The Mailman Page 2

  Jade had not realized she’d fallen asleep until she woke up. Looking at the clock on the bedside table, she was demoralized to find it was already five o’clock. Somehow she had slept the entire afternoon away. I’m sleeping my life away, she thought despondently. She had a cold shower to wake herself up and was just getting dressed when Mick came home.

  He was in an ebullient mood. He had signed The Tempests to the label. He didn’t say much more than this, only that his boss was having an intimate get-together at his house, and they were to be there at eight o’clock. Jade didn’t like these things. Intimate dinners, gala dinners, the red carpet events Mick got invited to, whatever. She didn’t feel like she fit in with the crowds Mick now ran with. She was a simple Jewish girl from the Castle Hill neighborhood of the Bronx. Her father had worked the night shift at an insurance company so he could sell vacuums door-to-door three days a week. Her mother had died at the age of forty-seven, and her father the following year, leaving her a teenaged orphan with no money. She moved in with her married sister in Bayside, Queens, dropped out of high school, and got a job working at McDonald’s. She met Mick about this time. He was the drummer in a rock n’ roll band that played local gigs. He put his heart and soul into his music, but the band wasn’t going anywhere, he knew it, and so he gave it up for a job with Atlantic Records. His initial role was as a writer and photographer, but he began writing songs on the side for popular musicians, one of which reached the Billboard Top 20. The following week he was headhunted as an A&R executive for Chrysalis Records—which prompted the move to LA, where they settled in the musical haven of Laurel Canyon, in the hills above Hollywood.

  While Mick began schmoozing with rock stars and celebrities and the like, Jade remained home, cleaning, cooking, gardening. She tried keeping herself busy outside the house. She attended yoga classes on Wednesdays, music lessons on Fridays. She went to art exhibitions and galleries on the weekend. But none of this made her happy. She missed New York. She missed her family and friends there. She even missed having a winter. Then one day she woke up depressed. It didn’t happen gradually; it was as sudden as if a switch had been flicked inside her, shutting off the lights. Every day after this became a slog, every chore or task a Herculean effort. At first she thought she was just in a funk, a dark funk, but a funk, and it would pass. It didn’t. The days of darkness became weeks of darkness, and then months. It had been half a year now since the lights went out inside her.

  She should probably be talking to somebody, seeing a professional, but, well, she simply couldn’t motivate herself to organize something. Besides, what could anybody tell her she didn’t already know? She needed friends, she knew that, a life of her own, she knew that. Nevertheless, accomplishing these feats was easier said than done. She had no job, which meant no coworkers to befriend. The few women she knew were Mick’s rather louche acquaintances, and they only seemed to care about clothes, money, scandal, and lists—A lists, B lists and, most importantly, the people who could make neither list.

  Jade spent the next hour or so in the bedroom standing in front of the mirror in her underwear and bra contemplating different dresses Mick had purchased for her since the move to LA. She didn’t feel comfortable in any of them—quite frankly, they all put either too much leg or cleavage, or both, on display—but she wanted to look good for him. She didn’t want to disappoint him. This was his night, his celebration.

  Finally she settled on a one-shouldered gown that would have made Vanna White proud. She did her makeup, stepped through a spray of Channel No. 5, and met Mick downstairs, where she selected a bottle of red wine from the wall rack. Then they were off, driving down the forested slope of Laurel Canyon Boulevard in the uncomfortably low-riding Corvette.

  Bob Corker’s Southern Colonial mansion was situated in the heart of Beverly Hills and featured a crescent driveway, topiary garden, and a champion-sized tennis court. A butler wearing a collared shirt and slacks answered the towering double-doors, and she and Mick stepped into a foyer that featured one of those true Beverly Hill winged staircases you expected Cinderella to come floating down. The butler led them through a two-story family room to a manicured and well-lit backyard.

  Four people sat in wicker chairs around a large block of travertine that rested on a polished nickel base. They stood to say hello, offering handshakes and double-cheek kisses. Bob Corker, a classically handsome man with dyed jet-black hair, said, “You look stunning tonight, Jade. Have you done something with your hair? It looks...bigger?”

  “I might have gotten carried away with teasing,” she replied, handing him the bottle of wine. “Thank you for having us.”

  Bob read the label. “Barbaresco. Marvelous. We love Italian wine.”

  “Thank you, darling,” Gloria, his wife, added. “It’s just lovely.” She’d been married to Bob for more than twenty years, a brunette with a stunning figure for fifty, as well as a youthful face, though this had been achieved with the help of a chin tuck and an eye-lift, if not a complete face-lift.

  Mick and Jade settled into seats at the end of the table, the butler took a round of drink orders, and the conversation picked up where it had been interrupted by their arrival: the serial killer Christopher Bernard Wilder.

  “They finally caught the bastard?” Mick said, surprised.

  Bob nodded. “Police shot him in New Hampshire.”

  “Why was he called the Beauty Queen Killer?” Gloria asked. “The victims weren’t all beauty queens, were they?”

  Jeffrey Griffin, Chrysalis’ chief entertainment officer, shook his head. He was Mick’s age, thirty-eight, but given he was bald and wore thick-framed glasses, he looked about ten years older. “But they were all attractive.”

  “How many women did he kill?” Jade asked.

  “Eight confirmed murders, I’ve heard. At least a dozen rapes.”

  “What the hell drives these psychos?” Desiree, Jeffrey’s wife, drawled. Only twenty-five, she was by far the youngest at the table, a platinum blonde who’d had two boob jobs, the second to correct the first, which apparently hadn’t made the girls massive enough.

  “Bands like the one that our husbands just signed,” Gloria said sardonically. She looked at Jade. “Have you heard their lyrics? They’re all about killing people. Seriously—killing people.”

  Jade nodded. “Mick played me a demo tape.”

  Mick chuckled. “You should have seen them today, hon. They came into my office, an hour late, their hair dyed all Day-Glo colors with enough Aqua Net to support a bridge, wearing leather, chains, cowboy boots, you name it. The singer threw his feet up on my desk like he owned the place, while the bassist ducked into the bathroom for the entire time they were there, and I’m not sure he didn’t tie off because when he came out, he was, I don’t know, a bit too elastic.”

  “They’re crazy, that’s for sure,” Bob said. “But the label needs its own Mötley Crüe.”

  “They make Mötley Crüe look like Poison,” Jeffrey remarked.

  “Anyway,” Mick said, “I can’t agree with you, Gloria. You can’t blame today’s music for the shit that goes on in the world. I mean, I listen to all sorts of stuff, and I’m not going to go out and start murdering people. This guy, this Beauty Queen Killer, who killed all those women, he was crazy, plain and simple. He wanted to kill just to kill. Blame him, not what’s on the airwaves.”

  “But it’s not just the airwaves anymore, is it?” Gloria said. “With this MTV cable channel, kids can see what musicians look like, the image they’re projecting. That’s much more powerful than just hearing their lyrics over the radio. And kids nowadays, teenagers, they’re impressionable, a lot are angry or confused. So if they watch their God-like idols on TV surrounded by beautiful women while they sing about burying an ex-girlfriend in a grave, or stabbing her in the heart... Who knows, right? Who knows how this might affect them? What they might do? Don’t get me started on Charles Manson and his followers.”

  “I won’t, don’t worry,” M
ick said as the butler returned, placing an ice cube-clinking Manhattan in front of him. “But speaking of MTV, we’ll want to get The Tempests on heavy video rotation.”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Mick,” Bob said. “First we’re going to need to find them real management—”

  “They have Michelle—”

  “Not some ditsy booking agent. A real manager, and a producer, who can get them into a studio to focus on making a record...”

  And so the conversation went until dinner was served, a feast that featured lobster flown in from Maine, Alaskan king crab, and chocolate mousse for dessert. Afterward, the men disappeared somewhere to enjoy their four-star French cognac and Cuban cigars, while the women retired inside to the family room for coffee.

  When Gloria and Desiree started talking about their children, Jade listened and smiled politely but privately wished they would change the subject. Children were a sore point for her. She had gotten pregnant when she was eighteen while she was working at the McDonald’s and Mick was in the penniless rock n’ roll band. They hadn’t been ready to have a baby then. They hadn’t even known if they were going to stay together. Which was why she’d allowed him to convince her to put up the baby for adoption. It had been the worst mistake in her life. She had never forgiven herself. She’d even gone so far as to track down the family who’d adopted the baby a couple of years later. She’d stalked their house for days until she’d seen her little Leslie—that’s the name she’d planned for the baby—out on the front porch, toddling around on two feet, trying desperately not to fall over. The image burned itself into her memory and broke her heart, and she had cried every day for the next two weeks. Her only consolation was that her baby was happy and in a good home. It was more than she and Mick could have provided at the time.

  Once Mick got the job at Atlantic and started making decent money, they tried to conceive another child. She was twenty-three then. She’d thought she’d had all the time in the world. But then she was twenty-five, then twenty-eight, then finally thirty—and she couldn’t get pregnant for the life of her. She and Mick saw a specialist, who broke the news that she was infertile. She was devastated but not surprised. Her barren state was God’s retribution. It was the punishment bestowed upon mothers who gave away their children.

  She and Mick’s sex life all but died. Sex, in her mind, had become associated with failure. There was no longer any pleasure in it for her, no purpose. And Mick had become so busy with work he would often come home long after she had gone to sleep. He might be randy some mornings, especially on the weekends, and she would give in now and then, but usually she would satisfy him with a quick hand job.

  And since they’d moved to LA? She couldn’t remember the last time they’d had sex. Twice? Twice in the last year? This was a terrible reality, sad and pathetic. They were married. They were still young. But...well...whatever.

  Whatever.

  That seemed to be her motto nowadays.

  Whatever.

  God, she felt like crying.

  Gloria and Desiree continued talking about their kids for the next twenty minutes: an upcoming birthday party Gloria was organizing for her fifteen-year-old son, Desiree’s one-year-old daughter’s first week in preschool, gossip about their nannies, their friend Jenny Wilson, whose autistic child had just turned eighteen but still acted like a spoiled six year old. They seemed to delight in the challenges raising the boy had caused her, eagerly swapping stories of his antics.

  Finally, thank God, the men returned. They reeked of tobacco and were drunk. Jade excused herself, pulled Mick aside, and asked him if they could leave. He didn’t want to, she could tell. He was having fun. But he didn’t tell her this or put up a fuss. He simply kissed her on the forehead, then announced their departure to the room.

  Jade drove the Corvette home while Mick nodded off in the passenger seat. Beverly Hills to Laurel Canyon, without traffic, was a ten-minute drive along Santa Monica Boulevard. At North Crescent Heights she turned left into the hills. A few minutes later she was on their winding, tree-lined street. As she pulled onto the steep driveway, the headlights flashed over the mailbox, and she thought of the mailman she’d seen that morning. The movie-star looks. The toned body. The well-fitted uniform—

  She ground the gears as she shifted down to first. The Corvette jerked but didn’t stall.

  Mick sat straight. “What the hell?”

  “Sorry,” she said, overcompensating on the gas and revving the engine. “This car...”

  “Jesus, hon. Be easy with it.”

  She reached the garage behind the house without further incident. In the kitchen Mick gulped back water from the sink tap, while she boiled water in the electric kettle.

  “Tea?” she said.

  He shook his head. “I’m going to crash.”

  She nodded but didn’t say anything.

  Mick left the kitchen heavy-footed, a giveaway of how drunk he was. She was pouring water into her mug when she heard a loud bang upstairs.

  “Mick?” she called.

  “Clothes hamper,” he replied. “Tripped.”

  Jade added a dash of milk to her tea and carried it to the living room where she settled down on the sofa. Thursday was her “TV Night.” She would usually watch the NBC lineup straight through from eight to ten thirty, beginning with The Cosby Show and Family Ties and ending with Hill Street Blues. The only time she varied from this routine was during the summer if The ABC Thursday Night Movie held any appeal to her.

  She flicked on the TV now with the remote and found Night Court playing, which meant it was sometime between nine thirty and ten; she hadn’t worn a watch this evening. One of Mick’s friends had once told her she resembled the show’s public defender, Christine Sullivan. She supposed she had the same feathered haircut and heart-shaped face. Nevertheless, the comparison likely had just as much to do with Christine Sullivan’s character: honest to a fault, bighearted, and somewhat naive. Your typical Goody Two-shoes.

  Jade hated being seen that way. It made her feel like a girl trapped in a woman’s body. She wanted to let her hair down. She wanted to break the rules. She wanted to be spontaneous. She wanted to be free.

  So why couldn’t she? What was her problem?

  When had she become such a bore?

  When had she stopped loving Mick?

  She blinked. That last thought was a bit of a non sequitur, but it made her think.

  Was it true?

  Why did she keep thinking it?

  Did she truly no longer love her husband?

  No. She did. She did love him.

  You get older, she told herself. Everything isn’t going to be exciting and new forever. You have to act your age. And she was nearly forty. She and Mick had a good marriage. A respectable one. Mick never hit her, rarely yelled at her. He was a bit controlling, and he worked too much. But what did she have to complain about? A lot of women had it worse—much worse.

  A fantasy played through her head. Going outside tomorrow to greet the young mailman, wearing one of the sheer negligees Mick had bought her, nothing but skin beneath. The wind blowing the fabric tight against her body, delineating her curves, her legs, hiding nothing. The mailman’s eyes on her, warm with lust, coming toward her, touching her, reminding her what it was like to feel like a woman again, attractive again, wanted again—

  Stop it. You’re being terrible. You need to forget that nonsense and go upstairs and slip into bed next to Mick, get frisky with him…

  Only he was passed out drunk. He wouldn’t wake up. He might even push her away.

  Jade snapped off the TV, unable to get into the Night Court episode. She sipped her tea in the semi-darkness. The house was quiet, the tick of the clock the only sound she could hear. There was something sinister about being awake in a big, dark house.

  She went to the kitchen, took her cigarettes and a lighter from her purse, and went outside. Mick had emphysema and was trying to quit smoking, so she no longer smoked arou
nd him or inside the house.

  She lit her cigarette, then tilted her head to look up at the vast black sky. The sibilant moon glowed silver, surrounded by a civilization of shimmering stars. One glittered especially bright. She wondered if it was Venus.

  Inhaling a long drag, Jade stepped deeper into the backyard, which smelled of cut grass and oak trees. She continued through the dark, feeling her way with her feet. An old couple lived to the left. Jade had seen both the husband and wife puttering around the garden at various times in the day. She would wave but had never spoken to them. To the right were the Katzenbergs, a youngish couple named Eli and Bianca who had two boys and one girl. They had come by for dinner once and were friendly and pleasant. Their kids were loud as heck, however, especially on weekends, when the boys would play road hockey or basketball in the driveway. They’d had a For Sale sign on their front lawn for a while now. Eli was a real estate agent in Malibu, and he apparently wanted to move closer to his office.

  Neither Jade nor Mick knew the neighbors whose property abutted the back of theirs. They had just moved in a few weeks before. Jade had only seen them once through the trees that bordered the fence. They had been having a barbecue. The wife, maybe fifty, was a skinny waif with long black hair. The husband, maybe five years older, was tall and seemed in good shape for his age. Presently the upstairs lights were on in their house, though all the blinds were drawn.

  Jade took a final puff on her cigarette and was about to go back inside when the light in the neighbor’s kitchen turned on. The skinny wife appeared, going to the stove, heating the kettle. She wore a red bathrobe. Her black hair was tied back in a ponytail. She turned, as if someone was talking to her. Then the husband appeared, buck naked. He was broad-shouldered and lean, though he was fighting a beer belly. And even from this distance, which must have been fifty yards, it was clear he was well endowed.

  Jade’s heartbeat spiked. This was wrong, she was spying, she should turn away. Instead she ashed the cigarette out beneath her toe and remained right where she was.