13 1/2 (9 page)

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Authors: Nevada Barr

BOOK: 13 1/2
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Two teenagers in high-heeled mules, both on cell phones, clattered by the open window. One had the smallest Chihuahua Polly had ever seen. It was pure white, the ghost of dogness, and was being towed on a leash. The little creature stumbled on its two-inch legs, fell, then was dragged up again, as its oblivious mistress chattered on.
“They buy them as accessories, like a purse or a scarf,” Marshall said disgustedly. “Miss,” he called through the window. “Miss.”
The girl turned a blank look in their direction.
“Your dog,” Marshall said to her. “Would it like a drink of water? The poor little guy looks pretty tired.”
The girl shook her head and, still talking on the phone, picked the Chihuahua up and tucked it under her arm.
Polly hadn’t been raised to respect life or practice kindness. When she’d escaped Prentiss, all she’d known was she hated cruelty. In the intervening years she’d been both cruel and kind and, like Sidney Poitier in
A Patch of Blue,
come to believe tolerance was the greatest human virtue.
“You are a good man,” she said.
“A virtual god to dogs,” Marshall mocked himself. “An old girlfriend of mine—the one I get credit for almost marrying—used to have a white Chihuahua, Tippity.” His lips closed tightly on the dog’s name as if he wished he’d never mentioned it.
“Did it die?” Polly asked impulsively.
For a minute, she didn’t think he was going to answer. Before the ease of their camaraderie could leak away, he began to speak. “I was renovating a shotgun near Magazine. The place was more or less just a shell. Danny and I had a falling out, and I was camping there. Occasionally, Elaine and her dog would stay over. One Friday Danny brought us a bottle of champagne as a peace offering. Our argument had been over Elaine. It wasn’t that he didn’t like her, so much as he didn’t like the fact of her, if you know what I mean.”
Polly hadn’t the foggiest idea what he meant, but she nodded. She hadn’t wanted to know this much about somebody else’s dog, but Marshall seemed to need to tell the story. Though she’d dragged it out of him, he now spoke as if he had to tell it beginning to end, all the words in the proper order.
“So, anyway, the champagne. When we woke up in the morning Tippity was missing. Elaine flipped out; I flipped out. She finally went to work. To make a long story shorter, I found the dog in the freezer. Evidently, Elaine had gotten up during the night for ice cream, or whatever, and opened it. The freezer was the drawer kind at the bottom of the refrigerator, and Tippity had jumped in. When I got to her, she’d about run out of time.”
“Time! Oh, my Lord!” Polly exclaimed. “The time! I forgot my children!” Caught up in Marshall, she had put all thought of Emma and Gracie from her mind. Maternal guilt had her reaching for purse and cell phone before she’d removed the napkin from her lap.
Immediately, Marshall was out of his chair signaling the waitress.
“It’s okay,” Polly said, as she held the phone to her ear. “I didn’t leave them wandering around the Ninth Ward or anything of the kind. A friend is watching them for me. But that dear friend is eighty years old and would probably like to go to bed soon.”
“Let me walk you to your car,” Marshall said, as he threw enough money on the table to cover the bill and the tip twice over.
Polly had been so absorbed by the company of a handsome man that she had forgotten the children. For a mother, that was terrible; for a woman, it was marvelous.
10
Idly, Red shuffled the oversized deck and watched Mr. Marchand talking with the blonde. She knew him—maybe better than anybody but his brother, Danny. Mr. Marchand was why she’d become the Woman in Red: to be near him. And to make a few bucks. Tarot reading on Jackson Square paid pretty well, or had until Katrina. Posthurricane, tourists didn’t seem as interested in getting their cards read. Maybe they figured if there was anything to it, of the thirty or so fortune-tellers on the square, at least one might have mentioned that the levees were going to break. Nobody’d seen it coming. Red hadn’t seen it coming. Though, afterward, she did remember the cards had been running dark most of that August.
Red knew the blonde, too. Not by name and not to talk to. But she knew her by sight. Blondie was a regular. Came about once a month. After getting her cards read, she’d sit in the park with a book, or sometimes just watch the people going by. This wasn’t the first time a man had come up to her, but this was the first time she’d ever given anybody the time of day.
Jason had done the blonde’s reading today. With his phony English accent and swarthy pirate looks, he grabbed up a lot of the business. “Hey Jason,” she hissed across the space separating their setups. “What was in the cards for blondie tonight?”
“Her name’s Polly. Pollyanna. Good name. Old-fashioned and sweet.”
“Yeah, yeah. Anything interesting in the cards?”
Jason cocked an eyebrow as thick and mobile as a caterpillar. Red believed in the tarot. Jason didn’t believe in anything. She wondered if he was going to rag her about it. He chose not to, and she was relieved.
“Let’s see.” He fingered a chin so dark with stubble Red half-imagined she could hear the rasp of his fingernails being filed down. “I did the Celtic Cross. The Knight of Swords was in the sixth.”
Daring, brave, handsome, unstable man, Mr. Marchand.
“What else?”
“I don’t memorize this crap,” Jason said amiably.
“What else? Come on, don’t be an asshole.”
“The Devil card was in the top of the ninth.” Even in the dusky light she could see the twinkle in his eyes. She wondered if he was bullshitting her.
The ninth card represented things that came out of nowhere. The Devil coming out of nowhere was no joke. Not with Mr. Marchand in the mix. “No kidding?” She sounded plaintive, like a beggar. She said it again, better. “No kidding?”
Jason waved a dismissal. “Would I kid about the Devil?” he asked, as he turned to smile on a couple of rubes down from Mississippi or Montana.
Mr. Marchand’s blonde, Polly, stood up, and they walked away together. Red whistled softly through her teeth. Ninety-nine point nine percent of the time, watching Mr. Marchand was a major snooze. He didn’t do much of anything that she could tell. Just worked, and worked, and went home, and worked some more.
At the gate on the garden’s east side, the two of them turned right. Mr. Marchand’s head was bent to catch what Polly was saying, a smile—a rare thing with him—playing around his mouth.
Red pushed down on the table to heave herself from her chair. Her hands were pressed flat, fingers, fat at the base, pointed where the acrylic nails had been filed too sharp, splayed out like starfish arms. For an instant, she didn’t recognize them. Her hands were slender, the skin smooth and white. These fat, spotty, wrinkled things revolted her.
Mostly, she never thought of who she used to be, but the alien hands made her remember. A wave of self-pity washed over her; if she’d had a cyanide tooth, she’d’ve bitten down on it.
Second best,
she thought, and fished a silver flask from one of the plastic Wal-Mart bags that served as purse and office.
Bag lady
, she thought as she took a swig.
Two steps from being a fucking bag lady.
The silver flask made her feel a little better, not just the hit of Jack Daniels, but the flask itself. It probably wasn’t real silver or even an antique—she’d gotten it for four dollars at the French Market, and there was a dent in it. But if she didn’t think about that, she could pretend it was like she was taking a tipple, like an English lady on a foxhunt maybe, a little snort to keep off the chill.
“Hey, Em. Emily,” she called, as she delicately wiped the mouth of the flask on her sleeve and screwed the cap back on. “Will you watch my setup for a few minutes? I got to pee.”
Emily wasn’t a friend exactly, but they’d set up next to each other in the same place for years and got along okay. Maybe that was friendship. Who could tell anymore?
“Go ahead. We’re here for the late shift.” “We” meant Emily and her best friend, Bony, an old wiener dog so crippled it had a little cart like a person’s wheelchair that carried its rear end around. Bony spent his days on Em’s lap. Em lifted Bony’s paw and waved bye-bye.
Red took the zippered makeup bag she kept her money in from the sack beneath her chair and stuffed it down the front of her shift until it wedged against the band of her bra. If somebody made off with the rest of the stuff, it was mostly crap anyway.
For a big woman, she moved gracefully. She was proud of that. One time, when she was a lot younger, she’d gotten the bug to take ballet. She’d done real good until she’d run out of money.
Well, what had happened was she’d had a few too many before she went to class, and the bitch who taught it got huffy, and that was that. She’d been going to quit anyway. Too expensive.
Dusk had slid a couple more notches toward night. Hurrying across the garden, she wasn’t worried that Mr. Marchand or his lady friend would turn and see her. Most people didn’t see her anymore. Sometimes it made her feel bad. More often than not, it came in handy.
They hadn’t gone far, just into the River’s Edge Restaurant on the corner. They were seated at a candlelit table by one of the windows.
Red settled herself on an iron bench on the brick walkway. It was like she was in a dark theater, and they were the movie on screen, except she couldn’t hear what they were saying. She pulled out the silver flask. That never went into the bags unless she was right there with them; it lived in a pocket, and if her gown didn’t have a pocket for it, she got that iron-on stuff and made one. A girl needed the essentials.
Red had never seen Mr. Marchand like he was tonight. Narrowing her eyes against the booze, she tried to figure out if it was the candlelight or what. He looked like he’d lost a couple decades. Red took another little snort to help her concentrate and cocked her head to one side.
Not just younger. “Fuck,” she whispered. She’d hit on it. Once the thought came to her there was no doubt about it.
Mr. Marchand looked happy. It had taken her so long because she’d never seen him happy before. Not like she’d ever thought about it; she had better things to do than sit around wondering if he was happy or not. But seeing it she knew he hadn’t been like that until now. He didn’t yuk it up like some guys might, or grin, or anything. It was in his strange, quiet way. He sort of glowed happy, like babies when they’re asleep and fed.
Miss Pollyanna was doing it. He glowed at her. Or maybe reflected the light coming off of her because she was a natural glow-er. Red didn’t know quite what she meant by that but it was true. The Polly woman had that inner thing going that can’t be painted on or faked.
Ms. Polly-the-blonde-charmer didn’t know what she was getting into.
Man, was she going to have something to talk about tonight. This was big! Red laughed and tipped the flask again.
“Fuck.” It was empty. She tossed it toward the garbage can on the corner, remembered it wasn’t a beer can, and hurried to retrieve it before some junky or drunk got it.
Sydney’s was down North Peters a couple of blocks. The store carried booze, and chips, and cigarettes. It’d take her probably five minutes, ten at the outside, to go and resupply. For a minute, she stood wondering if she dared. If they got away, it could go bad for her.
Polly laughed, and Mr. Marchand reached out as if he was going to touch her hand. They weren’t going anywhere for a while, not unless it was to somebody’s room, and Red doubted blondie was the type. She knew for a fact Mr. Marchand wasn’t.
Comforted by that thought, she deserted her post in search of refreshments. She wasn’t away long, she was sure of that, but when she got back they were gone. A waitress was wiping down the table.
“Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me,” she whispered as she turned around in a full circle peering through the gathering darkness, the glittering lights, and the gabbling tourists. A teenager laughed. With instinct born of experience, Red knew it was at her. Once it would have hurt her feelings; now she barely registered it.
“Shit, shit, shit,” she murmured. A mule-drawn carriage pulled away from the curb where they lined up waiting for fares and she saw them on the far side of the North Peters: Polly’s hair, the color of the moon under the streetlights; Mr. Marchand’s dark suit, a shadow between her and the traffic.
Red trotted to catch up. Years and pounds had built up around her middle, and before she’d made it fifty feet she was gasping for breath, sweat running between her breasts, but she didn’t give up. They walked for what seemed like miles but was only five blocks before they finally stopped on Decatur.
There weren’t as many tourists here as on the square. Red fought to quiet her breathing. If she kept on huffing like a hyperventilating rhino, everybody was going to look at her. Mr. Marchand took the blonde’s keys, opened the driver’s door of a silver Volvo, held it as she got in, then handed her keys back. Polly was laughing, and he looked like he didn’t know what to do.
He didn’t know what to do—that’s why he was acting like some asshole out of a Fred Astaire movie. He didn’t know people didn’t do that crap anymore; they just hooked up, and screwed, and moved on. Mr. Marchand was so stupid he was still doing the whole gentlemen-prefer-blondes routine.

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