3 A Brewski for the Old Man

by Phyllis Smallman

  My friend was really unhappy. I was going to enjoy this new situation. I was usually the one in shit up to my eyeballs and Marley was the friend giving the good advice and telling me what I should have done. How lovely to be the one making superior pronouncements. Of course, this was only going to work until she asked how Clay and I were getting along. Then…well, then I’d be forced to lie, one of the few things on earth I truly excel at.

  Behind me Lace moved cautiously through the door. “Are you sure it’s all right?” she whispered, suddenly shy.

  “Honey, if the place survived me, you won’t be a shock.” I took the handle of her trundle suitcase. “Just don’t annoy Mrs. Whiting, the housekeeper. She’s really in charge here and she’s going to complain like hell if we move the slightest little thing. Every day when I come home she’s hidden every tube of lipstick away, insists that the apartment look exactly like it did when that glossy magazine photographed it. This is a shrine and she is its keeper. We are the mere mortals she is forced to tolerate.”

  Marley had already parked her ass in a chair in the guestroom, denim-clad legs splayed and arms thrown out over the sides of a chair covered in moiré silk. She looked really unhappy. How delightful. “Do you intend to share?” I asked. “No,” was her gracious reply.

  “Charming.” I trundled the suitcase past the door. “Looks like it’s the den for you, Lace.”

  She followed silently behind me, still shocked and overwhelmed by the eighteen-foot ceilings, marble and mahogany that stunned any newcomer to Clay’s world. The overpowering wealth of the place had terrified me when I first met Clay, but now I hardly saw it. It’s true that you can get used to just about anything, but I’ve decided, given a choice, I’d rather get accustomed to excess rather than the stripped-down poverty I’d spent my life in.

  The apartment was done in what the Florida Interiors magazine called the Plantation style. Sounded silly to me. I didn’t think the stone urns full of orchids out in the conservatory qualified as a plantation.

  I switched on the light to brighten the den, a room decorated in willow green, straw and cream colors. A pretty room, it was less formal than the rooms in the rest of the penthouse, which made it my favorite room in the three-thousand-square-foot apartment. “The couch pulls out into a queen-sized bed, the bathroom is over there, the TV is in this armoire, okay?”

  Lacey nodded and said, “It’s lovely,” but then she probably would be willing to sleep out on the beach to be safe from the hands of R.J. Leenders.

  Never one to sulk for long, Marley came out of her bed-room as we made up the sofa bed.

  “Okay, you two finish this,” I said. “I’m off to call Clay. I need a little sweet talk.” The one thing I wouldn’t be talking about to Clay was Ray John. He was a secret I hadn’t shared with Clay yet.

  But Clay had too much on his mind to be worrying about me. “There are more police, Coast Guard, Customs agents, Florida Marine Patrol, you name it, there are more of them than there are boaters or anti-Cuba marchers. Our boat was searched again today.” “What were they looking for?”

  “Beats me, but they found a pile of booze in Kevin’s locker. I didn’t know how much he drinks and no one but me seems concerned about it. It’s all still in there; they weren’t looking for booze but for something else.”

  “What?”

  “Who the hell knows?

  “They must have some reason for searching the boats although I thought they’d be more worried about things coming into the country than going out.”

  “I think everyone is overdosing on paranoia, but it looks like they’re going to let us leave tomorrow.” He fell silent before adding in rather a sheepish tone, “To tell the truth, I’ve been trying to talk the guys out of it. Just forget the whole damn thing and go home.”

  “Is it that dangerous? If there’s any question in your mind if it’s safe to sail to Havana just forget about it. Fly back and I can pick you up in an hour. Let them go on without you.”

  “Well, that’s not really it,” he said. “It’s safe enough.” His tone was tender and reluctant.

  “Not safety? You don’t think it’s dangerous?”

  “No, it’s not safety that’s the issue.”

  “Then what’s worrying you?”

  Big sigh. “I’m just missing you,” hesitant and almost pained. “I guess that’s what’s worrying me. Man, when did I turn into such a wimp?”

  “Oh, you miss your sugar. You need a little candy, a little sweet, honey?” That’s when the safe-sex part started, although this was just a little too safe for my liking. I could’ve handled something a little more high risk than phone sex.

  When I went back to the den forty minutes later I found Marley and Lacey well into the bonding rituals of females on their own.

  “I kid you not,” Marley was telling Lacey, who was sitting cross-legged on the bed while Marley lounged across the bottom. “Tell her it’s true,” Marley ordered. “Tell her that everyone in your family is named after states or cities.”

  “Well, not everyone. But we have a few.” I flopped down in a butter yellow leather chair and held up my hand and started ticking off the names. “There’s Aunt Carolina, Aunt Virginia, Aunt Georgia and then Aunt Atlanta. I have an uncle named Dakota and one named Nevada.”

  Lacey put her hand over her mouth to hide her smile. “My family was so poor Grandma used a beat-up old atlas of the U.S. to name her eight children instead of a baby book. Or maybe she had wanderlust. I’m only sure she had an atlas and they were poor. Thank god she stopped having kids before she got to Poughkeepsie.”

  Lacey’s hand couldn’t quite hide her smile. “My dad is named Tulsa.”

  “But it worked,” Marley put in. “Your Aunt Virginia was well named, virgin by name and virgin by inclination. That woman is just too ugly and mean to ever find a man.”

  “And Aunt Georgia, she was well named,” I pointed out.

  “She’s sweet, a real peach.”

  “Yeah, fuzzy and round. I think her mustache may be her best feature. Hasn’t that woman ever heard of depilatories? Of course, she’d have to bathe in it.” Marley pointed a finger at me. “See where your genes are leading you?” Lacey snorted with laughter, spraying soda over herself.

  I’d known her for six months and never seen her laugh outright. It was a good feeling if only temporary but maybe even this would show her things could get better.

  “Listen Saint Marley, don’t go trashing my family. At least none of them spread manure from the church door to the altar.”

  “Oh, trust you to bring that up.”

  “That’s why she’s hanging out here,” I explained. “The Baptist church elders are out to lynch her.”

  Lacey’s smiled faded. She looked at Marley and then me.

  “Really?”

  Before Marley could answer, I jumped in with the story. “It came with Marley’s handling of the Christmas pageant. Marley took over the pageant, just as she takes over everything she’s associated with, and decided that what they really needed was to have Mary ride into the church on a real donkey. That wasn’t too bad, despite the little deposit the donkey left on the way up the center aisle; it was the loud fart in the middle of the prayers and the hysteria it caused among the junior choir that sent events spiraling downhill.”

  Lacey was laughing again and even Marley stopped looking like she had a bellyache. “The sheep and the cow were no better behaved and the smell of barnyard did nothing to improve the behavior of the choir, and what should have been a magical evening turned into Barnum & Bailey when one little angel stepped forward for her solo and joined the rest of the animals, peeing on the altar steps.”

  “That wasn’t my fault,” Marley protested. “I can’t be held responsible for that kid’s bladder control.”

  “Oh yeah? Didn’t you fill them full of juice and cookies before the parade?”

  Marley was never one to give up on a good idea. “The church was packed. They never had so many ki
ds in the choir or so many bums in the pews. Wasn’t that the point, to get people out for the Christmas Eve service and make it a real Christmas experience?”

  “Perhaps it was just too real for the elders, all that poop and stuff.”

  “What did they get so bent out of shape about?” Marley asked. Her face held a look of utter amazement. “I got it all cleaned up.”

  “And I may be wrong, seeing how religion and I are barely on a first-name basis, but a Baptist minister would probably frown on his future wife telling the ladies at bible class last week that it was like trying to herd cats, getting them to do anything.”

  Marley stopped smiling and sat up. “Who told you that? Was it David?”

  “Lauren Sales. She was the only one who thought it was funny.”

  “Well, those women just wanted to drink coffee and gossip. There was work to be done.”

  “Maybe you should take a course in people management.”

  “If I do, I know who’s going with me,” she said, wagging a finger at me. “I heard you and Miguel going at it last week.”

  “He can’t fire a supplier, that’s my job. He just takes on too much.”

  “You two have been friends for a long time, haven’t you?”

  said Lacey. “Does it show?”

  “Yes.” The frown was back. “I’ve never had that kind of friend.”

  “Lucky you,” Marley told her. “Who needs a friend who tells you you’re bossy?”

  “Well, you are. She is!” I said to Lacey. “But if Marley was running for president I’d go out and vote for the first time in my life. She’s right more times than she’s wrong and her heart encompasses the whole world. Oh, don’t let it go to your head, Hemming, you’re still the bossiest person on the planet.”

  The phone rang and I reached over and picked it up, saying, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun Boarding House.” I sat up. “Hi, Rena.” The laughter drained from Lacey’s face.

  I got to my feet and left the room, closing the door behind me.

  C H A P T E R 7

  Rena was saying, “Ray John just called. I’m sorry but he doesn’t want Lacey staying with you. It’s nothing against you, Sherri; it’s just that she needs her routine. He’s afraid her schoolwork will suffer and…” She searched for words. I could guess just how upset Ray John would be at having his plaything removed, and from what Lacey had told me whatever he wanted, he pretty well got. Rena was desperately in love with him and would do anything to keep him.

  “It’s all right with me,” Rena told me, “but he really wants us to be together. As a family.”

  “Look, it’s late, leave Lacey here for tonight and we’ll talk about it tomorrow when she’s in school. One night can’t hurt, can it?”

  “No,” she hesitated and then said, “no,” again, sounding relieved. “I’m sure he won’t mind that. He won’t be home until after seven tomorrow morning and Lacey leaves for school at seven-thirty. He’d hardly see her. That will be fine.”

  Her words gave me a sick feeling. Just how far was she willing to go to keep this man? How much was she willing to give up for love?

  Clay called at six-thirty in the morning. I groaned hello. “You okay?” Clay asked.

  “Sure. You?”

  “Almost. I never knew how much Kevin drank. Now I know why there were ten bottles of vodka in his locker. Was he always this way or is it because Ann left him? Last night he didn’t come back to the boat. Graham went looking for him about one and dragged him back. He was on one of the other boats, dead drunk and in the bed of a Scandinavian blonde.” I grunted in response, not caring a whole lot about Kevin’s sex life.

  “We finally got permission to sail and he’s in the bag. Anyway, we’ve already sailed.”

  “Rah, rah,” I said and dropped the phone onto the cradle, sympathizing with Kevin and wishing I hadn’t finished the second bottle of wine Marley had opened.

  Mornings are definitely not my time of day but I was a responsible adult now so I stumbled through a shower and out to the kitchen. I opened the polished aluminum sliding doors hiding the toaster and knocked over the orange juice. Then I poured water all over the counter trying to fill the water reserve on the coffee maker. When I picked up a serrated knife and the bag of bagels I’d taken out of the freezer the night before, Marley stepped in. “I’ll drive Lace to school. You go back to bed before you hurt yourself,” she said, taking the knife from my hand.

  “What, you don’t like my sweet morning face?”

  “It’ll sour the milk. Go.”

  I leaned against the counter, one bare foot resting on the other. “Thanks, Marley.”

  “Thank you. I’m more than happy to eat your bagels.” She turned to look at me, then dropped the knife on the counter and whispered, “What’s going on?” She jerked her head in the direction of the den, leaving no doubt what she was talking about. “What’s up?”

  My voice was as soft as I could make it. “Ray John Leenders is back in town.” Her eyes got round.

  “He lives with Rena and Lacey.”

  “Shit.”

  I grinned at her fall from grace. Any crack in her Mother Superior act always pleased me.

  “Sorry to dump on you last night when you’ve got this,” Marley whispered. While Lacey did homework I’d heard all about the rocky road to sainthood and her split from David as I finished the wine.

  “It’s all right. Your hurt is new, mine’s old.”

  “No,” she shook her head in disagreement. “I just don’t think that’s true.” Her face wrinkled in thought. “Your hurt never stopped.”

  In a way it was true. Ray John’s abuse was like a scar on my soul and on my memory. I turned away from Marley. “I’ve been working out just how I’m going to handle the meeting I intend to have with Ray John.”

  Marley said, “Leave it until tonight and I’ll go with you. I can’t get away this morning. I’m booked solid.” Marley is a dental hygienist in a busy dental practice, often working long hours and a half-day on Saturdays to keep up. “I’ll be done about six, I’ll go with you.”

  “Nope. I’m going to see him this morning. Alone.”

  “Don’t be silly. You can’t go alone.”

  But I wouldn’t be alone. I was taking an old friend, but not one I could tell Marley about. “I want to do this my way,” I said. Marley started to argue but Lacey came out of the den, dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved tee-shirt and carrying her backpack, ready for school.

  I waited until I knew Rena had opened the store and then I put on a fanny pack, wearing the pouch at the front where it would be nice and handy and where the replacement for my daddy’s sixteenth birthday present, my special friend, a nice little Beretta, resided. Just to be sure Ray John would be alone, I swung by the store and saw Rena’s beige sedan in the parking lot. Then I went to the neat little ranch house on Blossom Avenue.

  Florida in September is pretty much like living in a sauna. At ten-thirty in the morning the day was already blistering hot. The humidity was way up there but I had the air conditioning cranked up so the sweat trickling down my side was from fear, not the weather. With each block my anger and conviction was seeping away like a spilled drink, to be replaced by gut-wrenching dread. I didn’t want to do this. Should I wait for Marley? But I was afraid by six-thirty, even with Marley holding my hand, I’d probably find it impossible. Besides, I didn’t want witnesses. Marley was way over on the sensible side of the upright-citizen path and what I had in mind wasn’t even in the same county. Ray John needed to be spoken to in a language he understood.

  The lift bridge was up, waiting for a yacht to clear. A line of cars piled up behind me, boxing me in so I couldn’t change my mind and turn around and run back to the Sunset. Panic was squeezing the air out of me. I took deep breaths and waited. The idea of facing this man again set my heart pounding in my chest until I was afraid I would have a heart attack.

  Could you die from anxiety? I had no idea. The bridge slowly went down. I coul
d go.

  The big ass SUV, with the oversized tires, was in the driveway. I pulled in behind it, trying to regulate my breathing to slow my racing heart and trying to find my courage. I left the keys in the ignition and the door open so I could leave fast. My right hand went to the comforting bulk at my waist as I climbed the steps like a snail. I wiped my sweaty palms on the ass of my jeans and then pressed the doorbell. While I waited I unzipped the pouch.

  Nothing happened, at least not fast enough to suit me. I wanted him to get his ass out there so I could get it over with and be gone. I started kicking the black door, taking pleasure in the marks I was leaving on the fresh paint. Between the bell and my shoe, the racket got his attention. The door exploded open. I jumped away from his body towering over me, the iron railing biting into my butt as I stared up at Ray John. Leaning over me, inches from my nose, he shouted down into my face, “What? What the hell do you want?”

  At five-foot-seven I was dwarfed by Ray John who stood a good seven inches above me. Barefoot and naked except for boxers, he must have been sleeping but the close-cropped fair hair was never going to give it away by being rumpled. When I’d known him he’d been big and fit, but now he was something else, almost grotesque with muscle definition. His neck had all but disappeared into ridges of muscle sloping down to his shoulders, making his head look undersized for his body. His arms, blown up with muscle, angled out from his body rather than hanging down as they would on a normal-sized man. It wasn’t natural…but then nothing about this animal had ever been natural.

  His iron-grey eyes drilled into me and his square jaw was clenched in anger; I had a strong sense it was taking a huge effort of will on his part not to pound me into the concrete.

  “Do you know who I am?” I asked.

  “You’re the woman who’s about to get her ass kicked back to the curb.”

  “I’m Ruth Ann Jenkins’ daughter, Sherri, the woman who regrets not blowing your brains out when I had the chance.” My right hand was wrapped around the cool metal in the pouch, giving me courage. “I’m the woman who’s still tempted to rid the earth of your sorry ass.”