I looked over at Palumbo who had apparently been paying no attention to the dealings at the front door. Following the direction of his gaze I realized why. Standing at the bar was a striking woman, tall and lean, dressed as one of the waitresses for the club with a short and shiny silver dress cut deeply in front. Her hair was a brilliant white that was almost luminescent in the dim light of Palumbo’s new establishment. She picked up a tray of drinks and made her way through the crowd, capturing the attention of most every man in the place as she passed. When she came by our table she gave Palumbo an alluring smile and nod and then our eyes met for just a moment before she moved on past. I’m not sure I had ever seen legs so long. Palumbo noticed my interest.
“Her name’s Eleanor,” he said. “Isn’t she a piece?”
I could only nod in agreement, captured in the sway of her hips and graceful navigation of the crowded club with the tray of drinks held high overhead. I tried not to stare, but I was certainly not alone. I noticed several women in the club had to pull their male companions’ attention back to their own table.
“You wanna meet her?” Palumbo asked loudly over the noise of the club. Before I could answer he got her attention as she was returning to the bar. She came over to our table and sat down between Palumbo and me. Leaning over she gave him a big hug and then a kiss on the cheek that left a bright red ring of lipstick. Palumbo’s meaty face seemed to flush and he returned her kiss on a turned cheek. “Eleanor, honey, this is my good friend Mathew from Atlanta,” he said.
The woman turned to me and up close she looked much younger than I would have first imagined, perhaps in her early twenties. Her face was flawless, if not somewhat over made-up. I tried not to look down at the well exposed swell of her breasts as she leaned over to greet me.
She reached out her hand, looking directly into my eyes and said, “Mathew, why haven’t we met before?”
I continued to hold her hand, more than a bit flustered, but I tried to compose myself and said, “First time here. I’ve just come down to the coast recently.”
She stood with a great flourish and said, “Well don’t be a stranger.” She kept looking at me as she walked back to the bar.
I looked over at Palumbo, and he was smiling a big toothy smile. “I think she likes the young man from Atlanta.”
“Sure, and every other man with a big tip in his pocket,” I said.
The night passed quickly with a steady procession of people stopping by to give their regards to the club’s new owner and occasional visits from the leggy Eleanor. Our mugs were never allowed to get empty and as the evening progressed I finally gave up on trying to pace myself on the whiskey. Palumbo and I had great conversations through the night that seemed extremely funny and none of which I will ever remember. My last memories were a blurring kaleidoscope of laughing faces and bad piano music.
In the morning, I woke to the sound of birds in the trees outside the window. I tried to open my eyes, but they seemed crusted shut. It had been several weeks since my last hangover. The familiar pain was there in my brain as I tried to sit up. Turning over and pushing the covers back I was startled to see a shock of tousled white hair on the pillow next to me and the curve of a long-exposed backside.
I tried my best to remember the events of the past night, but nothing was coming back to me; even leaving The Panama Club was a fuzzy recollection. So how did Eleanor end up here at the Headley cottage and what had happened? I was finally able to get up and put my feet on the floor and I looked down to see that all of my clothes were there at my feet. I reached down for my shorts and put them on, trying not to bend over for too long to prevent my head from pounding. Eleanor wasn’t stirring so I walked out to the kitchen and pumped water from the well and then placed my head under the cold flow. I filled a glass and drank it down in one long swallow to cut the dryness that was gripping at my throat.
My mind was floating back and forth between the obviously male reactions to waking up in bed with a beautiful woman, to the doubts and guilt about being so drunk I didn’t really know what had happened. I filled another glass and walked back into the bedroom. Eleanor was awake and just sitting up with a pillow propped up behind her against the wall, one hand holding a sheet up to cover herself. Her face was a blurred image of what I had remembered from the night before. Her make-up was smeared around her face in places it wasn’t meant to be and her hair was a tangled mess.
“Good morning,” I said as I walked in to sit beside her on the bed. I handed her the glass of water which she drank before speaking. She glanced around the room, a look of confusion on her face.
“So, this is your place?” she asked.
“No, actually I’m just staying here for a while. It belongs to a friend.”
“Where are we?” she asked
I laughed at her question. She was obviously as far gone the previous night as I had been. Wondering if either of us was even able to stay conscious when we got back and into bed, I said, “We’re in Grayton Beach. Willie Palumbo must have brought us both back. He’s staying down the street at the hotel.”
“Willie…right,” she said, trying to put the pieces together.
I was struggling to figure out what to say about our encounter. She put the glass on the small table next to the bed and started looking at the floor for her clothes. I decided she might appreciate some privacy.
“I’ll wait out in the main room. Can I get you anything else?” I asked as I was backing away.
“How about some coffee?”
“Sure, I’ll put a pot on.”
“Mathew,” she started and then stopped and looked out the window beside the bed. “I don’t know what you think about last night… or how we ended up like this.” She looked down at the sheet covering her.
“Eleanor, really it’s all right,” I said. “We had too much to drink”
“I don’t know what you must think about me.”
“Really, it’s all right,” I said, and then left her there to get dressed.
The coffee was brewing when she came out of the bedroom, dressed as she was the night before in the tiny silver dress. This time she was barefoot, carrying her shoes and she had obviously tried to run a brush through her hair. She saw the well pump in the sink and went over and washed her face and then dried off. I was sitting at the kitchen table and she came over and sat beside me. She leaned over to kiss me softly on the cheek. With the remnants of her make-up washed away she was still a pretty girl, but she looked even younger without it.
“Mr. Palumbo can be a bad influence,” she finally said, and then tried to stifle a smile.
I looked at her face, intent on the soft lines at the corner of her eyes.
“How do you know him?” she asked.
“He’s staying at the little hotel up the street there,” I said. “Have you been working at the club very long?”
“Almost two years. I moved down from my little hometown in Alabama.”
The coffee was finished and we both took a cup out onto the front porch. We sat down to watch the sun come up over the dunes and cottages at Grayton Beach. It must have been around mid-morning, and the heat was beginning to build.
Eleanor spoke first. “I really need to get back to town. I’m working the lunch shift today.”
In a way, I was grateful for an easy conclusion to this unexpected tryst. When we had finished our coffee, I took her out to the car and as I was opening the door for her to get in, I saw Sara Dalton walking down from the porch at Lila’s hotel holding on to her daughter’s hand. She looked over and noticed me and my guest in her distinctive outfit. She hesitated only for a moment before continuing on toward the beach with Melanee. She didn’t acknowledge she had even seen us. I suppose I would have been embarrassed regardless who had observed me on that morning, but I remember being thankful that Lila hadn’t come out to see us; probably that strange mother-figure guilt at work.
The trip back to Panama City was enlighte
ning as Eleanor opened up about her past and growing up in Dothan, Alabama, just a few hours north, before moving to the beach two years ago to find work.
“I’ve been trying to save enough money to go to New York or Los Angeles”, she told me. “I was a pretty good actress back in school. Everyone was always telling me I should be in motion pictures.”
I revealed as little as possible about my life in Atlanta, only enough to be polite. She seemed interested I was working on a book and she wondered if I knew anyone in the movies, which I told her I did not. She lived in a small house a block back from the beach. She told me she had two roommates and that both were waitresses at the club. I asked if they might be worried about her not coming home last night. She just smiled and shook her head no. When I stopped in front of the house, she slid over on the seat and kissed me slowly and purposefully on the lips and I found myself caught up in her apparent affection and secretly wishing I could remember at least some of the past night’s activities. She smiled again as she pulled back and slid over toward the door.
“Can I see you again,” I asked.
“You know where to find me,” she said, and then opened the car door.
“Sure,” I said, and then got out to walk her up to her door. She kissed me again on the porch and then quickly went inside and closed the door behind her. I stood there for a few moments feeling the wet taste of her on my lips, thinking about our unexpected night together. Then the strangest notion came over me as I thought about what my family might think about me bringing home a bleached blonde barmaid from an illegal club in Panama City. I could only delight in the vision of bringing Eleanor out to one of my parent’s parties in her little work outfit. My mother and her friends would choke on their martini olives. With that bit of amusement to fill my time I drove on back to Grayton Beach.
Chapter Fourteen
When I returned to the Headley cottage from Panama City there was a note tucked in the front door. It was from Lila. My sister from Atlanta had called and it was very important I call her back as soon as possible. I walked over to the hotel and into the front lobby. Melanee was practicing piano and heard me come in.
“Hello?” she said, “Mathew?”
“Hi Melanee…”
“Oh Mathew, thank goodness you’ve come,” the little girl said. “You must call your sister right away. I feel something terrible’s happened.”
“What did she say?” I asked.
“I’m not sure. My grandma spoke with her, but I can tell something’s happened.”
Sara and Lila walked in from the kitchen. “Melanee told you that your sister called?” Lila asked. “She seemed really upset, Mathew.”
Sara went over to sit next to her daughter and avoided any involvement in the conversation. Within a few minutes the operator had connected me with the house in Atlanta. My sister, Maggie, answered the phone and I could tell immediately that something was horribly wrong. She was crying and trying to compose herself to speak.
“Mathew… you must come home right away,” she said.
When I asked her what had happened, she started sobbing again and then there was a pause before my father was on the line. I was startled to hear his voice.
“Mathew, is that you?” he asked.
“What’s happened?”
I heard him take a deep breath and then he spoke in a weak voice. “Mathew… your brother is…” and he hesitated again. “Jess is dead, Mathew.”
The shock of his words stunned me and I felt that I was going to be sick standing right there in the lobby of the hotel. I reached out for the wall to steady myself. When I was able to ask what had happened he simply said he wanted to wait until I returned home to discuss it.
I was trying to make sense of what I was hearing. I looked over and Lila and Sara were watching, obviously aware that something terrible had happened. Even little Melanee was looking over toward me with a concerned and frightened expression on her face. My father asked me to come home right away. The funeral would be in a couple of days, but the family needed to be together as soon as possible. I was too bewildered to even comment or question anything he had said. I simply told him I would be there as quickly as I could and then I hung up the phone.
I left the hotel without speaking, too stunned to even think about explaining what had happened. Back at the house I threw a few things into the car and was soon on the road back to Atlanta. Early on as I made my way along the rough country roads, my mind was rambling on about what could have possibly happened to Jess. My anger at his recent betrayal was replaced with overwhelming grief at losing my only brother, someone I had, until recently, always loved and looked up to.
I remembered better days when we were younger, when we had been as close as two brothers can be; to a day when we were both caught shoplifting some candy at a drugstore in town. Our father came down to pick us up when the owner had called. He was furious with us and Jess took the entire blame, telling him it was his idea, and I only went along with it because he had forced me to. I always felt I owed Jess an enormous debt for standing up for me that day. We never discussed it again and he never asked for anything in return.
The long drive back to Atlanta was nearly unbearable. My mind eventually became numb with the grief. The road stretched on through seemingly endless miles of desolate country. I stopped occasionally for gas or food, but pressed on straight through the night and arrived the next day in the late afternoon, pulling up to the long drive in front of our house. A police car was parked at the street with an officer standing outside leaning against the front bumper. After showing him my identification I was allowed to continue on. Our housekeeper, Velma, must have seen me pull in because she came out right away and met me on the porch. She put her arms around me and squeezed me tight against her stout body. I could feel the wetness from her tears against my cheek.
“I’m so sorry, Matty,” she said.
“What in hell happened?”
She just shook her head. “Your father is in his den.”
I found him there with the lights off and the shades closed, sitting at his desk with his head in his hands. He heard me come in and motioned for me to sit down across from him. He rubbed his eyes and even in the dim light I could see he had probably been up all night as well.
“I’m glad you’re here, son,” he said, and then took a slow measured breath. “We need to talk about you running off, but that can wait.”
“Just tell me what’s happened.”
I could see he was irritated by my tone. He sighed and then began speaking very slowly. “Your brother Jess has been murdered. I’m certain it was the O’Leary family. They’ve been trying to move in on our business.” He paused for a moment, trying to calm his emotions. I was listening to him speak, but his words were like a distant echo. I was finding it nearly impossible to comprehend what had occurred and what I was hearing.
“Jess had a run-in with one of the O’Leary boys a day earlier. The kid was at a club that Jess stopped in at and they scuffled before someone stepped in. We found Jess’s body dumped on the road out in front of the house the next day. He had been badly beaten and there was a single gunshot wound in the back of his head.”
He stopped again and used the sleeve of his shirt to wipe the traces of tears from his eyes. “I have no solid proof they’re behind this, but the old man O’Leary called me the next day to offer his regrets. I hardly know the man. They’re involved in prostitution and some illegal clubs around town and who knows what else. He asked if I felt it was time to find a different line of work; that under the circumstances the dangers of this business were simply too great to risk the safety of any more of our family. I told the sonofabitch he was a dead man if he had anything to do with Jess. He laughed and hung up on me.”
I could barely breathe and felt an uncontrollable rage welling up inside of me. There are no words to describe the anguish that overcomes you in a moment when you realize that someone you have loved and spent a
ll of your life with is gone in an instant, and the fact he was brutally murdered makes it nearly intolerable. My first conscious reaction was to lash out at my father for getting all of us into this contemptible business, but then I realized he was as devastated as I by all of this and I managed to throttle my response. He rose and walked over to the window and pulled the shades open, looking out over the long expanse of lawn and trees behind our house. His shoulders seemed bent and defeated and I realized that I had never seen my father in a weak moment. He rose up within himself and turned to look at me and then said, “Son, I need you here with me now. We have issues to deal with and we have to come together.”
I looked at this man, who only weeks ago I had lost all respect for and seen as a monster as he and one of his men had brutally beaten a man in the interest of business. I had often wondered over the past weeks if the man had survived that night; and now I was faced with the death of my own brother. How could I possibly align myself with his interests? In my father’s mind the family was his business. The two entities were entwined as one and we both differed considerably on that assumption. My overriding thought was about Jess and how the family would deal with his loss. “When have you planned the funeral?” I asked, trying to bring him back to the essential concern.
Grayton Winds Page 13
