Chapter 35 – Knock on the Door
It didn’t take Tommy long to get our address. He called the Curator (who wanted to ask Tommy why he wasn’t in his office at the museum), who called his uncle, who called his lawyer, who called the clerk in the county records office, who looked up the name Roger June, and there was our address on Church Street just five blocks north of The Battery. It was eleven thirty when Tommy mounted the eleven steps up to my front door, the riser of each step covered in hundred year old fig vine, and rang the chimes. People in Charleston don’t have doorbells, we have chimes.
When they rang inside, Gale, having finished her third bourbon and succumbing to her inherent wild streak, got off the sofa, dropped the blanket, and headed to the door. Tommy was ready to say something like ‘good morning’ to whoever opened the door, but when he saw Gale standing there, he couldn’t, for obvious reasons. Like I said, she’s a bombshell of a babe. When she saw who it was ringing the chimes, she said, “Any other man right now, I’d say ‘Take me,’ but you, get lost,” and slammed the door in his face.
She came back into the living room and Jinny said, “Who was that?”
“Nobody we wanna know,” and eyed the now almost empty bourbon bottle.
The chimes rang again, and I motioned to Jinny to check it out. This time Tommy was able to verbalize a ‘good morning,’ and Jinny said, “Hey, how ya doing?” Jinny was about the friendliest Russian gangster you’ll ever want to meet, except when someone was messing with Gale, his ‘like a little sister’ except when he was mixing booze and the morning urge and she was walking around in her Versace lingerie.
Tommy said, “Is Gwen in?”
“Yeah, she’s here; not exactly up and around, but she’s here.” Tommy looked at his watch, which said eleven thirty, then back at Jinny, who said, “She’s been having a rough morning, but that’s ok, c’mon in.” And he stepped back from the door, invitingly. Tommy was two steps into the foyer when the bell rang in Jinny’s head and he grabbed Tommy’s arm and said, “Oh, whoa, wait a second, sorry, um, I gotta check with her first,” and he unceremoniously pushed Tommy out the door, who got it slammed in his face a second time. Tommy stood on the stoop thinking, ‘I thought Charlestonians were supposed to be polite. This is more like Brooklyn.’
Jinny came back into the living room and also looked at the almost empty bottle, then looked at me and said, “It’s the crook catcher. Wants to see you.”
Before I could say anything Gwendy said, “Bring him in. Bring him in. I wanna meet this stud-muffin deluxe, even though consummation ain’t in the cards. I can fantasize.”
I said, “Yeah, that would be real smart. Bring him in, and you’d be on your way back to center stage in the museum and we’d be on our way to the hoosegow.”
She said, “Really, dear? You can’t control him? I remember the days, any man came within my orbit, he was mine. Like putty, like a puppet. Hop, dance, up, down, whatever I wanted. Skills seem to have eroded going down through the generations.” And she sniffed.
I ignored the diss and said, “How’d he find us here?”
Gale said, “Seems he’s a better investigator than lover. Probably stinks in that department, so you’re not missing anything.”
Gale was getting on my nerves, so I said, “But you wouldn’t say No to him, would you, hon?”
“If it meant saving your bacon, I’d suffer through it. Then I’d tell you the guy was pathetic, and maybe that would be enough to keep you pure. Le’me go see him again,” and she headed for the living room door.
“Gale. No. We can’t let him in here to see her,” meaning Gwendy. “I’ll go.”
I got up, kept a blanket around me, adorned like Gale underneath, and went to the door. When I opened it, his mouth opened to say hello, and so did my heart. Three bourbons under my belt, under the waistline of my panties, I should say, and I was his. Well, almost. “Hey, stranger,” I said. “How’s the head this morning?”
He smiled. “Better now than earlier, that’s for sure. A long walk helped with the hangover. How ‘bout you?”
“Um, I was going to go to the gym, work out, work it off, but then Gale and Jinny stuck their noses into the act, and things went downhill from there,” I lied.
“So I see. Do I smell hair of the dog?”
“How’d you know?”
“Gale smells like bourbon, Jinny smells like bourbon, and you smell like bourbon.”
“Oh.”
“You going to offer me one? Otherwise I might be inclined to go back to work,” he said, the great smile still happening.
“You mean the investigator thing?” He nodded, so I said, “Come on in.”
In the hallway we heard voices, more than two, coming from the living room. I steered him away from there and into the kitchen, made him sit at the counter and said, “Le’me get dressed, then I’ll get you a drink.” I went through the hall and into the living room and said to Jinny and Gale, “Go keep him company while I get dressed. Don’t let him out of the kitchen.” I looked up at Gwendy and said, “You keep quiet.” I started to leave, then turned around and looked at Gale in her blanket, and said, “Get dressed first. You’ll tear him apart looking like that. Don’t let her in the kitchen till she’s decent,” looking at Jinny, who nodded, thinking Gale getting dressed would be better for him, too, just barely cognizant of his oath of ‘little sister’ in-violability.
I went upstairs and pulled on jeans and a while cashmere sweater, the booze telling me to forget the underwear, my own little Plato AWOL, absent without leave, me not being sure if that was good or bad. Downstairs I found Jinny rummaging in the refrigerator, which seemed like a good thing to do, and Gale rummaging in the kitchen liquor cabinet, which also seemed like a good thing to do but probably wasn’t, given the circumstances. I asked Tommy, “What do you want to drink?”
“Can you make a stinger?”
I looked at the clock on the wall, which now showed noon, and said, “It’s noon. We don’t drink stingers before noon here in Charleston, but after noon they’re fine. Up or on the rocks?”
“Up, please.”
Gale said, “Mine too.”
I didn’t think it was a good idea to let her have anything else, didn’t know if I could control her, but how could I say No, me getting ready to mix one for myself, clearly under the Tommy Crown spell. He had a lot of catching up to do. I said to Gale, “How ‘bout we let Jinny fix us eggs and potatoes, then we have a stinger afterwards?”
She said, “Wimp.”
I stood at the side counter over the liquor cabinet, one of our liquor cabinets, in my bare feet and mixed him the drink. God, did it look good, that caramel color, and already sweating the glass. I set it in front of him and turned to Jinny saying, “How about a big platter of scrambled eggs and home fries? Soak up the bourbon.”
“On their way,” he said.
I sat at the counter opposite the sandy haired boy and lusted after him. Gale had stopped taking bottles out of the cabinet when we decided on stingers, and now stood next to Jinny, leaning with her back against the counter, staring daggers at me and Tommy. Even under the best of circumstances she probably would have dominated the conversation, and now she had a bunch of bourbon in her. She had managed to get into a pair of slacks and top, but somehow had managed to not fasten the hook at the front of the slacks, and Tommy hardly could get his eyes off of there between sips of his stinger. Who could blame him? Gale started in, “Fancy meeting you here, center of the infidel universe.”
Tommy raised his eyes up to her face, said, “The what?”
“The infidel universe, you heard me.”
“This is the place of the non-believers?” He looked at me, who shrugged.
“Whad’ya mean, non-believers? I said it’s the place of infidelity. Cheaters. Husband cheaters. Right, Jinny?”
Jinny keep his face pointed at the frying pan and said, “Give ‘em a break,
babe. They ain’t done nothin’.”
“Yet,” she spat out.
“How many drinks she had this morning?” he asked.
“Three. Same as Jinny and me.” I smiled and said, “You have some catching up to do.”
“I enjoyed last night. It was a beautiful place, and great food, and really good wine. Thanks for making that happen.”
Gale interjected, “Bet you weren’t happy to see me, were you? Me and Jinn Jinn. Spoil your party. Saved her ass.”
“Well, to tell you the truth, I was a little ambivalent, but today I can say, yes, I am glad you two showed up. My Plato was hanging out at the agora when he should have been on duty, and you guys showed up just in the nick of time,” he said, smiling at me. Then he said to me, “How about your Plato? Was he where he should have been?”
“Umm, let’s just say that I went to have a word with him this morning, and couldn’t find him. Still AWOL.”
“So,” he said, “It’s good that Gale and Jinny are around, subbing for the missing Ps, especially since, somehow somewhy, we’re drinking again. You do this often, bourbon and stingers in the morning?” And with a flourish he finished his first one.
“Me, no. Not very often. Only on special occasions. Now them,” I said nodding towards the stove, “they’re two of the wild bunch.”
Gale dialed her antagonism down a notch and said, “The only time I drink in the morning is when the morning started out as the evening before and the usual demarcation between the two got blurred. That hasn’t happened since I met that guy from the Sons of Confederate Veterans, and he told me he had ancestors in his attic that like to shoot off cannons at dawn, and if we hung out together for a while he’d show me.”
“And?” Tommy asked.
For the first time Gale issued him a smile and said, “Hell, there were cannons at midnight, and cannons at 3am, and then, yes, some really big cannons at dawn. That boy had what it took, I gotta say.”
“And what was fueling all the cannons through the night?” I asked.
“Charleston Light Dragoon Punch, and lots of it. That boy said his family used to make it going way back, before the ‘Late Unpleasantness’.”
“The what?” Tommy asked.
I said, “That’s what some of us call the War Between the States.”
He said, “Oh. And what we from higher latitudes call the Civil War?”
Gale said, “Best to not use that name around here.”
I could see she was lightening up about the same time Jinny turned away from the stove with one frying pan full of potatoes, onions and bell peppers, and another holding a dozen lightly scrambled eggs. Gale set four plates on the table and we fell to. All of us sensed we needed to eat rather than drink, and we did that silently. We were working on seconds when we heard a faint voice from the other side of the house. “Gwenny. Gwenny.” Gale, Jinny, and I froze, fork halfway to our mouths, first looking out the kitchen door and then at each other, Gale and I panic stricken, Jinny his usual complacent self. We mobilized and got the forks to their destination, eyes on our plates. Tommy looked at each of us in turn, then continued his eating. A few moments later, faintly, “Gale. Jinn Jinn.”
We knew we couldn’t fake it a second time, and simultaneously Gale said, “Is that Roger, home early?” Jinny said, “It’s Westlake, from next door.” And I said, “It’s the plumber. Fix the toilet.”
How Tommy kept a neutral expression on his face, I’ll never know, but he did, and helped himself to more eggs, eating three forkfuls, biding his time, and then saying, “That was a women’s voice, wasn’t it?”
Again simultaneously Gale and I said, “Woman? Really? Better go see,” and we got up and left the kitchen. Tommy looked inquiringly at Jinny, who said, “You ready for another stinger, or you want more potatoes?” His Russian heritage thick in his veins, Jinny couldn’t conceive of anyone ever getting enough potatoes. Tommy pushed his plate away from him and signaled for another drink. As Jinny stood at the far counter and mixed the cognac and white cream de menthe, Tommy stared at the kitchen doorway.
In the living room we stood in front of the painting and said together, “Are you crazy? You want to go back to the museum? Want us to go to jail?”
Gwendy’s smile exuded mischief, and she said, “Oh, poo. That boy isn’t going to turn us in. Bring him in here, I’ll have him around my little finger for he can say ‘Where’s the bedroom?’”
Gale and I looked at each other, and Gale said, “Hon, I’m sure in your day that would have been true, but you don’t exactly have all your attributes up and running in the same way now. He can’t smell your perfume, and you can’t let your dress ride up your leg a little, and you can’t lean towards him and gesticulate with your mouth the way she can,” nodding at me. “You really want to take that risk? How long’s it been since you seduced a guy, anyway?”
“None of your beeswax,” she said. “Just because neither of YOU two have the goods to nail him, doesn’t mean I couldn’t. Bring him in and we’ll see,” her voice rising in volume.
I thought, ‘Jesus, she’s crazy. And I don’t want to go to jail.’ I looked around and saw a blanket still on the sofa, grabbed it, and threw it around the painting like people do with their birdcages when they want their birds to shut up and go to sleep. We stood back and waited. After fifteen seconds, faintly from under the blanket we heard, “Ok, I get the picture (pun). I’ll be quiet. But I got one last question: how come, Galey, the button of your pants is undone, showing the top of those little pink panties, and how come, Gwenny, you got no underwear on? You telling me you use those tricks and you still can’t get this guy under control?” She paused, and then, “Weak.”
We waited again, thankfully hearing nothing more from the birdcage, and went back into the kitchen, where simultaneously we said, “It was the plumber.”
Tommy looked at Jinny who maintained his noncommittal stance, took a large sip of his second stinger, and said, “You have female plumbers in Charleston? We don’t have any of those up in New York City.”
Gale, at the counter mixing her next drink, said, “Here in the south we believe in diversity and equality; always have, always will. Plumbers with boobs ain’t the half of it.” She tried her drink, shook her head, went on, “You know how plumbers are famous for crouching on the floor, the back of their shirts riding up and their pants riding down?” I thought, ‘Oh my God’ and Jinny smiled. “Well, down here we decided we could turn that from being a really bad thing to a social grace, if we just got some women to turn to plumbing. Which we did; problem solved.” And she took another hit from her glass.
Tommy drained his second drink and said, “The more I drink the more I’m able to appreciate southern humor and values. Gale, I think I get it.” And he raised his glass and said, “Gimme one more blast, Jinny, and I’ll be ready to sing “Dixie” with y’all.”
Gwenny June's Tommy Crown Affair Page 35
