by Larry Brown
“I don’t think so,” Gigi said.
Fay just looked at her. She should have known that somebody that beautiful was likely to be famous. You could just tell it by looking at her. Women like her didn’t walk down the street every day.
“But back to our little conversation, though. You wouldn’t be … I’m searching for how to put this … you wouldn’t be involved in any way with Aaron, would you?”
“Involved?”
“Precisely.”
Fay saw what she was getting at now. She thought she was fucking him. She almost laughed. But she saw that it could look like that, her sitting out here, him upstairs asleep. But all of a sudden she didn’t care for the way this woman was treating her, with her fancy nightgown and her fancy cigarette-smoking. She had to be Aaron’s girlfriend.
“I’m not messin around with Aaron,” she said. “What’s it to you? What would happen to me if I was?”
Gigi blew a cloud of smoke straight toward her, then stubbed out the cigarette without looking down.
“You might get some of that hair snatched out of your pretty little head, that’s what.”
“Oh yeah?” Fay said. She leaned closer. “You let me tell you some-thin. That shit goes two ways. You mess with me and I’ll kick your ass up between your shoulder blades.”
Gigi didn’t say anything else. She got up in a huff and grabbed her coffee cup and went back in, letting the screen door slam behind her.
Well she guessed she’d done it now. She was probably going straight upstairs to see Aaron and tell on her. She wished now she’d just gone ahead and slapped the shit out of her, really given her something to complain about. She couldn’t see him with her, not that piece of fluff. But she was the kind that men probably just melted over. She probably just shook those big titties at them and they … same thing she’d done to Sam, dropping that towel. What the hell’d you expect him to do, turn it down?
She got up and stepped back inside the bedroom for just a moment to see what time it was. It was 6:17. He probably wouldn’t get up for hours. And she didn’t want to go back into that kitchen where that woman was if that was his mother. And sitting on the bed she knew she just couldn’t keep sitting in there. What a fucking mess. She got up and went back out on the porch, looked at the table, then walked over to the steps and down them and out across the neat brick path that led to the street. Where it ended she stopped and spread her feet a little apart and put her hands in her pockets. The sun was up now and the sails of the boats out in the bay were bright with it.
What a life that would be, to be rich like that, rich enough to own a sailboat and go out messing around on a Monday morning instead of going into work like that. Sam might be out on the lake this morning. Or sleeping late probably because of the night shift. Or maybe out looking for her. She wondered if there was any way she could get in touch with him without getting into trouble. But what if he came after her or somebody came after her and it was trouble? Where would she run to then? And you killed her. Ain’t no two ways about that.
She sat down on the step there and picked up a pebble and tossed it toward the street. It bounced and rolled. She squinted up into the morning, then turned her head and looked back at the house. Couldn’t see anybody. Miss Bitch was probably right up there with Aaron now. Probably had a room they slept in together when they got through fucking. She probably wasn’t nothing but a high-class whore. She hadn’t seemed to think much of Reena. And what was the deal with Aaron’s brother and her anyhow? What was he doing coming over there and beating her up and taking her money away from her? She wondered what would have happened if that Chuck had been there. And how did Reena get him out of the way at the right time when she wanted to fuck somebody?
The whole thing was too puzzling for anybody to be able to figure it out. She picked up a couple more pebbles and closed her hand over them loosely and rattled them around in her palm.
She opened her hand and picked up the pebbles one by one and tossed them across the street. Then she rested her wrists on her knees and let her hands hang down and just sat there.
She pulled her knees up and rested her chin on them. That sun was creeping up and getting hotter already. She wondered how many hours she had spent between rows of dirt with plants growing on them, fields of green and black out there around her, a whole world of it and nothing to do but keep on working and working and on into the afternoon when it was hottest and wanting to stop so badly, go up under a shade tree, drink some cool water. As far back as she could remember, she could remember that, that work of some kind that was always around them, and the other people around them, like the naked people she saw bathing in a river one time, and the place where they had all the horses, and the walking between the fields with hoes and rakes, even down on her knees in Georgia picking up pecans in the fall and gathering them in the folds of her dress to run and dump them into the bucket her mother carried before Calvin came.
But always in the summer there was that awful sun. And she didn’t understand how they could have done that to her. To all of them.
She could hardly imagine a life without Sam now that she’d had one with him for a while. If she could make any one thing real and true it would be that Sam had never gotten into a bed with that woman.
She blew out a sigh and got up. She went back to the house and got her coffee cup and grabbed her smokes and lighter, opened the screen door and went in. He’d said for her to help herself. She wasn’t very hungry, so she’d just get herself a biscuit. If that woman was back there, the first one, the one who hadn’t said anything, if she was back there and still wouldn’t say anything, she’d just introduce herself to her and tell her that Aaron had brought her out here and had told her to help herself. And if she didn’t like it, fuck her. She’d fix some toast and jelly or something and take it out on the front porch and eat it by herself.
But when she got back to the kitchen there was nobody there. The coffeepot was full, cups and saucers and spoons and sugar and milk in a little silver pot beside it all laid out on a clean towel. Doughnuts of all kinds, chocolate icing, plain, some dusted with white flaky sugar, resting in a large wooden platter. In a warming pan on the stove was a high mound of scrambled eggs, crisp bacon and round sausage patties piled next to them. Beside the toaster a loaf of bread sat, and a handwritten card was propped against it saying HELP YOURSELF. There was a stack of plates and butter knives and napkins, jars of jelly and preserves, a tray of butter.
Her plate was piled high when she sat down again at the table on the front porch, a hot cup of coffee beside the plate, her napkin neatly in her lap as Amy had shown her. So much Amy had shown her. She’d really paid Amy back good, hadn’t she. Hadn’t got cold good and she was fucking Sam. Just stayed after him all the time and didn’t ever get tired of it. Aaron and Gigi might be doing it up there right now.
She bent her head and started eating. Traffic was almost steady now on the road out there. It wouldn’t be any trouble to finish eating and get her stuff together, get her underwear off the line, pack the suitcase and step out there with her thumb out. Go somewhere else.
She hated to be so wishy-washy. She knew a few people here. She wouldn’t know anybody if she went somewhere else. Why not just take the ride back to town with him and look around for a job? If she couldn’t find anything, well … well what? Sleep on a park bench. Or on the beach? Then a cop would come along would be her luck and want to know what she was doing and where she was going and what her name was and then he might go back to his cruiser and have some kind of list with her name on it …Fay Jones. You just the one I’m looking for. Git yo ass in this here car. Naw, that wouldn’t do, that wouldn’t do at all. She needed to keep her ass off the street for sure.
She kept eating. After a while she began to hear some voices inside, clumps and bumps. She lifted her head and listened for a few moments but she couldn’t tell who it was or what they were saying. She heard a door open and close, sounded like maybe it was the back door.
She cut a piece of sausage and put it in her mouth and chewed. The door slammed again. Within thirty seconds an engine started. Somebody was leaving. She hoped it was Gigi. A crunching of gravel slowly got louder and she could hear the car coming alongside the house and she looked up as the little red car rolled by. Some man driving it, the woman who had come to the screen door without saying anything in the passenger seat. The car stopped at the end of the drive and the left rear blinker came on. It pulled out and was gone, the motor noise rising a bit each time the driver shifted a gear. She picked up her coffee and sipped at it. After a minute she saw the car go down the beach road to the right, gathering speed.
“Good morning,” she heard. She sat up and looked. An older, pretty woman was standing beside the porch in green pants and a flowered blouse. She had some shears and a hat in her hands and she had on some gloves.
“Hey,” Fay said.
“Did you find some breakfast?” the lady said.
“Yes ma’am. It sure was good, too. Thank you.”
“I’m Arlene,” she said, and kind of waved one hand at her. “If you need anything just let me know.”
“Yes ma’am. Thank you. My name’s Fay.”
“I know,” she said. “You just make yourself at home.” And then she turned away while Fay was still nodding and walked over to a bush out near the road and started whacking at it. Small limbs dropped from under the shears. Then heavy steps came down the hall. Aaron, it sounded like. She turned her head when the screen door pushed open and he came out, barefooted, wearing the black pants from last night with one of those ribbed undershirts that old men used to wear.
“Hey girl,” he said, and came over with a plate and a glass of orange juice.
“Hey,” she said.
“You already eat, huh?” He set his stuff down and pulled out a chair, then sat down in it. “There’s some more coffee if you want some.”
“I done had three cups.”
She sat there and watched him eat. He looked around, rubbing at his nose once in a while. Out in the yard his mother clipped away at the bush, then stepped back and looked at it. Shook her head. Leaned over. Snip snip.
“I heard you met Gigi,” he said, and he couldn’t stop a small grin at his mouth. He picked up his orange juice and drank some of it.
Fay stretched out in the chair, her hands crossed over her belly. Wonder when she’d feel the baby kick?
“Yeah, I had that pleasure. She your girlfriend?”
“We’ve kind of got an arrangement,” he said.
“Oh.” She thought about things for a little while. “What kind of movies she make?”
He raised his eyes to her with a small look of surprise.
“She mentioned that to you?”
“Yeah. She said she was an artist too.”
He forked up some eggs and took a bite of buttered toast.
“In her own mind I guess maybe she is. She’s a stripper, no more, no less.” His face considered something contemplative for a moment. “But I guess she’s got more than most of them.” He looked up at her again. “Except maybe you.”
He went on eating for a while and she let him eat. She didn’t really know what to make of what he’d just said but she guessed she had to take it as a compliment. She wondered if Sam could whip him.
“What was you gonna do?”
“Do what?” she said.
“What was you gonna do, whip her ass?”
She looked out toward the bay, moved her hands up and down. Arlene was walking around the bush, squinting at it. Snip.
“She thought I was messin around with you.”
“She did?”
“Yep. That’s what she thought cause I was out here and all.”
“You were just minding your own business.”
“Yeah.”
He picked up his napkin and wiped his mouth and dropped it in his lap again.
“Well she’s upstairs pouting right now because I wouldn’t throw you out.”
Fay nodded toward the yard.
“What does your mama think about her?”
“She’s got a really efficient way of dealing with it. She just acts like she don’t see her.”
“Your mama don’t approve of a stripper girlfriend, huh?”
“Actually it’s not that. She used to be one herself.”
Fay almost dropped her jaw then. She looked at the nice lady so busily clipping with the shears, straw hat, cloth slip-on shoes.
She leaned forward, whispered, “Your mama? Was a stripper?”
“Yep. A damn good one, too, they say. Or at least my old man said. I have seen some of her show pictures. She was pretty fine.” He raised his chin and shouted, “Wasn’t you fine, Arlene? You’s fine as frog hair wasn’t you?”
She looked up at him, waved her hand, shoo. He laughed and scooped up some more eggs.
“I believe I will get me some more coffee,” Fay said. She got up with her cup. “You want me to bring you one?”
“Yeah, sure,” he said. “Just put a little milk in it.”
“All right.” She turned and started across the porch.
“How about getting me another piece of toast, too? With some butter on it? Please?”
“Okay.” She nodded and went on in. She fixed the coffee and made the toast and buttered it. He’d finished his orange juice by the time she got back out front.
She set the cup down by his elbow and he said Thanks.
“You’re welcome.” She settled in the chair again and looked at Arlene. Things weren’t as bad now. Aaron was here and he was talking to her and his mother was right out there.
“I had a talk with Mama a while ago,” he said. He pushed his plate away and picked up the coffee. “She could use a little help around here sometimes.”
Fay didn’t say anything. This was a real house like Sam’s. And it had many rooms. It had plenty of room. She didn’t want to hope but couldn’t help hoping. It was dry inside and it had a good roof on it and it was probably warm in the wintertime. If wintertime came to this place. Gray days she’d bet, no people on the beach, the birds still crying out and flapping.
“Nothing heavy,” he said. “Worst you might have to do’s help her take the screens off to wash them. Just cleaning mostly. It wouldn’t take but a few hours a day. Making beds, putting toilet paper on the rolls. Can you cook?”
She thought about what she should say.
“Well, yeah. I mean yes I can. I know I can cook breakfast.”
He drank some of his coffee and put the cup back on the table. He looked at her cigarettes lying there. She thought for a moment that he was going to ask for one and then he picked up his cup again.
“Well,” he said. “It wouldn’t be every morning. She gets up and does it most of the time. But she’s getting older and to me she works too hard. She’s damn near seventy. Don’t look it, though, does she?”
Fay watched Arlene still snipping around on the bush, trying to imagine what she had looked like fifty years before, young and beautiful.
“She seems to be pretty spry for her age,” she said.
“Hell, she’s got a boyfriend.”
“Boyfriend?”
“You can’t blame her for getting lonely. He’s a pretty good old fart anyway, name’s Henry. Got a big cattle ranch up here at Winona.” He flicked his eyes toward the bay for a moment. “Got a big yacht his crew brings over here from Miami once in a while. You talk about a party when that thing gets here … boiled shrimp, oysters on the half shell … hell he’s got so much damn money he don’t even know how much he’s got.”
He looked at her cigarettes again and said, “Damn it, let me bum one of your cigarettes if you don’t care.”
She pushed them toward him. “Sure.”
He kept shaking his head while he tapped one out of the pack. “I can’t hardly stand a menthol but I just can’t stand it no more.” She leaned forward and flicked her lighter. “Thanks. Damn.” He exhaled smoke and looked at the tip of
it. “There goes eight days shot to shit.”
“What?” she said. “You try to quit?”
“Hell yeah. That’s what I was doing with those cigars last night. I’ll have to go to the store in a minute now. But look here. What do you think about maybe helping her out a little around here?”
“You mean? Like a job?”
He seemed impatient then, leaned forward and flicked some ashes into the tray.
“Yeah, like a job. I mean.” He lowered his voice and seemed a little embarrassed. “What you told me last night, the baby and all. Probably be hard for you to find a decent job over at Biloxi. Hard enough for somebody who’s got a high school education. Mama’s got plenty of room here. She’s willing to let you stay here and she’ll pay you something. I don’t know how much. That’s between you and her. It’s her place. I just stay here sometimes.”
“Well sure,” she said, without any hesitation. “I mean, if you’re sure it’s all right. You don’t even know me hardly.”
“You’ll be working for her, not me,” he said, and he stood up. “You want to ride over to the store with me?”
He had changed into jeans and a yellow tank top. He’d swapped his cowboy boots for leather sandals. He had a pack of Marlboro Lights on the seat beside him now and they were cruising on down the beach road toward Bay St. Louis. He’d bought her some lemonade when she’d told him she liked it. She was leaning against the door sipping on it, the breeze coming in the windows and making her hair fly in all directions.
He turned his face to her, a cold beer in his hand.
“We can roll these windows up and turn on the air if you want to.”
“I’m fine,” she said. “How long’s the coast?”
“It’s twenty-six miles if you count all the bays and everything. Pascagoula and Gautier and all that. You ever been over to Gulf Shores?”
“No,” she said. Where Chris Dodd was from. “I ain’t ever been over there.”
“Someday when we’ve both got some time, we might ride over there if you want to. There’s some good waves to swim in. I mean if you want to go swimming. You can swim, can’t you?”
