He Was Her Man (4 page)

Sam, who had inherited that and more from her long-deceased parents, narrowed her eyes and sniffed. “An engagement party for your third time around, when you’re forty-one years old, is tacky, and you know it.”

“Since when did you become Miss Manners? You don’t give a rip about that kind of thing.”

Kitty was right, but Sam didn’t let that stop her from trashing Jinx. “I bet she’s going to have a long white gown, a four-tiered cake, and six bridesmaids, their shoes and dresses dyed lime or puce or whatever to match the punch. There’ll be a video of her getting her ring—four carats. No, six. Jinx wouldn’t marry anybody for fewer than six. And a cake at this party tonight with a music box inside playing a recording of Jinx and the groom—what’s his name?”

“Speed. Speed McKay.”

“Sounds like a pool hustler to me; anyway, a recording of Jinx and Speed, blathering about the day they met.”

“Sammy, you’re over the top. Your mind’s come unhinged over this Harry thing. What you’re saying about Jinx, I think this is called displacement. You’re furious with Harry, but you’re dumping on Jinx.”

It was maddening to have a friend who knew her so well. Sam absolutely was doing that very thing. She was losing it, big-time. She sounded like a jealous 16-year-old girl. And she
hated
the idea that she was so het up about Jinx’s wedding because of her own problems of the heart. Resenting Jinx because she was getting married again just when Harry had strayed. June, moon, croon, puke. She was bored with the whole concept. Maybe she’d find a nice nunnery to check into for a good long sulk, even if she wasn’t Catholic.

Just then a short middle-aged black woman all in white—T-shirt, shorts, socks, sneakers—sauntered up to the two women and patted Sam on the shoulder. “Hi, baby, I’m June, and I’m going to take care of you. Come on over here with me.” She nodded at Kitty. “Sweet thing, somebody’ll be along for you directly.”

*

Back at the Gas ’N Grub, Olive Adair was down on her hands and knees talking to herself.
It’s here, I know it’s here.
Wiping the sweat out of her eyes. It could get pretty hot in Arkansas in late April. Hot enough to make an old lady think maybe she was about to get sunstroke if she didn’t take a break from searching for that diamond ring.

Besides, Pearl was about to have a fit. Howling, Ooohuroo, ooohuroo, in front of the soda cooler as if Olive didn’t know how that felt, a woman left lonely, which was the title of her favorite song by Janis Joplin. It was on the album,
Pearl,
she’d named the dog after. Bobby, her grandbaby, hadn’t had time to name her before they dragged him off to the slammer.

“Momma understands, sugar.” Olive leaned over and gave Pearl a hug, then reached into the cooler and grabbed herself another Delaware Punch. Whew! There was nothing like an ice-cold pop to make an old lady feel better.

Unless it was a thousand-dollar reward. Olive rested back on the cooler and took another swig. “How would that be, Pearl? You and me, we’d throw ourselves in that Sunliner, drive into town, have ourselves a little vacation right here at home.” She glanced out at the old black-and-gold retractable hardtop convertible shrouded with a tarp. It was a classic, more than one young hotshot had offered her good money for it, but Olive wouldn’t let it go. It belonged to Bobby. He was supposed to be getting out any minute now, she’d been saving the Sunliner for him all this time. Kept it in A-l condition, too. “Then we’d drive into town and check into the Arlington. No, the Palace. I always favored the Palace, better class of clientele, and I ought to know, having entertained gentlemen from both plenty of times. Get ourselves freshened up, go downstairs, stroll through that pretty lobby, watch ourselves in all those gold mirrors, I bet they make us look slim, take ourselves a table on the veranda, order ourselves a shrimp salad and some real sweet iced tea. Watch the passing scene on Central Avenue. Ask the waiter to call and make us a reservation for a bath and massage a little later.”

Pearl barked.

“You like that? Well, then we’d take us a little nap in our suite, get up and dress for the evening. You remember that dress I used to have of lemon yellow dotted swiss? It had the most beautiful collar trimmed in lace, I think that’s what Madeline’s suit reminded me of.”

Pearl said, “Ooooruha.”

“No, I guess you don’t. That was before your time. Anyway, we’d stroll down Central, go look at us some art. There’s all these new galleries now in the old buildings across from Bathhouse Row. Boy, have things changed. Back before air-conditioning, standing out on the sidewalk you could hear the results of the races at Santa Anita, Saratoga, Pimlico broadcast over the loudspeakers came right through the open windows of those same buildings in the hot weather. Pearl, would you
hush up!”

Then Olive looked around and saw what had the hound so agitated. There was a tramp cutting across the edge of her property, a tall old man in a filthy long-sleeved undershirt and a pair of what looked like green fatigues belted with a rope. He had long white hair under a straw hat, a scraggly gray beard, and a sticky-looking handlebar mustache.

Well, God knows there were plenty of folks poorer than her these days, people who didn’t have the luxury of worrying about not meeting next month’s rent, worrying about bankruptcy, had already lost what little they had, including their homes, lots of which were pretty pitiful anyway. Things had gotten so bad under those damned Republicans, rich folks sucking off not only all the cream, but purt near down to the bottom of the bottle, you couldn’t drive more than five miles in any direction in this country anymore you didn’t see people living in shacks, in chicken coops, in that kind of cab-over trailer that’d fit on the back of a pickup truck, no matter what there was always a bunch of snot-nosed kids playing out in the dirt, old clothes flapping on a single line. It’d break your heart. Olive was about to reach back in the cooler, pull out a cold drink to take out to the old man, he looked so hot, when suddenly he stopped at the edge of the pavement, reached down, and picked up something, his mouth falling open like a black cave. He stuck whatever it was in his pocket in a godawful hurry, and looking behind him like a booger-bear might be after him, took off down the road.

Jesus H. Christ! He’d found the ring!

*

June led Sam off into a small room with a dressing area and a tub. “Take that robe off, honey, hang it up there.” Sam felt a little shy, standing there in the altogether—like maybe she ought to do more than fast-walking three miles a day, which wasn’t doing a thing for her upper arms, and what the heck was happening to her waist—but June, who handled naked ladies all day long, didn’t give her a second look.

She pointed Sam toward the deep long tub, sort of like a horse trough of ancient white porcelain with a contraption at the end that looked like an oversized egg beater. “Y’all friends, you and that women you talking to? Unh-huh. Mozelle’ll take care of her in a minute. Ain’t nothing like girlfriends. Where y’all from?”

While Sam talked, June gave her a hand into the tub, and the water was hot, not the kind of hot when you’ve overdone it filling the tub and you have to jump out again before your tootsies parboil, but good hot, and growing hotter as June opened the tap. “How’s that? Tell me if it’s too much.”

It was wonderful. Absolutely aces. She could already feel the tension of the long drive melting away.

Then June scrubbed Sam all over with a loofah and pink liquid soap out of a plastic jug, chatting away about what a small world it was. “Ladies run into each other in here all the time. Had a couple last week, had to be seventy years old, hadn’t seen each other since high school somewhere up in Ohio. You ain’t never heard so much hollering in your life. Liddy, that’s the old lady outside at the desk with the sparkly glasses, she called in here, had her fingers on the nine-one-one, thought we’d drowned somebody for sure.” June laughed, showing perfect white teeth in a chocolate face so clean and smooth Sam wanted to lick it, see if it’d taste as good as it looked.

She asked June, “Are all the bathhouses like this?”

“Well, strictly speaking, this ain’t a bathhouse. I mean, it’s a bath, but it’s in a hotel. The bathhouses are those eight buildings you see parading on down the hill from here on Central. Only one of them’s operating, the Buckstaff. And the Fordyce, it’s all fixed up as a museum. You go in there, you want to see yourself some glamorous. It’s got lobbies and verandas and ladies’ parlors and billiard rooms, a fountain, stained glass, treatment rooms, a gym. Joe Louis himself worked out there. ’Course, the Dallas Cowboys been here.
Big
old boys.” June laughed.

“So all the others are closed?”

“No, there’s a restaurant called Bubbles in one of them, on the
main
floor.” Then June sniffed, like there was more to be told, but her time with Sam was up. She slapped a hot white washcloth over Sam’s brow and plopped two paper cups full of hot water on the bathtub ledge. “You drink that, same water inside and out you, holler if you need anything, I’ll come back and get you in about fifteen minutes.” Then she flipped on the egg beater, and the water bubbled and surged.

Sam stretched out, sighed, and let go. She was tired of conversation anyway. Thank you, God, for hydrotherapy. Was there anything better than hot water pumping over your bare bod? Well, yes, there was. But she didn’t want to think about him or his damned brass bed.

“Sammy? Can you hear me?” So much for silence. That was Kitty, over in the next cubicle. “Listen, after the party’s over we can snuggle up in my bed, have a serious talk about Harry, what you ought to do. But in the meantime, don’t fall asleep, we’ve got to be downstairs at six-thirty sharp.”

“Whoowee!” June’s voice floated over the divider. “Y’all must be here for that McKay do.”

“I’d say Watson, because we’re friends of the bride-to-be.” Kitty spoke as if she were being asked which side of the church she wanted to sit on.

I myself am an enemy of the bride, thought Sam. An enemy of long standing.

“Ain’t that something,” said June. “Miz Loydell Watson’s daughter, the one that was on the TV talking about them lottery altars she builds. They work, too, unh-huh. She won that million down in Texas. They say her fiancé, that Speed McKay, he’s rich, too. Ain’t that the way it always is, them that gots gots. Them that nots nots. It don’t hardly seem fair.”

“You didn’t say he was rich,” Sam called to Kitty.

“Are you starting in again?”

“I’m just curious.”

“I bet.” Kitty wasn’t having any of it. “Jinx allowed as how he was comfortable. That’s all I know except that he’s lived in New Orleans. Not that I ever heard of him before, but I’m sure he’s very nice.”

Sam grinned.
Not that I ever heard of him
is the kiss of death in New Orleans society, where nobody cares how much money your family has or had, but their great-great-great-grandmother better have known yours, or, darlin’, socially speaking, you might as well move to Slidell.

“Unh-huh,” said June. “There’s lots of rich folks here in Arkansas nobody ever heard of. Like that Mr. Sam Walton, owned them Wal-Marts. Man owned half the United States, before anybody even knew his name. Mr. Don Tyson, the chicken man, Mr. Witt Stephens, natural gas, it’s the same thing. Arkansas white folks, they not like other Southern people. They kind of a mix of South and West, more West, some say, they just keep kind of close to themselves, doing business with their own, all of a sudden other peoples figures out they
rich,
you know what I mean?”

“So what does he do, this Speed McKay?” Sam asked, her tone innocent as a spring day.

“Lordy, I don’t know,” said June. “Breezed into town during the racing season out at Oaklawn. But makes an impression, you know what I mean? Comes in the hotel,
big
tipper. The kind belongs to the Oaklawn Club out at the track, fancy folks. Sugar,” June patted Sam on the arm, “your time’s up. Let’s get you out of there ’fore you pucker.” Then she leaned over the tub, gave Sam a hand, toweled her off, and wrapped her in a white cotton toga.

Next June led her out into a long room where a half-dozen mummies lay stretched out on tables. “Now, you want to go in the steam or you just want the wrap?” June was pointing over at an old-fashioned metal cabinet they’d open up and sit you down on a chair, then close it, you with only your neck sticking out. No, thank you. Once Sam had begun working a crime beat 15 years ago, she wanted her hands free and her back to the wall.

“Okay, then come lie down”—June patted one of the padded tables—“and tell June where it hurts.”

Well, for starters, her neck, her shoulders, her knees. She wasn’t saying anything about her heart. June piled on the hot packs, then tucked another sheet around her tight, slapped an icy towel on her forehead. Sam felt like a big pink noodle, way beyond
al dente.
She said as much to Kitty on the next table, who grunted. Then June was talking to someone. “I don’t care what you say, they’s professionals. Gangsters! Friends of Mr. You Know Who. You
see
them men in them sharkskin suits up in the lobby the past two evenings? Wearing them big diamonds, gold rings? Who you think they are, Mozelle? Ice cream salesmens?”

Sam opened one eye to spy Mozelle, the short round light-skinned woman attending to Kitty. Mozelle snorted. “Them’s friends of Jinx Watson and Speed McKay come to town for the big party. That’s who.”