We Five (27 page)

Neither of the girls had had more than a cat nap. They had spent all of the previous two nights in the I.C.U. waiting room as Carrie received continuous updates on her mother's precarious condition. Sylvia Hale had suffered burns over fifty percent of her body, and the doctors had thought it best to induce medical coma to spare her from excruciating pain. What the doctors
hadn't
been able to do was offer any kind of assurance that Carrie's mother would recover. It is always impossible to know such a thing in those critical first few days. Every patient is different, the doctors had said, and every patient's immune response to severe bodily trauma unique.

What was additionally difficult for Carrie to bear was that she'd been denied the chance to see her. “Oh goodness mercy! Why would you even
want
to, child?” was what one of the I.C.U. nurses had said to her (somewhat callously, though the harshness of the statement was softened somewhat by the woman's honey-sweet Delta drawl). “She won't know you're there and she'll be a fright to look at. Spare yourself, sweetie.”

It was almost as if her mother were already dead.

Molly didn't know what to say that would be of any comfort to her friend. She only knew that Carrie needed her. And she'd be there for Carrie for as long as was necessary. Mr. Osborne had also made it clear that Carrie could stay with Molly and him if she liked, an offer repeated by three of her sisters. Ruth would have asked her too, but Ruth hadn't room in her tiny trailer to, as Jane had colorfully put it, “swing a dead cat.”

The two young women wandered in silent head-shaking bewilderment through the remains of the house, its destruction caused by a short in its aging electrical wiring. When Carrie finally found her voice, she mused aloud, “In times like these it does make you wonder why people collect so much stuff. Although I hate it that we've lost all the photo albums and the scrapbooks.” Then Carrie turned to Molly and said, “But I'd gladly give up everything I own to have Mama back the way she was.”

Molly nodded, though she was having a little trouble understanding the logic behind such a hypothetical tradeoff. At that moment her eyes fell on the black carcass of Carrie's violin. “Oh, your fiddle!” she announced sadly.

“Oh, I can always buy another one when I want to start playing again. It's not like it came from Cremona.”

Molly didn't get the Stradivarius reference, but she nodded and smiled nonetheless.

Carrie picked up a few things for Molly to take home and keep for her, and then the two left.

As Molly was driving them back to the hospital, Carrie said, seemingly out of the blue, “Do you know if Will's been asking about me?”

Molly gave Carrie a curious look. “You know I haven't been back to the casino, Carrie.”

“But you talk to Jane and Ruth and Mags. Did he say anything to
them
?”

“If he did, they didn't tell me about it.”

“Oh,” said Carrie, staring contemplatively into space. Then she said, as if to herself, “I liked him.”

“Will Holborne should be the last thing on your mind right now, Car.”

Carrie shook her head. “He's the only nice thing I have left to hold on to.”

Molly gripped the steering wheel tightly. “First, that isn't true. You have your four sisters. We're always gonna be there for you. Second, you need to stop thinkin' about Will. He's just like the others. We were just fun little pieces of ass to them.”

“You sound just like Ruth,” said Carrie, swiping a handkerchief across her swollen eyes. She half groaned/half sighed. “I could sleep for days.” She slumped down in her seat. “I wish the doctors would put
me
in a coma. And if I'm lucky I'll never wake up again.”

“You stop talking like that.”

“Will is different,” said Carrie groggily, her eyes now closed.

“Uh-uh. They're all the same,” responded Molly, giving no ground. She took a deep breath. Then softly—so softly, in fact, that she didn't think Carrie in her present, half-somnolent state could even hear her, she said, “Except for Pat. He's the only exception.”

Coincidentally, at that very moment Pat was very much the outlier—but only in the sense of physical proximity to his four Ole Miss frat buddies. Because while he was helping to hose out the casino's parking garage (not in his job description, but who respects job descriptions in the non-unionized American South?), Pat Harrison's four friends were all waiting together on the arrivals pick-up deck of Memphis International Airport, each man having driven one of Lucky Aces' four courtesy vans. They were waiting for the appearance of a large party (four entire vans' worth) of Atlanta Woman's Club members, who were treating themselves to three days of gambling and one night of the Jordanaires at their favorite Mississippi River casino. The plane was late. The four men had gotten tired of automotive circling, and one of the airport cops had eventually given them permission to stand.

“I hate this fucking job,” said Jerry Castle through a cloud of cigarette smoke.

“It was supposed to build character,” said Tom Katz, “although in
your
case, Castle, I always knew
that
was gonna be a nonstarter.” Tom turned to Will. “So, are you gonna call her or what?”

“What do
you
care?”

“You
don't
care?”

“Course I care. But just how am I supposed to do this? Her phone's probably a glob of molten plastic.”

“Then go see her at the hospital. Ms. Colthurst said they've got her mother in the Baptist in Southaven.”

Will, who was also sucking smoke, exhaled his own thick cloud and shook his head. “Eh—I don't think so.”

Cain unfolded his arms. He'd been leaning against the Unloading Zone sign cemented into the sidewalk, counting the number of times the same woman in the same blue Dodge Colt was making the “loop” while waiting to pick up whoever it was that was supposed to be flying in around this time. Cain wanted to tell the woman it would be much better for the environment if she'd just park the damned thing, eat the two dollars it would cost to leave the car in the short-term lot, and go inside.

Seeing no need for preamble, Cain said, “I think it's time to end the game, y'all. Now that Will's decided to remove himself from competition—”

“Who said Will's removing himself from competition?” hurled Will, straightening up. After flicking his butt to the ground and then mashing it with the tip of his shoe—it was a black cowboy boot, actually, the closest thing Will could find to go with the livery provided by Lucky Aces—he took a couple of steps in Cain's direction. “Where's the rule that says I gotta be stuck with ‘The Warbler'? Besides, I've already made big plans for my weekend with Tommy's friend's Maserati, and if any of you even
tries
to blow this for me, I'll fuck you over real good.”

Jerry Castle hooted. “Being awfully cocky about your chances, ain't ya, Willy-Boy? Seeing's as how the girl
you
wound up with doesn't have much time for
anybody
these days 'cept her medium-to-well-done mawmaw.” Castle cawed with laughter.

Cain looked him coldly in the eye and said, “Why do you talk shit like that? After what happened to that woman. And maybe you haven't noticed, Castle, but until this
did
happen, you were the only one of us who didn't have a date lined up for this week. In fact, you left such a favorable impression on Mags, you'd probably be lucky to get her inside the same county with you.”

The fingers that comprised Jerry's right hand curled into a tight fist.

Noticing this, Cain said, “Wouldn't you rather wait and beat the crap out of me somewhere more private?”

“It's Tommy's game,” Jerry shot back. “He's the one who gets to decide whether we keep playing or not.”

Tom “the Kat” Cheshire-grinned. “Well,
that's
an easy one. We keep playing. Because I could easily wrap this whole thing up by Friday. Jane's as horny as a junkyard bitch in heat. She all but went down on me in the parking lot of the blues club last week.”

Will and Jerry burst out laughing. Will said, “You really think you can win the game based on a pity fuck?”

Jerry added: “Bless the bestiality and the chilrens!”

Cain retreated to his van. After climbing into the driver's seat, he slammed the door with force sufficient to get across, unequivocally, his absolute disgust for the topic at hand.

Cain Pardlow wondered, as he often did, why he continued to associate with three men whose every word and deed turned his stomach into a roiling acid pit. But the answer always came quick and easy, and it was always the same: Cain hung out with Will and Tom and Jerry, as much as he had grown to despise them, as the price he had to pay for being with Pat.

Pat. The man he loved. The man to whom he was affectionately and dutifully devoted. Cain had tried to reroute these feelings—had tried to make himself think of Pat in that fraternal, protective way older brothers sometimes feel about younger brothers. But he never succeeded. The physical desire was too strong. There was nothing remotely fraternal or even platonic about Cain's feelings for Pat Harrison—feelings he knew
would
never and
could
never be returned. Not that this mattered. Because at this point he'd pretty much reconciled himself to circumstances. And if just being around Pat was the best it was going to get, then he would exercise his private devotion by helping to shepherd the boyishly adorable Pat Harrison safely and happily through these early formative chapters of his life.

Cain Pardlow had become, in his own mind, the self-sacrificing heroine of a schmaltzy Douglas Sirk soaper.

“
So
,” said Will Holborne, lighting up another Marlboro, “all things being fair in love and shit, and there being no rules in the game against poaching, I shall find myself another victim. So good luck,
suckahs
.”

Tom Katz couldn't help laughing. You had to admire Will's chutzpah. Jerry might be your garden-variety, old-fashioned Mississippi anti-Semite, but Will Holborne, when he wanted to be, could top them all: the aggressive, the assertive, the brawny Quicker-Picker-Upper Nordic über-man Nazi right down to his hollow core.

The next day, conveniently a day off from the casino for both Cain and Ruth, the two found themselves sipping caffé mochas (called, with a soupçon of pretension, “mocaccinos” on the menu) at Harvey Joe's, Bellevenue's popular new combination bookstore/coffeehouse on the town square. Although it wasn't, nor could it ever be thought of as a “date,” their afternoon meeting didn't go to the other extreme either. Neither the gay man nor the lesbian felt like the kind of awkward stranger that circumstances required them to be in this early, exploratory stage in their friendship. In fact, the ease with which they settled into conversation was a first for both; Cain had never had a female friend with whom he felt comfortable enough to open up, and the same could be said for Ruth (with the required gender flip). Even though the Reverend Mobry had dropped many a hint that he would be receptive to anything Ruth wished to share with him, she'd never felt the desire to take him up on the offer. It would have been, for Ruth, a little like a daughter disrobing in front of her father.

“When did you know—or at least suspect?” asked Ruth.

“Maybe it was that night at the blues club. The way you kept checking out the waitress with the big—well—”

“You can say it.
Tits.
It's a great word. I love the word. I love the tits.”

“You seem really close to your four friends—”

“Yeah, we've been like that since childhood.”

Someone had left a promo postcard on the table for a local barbecue restaurant. Cain speared it with his index finger and spun it absently around. “You never had a, like, inconvenient crush on any of them?”

Ruth laughed. “To be totally honest, if Molly suddenly came out to me—not that Molly's budged from the zero mark on my gaydar in all the years I've known her—but if, miracle of miracles, she did happen to someday come out as the cute, pixyish little dyke of my dreams, I would, without the slightest hesitation, dive right into the sack with her. But I'm a realist who doesn't dwell on things that shall never be.”

“Hmm.”

Ruth cocked her head. “Which one?”

Cain grinned self-consciously. “Pat. The kid.”

Ruth nodded. “He's cute.”

“And as straight as your Molly. Probably straighter.”

Ruth smirked. “
Probably straighter
. Now what the hell, Mr. Pardlow, does
that
mean?”

“I don't know. Isn't it common knowledge that women have a little more wiggle room in this area than men do?”

Ruth laughed out loud. “Well, that's certainly what the straight male media wants you to think—all the better to feed those fantasies about two hot women going at it with each other under the sheets. No. There's never been much wiggle room with any of the girls
I've
known. Especially my four sisters.”

“Has there—if you don't mind me asking—has there been anybody you've—?”

“Not really. Viv at work—
Ms. Colthurst
—you know, who supervises all the gaming-floor waitresses—she's been sending me a few not-
too
-subtle signals she might be interested in me.”

“Do you like her?”

Ruth shrugged her eyes. “She's—I don't know. Maybe I could
grow
to like her.”

“You don't have to settle, you know.”

“Ain't you sweet.”

“Ruth, I have to tell you something.” Cain downed the rest of his mocha as if for fortification.

“You're gonna tell me about the bet, aren't you?”

“So you know about the bet.”

Ruth nodded.