“You gonna call me tonight?” she said.
“Absolutely. I’ve just got to teach this last class and then get my grades together.”
“When we gonna go over to your house? I want to see your place.”
“I don’t know…like I said, it’s dirty and needs to be cleaned up…maybe in a day or two…”
“You don’t want me over at your house,” she said, all pouty suddenly, and she somehow managed to look abused. “What, I ain’t good enough to bring home?”
“I just want to clean it up first,” he said.
She drew back. She looked at her nails. They were white and glossy and short.
“Well, okay. You better call me.”
“I will.”
“Maybe we could go out to eat.”
“Maybe we could.”
“Don’t you be flirtin’ with none of them little old skank gals in your class, you hear me?”
“I won’t.”
“’Cause ain’t none of them little gals got any stuff near as good as what I got for you.”
“I know that’s right.”
“Well. Long as you know.”
“I do. Believe me, baby, I do.”
“Why? You done screwed some of that little bony ass with that big old thang? I bet they done some yellin’.”
“Hell no.”
She turned her chin up sideways a little.
“Baby. Come on. They didn’t do no yellin’?”
“I mean no I didn’t…”
She laughed at his reddening face with her pretty teeth white as ivory, her rich voice deep, her cheek in a strong brown curve. She chucked him under the chin with her fist, softly. She kept looking at him from up under her eyelashes. Girls knew how to do stuff to you. Boy did they. This one was melting him like Silly Putty on a hot day.
“I’m just playin’ with you, baby.”
“I know it. I like you to play with me. You can play with me all you want to.”
“I plan to. Tonight.”
He stepped back and she shut the door and pulled off. He watched her circle through the parking lot and go down the hill and stop at the highway, then heard her toot the horn before she headed back.
Merlot got in and drove fast, back to Oxford and the campus. It was early in the afternoon and a lot of students had already left for the Christmas break, so there wasn’t any problem finding a parking slot near Bishop Hall. He stopped by his office and got all his notes. He hurried upstairs and picked up his grade sheets in the English department office and then almost never got out of there for people wanting to talk about his carjacking, even some people who worked in offices down the hall, and he had to tell it three or four times but he finally said he had to get to class and they understood and finally let him go but told him they wanted to get together for a drink or two sometime in the near future and hear the whole story and he said okay and walked down the hall to the classroom but nobody was there. That was good because he didn’t have his class together. So much had gone on in the last couple days. He’d been smoking all that dope and they’d made a bunch of love, about nine times. All he was going to do anyway was give a summary of the semester, and he could do that off the top of his head. He sat there going over the notes he’d made over the semester but none of the students started drifting in. Then two did. By the time he’d been sitting there for ten minutes, he realized that was probably all he could expect, so he launched into a discussion about the things they’d read, kind of an overview, and he could tell that they were just as ready to get out of there as he was, and had already had about all they could stand for one semester, just like him, so he cut it short and let them go real early. They asked if he was okay because they’d seen the paper and he said he was and wished them a merry Christmas and they left.
After class he hustled over to the grill, through the dead brown leaves that were blowing across the campus in the chilly wind, and picked up a cup of coffee and a club sandwich and then went back to his overheated office and spread all his papers out on his desk and ate his sandwich and drank the coffee until it got cold, and worked up his grades. He signed all the papers and filled in all the little boxes and then took them back up to the English department office, which had closed by then, but he had everything in a manila envelope with his name on it and he just crammed it in under the door.
After that he drove around for a while. He didn’t know what to do. He wasn’t ready to tell her about Candy yet. Maybe they ought to just take on off, just go ahead and go. Maybe he could tell her in Natchez.
He circled the square in Oxford. The city electric department had hung wreaths on all the light poles and all the stores had Christmas decorations out. There was Christmas music playing on loudspeakers mounted in front of city hall. People were out shopping. Some were carrying bright gift-wrapped packages. A shitload of people were in the bookstore. Neilson’s had people going in and out. He thought about going by City Grocery and having a drink, because he knew that some of his colleagues from the English department would probably be in there, celebrating the end of another semester, but he knew if he got in there he’d probably catch a buzz and stay too long, and he wanted more than anything first to check on Candy. So he went by his house.
Mrs. Poteet met him at the door. A natural redhead, her now-raven hair was piled high and she was wearing a tight red dress with sequins and a daring slit up the side. She gave him a fierce hug with her bony freckled arms.
“Hey, Marla. How is she?” he said.
“She’s asleep,” she said, patting him on the back. “I’m so glad you’re all right. It was in the paper.”
“That’s what I heard.”
Merlot walked down the hall and into the room. Candy was lying on her bed and she was asleep. Her ribs were rising and falling slightly with her breath. She hadn’t shit in the bed. He thought about the first time she’d slipped into the bed with him, and how he hadn’t told his mother about it, until the morning she’d walked in and caught them together. But she never had said anything. He guessed she’d always known that they’d one day wind up sleeping together. But they didn’t now. She’d gotten too old for that.
He didn’t wake her to tell her good-bye. She looked peaceful. What if she died while he was gone? He went into his bedroom and packed some clothes and underwear and socks, another pair of boots, got his toothbrush and toothpaste and his shaving gear from the bathroom, then went to the kitchen for some cash from under the cookie jar.
“I guess I’m going off for a few days,” he said to Mrs. Poteet. She was sitting on the kitchen counter having a glass of red wine. She had the stereo going and was listening to C. J. Chenier doing “Bad Feet.” “You got enough wine to last you?”
“We’re good,” she said. “A bunch of people called over here today wanting to talk to you. They all saw that thing in the paper. Was it horrible?”
“It was horrible enough,” Merlot said. “Hell, I might as well have a glass with you, Marla. I’m not in that big a hurry.”
“Please do,” Mrs. Poteet said, and got him a glass from the cabinet without getting down. She poured him a full one and then lit a thin cigarillo. She had crossed one leg over the other in the tight dress. In her prime she’d been a stripper named Louisiana Red. Now she was about eighty years old, but still evidently pretty hot. She had more than one boyfriend now that she was a widow, and once, after attending a poetry seminar in St. Petersburg, Merlot’d found three empty condom packets in the bathroom garbage can. And had chuckled looking at them.
He leaned against the counter, close to her, and sipped his wine.
“I met somebody,” he said.
Mrs. Poteet’s eyes watered and filled almost up with tears but didn’t brim over until she lowered her face and shook her head, slinging a few of them on Merlot’s leg.
“Oh! I am so glad,” she said.
“I’ll bring her over sometime. She’s got to meet Candy.”
“Well, maybe you shouldn’t wait too long.
”
“How’s she been lately?”
Mrs. Poteet lifted her glass and sipped, then lowered it and held it with one hand. She rubbed the ash from her cigarillo on the edge of the ashtray.
“Every day’s about the same. I don’t think even she wants to live much longer. You could always call Dr. Dees. He’s got that painless steel.”
“Yeah, that’s true,” Merlot said. It was an old discussion.
The clock ticked. The television was playing low up front. A car went down the street outside. He hoped it wouldn’t snow anymore.
“What’s her name?” Mrs. Poteet said.
“Penelope. She’s a cop.”
“That’s such a lovely name. Are you falling in love with her, Merlot?”
He took a big drink of his wine.
“Shit. I think maybe I already have.”
He set his glass down and went to the phone on the wall.
“I’ll be gone a few days probably. I’ll call you and give you my number once I get somewhere. I think we’re going to Texado in Natchez if we can get in. I’m gonna call them. Probably stop somewhere tonight. But you’ve got my cell phone, too.”
“Yes I do. Well then. I might have a couple people over tonight if that’s okay. I’ve got a few friends who are just dying to watch Dancing Outlaw and I told them you had Vernon, Florida, too, so we might just get into an orgy of video watching tonight.” She gave him a look. “And maybe some other things, too.”
“You go for it, girl. Buy some more wine if you need it. If you need any money, it’s right there under the cookie jar.”
“I know where it’s at. I don’t need anything,” Mrs. Poteet said, lifting her glass.
“You want to get stoned? You want a couple of joints?”
A smiled leaped on her face and she leaned forward eagerly.
“Why, Merlot, have you got some?”
He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out two and put them in her hand. She stared at them and he grinned when she dropped her jaw.
“This stuff does the trick.”
“Coo-ool,” she said. “I know just who to call.”
He called information and got the number for Texado and a nice lady answered and they exchanged a few pleasantries and he found out that they could get in tomorrow night, preferably before six P.M. if they wanted dinner. He said that was cool and thanked the lady and told her ’bye and called Penelope and told her to start getting ready. On the way out, he squatted down and got a few CDs from the rack in the living room and told Mrs. Poteet ’bye and drove on down to Penelope’s house, stopping on the way for some rubbers at a Texaco station just off 315 that sold hot gizzards and cold minnows. She wasn’t ready and he had to sit on her bed and wait for her to pack her clothes and her gun, and he didn’t understand why she was taking it, but he didn’t say anything, and when she finally got ready, they took off from her house in the Four-Runner happily still burning the deadbeat’s gas. He sped driving over to Tupelo and they got on the Trace there. Merlot said it would make for a longer, more scenic ride if they got on it there instead of down close to Columbus. He drove while she sightsaw but it was starting to get dark. They saw a few groups of deer but he guessed the turkeys had already roosted. There were some pretty creeks beside the road, where the water ran over rocks and trickled through trees. It was nice to be able to drive at a leisurely pace and not have all those monster trucks breathing down your neck. Why did they sometimes creep up close behind you and start blowing their horns and scaring the shit out of you on downhill grades in the steep, curvy mountains of the Pisgah National Forest in North Carolina? He still didn’t know if she would understand about Candy. He’d made a very short call on her phone while she was in the shower and Mrs. Poteet said that Candy was awake now and fine but missing him.
“You know,” she said, leaning on his shoulder for a while. “I just love going where I’ve never been.”
She loved food the same way he did. She wouldn’t make a peep while you were trying to watch a movie but would bring peanuts and pretzels and chips and dip and wine and frigid beer noiselessly. She knew all about baseball and played on the police league fast-pitch softball team in the summers, and pitched. Merlot was already thinking up names for the kids. They’d name one KuShondra, another Raymond, maybe a Herman.
They spent the first night in a perfect house off the beaten path, a place they found by just getting off the Trace close to Starkville and cruising over to Columbus and driving around in the city until they saw a friendly-looking police officer taking a smoke break on a bench and stopped and asked him about a place to stay. His name was Calvin and he said there was a great bed-and-breakfast called White Arches just up the street and told them what street and exactly how to get there and told them to just knock since it was so early and the old lady who ran it would come to the door. And he was exactly right. There was a huge old brown house with a wide brick walk and white trim around the windows and a deep front porch where wicker rocking chairs were set up and the porch ceiling was high and lined with bead board and the front doors were tall and very thick with leaded glass panels and brass latch plates and knobs and there were giant magnolias in the yard and even a small lighted goldfish pond with curved stone benches where you could sit and read a book if you wanted to, the old lady said, except that it had gotten too dark to read by then. There were some woods up behind the house, owls in the woods, she said gaily, told them they might hear them hoot hoot hooting!
The old white-haired lady was tiny and bent over slightly with a small hump in the middle of her back but she welcomed them in, babbling like she was on Ecstasy, and said she had a room or three ready and that if they would like to drink some wine and nibble on some Brie and shrimp and give her an hour or so, she could have the maid fix up some dinner for them. The room was upstairs and Merlot and Penelope carried their stuff up into the bedroom, which was full of antiques, and it had a high four-poster bed with a canopy and a dark-green velvet drape. There was a pair of French doors that opened onto a short balcony. The ornate wallpaper was slightly torn in a few places, but a delicate bedside table held a bottle of red wine, a bowl of fruit, two glasses, and a corkscrew. The maid, in a crisp uniform and a starched cap, knocked and then entered with a tray holding a warmed wedge of the cheese and a knife and an array of crackers on napkins and a small bowl of peeled pink shrimp alongside a bowl of cocktail sauce and another one of lemon wedges and a bottle of green Tabasco. She set it down on the coffee table and went back out butt first with a little bow.