s mission. Leslie’s here today, so she can cover for you— admirably, I might add.”

  Vaguely annoyed, I hurried outside and got a cab to the Prentiss-Carlini mansion in Chestnut Hill. I told the driver, “Pedal to the metal,” and she got me out there in fifteen blurry minutes. On arrival I saw two police cruisers still parked on the street, so I wasn’t too late, despite my delayed start. Then I noticed the curious presence of Lieutenant Branco’s green Alpha Romeo parked in the driveway. Perhaps police protection in the wealthy suburbs had an element of overkill.

  I trotted up the dry asphalt, then tried to convince the cop guarding the door to let me in. After checking with the others, he allowed me to enter. I followed the sound of voices coming from the living room, which was decorated to resemble the main reception room of a London town house.

  Liz Carlini was sitting on the edge of a creamy mohair-covered sofa. Branco sat in a matching chair, facing her directly and asking her questions. Two other uniformed officers were also in the room. Both were good-looking men, probably expressly chosen for this particular Chestnut Hill beat. One stood taking notes behind Liz where she sat on the sofa, the other one stood next to Branco.

  When I walked into the room, Branco said, “What are you doing here?”

  Liz answered him quickly. “I asked him to come.”

  I waved to Branco in a friendly manner, and noticed that he actually looked tired. I felt kind of sorry for him. Maybe he really did work hard. Branco turned back to questioning Liz.

  “Think again, Miss Carlini. Are you sure there’s no one who might want to hurt you?”

  Long pause.

  “No …”

  “What about your husband?”

  Liz shot an accusing glance at me, as though I’d told the police that she and Prentiss were temporarily separated. “We had a small disagreement, but that wouldn’t drive Prentiss to such extremes.” Then she added with a little snicker, “Nothing would.”

  “He might be more angry than you realize.”

  “It’s not his style, Lieutenant.”