I'll Sing for my Dinner

by BR Kingsolver

  He went on to explain our game plan.

  The dreams that night were bad. It was like a medley of Cecille Buchanan’s greatest hits. Eddie, Alejandro, the man in West Virginia, the homeless shelter in Memphis, that filthy alley in Kansas City, and the trucker in Kansas. All the pain, the terror, the blood.

  I hadn’t dreamed about the trucker before, and I woke, writhing in the throes of an orgasm. If none of my other experiences taught me how sick I was, he brought it home in a way I couldn’t ignore. How do you spend three days being terrorized and tortured, yet even the memory causes a massive climax?

  Jake was holding me and murmuring soft reassurances. I wanted to ask him to do one of the things the man had done in my dream, but I was too ashamed. I couldn’t go back to sleep the rest of the night because of the aching need inside me.

  ~~~

  Chapter 11

  Jake

  I drove Cecily down to Denver and Kerrigan met us at the courthouse. At my insistence, and with Kerrigan’s blessing, she was wearing a diamond engagement ring. She was linked with a dead drug dealer. I wanted to change that dynamic by linking her to a war hero, businessman and rancher, a pillar of his community in America’s heartland. I also hoped being her fiancé would get me a little more consideration as far as access to her than being a boyfriend would.

  She kept toying with the ring, looking at the diamond, then looking at me.

  “Were you really a war hero?” she asked.

  “They gave me a slew of medals. If they’re finally worth something, then I’ll milk it for all it’s worth,” I said.

  “You didn’t need to get such a large diamond,” she said. Indeed, it looked a lot larger on her slender finger than I thought it would.

  “I plan to recycle it sometime,” I said. “In a more romantic setting.”

  That brought a small smile to her face.

  “Jake, no matter what anyone says I did, or how disgusted you might feel, I really do love you. That part of what I’ve told you is real.”

  She didn’t say anything else until she kissed me and said good-bye when we reached Denver. From the look on her face, and the fierce way she hugged me, I didn’t think she expected to ever see me again.

  We met Kerrigan, and then walked in to the FBI offices. Kerrigan introduced himself, and the agents who were there to meet us took him and Cecily inside. I had to wait. And wait. Kerrigan emerged alone three hours later.

  “They’ve decided to put her in protective custody,” Kerrigan said. “I thought they might pull something like that. Come on, I need to file a couple of motions with the court.”

  “What kind of motions?” I asked.

  “First, an injunction to prevent them from moving her out of Denver. The second is to protest them holding her at all. The last thing we want is to have her transferred back to Baltimore. I don’t think she’s paranoid to have concerns about her safety.”

  “She was running scared when I first met her,” I said. “She had all that money in the bank, and she had only eaten three times in five days. A lone girl hitchhiking across the country, staying in homeless shelters and hippie crash pads. She won’t talk about it, but I’ve read about the drug culture. It seems they don’t give a damn about human life.”

  “Baltimore is one of the murder capitals of the country,” Kerrigan said, “and most of those are involved with drugs. I’ve done some research into her ex-boyfriend, and he was investigated in connection with at least a half-dozen murders. The cops never got enough evidence to arrest him for anything, but it gives you an idea of the environment she was in. When they found his body, there was a kilo and a half of cocaine in the apartment, along with marijuana, an ounce of pure heroin, pills, and enough guns to start a small war.”

  He went into the court clerk’s office and filed his papers. When he came out, he said, “One of the things the agents pressed this morning was that she is a suspect in his murder. I think they’re trying to pressure her into telling them more than what she’s giving them. Your testimony about her physical state six weeks later may help. The cops found over a hundred thousand dollars in cash in the bedroom where he was killed. If she killed him, it would be inconceivable that she didn’t take the money before she ran.”

  The judge handed down the injunction against moving her that afternoon. A date for a hearing on the feds holding her was set for two weeks later. For the time being, she was where she had worked so hard to escape.

  The feds petitioned to close the hearing, so I didn’t get to see her. Kerrigan said she looked pale and thinner than he remembered. He also described her as listless, until the judge asked her if she had anything to say. Kerrigan said she evidently had been rehearsing for that moment, and she gave the performance of her life. She told the judge that she had run from Baltimore because she was afraid for her life, named the FBI agent on Jimenez’ payroll as justification, and castigated the feds for making her a scapegoat for their incompetence in controlling the drug trade in Baltimore.

  “She also said that she had more faith in her war hero fiancé to protect her, than she did in a bunch of federal bureaucrats who couldn’t find a marijuana joint in Baltimore with a flashlight and a roadmap,” Kerrigan told me. “I liked that one.”

  So did I.

  “The real zinger,” Kerrigan said, “was her allegation of corruption within the FBI. The U.S. Attorney went nuts. The judge asked if she mentioned this in her interview with the FBI, and she said no. She said that she had been on the run from two criminal enterprises, the drug dealers and the FBI. She said she was afraid to talk to agents from the Baltimore office, or go back to Baltimore, because she knew there were more corrupt agents, but didn’t know who they were.”

  “She’s had a long time to think about all this,” I said.

  “Yes, and her reasoning is sound. There isn’t a thing the U.S. Attorney can say to refute her logic. They have to haul the agent she named in for investigation, and they have to investigate her allegations that there are more agents on the take. If they send her back there now, and she gets killed, the stink will reach into the highest levels of the FBI.”

  He put a hand on my arm, “Mr. McGarrity, the judge asked her if she was well, and she said no. She said she can’t eat because of the stress and her fear for her life. I moved to have a medical evaluation done, and the judge granted it.”

  “She was twenty pounds thinner when I first met her,” I said.

  “Christ,” he said. “She’s skinny already. She must have been nothing but skin and bones. Do you know if she has a history of an eating disorder?”

  “Do you mean if she is anorexic? I doubt it. She’s been trying to gain weight. She eats almost anything; she just doesn’t eat a lot. She’ll order a cheeseburger with bacon and give me half to save room for a slice of cheesecake. And she’ll give me half of that, too. I mean, where would she put it? Even if she got fat, she still wouldn’t weigh anything.”

  “Well, we’ll see what the judge decides. They did allow me to give that violin to her. The FBI tried to object that the bow could be used as a weapon, and she asked if she was under arrest or in protective custody. She also asked the U.S. attorney why they expected her to tell them anything when they kept threatening to charge her with murder. Then she asked the judge if that was a violation of her Miranda rights. ” Kerrigan grinned. “And then she said, ‘Oh, I guess it couldn’t be a Miranda violation, since they’ve never informed me that I have any rights.’ The judge went ballistic.”

  I knew she didn’t want her guitar exposed to the judicial system, but I figured my old violin wouldn’t be a great loss. I drove back to Greeley, and sat around and worried.

  Three days later, Kerrigan called me.

  “Go pick up your girl,” he said. “Dave Thomas will meet you at the jail and sign her out as my representative.”

  When she came out, she threw herself into my arms and kissed me. One of the guards handed her the violin.

  “Good riddance,” the guard
said. “I hope you don’t end up back here, missy.”

  Outside, I asked, “What was that about?”

  Gaily smiling, she said, “There isn’t an instrument better for conveying emotions than the violin. I’ve been playing funeral dirges almost non-stop for three days straight. One of the guards told me everyone in there is practically suicidal, including the guards. So when they came to let me out, I played an Irish jig for them.”

  What followed next were weeks of hauling her down to Denver to talk with federal prosecutors. Kerrigan flew out for every meeting, and I had images of the meter running and the charges piling up.

  Now that she wasn’t hiding anymore, she got a credit card, a cell phone, and opened a bank account in Greeley. I guess she transferred money into it from her trust, because she went shopping and bought herself a wardrobe that didn’t include any cowboy shirts. The elegance of the way she dressed to meet with the feds made me feel rather scruffy.

  One reason for the dress-up was that she took me to dinner in Denver or Boulder on every trip. The finest restaurants, places I didn’t have much experience with. I could see the way she was raised, the kind of atmosphere she was used to. I protested that she was being too extravagant, and she said she was paying me back for all the food I fed her, and all the trouble she cost me.

  Then she said, with a bright smile, “Would you rather punish me? We could do that instead.” So I shut up and ate fancy steaks and crab and lobster.

  But when we were back in Greeley, she put on her jeans and cowboy boots and acted like the girl I had fallen in love with. She wrote a couple of new songs about her time in jail, and sang them for the audience at the Roadhouse. One was heart wrenching, the other had everyone in stitches.

  One day the phone rang at the house, and when she answered it, I immediately knew something was wrong. The conversation on her end consisted of a lot of ‘yes, ma’am’ and ‘no, ma’am’. Until the end.

  “No, I don’t want you to come out here, and I’m not going to Connecticut. It’s not that I don’t love you, but obviously we don’t agree on how I should live my life. And until you’re ready to admit that I’m an adult, and we can have a conversation instead of a lecture, I don’t think we have anything to talk about.”

  I raised an eyebrow when she turned to me after hanging up. She ran her hand across her face, and grabbed a hand full of hair and started pulling on it.

  “My parents. Somehow they got your number,” she said.

  “I’m in the phone book.”

  “Well, that’s kind of silly. You open yourself up to just anyone calling you.”

  I laughed. “So, I assume the conversation didn’t go very well?”

  “What conversation? My mother started lecturing me the moment I answered the phone, and I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. In addition to being a drug-addict whore, I’m ungrateful, willful, incompetent to run my own affairs, and she demanded that I come home immediately so she can run my life again. Other than me being a drug-addict whore, there wasn’t much to agree on.”

  I crooked a finger at her and she came over and sat in my lap. “I don’t think describing you as a drug addict is accurate,” I said.

  She threw me a grin and said, “You’re going to agree I’m a whore?”

  “By some people’s definition. You’re living in sin with a man.”

  “Ooo, that sounds exciting,” she said. “If this be sin, then give me my sin again.”

  ~~~

  Chapter 12

  Cecily

  I thought the low point of my week was the call from my mother. The visit from my agent, threatening to sue me and the Roadhouse for a hundred million dollars, trumped that.

  I pointed out that there was a loophole in our agreement. I was allowed to perform at private functions for friends and relatives for free. Since my agreement with Jake was an under-the-table handshake agreement, and there weren’t any records of his illegal cash payments that neither of us was declaring to the IRS, I told the agent to fly a kite. I dared him to prove that Jake and I weren’t friends.

  Jake looked worried for a while. I kissed him and told him to leave my money in the cookie jar from now on. “Honey, if they really try to make a stink of it, we can just tell them that I play for free, and you’re paying me for sex.”

  The incident did spark an interesting dialogue concerning my contract and the possibility of my performing again. I pointed out that the contract was signed by my parents, and since I was over twenty-one, I wasn’t bound by it anymore.

  Actually, taking another look at the contract when I got home, I had additional questions. It was signed by my parents when I was sixteen. Although state laws varied, it might have become invalid when I turned eighteen. That brought up the question as to whether my parents were entitled to any of my income between the time I was eighteen and when I turned twenty-one.

  I called Kerrigan and asked for a recommendation for a lawyer in contract law.

  I was still meeting with the federal prosecutors in Denver once a week. Kerrigan always flew in. The FBI was excluded. The prosecutors’ questions had long since abandoned Eddie’s murder and focused more on what I knew and whom I knew concerning the Baltimore drug scene. I kept telling them that I didn’t know squat on purpose. I never wanted to get involved in any of that. When people talked money, I always left the room.

  Of course, all of that spurred the dreams and I was plagued with them nightly. Only now the FBI joined the gangbangers in chasing me. In the dream world, everything got turned upside down and intermingled. The night I dreamed about being gang raped by men in dark suits and trench coats was truly terrifying.

  The bar was closed for Thanksgiving, and Jake showed me how to roast a turkey. Jared and Karen came over, along with two other members of the band and their girlfriend and wife. We still ate turkey sandwiches for a week afterward. I told Jake that I was going to fix Cornish game hens the next year.

  The week before Christmas, the feds declared I was no longer ‘a person of interest’ and cut me loose. I steadfastly refused to testify in court and they got tired of badgering me. I paid Kerrigan off, and for the first time in nine months, I felt as though the air I breathed wasn’t tainted by fear.

  But it didn’t make the dreams go away. As if my relief at knowing I wasn’t going to jail released something in my guilty conscience, my sleep that night was bathed in blood. I might have fooled the feds, but I couldn’t fool myself.

  Chapter 13

  Jake

  With all of Cicely’s legal issues resolved, life still didn’t return to normal. The contract lawyer that Kerrigan recommended went to court and invalidated her contract with her previous agent. That didn’t mean the guy wasn’t interested in representing her anymore. It just meant a new contract needed to be negotiated.

  Dave Thomas sent a CD of her original songs to a heavyweight agent in Los Angeles, and that agent also wanted to negotiate a contract. Cecily, being no fool, hired Dave to watch over the lawyer, who negotiated contracts with both agents.

  I rapidly discovered that the little lost waif I fell in love with had a bit of shark in her when put back in her element.

  “Jake, I remember everything I didn’t like about every trip, every performance I ever did. All the fun things sort of merge together, you know? I couldn’t tell you whether that sweet old man who was blowing me kisses one night was in New York, London, or Toronto. But I remember that jackass who said I couldn’t play my violin in the mezzanine of the Toronto Hilton. He told me that little girls should be seen and not heard.”

  I loved the way she made me laugh. Life was never dull with her.

  “So, what I’m trying to say,” she continued, “is when we nail down the final contracts, I want to make sure all the constraints, the little irritants, are covered.”

  “My God,” I said, “you really are a diva. Do you want a specific brand of lilac water supplied in your dressing room?”

  “No, I want a certain naked Marine in my dre
ssing room,” she said with a grin. “Every night before I go on and waiting for me when I get off. If they have to pay him to show up, it’s not my problem.”

  “Turning me into a sex slave, huh?” I teased.

  “Darling, the slave role is mine, remember? Just be sure to show up in the right place, on time, whenever I want to be dominated.” She winked at me.

  I hadn’t had a vacation since taking over the bar and the feds had taken care of my plan to take her to Hawaii for Christmas. A week before Christmas, Cecily breezed into the bar, laden down with shopping bags.

  “Darling,” she said as she stopped to kiss me before hauling her booty back to the office, “I had the most brilliant idea! What do you think about San Diego for Christmas?”

  “I thought we were going to spend Christmas at home,” I said.

  “Oh, Jared will make do without us. If we aren’t there, he can put a girl in every bedroom and play musical beds to his heart’s content.”

  I heard Kathy and the kitchen crew erupt with laughter.

  The San Diego idea rolled around my head that evening as I watched Cecily perform. I hadn’t been there in eight years, and I was in uniform then. I knew the city pretty well, and decided we could have a good time. On our way home, I told her I liked the idea.

  When I came downstairs the next morning, following my nose to the double bonanza of coffee and bacon, Cecily was sitting at the kitchen table, talking on the phone. I picked up pretty quickly that she was talking business, and San Diego was mentioned.

  “Who was that?” I asked, munching on a rasher of bacon.

  “The classical music guy. I’m setting up for all the agents and lawyers to meet us in San Diego two days after Christmas.”

  “And why are we going to do business on our vacation?” I asked.

  She stood and kissed me. “So we can write the trip off as a business expense.”

  Pulling some strawberries out of the refrigerator, and bananas off the shelf, she began making pancake batter. God, I loved that woman.