“Her name is Goldie Swallows. Hooj, come on! Goldie Swallows?”
“I knew I shouldn’t’ve told you that. Her name is Margot. She doesn’t actually answer to Goldie. And you be nice.” His tone was firm, but he laughed.
“I’m always nice. It’s all those Southern manners I got steeped in growin’ up. I’m the nicest bitch in the state of California.” She turned and looked up at him. When his eyes dropped to her cleavage, she lifted his chin with the tip of her index finger. “You met her. Prep me.”
She hadn’t had a real friend in the five years they’d been married. But Hoosier had Blue, and she guessed he was as close to a friend as she herself had. He was around enough—he spent half his life drinking their booze and passing out on their sofa. And now he wanted to put his mark on a woman. He hadn’t asked her to take it yet, but he wanted to do it.
Blue. Who about the worst hound she’d ever known. Had found himself a woman.
And he wanted Bibi to like her.
Hoosier hooked his finger into her bustier, between her tits, and pulled her up against him. “She’s real pretty.”
“Yeah, I’m gonna need more’n that.”
“I don’t know. She’s young. Blonde. Big blue eyes. Nice smile.” As he talked, his fingers danced over her skin. “How’s this come off?”
She slapped his hand away and stepped back. “It took forever to get it on, so you can just keep your cock in storage till I can get naked and stay that way. Did she just stand there and pose the whole time? Or maybe she spoke once or twice? Anythin’ you can give me about, I don’t know, her personality?”
He gave her a sheepish grin and a shrug.
“Sweet Lord, Jerome Elliott, you are such a man. You honestly didn’t notice anythin’ but her porn-star tits, did you?”
Another shrug. “But your tits are better. And they’re mine. How about we leave that thing on and I just pull down your jeans and bend you over the dresser?”
“Such a man,” she scoffed.
“You love it.” He opened her jeans, and she didn’t stop him.
She turned around, rubbing her ass against him as she went, and bent over to lean on the vanity. “I do. I love you.”
“I love you better.”
~oOo~
“Blue takes his pool serious. Do you play?” Bibi nodded toward Hoosier and Blue, hustling a couple of drunk good ol’ boys at the pool table.
Margot smiled and sipped her whiskey sour. “No. Blue said he’d teach me, but every time he tries, we end up fucking.”
“Sounds about right,” Bibi laughed.
“Do you play?”
“Nah. Hooj mostly plays at the clubhouse, and I don’t spend much time there.” Even as he’d climbed in the ranks, becoming VP, Bibi kept her distance from the Blades’ clubhouse. That place was nasty, and practically a brothel. She was still the only old lady, and the girls they kept for their fun were…difficult. Bibi could be nice to almost anyone. But those women had too much self-regard and not nearly enough self-respect.
At the thought, she considered her companion. Margot Taylor, known to men all over as Goldie Swallows. She really was pretty, in a sweet, wide-eyed, Precious Moments way. The girl next door, in the flesh. All the flesh. She was young; Hoosier had said she was about twenty. And she did hardcore porn. Apparently her specialty was what Hooj had called ‘airtight,’ meaning three men filling up her holes—mouth, pussy, and ass—at once.
Bibi herself was fond of double penetration—with Hooj and a toy—so the idea of Margot taking it every which way at once didn’t make her morals flutter. Truth be told, she was a little impressed and a little curious. But there was still too much of a good Southern girl in her heart to come out and ask such a question of a woman she’d just met.
Margot sipped at her drink and considered Bibi right back. “I’m no threat to you.”
“Pardon?”
“If you’re worried. Women get worried around me. I’m no threat.”
That statement could have come off as astoundingly arrogant, but said in a sweet voice, from a face with those wide figurine eyes, Bibi heard it as simple reassurance. And she realized it must have been a hard thing to be a woman who was so often judged, and with such exuberance. She thought about what she’d said to Hoosier earlier, in their bedroom, and she felt herself blush.
“I know you’re not. Hooj’s eye wanders, but his cock stays put.”
“You don’t mind him looking?”
“Why should I? I look, too. And if Mel Gibson ever shows up and wants to sweep me away, I might have to think long and hard about that offer.”
Margot set her glass down and laughed, a sincere, open, musical sound. “Mad Max Mel or Lethal Weapon Mel?”
“Mad Max, definitely.”
“Definitely.” She looked over at their boys, and her smile was positively dewy. “I think Blue looks like Mel, you know?”
Blue was a gorgeous man. A brute, and an asshole more than half the time, but a gorgeous specimen of male flesh. “Yeah, I think he does.”
Bibi felt a little worried for this girl, who seemed much more naïve than her job suggested.
~oOo~
Margot picked up a contouring brush and ran it over her fingers. Bibi snatched it out of her hand and put it back in its slot in her kit.
“Keep your grabby hands to yourself. Everythin’s clean. I swear, Margie, you’re like a toddler.”
“What’s the job?”
“Some high school dance. Doin’ a buncha girlfriends for their big night.”
“You know, when I say that sentence, it means something else entirely,” Margot giggled.
Bibi answered with a laugh of her own, but then she got serious. “Blue still kickin’ up a stink about that?” Margot wasn’t willing to stop working, and it was making Blue crazy.
The real thing making Blue crazy was that he was in love with this girl, so much that he couldn’t turn his back, even when she defied him. Bibi was enjoying the show, watching that man, with his prehistoric ideas about women, twist and writhe on the hook of love.
Less enjoyable to witness was the way he bullied the shit out of Margot, trying to force her to give him his way. The last time they’d all gone out, Margot had made a comment about how romantic she thought Hoosier and Bibi’s ink was. That comment had ignited a blazing row, ending with Blue shouting that he’d never put ink on a whore, and Margot running out in tears.
That night, at home in bed, Bibi and Hoosier had argued, too, as if they’d been infected by Blue and Margot’s virus. Hoosier had defended his friend, the one who’d called the woman he supposedly loved a whore. Bibi had had none of that bullshit, and Hoosier had ended up sleeping on the sofa—at least until Bibi hadn’t been able to stand it anymore and had gone out to get him.
“Yeah, he is,” Margot answered. “If you look at it right, though, it’s kinda romantic, isn’t it? The way he wants to take me away from all that and just take care of me.”
Bibi closed the lid on her kit and fastened the clasps. “Margot, honey, I love Blue. I’ve known him as long as I’ve known Hooj, and I know there’s a good man inside that hunk of rocks and briars. But if you’re really askin’, then I gotta say that to see the way he’s treatin’ you over this as romantic, you gotta put on about a hundred pairs of rose-colored glasses, go blind, and get a lobotomy. It ain’t romantic. He’s not ridin’ in on a white Harley and rescuin’ you, not unless you want to quit. You say you don’t want to quit, so he’s not bein’ a hero. He’s bein’ a bully.”
“He just wants to take care of me,” Margot said again. “He says it all the time. Like Hooj takes care of you, he says.”
“Hooj takes care of me by lettin’ me be me. And I do the same right back to him. That’s romantic.”
“Yeah, it is.”
~oOo~
Much later, after Bibi had come home from her makeup gig, and while she and Hoosier were curled together on the sofa, watching television and smoking a joint, Blue pounde
d on their door, shouting to be let in. Since Bibi was lying on top of her man, she got herself up and went to the door. As soon as she had it unlocked, Blue threw the door open and then grabbed her by the arms, forcing her back into the room.
“What the fuck did you say to her? What did you do, you stupid cunt?”
“Blue! What—”
Before she could finish, Hoosier was yanking her back, out of Blue’s clutches. He punched his best friend in the face and, as Blue was reeling from that blow, caught him with another in the gut, driving him to his knees. “If you touch her again, or talk to her like that, I will end your ass. I don’t give a fuck what you do with your woman, but you will not come at mine.”
“She left me. She fuckin’ left me. ‘Cuz your woman can’t keep her nose outta my business.” Still on his knees, defeated, he looked around Hoosier’s legs, up at Bibi. “What did you say?”
Hoosier slapped him upside the head. “Don’t even look at her.”
“It’s okay, Hooj,” Bibi tried, coming up behind him and laying a calming hand on his arm.
“No, it is not okay.” His face was livid with anger when he looked back at her, but his expression softened right away. “Go back to the bedroom, Beebs. I don’t want you out here.”
Bibi met his eyes and then shifted her regard to Blue. She realized that this could be a watershed moment for all three of them. Without being sure quite how, she knew it was important, for her and Hoosier as well as for Margot and Blue, as if the way she handled what had just happened would fit in the last piece of the puzzle that was her life, her self. This moment would tell everybody who she was.
“No. Let’s talk it out.”
“Dammit, woman.” His shoulders lifted with a heavy sigh. He turned back to Blue. “Get up, shithead, and go sit down.”
As Blue struggled to his feet and slumped over to their recliner, Hoosier pulled Bibi close and muttered at her ear, “Did you say somethin’?”
For an answer, she let a pat of his belly suffice. Then she stepped out of the strong circle of his arms and went to Blue. She sat on the arm of the recliner and heard Hoosier make a noise of displeasure—he didn’t like her so close to the man who’d just had hands on her, she knew. But she also knew Blue wouldn’t hurt her. He was made of bluster and bile when he was angry, but he didn’t hurt the people he cared about. Not physically, at least.
“Do you love her?”
“You fuckin’ know I do. Goddammit, Beebs, what’d you do?”
“Well, I love her, too. Why’d you want me to like her? Why was that so important?”
Blue frowned up at her. He was older than she and younger than Hoosier, about right between them in age, but he had a hard look that Hoosier didn’t have. Neither man looked like someone to fuck with, but Blue had a heavy edge to him. It aged him. He looked like he hated the world. All the time.
Bibi knew that was partly true, and she knew why. Blue had grown up hard. Seemed like most of the men Hoosier called brothers were hard and had grown up that way.
Maybe they were harder because they didn’t have women they loved. Blue was softening a little, just at his edges, since he’d loved Margot. He was in no danger of anybody thinking he was an old softie, though, that was damn sure.
“I want her to have a friend like you. Somebody to help her figure out…everything.”
She laughed and picked up his rough hand. “Well, honey, that’s what she got. A friend. I’m not your agent, I’m her friend. What I told her was for her, not you.”
“You told her to leave me?”
“No! Blue, no.” She tried to think how she could summarize her conversation with Margot, what she could say to explain to Blue without betraying any confidences. “I told her she had to make her own choices, if she wanted to work or not. And I told her that the way you’re treatin’ her about her job, that ain’t romantic or protective.” When Blue tensed and began to protest, Bibi put up her hand. “It’s not, Blue. You don’t call the woman you love a whore. Not ever, no matter how angry you get. You knew her job when you met her. You either love the woman she is or you don’t, but you don’t get to decide what kind of woman she is.”
“She fucks other men every goddamn day.”
“And I understand how that could be hard. But she was doin’ it when you met, and you went for her anyway. This ain’t her problem, Blue Fordham. It’s yours. And you need to stop takin’ it out on that girl. I’m her friend, so I told her I thought she should stop takin’ it. I’m your friend, too, and I’m tellin’ you to stop dishin’ it out. Maybe then you can fix it. If you love her, then be lovin’.”
Sitting there holding Blue’s hand, telling him that hard truth, Bibi felt something click inside her. The last piece of her puzzle. What it was exactly, she wasn’t quite sure, but she felt like she understood something important. She looked up at Hoosier, standing there like a guard dog, glaring at Blue, looking fit to spit nails. But as before, when their eyes met, his expression eased, and she saw love beaming back at her.
~oOo~
That night, while she and Hoosier lay tangled in a sweaty heap, Bibi picked up his hand and kissed his palm. A thought had risen up in her head, and as it had formed and defined, it had become a certainty.
“I’m ready, Hooj.”
He lifted his head, his brow furrowed with confusion. “What?”
“To have a baby, if you still want that.” She had to ask if he did, because it had been a long time, years, since he’d brought it up.
He grinned. “You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
Rolling over and onto her so quickly she gasped, he laughed and said, “Well, let’s get started.”
“I’m not gonna get pregnant now, dummy. I have to stop the pills.”
He pushed into her easily; she was still wet from what they’d just finished. “Call it practice, then.”
~oOo~
It turned out that Blue had won that skirmish after all. Margot quit her job, and Blue put his ink on her. Then he married her. And the two couples became inseparable.
But Blue stayed a hard man, and Margot kept fighting and then giving in, and then she’d figured out the way to twist him around until he was fighting for what she wanted. They never had what Bibi and Hoosier had. Love was just not enough. It couldn’t be everything.
What Bibi and Hoosier had that Margot and Blue never did was friendship. Respect and understanding. It was what Bibi missed most now, with her man and her friend both so far from her.
After they’d been sitting together for a while, Margot’s chatter faded out, and Bibi knew what that meant. She squeezed her friend’s hand and stood, and Margot looked up at her with the cordial face of new meeting. She’d gone away.
Bibi kissed her on the cheek and left without saying a word.
EIGHT
The day after Hoosier finally woke up from his latest surgery, he recognized his wife and son.
Better even than that: he recognized Faith and Demon. Muse. Bart.
Everybody.
The fire had happened a few days before Halloween. A few days before St. Patrick’s Day, his favorite holiday, Hoosier finally recognized his whole family.
He still couldn’t talk, and he’d lost a little of the motor skills he’d worked so hard to regain, but even the morose Dr. Philpott was encouraged.
For all these months, when any of them discussed what was going on with Hoosier, they all described him as being unable to ‘talk.’ But that wasn’t sufficient. He was unable to communicate. He didn’t know how to answer yes-no questions, either. He understood words, and could follow commands, which was how he’d been able to progress in his physical and occupational therapies. But he didn’t understand how to make himself known.
Ask him to raise his hand, and he would. Tell him a story, and he’d listen. He would even laugh at something funny or get distressed at something sad. But ask him if he was hungry, and he would simply stare.
He hadn’t made any progress on tha
t point. But now, with his recognition of family so much stronger, there was real cause for hope that all his ‘cognitive processes’ would improve. Even Philpott thought so. He encouraged Bibi to keep up with her ‘stories,’ and he encouraged them all to visit in groups and bring Hoosier into the family dynamic as much as they could.
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