Deaths of Jocasta (27 page)

I was disappointed in Bernie. I didn’t think she’d chicken out.

“But can I ask anyway?” she restored my faith.

“Ask away,” I said, leaning in toward her.

“Are you…have you really slept with a woman?” she whispered conspiratorially.

“Oh, sure. Hasn’t everyone?” I replied nonchalantly. My answer flustered Bernie.

“Uh…well…no,” she responded.

“You’re young. Don’t worry about it.”

“You’re joking, aren’t you?”

“No.”

“But, Micky, you don’t look like…?”

“Be wary of stereotypes, Bernie, baby,” I chided.

“But…what do two,” she leaned toward me and lowered her voice even more, “women do with each other?”

I stifled my first reaction, which was to burst out laughing. You, too, were once naïve, I told myself. A very long time ago. Instead I looked at Bernie, watching the blush that slowly started in my silence. When her cheeks were a pleasing rose shade, I finally replied, “Have a hell of a lot of fun. That’s what two women do when they sleep together. If you want to find out, I could—”

A throat cleared loudly behind me.

“Bernie,” Cordelia said, “I want Mrs. Ludlow’s file.”

“Right away,” Bernie replied, jumping up to get it.

Sister Ann appeared on my other side.

“Cordelia,” she said, “Here is the final statement. I thought you might like to give it a last look before I release it.”

Cordelia took the piece of paper from Sister Ann and started reading it.

“Quite a display out in the parking lot, Ms. Knight,” Sister Ann remarked dryly to me while Cordelia read. “I did manage to convince Sister Fatima that one of you was male. Don’t ask me which one.”

“Here. Thanks. It’s fine,” Cordelia said, handing the statement back to Sister Ann. She busied herself with a file she picked off of Bernie’s desk. As soon as Sister Ann was out of earshot, she said in an undertone, “My office. Wait in there.” Then she spun away, taking the file out of Bernie’s hand without a word, and strode back down the hallway.

“To the principal’s office,” I muttered. I picked up the books Alex had given me.

Elly gave me a quizzical look as I passed her in the hallway.

“Pick up the pieces,” I acerbically commented as I let myself in Cordelia’s office. I did not like her assumption that she had a right to order me around. Even if she was paying me.

Cordelia kept me waiting half an hour.

After shutting the door, she sat down heavily, then said, “‘Scene in the parking lot’? I’d like an explanation.”

“We were putting the fear of the devil into those self-righteous bigots.”

“How?” she demanded.

“Nothing Sister Ann wouldn’t let two sixteen-year-olds do at the prom.”

“Depending on their sex,” Cordelia corrected. “So you and Joanne were in the parking lot making out.”

“Not Joanne,” I replied. “She has better sense than that.” Particularly with O’Connor lurking about.

“Who?”

“Alex,” I answered.

“Alex? That’s not funny,” she retorted icily.

“It’s not meant to be. Here, she asked me to return these books to you.” I put them on Cordelia’s desk.

She looked at the books, then at me, then back at the books.

“Was it really Alex?” she finally asked.

I nodded.

“So you’re sleeping with Joanne behind Alex’s back and Alex behind Joanne’s? Dammit, can’t you keep your pants zipped?”

I looked down at my zipper.

“It seems possible,” I retorted. I was getting annoyed at Cordelia. Whatever our relationship was, she had overstepped the bounds of it as far as I was concerned. She had no business telling me who I could or couldn’t sleep with. With the exception of herself.

We glared at each other across her desk. “Besides,” I continued, “I’m not sleeping with Alex and she knows about me and Joanne.”

“She hasn’t seen Joanne yet.”

“We talked,” I explained.

“You…I thought Joanne was going to. Couldn’t you keep your mouth shut?”

“Of course not. Mouth and pants open all the time. I saw Alex in the parking lot and I just had to yell, ‘Hey, you know I’m fucking Joanne, don’t you?’”

Cordelia’s jaw tensed. I would not win any diplomatic awards today.

“Keep your voice down,” she said in a harsh whisper. “And another thing,” she continued angrily, “keep your hands off my nineteen-year-old secretary.”

“What?”

“I heard you proposition her—”

“I was not propositioning her,” I interrupted.

“Then what were you doing?”

“Answering her questions.”

“Oh, please, how naïve do you think I am?”

“I don’t think you’re naïve. I think you’re being an overbearing moralist. If you weren’t a dyke, you’d be out on the picket line where you belong.”

Cordelia almost jerked out of her chair, her eyes changing to a chill blue. She sat still for a moment, before replying, biting off her words, “I prefer to consider what I’m doing and think about the consequences before I act. If that makes me an overbearing moralist, so be it. Rather that, than following my vagina wherever it leads.”

“Better than leaving it behind. Not by your standards, perhaps, but I am an adult, Joanne and Alex are adults, and we can run our lives without your interference. And I can most certainly keep my hands off nineteen-year-old virgins. I don’t need your lectures about standards. If I want to fuck Alex, and Joanne, and Bernie, and a dozen other women, it’s none of your business.”

“Haven’t you already? Certainly Joanne, Alex, and the dozen other women. Probably in the last month.”

“No, the last week. Two a night. Sundays off. That was how Alex found out. She bumped into Joanne coming out of my bedroom.”

“Does anything stop you? Don’t you have any standards.”

I tensed, furious at her arrogance. “Not a single one. There’s nothing I won’t do. Want a list?” I shot back acidly.

“I don’t care to know.”

I stood up and leaned across her desk. “Not sanitary enough for you? Below your standards? Keep your sex in cheap novels?”

“Please leave,” she said, not looking at me.

I strode around the desk, grabbed the arms of her chair, and spun her around to face me.

“Sex with women, sex with men, sometimes, I was too drunk to tell. I can’t remember half the people I’ve slept with. Hell, by the time I was nineteen, I’d probably fucked more women than you ever will. Sex for the hell of it, sex for money, you name it. Ever been tied up, Dr. James?” I shook her chair, making her look at me.

“Get out, Micky. I mean it.” She glared at me this time.

It was a command that she expected to be obeyed. She sat in her chair, staring at me, challenging me to back down. Magnificently powerful, I thought, looking into her blazing blue eyes. I resented her for it. No one had ever told her she couldn’t be strong. Or proved indelibly how shifting control and strength were. Like Bayard had for me.

Cordelia sat before me, in her assumed omnipotence.

I knelt down in front of her, then ran my hand under her skirt.

“Come on, Dr. James. You can fuck me. You hired me. Isn’t that what you really wanted?”

I started to push her skirt up with my other hand, bending my face toward her lap.

She grabbed my hair and jerked my head back.

“Stop it! I don’t buy sex.”

For a moment, we hung there, my hands on her thighs, her fingers in my hair, staring at each other across some vast distance. Then her fingers loosened in my hair, and she took my face between her hands. She pulled me to her and kissed me. It lasted only a moment, then she wrenched herself away, pushing me back and turning her chair aside. I had to catch myself with my palms to keep from falling back.

“Please leave, Micky,” she said, no longer commanding. For one brief second, she hadn’t been in control. “Please,” she repeated.

I stood, brushed off my knees, and without saying anything, let myself out of her office.

Mercifully, Bernie was on the phone, so I didn’t have to banter with her. I left the clinic, walking out the rear door. I sat on the back steps, staring at the lush summer green of the overgrown back lot. The buzzing of bees carried through the still, sultry air.

Why had I done that I wondered? Flaunted my…past in front of a woman who could only feel contempt for what I was. I had guaranteed her disapproval, perhaps disgust.

That makes it safe, doesn’t it, I suddenly thought. It makes it impossible for her to love me. Like I had made it impossible for Danny to love me. I had gotten what I’d really wanted. I didn’t like the thought. Maybe I’m just protecting myself by not imagining possibilities that will never come true. We’d been together one night. For a lot of reasons, none of which had anything to do with her wanting to spend the rest of her life with me.

I heard the door open behind me.

“Where do you want the pieces?” Elly said, sitting beside me on the stairs.

“Oh, hi, Elly. I’m okay. You can go eat your sandwich where it’s cool.”

“Want a bite?”

“No, thanks. I’m fine.”

“What happened? I don’t think I’ve ever seen Cordelia so flustered.”

“We discussed my moral standards. Or lack of them. That would probably fluster anyone.”

“What business is it of hers?”

“She thought I was propositioning Bernie.” I conveniently left out Joanne.

“Were you?”

“No, of course not. Well, maybe mild flirting. She was asking me about being a lesbian. And I was answering her questions. In my usual style.”

“That’s what got Cordelia so upset?”

“I guess,” I hedged. “Maybe it was the manner in which I answered some of her questions. Besides, it’s hard to believe I’m an innocent once you’ve heard the Danny Clayton version of my life story. Sorry, Elly,” I caught myself.

“It’s okay,” she replied equitably.

“I guess you’ve heard the Danny Clayton version, too,” I said sheepishly.

“At length.”

“Oh…well.” I shrugged my shoulders.

“I’ve always wondered what the Micky Knight version is,” she said. “There are usually two sides to any story.”

“Only one true.”

“Which?”

I looked at Elly, wondering what she wanted from me.

“I suppose Danny’s told you I gratuitously slept around on her, making a point of rubbing her face in it? That if she tried to talk to me I was a sarcastic bitch?”

“Not quite those words.”

“If that’s what Danny told you, she was being polite. I made sure she regretted ever thinking she was in love with me. I gave new meaning to the word ‘despicable.’”

“Why? Not that I’m not grateful, mind you.”

“Grateful?” I asked.

“If you had stayed with Danny I wouldn’t be with her now.”

“Danny and I would have broken up at any rate. I just made sure we did it at my convenience. Don’t be grateful to me.”

“Why?” she asked again.

“Why not?” I countered. Then immediately, “I don’t know. I really don’t.” Because Danny had said she loved me and I knew that couldn’t be true.

“If you don’t want to tell me, I won’t press.”

“What are you going to tell Danny?”

“Nothing. This conversation is between us.”

“I don’t know,” I still hedged. “I…can’t explain.” I couldn’t.

Elly glanced at her watch. “Well, back to the zoo.” She got up.

“Sorry, Elly,” I said.

“For what?”

“Just…I don’t know.” Then, to change the mood, “I left Danny because I knew someone like you would show up someday and I didn’t think she’d have enough sense to dump me when the right woman arrived. Now get back to work before Cordelia thinks I’m propositioning you.”

“I doubt that,” Elly replied. She put her hand on my shoulder and gave it a friendly squeeze.

“Elly,” I called her back. “Do you remember any of the women—the murdered women? Beverly Sue Morris? Alice Janice Tresoe?” Then I added, “Vicky Williams?”

Elly looked at me. “The woman in the woods? Why do you think she’s connected?”

“A botched abortion and she gets dumped at a party Cordelia’s going to. It’s hard not to connect it.”

“True.” Then Elly was silent.

“Do you remember any of the women?” I asked again.

“Yeah, I do,” Elly said slowly. “Alice. I remember her looking at me and saying, ‘I can’t be pregnant again, can I?’ She had three kids already.”

“Was she pregnant?”

“Yes. She decided to have an abortion.”

“When?” I asked.

“On the day she died,” Elly answered.

“Thanks, Elly,” I said softly.

She nodded and then went back into the building.

I sat where I was for several minutes, then finally noticed that I was hungry. I walked across the yard, around the truncated wrought iron fence and headed for a grocery I had seen on the avenue.