Deaths of Jocasta (4 page)

It was going to be a long weekend, I could see that. This was not just a party, but a party for people from the party town. Alcohol was a constant.

I decided to cheat. While some brave soul asked Rhett for a drink, I filled a glass with tonic water, adding a slice of lime. No one would tell me to get a drink if I already had one. I edged out from behind the bar, leaving the guests to the tender mercies of Rhett and Melanie. Rachel was getting another bourbon and water.

“Good luck,” I said to her, clicking my glass against the just completed bourbon she was eyeing suspiciously.

“I’ll need it,” she answered, keeping Rhett in suspense.

I left the front room and headed back to the library. Emma was there and in the middle of an argument concerning some obscure area of Baroque music. I didn’t know what they were talking about, let alone have any interest in it. Emma gave me a quick nod, then went back to her debate. As I turned to go, I caught her glance at the drink in my hand. Then she was back in the argument, making a point. I left the room.

I found myself back in the front room, and Rhett was crooking a finger at me. Rachel and Melanie were out of sight, so I figured it was safe.

“Micky, ma’am?” he said as I approached.

“No ma’am,” I admonished.

“Yes, sir,” he replied.

“What do you want, little boy?” I could get away with that since he was on the far side of six feet.

“What’s a kir royale?”

“Champagne and crème de cassis,” I answered and gave him a kir lesson. Then I scooted around from behind the bar. I didn’t want to be there when Melanie came back. Particularly if she’d heard Rachel tell any stories about me.

“Oh, Micky, sir,” Rhett called. “For you.”

He had refilled my glass and was handing it to me.

“I can make a gin and tonic.” He grinned.

“Thanks,” I said, taking the glass from him. There wasn’t much else to do.

I hurried out to the porch. And right into Joanne Ranson. Joanne didn’t get wet, but I was splashed with a significant amount of gin and tonic.

“Micky Knight, in her usual state,” was her only comment. Drunk, but she didn’t say that.

“Hi, Micky,” said Alex, who was coming up the steps behind Joanne. “Oops,” she continued, seeing my stained shirt. “And gin, too, one of the more pungent liquors.”

“I thought you were a Scotch woman,” Joanne said. “When did you start drinking gin?”

“I didn’t start…” I began.

“Never stopped,” Joanne answered. “Go change your shirt, Micky. Gin does reek.” She turned her back to me to help Alex with an overnight bag. I was being dismissed.

I stared at her disapproving back for another moment, then turned on my heel and reentered the house, quickly climbing the stairs to my room.

As I took off my shirt, I maliciously hoped that Joanne and Alex would walk in on Danny and Elly by the fireplace. Then I told myself to grow up. Joanne can be a hard-ass, but she’s been fair to me, and whatever hurt lingers between Danny and me is basically my fault. And Alex and Elly have done nothing whatsoever to deserve my spite.

I was staring at my less than plentiful selection of shirts, when there was a knock on my door.

I absentmindedly said, “Come in.” I was vaguely aware that I had no shirt on, but it had to be another woman entering, probably Rachel or Rosie.

“I’m sorry I sent you to tend bar. It was thoughtless of me,” Emma said as she entered. There was a slight hesitation as she noticed my state of dress, then she continued, “Given what you told me when you arrived.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I answered, trying to be casual. I couldn’t remember Emma ever seeing me like this. I had always been careful in my actions and appearances around her. “I had fun with those college kids.”

“I saw you with a drink. I thought maybe I had…”

“Tonic water, with a lime. It was the only thing I could come up with to stop people from offering me drinks. What shirt should I wear?” I said, still trying to be nonchalant.

“The burgundy, I think. It sets off your eyes.”

“Then Rhett, the college boy bartender, saw my drink was low and made me another one. A real one this time with a generous amount of gin. I was looking for some place to ditch it when I took a wrong turn and ran into someone. Hence the need for a new shirt,” I babbled to cover my awkwardness.

“Micky,” Emma said. She had picked up the burgundy shirt. “I don’t want anything from you that you don’t want to give.”

“I know,” I answered too quickly, cutting her off.

“Why don’t you put on your shirt if it will make you more comfortable?”

“It’s okay, I’m still drying off,” I lied, unwilling to so visibly show my discomfort by hiding my breasts from her.

“What do you think you owe me?” she asked.

“My firstborn child and any cat that can be guaranteed to hit the litter pan one hundred percent of the time,” I answered. She didn’t say anything for a while, making me regret my smart answer. What could I say? I owed her nothing and my life.

“Well,” she said finally, handing me the shirt, “I hope we get a chance to talk sometime this weekend. Maybe you’ll have an answer then.”

“I hope we get to talk,” I replied.

I reached for my shirt. She was careful not to let our fingers touch.

“Well, Rachel is right,” she said as she turned to go. “You do have nice breasts.”

I dropped my shirt. Then quickly bent to pick it up so Emma wouldn’t catch the look on my face. I would have been less surprised if I’d heard a nun say what she had just said.

“Anything you want,” I blurted out, answering her question, not knowing what she could want from me.

“Nothing physical, believe me,” she replied, framed for a moment in the doorway, mistaking my answer. Or perhaps not. Perhaps that’s what I was offering her.

She was gone, closing the door softly behind her.

I stood holding my shirt.

Damn, damn it, I thought as I pulled it on. I left my room, slowly descending the stairs, wondering what other minefields I might yet step in.

I went back out onto the porch, carefully this time, but no one was there. Then I wandered off onto the starlit lawn, finally pacing the perimeter where the gray yard faded into the dark woods.

I made a wide arc around the blue cottage, not wanting to come near the warm nimbus of light from its windows. I caught a glimpse of Joanne and Danny from one lit window, then Alex and Elly half-framed in another, animatedly talking in front of the unneeded warmth of the fire.

For a moment I almost turned to go knock on the door and ask to be invited in, but instead I kept walking. I was out of place tonight, each step jarring on uneven ground. No one had told me that love and friendship would be so hard. But I don’t guess anyone can ever tell you.

I halted my pacing and sat on a low-hanging branch of an old oak tree. Rachel said there were bullet holes in it from the Civil War, but I could never find them. I stayed there, a dark figure in the dark, trying to etch the constellations, but instead seeing only the blinking and shuttering of electric lights in the house and the cottages. When the lights in the blue cottage finally went out, I got up and returned to the house. A few hushed voices came from the living room and the kitchen. I avoided them, going instead into the deserted music room. I turned on the stereo, and used headphones to listen to Holst’s
The Planets,
in honor of my stargazing. When it was over, after the last faint notes had faded, I curled up on the couch and fell asleep. I awoke sometime in the dim morning and stumbled up to my bed, setting the alarm clock for a few hours later.

I awoke to an insistent buzzing in my ear and slapped off the alarm clock, willing my eyes to open. They weren’t very willing.

Saturday sunshine streamed through my window, crisscrossing the bed with its bright paw prints. I swung out of bed, glancing at the now mercifully silent alarm clock: nine thirty. I heard voices from the yard. Time for me to be up and about. Past time, really. My morose mood was gone; I looked forward to the sunshine and bright woods. It would be warm enough in a few hours to make swimming almost obligatory.

I looked out my window, but couldn’t see the bodies belonging to the voices, only a few cawing bluejays feeding greedily on bread crumbs.

I dressed hastily—well-patched cut-offs, T-shirt, and old sneakers—and headed for the kitchen. Rachel wasn’t there, but evidence of her earlier presence was. I poured myself a cup of coffee, then paused indecisively at the various pastries, muffins, and breads left out to feed the famished. I was reaching for a decadently sugar-laden beignet when Rachel entered.

“Damn cat,” was her first remark, followed with, “I’ll save it for you,” her hint that the beignet would have to wait.

“What now?” I inquired.

“Magnolia tree past the gazebo. She chased a squirrel halfway up and now can’t get down. Damn cat,” she repeated. “She’ll wake up every last guest we have, including the ones still in the city, if we don’t get her down soon.”

“We?” I asked.

“You,” she clarified.

“Am I the only butch around here, or what,” I grumbled as I put down my coffee mug.

“Naw, sugar, just the best.”

“On my way,” I said, exiting the kitchen and heading for the old magnolia tree. Halfway there I could hear distant cat-up-the-tree sounds. The older P.C. got, the stronger her lungs became. P.C. was her name, but what exactly the initials stood for varied: Pussy Cat, Politically Correct, Pushy Chewer, and Proficient Cunnilinguist had all been suggested, the time of day and state of the suggesters obvious by their choices.

Her cries became louder and more insistent as I got closer. I grasped one of the lower branches and hauled myself up. About ten feet off the ground, I looked and saw a twitching tail.

“Come on, P.C., you putrid cunt,” I called to her, sure that her limited vocabulary would not catch the insult.

“Talking to yourself?” a voice below me asked.

“Now, why would I lie about my anatomy like that?” I answered, twisting around to see the questioner. Joanne Ranson was looking up through the branches at me.

“And here I thought I’d finally met an honest woman,” she replied. “Do you have any reason for being up that tree other than muttering obscenities to yourself?”

“Cat rescue. P.C., the house cat, has treed herself.”

“Need any help?” Joanne asked.

“Yeah, stay there and catch me if I fall.”

“Sure, Micky, no problem,” she replied in a tone that told me she would probably be in the kitchen eating my supposedly saved beignet by the time I got to P.C.

I continued climbing, resigned to leftovers for breakfast. I sighted P.C.’s tail again, about five feet above my head. True to form, P.C. saw me, and with rescue assured, started calmly licking herself. The nonchalant cleaning meant that she was ready to allow herself to be draped over my shoulder and ferried, à la Cleopatra on her barge, down the tree.

“Well, I’ll be damned. There is a cat up here,” said Joanne who, instead of stealing my breakfast, was climbing up the tree behind me.

“Would I lie to you?”

“Yes.”

She was catching up. I took a long step, then jumped up, landing several feet higher.

“Careful,” she cautioned. “You’ll hurt yourself that way.”

“Naw, not me,” I retorted. And jumped up to another branch. I missed. There were too many branches for me to go more than a few feet. Unfortunately, the branch that stopped me did so by catching a tender part of my anatomy.

“Shit,” I said, cursing the branch between my legs.

“That’s what you get for showing off,” was Joanne’s sympathy.

“Thanks, Joanne,” I groaned as we were now face-to-face. “I haven’t had any breakfast yet and I’ve just lost my virginity. Nice of you to be so sympathetic.”

“What do you want?” she replied sardonically. “Me to kiss it and make it better?”

I looked at her. She had on dark sunglasses, her eyes unreadable behind the opaque lenses. I couldn’t tell if she was actually flirting or just toying with me. I assumed the latter. I grimaced in reply.

“Cat got your tongue?” she prompted.

“No. A magnolia tree’s got my maidenhead,” I retorted, still sore between the legs. Then I decided what the hell, maybe she was flirting with me. “But I could probably use some first aid later.” I tried to look into her eyes, but the sunglasses prevented it.

Joanne has a quiet intensity that most people, myself included, found riveting. She is tall, her dark hair shot through with gray, and, when you could see them, cool gray eyes that never stopped observing and comprehending the world around her. She is older than I am, somewhere in her late thirties. At times I found myself very attracted to her, but I could never imagine falling in love with her, because I was always much more concerned with impressing her.

“Go save your cat, then,” she replied.

Definitely toying with me, I decided. Alex was probably sitting in the gazebo listening to the whole thing.

It was time to dislodge myself from the unwelcome bark. I put one foot on a limb and started to heave myself up. The wayward branch rudely yanked me back, having entangled itself in one of the many disreputable patches of my cut-offs. I reached around behind me, trying to become disentangled as gracefully as possible.