The Gilda Stories (21 page)

Gilda introduced Bird casually, as if they regularly met at the 411 on Sunday evenings, then asked, “How're the kids?”

“Girl, how the hell can they be? Darlene got all A's in school, so she don't want to do no homework. Daryl got all D's in school, so he don' wanna do none either!” With that she laughed loudly and several people at the bar turned. Gilda excused herself from the table and had Savannah follow her to the tiny bathroom at the back of the bar. Toya stopped eating and finally began to drink her glass of gin.

Inside the bathroom Savannah was tense. “I knew you be here today, but don' ask me how. Matter of fact, don' ask me nothin', beginnin' with who that dry one is you got with you or what the hell the fire was about. All I know is we got to get that child out of here and right now!”

“Listen, Savannah, you're out of it. Fox is more than you or I can deal with alone, so I want you to forget everything. Stay here and meet some friends for a drink or dinner.”

“Are you crazy? That nigger ain't shit. He's been waiting to get his for the past five years, and if it's us that got to give it to him, then that's it, ya dig?”

“Savannah, let it go. We saw him last night. He's a real killer—”

“Girl, I coulda told you that before the shit hit. He's more'n that. The girls that leave him can be counted on one finger, so I know what the word is, O.K.? Let's just get the hell out of this joint. I ain't even sure the .45 I got in my jacket will take care of him!”

“You're right, Savannah, it won't. That's why you've got to stay out of it.”

“You ever kill anybody?” Savannah asked it with a coolness that did not match the agitated movement of her hands. She didn't wait for Gilda to respond. “It ain't an easy thing, but I think that's the only way Toya gonna leave this town. And I'ma tell you at this point, after that fire, that motherfucker is tryin' to kill her and droppin' him is the only way to get her free.”

“I know,” Gilda said.

“Well, have you?”

“Yes,” she answered impatiently. The cloying smell of the air freshener and the closeness of the walls made Gilda even more anxious. The faces floated up in her mind again, and the bitterness of those moments singed the back of her throat. Savannah was surprised by the response and by its tone.

The bathroom door swung open abruptly. Henrietta burst in, closing it tightly behind her.

“That other one says y'all get out now. She say he's coming!”

“We'll take the alley!” said Savannah.

“She done paid me,” Henrietta said as Gilda pressed some bills into her hand. But Gilda did not hear. She had Savannah by the hand as they tumbled out the fire exit.

The narrow stairs went down one dark flight into the alley. A row of full trash cans stood against one wall. Bird picked her way around debris, holding Toya by the wrist with one hand and Savannah's fur in the other. Gilda and Savannah came up close behind.

“Turn right up the alley, hurry,” Savannah whispered loudly. Bird peered into the darkness at her right, trusting Savannah's words and her own instinct. Their footsteps were almost silent as they ran. Both Gilda and Bird concentrated not on the running, but on the next step after the alley; there would be few safe places now.

The street light at the end of the alley was out. It was dark, and the opening onto the street was blocked by a large car. Bird stopped short. The three women almost piled into her like cartoon figures. The door of the car sprung open wide, but the interior remained murky. Gilda was angry she had no weapon. She might have taken a knife from the table or a glass. How would she cut into the man's heart, stop it from beating, with her bare hands? Bird stood motionless, searching her memory of the surrounding territory. She had not been prepared to face this one yet. More time was needed, but there was no more time.

“Back to the bar,” she whispered and let go of Toya.

“No,” Savannah said, “it's Skip.” She ran toward the car. Gilda followed her and recognized the thin, brown-skinned young man sliding over from the driver's to the passenger's seat. His boyish face was split by a genuine smile.

“Get in, hurry up. Damn!” Savannah said as she got behind the wheel. Gilda climbed into the backseat, Toya and Bird followed. Savannah pulled the car away from the curb silently, slowly, without turning on the lights, driving as if she'd trained all her life for the getaway. “We got a house on the Cape we share with Maurice. It's closed down now, so we can hide out there for a while.”

Gilda and Bird looked at each other, knowing there would be little hiding time. Fox would find them easily and follow. He only had to listen to the thoughts, sniff out the fear of the others in the car. But he had to be faced somewhere, and away from the eyes of the city was better. Neither wanted to risk a confrontation with him among the crowds of the train station. Gilda was sorry that Savannah, and now Skip, were involved, yet their choice felt natural. Bird picked up these thoughts as she sifted through her own. She held the girl close, trying to calm her with her touch. She was silent, staring ahead as if her will, not Savannah, drove the car through the evening streets.

Then Toya spoke. “I don't know what he want with me. Shit, I ain't even the big money-maker.”

“Girl, you know it ain't about money with most of 'em,” Savannah said over her shoulder.

“Maybe you all better just drop me off at the bus, I mean I could get on and be away before he knows. You all could just hold him back, or something. I don't even have to take it home directly. I mean, I could go a roundabout way, you know, so he won't be able to follow me.

Gilda answered. “He'd know, Toya. There's no way we can hold him or keep him from knowing. He'd be there when you got there, wherever it was. Savannah's right, we'll just stay put, stay out of town, until he comes to us.”

As the car sped through the night Gilda and Bird watched the fog gathering around the road and the dim lights from the houses growing further apart. Skip was quiet during most of the ride, only speaking to answer the few questions that Savannah threw at him.

“Yes,” he'd remembered the milk for the tea and the brandy and the extra clothes. He'd mailed her letters. Each response came officiously with an edge of pride. Savannah just nodded or said “uh-huh,” like she was grading him.

Everyone was silent for ten miles or so when Skip said unexpectedly, “I brought your pillow, the soft one.”

Gilda saw one of Savannah's hands leave the steering wheel to rest on Skip's leg. She said thanks in a clipped voice, her throat tight. They were silent again. Savannah wanted to ask questions of the dark one, Bird, but could see there would be no answers. Her glance into the rearview mirror confirmed it. The two women sat stonily with Toya wedged between them.

Savannah broke the silence with a sudden loud laugh. Everyone looked at her, startled by the sound.

“Goddamn! Me and Skip got this, what you call, contingency plan together to avoid a funeral, not lead the procession. Skip, I think your girls here need a drink!”

Toya was the first to laugh. It was as if Savannah had pricked her with a pin, releasing the tension that held her tight. Skip passed a flask to the backseat, and it circled the group several times before the tension left the air.

They finally exited off the main road and turned into a small lane. The house was tiny. It was set back and surrounded by a high hedge, its rear toward the bay. They entered the bungalow hurriedly, escaping the damp air. Gilda cautioned Savannah to leave the wooden shutters closed on all the windows as they searched with flashlights for lanterns. Once the amber glow was cast over the room, Skip and Toya exhaled forcefully. It sounded like they had been holding their breath for the entire ride. Gilda walked to the rear of the room where the kitchen remained in shadow. She looked through the back door which opened out onto a small yard over-run with weeds and dead grass leading down to the beach. Bird stood in the center of the room while Savannah unpacked a bag of groceries in the kitchen.

“What's up there?” Bird asked, staring at a trapdoor in the ceiling. A chain hung from it, a tiny brass ring at the end swaying in the air.

“The attic. It's got another small bed and a lot of junk stored for the summer,” Skip answered.

Bird stood on a chair and pulled at the chain until the stairs dislodged and she could lower them into the living room. An even stronger musty smell filled the room as Bird climbed up to the attic with a flashlight in hand. She moved above them, feeling the room rather than looking at it. The single bed in its brass frame was next to a shuttered window. There was barely room to stand at full height, and the boxes left little space to walk about.

She came down and said, “We'll take that room.”

“Sure. We've got sleeping bags and everything up there you want,” Skip said, eager to be helpful. Bird watched him as she pushed the stairs back up into the ceiling. He was slightly built and his mocha-colored skin was almost as dark as her own. His closely cut hair seemed conservative compared to the blue sharkskin suit and dark blue shoes he wore. He looked to be about twenty to Bird. She could smell the fear in him, a boy among old women, but she also sensed his fierce loyalty to Savannah. She wondered about him for only a second, then turned to Gilda who was about to open the front door.

“Maybe Skip can do that for you?” Bird said.

“Yes, Skip, how about driving the car around back, into the yard. No point in drawing attention to the house,” Gilda said.

“Sure thing.” He grabbed the car keys from the table, full with his mission. Savannah chuckled and rushed over to kiss the back of his neck as he went out, looking, at that moment, as young as he did.

“O.K., I'm ready for a drink,” Savannah said. “That seems to be the theme of our little get-together tonight.” She unlocked a cabinet beneath the sink and lined up bottles on the small counter that stood between the main room and the kitchen area. Gilda sat on the couch, Toya on the hooked rug at her feet. Bird sat across from them in the one armchair.

Savannah glanced at each of them and asked, “Brandy all around?” Everyone looked up when the door opened. Skip came back in as she poured. Toya trembled, and Savannah gave her the first drink.

“That's my baby and I use that word advisedly,” she said, handing Skip the next one.

The room was old. The walls and floor met at odd angles; the floorboards were worn in the way that says many people have enjoyed the house. A thin layer of dust covered the framed photographs on the sideboard: several vintage pictures of men and women, someone's parents in their youth, and snapshots of Savannah and Skip, their arms linked with two slender men in bathing suits.

Gilda recognized Maurice from Mass. Ave., but not the pale man with his hand draped intimately over Maurice's shoulder. Bird could almost hear the laughter of these carefree friends as they ran up from the beach and collapsed in this weary room. When Savannah sat next to Gilda on the couch, the cushions sank under her weight. Skip took the ottoman that matched the faded cover of Bird's chair. He stretched his legs in front of him and leaned back on his elbows. Everyone was quiet, not sure how to pass the evening.

Bird shifted in her chair after a moment, then said, “Gilda?”

“Well, I don't think anything will happen tonight,” she responded, as if they'd already started the conversation in their heads. “He'll search the city 'til dawn. Go to his regular hangouts. My house probably, maybe to yours, Savannah, if the people in the bar say you left with us.”

“I don't think so. Not one of them barflies likes the dude. I mean this is a guy any of them would walk backwards away from in the desert if they thought they could get away with it.”

“He has persuasive ways, so we can figure he'll check everywhere in town before he comes out here tomorrow night.”

“What if he comes in the morning?” Skip asked. “I mean, why should he wait? He might think we'll just try to skip town, head west…”

“He won't come in the morning. He'll be here tomorrow evening. We'll have a plan by then, but you all must do exactly as we say. No questions, no hesitations. It'll be hard to surprise Fox. But I think we have one for him. Maybe even a couple of them. The main thing is that we don't panic.”

Gilda's last words were aimed almost directly at Toya. Bird peered at her, looking for signs of hysteria.

“Fox broke my jaw once,” Toya said in a softly accented voice, “just backhanded me across the room. But I never hollered, never cried. All the way to the hospital they kept looking at me, waiting. But I couldn't. Later he did things, mean things like threw out my letters from mama, then he ripped up my favorite dress 'cause he didn't like the color. I couldn't cry when he did that stuff. I knew he was waitin' for me to fall apart. He was doin' 'em to make me cry. So I couldn't, and I ain't gonna now. I'll cry when I know he's gonna leave me alone. And if that means he got to be dead to do that, then like the preacher say: may God have mercy on his soul.”

“Amen!” Skip said.

The assent of the others came in silence.

Gilda rose and said, “I'm going out to scout around the house, just a bit. I'll be back in an hour.”

The silence remained unbroken until Savannah spoke. “Hell, I ain't had to hide out from no nigger since 1940. You heard tell of Franklin, ain't you?” She directed her question to Toya, who nodded. “Well, he took it into his head he wasn't gonna let me leave him. Which was something else since I ain't never gone with him in the first place. He just started following me around, hanging over me like a fool. Got so I couldn't leave the bar but he'd be right there. Scared off half my customers. I was so mad I thought I'd croak the guy.”

“What'd you do?” Skip asked like a child hearing a bedtime story.