StoneDust (21 page)

Chapter 25

“Let's have a burger at the bar.”

“I guess…Make mine tuna on toast. I'll be right back.”

She swayed off to a ladies' room designated by a golfer in a skirt. I ordered our lunch. The bar had cleared out as everyone went off to the dining room, and we had the place to ourselves except for the bartender, who busied herself beyond earshot.

Georgia returned, bright-eyed and smiling. “Everyone's gone. Just us.”

“And the bartender.”

“Can't lose her.”

Christ, I thought. She'd had a hit of coke in the stalls.

I had paid lip service to the concept that addiction was a disease. Certainly no one who had worked on the Street in the 'Eighties was a stranger to coke—and I had my own warm relationship with alcohol—but sitting in the club with Georgia, I felt it more personally than I had before. Reg floated into memory. Before he'd signed up with AA, he'd probably had lunches like this too, where tanking up wasn't quite enough.

“So why are you getting me drunk, Ben?”

“I'm getting drunk right along with you.” Even with what I'd managed to spill.

“Is this some sort of seduction?”

“No.”

“Feels like one.”

“I've always preferred my seductions sober. And my seductees.”

“Not me.”

“In that case,” I assured her, “we're both safe.”

“Great. Let's be friends.” She reached over and we shook hands, elaborately. “So why are you getting me drunk?”

“You tell me.”

Back when I was around the stuff, for which I never developed much of a taste, I had noticed that the chief benefit of cocaine, for the users, was how marvelous it made their own voices sound, while simultaneously insulating their ears. Georgia was enjoying this effect, and she answered me at some length, whole paragraphs galloping forth like the hounds, horses, and riders of the Plainfield County Hunt on the tail of an aromatic fox.

Straight, she was a gifted talker, a weaver of full, rich sentences. Stoned, she surpassed herself. She began with a history of recent events: my leaving a message for her; our meeting in the bar; our choice of libation; our rate of consumption. Next came a treatise on refills, observations on my habit of eating the olives versus hers of stacking them to keep count.

She digressed to a learned discussion of full-flavored gins like Burnett's and Beefeaters, and digressed further to disparage vodka martinis, people who drank them, and the barbarous—her word—custom of substituting lemon twist for olives. A further digression introduced her father, who had introduced her to martinis. Daddy had been a man of many parts, which she endeavored to describe in detail.

I interrupted, remarking on the coincidence that Vicky McLachlan had made the acquaintance of alcohol in the exact same fashion, though in their case the old man's liquid of choice had been beer. Georgia appeared to listen attentively. She perked up her ears, nodded, smiled, but never stopped talking.

Lunch arrived. My hamburger grew cold, her tuna warm. At last, she looked down at her plate, with the surprised expression of someone who hadn't noticed the arrival of a small elephant. “Oh, wow, am I hungry.”

We had still not answered the question of why I was trying to get her drunk. I let her get halfway through her tuna sandwich. Then I said, “Georgia, can I ask you something?”

“What?” The stuff had worn off. She looked beat.

“I don't want to upset you.”

Now she looked frightened. “Oh, Ben, you're not starting that again, are you?”

“I'm sorry.”

“Oh, please don't. Please, Ben.”

“I've got to ask you something.”

She dropped her sandwich, wiped her mouth with her napkin, and started to crumple it onto the bar.

“Please don't go.”

“You're sneaky,” she said. “That's what I don't like about you.”

“Sorry.”

“But you're gentle. And that I do like.”

“I've gotten myself into a real mess here,” I said. “Someone I care about could get hurt and someone else I cared about is dead. So I'm worried and I'm feeling guilty and I'm trying to work it out.”

“Are you in therapy?”

“No. Now listen—”

“Maybe you should be.”

“Later. Listen—Hey, please don't go.”

“I'm just going to the ladies' room. I'll be back in a minute.”

“Could you wait on the hit?”

She turned back, eyebrows rising, with a studied, “I beg your pardon.”

“Come on, Georgia, you can fool the country boys, but give me a break.”

“I'm afraid I don't understand.”

“I'm asking you to answer my questions before you go into the ladies' room to snort coke.”

Her mouth trembled.

I said, “It's your business what you do to yourself, but coke at lunch is possibly, shall we say, moving toward a problem.”

“You don't know what it's like.”

“I don't presume to. But I would say this: You're spending too much time alone. You need some people—and I don't mean ‘doing lunch' with Michelle's gang. They're not going to call you on sneaking off for a hit.”

“Susan did,” she whispered.

“Well, I'd expect her to. You're not going to fool a nurse. But I don't put her in Michelle's gang. She's too busy working. Sit down. Coffee? Dessert?”

“Both,” she murmured.

I ordered, hoping cream pie might sop up the toxins. We waited in silence until it came.

“You're wrong,” she said.

“About what?”

“Some of them do coke.”

“I'm aware of that. But they don't sneak coke at lunch.”

“Michelle's really into it. She's my connection when I can't get down to New York.”

“You're kidding. You buy from her?”

“When I have to. What she makes on me probably keeps her and Duane supplied.”

I hadn't put much thought into supply, but of course somebody had to sell it. “What about Bill and Sherry?”

“At a party.”

“Susan and Ted?”

“No way.”

“Rick?”

Her expression hardened. “Rick inhabits a 1958 time warp. He knows I drink too much. But if he caught me doing lines in the kitchen, he'd assume I was learning how to bake, which would make him very happy.”

“Were they doing coke at the party?”

“Oh God, it was so lame. At one point, I thought, Hell must be a weekend with local yokels who think they're hip. Michelle laid lines
around
the Jacuzzi—it's round, you see, and the idea was to snort your way around in a circle. While you're in the water? Bill Carter kicked up waves and turned about two hundred dollars' worth of cocaine into library paste.”

We both laughed.

“God, was Michelle pissed.”

“How did Rick incorporate that into his time warp?”

“He was upstairs with Sherry—Oh, Ben, you should see yourself. Look in the mirror.” She turned me toward the bottles and I saw my jaw slowly rise from the bar.

“I'm amazed. I mean, I heard all the dumb rumors, but I'm still amazed. Are you sure?”

“Sure enough for it to ruin
my
night.”

“You mean—”

“I didn't go there to swap.” She shuddered. “God, what a thought. Eeeyyaaach. Duane? Bill? Spare me. I may have my problems, but desperation to get laid is not among them.”

“Ted?”

“
Ted
? Are you joking? Ted and Susan were joined surgically at their wedding. They're like Siamese twins. You couldn't get between them if you tried, and if you tried too hard, either one of them would cut your throat. Don't you find them a little scary?”

“No.”

“I do. I mean I like them a lot. And I admire them enormously. I never met anyone who dealt better with defeat than those two. But I wouldn't want them mad at me. Silent Ted? Oooooohhh. And Susan? How she seems to materialize, like something
looming
out of the fog. Don't you find that?”

“What time was that, when Rick was upstairs—if he was—with Sherry?”

“About eleven.”

“Before Reg got there?”

“Before.”

“How long were they up there?”

“Not long. Rick's somewhat of a rabbit.”

Maybe the couple Vicky heard. Maybe not. “If you weren't swapping, who'd Bill go with?”

“Bill was too smashed on those stupid Tombstones. I doubt he noticed. Or didn't want to notice. Sherry likes men. They've got some sort of tacit arrangement.”

“Do you
know
all this or are you guessing? I mean, you're kind of new in town, by comparison. But you seem to have a take on everybody. All the down and dirty.”

Georgia smiled. “People forget you're there when you're drunk. Sometimes the girls'll have lunch and it's like Georgia doesn't exist.”

“Did Reg get into the Jacuzzi?”

“No. He just hung out.”

“Did he do any lines?”

Georgia laughed. “Nobody did any lines after Bill's walrus act.”

“Did Michelle freak when Reg arrived?”

“No. She had a real thing with Reg.”

“‘Thing'?”

“They were close.” Georgia attempted to cross two fingers to demonstrate how close, but her fingers wouldn't obey. She kept trying.

“How close?”

“Friends. Buddies.”

“Lovers?”

“I don't think so.”

“But she told me how angry she was. Remember at Connie's, she yelled at Duane about how Reg was always wrecking their parties?”

“Close. Buddies. Friends. Pals.”

“But not lovers.”

Georgia shook her head. “It didn't feel that way. At least not to me.”

“How was Duane about that?”

“That's why I don't think they were lovers. He sort of encouraged them, like he enjoyed their friendship. As you said yourself, these people have known each other a long time, Ben. Like you, since childhood.”

“But I thought Michelle told Reg to leave.”

“No. It didn't happen that way. Reg was just kind of mooning around and finally Michelle climbed out of the Jacuzzi and said, ‘Come on, I'll make you some coffee.' She put on a robe and they went to the kitchen.”

“Just the two of them?”

“I don't know.”

“What do you mean? Oh, you mean Sherry and Rick might have joined them.”

“Or Ted and Susan.”

“Where were they?”

“I don't know. They kind of drifted away when the lines started. Susan's down on drugs. I thought nurses were really into drugs—thanks to an enviable availability—but not Susan.”

“Ted and Susan seem a little out of place in that crowd, wouldn't you say? No swapping, no dope. What was left?”

“Booze. Susan must have had three Tombstones without even blinking. Ted matched her, glass for glass. And business,” Georgia added as an afterthought.

“What do you mean?”

“They're trying to get back in the game—Gosh, you don't know
anything
, do you?”

I admitted I didn't, to keep her talking, though it was hardly a surprise that Ted and Susan would cultivate the Fisks and Carters to get back into building houses. “Did they talk about the Mount Pleasant project?”

“It was more like they listened. Duane and Bill were at them about zoning problems. I must admit my concentration wavered when they got into setbacks and grades.”

“Were they asking Ted for something specific?” This was of double interest to me, as Ted was a zoning commissioner and ruled on variances. There wasn't much I could do about it, but it never hurt to know who was diddling whom in the name of progress.

“They kept saying, ‘Why do we need four-acre lots when three is plenty?'”

“Three means they could build twelve more houses on their acreage.”

“Sounds like money.”

“About a million bucks…Did Reg get into any of that?”

“He didn't seem to care. He looked so sad. I thought he would cry at any minute. When Michelle led him away he looked like a condemned prisoner.”

“Leaving you with Duane and Bill in the Jacuzzi.”

“Right.”

“Then what happened?”

“Bill asked if he could borrow my bathing suit.”

I had wondered, but had not asked, about costume. “And?”

“I was bombed enough to think that was the funniest thing I'd ever heard. I started laughing so hard I almost drowned. Big Bill came to the rescue, which he used for an excuse to put his hand on me. I tried to pull away, but he was really strong, and really bombed. I got scared. So I bit him.”

She got very quiet and toyed with her empty glass. “You should never drink with guys.”

“What happened?”

“Well, he jumped and let go. Then he turned to Duane and he said, ‘Come on, Duane, give me a hand.'

“I was so scared I was suddenly sober. That party wing of theirs was all the way to hell and gone the far end of the house. And we were all alone, just me and them. And I thought, Oh God, even if I scream, who's going to notice?”

I said, “I'm surprised Bill would do that.”

Georgia shrugged. “Daddy always said, ‘Careful drinking with men.'” Her eyes filled with tears. “I can't tell you, Ben, you're a guy, you can't know, how scary it is. It was so horrible to be in that position, knowing that the only thing that could save me was Duane, and he's standing there with this look on his face. Bill circled so they had me between them. He said, ‘Ready, Duane?'”

“I said, ‘Come on, guys.' Bill laughed. ‘Come on, Duane. She's so drunk she'll never remember—hell, we're so drunk,
we
won't remember. Ha. Ha. Ha.' Duane said, ‘Screw you, Billy.' Just like that. ‘Screw you, Billy.' Then my knight in shining armor climbed out and walked away.”