by Larry Brown
But how would they know she was here? It was probably only housecleaning. It was probably time to check out.
She went back into the suite and the doorbell rang again.
“Yes?” she called.
“Room service, ma’am,” came a muffled answer.
There was a peek hole in the door and she peeked. No cop. A nerdy-looking guy in a gray tunic was out there. He had on white gloves. She opened the door and he flashed her a polite smile. He had a table on wheels with him and it was covered in a large burgundy cloth.
“I didn’t order anything,” she said.
“Late breakfast, ma’am. Where would you like it?”
She looked. Her clothes were scattered. But there was a table fairly clean.
“Over there, please. Come on in.”
He wheeled it in and she could hear dishes rattling gently. Once he stopped it, he removed the cloth to reveal covered dishes with metal lids, all kinds of condiments, syrup, napkins, coffee, a cup and saucer, juice, a dish of kiwi fruit covered with clear stuff, silverware.
“What’s all this?” she said.
“Late breakfast, ma’am. Comes with the suite. Enjoy.”
He didn’t wait for a tip or anything, just went on out the door and pulled it shut. When she heard the lock click, she took the lid off one of the dishes. There was a large mound of hash browns with buttered toast. Another dish held sausage patties and bacon and fluffy-looking scrambled eggs. Another was full of pancakes. The last lid hid an envelope sitting on top of a note. She picked up the envelope and looked inside. It was full of used fifty-dollar bills. It didn’t take her long to count it and there was eight hundred dollars in it.
The note:
Had to go, baby, but I’ll hook back up. Go buy you some clothes.
Stay here long as you like, it’s on me. I’ll call. You rock. Lenny
She could go shopping this afternoon. Stay here? Hell, why not? There was food and a good TV and a very nice bathroom and bed and a place to hide until she could decide what she wanted to do. She got a chair, pulled it up to the table, unrolled her silverware, and grabbed a fork. The cops probably wouldn’t look for her in a place this nice.
Then she stopped. She looked at the money again. Hell. She could go home now. But it wouldn’t hurt to buy a few clothes since she couldn’t get anything out of her apartment. If she hung around Memphis much longer, the cops were going to pick her up.
She laid down her fork, picked up a piece of bacon, and bit into it. She was going to have to make a move. Pretty soon. But there was Lenny to think about. What was he going to say if she skipped town with eight hundred of his dollars?
Hell. If she never came back to Memphis, what would it matter? There had been nothing but trouble for her up here lately. And there were other places where she could work. There was Atlanta. There was Nashville. Chattanooga even. She could go anywhere in the whole country if she wanted to.
But she had to eat. She picked her fork back up and took the lid off the eggs. She smelled them, kind of hoping they’d smell like her grandmother’s, and they did, a little bit, maybe, good enough to eat anyway.
50
Miss Muffett mopped the kitchen floor and vacuumed the carpet in the great room and sucked the dirt off the drapes, too. The people outside had gone by the time she got through. She thought maybe she’d make the firemen a carrot cake and take it over to the fire station before Christmas.
She went upstairs to the room she stayed in and took her leg off and dropped it on the floor and lay down on the bed and put one arm over her eyes. She hadn’t gotten a phone number from Nub and didn’t know how to get in touch with him. She guessed she could call directory information. Everything was still so cloudy in her mind that it seemed now more like a dream. She hated she couldn’t remember the lovemaking. It was kind of like it almost didn’t happen. It wasn’t a satisfying feeling. Next time she picked up a man, she wouldn’t drink so much.
She figured the little dog was hiding from her somewhere. That was okay, if he wanted to hide. Right now she needed a nap more than anything since she was so tired.
It was silent in the room, in the big empty house. She dimly heard something kick on and run for a while and then go off. There was a clock ticking. It ticked her softly to sleep. Outside the window the snow fell in soft ragged flakes over the woods and fields and rivers and roads of north Mississippi, under a sky low and gray. Black ducks shot overhead, past the big house, wheeling south, wings driving fast to the coming dark.
51
Penelope got notified by phone that she was being placed on administrative leave with full pay until the investigation was over, which was routine whenever shots were fired. She seemed upset when she got off the phone, but he didn’t pry.
After she told Merlot what was happening, she sat on the bed naked and cross-legged eating a banana to get her strength back as well as for the potassium. Merlot was rolling a super-thin joint, which he then licked and sucked on the ends until it was nearly perfect. He had eight others already made, lined up on her bedside table, drying. He glanced up at her. When was the right time to tell her about Candy and how it was with them? Would it be best to wait? Maybe so. There really wasn’t any kind of deception going on. Was there?
Penelope stripped the skin off the banana and shoved the rest of it in her mouth. Her cheeks bulged while she chewed. God, he loved her lips. They tasted like grapes. She dropped the peel on the floor.
“I need to get back home and check on things,” Merlot said. “I’ve got to teach class tomorrow and give out grades. Then I’m done.”
“Ummhummumm,” she said.
“I’ll probably get another car from my insurance company. There’s a party before long and I’d like you to meet some of the people at the school, maybe some of my students who aren’t going home for Christmas. They’re pretty cool kids, some of them.”
“You like kids, Merlot?”
“I love kids. I wish I was still one myself.”
She laughed, but then got all shy and said: “Yeah, but I mean do you want some one day?”
He stopped rolling. She had finished chewing her banana. Her lips were shiny with banana grease.
“Yeah,” he said. “With you I do. About ten of them. Or maybe twelve.”
She crawled across the bed to him and kissed his naked leg.
“So,” he said. “You got some time off, huh?”
“Yep. Sure do.”
“And right here at Christmas. What you gonna do with it?”
She rolled over onto her back. She folded her hands across her massive flattened titties.
“I don’t know. What do you want to do with it?”
“Are you asking me?”
“I’m asking you, baby. You are my baby, aren’t you?”
“I guess I am now,” he said.
“You better be.”
“Well…” He laid the joint aside with the others and folded down the top of the baggie and put it beside them. He got his pillow and propped it up against the headboard and slid closer to her.
“What would you think about a little trip?”
“A trip?”
“Yeah. Just a little one. Say, for a few days. I’m through after one more class. And giving out grades.”
“How long does that take you?”
“Couple of hours.”
“Ooh I love trips,” she said. “We went to New Orleans on the bus one time when I was ten and I just about died from excitement.”
She rolled over onto her side and his heart gave a leap when her titties rubbed up against him. He picked up one of the joints that was dried and found the lighter on the table beside it and fired it up. It was the best shit he’d smoked in a long time. He took a couple of tokes and flicked the ash in the ashtray and handed it to her.
“Where would you want to go if we went somewhere?” he said.
“I don’t know. Where would you want to go?”
“You want me to tell you?”
/>
“Tell me, baby.” She sucked on the joint.
“Okay. I’d like to drive down the Natchez Trace and go to Natchez and stay in Texado. I’ve always wanted to do that.”
“What’s that?”
“Texado? It’s the oldest house in Mississippi. It was built in 1790 when this whole state was still a Spanish territory.”
“Oh shit, baby,” she said. “That Natchez Trace is pretty nice, isn’t it?”
“Fifty miles an hour,” Merlot said, and took the joint back to suck on it. “No stinking trucks allowed. They don’t even let UPS on it. Nothing but streams and woods and deer and wild turkeys.”
“And this old place is nice?”
“Oh yeah. I saw some pictures of it in a Southern Living Mama had one time. We could call ahead of time and see if we can get in. We probably can since it’s close to Christmas. They got a casino down there, too.”
“I know it. I love to play those slot machines. I hit that hot streak at Tunica that time. Can we play the slot machines?”
“We can do anything you want to. We’re free birds.”
What he didn’t say was that he hadn’t made up his mind yet what to do about Candy. He knew Mrs. Poteet would stay with her for a while longer. He thought maybe if they took off for a few days and did some riding and talking he could break it to her gently.
“When you gonna take me to your place?” she said.
“I don’t know. It’s probably dirty.”
“I don’t care.”
“Probably a bunch of dirty dishes in the sink.”
“I’ll wash ’em for you.”
“My carpet hasn’t been cleaned in a while. Garbage is probably full.”
She propped herself up on her elbow.
“Is there some specific reason you don’t want me over at yo house, white boy?”
He sucked on the joint and then passed it back to her. She held up a hand.
“I’m good.”
“Oh. Okay.” He took two more hits off it and then put it out. “It’s just a mess,” he said. “All my papers and shit are probably all over the place.”
“You got as many books in it as you got in your van?”
“More,” he said.
“Well, you let me know whenever you get ready to go,” she said.
“Now c’mere and gimme some sugar.”
And he didn’t have to worry about it anymore right then, which was real good.
52
It had been a long day and it was a big surprise to Eric when Miss Helen walked in around nine. He could see right away that she’d been drinking. Her lipstick was a bit smeared, but she had a smile on her face. Some kids were looking at green-and-white parakeets. A married couple was looking at a puppy. Miss Helen walked over to the young rabbits’ cages and he saw her stick her fingers in through the bars to touch one of them. The little rabbit sniffed at her fingers. He didn’t guess he’d tell her what would be happening with some of those guys in a few more weeks, out back by the Dumpsters.
She wandered around the shop, acted like she was thinking about buying a pet. He tried to watch her without letting the people in the shop know he was watching her. But he watched her. He watched the movements of her legs in the tight jeans she was wearing and he watched her face and her breasts inside the leather coat she was wearing. The kids bought two parakeets so that maybe they could have baby parakeets and he sexed the birds quickly to be sure they were male and female and sold them a cage and gave them some feed and told them how to take care of them and they paid and left.
The guy of the couple came up to the counter and wanted to know if the bichon frise he was thinking about buying came with any kind of warranty and when Eric told him it didn’t, he left, too, and then his wife followed him out all pissed off and bitching at him.
When the door slammed, Helen looked straight at him.
“Let’s go have a drink when you get off,” she said.
“I can’t close till ten,” he said. It was true. But what about Mister Arthur?
“You know where the Peabody is?” she said.
He had to think about it for a few seconds. He thought about Jada Pinkett eating the beef stew in Miss Helen’s kitchen, about Mister Arthur opening the can for him, putting the newspaper down, petting him while he ate, talking to him. Mister Arthur had been really nice to him. So had she. It had felt good being in their house. It had made him feel not so bad about being away from home this close to Christmas.
“I never have been in there,” he said. “But I know where it’s at. What about Mister Arthur? Will he care?”
“Arthur doesn’t have to know anything about it. He doesn’t know everything I do anyway.”
He didn’t know what to say. She looked good. Better than good. But she was older. There was that. A grown woman. Not no girl. That was all he knew, girls, and not many of them. Actually only one that way, Rae Loni Kaye Nafco, a kind of large girl his age with a very pretty face who lived down close to Potlockney. She’d bought a puppy one time, a black poodle, while his daddy was gone off drinking and fishing with some of his buddies, and Eric had said some things she’d laughed at, and she kept talking to him, and stroking the puppy, and acting like she didn’t want to leave, and then he’d opened a couple of beers, and then they had taken a seat on a bale of hay, and then she had kissed him, and one thing had led to another pretty quickly, especially after she told him she was on the pill, and they had done it in the barn. Then a few very satisfying times at her trailer with fresh puppy shit on the kitchen floor. And all that had happened right before he left home. He missed her now. He missed home even more.
“What does it matter about Arthur?” she said. “You barely know him.”
She walked a little closer to him. She was wearing a zippered sweater under her coat and the zipper was down some now, almost halfway, and the cleavage of her breasts was showing. He could smell that perfume again and he felt almost weak.
“There’s no reason to be scared of me, Eric,” she said.
“Aw, I ain’t scared,” he said, which wasn’t true, since he was plenty scared, thoroughly scared, scared shitless.
“I’m going on over,” she said. “I’ll be at the bar. Just park on the street somewhere and walk on over. When you get there, we’ll get a table.”
She didn’t even wait for an answer from him. She zipped the sweater back up, stuck her hands in her pockets, then turned around and walked out. Watching her go, he couldn’t help but notice that she had a fine ass.
53
Arthur was sitting on the toilet with the lid down, naked except for his socks, in the privacy of his own bathroom. He didn’t have much hair on him anymore, hadn’t in a long time. And a lot of his skin was pretty wrinkled. He was uneasy that Helen wasn’t home yet. He’d wakened during the night, a month back, and she hadn’t been in the bed, and when he’d gone downstairs, she wasn’t down there in the living room either. But she’d come back in about a half hour later with a half gallon of melting Edy’s Rocky Road ice cream, opening the front door like she was trying to be quiet, getting flustered on seeing him sitting in the living room with the lamp on and a magazine, in his housecoat and pajamas and slippers, saying that she had run over to Kroger. Had developed a sudden craving for some Rocky Road. But he’d smelled liquor on her breath when she walked by him, and figured she’d been to a bar. Probably the Peabody. And when he’d tried to question her about why she’d been drinking and driving again after all the trouble she’d already been in with the police, she’d just slammed the ice cream into the freezer and gone into the bathroom and slammed the door. But stuff like that was nothing new for her. Temper tantrums. Now she’d been gone for hours and he had no idea where. He wanted her to come on back because he was afraid of who she might be with and what she might be doing. Was something going on that he didn’t know about? Did she have somebody else? Was there another man somewhere she was seeing? Had he waited around too long to get some help? What were those stains on
the back seat of the Jag and who put them there? What if she was driving around drunk again and got another DUI? The judge had already told her right there in the courtroom downtown, in front of everybody, that he’d put her in the state penitentiary for a while if she did it again, and that if she didn’t believe him, for her to just show up in his court on a DUI charge again.
He was also afraid of the pump-up thing but he went ahead and did what the instructions said and amazingly, it worked. It got big and it got hard and he slipped the rubber ring around the base of it and walked around the bathroom proudly with it sticking up at a pretty good angle for an old guy, he figured, even admired it in the mirror. Turned sideways and checked it that way, got the profile. He was surprised and almost embarrassingly pleased by how well the thing worked. And then he just let out a big sigh and started taking the band off. All pumped up with no place to go.
