13 1/2

by Nevada Barr

  A goddamn, freak, sideshow, circus-fat Woman in Red.

  In the nineteen eighties the sobriquet had seemed marvelously mysterious. Sick unto soul-death of the pasty lump she had been since the cradle-or since she could remember-she had grabbed onto the colorful handle as she had grabbed onto her colorful new city.

  Mister Marchand had been nicer to her in those days. They’d gone to the shops on Decatur. The Quarter was rougher then; stuff was still cheap, and drugs and real sex shows could be had any time, day or night. He’d bought her everything she wanted. She’d point and he’d pay. They’d come away with armloads of bags containing red scarves, shoes, hats, dresses. The grand total had been one hundred seventy-eight bucks.

  Big spender, big fucking spender, she thought as she stared into the Wal-Mart mirror on the back of her closet door. But it had been big to her then. It was the most she’d ever spent on clothes at one time in her life. Mostly, it was big because he was with her; because he’d done it to make her happy she was happy, happier than she’d ever been before or since. That day she became the Woman in Red.

  The neck of the caftan was pooching out. With the flat of her hand she smacked it down. Not even tits. I’m a fat freak with no tits, she thought as she smashed the neckline down again. She’d put it on backwards and the label wouldn’t lie right. Hooking a finger under the loop of cloth, she gave it a yank to rip it out. The label held. She jerked harder. When it came free it tore the neck of the caftan halfway to her gut. White flesh rolled into the red in the mirror, limp, deflated breasts over mounds of flab.

  “Fuck you!” she screamed and backed away. “Not okay. Not okay.” She crashed into the other room and began throwing things off one chair onto another, digging like a badger and chanting, “Fuck you, fuck me.” At last her hand closed on what she sought. Clutching it to her bare chest, she staggered back to the bedroom, held out the can of flat black spray paint she’d gotten to refurbish her setup, depressed the nozzle, and crying, “Fuck yoooooooooou!” sprayed the mirror and the closet door until all that remained in the looking glass was her disembodied head floating on a sooty cloud. “’Bout damn time,” she told the head. “’Bout damn fucking time.”

  A sharp knock on the door froze her in her tracks.

  Her hands were splotched with black paint that had leaked from the nozzle, her dress torn; mascara ran down through the thick makeup. Tonight was important, really, really important. She had to look her best, she had to be her best, but she couldn’t remember why.

  Mr. Marchand.

  He was here.

  “No, no, no, no,” she whimpered, looking around as if there would be a new escape door, a place big enough for a circus sideshow fat woman in red to hide.

  Knocking.

  “Just a minute,” she sang out. “I’m coming.”

  She could tell him that a man-a black man-broke in and raped her. Ripped her dress. Hit her. She could, she could… She couldn’t find her drink, her glass of bourbon.

  Bang. Bang. Bang.

  This time the knocking shook the flimsy wall.

  Ripped her dress. Hit her…

  He’d never believe it. Maybe, if she did something nice for him, something special, he would overlook her dress and her face; if he said anything it would be that she had taken good care of him and he’d had a good time. That was better than the rape story. Nobody cared whether you were raped or not.

  She’d give him a blow job.

  Men liked that. And it was a nice thing, easy. Most were real quick so it didn’t ruin the whole evening or anything. When business was slow, and Mr. Marchand didn’t think to send her anything, she often gave little blow jobs to keep some money in her pocket.

  “Coming,” she sang with false good cheer. She grabbed the bourbon from the cupboard and took a healthy slug right from the bottle. If he didn’t want a blow job, it wouldn’t matter whether or not she was an alcoholic.

  25

  She wiped her mouth on the sleeve of the caftan in hopes of diluting the whiskey smell. Lipstick smeared across her cheek and chin.

  “I am the Woman in Red,” she said.

  Pulling from the depths of a battered past the confidence and allure that name had once inspired, she clutched the torn caftan to her shoulder in what she hoped would come across as sexy dishabille, threw the deadbolt, and opened the door.

  “Why, Mister Marchand,” she said coyly. Then, “You said… ”

  “Never mind what I said. What kind of woman answers the door looking like that? What happened to you?” He pushed by her and surveyed the trashed sitting room. “I’m doing the world a favor,” he muttered.

  “What did you say, honey?”

  He was carrying a package, a big one, like the boxes holding a dozen long-stemmed roses she’d seen delivered by bellboys in old movies. There was no ribbon on this one, and it was bigger. She couldn’t remember the last time she had been given a present. Fear that had her verging on tears was instantly ameliorated by a warm buzzing excitement.

  “Honey, just let me change. This old dress tore when I was putting it on, but I didn’t want to make a guest wait on the welcome mat.” There was no welcome mat. Like much else it had turned to rags and drifted away. But it sounded nice to say it.

  “Never mind that. Sit down. If you can find a place to sit.” He looked around at the rubble of her life. Without waiting to see if she obeyed him, he swept a pile of junk from an old Naugahyde recliner.

  He was wearing gloves.

  With clarity as sudden as it was unwelcome, she saw her home through his eyes. Filthy. Unsanitary. So disgusting it could not be touched by bare skin for fear of contamination. Before she imploded with shame, the vision blurred. “I’ve been meaning to straighten up a bit,” she said. “My knee isn’t what it used to be-you remember when I fell and twisted it?”

  Of course he wouldn’t. Mostly she knew what she knew and lived with it. Tonight for some reason-maybe the gloves or the broken nail or the torn dress or the ruined makeup-she needed to believe he thought of her sometimes when he didn’t need her, that he cared she’d been hurt. He didn’t answer but kicked the crap on the floor out of the way so he could move a footstool.

  He didn’t remember; she could tell by the nothing on his face. Against all reason, it hurt her-not that he didn’t remember. Who’d remember she’d been injured? It hurt her that he didn’t pretend to remember. What would pretending have cost him?

  “And I’ve let the place go a little,” she finished lamely.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said kindly, the hostility of a moment before seemingly forgotten.

  Relief flooded her. She was to be forgiven. “I won’t be a minute.” She again started toward the bedroom to change.

  “Stay. I like it like that,” he said, and there was a spark of something in his eyes. Interest. Or humor. Maybe he was laughing at her. He did that. She’d gotten used to it; it was just his way. Still, there were times it made her feel bad. Not that he thought she was a clown or a fool, but that he didn’t care enough to hide it from her. This time, though, the spark was ambiguous. It really could be interest, the kind a man has in a woman.

  It had been a long time since she’d seen anything in men’s eyes but a passing smirk, if they noticed her at all. Usually, despite the red of dress and hair and lips, they didn’t see her anymore. That spark in Mr. Marchand’s eyes thrilled her. She let the caftan slip an inch to show the top of her breast. No more than that. Mr. Marchand would not be pleased by crude behavior.

  “Why don’t you pour yourself a drink?” he said. “Make yourself at home.”

  Again he looked around the ruin of her apartment. This time she did not suffer the instant of clarity. The offer of a drink made her realize how much she needed a little courage, a little comfort. Careful not to seem too eager, to move too quickly, she followed the path to the cupboard. The bottle was still on top, the cap off, lost in the clutter on the floor. Shielding the bottle with her body so he wouldn’t see it was al
ready open, she found her tumbler and poured. “Can I get you a drink, honey?”

  “No, thank you.”

  No, thank you. He was being a gentleman, a gentle man. This was going to be a good evening. A date, she remembered. Smiling, she took a drink before she turned around. She needed to get one sizable shot into her, then she could sip politely.

  “Come sit,” he ordered, a hint of sharpness returning.

  Holding her drink in both hands so it wouldn’t slop, she scurried back. It would be just like her to ruin everything by being stupid, trying his patience, saying the wrong thing. The eggshells she walked on were fragile and the breakage cost dear.

  Don’t say the F word. Don’t gulp your drink. Don’t laugh too loud. Don’t talk too much. Don’t burp. Please, please, please don’t let me fart, Lord, she prayed as she made her way to the chair he’d so peremptorily cleared for her.

  “Aren’t you going to sit, honey?” she asked, as she lowered herself carefully into the chair. Like a lady, not plopping; lowering.

  He smiled.

  God, but she loved that smile.

  Even through the bourbon, and the excitement, and the fear, she knew he wasn’t smiling because the offer pleased him. He smiled because to sit in her home appalled him. Still, she could pretend, and so she did. “Let me tidy a chair for you,” she offered and tried to rise. The chair and the booze conspired to suck her back down and she laughed.

  “Oops-a-daisy,” she said as she fell back, drink in hand, sloshing onto the chair arm. Bad. She was acting drunk. Contenting herself with the fact that she had not said the F word by accident, she smiled up at him.

  He set the package down near her feet and pulled up an ottoman. Tilting it so the papers, shoes, and two purses she had forgotten she had slid off into the rest of the litter, he moved it so he could sit facing her. Before he sat down, he stared for a moment at the nubbled brown fabric scarred with cigarette burns and, in a flash of ESP, she knew he was thinking of getting his handkerchief out and spreading it over the top. That he didn’t, she took as a compliment and smiled as he sat on the stool at her feet.

  “It’s so nice having you here,” she said and meant it so much she nearly ruined everything by crying. “It’s like family, you know.”

  “Like family,” he said in a distant voice, a sound from a long way off, coming through years of darkness and cold.

  For reasons she did not identify, she shivered. “You brought something,” she said brightly to make him come back from wherever his voice had gone.

  “It’s a present,” he said. “I need you to do something special for me tonight.”

  Blow job, she hoped, but he didn’t act like a man who wanted a sexual favor.

  Methodically, he began unwrapping her present, talking as he did. She would rather have unwrapped it herself while he watched. That would have been more special, more intimate, but she didn’t spoil the moment by pushing what she wanted on him. A present was enough.

  He was here, and sitting in her home, and giving her a present. She said those words in her mind because she wanted to remind herself how happy she was.

  The gift wasn’t wrapped in white paper as she had first thought but plastic, two enormous sheets of it. Painters’ drop cloths or clear shower curtains. As he unwound them, he took out roll after roll of packing tape, the superstrong kind with fibers all through it.

  “Are we building something?” she asked. The tape and the plastic were giving her a bad feeling. Nobody wrapped gifts in plastic and tape you had to cut with a knife.

  “Sort of,” he replied. “A box for a friend of mine.” He smiled more to himself than to her. The bad feeling didn’t go away. She poured bourbon on it to quiet it down.

  At last, the plastic and the tape had been set aside in a neat pile, and all that remained was the gift loosely wrapped in brown paper.

  No long-stem roses for her. What it was she couldn’t guess.

  “Before I give this to you I want to tell you a story,” he said and, looking her in the eyes, his gloved hands resting on his knees, he began: “Once upon a time there was an ugly duckling… ”

  “Does she turn into a beautiful swan?” Her hand flew to her mouth. She had interrupted him. He hated it when she interrupted him. Before she could say she was sorry, he went on.

  “No. This is a true story. In real life, ugly ducklings, at least the ones that aren’t savaged by dogs or eaten by cats, grow up to be big ugly ducks. Big fat ugly quackers,” he said. Relieved he’d not gotten angry at her interruption, she scarcely noticed the hard edge his words took on.

  “This ugly duckling was a nosey little bird, a spying little bird. She had very sharp eyes, and she saw things that she wasn’t supposed to see.”

  The set of his mouth, the mocking way he was telling the story, cut through the alcohol, and she realized he was talking about the Woman in Red, about her. She knew this the way she knew things, the way the tarot had unlocked for her.

  She was the spying little bird.

  She tried to think of what she could have seen that she wasn’t supposed to. He knew she’d been watching the office, but even so he hadn’t done anything interesting. He’d gone over to Polly Whatsername on the bench that day. Anybody could have seen that. That was about the most interesting thing he’d done. Other than that, it was clients and business.

  “What did she see?” she asked. Bourbon slurred her words and she was ashamed. He didn’t get mad though.

  “You know what she saw.”

  She didn’t, but she was afraid if she said it he would think she was stupid or being contrary. Then he really would get mad, so she nodded.

  “The prince-every story has to have a prince,” he said, and there was genuine warmth when he looked into her eyes and smiled.

  I would die for an hour of his love. The thought floated like a bubble on the bourbon and the fear. He was so beautiful.

  “The prince paid the ugly spying duckling to keep what she had seen a secret. Oh, they never talked about it; a prince doesn’t share things with fat ugly birds, but he paid. He paid so much that the ugly duckling came to owe him.

  “One night the prince came to the duck’s nest to collect the debt.” At this point in the story, he reached down and meticulously loosened the masking tape holding the wrapper in place and folded the brown paper back.

  “An axe,” she said stupidly.

  “Melodramatic, isn’t it? A child’s weapon, but I need historic continuity so an axe it has to be.” He didn’t move to pick it up or touch it but kept looking at her, smiling warmly

  She couldn’t take her eyes off the blade, blunt on one end, sharp and shiny sharp on the other.

  “Yore gimmin me nax?”

  What she had meant to ask was, Are you giving me an axe? Usually, she didn’t get to the point her lips numbed and her words slurred until she was alone.

  “Sort of. See all this plastic? I’m going to spread it out over the floor-assuming there is a floor under all this dross-and you’re going to stand in the middle of it. Sit in the middle; I doubt you are in any shape to stand. That’s okay. Bourbon is a good anesthetic. I don’t wish to hurt you, so I will make the first blow count. If you don’t move, you shouldn’t even feel it.”

  The smile was still cozy and comforting on his face. Smile and words were at such odds, it took a moment for the meaning of the latter to sink in. “You are going to kill me.” A jolt of adrenaline sobered her for a minute. “Why?” she wailed and tried to stand. He leaned forward, put a gloved hand on her chest, and pushed her back. Forgotten, the caftan gaped open, her left breast exposed. “Why?” she repeated, the wail degenerating into a confused whimper. “I love you.”

  “I know. It will be better if you don’t think about it as me killing you. Think about it as you giving me the thing I need right now. I’m not mad at you. This isn’t punishment. I know you didn’t mean to be a spying, prying little duck. That’s the least part of it, really. It’s something I need you to do so
I can make right a wrong. It’s the way you can show me you really do love me.”

  While he talked in a nice reasonable voice, he shook out the plastic sheets and spread them over the detritus of the room, careful to overlap them several feet. Together, they covered nearly the entire space.

  Watching him, she did not know what to feel. He would kill her; she knew that. Part of her thought to get up and run for the door, but she knew she’d never make it. Screaming crossed her mind, but she didn’t do it. The fear was there, so intense she tingled with it, but it wasn’t the bowel-loosening fear she suffered when she crossed him.

  “What do you have to live for anyway? Look at yourself. You are middle-aged and pathologically obese; you live in a sty that any self-respecting pig would be ashamed of. The people you know laugh at you. The people you don’t know laugh at you. The greatest emotion you inspire in others is disgust. You’re a drunk. Liver disease will probably kill you in the not-too-distant future. This is your chance to make your pathetic miserable life end with some spark of meaning. You don’t want to keep on living do you? Not a drunken slut selling blow jobs for five dollars a pop? Yes, I know about your little side business. You have made yourself a whore, and a cheap one at that. Let me take you out of this mess.”

  He’d come back to her chair and now held out his hand to her. Tears were pouring down her face; she knew this because she felt the warm drops hitting her bare chest.

  “Could you take off your glove?” she pleaded, her voice small and sweet, the way it had been when she was little, before she’d become a lump, then a lard, then a whore, and a cheap one at that. “Please? For just a second?”

  If she could feel his flesh, hold his hand, it would be okay.

  For a moment she thought he would refuse her but, in the end, he did care for her; he took his glove off and helped her to her feet. She staggered and would have fallen, but he steadied her with an arm around her waist.