From Herring to Eternity

by Delia Rosen

  “Yeah.”

  “Is he really your dear friend?” Grant asked. The question was in earnest and slightly wounded. It was almost sweet.

  “I can’t stand the shmuck,” I assured him.

  Grant relaxed into a smile. “Well, you might want to find out where that key was. Or I can, if you’d like.”

  “Thanks, but I’ll let Detective Egan do it,” I said.

  Grant’s expression shifted from neutral to mildly distressed. It reflected the frustration he obviously felt at his lack of progress in recovering lost territory. “Just trying to help,” he said weakly.

  “I know. And I appreciate it.”

  “Right. Great.”

  He forced a smile and left. I moved slowly to give him time to get away. I wanted to be alone when I went back to my car. This relationship was like a yo-yo that kept hitting me in the chin each time I pulled it up. If it couldn’t be the way he wanted, then it couldn’t be. I’d already had one of those. I didn’t want another.

  Chapter 21

  The Wiccans convened that night at around eight and decided that a prayer meeting, with chanting, was a good idea.

  There were about a dozen of them. I watched through my living-room window as they arrived in a van—except for Sally, who came on her bike. I didn’t know anyone other than her and Mad; I certainly didn’t know there were that many witches in Nashville. Or maybe they’d been bussed in to make the case that my property was a working temple. I also noticed a sedan with smoky-black windows parked across the street, in front of a house that had been foreclosed about six months ago. My guess—based on nothing but mistrust—is that it was Attorney Andrew A. Dickson III, recording the comings and goings of Wiccans.

  I wasn’t worried about any noise the Wiccans might make. Given the amount of chainsawing and motor overhauling my neighbors did at all hours, they weren’t likely to call the cops on some pagan dissonance.

  I was tired from my little adventure—and the stressful week—and later as I lay in bed, half drowsing, I heard the nonmelodic, minor-key dovening that drifted into the room.

  No, that’s not right, I thought. It’s more like kvetching; a bunch of women whining. The difference was a kind of tension that came from the back of the throat. You grow up in a home like mine, you become aware of how women complain.

  Lying in bed, my eyes shut, I hovered between sleep and wakefulness as the chant hung faintly in the air around me, like a mosquito net. I thought about how much I had enjoyed the day and how I needed more of those and how much I didn’t want to go back to the deli. When I wasn’t walking the floor or cutting things up in the kitchen, I was stuck in an office that was stuck in the past—except when I was examining the trumpet case, I smiled. That was fun, that was different. It was a challenge. It had a purpose. It— Wait a minute.

  My eyes opened and I looked at the dark ceiling. I was surprised that I had remembered a word from high school geometry. It was pretty impressive what the mind could do when it wasn’t focused on a subject. Like thinking about the trumpet case.

  Why didn’t I see that before?

  Because you’re an accountant-turned-deli-manager, not a musicologist, I told myself.

  I wondered if Grant had picked it up. I turned on the light beside my bed, switched on my charging cell phone, and sent a text to Raylene. She probably wasn’t asleep yet and, sure enough, she wrote back in less than a minute. Just two words:

  I’ll check.

  Perfect.

  I turned off the light, lay back, and hoped I could sleep. I did, easily and deeply. My subconscious had done its job and was as eager for rest as the remainder of my brain.

  I was full of enthusiasm the next morning because there was a sense of proactivity and discovery in my soul. I was looking forward to something with a different set of challenges.

  Raylene arrived with what I’d asked for—one of the business cards Fly had given her, with his personal phone number written in gold Sharpie on the back.

  “Are you expecting him not to be here?” she asked as we did the morning prep, checking napkin holders and filling the ketchup and mustard jars.

  “That’s always a possibility,” I allowed.

  “So what’s up? Are you thinkin’ of dating him? Because if you are, I’d say you haven’t got enough of what he wants.”

  “What would that be?”

  “Tookas,” she said, slapping her own rump.

  “It’s tuchas,” I said with a guttural ch, “and isn’t that a little stereotypical?”

  “Call it what you want, I see him checkin’ me out when I walk away.” Raylene pointed to the mirror above the counter. “He likes my toochas.”

  “Well, don’t worry about mine,” I said.

  “Will the two of you please change the topic?” Thom asked from behind the counter. She seemed mildly but sincerely offended.

  “Hey, butt out, Thom!” Luke shouted from the back.

  It was definitely time to get to work.

  We didn’t open until ten on Sunday mornings. It was our lightest day, a drizzle of tourists from opening until we closed at six. It was typically just a break-even day but I stayed open because it gave everyone an extra shift.

  I wasn’t willing to go so far as to say it was Fly Saucer’s facial hair the police lab had found in the trumpet case and that he’d gone into hiding—that wouldn’t have done him much good—but I was willing to bet that Chimanga Strong got him on the phone the night before to ask him if it might be. And if so, why. Which meant that Fly had probably spent the morning talking to an attorney. It was sad that even if someone were innocent, it was necessary to hire a lawyer.

  As soon as we had a break around ten-thirty, I called the number on Raylene’s card.

  I was weighing whether or not to ask about “the fuzz” if he picked up. He didn’t, but someone did—just after four rings, when I was pretty sure I was headed for voice mail.

  “This is Mr. Saucer’s line.”

  I recognized that voice but I couldn’t place it. “This is Gwen Katz. Is Mr. Saucer available? I want to dish with the Saucer.” It just came out; I couldn’t resist and I didn’t apologize to whoever I was talking with. Anxiety sometimes makes me punny.

  “Ms. Katz, Mr. Saucer is not available.”

  “Who is this?” I asked.

  “Attorney Dickson,” he replied smoothly. “Is there a message for Mr. Saucer?”

  “Yes,” I said. “He—forgot something the last time he was here. Just tell him I’ll give it to him next time I see him.”

  “May I tell him what it is?”

  “No.”

  I hung up. Hard. I could have respected him if he were an advocate for the downtrodden, but he smelled like an opportunist. When it suited him, he helped them. When it didn’t, as with Thom’s brother, he helped boot them from their businesses. Wall Streeters got a bad rap, but at least we were consistent: it was all about the money. Virtually every lawyer I ever knew did not have that same kind of compass. Maybe because most of them were future politicians at heart interested in the corridors of power.

  Sunday dragged. It was livened only by an early afternoon visit from a very, very angry Robert Barron. He literally exploded through the door like Uther Pendragon pouncing on the Lady Igraine. Only King Arthur would not be the issue from this union.

  He stood by the cash register as his eyes sought me out. They found me behind the counter, making coffee.

  “You did this!” he yelled as he walked over.

  The six customers stopped what they were doing and looked over.

  “Good afternoon, Robert,” I said calmly, having no idea what I’d done. I was pretty sure he hadn’t been drinking, though; his eyes were clear and his walk was steady, purposeful. “You want to turn the volume down?”

  “I’ll turn nothing down except my bed sheets!” he roared.

  That didn’t even make sense, but then all a guy like him needed was a loud voice—which he was using now.

  “Yo
u had sex with Yutu and now he doesn’t want to have anything to do with me!”

  Raylene and Luke gawked at me with amused, perverse interest.

  “You had a threesome?” Raylene muttered.

  “No, with just Yutu,” I said.

  This wasn’t the time to get into shtick. Thom looked as if she’d seen Medusa. Two of the three couples in the dining room asked for their food “to go.” The third couple—bus driver Jackie and her gal-pal Leigh—looked on with rapt fascination.

  “I don’t know what you said to him,” Barron said through his teeth, “but Yutu got home and called the whole expedition off!”

  “I think it was seeing you naked that scared him,” I said. “He got to see you for what you really are—a hustler.”

  Barron stalked closer. I had my hand on the glass coffeepot in case I needed to defend myself. There were many ways in which hot coffee could sober a man.

  “You and your opinions, your judgments,” he snarled as he reached the counter. “You people—always so suspicious!”

  “You mean women?” I asked. “Or accountants? Or restaurateurs—?”

  “I mean you people,” he said. “You stick to your own, you don’t trust anyone outside the group. Now I’ve got that problem with the damn Eskimos, too. That kind of anti-Americanism makes me sick.”

  “Is that what it is?” I said. “Because I’m an American—so is Thom, so are Leigh and Jackie, so is everyone here!”

  “Then how come I’m the outsider?”

  “Because you’re a bully?” I said. “As for ‘we people,’ it’s true—we’ve found that it’s safer not to get on the train just because someone tells you to. If that makes you ‘sick,’ then hindert hayzer zol er hobn, in yeder hoyz a hindert tsimern, in yeder tsimer tsvonsik betn un kadukhes zol im varfn fin eyn bet in der tsveyter.”

  That stopped him dead. It also confused the hell out of Raylene, Luke, Thom, and the two lesbian lovers.

  “It was my great-grandmother’s favorite Yiddish expression,” I said. “‘A hundred houses shall he have, in every house a hundred rooms, and in every room twenty beds, and a delirious fever should drive him from bed to bed.’”

  The ensuing silence was broken when Raylene said, “Girl, that’s nasty!”

  Barron did not know quite how to respond. His mouth contorted as if it wanted to say things, but he decided against it. He just shook his head angrily. “I won’t be coming here again,” he said at last.

  “There goes our diversity award,” I replied. “We’ve got everything but an unrepentant redneck.”

  Jackie and Leigh applauded lightly. I heard Luke say an approving, “Duuuude!” behind me. Raylene was leaning on a chair, ready to swing it. Thom was still frozen.

  But Barron had been unmanned. He left angrier than he’d arrived. I would have to find out who made the glass in our front door so I could post something online: it withstood a ferocious exit.

  There was a moment of silence and then an audible exhale followed by more reserved applause from the two remaining customers. I had a kind of fluttering anxiety attack in my knees that ran up to my waist, but I was behind the counter so I was able to lean the front of my thighs against it. I carefully put the coffeepot back in its place.

  “Duuude,” Luke repeated.

  That pretty much said it all.

  We got back to work as new customers arrived, though I did not escape a wave-over from Leigh. I walked over and sat down—my still-wobbly legs demanded it.

  “That was a thing of beauty,” Leigh said, still aglow. “You stood up for everyone, girl. All of us so-called minorities.”

  “It just happened that way,” I assured her.

  “Maybe, but if we all stood shoulder-to-shoulder against bullies, they would be exposed as blowhards, like you did with that a-hole.”

  “It could just as easily have gone another way,” I said. “He could have had a gun.”

  “Those are the risks of defending our liberties,” Jackie said.

  “I have a thing about men telling me what to do,” I smiled. “And referring to me as ‘you people’ as if any group is homogeneous.”

  “Hey, watch your language.” Leigh grinned.

  I didn’t get it. She had to explain that I’d said “homo.”

  I returned her smile. I was more anxious now than I had been before.

  “Hey, you want to have a girls’ night?” Jackie asked. “Nothing like what you apparently had the other night—”

  “Unless you want to.” Leigh winked.

  “I was just thinking maybe you could use the distraction,” Jackie went on.

  “Yeah, and we could show you one of Tippi’s movies.”

  That knocked the “dis” off my “interested.”

  “You have the one with Lippy in it?”

  “We do own that,” Leigh said.

  “I accept,” I said impulsively. “Just to watch. The movie, I mean.”

  “We are happy to share with you,” Leigh replied.

  Jackie gave me the address and I told them I’d be there around a little after six. I said I’d bring the sandwiches. And I knew, already, what I would learn that day: whether going home with a pair of women who happened to be gay and who understood and supported me, to watch porn, was a good idea—or a great one.

  Chapter 22

  Jackie and Leigh lived in a one bedroom apartment on the top floor of a new faux stone building called—I’m not kidding—the Cuirass. The three-story building was decorated with sculptures of ancient armor on the exterior and interior walls and was located on Edmondson Pike, halfway between Sevenmile Park and William Whitfield Park.

  The couple had made the most of their limited resources by incorporating beer cans and hubcaps into the design of furniture and various fixtures like lamps and picture frames. Inside those frames were pictures of the ladies with what looked like parents, nieces, and nephews. I’ll admit I felt a twinge of—not jealousy, but wistfulness. Not only didn’t I have any close family left, I didn’t have close family even when they’d been nearby. I had no framed photos of my parents at the house. What photos I had were stuffed in a USPS priority mail pouch, which was in a box in a closet in the den.

  So I wasn’t sentimental. Maybe that was a problem, too.

  The ladies had changed from jeans and button-down shirts into sweat clothes. They hadn’t dressed up, which was nice, since I hadn’t bothered to go home to change. This wasn’t a date, after all.

  I handed the bag with the sandwiches and sides to Leigh, who asked me what I wanted to drink. I had brought Diet 7-Up and asked for that, on ice. They didn’t try to push wine or beer on me and I appreciated that. It was difficult to process the fact that I was with nonjudgmental people. I helped them set things up on the table, which looked like it was made from a car lift with butcher block laid across the top.

  We chatted a little, something we didn’t do much of at the deli, and I was surprised to learn that they’d been together, openly, since high school back in the early 1990s. That took some courage.

  “You want to eat while we watch?” Leigh asked, after hearing my sad story.

  I said it was up to them. They said they preferred it.

  “Otherwise, you have to pay attention to the story, which isn’t much, or make fun of it, which one of us doesn’t appreciate—”

  “Me,” Jackie raised her hand. “If you’re watching a movie, you should watch it.”

  “—or else you have to keep yourself busy some other way,” Leigh said, with a little smile that didn’t bother me. It didn’t bother me, not because it lacked a sexual component, but because it didn’t come with the kind of pressure I always feel from men.

  So we ate with the plates on cloth napkins spread on our laps. Leigh sat between Jackie and me.

  Come Blow Your Horny was my first-ever hi-def porn experience. Not that I had a lot of porn-watching under my belt, so to speak. It looked nothing like any jazz club I’d ever seen; it was mostly white and red velvet dra
pes where walls should have been. Small blue spotlights added a harshness to the fabric and smoke formed a tester above the set—more than could have been produced by anyone smoking. The costumes looked like they came from thrift shops or someone’s trunk in the attic, which they probably did.

  Lippy was in the very first scene, tooting “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” in the background. It was the liveliest thing on the screen as everyone else said “Hi” and “Are you here alone?” and poor Tippi moved through them all asking, “Candy? Cigarettes?”

  Sex happened—all kinds—before Lippy was back playing trumpet. We had finished our dinner by then, which was fortunate; otherwise I would have spit it out, hard.

  “Holy crap,” I said as I turned an ear toward the flat screen. I ignored the fact that Leigh’s and Jackie’s hands were roaming Leigh’s and Jackie’s bodies.

  “What?” Leigh asked, startled.

  “Can you rewind or scroll back or whatever you do with this?”

  “Sure.” Leigh grabbed the remote from the coffee table, a tailgate resting on wooden crates. “How far?”

  “To when Lippy appeared in this scene. And crank up the volume, please.”

  The image jerked backward. Leigh stopped it just as Tippi—after a lengthy, claustrophobic interlude in a cab, which I guessed was cheaper to hire than a limo—walked back into the club. It was only the second time in about twenty minutes that she had her clothes on, a little French maid number. It broke my heart to see her alive and seemingly comfortable. Fortunately, I had something else to think about when Leigh released the button and the image began to play. I listened carefully.

  “What is it?” Jackie asked.

  “I think it’s the treasure,” I said. “What do you hear?”

  “Lippy and background noise—which includes someone’s cell phone ringing before they were invented.”

  “The song,” I said impatiently.

  The women listened silently.

  “You’re right,” Leigh said. “I do know that.” She started humming along. “That sounds a lot like ‘More Coffee.’”