Then watching Madonna gyrate across the screen, Ben decided she looked more like a corrupt choirboy than a premier sex goddess. He wondered how exactly she had seduced the masses into believing she was the second coming of Marilyn Monroe. Silently, Ben wished the hedonistic media manipulator would return to her brunette roots, because she most resembled Vange in the Pepsi ad with the burning crosses. He wondered if maybe Nick had a point, small towns persecuted the freakishly beautiful among their midst as a homegrown sacrifice for the benefit of society at large. Who would want to live in a world where Demi Moore, Nicollette Sheridan, or Wynona Ryder never left their hometowns?
Nick picked up one of the glossy photos. For an eternity, he glanced down at Evangelica, sitting on the steps of an old general store. She looked sweet and angelic. He found himself shaking with emotion as he watched the rain run down the picture window. He felt his insides swelling with sadness, but the tears remained safely under lock and key without a chance for parole. Nick could not remember the last time he cried, and he guessed he was so young his father had probably scolded him for acting like a girl.
Shuffling over the photographs, Ben dragged his bare feet across the shag carpet. Anxious for Nick to leave, he switched off the television and removed Evangelica’s wedding cassette from his tape player. They would need it for the ceremony tomorrow.
Nick accidentally dropped the picture he was holding of Vange, and it landed at his feet despite his fumbling attempt to retrieve it. “Hey, you remember the Christmas Fiesta, where Vange and I got together for the first time. It was before we conspired to rob you of your virginity. The party was out of control. Somehow, she and I ended up together in a bedroom with a piñata full of condoms.”
“Then we went snowmen bashing,” Ben recalled, trying to change the subject from Vange’s seemingly insatiable sexual appetite.
“We smashed half the snowmen in town, except for Mrs. Norris’s, but only because she tried to shoot our asses,” Nick said laughing.
“Those were wild times,” Ben said admitted disdainfully.
“I don’t know what to say, Benny.” Nick collapsed back on the sofa. The beer was beginning to have an effect. “I’m not so sure what to do about Kate. How do I make her see this last fling with Vange doesn’t mean anything?”
“Nothing at all?”
“All I want is to be married to Kate until death do us part.”
Ben shrugged and said, “Looks like you’re in quite a jam.”
Nick rose to his feet and appeared lost as if he were altogether unsure where he was. He knew he was not in Portnorth anymore, not in spirit. Standing in this time warp of a house did not help matters. It was disorientating. Nick glanced at his watch, paced around in a half-circle and loitered before a macrame hanger that was home to a sad looking spider plant. Finally, Ben walked to the door, opened it slowly and said, “Good luck working everything out.”
Flabbergasted, Nick could not believe his oldest friend in the world was showing him the door during the most catastrophic crisis of his entire life. Nick thanked Ben for the beer and apologized for consuming such a large chunk of his valuable time. Banished from Ben’s dungeon-like house, Nick felt slightly discarded as he made his way down the desolate street. As his feet carried him in no particular direction, Nick glanced over his shoulder and saw Ben had resumed sitting blankly on the crushed-velvet gold chair next to the ice cream carton.
Lost in his thoughts, Ben attempted to remember if any of his flings with Evangelica had ever not meant anything at all. Eventually, he concluded they all meant something even if it was only great sex followed by interesting conversation. Post-intercourse was never dull, Vange either babbled incessantly, cooked up a feast, or bawled in his arms.
Ben sensed an inexplicable anger festering within, and he felt the need for definitive answers. So, he jumped to his feet, ambled over the scattered photos and carried the carton of soupy mush to the kitchen sink.
As he dressed, the phone rang without end, and it occurred to him he should have made arrangements to meet with Ginny Norris. Above all, his encounters with Ginny were a welcomed escape from his everyday life. Her languid disposition always put him at ease, and her lazy smile of satisfaction would have certainly made him feel more effectual and competent than Nick’s endless prattle.
After mounting his motorcycle, he vigorously revved the engine. He drove determinedly through the soft summer rain. Every time he accelerated, he released more of the aggression he had shored up inside of himself for too long.
With a cigarette clenched in his mouth, and a glass of vodka dangling in his hand, Thad poured over a pile of newspaper clippings. Ever since his unfortunate trip to the hospital, he had grown increasingly less productive as he became increasingly more intoxicated. He murmured to himself while half-heartedly attempting to follow Ben’s fervent line of inquiry.
Sitting in the swiveling chair with his feet propped up on the desk, Ben drummed a pencil against his leg to the beat of an intense rhythm he appeared to be composing off the top of his head.
“Then what happened?” Ben asked again.
“How many times do we have to go over this?”
“What were her exact words before storming off?”
“She didn’t storm off.”
“It doesn’t sound that way to me. Are you saying she just said, see yah and walked away?”
“That’s how it went. Pretty much.”
“Hard to believe.” Ben stopped drumming and implored, “Don’t water this down. I want to hear all of it.”
“Why do you even care? The only trace of hostility I saw was when she shoved him and sped out of the parking lot,” Thad reiterated, letting cigarette ash fall to the floor.
“As a reporter, you suck. You’ll never get a news beat outside this room,” Ben said. “Nick threatened you, what was that all about?”
“He didn’t threaten me exactly.”
“What did he say?”
“He said he’d tell Kate about the time I made a drunken pass at him, that is if I told Kate about his fling with Vange.”
“Well, did you?” Ben asked. He sat upright and shifted uncomfortably in the chair.
“Tell Kate, are you nuts?”
“I mean, did you make a pass at him?”
“I’ve no idea, it was during an alcoholic blackout.”
“That’s a cop out, did you or didn’t you?”
Thad offered ambiguously, “I guess I was sort of making fun of him.”
“How so?”
“You know, if a body’s just a body, then why not have sex with every body?”
“That’s really strange logic,” Ben shook his head, unsure if he wanted to pursue this line of questioning any further.
Thad downed the last remnants of the vodka pint and put out his cigarette. Then he asked flatly, “Why go through life with one hand tied behind your back? Why roller-blade on only one foot?”
“Don’t be idiotic.”
Thad shrugged and resumed pasting the newspaper clippings together. “I could never be gay, men are too simple.”
“Or maybe you should be because women are complicated creatures.” Ben raised his glass and downed the last of its contents. He then picked up the pint and shook it. Out of booze, their conversation withered up, and he resumed drumming against his thigh. With defeated resignation, Thad worked away at the task of completing the Back to School insert.
Ben cleared his throat, and he began, “You had sex with Vange a couple times.”
“And your point is?”
“Did it ever not mean anything at all?”
“What,” Thad asked, “like did I love her?”
“Sure, or was it meaningless?”
“Of course it meant something; of course I love her.”
“Oh, really?”
“But I could never be in love with her,” Thad rationalized.
“Why’s that?”
“Ah, because she loves you,” Thad said as if it were t
he most obvious thing in the world. “Didn’t she ever tell you that?”
Ben was silent for a long moment, and he finally shook his head. “No, I guess not.”
Watching Thad work, Ben was grateful at least his days were his own, and at night he worked around people, even if they were drunks who wove endless tales of yesteryear. It was a shame, he thought, their multitudes of talents and wealth of wisdom should be wasted on dreary dead end jobs in newspaper layout room or a restaurant that served only deep-fried and flame-broiled artery-clogging dinners. Once Ben attempted to convince Ginny Norris to revamp the menu with health foods, but she thought the idea preposterous and too cutting edge for a town that had barely seen an episode of Beverly Hills 90210.
Ben grabbed a pair of scissors and began trimming his nails. “Is this job the reason you dropped out of college?”
Thad laughed dementedly, and he said, “I didn’t drop out, but I was nearly too shell-shocked to complete my tour of duty.”
“Why’s that?”
“Some punk rocker tried to rape my girlfriend, and she dumped me. Then my roommate ran off with his boyfriend, and my best friend got pregnant. And then I moved six times in one year.”
“Would you ever go back and get a Masters?”
“If the economy doesn’t pick up, I won’t have a choice. I can hardly pay back $25,000 worth of student loans with a $6 an hour job.”
Distant drunken commotion drifted upstairs from the main entrance and voices filled the vast cluttered second floor with an out-of-place sense of merriment. Heavy feet trudged up the stairs followed by quick, light steps. Seth Poole emerged and saturated the room with his loud, sweaty presence. His short-sleeved, pink dress shirt was open at his fatty hairy neck, and his loosened tie was flung over his bulky shoulder. His gray slacks were more wrinkled than usual, and he grinned tellingly from ear to ear. When he moved aside to let Tristana pass through, his face grew flushed with smug, self-satisfaction.
Tristana giggled loudly and poked at his big gut. She heaved his pants up over the exposed crack of his ass.
“Yes, my roving reporter is hard at work,” Poole said pleased. “That’s what I like to see.”
“The drudgery of deadlines,” Thad murmured, and he eyed Tristana’s anatomically incorrect body. Her tight short black dress emphasized her skinny waist and unnaturally full breasts. With her smeared lipstick and long henna-dyed hair tousled, she looked hauntingly beautiful as ever.
“Here’s a treat for your trouble,” Seth Poole said, and he slammed down another pint of booze on the desk next to where Ben’s feet were resting. “Drink up, fellas, all work and no play makes Johnny a dull boy!”
“Awesome, my Christmas bonus in September,” Thad said.
Ben removed his feet from the desk, sat upright and inspected the cheap bottle of vodka.
“I don’t want to spoil you too much,” Seth remarked as if reading Ben’s mind, and he wrapped his big hairy arm around Tristana. “I prefer to spoil Porknorth’s lovely maidens, especially this beautiful fugitive. In this backwater town, the men are men, and so are half the women!”
Tristana’s raucous laughter only encouraged his ribald attacks on Portnorth’s females, and he added, “And the sheep are scared!”
Top-heavy Tristana giggled wildly and leaned so far back she would have surely plummeted down the steps if it had not been for Seth Poole’s stronghold around her scrawny waist.
“You big lug, you really know how to treat a girl,” Tristana said, and she squealed with laughter. She flashed Ben and Thad a facetious wink and nuzzled up next to Seth. With all the flattery she could muster, she flicked her long tongue against his swollen, fatty neck.
Chortling with anxious anticipation they made their way up the dusty attic steps, and Seth called down, “Hold all calls until further notice. I’ve got to teach this luscious little lawbreaker a lesson, you’ll never guess where I picked her up!”
“A street corner,” Thad mumbled under his breath.
“Jail!” Poole called down, and he slammed the attic door behind them. His raucous laughter was now muffled, along with Tristana’s encouraging squeals.
With his eyes wide with disbelief, Ben poured two shots of vodka and downed one. He then threw his feet back up on the messy desk. “You weren’t lying when you said they were hot-n-heavy.” Ben drummed the pencil fiercely against his thigh with increasing frenzy as he spun around in his seat.
Thad slurred confidently, “Never doubt me, I know most everything that goes on around this town.”
“Everything? Then tell me something about myself.”
“You’re conducting an illicit affair,” Thad began, and Ben grew perfectly still. “It’s with the girlfriend of Portnorth’s only mortician and alleged drug kingpin; not to mention, she’s the mother of one of our closest friends.”
“Chelsea is not one of my closest friends,” Ben said.
“So, then you are screwing Ginny Norris.”
“Who told you?”
Thad continued to haphazardly cut and paste together the newspaper layout. He shrugged immodestly and tapped his temple, “No one, women’s intuition.”
Ben laughed and challenged, “How about intuiting this; I bet Kate doesn’t go through with it. I bet anything she backs out of the wedding.”
“You really think so?” Thad asked, skeptically. He held out his shot glass for a refill. “I’m not sure. I bet its Nick who backs out.”
Growing suddenly excited about gambling, with the stakes being their friends’ future, Ben inquired, “How much you willing to put down, fifty bucks?”
Thad grinned and said daringly, “Make it a hundred.”
“Dude-man, you’re on!” Ben exclaimed, and he jubilantly hammered his empty shot glass down on the table.
chapter sixteen
“It is no use,” Alexa said to the air as she forcefully hung up the phone, “He’s probably with his elderly girlfriend now that the lunatic is in a coma.”
Hovering in the narrow Feldpausch kitchen, she grappled with the futility of her situation as she plotted her next move. She was unsure how to go about springing Jack and Tristana from their cellblocks with only her meager teenage resources. The authorities would hardly release two criminals into the custody of a minor. Besides, Alexa had long ago suspected the Portnorth Police department of holding Jack responsible for the death of Jules Czerwinski, and they were as determined to lock him up as he was elusive.
For a brief moment, Alexa considered calling her parents, but with one hand on the receiver she decided they were probably falling off their barstools as she dialed. She bet Jack’s dad and stepmom were in no better predicament. More than anything else in the world, she dreaded a life sentence spent wasted on booze in Portnorth, where the only viable pastime was to piss away years in local taverns.
Unable to reach Ben, or Thad, or anyone else for that matter, Alexa impulsively ran the three blocks to the police station alone through the pouring rain. Soaking wet, she entered the station and shook like a dog for the fun of it. Water droplets covered the Plexiglas entrance barrier. Emotionally wrought screams escaped from the backroom headquarters.
Alexa rang the buzzer and knocked on the bullet proof Plexiglas. But as the yelling grew louder, so did her confidence, and she forcefully pounded her fist against the window. A red headed dispatcher appeared from the Sherriff’s office. She blew her nose and dabbed at a steady river of tears. She finally asked, “What for can I do you, kid? Visiting hours are posted on the door.”
“I’m here to find out about Jack Hesse and Tris-,” Alexa broke off and asked, “What’s her real name? It’s not Tristana, it’s like Nan, or Nanette, maybe?”
“If you come to see that Hesse criminal and the Paull girl, tough luck,” said the middle-aged dispatcher, gnawing on a wad of gum. She was decked out in too large Avon jewelry.
“Please, give me a few minutes, it’s all I need,” Alexa pleaded. “Has bail been set yet?”
“What
do you think this is Night Court?” The woman laughed at her stunned face and rattled off the important details. “That weirdo in black was picked up by the newspaper guy, Seth Poole, and it’s unfortunate, but the Hesse criminal is not being detained behind bars.”
“Where is he?”
“Beats me, we released him into the custody of Carey Derry. He came in and probably took Jack out to the farm, with all the other Juvies,” the dispatcher explained. “Uncle Carey likes to bail out boys in trouble and give them a second, third and fourth chance in life. But if I had my way, that pipsqueak criminal would be thrown in the slammer. He’ll end up on America’s Most Wanted, for sure.”
The angry yelling erupting from the backroom lent the police station the ambiance of a mental institution. Alexa stepped back and asked quietly, “What the hell do I do now?”
“Go home, kid, it’s late.”
“Derry Queen is probably molesting Jack as we speak – they probably have him tied up in the barn and are torturing him,” Alexa said.
The older woman rolled her eyes up at the stained, sagging ceiling and quipped, “Well, let’s hope he’s into S&M bondage and kink.”
“This isn’t funny,” Alexa said hotly. Trying to ignore the barrage of shouts coming from the back room, she glanced out at the wet street. She supposed she could get Thad’s car and drive out to the farm and smuggle Jack home, but she had no driver’s license. She never learned how to drive, or bothered to get one. She never quite saw the point, as the entire city of Portnorth only covered a four-mile radius.
The dispatcher cringed as the screams grew angrier. “You got to leave here, we’re in the middle of a whopping big-ass crisis.”
Feeling defeated, Alexa turned away and stepped into a vacant street glistening with possibilities. She leisurely made her way back to her parent’s house. As she ambled aimlessly along, she noticed a figure in the distance and vaguely recognized it as being her cousin Kate’s fiancé. As he neared her, Nick Paull waved eagerly and called out her name.
Trying the Knot Page 24
