The Thousand - Kevin Guilfoile [58]
Wayne had become expert at scaring people.
Now he stepped into Nada’s kitchen. The green countertops shined. No chocolate-smudged prints or wine stains anywhere. A white cabinet door creaked from disuse. Empty inside. There were no crumbs at the bottom of the toaster oven, no yellowing inside the microwave, no soap scum ringing the dishwasher.
The only thing that set the place apart from a showroom sample was a small pile of envelopes on the counter that marked the border of the kitchen and the dining area. Nada must have brought the stack in from the mailbox with a plan to go through it later, Wayne realized.
He sifted through the envelopes. Junk. Nothing personal. No handwritten letters or cards. Nada didn’t have e-mail, or a cell phone. At least that’s what she said. If someone wanted to get hold of her, presumably they might write, but there was no evidence of that here.
Most of it looked like advertising flyers and coupons. A few fast-food menus. A packet of stickers from the Humane Society. An envelope from something called Executive Concierge. The name meant nothing to him. He tilted the envelope toward the streetlight outside and checked the postmark.
Chicago. July 13. Two days before he last saw her.
Wayne tossed the letter back on the pile; then he turned and walked toward the bedroom.
The bedroom.
His phone vibrated in his pocket. A message maybe. An incoming call. He wished he’d turned the damn thing off. The casino might be open twenty-four hours, but Wayne Jennings wasn’t. Right now, Wayne Jennings was closed. Closed and drunk.
He looked at the screen, but it was out of focus. He held the device at arm’s length.
What the hell?
CANADA GOLD.
Wayne tapped the bug at his ear several times to answer before he realized it wasn’t an incoming call.
The touch screen had turned to a blank grid and a green dot was beeping at him. A green dot labeled CANADA GOLD. Clumsily, he tried to orient himself. With the Heineken in his bloodstream and without the digital map of the casino to guide him, Wayne was lost. But there was only one place the signal could be coming from.
He had a horrible vision of Nada on the other side of the bedroom door, her body twisted on the carpet, lips slightly parted in a final breath, the circle outline of a stray chip from the Colossus Casino—Wayne’s casino—just visible through the tight fabric of her jeans pocket. With sadness and rage and anger, he was already promising to avenge her, vowing to track down the bastard, the burglar, the rapist, the serial murderer, whoever had chosen to make a target of the woman Wayne Jennings loved.
He pushed on the door. A bare queen-size mattress and a box spring. A side table and lamp and an old-fashioned Princess phone. A cheap linen chest and dresser. More beige carpet. He flipped the bathroom light. This room was as antiseptic and unsmudged as the kitchen.
He exhaled, expelling the fear he would discover Nada’s inert body in the bathtub or bed. Just as quickly as that terrible thought departed, however, it was replaced by regrets of what could have been. About the nights he had imagined himself between her sheets the way, three times, she had been between his.
Wayne allowed himself a few moments to wonder what it would be like to be her boyfriend. To have his toothbrush in a holder behind the faucet, his brand of deodorant next to hers in the medicine cabinet, a second bottle of shampoo in the shower. One entire wall of the bedroom was composed of mirrored closet doors, and he imagined what it would be like to sneak glimpses of himself making love to her. There was an all-day breakfast place just down the street from the apartment, close enough to walk for a tall stack of blueberry pancakes, Wayne reading the Sunday sports, Nada picking through the style section or the police beat or whatever it was she liked to read, while under the table her bare foot, free of her sandal, tickled the back of his calf.
He washed his face in the bleached sink, picking up her