Deaths of Jocasta (3 page)

Another woman I’d let slip by me, with regret coming much too late. Danny and Elly were in the process of buying the house they had been renting.

Then Elly hugged me, her slight and slender frame replacing Danny’s broad-shouldered sturdiness. I had always felt a little awkward around Elly. Probably because she knows a good deal more about me than I do about her, including possibly (knowing Danny, quite probably), what I do in bed. At least what I did the summer Danny and I were lovers.

“I’ll show you where you’re staying,” I said, snagging their suitcase.

“How did you manage to get invited out here?” Danny asked as I led them to their cottage.

“It’s a long story, dear Danno,” I replied.

“Which you have to get very drunk to tell, I presume,” she answered.

“That’s the swimming pond over there,” I said, playing tour guide. “You can see a bit of the gazebo behind the oak tree beyond it.”

“I can’t wait to walk around here tomorrow,” Elly said. “Do you know how big the place is?”

“Around two hundred acres, total,” I answered, “but most of it’s forest. There are a number of hiking trails, so you can, if you want, walk your little feet off.”

“You’ve had a busy afternoon,” Danny commented.

“Huh?” was my intellectual response.

“Or did you do research before you came up here?”

“Danny, being a D.A.,” interjected Elly, “wants information. Like how do you know so much about this place after being here only a few hours?”

“Then, Danny, being an assistant D.A., can ask,” I responded.

“Right,” Danny said. “How do you know so much, etc.?”

“I’ve been here before, for one thing. Here’s your cottage,” I said, making a ninety-degree turn, leading them up a walkway to the porch.

All the cottages were different. This one was pale blue with a broad porch complete with authentically creaking porch swing. Off by itself, nestled closely to the woods, it was my favorite. I turned on the porch light.

“This is great,” Elly said.

“I’m impressed,” Danny added as she opened the door and led the way in.

There was a comfortably spacious sitting room with a small kitchenette tucked off at one end and a large red brick fireplace at the other end. Off to one side was a hallway that led to three bedrooms. Joanne and Alex would also be out here.

“Looks like we get our choice,” Danny said from the hallway where she was poking her head into all the bedrooms.

“How about the one with the oak tree outside?” Elly asked. She got their suitcase and put it in the far bedroom.

“Good choice,” I noted.

“Okay,” Danny said from the room. “Where is that…aha!” she muttered to Elly. They came back to the main room, Danny with a bottle of bourbon. “I’m going to make us all drinks and then, dear El Micko, you can enlighten us on how you know so much about this place.”

“Good idea,” Elly agreed. “This has been a hell of a week. I could use a drink.” She went to the kitchenette and started searching for glasses.

“Elly has been having lots of fun with anti-abortionists.”

“Right to life,” she snorted. “Some of them would kill you if you disagree with them.”

“New job?” I asked.

“No, I work part time at Cordelia’s clinic. Cordelia said they’ve had protesters there all week. We’re really just a local clinic in a neighborhood that needs one. You think they’d leave us alone.”

“Better a whole community do without health care, than a single innocent life aborted,” was Danny’s sardonic comment.

Elly took three glasses off a shelf. Danny got an ice tray from the small refrigerator. She cracked it and started putting cubes in the glasses.

“None for me,” I said as Danny was about to put ice in the third glass.

“Would you repeat that? I’m sure I heard it wrong,” Danny said.

“I’m not drinking,” I said. “I’m on duty.”

“‘Duty?’” Danny’s eyebrows shot up.

“Emma hired me to take care of security for this weekend. Hence, no inebriation while I’m protecting the premises,” I circumlocuted. It would do for now.

“Well, that’s nice to know. And I must tell you I feel very secure,” Danny said sarcastically.

“Glad to know that. I aim to keep the guests comfortable.”

“Right. Why do I detect the sound of a bull straining and grunting to drop a big load in the background?” she continued.

“Dan-ny,” Elly chided. “How did you get this job?” she asked me.

“Actually,” Danny broke in, “I’d feel more secure if you were drinking. I’m not sure how to talk to you sober. Maybe that swamp did some brain damage.”

“I have a right not to drink. Particularly your cheap bourbon,” I shot back.

“Cheap never stopped you before.” Danny had some choice memories of my drinking when I was with her.

“Danny, make two drinks, dear,” Elly said.

Sometimes the hardest thing about changing is the people who still expect you to be as you always were. Danny’s most potent recollections of me had to be from college and the summer we lived together. I was a heavy drinker then and proud of it. I thought it proved something. I drank because I knew Aunt Greta wouldn’t approve. I fancied each drink a victory over her.

“And don’t make jokes about that swamp,” Elly continued as Danny made their drinks. “Beowulf lost track at one point and we were almost ready to give up and go off in the wrong direction. If we’d done that, we may never have found you.”

You’d have found me, I started to say. Just not alive. Then I realized that Elly really was concerned. I had been shot in the thigh and forced to hide in a swamp to avoid the men who had shot me. Danny and Elly, along with their hound dog, Beowulf, had helped find me.

“Yeah, Mick,” Danny said, handing Elly her drink, “that swamp was not fun. If you must have gangsters shooting at you, please stay in the city.” But there was a hint of conciliation and apology in her voice. I’d hurt Danny when I’d left her. Occasionally a trace of anger would sneak out. Heavy sarcasm, a strident tone to her voice. I never said anything. I tried, like she did, to pretend it was all part of our usual banter. Then there would be a slight change in her tone and the anger would be gone.

“You think it wasn’t fun? You should have been in my shoes,” I said.

“No, thanks,” Danny and Elly said in unison.

“No way,” Danny continued. “I don’t ever want to see a criminal outside a courtroom.”

“I don’t want to see any at all,” Elly added.

“Look, I agree,” I said. “And from now on I’m taking cream puff jobs like guarding secluded parties with selectively invited guests.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Danny toasted, touching her glass to Elly’s.

“Can we build a fire?” Elly asked.

“That’s what the wood’s for,” I answered.

“Good. You know what I love to do in front of the fireplace,” Danny said as she put an arm around Elly.

“Cook marshmallows?” I asked.

“Of course, that’s what I meant,” Danny murmured from Elly’s neck, which she was now nuzzling.

“Come on, Danny,” Elly said laughingly. “We haven’t seen Micky for a while.”

“Yeah, Mick. What have you been up to lately?” Danny asked, still making progress on Elly’s neck, and, I suspected, not much interested in what I had been doing lately.

“Much as I know you’d love for me to stay and talk, I am a working girl and duty is calling, nay, yelling, screaming for me.”

“Oh, too bad,” Danny muttered, paying no attention to me.

“So long, Micky. We’ll talk tomorrow,” Elly said, not yet totally consumed by lust.

I waved to her (Danny wasn’t looking in my direction) and let myself out. I cut away from the footpath and walked along the border of the woods.

The stars were bright points of ice against the approaching dark of the evening sky. I stood staring at them, a discreet distance from Danny’s and Elly’s lovemaking. I didn’t want to hear Danny’s passion or remember the ways I’d touched her to elicit such cries. I stared instead at the crowded and lonely sky.

I hadn’t seen Danny and Elly in about six weeks. I had said I was busy whenever they called asking me over or out. Letting my leg heal and taking it easy, so no parties or dancing, I elaborated for them. But I knew that Danny and Cordelia were good friends. And that if I saw Danny I would see Cordelia. I didn’t want to be idly hanging around in front of her, intruding on her life. Even that was only partly true. I was too afraid of her unconcern, or worse, polite, distant solicitude.

I turned from the night sky and walked back to the house. Perhaps Joanne and Alex were here by now. I could distract myself by trying not to flirt with Joanne. Or Alex. Danny and Elly had reminded me of my past few months of celibacy.

As I stepped onto the porch, Emma called to me, “Micky, dear, you used to tend bar, didn’t you?”

I nodded yes.

“Disaster. These college kids can handle beer, but they’re not sure what a dry martini is. And there are a few women my age who are members of the martini generation.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” I volunteered

She touched my arm briefly as I passed. I stiffened without thinking, then belatedly smiled. But Emma was hurrying off in the other direction. I headed for the bar.

Aunt Greta’s oldest son, Bayard, had caught me in the street one day shortly after I’d turned eighteen and moved out of their house and into Emma’s. I remembered him standing there blocking my way, a knowing smirk on his face.

“You know what they say about Miss Auerbach?” he said, hitting the Miss with a hard inflection.

I tried to sidestep him.

“You know what she wants from you, don’t you?” he continued.

I started to turn around, but he grabbed my arm.

“She wants to fuck you,” he said, the “fuck” a hissing whisper. “That’s the only reason she’s letting you stay there. Want to put your mouth on her old pussy? Want to fuck an old woman like that?” His voice a close and foul undertone.

“Better her than you,” I yelled, jerking my arm away, causing passersby to look. Then I ran from him, not stopping until I was breathless and on a street I didn’t remember turning onto.

But he had planted something corrupt and contaminated. It wasn’t until after college, after the hold I thought Emma had on me was gone, only after it hadn’t happened and hadn’t happened over and over again, that I could believe it wouldn’t happen. But before time had taught me trust, whenever she put her hand on my arm, as she had just now, I would wonder, is this it?

If Emma had ever had any sexual thoughts about me, she never showed them. I doubted she did. Now. Now I trusted her. Now I knew better. By the time I finally knew she didn’t want sex with me, I had pulled back and stiffened too many times whenever she touched me. At times I wanted so much to apologize for my suspicion, but that would mean admitting to it, framing the words to explain how evil I thought she might have been. To take in a scared high school kid with no other place to go only to…fuck, Bayard’s tainted word.

“An Old-Fashioned?” I heard the barkeep ask. “How about a new-fangled? I’m better at those,” he said with disarming ineptness.

“Want a lesson?” I asked, jerking away from memories to the mundane demands of the present.

“Hi…Oh…Yes, ma’am,” he answered to my presence.

“Micky. Don’t call me ‘ma’am,’” I told him as I pulled the ingredients for an Old-Fashioned.

I proceeded with my Old-Fashioned lesson. I had to send to the kitchen for sugar. A young college girl brought it to me, making sure her hand touched mine as she handed it to me. She was cute, but she still had a little baby fat left in her cheeks, and not a single, solitary gray hair. I would have to steer Rosie in her direction.

The Old-Fashioned was finally done and passed off to the woman who’d had the temerity to ask for it in the first place. She winked and said she’d enjoyed the show.

“What’s your name?” I asked the young cutie.

“Melanie,” she replied in a broad accent.

“And I suppose you’re Ashley,” I said to Inept.

“No, ma’am,” he said straight-faced. “My name’s Rhett, and I don’ know nothin’ ’bout birthin’ no daiquiris.”

“What I have done in the kitchen, I have done,” Rachel announced, as she arrived to lean on the bar. “It’s bourbon time.”

Rhett started to fix her a drink, but she waved him off saying, “I want experience to handle my bourbon.”

I made her the drink. “Here you go,” I said, handing it to her.

“Fix yourself one,” Rachel told me, “and come out from behind that bar.”

“I’m having a good time here,” I replied.

“I’ll bet you are,” Rachel answered. “I know you, Micky Knight, and I wouldn’t even try to budge you from the best cruising spot in the house.”

“I don’t know, Rach, I’m getting old. Hit the big three-oh a few months ago.”

“Honey, you don’t know what old is.”

“‘Gettin’ older, sugar,” I kidded her. “I’m not there yet like you are.”

Rachel shot me a fierce glance. “Fix her a drink,” she told Rhett. “I almost can’t recognize Micky without a Scotch in her hand.”