As Joan watched, she remembered popping open the champagne at Dave’s house yesterday.
If only I were there right now, she thought.
He isn’t there.
He’s dealing with Gloria, and I’ve got to deal with Harold. We each have our own messes keeping us apart.
Harold popped the cork. He filled the glasses and handed the one without ice to Joan.
“I hope you don’t mind me dropping by like this,” he said as they walked into the living room.
“No, that’s fine. I’m kind of a mess, is all.”
“You look terrific. As always.”
“Thanks,” she muttered.
Harold sat on the sofa. Joan sat down beside him.
“I was planning to call you,” she said.
Harold nodded. He took a sip of wine, then gazed at his glass. “I understand that. And I can well imagine what you would’ve had to say. I wasn’t especially eager to hear it. Each time the phone rang, I thought it was you and…This is not at all easy for me, Joan. To come here like this. I’ve felt…physically ill…all day.”
“I’m sorry,” she murmured.
He held up one hand as if to ward off her apology. “It’s not your fault. It’s me.” He looked at her, smiled bleakly, and returned his gaze to the glass. “I was actually twenty-five before I had my first sexual encounter. And that was a case of the girl seducing me. I had no interest in her. She was…not attractive. In fact, she was distinctly unappealing. As was every female I’ve ever dared to approach.”
“Thanks a heap,” Joan said, hoping to cheer him up.
“If you remember correctly, you approached me.”
“I did, yes.”
“And I was…instantly smitten. I could hardly believe that I was in the company of a woman who was not only exceedingly attractive but also intelligent and well-read and witty. That sort of thing had never happened to me before. I found it incomprehensible that you would even speak to me, much less…”
“I like you, Harold. I really do. I’ve enjoyed our times together.”
“Enjoy.” He made a small huff through his nose. “Such a pallid word. To me, the times we spent together were…like glimpses of paradise. Which is why I never dared to risk it all, why I never…” He shook his head.
“Put moves on me?”
“I wanted to,” he admitted, frowning at his wineglass. “You’ve no idea how much I’ve wanted to kiss you, embrace you. I’ve dreamed of—”
The jangle of the telephone stopped his voice.
Joan’s heart lurched.
Dave? It had to be Dave.
The phone rang again, again.
“Aren’t you going to answer it?” Harold asked.
“No,” she said, and rested a hand gently on his knee. The phone rang seven more times.
The silence when it stopped felt heavy and dark.
Harold began to weep. He reached out and set the wineglass on the table, then turned his face away from Joan. She rubbed his back. She could feel it hitching under her hand as he struggled to stifle his sobs.
“I know it’s over,” he said in a choked voice. “You were looking for a…a Rhett Butler, and I’m…not even an Ashley. A Prufrock, that’s what I am, nothing but a Prufrock.”
“Hey, come on. Everything’s going to be okay.”
“No. No, I don’t think so.”
“We’ll still see each other, Harold. We’ll still be friends. And really, it was never more than that. Maybe we both wanted it to be more, but it never was. So we’ll leave it that way and stop trying to make it something else.”
He sniffed. He shook his head. He wiped his eyes.
“We’ll go to the movies next week.”
“No. I couldn’t. God, I don’t want your pity.”
“Well, then, the hell with you.”
His head jerked around. His eyes were wet and red. His cheeks were shiny with tears. He looked at her eyes. He looked at her smirk. And a laugh sputtered out of him.
“Take my pity or take a leap, Gonzo.”
He laughed again.
The telephone began to ring. “This time, I’m going to get it. Take the opportunity to pull yourself together.”
He stayed on the sofa. Joan rushed into the kitchen and grabbed the telephone. “Hello?”
“Hi there. It’s me.”
“Hiya, Me,” she said, and felt a warmth come into her. “How’d it go?”
“It didn’t. I went over to her place and she wasn’t home. In fact, I went over twice. Once before supper, once after.”
“You think she’s still out playing games?”
“Wouldn’t surprise me. I’m going to drive down to the boardwalk and search around, but that’ll take a while. I just wanted to talk to you first, let you know what’s going on.”
“I was starting to get worried. Hey, how about letting me go with you?”
“I think it’d just make matters worse if we’re together, and…”
“I know. I know that. Shit.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah. It’s just that I miss you.”
“You miss me?”
“No, I’m sick of your face. Of course I miss you. I thought we might see each other tonight. I called you a while ago.”
“I called you too.”
“Yeah, I thought it was you. I couldn’t answer it. If you really think Gloria will freak out or something if we’re together…”
“Aah, let her. I’ll come by and get you. How about ten minutes?”
“How about half an hour? I need to take a shower.”
“Can’t it wait till I get there?”
“Haw haw. In your ear, Davy boy.”
“I’ll have to think about that.”
“See you later.” She hung up and went back to the living room. She stopped at the edge of the table. Harold was sitting up straight. He was no longer crying. “You all right?” she asked.
“As well as can be expected, I suppose.”
“You’ll pick me up for the film next week?”
He made a limp smile. “Ah, my cue to evacuate the premises.”
“Afraid so. I have to get cleaned up and leave. That was Dave. We’ve got a little bit of an emergency we need to take care of.”
Nodding, Harold drank the last of his wine.
He stood up. Joan took hold of his hand, and they walked toward the door. “The film?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Let’s give it a try and see how it goes. Unless, of course, you dump me between now and then for someone even more beautiful and charming than moi.”
“The dumping, my dear, has already been done. Not by me, of course.”
The words wrenched her. She’d thought she had healed his wound. All she’d done, she realized, was slap a bandage across it. The gash was too big for such a flimsy patch. She could almost see the tide of blood.
Harold opened the door.
Joan clutched his arm to stop him from leaving. She turned him to face her. He didn’t look tormented now. He looked resigned, defeated, a little dazed and hollow in the eyes.
“I wish I could make it all right,” she said.
“You get an E for effort.” He eased his arm out of her grip and walked out into the dusk.
Joan closed the door and leaned back against it. She let out a deep sigh.
She felt awful. She was glad that he was gone. She was glad that it was over.
It was over. He’d lost, and he wasn’t about to accept the consolation prize of friendship.
And she was glad.
And it was not too different from kicking Woodrow Abernathy in the chin. A feeling of relief and joy because she’d taken care of business, finished the matter, brought a bad situation to a quick end. But guilt was like gray rain in her soul.
Twenty-four
“It was very nice to meet you, Mrs. Wayne.”
“Well, it was nice to meet you too, Shiner.”
“I have to be
home before midnight, so I’ll get Jeremy back here around eleven-thirty. Is that all right?”
“Fine, fine. Have a good time, kids.”
Jeremy opened the door for Shiner. As she walked out, he smiled at his mother. She made a face at him—eyebrows rising, eyes rolling upward, lips pursing—a face that said, “I can’t believe it. How did you possibly manage to latch on to a girl like this?”
Once the door was shut, he took hold of Shiner’s hand. “You wowed her!”
“But of course.”
“She was all set to hate your guts.”
“She’s nice. I like her.”
They reached the curb. Shiner unlocked the passenger door for Jeremy, then walked around the front of the car.
“You sure look nice tonight,” he said as she slipped in behind the steering wheel.
“Thanks. You too.”
He wished she were wearing a dress, but she looked awfully good in the white jeans. And he liked the way her blouse seemed so light and clingy. If he held her, it would feel slick and he would be able to slide it on her skin.
She had an aroma that made him think of the way the air might smell in a forest after a spring rain.
She started the car and pulled away from the curb. “I’ve been thinking,” she said, “and there’s no law says we have to go to this thing at Tanya’s. It’s going to be a bummer, you know. A lot of talk about that guy who kicked it. We could do something else. Go to the movies or fool around at Funland or something.”
“Don’t you want to go?” Jeremy asked.
“If you do. I’m just saying we don’t have to.”
The idea of going to a movie or to Funland with Shiner excited him. On the other hand, he hated to miss Tanya’s party.
“I’m pretty curious about it,” he said.
“Okay. We’ll go, then. No problem.”
“Are you sure?”
“It was just a thought. And, I mean, we should go. Tanya wants everyone to be there. I’ve just got cold feet, I guess.”
“You’re scared?”
“No, not scared. A little nervous, maybe. I don’t know, I have this feeling I’m going to wish we’d stayed away.”
“Maybe we’d better not go, then,” he said, being gallant and self-sacrificing and feeling dismal about it.
“No. Hey, you don’t want to miss the thing. And I’m not sure whether I do or not. Maybe it’ll be terrific.”
“Let’s just go for a while,” Jeremy suggested. “Just put in an appearance and see what’s going on. Then, if we feel like it, we’ll split.”
“Sounds good to me,” Shiner said.
He settled back into the car’s bucket seat.
The rest of the trip was wonderful. Jeremy felt nervous, but excited too. He was alone in the car with Shiner, his girlfriend, his actual girlfriend who wasn’t a dog, who was—as Letter-man would put it—“a fabulous babe.” She was beautiful and his. And they were on their way to a party. At Tanya’s. Where anything might happen but where one thing would happen for sure: he would be in Tanya’s presence. And she wasn’t a fabulous babe, she was a Force of Nature.
It’s really happening, he assurred himself. Right now. To me.
When Jeremy came out of his reverie, he saw that they were on a residential street that he’d never seen before. “Where are we?”
“You might call it ‘the other side of the tracks.’”
“Huh?”
“We’re heading into the north end. Where the rich folk live.”
“Tanya lives over here?”
“Sure. She’s loaded. Her father’s a chiropractor and her stepmother’s a lawyer.”
“If they’re so rich, why does she have to work?”
Shiner steered the car into a narrow lane that slanted up a wooded hillside. “Well, she obviously doesn’t have to. She likes it. Look what she does. She’s a lifeguard. Stands around on the beach all day, looking fabulous, the center of attention for every guy within eyeball distance—and now and again she gets to play hero.”
Shiner sounded a little amused, and maybe as if she were above such things herself.
“You kind of sound like you don’t like her,” Jeremy said.
“No, I like her fine. I just don’t adore her the way everyone else does.”
Is she including me? Jeremy wondered. Does she know? How could she?
Shiner stopped at a Y in the road. She took a sheet of paper from the blouse pocket over her left breast and unfolded it. In the faint, bluish light of dusk, Jeremy saw that it was a rough map drawn with a ball-point. Shiner frowned at it for a while. Then she swung to the left and drove slowly up the road.
Jeremy could see no houses. Just woods and sometimes a driveway entrance with a mailbox beside it. The houses, he guessed, were hidden in the trees far above the winding road and far below it.
“How did you meet Tanya?” he asked, wanting to get away from the subject of adoration. “You don’t go to the same school, and she lives…Do you live up here too?”
“Hell, no. I’m over on…in your neighborhood. I met her by hunting out the trollers. Everybody in town was talking about them—and Great Big Billy Goat Gruff. I started sneaking out late at night, and pretty soon I found them. I just explained that I wanted to join up, and why.”
“Because of your sister?”
“Right. And they put me through the initiation. I’ve been with them ever since.”
“Was it always the same kids?”
She nodded. “Mostly. A couple of them moved away, and Randy wasn’t with them yet. He got involved after Tanya pulled him out of the drink. She did mouth-to-mouth, and he woke up and figured he’d died and gone to heaven. He’s been one of her worshipers ever since.”
Shiner stopped. She peered through the windshield at the road sign, then checked the map again. “Okay, that’s Avion,” she said, nodding to the right. “Her place should be the third driveway.” She drove forward.
The third driveway was on the left side of the road, and slanted upward with a steep grade. Shiner shifted to first gear, turned onto the driveway, and started to climb it slowly, the engine racing. Jeremy wasn’t sure what he expected to find at the top. A cabin or cottage would’ve seemed about right. But when the road leveled off and the forest opened, he saw something that looked very much like a southern plantation house—complete with a veranda and white columns. He supposed it was smaller than the real thing, but it seemed awfully big to be sitting up here above Boleta Bay.
The whole top of the hill must’ve been lopped off to make room for the house, its three-car garage, and grounds. The driveway looped around the front lawn and led to a broad paved area to the right of the garage. There, five other cars were already parked.
Shiner parked beside a Jeep that had a Confederate flag on its radio antenna.
She took hold of Jeremy’s hand as they walked toward the veranda. Her hand felt moist.
She really is nervous about this, Jeremy realized. Why? What does she think might happen?
At the top of the stairs they stopped in front of twin oak doors. Jeremy pushed the doorbell button. From inside came the sound of chimes playing a few bars of “My Old Kentucky Home.”
“Are they southerners?” Jeremy asked.
“Who knows? Tanya isn’t. She grew up here.”
The door on the right swung open.
“Howdy there, Duke, Shiner.” Cowboy clapped him on the shoulder. “Long time no see, pardner.” The whole right side of his head looked like one huge bandage with a big hump where his ear must be. He wore his old battered Stetson. There were a few bandages on his arms, and Jeremy could see others through the thin white fabric of his T-shirt.
“Come on in, folks. Join the party.” As they followed him across the foyer, he said, “I hear you aced a troll last night. Fuckin’-A, and I missed it.”
“How are you feeling?” Shiner asked him.
“Like the old lady that bit the hatchet.”
He led them down a stairc
ase into a huge carpeted room with furniture along the paneled walls, a pool table, and a bar at the far end. All the trollers were there.
Jeremy’s eyes sought out Tanya. He spotted her bending over the pool table, lining up a shot. She was barefoot, wearing white shorts and an oversize shirt with tails so long that they almost covered the shorts. The shirt was a plaid of bright blue and yellow. The way she was bent over, its loose front probably didn’t even touch her body.
Karen, standing beside Nate at the other side of the table, looked as if she might be trying for peeks.
Tanya banked the eight ball into a corner pocket and punched her fist into the air. Nate shook his head. Apparently the shot had just won the game for Tanya.
Randy, at a corner of the table, waved a greeting toward Jeremy and Shiner.
Tanya set her cue stick on the table, turned around, and smiled. “Glad you made it,” she said, coming forward. Jeremy saw the way her shirt moved, and quickly raised his eyes to her face.
Someone patted his rump. He looked over his shoulder and tried to keep his smile as he met Heather’s tiny piglike eyes.
“How’s it hanging, Duke?” she asked.
He shrugged.
Samson, behind her, winked and hoisted a glass full of red liquid.
Liz, off to the side, held a glass with the same stuff in it.
The three of them—Heather, Samson, and Liz—had all been at the bar a minute ago when Jeremy first scanned the room.
Heather bumped soft bulges against Jeremy’s side. “Why don’t you get some punch and join the party?” she said.
“What’s the occasion?” Shiner asked, slipping an arm around Jeremy’s back as if to let Heather know he wasn’t available.
“Let’s just call it a wake,” Tanya said. “A tribute to the ‘good troll.’”
“Only good troll’s a dead one,” Cowboy added. “Shit, I should’ve been there.”
“And I thought I was good at the high dive,” Liz said, hooting out a laugh. “That guy did the best damn triple-back-somersault…”
“He lost points on his entry, though,” Samson said.
“Yeah. I’d only give him an eight.”
Some of them laughed. Shiner didn’t. Neither did Nate.