by Joan Hess
“How dreadful for you. I do hope they spring back to life, since you’ll need to put away all the little things you picked up and then distribute the ingredients to the proper boxes. Once you’ve done that, lock up and be back at five. And, please, try to wear something suitable for the media.”
Kyle’s neck muscles tensed, but he continued down the hallway. While our group stood like children awaiting permission to go to the bathroom, Geri complacently resumed her study of her clipboard.
The elevator doors opened and a trim, middle-aged woman joined us. “Oh, Geri, dear, have you seen Jerome? I popped out earlier to shop, and I thought he was intending to work in the room all afternoon, but he’s gone. I cannot face the idea of television cameras and newspaper reporters without him beside me to keep me from making an idiot of myself. My daughters say that every time I open my mouth, there’s room for a discount shoe outlet to fit inside, and—”
“No, I haven’t seen him, Brenda,” said Geri, “but the press reception doesn’t start for an hour. I’m sure he’s just gone for a walk and will be back shortly.”
“I suppose so,” she said, sighing in much the fashion Eilene Buchanon did when informed of Kevin’s latest mishaps. She acknowledged my introduction with yet another sigh and was hovering near the door as Ruby Bee, Estelle, Durmond, and I went to the elevator and rode to the second floor. The two intrepid tourists continued to their room, now engrossed in the spectre of a large sum of money.
“A quiet drink?” Durmond said as we paused in the hall to locate our respective room keys. “I think I need something after today’s … outing. Gloria Swanson must be laughing hysterically from the great beyond, along with Picasso and Warhol, and poor old Monet, who probably intended all along for his paintings to be blurry.”
“I wish I were with them. Let me wash my face, then I’ll tap discreetly on the adjoining door and we can do the dirty deed without stirring up any gossip.”
The elevator door slid open. Brenda and Frannie stared at us, then nervously twittered as if they’d been accused of conspiring to rig the Krazy KoKo-Nut cookoff.
“Frannie’s coming to my room for a little drink,” Brenda said in response to our less than inquisitive expressions. “I know we shouldn’t be imbibing at such an hour, but I’m so excited about the press reception, and, as Jerome says, it must be five o’clock somewhere in the world.”
“I’ve been out shopping,” Frannie said, somehow equally compelled to explain herself—and the highly suspicious presence of shopping bags in her hands. “I sent Catherine back here earlier to take a nap and prepare herself for the press. She’s been in numerous beauty pageants, talent contests, that sort of thing, and she does much better if she’s well rested. The DO NOT DISTURB sign’s still up, so I guess she’s asleep.”
“What time is it in California?” Brenda asked as the two went down the hall. “I never can keep it straight, although I do know it’s much earlier or much later. Vernie’s a freelance writer, as I told you, and works at home. She’s sold articles to—” The door closed on Vernie’s career.
“I’ll be ready in a minute,” I said to Durmond, then went inside my shabby little sanctuary and sank down on the bed. The ghastly foray had left me so tense that I was trembling, as if I’d confronted my past on every corner. I hadn’t scrutinized every face for that of my ex, nor had I really worried that I would run into him or anyone else. In Maggody, population about 755 (depending on who was off visiting relatives), you bet. In Manhattan, population 10,000,000 (give or take a million), not likely—but too close for comfort, nevertheless.
The red bulb on the telephone was blinking. I punched for the operator and waited, although I was more interested in the far side of the adjoining door than I was any messages.
Rick responded with a surly, “Yeah? Whaddya want?”
“My message light’s blinking. This leads me to believe there’s a message.”
“Hang on.” He banged down the receiver, cursing, and several minutes later, came back on, cursing. “Goddamn Gebhearn dame swept everything off the desk. Here it is, no thanks to her. Some broad named Ellen called, said to call her back, said it’s an emergency.” This time he banged down the receiver in its cradle.
I replaced mine more gently and flopped back on the limp pillow. I’d been expecting the message to be from Ruby Bee, concerned with the presence of cockroaches in their room or a desire for sodas from the machine in the lobby—both of which she would have construed as emergencies no less volatile than a neighborhood nuclear meltdown. But Ellen who?
There was a mild tap on the adjoining door. I pulled myself up, rubbed my eyes, and opened it. Durmond held two glasses, the ice cubes tinkling seductively, a bagged bottle, and a bag of potato chips. “Your place or mine?” he said.
I waved him in and, while he fixed drinks, said, “I’ve had a message from someone named Ellen. I have no idea who it might be. Could it have been meant for you?”
“A woman calling me?” With a self-deprecatory chuckle, he sat down on the bed and began to open the bag. “Who’d be interested in a dreary old professor who’s desperate enough to mutilate a perfectly decent cake recipe with Krazy KoKo-Nut?”
“She said it was an emergency,” I said, ignoring his melodramatic display designed to elicit a tender response from yours truly. “I guess I’d better ask Ruby Bee and Estelle if they have any idea who it might be. I’ll be right back.”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll just sit here by myself.”
“Do that.” I went down the hall and knocked on their door. When Estelle opened it, I made a rather natural attempt to enter the room. Natural and unsuccessful. “What’s the deal with the security in this room?” I asked, irritated. “Are you entertaining sailors or something? Boozing it up with traveling salesmen from Toledo?”
“Ruby Bee is gettin’ herself gussied up for the press reception,” Estelle said, glancing over her shoulder. “She’s wedged in the bathroom at the moment, while I try to figure out what she’s gonna wear. The room’s too darn small to have other people traipsing in and out all the time like a bunch of gawky outlanders. Now, what’s your problem, missy?”
Manhattan was unnerving me, but it was unhinging them. I told Estelle about the mysterious call from “Ellen,” and was told that they were a sight too busy to worry about my anonymous callers. On that note, the door was closed.
As I retreated toward 204, a man with erect peppery hair and thick-lensed glasses came out of one room and headed for the door through which Frannie and Brenda had gone earlier. The missing Jerome, I surmised as I smiled vaguely and made a move to pass him, wrinkling my nose as I caught a whiff of perfume tainted with cigar smoke.
He stepped back to block my way. Although we were the same height, he seemed to think he could tower over me and intimidate me with his masculine authority, or at least his bad breath. “Who are you?”
“Not my mother’s keeper,” I replied mildly. “How about yourself?”
He moistened his lips with a normal tongue. “I’m Jerome Appleton, honey. My wife’s one of the contestants, and I came along for moral support. How about yourself?”
I recognized his voice, although it was no longer roaring about the blankety-blank buzzards at the IRS. I introduced myself and admitted I was in a similar role. “I guess this is convenient for you,” I added, “since the Chadwick Hotel is one of your accounts.”
“This dump? You gotta be kidding.” He moved toward me, and as Estelle had sworn, it was damned easy to see the mental icing on his face, not to mention the real dribble on his chin. “I handle a coupla clubs not too far from here, though. Maybe while the contestants are busy, we might go have a drink to console ourselves for missing out on the limelight? Don’t get me wrong, honey. I’m not suggesting anything more risqué than that—unless you’re in the mood …?”
“You really are a toad, aren’t you?” I said evenly. “Do you have dead flies stuck between your teeth?”
“Jerome?” B
renda said, opening the door and frowning as she noticed his face, which was frozen in a fine imitation of a gargoyle. All we needed was a flying buttress on which to perch him. “Is something wrong?”
“Nothing.” He brushed past her and closed the door.
I was not popular on the second floor of the Chadwick, I thought as I trudged on my way like an errant mail carrier. The last time I’d received the cold shoulder from Estelle and Ruby Bee, they’d been up to no damn good, not to mention enmeshed in a thoroughly idiotic kidnapping plot that had backfired and then some. It was hard not to suspect they were up to something now, but I had no idea what it could be.
There was something damned fishy about the so-called mugging in the stairwell, but everyone seemed content to dismiss it as a typical New York close encounter of the wrong kind. I was the only person who remained unsatisfied with the story. But it was hard to explain why Durmond had been dragged to Ruby Bee’s room and stripped, and the police alerted to storm the same site. To myself, anyway—since no one else was asking.
I stopped in front of the stairwell door around the corner from the elevator. Almost invisible in the terminally dingy pattern of the carpet was a round brown speckle. I knelt and looked for others. There was a trail of sorts, and I determined that it began by the door and went in the direction I’d just come. Like Raz’s sow on the scent of a wily truffle, I crawled down the hall, restraining myself from actually snuffling as each speckle lured me on.
“Arly?” Durmond said from behind me. “Are you okay?”
I stood up and tried to think of something clever to explain my porcine imitation. In that nothing came to mind, I was relieved when he said, “There’s something on the news that … well, did you say the name of your town is Maggody?” He pronounced it “mu-GOH-dee,” but I forgave him since he’d saved me the necessity of a lie.
“Maggody,” I said, stressing the first syllable. “It rhymes with ‘raggedy.’ But I can’t believe it’s on the news. Stoplight go dead? Fish kill downstream from the sewage plant? Pedigreed sow on the rampage?”
He hurried me into my room and turned up the volume on the television set in time for the tail end of the story. When the flat-faced anchorwoman moved on to footage of sump holes in Florida, I found myself numbly staring at the now dark message button on the telephone. “Not Ellen,” I heard myself croak. “Eilene.”
Her white gloves clutched in one hand, Mrs. Jim Bob rapped on the rectory door, determined to go on doing it until she received a response. “I know you’re in there,” she called sternly. “When I came out of the Assembly Hall, one of those licentious hippie women across the road said you hadn’t been out all day. She also said she was thinking about bringing you some carob cookies and a pot of herbal tea, but I put a stop to that.” She increased the fury of her fist. “Brother Verber, you are trying my patience. Open up this minute!”
The door opened, and Brother Verber blinked down at her with the unfocused gaze of someone who has been knocked up the side of the head with a two-by-four. “Why, Sister Barbara,” he said, swallowing several times between each word, “how nice of you to come visitin’ like this.”
She took in his bathrobe, pale puffy face, and eyes zigzagged with red lines. “Are you sick?”
“I’ve had a touch of a stomach virus,” he said as he held open the door for her and tried not to wince as her high heels clattered like a machine gun across the living room floor.
“We missed you at the organizational meeting last night,” she said, twisting her gloves and tapping her foot, clearly not in the mood to proffer sympathy for the invalid’s woeful condition. “I was disappointed, Brother Verber. You and I must join forces to lead the community away from the wickedness. No one else has the kind of dedication to decency, the commitment to righteous and old-fashioned Christian morality.” She eyed him narrowly, and her lips all but disappeared. “The meeting ended at ten, and I drove by here afterward. The lights were off, and I could only assume you’d found something more entertaining elsewhere.”
Brother Verber pulled the bathrobe around him more tightly and searched his maladroit mind for an explanation that might gain him temporary parole (a full pardon was most likely out of the question). He took his handkerchief from a pocket and began to mop his forehead, doing his best not to squirm as her eyes bored into him like skewers. “You and I surely are the generals in the Almighty’s army,” he said, wishing his mouth wasn’t drier than a wad of cotton. “That’s right—the brigadier generals leading on the Christian footsoldiers, marching against the forces of evil.”
“I believe we were discussing your absence from the Christians Against Whiskey meeting, Brother Verber.”
“So we were.” He realized the handkerchief was so wet he was gonna have to wring it out in the sink before too long. “By the way, that’s a most fetching dress, Sister Barbara. It must be new, ’cause I’m sure I would have noticed it if you’d worn it to church or Wednesday evening prayer meeting.”
“You would have seen it last night—if you’d been at the police department.” She sat down and made sure her skirt was pulled down to cover her knees. Her gloves placed squarely in her lap and her hands folded beside them, she once again made it plain she was waiting for an explanation and was willing to do so until she was completely satisfied.
“Would you like a glass of iced tea?” Brother Verber whimpered. She shook her head, and after a painful minute of silence, he came up with something. “I was on a mission last night,” he began tentatively, watching her from the corner of his eye, “a mission assigned to me by our Commander-in-Chief. Praise the Lord!” She failed to react, so he blotted his neck and moved along. “I went to Raz’s like you said to do, forced my way into his den of degradation and decay, and offered to go down on my knees with him on his area rug to beg for divine forgiveness. He resisted, so I grabbed his bony shoulders and said to him, ‘Woe unto them that draws iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin as if it were with a cart rope.’”
“You did?” said Mrs. Jim Bob, mystified.
“I did, indeed. Isaiah, chapter five, verse eighteen. While he was mulling this over, I dug my fingers into those same bony shoulders, shook ’em so hard his eyes liked to pop, and said, ‘Joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance.’” He smiled modestly. “From the Gospel of Luke, chapter fifteen, verse seven. Well, that stopped Raz cold in his tracks, if I say so myself. A strange look came over his face and he began to cry like a newborn baby. It was something to behold, this miserly old wreck of a man, blubbering and mewling and begging me to put my hand on his head and grant him forgiveness.”
“He did?” Mrs. Jim Bob usually wasn’t the terse type, but she was having a hard time grappling with the scene. “We’re talking about Raz Buchanon, right?”
Wiping away the hint of a tear, Brother Verber sat down next to her on the sofa and put his hand over hers. “It was the most intense moment of my entire ministry, Sister Barbara. I was so moved by this unexpected triumph over Satan hisself that my throat seized up and I could barely speak. Sweat blinded me. My heart pounded like a big bass drum. The only reason I didn’t crumple to the floor was the angels on either side of me like celestial bookends, holding me steady so I could save the soul of the wretched sinner. Praise the Lord!”
“Praise the Lord,” she echoed weakly.
His hand, guided by an equally omnipotent force, abandoned her hands and began to squeeze her knee. Unlike Raz’s purportedly bony shoulders, it was soft and supple. “So that’s where I was last night,” he concluded with a moist smile, a little confused about where he was in the narrative. He shifted so his thigh was against hers, and he could drink in her redolence that was as pure as spring water.
He was about to suggest they fall to their knees when she said, “Then Raz repented his wicked ways and promised to destroy his still and whatever whiskey he has?”
Every story needs a happy ending. “O
f course he did,” Brother Verber said, emphasizing the words with a tighter grip on her knee. “Soon as he has a chance, he’s going right up on Cotter’s Ridge with an axe. He’s gonna smash the still until it ain’t nothing but a heap of rubble, and pray for the Almighty to guide his arm as he throws those jars of evil moonshine onto the rocks. The youth of Maggody can go back to their innocent ways, playing ball and doin’ schoolwork and attending Sunday school.”
Mrs. Jim Bob was doing her best to ignore his hand, which drifted from her knee and was massaging her thigh—and heading in a direction she found most unsettling. She’d been married nearly twenty years, and since the very night of the honeymoon, had resigned herself to her marital obligations (carried out once a month, in total darkness). But Jim Bob had grown perfunctory over the years, and disinclined to dally about his business. But, she thought, as an unfamiliar sensation began to seep into her body, her dedication to the preservation of Christian standards had not made her less of a woman.
Their thoughts were running in a somewhat similar direction. However, she yanked hers to a halt well short of anything less than respectable, hastily stood up, and said, “We’ll have to go along with Raz when he destroys the still, Brother Verber. Without us to help him maintain his resolve, he might change his mind. It’s our duty, and we have to see it through.”
With a gurgle, Brother Verber clasped his hands together and lowered his head as if in prayer. Actually, he was praying, and as hard as he’d ever prayed since he’d mailed back his final exams to the seminary in Las Vegas, although he wasn’t silently exalting in the glories of the Almighty. “Our duty,” he repeated in a reverent tone, “and we have to see it through.” Now all he had to do was figure out how in tarnation they were gonna do it.
“In Lebanon?” I said between Eilene’s hiccupy sobs. “They’re being held hostage in Lebanon, Kentucky—right?” I waited out another one. “But they haven’t been hurt?”
“Not yet,” she wailed, “but the policemen haven’t seen them in over an hour, so they could be bleeding to death right this minute …”
