Deaths of Jocasta (14 page)

For a moment, I was afraid, unsure of what I had said and done in that brief oblivion. Then afraid of anything that had that much power. As if drinking and fucking around the way you used to was any better, I told myself. There were times when I had lost track of hours, even days, not brief moments. But they hadn’t mattered.

My breath lengthened, returned to normal.

“You survive?” Joanne asked.

“Ask me in the morning,” I answered, then I tightened my arms around her, aware of her body.

She slowly moved from beside me to on top of me. Her hands were on my shoulders, gently pushing me down. She lifted herself while I slid between her legs until my head was poised beneath her, ready to suck the glistening drops of water that clung to her. God, did I want to do this, I realized, as I spread her lips, pausing for a moment to gaze at the inviting flesh. I put my mouth to her, my tongue gently licking.

I wanted to please Joanne, to make all the right moves. It wasn’t something I had worried about before. I strained, listening for her to make noise, her heavy breathing, but it was hard with her thighs covering my ears.

“Is this all right?” I finally asked.

“Just keep going.”

“Anything you want me to do differently?”

“No.”

I started again. I felt her hand touch my face, a reassuring gesture, brushing hair off my forehead. Then her fingers stiffened and she gasped, then gasped again. She lowered herself slightly, opening to me. Now I could hear her breathing, ragged and harsh. Then I heard an intake of breath, a silence, her body taut and still, then her breath rushed out as she shuddered.

I knew that was it. Even in sex, Joanne was quiet and controlled. At least with me. I gently kissed her a few more times, letting her be the one to move away.

She did, lying next to me for a few minutes, then standing up. She extended a hand to me, to pull me up.

“Let’s dry off,” she said as she stepped out of the tub.

“Good idea,” I answered.

She threw me a towel. We dried ourselves, saying little.

“Should I go, or do you want me to stay?” she finally asked.

“Stay. If you want,” I replied, not sure which scared me more.

She nodded what I guessed was agreement.

“You hungry?” I asked, trying to be a decent host.

“No. Tired. Are you?”

“No, just trying to be polite.”

“Don’t. Polite isn’t your natural state,” Joanne answered. “And I’m too worn out for it tonight.”

“Okay. Do you want to borrow something to sleep in?”

“No. Unless you have some objection.”

“Me? No,” I replied. Joanne was right, polite hosting was not one of my strong points.

“Can I borrow your toothbrush?”

“Help yourself.”

I left her in the bathroom and made a quick check of my bed, not wanting to find any of Hepplewhite’s clever little surprises. She was innocently asleep at the foot of the bed. The sheets were in company condition.

Joanne came into the room. She hadn’t dressed, instead she had wrapped a towel around herself and draped her clothes over one arm. Those she neatly laid over the back of the one chair in the room.

“Are you sure you want me to stay?” she asked. “Sometimes I can be…” And she faltered. Joanne Ranson didn’t say a lot, but I’d never seen her at a loss for words.

“An aggressive, overbearing bitch?” I supplied, unable to leave Joanne groping for words. If it wasn’t a night for me to be polite, neither was it a night for her to be unsure.

“Something like that,” she replied.

“Those rumors are exaggerated. Stay. I’d like your company.” Disconcerted as I was by the probing of her gray eyes, I preferred them to dismissal. I wanted Joanne to like me well enough to stay the night.

She nodded, not saying anything, but she pulled back the covers and got into my bed.

I went into the bathroom to quickly brush my teeth. I also left some food for Hep, so she wouldn’t be too meddlesome in the morning. After turning out the lights and making sure my door was locked, I went back into my bedroom and got into bed beside Joanne.

She put her arms around me and hugged me very tightly. I returned her embrace, then wanting more, kissed her. She broke off.

“I’m sorry. I really am very tired,” she apologized. “I wasn’t too rough earlier, was I? I did come storming in here.”

“Naw, I’m used to a few bruises,” I answered, brushing it off, trying to be casual about her refusal.

“You that kind of girl?” she asked, giving me a questioning look.

“No, not often,” I answered.

“Anything you haven’t done?” Joanne asked, still appraising me.

“No elephants, I swear,” I joked to turn aside her queries. I doubted that Joanne would approve of my sexual history. I wasn’t sure that I did. “At least none that I can remember,” I added, still joking to fill the silence.

“It’s okay,” she replied, then touched me, briefly, on the cheek. “See you in the morning.” She rolled over to fall asleep.

She was tired. It took only a minute or two before I heard her steady breathing.

I lay awake, wondering for one panicked minute what I was doing sleeping with Joanne. Imagining Danny’s disapproval, Alex’s anger, and Cordelia… I backed away. Joanne was here. It was too late to escape the consequences of it.

I looked at her, sleep doing little to relieve the tiredness and strain etched on her face. And I realized that there was no way I could have said no to her. Not if she wanted me.

We made love again in the morning, sex that rapidly turned hot and sweaty, no less intense than that of the night before. For both of us, though in different ways, I suspected, it was an escape, a release from the everyday. Even a lover, after a certain time together, becomes everyday. Perhaps Joanne needed the passion of the illicit, that tug of desire from areas off-limits. I wanted to ask, “What about Alex? What will she think? Does she know? Will she know? Are you tired of her?” But I couldn’t. Something in Joanne said not to ask, not to intrude between our sweaty and gasping bodies.

Later we went out for brunch, being sure (at my suggestion, I must admit), to avoid a place where we might run into Danny. But still we talked of nothing substantial. I asked no questions and Joanne ventured no answers.

She drove me back to my place, stopping next to a parked car.

“Well, it was fun,” I said, with a forced jauntiness. “Thanks for brunch.” She had paid. I started to get out, not wanting any messy lingering.

“Micky.” She stopped me. “Thank you. I don’t know what else to say.”

“I owed you. Remember?”

She shrugged off my answer.

I got out.

“Can I call you?” she asked through the car window.

“Yes. Call me. I would like that,” I replied, knowing what she meant.

“Bye, Mick. I’ll let you know if I find out anything more about Vicky Williams.”

“Good-bye, Joanne.”

She pulled away. I watched her drive off. We hadn’t mentioned the dead woman’s name since that first conversation last night. For a few brief hours we had forgotten about her.

Joanne was probably going to her office. I was left to spend the rest of the weekend remembering Vicky Williams.

Dante wasn’t much of a distraction. Not that I had thought he would be.

Monday inched by, morning creeping into afternoon. My appointment with Cordelia was at five thirty. After office hours, I presumed.

Around four thirty I decided that motion was required. I got in my car and headed for the clinic. I took the long way there, using side streets. Then I drove around the neighborhood for a while, checking it out. In its better days, it may have been middle class, but those days were long gone. All that remained was a shabby gentility on some of the older buildings. They alternated with empty lots, already crumbling new buildings and ramshackle clapboard, built with no intention of permanency. The clinic itself was on the corner of a busy avenue. It had been built, perhaps as a school, in the red brick style of an earlier age. Attempts had been made to make it look taken care of—a new sign out front, already graffitied, some recently planted shrubs, but I didn’t think the trash around their roots was meant as fertilizer.

I pulled into the potholed parking lot at 5:05. I sat in my car for a few minutes, reluctant to be so early. Instead I told myself it would be useful to watch the people who went in and out of the building.

I didn’t see any anti-abortion protesters about. Probably too late in the day for them. People that self-righteous had to be early risers.

The door opened. A nun came out. A nun? Out of a building that was a hot target for right-to-lifers? There was a Catholic church a block away, but this still didn’t strike me as a nun hangout.

Time to find out what was going on. I got out of my car, made sure it was locked (didn’t want those nuns stealing any of the lesbian porn that I always kept on my backseat), and headed for the building.

The first few rooms I passed were filled with secondhand toys and battered children’s books. A few kids were still here waiting for their parents, some contentedly, others less so. Farther down the hall were some classrooms that had been divided into offices. Several of them on the left side of the hall had crosses in them. Curiouser and curiouser.

The clinic occupied the last part of the building, but only the right side.

A harried-looking young receptionist took my name, telling me that Dr. James was with a patient and would I please wait.

I sat down. Few people were here. A sign promised late hours Tuesday and Thursday evenings. The receptionist was filling out assorted paperwork, making a slight dent in the pile on her desk. Every once in a while a nurse came out of one of the examining rooms. I remembered that Elly had said she worked here evenings and some afternoons, but I didn’t see her.

I glanced at my watch. It was almost six o’clock. I got up and paced around, going out to the main hall.

One of the office doors opened. Another nun. What was going on here, I wondered. She locked the door. Evidently she belonged here. Then I realized that she looked familiar. A face from my years with Aunt Greta and all those masses I was forced to attend. Sister? I probed my memory. Something with an
A.
She turned and walked out.

I heard voices back in the clinic. The last patient was emerging from one of the rooms. She was followed by the nurse I had seen earlier. Cordelia came slowly out of the examining room, writing something on a chart. She didn’t notice me.

I headed in her direction. “Doctor, insanity runs in my family. It seems to have run into me. Can I be cured?” I asked loudly, getting her attention. Being nervous can bring out the worst of my flippancy.

“Oh, hi, Micky,” Cordelia said, looking up. She looked tired, but my antics did bring a hint of a smile to her lips.

“Or will I always be like this, hopelessly inane?” I continued.

“It’s okay, Betty, I know this character,” Cordelia said to the nurse. “Yes, you’re hopeless. My office,” and she pointed me into a room at the end of the hall. “I’ll be with you in a minute.”

I went into her office while she conferred with Nurse Betty. Probably to assure her that I was harmless. Her desk, like the receptionist’s, was covered with paperwork waiting to be done. Cordelia hadn’t spent much time decorating—an Impressionist calendar, a few prints on the wall, Van Gogh sunflowers, that was it. And on her desk a picture of a marmalade kitten.

She entered.

“Have a seat,” she said as she walked to her desk and sat down.

“So…” I said, not sure what question to ask first.

“Here, look at these,” she said, rummaging in one of her drawers for a few seconds. She handed me several sheets of paper. “Chronological order,” she added.

I looked at the papers. My first glance told me they had been done on a cheap dot-matrix printer. Then I started reading.

My dear Dr. James,

So your grandpa left you money. How convenient. Money buys a lot of things. You’re too tall and ugly for anyone to want to fuck. The money will help your sex life. That cunt of yours must have really been itching while you waited for him to kick the bucket. But you took such good care of him he died two years sooner than anyone would have thought possible.

“This is crap,” I said, looking up at her, not bothering to finish.

“I know.”

“Are they all like this?”

“Pretty much. That was one of the first ones. One of the first I knew about.”

I looked at the other ones. They were addressed to other staff members. I came across a second one to Cordelia. This one wasn’t just nasty, but threatening, ending with, “We’ll take pity on you and fuck you. We’ll just have to cut a foot or so off to make you short enough.”

“Obviously some man who’s threatened by tall women,” I commented. “Has anything happened?”

“Phone calls started about a week ago.”

“The same sort of thing? How about a trace?” I asked.