by Diane Munier
But he was so tired…so they pitched their rolls on the bed…and morning came…morning light…
He’d taken the spot near the wall.
And he looked down…in that crack…and there she was…all night long…all night.
If his hand had dangled off the bed…if he’d gotten up to piss…there she was…her head cut off. And who…what?
And he’d made a sound, scrambled up…hitting his buddy…get up…get up.
And they’d gathered their gear…like they were being strafed.
But this one in the trunk…this poor soul…there was no running now. Was he sure?
He made that first cut…he’d better be.
Chapter 12
In the morning, Isbe rolled over in her bed and stared at the ceiling, arms flung wide. The streamers that hung from the electrical light blew slowly in the breeze the fan made. She stared at these like blessings reaching down to grace her, to wave gently, to welcome her to a day where anything was possible. Oh…something was finally happening. Jules.
She was awake now. When she stretched, she felt her body in a new way. The sheet grazed her pulse points. She was aroused…she was alive.
She’d been saving herself. Waiting.
She ran her hand over every part of body. Her skin was alluring beneath her fingers, soft. She was straight, she was curved. This is what he’d felt…what he’d wanted. Maybe it was enough. Maybe she was.
She loved him, and she’d told him, and there was something when he looked at her—lust, yes, and he didn’t hide it like the boys…the proper sons who lured her with manners and their mamas, with good jobs, she couldn’t seem to grasp on to…couldn’t listen to the mouths that spoke the many words….lips moving…moustaches…clean-shaven….they were the same, offering a better prison, a better cell…solitary confinement…with matching silverware.
Jules blew through her walls. He came after her… then she went after him.
When she’d seen him outside, there was nothing else. She went forward; he was tall and leaning on the wall like he’d escaped something. She knew him…she didn’t. She had a hunch…and she knew he wasn’t afraid of anything—but theaters, and other people’s stories—and boring little girls that looked like women.
She knew it was too much—inside—and he was thinking all of it over. He’d been someplace else…she could feel it on him, back in the theater; she could see it now—the way he’d sat in back, too much, too big, and he had to get out, now the way he lipped that smoke…and all he’d probably done and been, it was there.
He was trying to get small…and it was hard. She knew this. She saw this. She was in the rabbit hole, and he was looking in cause he’d been out, and wondering if…and how…and mostly…why.
He was beautiful. Astoundingly…everything a stilted, desperate girl could imagine. A girl who had pulled on the wooden bars of her headboard just the night before, frustrated and hopeless. A girl who carried the sadness of her mother and father’s failed love…and thought on it too much…and tried to let go of it when her mother died…and wanted to outlive it…but couldn’t…without someone to love…to pull her forth even as she pulled him in.
The drive and need to love…to be loved. She had a mission…she’d been looking. All along. For Him. Would she be shy about it? She was starving.
His eyes when he saw her, gone in his thoughts, but she said “Mister” like a kid would...and his eyes. He needed her then. For a minute. Forever.
But she was no kid; she was aware—so aware.
He’d looked her up and down. She’d said it. She wasn’t going to let him deny how it was. She could get looked at—he could look at a hundred women, a thousand—but his eyes on her…a crash of thunder, a great cracking break at the North Pole, an angry black sky over the ocean and waves lifting a ship a hundred feet in the air, a mile-wide twister in Kansas sweeping everything clean…when he looked at her, something got yanked at the roots. Something moved.
She’d been the quiet girl, the coy girl. She’d been the swell girl, the girl mother brought home to you.
Everything else had been practice: speaking brashly and batting her lashes like a lamb. Being a good student who tried to fix things at home by earning E’s for “excellent.” Working the switchboard and wearing sweater sets and fake pearls or tying a dime-store scarf around her neck, plugging the cord into the jack and crossing her ankles, tightly, while wondering how it felt to have a man push into the ache between her legs while she clawed his back and screamed his name.
She looked for Him in the movies she watched on Saturday night at the Ritz…a woman of faith…a woman who believed…dared to know…he was searching…he was lost…and by some miracle…he would find her…and she’d know him…instantly.
Reality? She had that. She knew. She was the girl who met her broken father at St. Francis’s for Mass once a month on Sunday mornings, then walked with him to Tillman’s diner on the corner of Grand and Magnolia for eggs Benedict and hashbrowns, which they ate in silence, and his two failed marriages—the one he’d killed, the one he was still killing—were on the table between them like the salt and pepper so old and grease-filled you could barely shake them out.
This morning, in her bed, she was this woman, this siren with the chest, with the hips, with the legs…with the hair…with the eyes…with the need. He was looking her up and down and leaving a trail of fire under her skin, fire she felt all the way to her bobby socks, her bare feet, her angry soul.
He wanted her. When he’d looked at her…she wasn’t a disappointment to him, not when she dared to hold his eyes, his troubled, gorgeous, worldly, secretive eyes. And the hands that held that cigarette, bruised from fighting…a wall…a man…his past…his present…the world? It scared her, it thrilled her, but she’d seen that many times…on her father…from his work…and from his rages…when he tore their house apart…when he worked on her mother…when he tore through them all.
Jules was different. And she knew Francis was going to give her hell for falling so quick and letting him know, and she knew Dorie would be all wide-eyed and follow her reckless path, but she had to do this; even if it was a mistake, a brutal mistake, she had to try.
She wasn’t going to run. She was done looking out from her rabbit hole. If anything could pull her out and make her take a chance, it was him. If he offered hell, and she sensed he was lost enough that he might, if this is how Satan wanted to come and finally finish her off…she was game to give him one hell of a ride.
If he called. Oh please, God, she prayed, let him call.
Chapter 13
She’d made an impression. It took a lot. To get through all the crap in him. It had to be red-hot to burn its way through.
She’d gotten through.
He thought about her walking away from that pool last night. He tried to rub the smile off his lips as he looked out the window. Damn. God bless the red, white, and blue.
They were on the backroads, the dusty dirt ones, the oiled and graveled ones. They were lost. That’s how they’d found the farmhouse, or what was left of it. They’d cleaned off the lid to the cistern near the decayed back porch. That’s where they put the body. They covered it, trashed it right up, pulled the rest of the porch over it, damn near pulled the house down and had a good laugh.
The head and hands they buried deeper in the woods. A body, it took fucking hours to plant one of those. But the head and hands, they were the dog tags. You could dig a hole to China and throw those babies in it in less time than it took to eat a steak.
Bobby was grousing about his clothes, which smelled like the musty rags he’d gotten out of the farmhouse to clean the trunk.
Audie said, “We gonna go by Mel’s or what?”
“Nah,” Jules said, lighting a smoke. “He comes to us, that mick.”
Audie hooted and sped up. He was the one who swung the broken pickax they’d found on the place. He’d buried the dog tags and their dirty skivvies.
Bobby leaned f
orward. “What about this car?”
“Coffin on wheels,” Jules laughed.
Bobby had the Buick’s trunk spit-shined. The carpet was rolled, though. It might be a loss. Jules said to keep it. He wasn’t sure yet.
Then he was. They saw a pond; he had Audie stop, and he got that piece of rug rolled tight and tied, and he sent it into the water.
That made him think of fish.
“We gonna ask those broads?” Audie said. “Take them fishing?”
Jules laughed. “Broads?” He thought of that.
“The girls. Francis. Bobby’s…Bisbe.”
“Isbe,” Julius said. “Her name’s Isbe.”
Yeah. They’d go fishing. Soon as he healed a little, but shit, that wouldn’t stop him. Clean clothes. Some bread so he could treat her right.
“What if he don’t pay?” Audie said, reading his thoughts.
“We got his wheels,” Jules said. “Park it on the street, couple blocks from your house. If it’s hot, they won’t come back to you.”
“Why not take it to Mel’s?”
“No.” That wasn’t how this worked. Mel’s was enemy territory. They needed some wheels. They’d earned them. And he knew what that car was.
“How much bread you guys got?” Jules said, swatting a fly.
“I’ve got forty-six,” Audie said.
Bobby wouldn’t know, and he didn’t. He dug in one pocket, then the other. Dollars were wadded like trash. He straightened them some and counted. “Thirty-seven.”
A month’s wages each. Working-stiff money. Treading-water money, just enough to keep you from drowning. Littlest trouble came, you went under.
Jules looked in his wallet. He had six. He’d had twenty. Where the hell had it gone?
Audie gave him ten, Bobby too. He kept Audie’s and gave five back to Bobby.
“Keep it, brother. You’ll just need it later,” Bobby said.
“How about your shoes? Gonna give me those too?” Jules said. “You keep it. Get some bait.”
“Should have kept that pickax. We could dig worms,” Bobby said.
“And put them in your coffee cup?” Jules said. “C’mon, let’s find our way out of here and get something to eat.”
And it was just that easy to keep going, to find their way back to the two-lane to glide back into the city, headed for a diner, Sinatra on the radio.
They went to Tillman’s, and Jules ordered the cube steak. He took his turn going to the john in the back and washing up best he could. He laughed at the color in his face. They looked like a bunch of circus clowns. Damn, his life was happening in one of the rings, and he hoped no one was looking. Not God, if he was there, and he knew he was, scorecard in hand. He believed in the big and the powerful. They’d marched before the Big Four for what they did in the Bulge. He figured it was like that. But he’d no wish to have an encounter in the john at Tillman’s. This made him laugh as he blew into a handful of water.
He was tonguing a sore in his mouth from where his teeth had gone into the soft side of his cheek during the fight, and winding his way between the booths and a waitress and a big tray full of fried food, when he saw her.
Shit on a duck and its mother. There sat Isbe in a booth, facing him, five feet away, and he still had to pass. Across from her, a man, back of his head, dark hair. A uniform shirt.
Jules glared at her, and she was frozen looking at him—recognition—then casting her eyes to the plate before her, her arms folded on the table. She was beautiful, and alarmed, and shocked. He walked by, close enough to touch her. She ignored him.
He stumbled along and got in the booth with the monkeys.
“What’s the matter?” Bobby said right away. He sat across from him, by Audie.
“Don’t look over there,” he said, watching both of them crane their necks.
Jules chewed them out, and the old lady in the booth behind Bobby turned around and told him he should be ashamed.
He thanked her. He didn’t need a scene.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said. But their food arrived, and he knew these guys couldn’t be dragged out now.
“You talk to her?” Audie said, taking his platter.
He was quiet then, and he let their food get placed by Merry Sunshine. He kept looking over there, just the sight of her dark head punching him in the gut and taking the light right out of him. He looked at the man she was with, keeping his breathing as even as he could. Her man was older. Was this that Jerry Blake?
He was a copper. And she didn’t want him to know Jules; he could see that. She had ignored him. She was hoping and praying, right now—he could see it in her shoulders—praying he’d stay away.
He cleared his throat. He’d faced worse than this. What was she? This time yesterday, he hadn’t known she existed. This time tomorrow, he wouldn’t either. He cleared his throat. The old lady had done her job for mothers everywhere. He said to the monkeys, real low-voiced, “Don’t look. I’ll break your faces, you look.” When they got that, he went on. “Isbe is sitting across from a copper.”
“Saw that,” Audie said, face over his plate, shoveling and chewing.
“Yep,” Bobby said licking his fork.
“Yeah,” Jules said, easing back some. She didn’t want to see him, she had no worries. None at all.
Or maybe he’d go over there. Maybe he should—tell her hello, he’d had a real nice time last night. He could wink, toss that money they’d given him on the table.
The copper…it wasn’t him…it was the act…the look. She was ashamed. He embarrassed her.
“I’ll be outside,” he told them.
“Aww damn, Jules. Go on and eat, man. You’re always runnin’ out,” Audie whined.
“Shut your mouth…damn ape.”
The old lady turned around then, but Jules was already leaving.
Chapter 14
Outside the diner, Jules stood by the Buick and lit a cigarette, let that smoke find its own way out of his open mouth. People were going in and out to get that good greasy food. He wasn’t standing there two minutes, and Isbe was coming out with the copper. They walked side by side, then she dropped back as they crossed the lot, the copper moving toward a police car parked near the street. She turned around then, Isbe did, stared straight at Jules—just stared while taking a few steps backward.
She turned around quick, skirt swirling, and caught up to the copper, but the look she’d given—no smile, no frown, just that look with those eyes that twisted his stomach with want. She knew.
He couldn’t take his eyes off her now, in a Sunday dress so prim and proper, that girl he’d had his hands all over, that girl who walked out of that pool and froze him into stillness. She was Isabelle now in those shiny heels and that cream-colored dress with the black lines running over it. She was Isabelle, surely that cause he did not know her...oh, but he did.
She and the copper stood at the police car, and she was talking with him. Copper leaned forward, hand on her arm, and kissed her upturned cheek, and she backed away, waved as he pulled off. When he was gone, she turned, pulled this little white hat off her head, and walked toward Jules.
He was smoking it down, his eyes boring into hers. He looked her up and down and finished the last of his smoke.
She looked around as if checking that the cop car was long gone.
She hurried to him, got close enough, her breasts pointing straight at him, a little black bow at her throat. Her hair parted at the side and wavy brown silk on her shoulders.
She was a stunner. And he knew he was filthy. Maybe he stank. He should.
But she liked it—him. She was so easy to read on that. She clutched this little purse with two hands, holding it in front of her waist, obstructing his view. He didn’t want anything between them. So he took her wrist, and he threw the smoke down and used both hands to pull her in.
She came right to him. “I didn’t…”
“Don’t,” he said. Like with Audie. He didn’t like excuses.
<
br /> She pulled in a breath, but her eyes…
“You afraid of me?” he said.
She shook her head.
“That your old man?”
She nodded.
He was quiet then, relieved…and screwed. A copper?
“You didn’t say…” he said.
“You wouldn’t let me,” she answered.
He smiled; he liked her pluck.
“Ain’t ready to introduce me?” He pulled her in closer, obscenely so for a diner parking lot on a Sunday afternoon.
“I…didn’t know if you were. He’s…I don’t…” She was trying to get it out. It was about her. He knew this.
“I’m not stupid,” he said. She kept the door closed on the old man. He got that. What would she say? How would she explain him?
“You’ve…been fighting,” she said.
He shrugged. “Ran into a door.”
She looked at his chest. He was patient.
“I…you’re not easy to explain,” she whispered. “I don’t want him nosing around.”
She held his gaze then.
“Do I embarrass you?” he said, had the courage to ask, because he knew now, that wasn’t it.
“No,” she whispered. Then she went up on her toes and crashed her pink lips against his. She wasn’t shy here, where she should be embarrassed with folks milling about. She was showing him.
He kissed her back, and he wanted to groan and lean back on the coffin and pull her onto him, but he felt protective of her, and he pulled back.
“Damn,” he whispered, and she had her eyes half closed, and she was huffing. He pulled her into the Buick then, the backseat, and remembered the saw was in the trunk. He put his arm around her and sat back. He left the door open some because it was hot.
He had his arm around her, and she had her head resting in the crook of his arm, and she was looking at him, fingering over some of the bruisings. “Why do you do this?” There were tears in her eyes.
He shrugged. “You like to go fishing?”
