Until tomorrow then …
Your man in Danville,
G.C.
It was nearly nine o’clock before Jack Dolan managed to make it to the local Hardee’s for his regular breakfast of black coffee and an egg-and-sausage biscuit. That Edith girl meant well with her bran flakes and grapefruit, talking nineteen to the dozen about vitamins and fiber (whatever that was), but he was too old to reform his habits now. He had made it past ninety on sausage biscuits and black coffee, and he reckoned if his diet was going to kill him, it would have done so by now. He’d had to eat some of Edith’s health muck to get a minute’s peace out of her, and then the lawyer and his arty cousin had come down and insisted on joining him at the table. They hadn’t liked Edith’s idea of a healthy breakfast any more than he had, and he’d almost offered to bring them back sausage biscuits from his breakfast run, but it occurred to him that if he mentioned his plan to go to Hardee’s, one of them might insist on accompanying him. Company would cramp his style, so the minute they wandered out of the kitchen in search of the newspaper, he’d snatched up his hat and jacket, hobbled out the back door, and lit out through the shortcut in the tall shrubbery that lined the property. His morning trip to the fast-food palace wasn’t just for mealtimes. He had business to conduct.
He settled into an orange-upholstered booth, out of the line of sight of the workers behind the counter, and sipped his coffee. He was a regular, and with the privilege of his great age, he could sit there all morning if he wanted to and nobody would bother him. The most they would do was come out and take a look at him every now and then, just to make sure he was still breathing. Mr. Jack began to unwrap his sausage biscuit, with an approving smile at the film of grease oozing from within. That ought to counteract the health muck he’d been forced to eat back at the house.
After a few pleasant moments of solitude and sausage grease, another elderly man approached the booth. “Mornin’, Jack,” he said in a hoarse voice that was trying to be a whisper. He slid into the booth opposite Jack Dolan, glancing around to see if anyone was watching. “I hear that you’re back in business.”
Mr. Jack took another swig of black coffee. He’d known the man for years, and the damn fool never did have any manners to speak of. Not so much as a how are you? Or nice weather we’re having … Straight to business … Mr. Jack didn’t bother to wonder how the fellow had known he was back in business. Small towns are always full of rumors. It stood to reason that occasionally one of them would be true.
“Just to keep my hand in,” he said, doing his best to sound indifferent. “Not really what you’d call business. Not at my age.”
“Well, there’s people that might want to lend a hand, Jack. Know-how like yours doesn’t come along every day.”
“Or even every decade,” grunted Jack Dolan. “I am the last.”
“You are that. But I’d need a sample to take to these fellows. To show them that you haven’t lost your touch.”
Mr. Jack turned his head like an old turtle and surveyed the restaurant with narrowed, unblinking eyes. Satisfied that they were unobserved, he reached into the pocket of his coat and drew out a pint-size glass bottle. It was filled with an amber-colored liquid. “That ought to show them,” he grunted.
“And there’s more where that came from?”
“There could be.”
Sometimes we are as unlike ourselves as we are unlike other people. Who had said that? La Rouchefoucald? A. P. Hill had found the phrase in a translation exercise in her fourth-year French text, and while she had forgotten exactly which French philosopher had made the statement, she never forgot the phrase itself. She had found it shortly after the incident, which Purdue called their finest hour. Powell Hill never called it anything. She contrived never to think of the incident at all, but when it did cross her mind, she banished it with that phrase from her French book. She had been unlike herself that night. But, if present circumstances were any indication, Purdue must have been more like herself than ever before.
They had not done it out of pity. She was sure of that. Otherwise, the motives eluded Powell Hill. It had begun with the sound of crying. A Saturday night in October on the third floor. Late. Everyone else either out on a date or away for the weekend. Even Sally Gee had left the fold, probably out with Klingenschmitt, which meant an all-you-can-eat buffet followed by Clint Eastwood or a no-cover-charge dance. One of the great advantages of going steady was that it removed the necessity of spending large amounts of money to impress one’s date.
A. P. Hill had been in her dorm room alone, filling up index cards with footnotes, a preliminary step in a term paper for an anal-retentive history prof. She sat cross-legged on her bed, glancing out the window from time to time at the full moon that was shining through the branches of the oak tree. From the other end of the hall she could hear the thud of notes from Purdue’s CD player, even through the closed door. A male singer’s voice, something about “leaving her by the river.” Purdue played it a lot. Then in the moment of silence between one song and the next, A. P. Hill had heard it: a hiccuping sob, a wail, then a slammed door. Not Purdue’s. This side of the hall. Couple of doors down.
A. P. Hill listened for a moment. Nothing. Perhaps she had imagined it. She waited for the music to begin again, but all was quiet. With a weary sigh, she tossed the index cards onto a stack of library books and went to her door. When she looked out into the hall, she saw P. J. Purdue, in her customary uniform of black T-shirt and sweatpants, peering out of her own doorway just past the water fountain.
“What’s the matter with you?” Purdue called out, squinting into the empty hallway.
A. P. Hill shook her head. “That wasn’t me.” She put a finger to her lips, and together they waited for the sounds to come again.
Together they walked up the hall, creeping up to the door of each room, listening for noises from within. In the deserted hallway past the stairwell they saw a crack of light under a closed door. Purdue motioned her forward, and together they crept closer. The muffled sobbing was just audible now.
A. P. Hill glanced at the high school calling cards taped to the door: Sandra Terrell; Pamela Bullington. Easy enough to guess which one of the roommates was in there now. Terrell’s parents lived in Richmond; her boyfriend since high school went to Richmond, Virginia’s Commonwealth University, and so every Friday afternoon at four o’clock pretty Sandi Terrell and her dirty laundry went home to mother and to Tim. She wouldn’t be back until Sunday night.
Bullington, on the other hand, an aptly named bovine chem major from Pennsylvania, was either shy or surly—nobody much cared which. Anyhow, she barely had acquaintances on the hall, much less friends. Terrell was reportedly polite to her roommate, but looking to change partners next term.
With her ear pressed against the door, P. J. Purdue listened for a few seconds to the ragged bouts of weeping. “Where the hell is Sally Gee?” she muttered. “Ministering angel is her gig.”
A. P. Hill shrugged. “House mother?”
“Be your age.” Purdue rolled her eyes. “Talk about making things worse. They might even call her parents.”
“So leave her alone then?”
The third-floor cynic considered this. “Nah,” she said at last. “Too risky. If she jumps out the window, we’re screwed. Do you want to go through life haunted by the hulking shade of Bullington?” Without waiting for a reply, Purdue turned the doorknob and went in.
The lights were off, but the moonlight from the window outlined a lumpish form under a quilt on one twin bed, head under the pillow, still emitting muffled sounds of distress.
“Yo, Bullington,” said Purdue, flipping the light switch. “You got a cat in here?”
The crying stopped in midgulp, and a red, tear-blotched moon face emerged from under the pillow, blinking at the sudden burst of light. “A c-c-cat?”
“Yeah. We thought we heard one. Sounded like somebody was stringing a violin with it.” Purdue’s expression was one of bright interes
t. She strolled over to the desk and sat down in the straight-backed chair, giving every indication that she planned to make herself at home.
A. P. Hill, still hovering in the doorway, cringed, wishing that she could turn and run, but Bullington was clearly distraught about something. Leaving her at the mercy of P. J. Purdue was probably more cruelty than the girl could bear just now. She cleared her throat. “Umm … is there anything we can do, Pam?”
“Coke machine,” said Purdue, before the weeping girl could answer. She peered into the metal wastebasket beside the desk. “Bullington here seems to be a Cherry Coke fan, so why don’t you bring her one? I’ll take a Diet, myself.” Purdue waved her away without even a glance at the girl on the bed.
As A. P. Hill fled back down in the hall to retrieve her change purse, she heard Purdue’s voice bellowing after her. “Bring chocolate, too!” The snack machines were in the basement next to the laundry room: four flights of concrete stairs that echoed her footfalls like drumbeats in the emptiness. She did not hurry. The errand of retrieving soft drinks and chocolate gave her a mission of charity without requiring her to be where she did not want to be: in the same room with a hysterical Pamela Bullington. She thought it might be easier for Bullington to tell her troubles to just one listener, even if it was the third-floor terrorist in black. Perhaps Purdue had thought that, and that was why she had dispatched her to the basement for refreshments. Ten minutes, thought A. P. Hill. That ought to give them enough time to talk over whatever it is that’s freaking her out.
Powell Hill took her time descending the stairs, and she emptied the contents of her change purse on a laundry table to count out just the right amount of coins for the soda machine—in nickels. She dawdled further while she debated the comfort value of each packaged item in the snack machine. Was a Snickers bar more soothing than a chocolate cupcake? She got one of each. She had absolutely no idea which snack foods Pamela Bullington favored. Judging by the bulk of her, probably all of them—often. Finally A. P. Hill had wasted all the time she could on the fine points of her errand of mercy. She gathered up what little change she had left, tucked the soda cans in the crook of her arm, and made her way back up the stairs to the deserted corridor on the third floor, wondering what sort of problem could have driven Bullington to tears. Surely not man trouble. Bullington? Surely not.
As she turned the corner into the third-floor hall, she saw P. J. Purdue leaning against the doorjamb, waiting for her return. “Here she comes!” she called back to Bullington in a cheery voice. “About damn time, right?”
As A. P. Hill handed over the soda cans and chocolate, she saw the grim look on Purdue’s face, an expression completely at odds with the jaunty tone of her voice. She gave A. P. Hill a look that said “Later,” and carried the food into the room. Bullington was sitting up now, wiping her swollen eyes with a wet washcloth.
“Well,” said Purdue, still brisk and calm, “I’m not going to tell you not to be upset, Bullington. I personally would be homicidal in your place. And I’m incapable of dispensing soothing words of encouragement—if you want that sort of help, try Sally Gee’s room in a couple of hours. But, if it’s any consolation to you, we will take care of this. You don’t need to know how. You don’t need to know when. It will happen. Got that?”
Bullington reddened as if another storm of weeping was imminent, but she nodded and reached for the Cherry Coke. Purdue tossed the cupcake and candy bar on the bed. “We’ll be back to check on you later,” she said as she headed for the door. “Why don’t you study or something? Why let your evening be wasted by people you hate, huh? Read, sleep, or study. Don’t brood. Don’t go home. Don’t throw yourself out the window. We’ll be back. And you’ll want to hear what we did, won’t you?”
Pamela Bullington nodded again, still leaking size-sixteen tears.
“Of course you do. Stay tuned. Save me some chocolate.”
Purdue’s voice had been calm and unconcerned. She gave the girl a casual wave, and sauntered out of Bullington’s room, smiling as if she had just made a casual visit to an acquaintance. Once the door closed behind her, though, Purdue’s smile vanished and she jerked her head in the direction of her room. “Move!” she muttered to A. P. Hill. She stalked off down the hall, and A. P. Hill hurried after her, still wondering what was going on.
When they were safely ensconced behind the closed door of Purdue’s room, A. P. Hill said, “So what’s the matter with Bullington? Trouble at home?”
“No. Trouble here.” Purdue was perched on the window ledge, looking out at the dark shapes of trees outlined against a sky bleached by the lights of the city. She sighed. “The poor beast took a blind date. Fraternity party. Guy called up on the house phone a couple of hours ago, trolling for meat. Bullington was feeling bored and sorry for herself, and she decided to accept the offer. They will do it, these stupid girls. I blame the Brothers Grimm, myself. Maybe Barbara Cartland. These girls really think Prince Charming is going to turn up in the lobby of the dorm as a blind date, and that he will love them for their beautiful souls. Five thousand years of collective human behavior fails to convince them otherwise.”
“True, but not very enlightening so far, Purdue. Could you just tell me what happened?”
Purdue scowled. “Oh, the usual,” she said, but there was a bitterness in her voice that A. P. Hill had never heard before. “Some jerk asked Bullington to go to a party at his frat house, and she went, and she thought she was having a pretty good time. Bright lights. Loud band. Cute guy. Then she went to find the bathroom, and on her way there she overheard a couple of the guys talking about the ‘pig party,’ and wondering who would win the prize for bringing the ugliest girl. She slipped out the back door and ran back to the dorm. She’s been crying ever since.”
A. P. Hill winced. She wasn’t particularly fond of Bullington, but she wouldn’t have wished that experience on anyone. She found it hard to believe that civilized people could be capable of so much casual cruelty. She would concede that war or famine might drive people to commit ignoble acts out of rage or desperation, but she would never understand why young men on a supposedly enlightened college campus would make a sport of it. Then she remembered Purdue telling Bullington that the matter would be taken care of. As usual, A. P. Hill thought of legal redress. “So, are you going to ask your grandfather about taking the case?”
“What case?”
“Bullington’s. You told her you’d take care of things. Are you going to sue the guys who gave the party?”
Purdue scowled at her. “Will you listen to yourself? Sue the guys who gave the party? For what? Something Bullington overheard but can’t prove?”
“It isn’t a good case,” Powell conceded. “It may not even be illegal. I’m not sure the discrimination laws cover that. I’d go for a civil suit on the grounds of emotional damage.”
“You would, would you, Tinkerbell? And what would happen if she did sue those creeps? Media coverage most likely. Is that going to make Pamela Bullington feel any better, do you think? Becoming famous as the disgruntled guest at a fraternity pig party? She’d never live it down. She’d probably drop out of school from the humiliation of it, and the story would follow her for the rest of her life.”
“Well, I don’t see what else you can do,” said A. P. Hill. “You could try throwing an ugly-guy party, but it probably wouldn’t faze them. I suppose it’s theoretically possible to hurt a guy’s self-esteem, but I’ve never actually seen it done.”
“Maybe nobody ever tried hard enough before.”
“What, the whole fraternity? No way, Purdue. I wish you hadn’t promised Bullington some action on this, because there’s nothing we can do.”
“Not the whole fraternity. Just one guy. She told me the name of the guy who picked her up here in the lobby. I say we go after him. Make an example of him. That ought to make the rest of those cretins think twice about what they’re doing.”
“Go … after … him?” A. P. Hill’s eyes widened. “You�
��ll end up in jail, Purdue.”
P. J. stopped pacing and flopped down on the bed. “There ought to be some way to teach him a lesson. Something he couldn’t—or wouldn’t—report to the authorities.”
Powell Hill looked thoughtful. “Maybe there is.”
Elizabeth’s day had been uneventful, which is a primary goal of treatment facilities. She had not tried to kill herself, or stared off into space brooding over her loss, or even given way to a brief storm of weeping. The pills saw to that. She had wandered quietly from art to group to lunch, with the vague suspicion beneath the chemical haze that this monotonous regimen was an empty waste of one’s youth. She must do something about that, she thought, but her resolve floated away before she could formulate a course of action. This must be one of her bad days. Dr. Dunkenburger said that her moods would zigzag from almost normal to despair. There were pills for the latter, if she cared to request them. Elizabeth thought not. Not yet.
Finally, after an afternoon that seemed to last for weeks, it was dinnertime. She wasn’t sure that she was hungry, but at least dinner was a semblance of society, a break in the monotony of watching the clock hands. She could sleep through it, of course. She felt that she could sleep twenty hours a day if they left her alone. But of course they wouldn’t. That was the whole point. Go through the motions of living until you find that once again you mean it. She wondered if that worked.
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