Stacking in Rivertown (21 page)

I nod and sit. Tonight she’s dressed in a different tight sweater that shows her nipples quite well. I drag my eyes away from them.

“I’m sorry about lunch,” she says. “I felt like a jerk leaving like that.” When I don’t say anything, she asks, “What do you recommend tonight?”

“The seared tuna. Larry’s best dish.”

“Can you have dinner with me? I messed up lunch. Maybe I can make it up to you.”

I’m screwed. “I’m sure I’d be interrupted. Besides, I appear to need
my
stomach pumped out tonight.”

Tom arrives with her wine. I ask him to bring me a glass of milk. My hands are shaking so badly that I hide them in the pockets of my skirt.

We sit quietly. Cinda comes with my milk and whips out her pad, taking Miriam’s order. She looks at me. “Josh needs to talk,” she says, turning to leave.

“Cinda dear,” I say.

She looks back.

“Could you have Larry whip me up a bowl of mashed potatoes?” I smile what I sense is a Ben kind of smile.

Cinda gets twitchy. “Whatever. Larry will yell about it. He won’t do anything extra for me.”

I try to decide whether she likes living dangerously or if she’s actually this stupid. “Tell him it’s for the wicked witch,” I say. “And bring me ketchup to go with it.”

She looks at me with disgust and scurries off.

“God, she’s white,” Miriam says.

“Can’t stay off the sushi,” I say.

Josh arrives and takes me away. He’s got two reservations for the same table. After I get that worked out, I sit and eat a few bites with Miriam. Tonight, even the mashed potatoes aren’t working.

“So tell me about the raft again,” Miriam says as I push the bowl away from me.

I allow my head to fall to the side and close my eyes, bringing Mama to mind. “And the cool,” I say, drawing it out like Mama did. “The cool, cool stream.”

She’s so still, trying to hear me over Mozart playing in the background.

“The lily leaves floating,” I say and pause. “It’s what Mama used to say if I was upset.”

She’s about to say something when Burt appears beside me. “We’ve got a problem, Becca.” He pulls me away again. As a matter of fact, I make up reasons to stay away from her table. But she keeps sitting there even after her table’s been cleared.

“Go and talk to her,” Josh says. “And cheer up.”

“She’s got a boyfriend,” I say, sneering.

“Who cares? You have two boyfriends.”

That makes me smile. I kiss him on the cheek and work my way bayside again.

“Would you like to go somewhere and talk?” she says. “I can see that’s not going to happen here.”

God. Life is kicking me in the gut. I look at her face, her eyes. So much like Violet. And seeing how her lips are tight, but only in the center, I feel the ache strong in her. I can’t decide whether or not I’d like to end up like Grady.

Tom knows, I say to myself again. I have to leave, get out of town. This whole thing is a big mistake.

“Yes,” I say, my mouth always betraying me. “I can have someone else close tonight.”

We go to a bar nearby where a trio plays a type of loud jazz that makes my neck hurt. And people keep coming over, telling Miriam how much they love her music.

I yell in her ear so she can hear me. “I live close. You want to go to my place?” I try to remember if I put all my guns away.

“Yeah,” she screams. “I need some peace and quiet.”

By the time we climb to the fourth floor, she’s out of breath. “I guess this will keep you in shape.” She leans against the wall as I slide my key in the lock.

I take the opportunity to head in the door first, kicking the Uzi under the sofa. And as I’m scanning the room, making sure nothing else incriminating is showing, she walks to the dresser and takes in the doll’s head and the toupee.

She picks up the toupee as though it’s something that’s been dead a long time, which I guess you could say it has. “How old is this thing?” She laughs.

“I use it when I go to church. You know. That cover-the-head thing.” I run my hand through my short hair, thinking that I’m glad I stashed Mama’s picture in the drawer.

“I wouldn’t let that thing anywhere near my head.” She drops it like it’s alive and might crawl off.

“I don’t have much to offer,” I say. “Some O.J., milk, bottled water. I usually graze at the restaurant.”

She plops down in the armchair, pulling up her knees and checking the place out. “I’m done with drinking anyway. Maybe just some water.”

I slip off my heels and open the fridge, retrieving two bottles of water.

“A little Spartan, isn’t it?”

“I haven’t been here long. Most of this stuff belongs to Tom, the wine steward. I don’t know. I wasn’t sure I was going to stay.”

“Where were you before?”

Ack. Not that again. “Out east, in the great lands beyond the big water.”

“But near a river,” she says.

I’m amazed at how she does that, softening all of a sudden. I curl up on the couch across from her.

We sit silent.

“So,” I say. “Tell me about the ache.”

“Huh?”

“In your music,” I say. “It’s always there. A yearning. An undercurrent.”

She gets almost shy, but her eyes take on a look I recognize. Maybe her mama burned up, I think. Maybe she knew her own Betty and Dave. Maybe she had a fake appendectomy.

“The ache,” she says. “It’s always been there. It’s why I started singing, like I could make it go away. But it just gets deeper.” Such sadness in those rainbow eyes. “Every day. Every year. Deeper. Can it go on that way?”

I lean forward. “I don’t know,” I say, my voice stripped down. I think of Mama’s picture in my dresser drawer and me beside her. Sitting next to her at that moment, I must have been happy. I can’t imagine it now.

She watches me so close it reminds me of how Kat watched me from across a room.

Those lips. Her skin. I look away, afraid she’ll read me, see how Mama stands there, and me so breakable then, so unaware of how things spook you clean out of your skin.

“The ache is written all over you,” she says.

I spill my water down the front of my dress.

Jumping up, I grab the towel off the sink and try to soak some of it up. While I’m messing with it, she comes up behind me. I feel her hands on either side of my waist, and then they slide around me. She presses her body against my back, and I rest my head on her shoulder, closing my eyes.

“Is this okay?” she says.

“Oh yes.” You’re going to kill me. You’re going to murder me this way. “What about your boyfriend?” I make the last word sound like it’s something unclean.

Now she moves one hand along my neck, sliding it up into my hair. “I just said that to see how you’d react. I’m sorry. It wasn’t fair. So many people try to get next to me, wanting to be my friend. I throw out junk like that every now and then.”

She pulls me closer. Stops. “What’s in the middle of your back?”

I clutch. “My pistol.”

“You carry a gun? Isn’t that illegal?” She begins to edge away.

I hold her arms in place with one hand and reach behind, unclipping the holster from my skirt and tossing gun and holster onto the table.

“It’s gone.”

Now I take her wrists and pull her arms tighter. She kisses my neck.

I turn, reach behind her head and lie my lips along hers, thinking now of nothing but the touch of her lips and the press of her tongue. And as I sink, and as I grow ever so still, I slip beneath the surface, my eyes wide. It’s Violet I see. Violet and her dark, dangerous eyes.

Miriam takes me in full, pressing forward. She kisses again, stronger, hungry, and I feel her hands moving over me. She reaches behind and unbuttons my blouse, still kissing, caught as I am caught in a river so strong that you have to let go. All you can do is let it grab you up and spit you out, hoping to hit the eddy at Fowler, where you can rise up drenched and shaken all the way through to the heart.

I run my hands beneath her sweater and up along her sides. She folds my blouse down from my shoulders, revealing my chest and the lace bra beneath. She runs both hands over my breasts, then back behind.

I find the soft, rounded flesh of her breasts, then curve my palms around, cupping, grasping her nipples, already erect. She presses me to her hard now, and we kiss blind, drowning.

Miriam and I make love like that river, settled down in the heat and aching beneath, the warmth and promise of her body and skin embracing me full.

I wake up crying in the middle of the night. She curls along my back and holds me.

Love

When I wake in the morning, I’m lying on my side. Miriam’s standing sideways to me, naked, looking through my CDs. Her body is slim, her breasts small but round. Her skin is flushed, yet in a way translucent.

As if aware of my eyes on her, she looks over, and for a moment I see the ache in her eyes and then, like water, pouring through the remainder of her body.

Miriam smiles, taking me in. She walks to the bed and sits beside me, lying an arm over my back. Then she leans forward, kissing me. “Good morning,” she says.

“God, you’re beautiful,” I say, running my hand over her thigh.

She sits back and peels the sheet off me.

“Let me see you,” she says. “I wanted to in that freaky café yesterday. I wanted to jump all over you.”

I brace, afraid, sensing how the river’s run up close to the door, and how the current is stronger than I’ve ever known, but silent, and deadly where it undercuts the bank.

She presses me onto my back and gazes, moving her hands over me.

“What is this?” she says, touching the you-know-what scar. “And these?” A few of my other marks. I don’t say anything. The appendectomy remark doesn’t seem to work anymore.

She turns me over, running her hands along my sides, over my ass. “These?” she asks again. I can imagine what she’s seeing.

“Not now,” I say. I try to turn, but she holds me in place, her hands gentle, still stroking, learning the shape of my back. She kisses along my spine as Violet would have done. I want her again.

She stretches out beside me and we wrap together, making love, still caught by the water.

Afterward, we lie with her cupping one of my breasts in her hand, her leg thrown over. I feel I must have fallen into someone else’s dream.

“I have to leave soon,” she says. “I’m doing some work in the studio. It’s why I had to leave yesterday.”

I turn and kiss her again, tasting her, wanting to keep her in place, perfect this way.

“Can I see you tonight?” she asks as I draw back.

“Really?”

“Why not?”

“I thought maybe it was just for a night. I didn’t know.” I look away.

“Is that what you want?” She touches my face, turning me back to her.

What I want is a fucking gun to my head.

I lie my cheek against her chest and close my eyes, listening to her heartbeat. “I want to see you again. And maybe again. And then again. I think it might kill me.”

“So you’re not such a smart-ass,” she says, kissing me. “And I still want to know about the scars.”

I later learn that nosiness is her worst vice. I have to admit it’s fairly benign when you think about my guns and Southern Comfort.

“When do you get done at Tutti tonight?”

“Late. Around one.”

“I’ve rented a place for while I’m here doing some recording. It looks over the bay. I’ll give you the phone number and the address. Can you come there? It’s bigger than this apartment from Sparta.”

“Yes,” I say, my head reeling.

“And do you have to wear that gun? It makes me nervous.”

“Have to,” I say, running my hand beneath her breasts. “You should see my other guns.”

We kiss long and soft. Then she leaves the bed and finds her clothes, strewn about the apartment. I watch her dress. When she’s done, she sits beside me and kisses me once more, fondling me.

“I want you again,” I say, whispering.

“Tonight.” She stands and walks out the door.

Leaving early for work, I take another cab to yet another phone booth at the edge of the city. I ring up Bates.

“It’s me again.”

“Beth. I was wondering about you.”

“I’ve got some information, but I think you’re going to be disappointed.”

“Go ahead.”

“I had a memory of him sitting in front of me. He was wearing a dust mask, something the clean freaks do, and a pair of dark sunglasses. He had his long brown hair pulled back in a ponytail and wore a hat. He looked to be tall, but I don’t remember him standing. He had on a heavy coat and gym shoes.”

“A big guy. As big as Ben?”

“Yeah.” I shudder at the sound of his name. “Very similar.”

“Have you checked out the pictures again? Maybe somebody strikes you now?”

“No. I’ll do that today.”

“We’re getting more evidence off the latest body. It just narrows things down, doesn’t finger anyone in particular.”

I wait a minute. “Bates?”

“Yes?”

“Have you been tracing my calls? Do you know where I am?”

He hesitates. “No.”

“Would you lie to me?”

He laughs. “I might. Beth, you have to trust me. You’re my best witness. I want to keep you safe.”

“Did you see the article in the
Globe
?”

“Yes .”

“One of my friends has figured me out. It’s making me nervous.”

“Hang on, Beth. I’m working on the Ben thing, too. I’d love to see him put away for awhile. Stay put if you can. Whatever you’re doing to help you remember seems to be working.”

I’m silent, unwilling to hang up. Talking to him makes my weird life more real.

“Stay in touch, Beth.”

“You too.”

I hang up and have the cabby take me to Tutti.

I remember Mama when she wasn’t so fat. I remember the willows overhead and me looking up, listening. And Mama was nearby with Vin, holding both his hands as he learned to walk between her legs.

There are brightnesses that come and go swiftly, so that if you are not paying attention, they pass unknown. What I remember of the willows then was the striking of the sun and the shading down.

In the days that I live now, these knowings crowd the banks, having risen from a deeper place. As I ride the length of my river, they are all that remain. That and the whisper of the water through grass, sedge, and rushes, and the hiss of the coachwhip, a slender god gliding through the bushes.

At Tutti, Josh takes one look at me. “You’re a goner now, Becca. Big bite.”

Tom wants to take me aside and quiz me about Clarisse. He’s started calling me Beth as though it’s funny.

Around eight, Miriam shows up for dinner again. I think I might stop breathing. Tom waits on her since we’re still down a waiter. I pour her wine. Her scent, with which I am now familiar, makes me heady. Her clothing seems stripped back, revealing warm, living skin.

“Sorry I can’t sit with you. It’s a mess tonight,” I say, magnetized, remembering how I bent myself in just this way first toward Kat and then Violet.

She looks in my face, her eyes full of something I’ve missed for so long that I’d forgotten such a thing could exist. “I wanted to be in the same building with you, that’s all. I can’t stop thinking about you.”

Maybe someone should shake me good and hard.

Tonight, she sits in the corner table next to the bay, her back to the wall, affording her a good view of the water and the room. Through the evening, I sense her eyes following me as I work the restaurant.

And I watch her on the sly, seeing how she lifts her wine to her lips and waits for just a breath, stretching desire. Her face softens as her eyes drift toward the water.

As she’s leaving, she stops me near Josh’s desk, touching my shoulder and letting her hand fall along my back. “See you soon?”

I shake my head, watching her walk out the door, as though Violet has kissed me on the cheek and now disappears. Josh raises his eyebrows at me and smirks. “Tragic,” he says.

Once we close and everybody’s cleaning up, I slip into Burt’s office with my envelope from Bates, taking out every picture and staring. I try to imagine dust masks and sunglasses. Long hair. I don’t get a thing.

Tutti is deserted by the time I leave. I’m drawn out to the loading dock. Taking a chair with me, I set it beside the Dumpster and stand on it, raking through garbage with my hands, feeling how my heart opens and fills with love. I want to jump in and bury myself. That way when Mama comes, she’ll find me.

After hosing off my hands, I call a cab. He drops me at Miriam’s address. Across the way I can hear the bay tapping the seawall. Gulls sit on the rooftops, their heads tucked in. I have the gym bag from the Dave and Betty fiasco. In it I packed extra clothes, the Uzi and the S&W, my notebook, and the envelope from Bates.

I ring the bell. Miriam lets me in and closes the door, pressing me against it. Her mouth covers mine, her hands slip under my clothes. I’m overcome with her scent, her talented lips and tongue, and the strength of her desire. I drop my bag with a clang. She doesn’t notice.

She takes my hand and leads me up the stairs.

Her bedroom is lit by moonlight streaming in the bank of windows facing the bay. And so near now, I sense in my chest the blocky low growl of the water. I smell the weeds of the river, rank and swishing the banks along the Narrows. The mud gnats buzz, crawling my eyes like love.

Suddenly, I remember dropping from the bridge, the wind roaring. And here I am again, falling. Gazing at Miriam, I want her so badly I think I might rather be dragged into the river. How could I ever survive another Violet?

Miriam pushes me on the bed and starts stripping me fast, fevered. I run my hands through her hair, astonished by her.

“Jesus,” she says, leaning over me, kissing above my breasts. She turns me and unzips my skirt, tearing it off. “You’re killing me,” she whispers, taking in my ass, the back of my corset and my stockings. Her hands course the sides of my ass, separating the cheeks, fingers probing, sliding between my legs, stroking wetly upward. I try to rise, but she holds me in place, removing the rest of my clothing.

Miriam makes love to me still dressed, pushing my hands away each time I reach for her. I come in a fury, clutching her against me, unable to wrap myself tight enough to beat back those other memories that I work so hard to forget.

She showers me with kisses while I sink down gentle and dreamy. As I lie floating, my head still socked in with pleasure, she leaves the bed and undresses, allowing me to take in her layer of lace, her skin, and the veil of her ache, all lit by the moon.

I slip off the bed and walk behind, brushing her with my fingers, then my lips.

“Waiting for you today was like torture,” she says, closing her eyes as I run my hands down her sides.

“Waiting is good for you,” I say, teasing her.

“If it’s one thing I’m not good at, it’s waiting,” she says.

Hmm.

I stay behind her, grasping her breasts hard, tugging her nipples. She lies her head back on my shoulder. I allow one hand to glide down her stomach, then between her legs, sliding into her and grasping her that way, then slipping out.

“You smell like the air beneath the live oak,” I say. “In the afternoon, when the shade gets thick and hot.” I stroke her light, teasing, slipping in and out of her while my other hand slides down her back. I wet my fingers and find her other opening, entering gently. Miriam moans and her legs begin to tremble, so I lie her on the bed.

And watching her this way, as she’s lost in pleasure, the moon striking her skin, I fall deeper. But I’m not fighting anymore. I want to hit the water so hard that I impale upon the ache.

She’s gorgeous when she comes, head thrown back, her body arching.

We lie embraced, talking quietly afterward. From her bed, we have a clear view of the bay, the setting moon hanging over the water, and the gleam along the ripples.

Miriam tells me about her family in Maine. She goes through a list of lovers she’s had and what went wrong, saying how the last breakup nearly killed her. She hasn’t seen anyone seriously in a year.

“What about you?” she says.

“What?”

“Family? Where are you from in the land on the far side of the big river?”

“Ohio,” I say. Why change now?

“Just Ohio?”

I run my fingers through her hair, trying to divert her. “I don’t think about it anymore.”

“Your family? Your entire childhood? You don’t think about it?”

I’m catching the beginning scent of her nosiness thing. “Let sleeping dogs lie, Miriam.”

She turns her irresistible eyes on mine. “But you do think about it. You lived by a river. And what was it? The cool stream?”

I’m quiet, wishing for the zillionth time that I knew how to keep my trap shut. “Please don’t push me on this. Give me time.”

“So you won’t tell me about yourself? Same as with the scars?”

“Actually, I do think about all that. I just don’t like to. And I really hate talking about it.”

Miriam pulls back, turning from me.

“Soon.” I catch her. “It’s not you, Miriam. I just can’t.” I swallow, remembering my hands tied above and the rail hitting me right at the middle of my ass so that I was leaning back with my legs chained out. It was near the end, when Ben kept me separate from the others after the plays to gain power over Violet.

My head goes dark and I don’t remember much after that except that Ben brought me back to our rooms afterward. There were marks on my body, and I was trembling all over. He laid me down and kissed me so tender about my breasts. Then he covered me and cooked up a spoonful of smack.