Charley's Web (3 page)

“Everyone says it’s my best.”

“Number nine.”

“Actually, number six as of next week.”

“That’s wonderful.”

“Everyone’s very pleased.”

“They should be.”

“I’m booked solid for speaking engagements for the next two months.”

“Really? Any chance you’ll be down this way?”

“Maybe. I’m not sure of my exact schedule.”

“Well, call me as soon as you know anything.”

“Why?”

The question was piercing in its simplicity. “I thought maybe we could all get together,” Charley improvised, trying to remember the last time she’d seen either of her sisters in person.

Another pause, this one the longest yet.

“Maybe. Look, I better go. Thanks for calling.”

“Thanks for the book.”

“Enjoy,” Anne said before hanging up.

“Enjoy,” Charley repeated, replacing the receiver and closing her eyes, trying to pinpoint the moment her family had begun its slow and steady disintegration. Her father would undoubtedly put the blame on her mother, insisting her desertion had damaged the family unit beyond repair. Her mother would no doubt issue a counterclaim, insist it was Robert Webb’s coldness that had driven her into the arms of someone else. That that someone was a woman had only added fuel to her father’s angry flame.

It shouldn’t have been that way.

On the surface, Robert and Elizabeth Webb had been the ideal couple, good-looking and educated, young and in love. Even their names were a perfect match, especially for an esteemed professor of English literature. Robert and Elizabeth, just like Robert Browning and his wife, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the famous romantic poets. How wonderfully appropriate, they’d joked. Except that Robert Webb had turned out to be anything but romantic, and it hadn’t taken Elizabeth long to discover that while she’d fallen in love with a Robert, she’d married a Bob.

They’d had four children in eight years. Charlotte arrived first—
Charlotte’s Web
having been her mother’s favorite children’s book, and the play on words was just too delicious for an English scholar to resist—followed two years later by Emily, and then Anne two years after that. “Our very own Brontë sisters,” her mother had told anyone who’d listen. And then came the boy her father had been hoping for all along. They’d actually considered naming him Branwell, after the Brontë sisters’ only brother, but since, unlike his famous siblings, Branwell was an abject failure at everything he tried, they’d settled on Bram, after Bram Stoker, author of
Dracula,
the bloodsucking count. The name change hadn’t helped. Just as the Webb sisters had followed the example of their more illustrious namesakes, Bram did his part as well, following in Branwell’s footsteps by never amounting to much. “It’s destiny,” he liked to say, citing Branwell’s addiction to both drugs and alcohol as the inspiration for his own.

Once again, Charley reached for the phone. She should call Bram, she was thinking, although speaking to her younger brother was always an exercise in frustration, and she was already feeling frustrated enough. Especially after his no-show over the weekend, when she’d driven all the way down to Miami in holiday traffic—in south Florida, the holiday extended from December through March—only to find his apartment empty and her brother nowhere around.

There was a time when this might have concerned her, but no longer. It had happened too often. “See you at eight o’clock,” he’d say, only to turn up at midnight. “I’ll be there Friday at six for dinner,” he’d confirm, arriving the following Monday at noon. Charley had known about the drugs for years. She’d hoped their mother’s reappearance in their lives might help turn things around. But after almost two years, Bram still refused to have anything to do with her. If anything, he was worse now than he’d been before.

“Knock, knock,” said a woman from behind Charley’s desk.

Charley swiveled her chair around to see Monica Turnbull, early twenties, jet black, closely cropped hair, a silver loop pinching her right nostril, blood-red nails clutching a plain white envelope.

“You’ve got mail,” Monica chirped. “And I don’t mean that virtual crap. I mean a real, actual letter,” she continued, dropping it into Charley’s outstretched palm.

Charley stared at the girlish scrawl on the front of the white envelope, then had to glance twice at the return address. “Pembroke Correctional? Isn’t that a prison?”

“Looks like you have a fan.”

“Just what I need.” The phone rang. “Thanks,” Charley said as Monica wiggled her fingers good-bye. “Charley Webb,” she said, picking up the receiver.

“This is Glen McLaren. I have your brother.”

“What?”

“You know where to find me.”

The line went dead in her hands.

W
here’s my brother?” Charley said, bursting through the heavy front door of Prime, the chichi nightclub that was Palm Beach’s current place to be and be seen. Prime boasted a clientele of mostly young, mostly rich, mostly beautiful—or those whose money qualified them as beautiful—people. They came to mingle, toss their layered blond hair around photogenically, show off buff bodies swathed in the latest designer fashions, and hook up—with old friends, future lovers, and discreet dealers. Charley had referred to the place as Prime Meat in a recent, none-too-flattering column that had done absolutely nothing to slow the club’s ever-burgeoning popularity.

The first time Charley had visited Prime was in the early morning hours of a late October weekend. Like most people her age, she’d initially found the combination of mirrors and mahogany, loud music and dim lights, expensive perfume and sweating, well-toned bodies, to be amazingly seductive. In the five minutes it had taken to navigate her way through the meticulously under-dressed crowd to the impressively overstocked bar that occupied the entire left side of the room, she’d been approached by a trio of handsome men, a woman with fake, balloon-sized breasts, and a chorus of seemingly disembodied voices offering to sell her everything from Ecstasy to heroin. “You name it, I’ve got it,” someone had whispered tantalizingly in Charley’s ear as a young socialite swayed past her on unsteady heels, white powder still clinging to the underside of her nostrils. Noise and laughter had followed Charley to the bar, stray hands carelessly groped her buttocks as she walked, the continuous beat of the music blocking out conscious thought. Charley had realized how easy it would be simply to give herself over to the meaninglessness of it all, to dance, to drift, to deny…everything.

I think not. Therefore I am not.

It had been so appealing.

But now, in the unflattering light of a rainy morning, the room retained little of its after-hours glamour or decadence. It was lifeless, like an overexposed photograph. Just another big, empty space with a deserted wooden dance floor. About twenty tables, each seating four, were crowded together in the far right corner of the room for patrons who actually wanted to eat, while a series of high-tops, seating two, were scattered throughout the room, guarded over by towering bronze sculptures of blank-faced nude women, their elbows bent, palms facing forward, fingers pointing toward the twenty-foot-high ceiling, in gestures of abject surrender.

“Where’s my brother?” Charley said again, her eyes returning to the bar where Glen McLaren sat perched on a tan leather stool, the morning paper, open to the sports pages, stretched out along the brown marble countertop.

McLaren was dressed all in black. He was maybe thirty-five, tall and slim and not quite as good-looking as Charley remembered from their previous encounter. In daylight, his features were coarser, his nose broader, his brown eyes sleepier, although she could still feel them undressing her as she approached. “Miss Webb,” he acknowledged. “How nice to see you again.”

“Where’s my brother?”

“He’s okay.”

“I didn’t ask you
how
he was. I asked
where
he was.”

“Would you like a drink?” Glen asked, as if she hadn’t spoken. “Some orange juice perhaps or…”

“I don’t want anything to drink.”

“…a cup of coffee?”

“I don’t want coffee. Look. You called me. You said you had my brother.”

“And
you
said a lot of very unflattering things about me and my club in your column last month. Or so I understand.” He grinned. “Personally, I never read your column.”

“Then you shouldn’t be too upset.”

“Unfortunately, a lot of other people, including our esteemed mayor and the chief of police, don’t have my discerning taste. I’ve been getting a lot of unwanted attention these past several weeks.”

“I’m sorry about that.”

“Are you?”

“Not really. What’s any of this got to do with my brother?”

“Nothing. I’m just making conversation.”

“I’m not interested in conversation, Mr. McLaren.”

“Glen,” he corrected.

“I’m not interested in conversation, Mr. McLaren,” Charley repeated, transferring her oversize beige leather handbag from one shoulder to the other. “I’m interested in finding my brother. Do you have him or don’t you?”

“I do.” McLaren smiled sheepishly. “God, the last time I said that it cost me a fortune.” He lowered his chin and raised his eyes flirtatiously. “What—not even a little grin? I’m trying to be charming here.”

“Why?” Charley glanced around the room, saw no one but a waiter wiping down the tables on the far side of the dance floor.

“Why am I trying to charm you? Oh, I don’t know. Because you’re beautiful? Because you’re a reporter? Because I’m trying to get into your good graces? Or maybe because I’m just trying to get into your pants.”

Charley’s impatient sigh filled the room. “I’m not into revenge fucking, Mr. McLaren.”

Glen shrugged, his eyes drifting back to the sports pages of the morning paper. If he was shocked by her coarse language, he gave no indication. “Interesting, since you seem to have no trouble at all fucking people over.”

He’s quick, Charley thought. She’d give him that. “I guess that’ll teach you not to talk to reporters.”

“Except that, if you recall, I had no idea you were a reporter the last time we spoke. I didn’t have a clue there was such a thing as WEBB SITE. Clever title for a column, incidentally.”

“Thank you.”

“I was simply under the impression I was talking to a beautiful young woman, one I was trying very hard to impress.”

“One you promptly stopped trying to impress the minute you realized she wasn’t going to sleep with you.”

“I’m a man, Charley. I’m only interested in so much talk.”

“Then why are we talking now?”

Glen smiled again—something he did with alarming regularity, Charley thought—causing the skin around his sleepy brown eyes to crinkle. “I’m just having fun, playing with you a little,” he admitted.

“I don’t like being played with.”

“Is that what your little literary temper tantrum was really all about? You felt you were being played and it hurt your feelings?”

“This isn’t about hurt feelings,” Charley said, trying not to enjoy the phrase “little literary temper tantrum.” “And it’s certainly not why I left work this morning to drive all the way over here in the pouring rain.”

“Aw, it’s not
that
far,” Glen pointed out.

“Where’s my brother?”

Glen nodded toward the rear of the club. “In my office.”

Immediately Charley darted in that direction.

“Turn left,” Glen said, following after her.

Charley quickly reached the back of the club and pushed open the hand-carved mahogany door to Glen’s office, her purse slapping at her side. The blinds were partially closed and the wood-paneled room was mostly in darkness, but even so, she could make out the figure of a man sprawled on his back across a red velvet sofa, right leg on the floor, left arm tossed dramatically over his head, light brown hair lying limp across his forehead. “My God. What have you done to him?”

Glen flipped on the light. “Take it easy. He’s just sleeping.”

“Sleeping?” Charley dropped her purse to the floor and rushed to her brother’s side. She knelt down, laying her head against his chest, listening for the sound of his breathing.

“Passed out, actually.”

“Passed out? What did you give him?”

“Well, I tried to give him a cup of coffee, but he’s stubborn. Like you. Said he didn’t want any.”

“Bram?” Charley said, shaking his shoulder gently. And then not so gently. “Bram, wake up.” She looked from her brother back to McLaren. “I don’t understand. What’s he doing here?”

“Oh, so now you want to talk?” Glen sank into the second, smaller sofa positioned at a right angle to the one on which Bram had apparently spent the night.

“How do you even know my brother?”

“I don’t,” Glen admitted. “First time I laid eyes on him was last night when I asked him to leave.”

“What are you talking about?”

“According to my bartender, your brother arrived around ten o’clock last night, had a couple of drinks, hit on a few young ladies, then became quite belligerent when they turned him down. He started mouthing off, being generally obnoxious, telling everyone within shouting distance he was really here to score some dope, and where were all the dealers he’d read about in his sister’s column?”

“Which was how you knew he was my brother,” Charley stated with a roll of her eyes.

“That, plus I checked his wallet for ID after he passed out.”

“Which was when exactly?”

“Around one o’clock.”

“How’d he get that bruise on his face?” Charley ran a wary finger along her brother’s pale cheek. She felt him flinch, although his eyes remained closed. “Did you hit him?”

“I had no choice.”

“What do you mean, you had no choice?”

“He was drunk, and probably stoned as well. I told him I was gonna call a cab to take him home, but he refused, said he was perfectly capable of making it back to Miami on his own. Well, I couldn’t let him do that. So I followed him to the parking lot, told him he was in no condition to drive, and he said to try and stop him.” Glen shrugged. “Like I said, I had no choice.”

“You were being a good samaritan?”

“I just didn’t want him driving drunk and maybe killing somebody. The last thing I need right now is a lawsuit.”

Charley saw a flash of lightning from behind the half-closed metallic blinds, followed seconds later by a crack of thunder. “So you brought him in here?”

“Would you have preferred it if I’d left him outside?”

“I hope you’re not expecting me to thank you,” Charley said.

“Perish the thought. I just thought you might like to know where he was.”

“Are you always so dramatic?” Charley asked, mimicking his voice on the phone.
“I have your brother. You know where to find me.”

Glen laughed. “Just having some fun. You already think I’m a gangster. Figured I might as well act like one.”

“I believe the term I used was ‘hoodlum wannabe.’ Not quite in the same league as ‘gangster,’” Charley corrected.

“Ouch.” Glen clutched his chest, as if he’d been mortally wounded.

“
Are
you a gangster?” Charley asked seconds later, curious in spite of herself.

“Off the record? Promise I’m not going to read about this conversation in next week’s paper?”

“I thought you never read my columns.”

Glen smiled. “I’m not a gangster.” He looked toward her sleeping brother. “He do this kind of thing often?”

“That’s really none of your business.”

“No, but it’s my sofa. You could at least try to make nice until he wakes up.”

“Sorry. I’ve never been very good at making nice.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

“Because you’re a man of great intelligence and perception. How’s that for making nice?”

“A little heavy-handed.”

“Take it or leave it.”

“Oh, I’ll take it. Does this mean you’ll reconsider sleeping with me?”

“Not a chance.”

Another bolt of lightning. Another crash of thunder.

“Storm’s getting closer,” Glen observed.

“Great,” Charley said sarcastically. “I always loved driving I-95 in the pouring rain.”

“I don’t think you’re going anywhere for at least a little while.”

Charley looked from the window to her brother, now snoring contentedly beside her. “Great,” she said again.

“How about reconsidering that cup of coffee?”

“Why are you being so nice to me?”

“You have a problem with people being nice to you?”

Charley lifted her hands into the air, in a gesture of surrender remarkably similar to that of the faceless bronze statues in the other room. “Sure, let’s have coffee,” she said. “Why not?”

“Why not indeed?” Glen echoed, going to the door. “How do you take it?”

“Black.”

“Thought you’d say that. Back in a flash,” he said, as another bolt of lightning shot through the sky. It was immediately followed by a spectacular crack of thunder.

“You’re missing quite a display,” Charley said to her sleeping brother, as she pushed herself to her feet and walked to the window. She opened the blinds with a flick of her fingers and stared at the ferocious downpour. The rain in Florida was like nowhere else in the world, she was thinking, watching huge drops, like angry fists, pound against the panes of glass. It came at you relentlessly, obliterating almost everything in its path, blinding you. If she’d been driving, she’d have been forced to pull over and wait it out.

Could that be any more uncomfortable than waiting it out in the office of the man she’d disparaged in print as a “hoodlum wannabe,” while her brother slept off a drunken stupor on that same man’s red velvet couch? “Why do you do these things to me?” she asked him, as another bolt of lightning lit up the sky, illuminating her dented, silver Camry in the parking lot next to Bram’s ancient, impeccably maintained, dark green MG. “You always loved that car more than anything else on earth,” she muttered as another clap of thunder rattled the palm trees and shook the premises. “God, Bram. What’s the matter with you? Why do you keep screwing up?” She returned to the sofa, sank down beside him. “Bram, wake up. Come on. Enough of this crap. Time to grow up and go home. Come on, Bram,” she said again. “Enough is enough.”

Bram said nothing, although his long, dark lashes fluttered provocatively, as if he might be persuaded, with a few well-chosen words, to open his eyes.

“Bram,” Charley said, impatiently poking at his arm. “Bram, can you hear me?”

Still nothing.

“You can’t keep doing this, Bram,” Charley lectured. “You can’t keep fucking up and expecting people to rescue you. It’s getting old. And you’re not getting any younger,” she added, although at twenty-four, he was hardly a candidate for a retirement community. “It’s time to get a life.” She sighed. Her brother had pretty much given up on life a long time ago. “Our mother called this morning,” she continued, recalling that of the four children, her brother had seemed to adapt to their mother’s desertion the best. Maybe because he was only two at the time she’d left, and too young to realize what exactly was happening. He’d cried for his mommy for several days, then blithely crawled into the arms of the woman their father had hired to take her place. A needy child, he’d basically stayed there until the woman quit two years later in a salary dispute with their father. She, too, had left without saying good-bye. After that, there’d been a succession of housekeepers, as plentiful and as faceless as the bronze statues beyond Glen’s office door. No one ever stayed very long. Their father’s unyielding coldness saw to that. “She’s worried about you,” Charley told her brother now, thinking of her own children, and wondering, as she always did when she thought too long about her mother, how the woman could have walked out and left them the way she did.