A Garden of Vipers (7 page)

When not engaged in long-distance greetings, Maylene Kincannon raked the crowd with emotionless eyes, black as cinders in the whiteness of her face. I watched in fascination as they gathered full measure of the room, every face, every gesture, every contact.

Perhaps she felt my gaze, and her eyes swung to mine. For a moment we stared at one another, until her eyes moved away, restless, scanning. I had the feeling of having been surveyed by a machine, deemed of zero value, dismissed.

There was a crowd at the bar and I got in one of the lines. My position faced me down a service hall to a kitchen door. Surprisingly—and delightfully—a woman's derriere backed from the kitchen, wiggling as it retreated. The owner followed, throwing air kisses and whispering thanks. I suspected she was a late arrival not wishing to enter via the cascading steps and glare of lights.

I put her age in the early thirties, slender where she needed to be, ample where she didn't, big lavender eyes augmented with too much shadow, perhaps trying to balance a succulent, lipsticked mouth. Her dress was cobalt blue, strapless, anchored by ample breasts whose originality was dubious.

“Whatcha need, sir?” the barkeep asked.

I reluctantly turned from the woman. “Tall bourbon and soda, light on the bourbon, and a white wine.”

“We have three whites tonight, sir. A Belden Farms Chardonnay, a B & G Vouvray, and a Chenin Blanc by Isenger.”

I knew wine as well as I knew Mandarin. I said
uh
several times.

“Go for the Vouvray, Slim,” a woman's voice said. “The others are horse piss.”

I turned. The woman in cobalt leaned against the column at the end of the bar, a few feet distant. She winked. “Grab me a drink while you're there, wouldya? Double scotch.” Her voice was a purr of command, cigarette husky, a voice with more years on it than the woman.

I turned, three drinks in hand. She snatched hers and spun away. I watched her circle behind the crowd, pause against another column, study the surroundings. She belted the scotch. Then she snapped her wrist twice, like flicking paint from a brush. She thought a moment, then repeated the odd motion, more exaggerated this time, like cracking a whip.

She flipped the empty glass into a trash can, snapped on a bright smile, and headed into the crowded room. My eyes kept following her derriere, but the room went dark.

 

Lucas arrived a half hour after the Channel 14 soiree had started, parking outside the Shrine Temple, slipping the used Subaru into the anonymous dark between streetlamps. He had been eating granola, spitting stale raisins out the window into the street. It had irritated him that a fucking health food store would sell granola with stale raisins and he'd considered returning to the store, grabbing the slacker clerk by his Bruce Cockburn T-shirt, dragging him down here, and making the bastard lick the raisins from the pavement.

“Those taste fresh to you? You little cocksucking son of a…”

He had caught himself. Taken several deep breaths, cleansing breaths. Listened to Dr. Rudolnick conjure up clouds.

“Settle into the clouds, Lucas. Let your anger drift away…”

Nothing much had happened while he waited, not that he'd expected anything. But he'd read about this soiree in a newspaper column and decided to rub elbows with the swells, even if it was a distant rubbing.

Sometimes things were revealed in small motions. Like the black stretch limo parked in the lot down the block, engine idling, keeping the air conditioning at a precise seventy-eight degrees, Maylene Kincannon's preferred enviroment. Lucas had wanted to knock on the door of the limo, engage the driver in conversation. Maybe leave a warm ass-print in the leather seat, like a dog spraying its territory.

Common sense had prevailed. It wasn't time yet.

After he'd been sitting for several more minutes, calm again, a woman slipped from the doors of the temple, a sexy woman in a blue dress, big casaba-melon hooters bobbing as she high-heeled down the sidewalk. She was weaving a bit, a sheet or two to the wind. She laughed, flicked her hand in the air, like a drummer tapping a cymbal. Then she hawked and spit onto the sidewalk, lit a cigarette, and crossed the street to climb into a battered red Corolla. It took two minutes of grinding the ignition before the engine kicked over and the car rattled away trailing a plume of exhaust.

The woman was suddenly more interesting to Lucas than a building he couldn't safely enter, and his curiosity made him follow her, just for a lark.

As I crossed the ballroom in the dark, a drink in each hand, the podium turned white with spotlight, signaling the business side of the affair. I returned to the table as the general manager took the dais. He droned industry jargon for twenty minutes: ratings points, targeted growth analysis, revenue streams, optimized asset utilization, and so forth. He was followed by three heads of something-or-other. Finally the GM reclaimed the microphone, burbled a few more comments, then swept his hand toward the Kincannon suburb.

“…cornerstones of our station and community, ladies and gentlemen, the Kincannons…”

The family members smiled and waved. Buck Kincannon elevated from his seat. A balcony spotlight centered on him, and I figured it had been aimed beforehand. The crowd applauded Kincannon like it had applauded everyone, solid, polite; then, after a few seconds, the applause started to wane.

A voice yelled, “Speech.”

Several men at a front table stood, hands clapping, calling for words from Kincannon. Folks at adjoining tables followed, checking side to side as they rose, concertgoers uncertain whether the music deserved a standing ovation, but everyone else seemed to think so. Applause thundered from the front table. They reminded me of cheerleaders in tuxedoes. Or, less politely, shills.

Dani stood and pounded her palms together. Kincannon took the dais with a laugh line, apologizing for disturbing “everyone's reason for being here: free food and drinks,” then segued into more business-speak. To my untrained ear, it seemed fifty percent jargon, fifty percent bullshit; the trick, perhaps, to discern which was which. Or perhaps it didn't matter.

After several minutes, Kincannon reverted to English.

“…nowhere is professionalism more evident than in the news department. No news team won more awards in Alabama last year than Channel 14 Action News…”

Applause from the audience at large.

“We've heard from some of those fine folks this evening, but there's someone else who needs to say a few words. I'm talking about the hard-charging investigative spark of the team…”

“I didn't expect this,” Dani said, touching at her hair. “How do I look, Carson?”

“Like you. Only dressier.”

“…gives me
great
pleasure to introduce a present star and future superstar of Clarity Broadcasting Corporation, a woman with more in her future than she knows…”

Dani grinned, shook her head.

“…I give you DeeDee Danbury.”

Kincannon lifted his arms wide, the Pope blessing St. Peter's Square.

“Come on up, DeeDee.”

Applause rang out as Dani jogged to the dais. Buck Kincannon extended his arms and she walked into them, his wide hand rubbing her bare back. They traded smiles and a few words and Dani stepped to the microphone as Kincannon moved back a step, but still in her light.

She cleared her throat and mimed opening an envelope, blowing into it, reaching inside. The crowd went silent, wondering what she was doing.

Dani plucked an invisible card from the invisible envelope, held it distant as if to better see the words.

“And the winner in the category of best employer is…Clarity Broadcasting Network!”

The crowd laughed, applauded, whistled. I clapped hesitantly, fighting the notion that I'd seen her pander to the audience, to her employer. I felt embarrassment, but didn't know for whom. Then I realized I was as naive to the ways of broadcasting as I was to the rental of formal wear.
This is what they must do at these bashes,
I thought.
Kiss ass and march in rhythm. Relax.

Dani's speech took two minutes. It was humorous. Smooth. Rich in praise to Clarity Broadcasting and the Kincannon family. Like her allusion to the Academy Awards, it seemed more act than sincerity.

Kincannon grabbed the mike, yelled, “Let's hear it for our own beautiful DeeDee Danbury!” He waved his hands in a
bring it on
motion. Again led by the group at the front table, the audience jumped to its feet as if Dani were a figure skater who'd just completed a quintuple something-or-other.

The soiree broke up at eleven. Since Dani's effusive blessing by ownership, she'd been surrounded by sudden friends. Outside, I waited as she chatted with others, enjoying the limelight. With little to do, I wandered in the warm night. I stepped around the corner and saw Racine and Nelson Kincannon and their wives waiting for transportation. It was a service entrance and I figured people like the Kincannons didn't queue with the riffraff.

I leaned against a lamp a hundred feet distant and watched, just me and the Kincannons. No one in the family spoke to anyone else, their eyes flat and expressionless. It was like the show was over, everyone could turn off their faces and go home. Racine Kincannon was drinking, glasses in both hands.

Nelson said something. I couldn't hear what. Racine spun, threw one of the drinks in his brother's face. Racine threw the other drink on the ground, grabbed his brother's lapels, pushed him away hard. The wives stepped a dozen feet away and looked into the night sky, bored. The two men seemed about to square off when I heard a voice like broken glass.

“Stop it, now!”

Maylene Kincannon exploded from the building like a rodeo bull from a gate, Buck Kincannon at her side. She thundered up, finger jabbing, tongue lashing. I heard the anger, but not the words. Her two squabbling sons looked at their feet. The wives remained turned away, like nothing was happening.

Then Buck Kincannon leaned toward his mother, said something. Whatever it was didn't agree with her. She slapped his face so hard it sounded like a gunshot. No one else seemed to notice or care.

A black stretch limo rolled into view. The family grouped together as the chauffeur emerged to open the doors. The black beast pulled from the curb. I saw an impenetrably dark window roll down. A male face, contorted in anger, yelled, “Get a life, asshole.”

The curtain fell.

 

It was almost midnight when our driver returned us to Dani's, the night drenched with haze and lit by moon glow, the air perfumed with dogwood and magnolia. Arms linked, we walked to the porch as a night bird sang from the eaves. She shook her keys free of her purse, opened the door. The cool, clean air felt good after sharing the exhalations of three hundred others for two hours. I looked at her phone, a red LED blinking.

“You've got a message.”

She went to the kitchen to rattle the lock at the back door, the habitual checks of a woman living alone. “Probably Laurel Hollings twitting me for the speech. He does that kind of thing when he's had a few. Punch it on while I look out back.”

I heard the kitchen door open, the screen slam, as she went out to check the back porch door. I tossed my jacket into a chair, walked to the phone, pressed
MESSAGE
.

“It was great to see you this evening, dear DeeDee. I meant everything I said about the bright future. And by the way, that red dress was fantastic. I'll talk to you soon.”

Four hours earlier I wouldn't have recognized the voice. But now I did.

Buck Kincannon.

I closed my eyes and wondered what to do, then diddled with the reset button on the phone. Dani returned a minute later. I stood in front of the hall mirror, fiddling with the button on the vest.

“Crap,” I snarled.

“What?”

“The button's snagged. Wrapped in a thread.”

She looked at the phone, the display blinking like it had never been touched.

“You didn't check the phone?” she asked.

I glared at the button. “If I tear the damn button off they'll probably charge me thirty bucks. There still scissors in the bathroom?”

She nodded and I hustled to the john, closed the door. I stood in the dark with my racing heart as she checked her message. My straining ears caught Buck Kincannon's voice again roaming through Dani's house.

It was a business call,
I told myself; Buck Kincannon was the
capo di tutti capo
of the Kincannon family and Clarity Broadcasting. He probably called all the station's speech givers, made them feel part of the team. It was just business.

I returned a couple minutes later, vest in hand. Dani was in the kitchen moving dishes from the dishwasher to her shelves.

“Can't that wait until tomorrow?” I asked.

She shrugged; put on a smile. “Just felt like doing something. Excess energy or whatever.”

“The message, was it your jokester from the station?”

Her eyes wouldn't meet mine; she turned and slid a dish into place, spoke into the cupboard. “Nothing important. A friend wanting to talk when I have a chance.”

That night we lay in her bed, but neither made motions toward making love. Lightning flashed at the windows and filled the room with shadows, but rain never came. Just past dawn I arose without waking her, penciled a note explaining that I had a busy day, and fled into a day already breathless with heat.