I watch Theresa Swallows—owner of Swallows and a woman I consider one of my closest friends—pull off her gray and white Swallows T-shirt, revealing a black string bikini top that leaves nothing to the imagination. Theresa is five feet two in heels and probably doesn’t weigh much more than my cat. She’s a cute-as-a-button Latina who gets mistaken for her twelve-year-old daughter’s sister all the time. With her tan skin and walnut brown eyes, I’ve always considered Theresa pretty, but never sexy.
But then, I’ve never seen her in nothing but a string bikini and a pair of ripped-up short shorts, either. Theresa may be petite, but she’s nicely proportioned. I’m a straight woman with pretty close to zero interest in women sexually, and I can’t stop looking.
So I shouldn’t be surprised that Cane can’t keep his eyes off her fingers as she rearranges the itty-bitty triangles to make sure they’re covering her not nearly so itty-bitty boobs. Men like boobs. Men will look at boobs—even if they’re in love with another woman, as Cane still professes to be in love with me.
If this were the community pool and Cane and Theresa happened to cross paths while they both happened to be scantily clad and Cane happened to ogle Theresa’s chest and Theresa happened to reach a flirty finger out to poke Cane’s stomach, I might not be bothered by what I was seeing.
But this is not the community pool. This is a back alley and I can’t imagine any innocent reason for the pair of them to be getting seminaked together. Yeah, it’s hot. But it’s cool inside in the air-conditioning. They could be in there, cool and fully clothed. Instead, they’re throwing their discarded shirts over their arms and moving closer. Theresa’s head tilts back to gaze into the much taller Cane’s face, and Cane smiles that smile that makes his eyes crinkle and his teeth flash and pulls women’s lips to his mouth like a sex-powered tractor beam. I watch Theresa give Cane’s stomach a second finger poke and Cane run his hand over his shaved head the way he does when he’s thinking naughty things, and I’m really glad I didn’t chug that Sapporo.
Because I would be tossing it back up all over the pavement.
I feel sick. Sick, sick, sick. My stomach is free-falling and my ribs are contracting in a viselike grip of misery and my mouth fills with the burnt-plastic taste of loss.
I’ve lost Cane. I’ve dicked around too long deciding if I’m ready for the long haul and now he’s found someone else. He and Theresa will probably get married and Cane will be the best stepfather in the world to her two kids and they’ll have more babies—because Theresa had Dina when she was only seventeen and is still young and undoubtedly fertile and Cane is dying to have kids—and I’ll have to pretend to be happy for them because Theresa is my friend and Cane was my friend, too, before he became my lover. And I can hardly fault them for finding happiness with each other. I had my chance, and I screwed it up.
But he said he’d wait. Just last night he kissed you good-bye and called you Lee-lee. What kind of man does that, and then turns around, strips off his shirt, and flirts with another woman?
A man who’s thinking about other options. That’s who. At least thinking, and maybe even acting. Who knows how much further this smile-and-finger-pokefest is going to go?
I don’t know, but I know I don’t want to stand around and watch.
I take a slow step back and then another, easing around the corner without being observed by the pair still canoodling by the Dumpster. As I hurry away, I whip out my phone and stab out a text to Hitch: “Can’t meet. Bernie called. Gimpy sick. Can meet first thing tomorrow. Six a.m. at Piggly Wiggly. They have coffee and donuts. I’ll buy.”
As soon as I hit Send, I feel the weight in my chest ease.
My insides still hurt like evil leprechauns are pummeling my guts with their fists, but I can’t bring myself to get angry. How can I? I’ve been tempted. I’ve stared into Tucker’s dreamy blue eyes and had impure thoughts. I even kissed Hitch the last time he was here. I’m in no position to play the woman wronged, but that doesn’t make imagining what Cane and Theresa might be doing right now any easier. The thought of his arms around her, her hands resting on his chest, her lips kissing those lips that once were mine . . .
I suck in a breath and surprise myself with a sob. I’m actually crying.
Crying over losing Cane and with every shuddery breath it gets harder to imagine feeling okay again. This is what it felt like the day I walked away from Hitch, like there was nothing in the world worth reaching out for because everything I touch turns to shit.
That’s why I decided never to love anyone again. But it looks like I broke that promise like I break everything else. I love Cane. I knew I loved Cane, but I’m not sure I knew I loved him like this. It’s only now that he’s slipping away that I realize how much he means to me.
But then, men are always more attractive once they’ve had the sense to reject me.
I resist the urge to call myself names like stupid and pathetic and chronically incompetent and unlovable. That way lies madness, and I refuse to let Low Self-Esteem win. Low Self-Esteem is for teenagers who haven’t realized that everyone else is just as lame as they are.
And who don’t have the cash or necessary ID to buy something to numb the pain.
Whiskey. Whiskey is perfect for a good, angry drunk, and I’d much rather be angry. I swipe the back of my hand across my face, smearing away the worst of the emotional leakage and start toward the liquor store at a jog.
I go in for a fifth of whiskey, but come out with two two-liter jugs, a six-pack of generic Coke, and a sleeve of plastic cups.
There’s no need to drink alone, especially when my drinking buddies might prove useful. The Junkyard Kings know more about what’s going down outside the iron gate than anyone in Donaldsonville. Even with easy travel between towns restricted by poisonous fairies, the vagrant gossip network manages to keep up with the news we average roof-over-our-heads people are unaware of.
The Kings know which towns are cracking down on the homeless population, which people give out a free dinner if you show up on their back porch, where the bands of highwaymen are moving, and who needs what contraband distributed for what price. Some of the homeless men living in the nonperishable waste dump down the street from my house are bleary-eyed drunks who spend their days digging through Dumpsters for recyclables and their nights pissing all over their grungy mattresses.
But some of them are black-market goods dealers or drug pushers or middlemen brokering information to whoever will pay for it. Some say last year’s breach of the iron gate in Baton Rouge and the subsequent theft of ten top-of-the-line metal-plated motor homes by Vlad the Inhaler—the leader of a band of highwaymen known for the pink and yellow inhalers he wears around his neck to combat a nasty case of asthma—wouldn’t have been possible without information provided by some of Donaldsonville’s own Junkyard Kings.
I figure there are worse places to start looking for answers. Besides, the Kings are always happy to see me. Especially when I come bearing alcoholic goodies.
This afternoon is no different. I’m greeted with catcalls and hugs and an impromptu serenade about good redheaded women who bring home the bacon.
And by “bacon,” we all know they mean booze. Bacon—though tasty—wouldn’t have generated nearly as much excitement.
We settle down around the cooking fire, where Stan is poking a pot of what smells like chili, but most certainly contains some breed of rodent meat, and get our drink on in a serious fashion. By the time the sun slinks low in the sky, we’re all comfortably wasted and the mounds of trash and rusted-out cars are starting to look artistic and meaningful and the laughs are coming easier and even Gerald—a relatively new King with ashy skin and yellowed eyes who doesn’t blink often enough to be anywhere close to sane—is singing along with some of the songs.
So when Eli and Nigel finish up their duet and Stan starts dishing out chili con rat, I decide the time has come to ask questions. Before I forget what the questions are.
“So, Eli, seen an
y good movies lately?” I casually drop the code phrase rumored to be the way to initiate off-color business in the dump.
Eli—an ancient black man with steel gray hair that sticks up all over his head like an electrified Brillo pad and surprisingly beautiful muddy green eyes—drops his spoon into his bowl and pins me with a hard look. “You know there ain’t no movie theater around here, girl.”
“I know that.” I take a sip of my drink. “I know a lot of things. But I’d like to know more about some other things, if you know what I mean.” I don’t bother trying to sound sober. It’ll be easier to pull this off if the Kings assume I’m too wasted to be a threat. My boyfriend is a cop—as far as the King’s know, anyway—and no matter how much they appreciate my gifts in clear bottles, it isn’t going to be easy to get them to trust me.
“I can know you more, girl,” Nigel shouts from the other side of the fire, a leer in his rheumy voice. “You come sit on old Nigel’s lap and I’ll know you all kinds of good things.”
“Nigel, you ain’t seen pussy since before this girl was born.” Stan leans over and nudges me with his beefy elbow. “I’m the only one of these stinkers who can still get it up, and that’s the damned truth. You need some seeing to, you come see me, Miss Lee.”
“Thanks, guys.” I manage not to gag at the thought of any of the Junkyard Kings naked. Just barely. “But I have questions that can’t be answered by a penis.”
“Sound like stupid questions to me,” Nigel says, inspiring a burst of raucous laughter from the circle at large.
It’s a man joke and I get that and I normally wouldn’t let the laughter throw me, but tonight it makes me uncomfortable. There’s an edge to it, a sharp edge that warns me to take a step back. For the first time, I feel a hint of danger whisper through the sour-smelling air, and I wonder if maybe Bernie is right and the Kings aren’t as harmless as I’ve always believed.
“Might be.” I keep my eyes on Eli, the only one of the pack who didn’t find the joke funny. “But stupid questions still need answers and you know I can pay for them. In drinks or cash. Your call.”
Eli scoops a bite of chili and chews. His tightly coiled beard makes his pink lips look like the underside of some menacing sea creature. He takes his time swallowing, but I don’t break eye contact, and the other Kings don’t say a word. They’re all Kings, but Eli is the ruler of this yard. Finally, he says, “All right.”
“You know anything about a cave out in the bayou?” I ask, not missing the tightening in the air as soon as the words are out of my mouth. I scan the circle, but no one is looking at me anymore. They’ve all become very interested in their drinks or their chili or the fire.
Except Gerald, who is staring at me with an I’m-thinking-about-what-you’d-look-like-without-skin look that makes me turn quickly back to Eli.
“I don’t know anything about that.” Eli enunciates each word more clearly than any I’ve heard him speak. “And neither do you. That’s what’s good for you, girl. You listen to Eli.”
Well. Dead end there; no doubt about it. Whatever Eli knows, he’s not going to tell me, for any price. But at least it seems like he still cares what’s good for me. It makes me ballsy enough to try avenue of questioning number two. “What about Marcy? Do you know anything about her?”
“What kind of anything?”
“Just . . . anything. About her past or where she went or what she’s doing now . . . anything.” I pause, but Eli doesn’t say a word. “Listen, somebody else wanted me to ask about the cave, but this is for me. Marcy was family to me, and all of sudden she disappeared. I don’t believe she’s gone to take care of a sick relative. If she were only out of town, she would have called me and told me when she was coming back. But now . . . I’m afraid she’s never coming back and I . . .” I swallow, surprised by how easily tears have risen in my eyes. I let them sit there, hoping they might convince Eli to take pity on me. “I miss her. A lot. I want to know she’s all right.”
“She’s all right,” he says, his voice a hair gentler than it was before.
“Then I want to know why she thinks it’s okay to run off and leave everyone who loves her,” I say. “Because right now, it seems like bullshit.”
Eli nods and chews with that same steady, stern look on his face. I’ve about decided to call it a night when he says, “Marcy is a good woman, but she’s got a past.”
“I heard she killed her old man,” Stan adds, taking the cue from Eli that it’s okay to spill. “Slit his damned throat while he was sleeping.”
“She ain’t killed Traynell.” Nigel coughs up a wad of phlegm and spits perilously close to the leftover chili. “I saw him last week down in N’Orleans, creeping round the Superdome flea market, buying scrap metal.”
“Was Marcy with him?”
Nigel shakes his head. “Nope. He was by his own sorry self. And looking it. A man should never live with a woman as long as that man has. Makes him weak. And after that woman leave your ass, you get all skinny and your skin goes saggy and your hair starts falling out.”
“More proof you ain’t never had a woman, you fat, hairy bastard,” Stan says, summoning another circle-wide laugh. Nigel joins in, ruffling his mane of kinky gray hair, sending a few insects jumping for safer ground.
“I wasn’t talking about Traynell or his skinny ass,” Stan continues as the laughter dies down. “I was talking about her old man. Her Daddy.” Stan turns his full attention my way. “I heard she tied him up in his bed and cut his throat, real slow, so he could stay alive to know he’s being kilt as long as possible.”
I nod, and try not to let on that Stan is fucking with my head. “I heard she killed two people, but I didn’t know who they were. Or why.”
“One was her daddy because he deserved a killing,” Eli says. “And Marcy was the first of her sisters brave enough to do it. The other was her own baby girl.”
“What?” My stomach twists, sending up a nose-scalding gurgle of whiskey and cheap soda. “That can’t be true. Marcy would never. Never.”
“I lived in Lafayette around the time it happened. Read all the papers.” Eli stretches out his stick legs, wiggling them at the ankles. “They said it was an accident. The little girl was supposed to be at her grandma’s house across the field, but came back looking for her mama in the middle of the night. She must of snuck in the back door just after Marcy rigged the gas stove. Exploded her right up and burned what was left of Marcy’s daddy down to the bone.”
The circle falls silent. Not even Stan or Nigel have any sarcastic commentary to offer. A woman murdering her father and accidentally taking out her baby girl in the process isn’t funny. It’s sad. So, so sad. Marcy was fifteen, trying to escape some kind of abuse, and she ended up killing her own kid. A kid she shouldn’t have even had at that age. If the girl could already walk and open doors on her own, she must have been at least two or three. That meant Marcy was pregnant when she was . . . twelve.
God. I want to go back in time and take care of the terrified kid she must have been. But I can’t. All I can do is try to help her out of whatever trouble she’s in now.
“But she served her time, didn’t she?” I finally ask, my voice thin. “Why is she running now?” I know what Marcy told me—she helped a father kidnap his daughter from her abusive mother—but I want to know what the Kings know. Marcy clearly left out several major details in her version of the story.
Eli shrugs. “Who knows? Maybe those old demons are still hauntin’ her.”
“After forty years?” I lift a brow, letting Eli know I smell bullshit. “All of sudden she has to up and run after being a part of this town for decades? When everyone here thinks she’s a saint?”
“I never thought that woman was a saint.” Nigel grunts and crosses his arms with an arthritic hitch of his shoulder. “She was a tough bitch. That’s what she was.”
Marcy? A tough bitch? Tough, yes. But Marcy has the kindest heart. I’ve never seen her lose her temper, not even when two of my bun
kmates at Sweet Haven tried to set each other’s hair on fire during the spring barbecue.
“Marcy wasn’t a bitch. She was a mama bear.” Stan throws his arm around me and leans in to whisper in my ear. I smell rat chili and whiskey with an undernote of diseased gums and rotted teeth and I try not to shudder. “She didn’t want us messing with her baby. The day you moved in down the street, she was up in here with that bulldog face of hers warning us to stay away from you. Said she was going to bring down the wrath of hellfire upon our place in the sun if we didn’t keep you safe.”
“But she ain’t here anymore,” Nigel says, a shade meaner than I’d like. “Guess we can be as bad as we want to be.”
I look to Eli—the only one of the Kings who seems like a decent excuse for a human being—but he has his face in his chili, slurping up the sauce at the bottom of his bowl. No help coming from there. Guess he’s done offering me good-natured warnings. I grit my teeth and think uncharitable things about him and men in power in general. They always turn a blind eye when the going gets tough.
“Nah. We love our little Lee. She’s good to us.” Stan hugs me closer, pressing me against his sweat-soaked fat rolls. I can feel the stink of him seeping into my skin and want to shove him away. But I don’t. I have to watch myself. Closely.
That feeling of potential danger is stronger now. It lifts the hairs on the back of my neck, crawls skeeter feet along my arms. It’s the feminine instinct kicking in, reminding me that I’m the smaller, weaker member of the species. Modern society tells women we have equality with men—and some women never have cause not to believe it—but in moments like these, when you’re a woman alone and a man’s good nature is the only thing keeping you safe and you know his “good nature” isn’t that good, the fear kicks in. These are the times when the threat alone keeps you quiet and submissive and in your place.
A place Marcy didn’t want me to be. So much so that she came to the dump to make sure these men never gave me a reason to be afraid. It makes me love her even more, and I swear to myself that I won’t betray her to Hitch or anyone else.