The Graduation (12 page)

“I wouldn’t put it in precisely those terms.”

“All right, back to the night of the party. How did you just happen to be upstairs and see Bill leaving the bedroom?”

“I was standing outside the bedroom door.”

“How’s that?” Michael asked.

“I followed Bill up the stairs.”

“What were you doing outside the bedroom?”

“Listening.”

“Listening to what?”

“To what was going on inside,” Bubba said.

“And what was that?”

“Absolutely nothing.”

“That’s the second time you’ve said that. What does it mean?” Michael insisted.

“I don’t know. Nothing.”

“Did Bill see you when he left the room?”

“He bumped into me.”

“Was he mad at you?”

“He was upset.”

“At you?” Michael asked.

“No.”

“What was he upset about?”

“Clair and he weren’t getting along.” He shrugged. “I went inside to see how she was. I guess it was good timing on my part.”

Michael felt as if he were missing something obvious. “Were you and Clair having sex when the gun was fired?”

“Mike! That is a very personal question. I do not feel legally or morally bound to answer it.”

“Did you hear anything coming from the adjacent room before the shot was fired?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.”

“Dammit, Bubba.”

“Clair was moaning in my ear,” he admitted.

“You were having sex.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You two were having sex for the first time,” Michael said, finally understanding at least a part of the puzzle. “And after doing it, you started to fall for her and feel protective of her.”

“Is there something wrong with that?”

“Not unless you have a huge stud reputation to maintain.”

Bubba sighed. “It does demand a great deal of my energy.”

“Did you have your condoms with you?

“That’s none of your business,” he snapped, showing a rare flash of anger. Then he showed something far more rare, perhaps an emotion he had not displayed since before he had mastered the art of “attitude” at the age of two. His face sagged into lines of deep pain. “I didn’t,” he said softly. “I was careless.”

Michael leaned closer. “She got pregnant?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s all behind you now.”

“No, it’s not.” Bubba took another deep breath; he was obviously struggling with intense feelings. “She had an abortion, Mike. I talked her into it.”

Michael’s instinctive distaste for the procedure rose up. He had to remind himself his views were not everybody’s views. “It must have been a difficult decision for both of you.”

“For Clair it was. For me it was just another problem to be handled.” The transformation was remarkable—he was close to tears. Michael thought an argument could be made for the beneficial effect of periodic alcoholic binges on Bubba’s character. Bubba buried his head in his hands. “But I couldn’t forget what I’d done. The more I fell in love with Clair, the more I thought about the baby I’d killed.”

Fell in love?

“You made a mistake. Everybody makes mistakes.”

Bubba looked at him with red eyes. “I murdered my son.”

“How do you know it was a boy?”

“Of course it was a boy,” he said, insulted. “I would not have a female for a firstborn.”

Despite the serious nature of the discussion, Michael couldn’t help but laugh. Bubba had finally begun to accept girls as people, but he was a long way from accepting them as equals. “Bubba, promise me one thing. Ten years from now, when you’re ruling the world, please try to remember that it was a woman who brought you into the world.”

Bubba was confused. “What about Baby Bubba?”

“What about Clair?”

He brightened suddenly. “We’re getting married.”

Michael almost fell out of his chair. That was the big secret Clair had been afraid to tell him. “
What
?”

Bubba nodded solemnly. “It’s time I settled down. She’s a good woman. She understands me.” He touched Michael’s hand. “I want you to do me a favor, Mike?”

“Anything.”

“I want you to be my maid of honor.”

“Your best man?”

“Yes. I want you to stand beside me on Sunday.”

“You’re getting married this Sunday?”

“In Las Vegas.” Bubba sat back. “I’ve thought about this a long time, Mike. It’s nothing Clair has talked me into. I’ve made up my own mind.”

“I believe you.” Michael offered his hand. “Congratulations.”

Bubba beamed. “You’re not going to try to talk me out of it?”

“Why should I? Like you said, she’s a good girl. I hope you don’t drive her crazy. You better not cheat on her.”

Bubba waved his hand. “I’ve canceled my subscription to
Playboy
, that’s how serious I am about this.”

“Great. I suppose you want to get back to your game now?”

Bubba nodded enthusiastically, then furrowed his brow in concentration, worried. “I haven’t told you anything I wouldn’t have ordinarily, have I?”

“You’ve been fine. Oh, there is one other thing. Now that school’s over, how often did you use the computer codes to change stuff?”

Bubba scratched his head. “I can’t remember.”

“Did you make Sara president?”

“No, not that. Sara got elected by a landslide. But I did make Clair vice-president. Don’t tell her, though. She doesn’t know.”

“What about homecoming?”

Bubba looked unhappy. “I don’t know if I should talk about that.”

“Did Jessie get elected queen?”

He hesitated. “Yes.”

“Why did you choose Maria?”

“I couldn’t put in Clair. People were too down on her because of the abortion talk. And Clair wouldn’t stand for Jessie being queen. Maria was neutral.”

“But Jessica should have been queen,” Michael insisted.

“Nah. Clair should have been queen.”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

“I’m glad neither of them won. They’re both bigger than Maria. The float probably would have collapsed on them in the middle of the dance.”

Did someone tamper with the float thinking it would be Jessie?

“But what about Maria?” Michael asked.

He shrugged. “What can I say? I’m only Bubba; I’m not God.”

“At least we’ve made some progress tonight.”

Michael accompanied Bubba back to the lounge. It was good that he did. Along the way, Bubba tried to tightrope-dance on the top of the rail. Had he fallen the wrong way, he would have disappeared into a hazy soup, probably disappeared for good.

Michael just couldn’t get into the game, even though the score was close and the end was near. He went out to search for Polly. But he couldn’t find her anywhere.

Polly lay soaking in the steaming tub, staring at her naked body. Her figure was fabulous. She had large firm breasts, a narrow waist, smooth wrinkle-free thighs, and soft creamy skin. Any normal guy, she thought miserably, would have been happy to climb into the tub with her.

The door to the bathroom lay wide open. Clark prowled the room beyond. In the last half hour, he hadn’t so much as peeked in. She didn’t understand it.

Polly was, however, grateful for the room. Sara had done her a good turn in that regard—for once. Polly didn’t know if she could have stood a whole night partying with people who didn’t like her. She knew they didn’t. She’d known it all along, actually, although she had never understood that, either. She wasn’t a bad person. She had been sort of fat once, but now she had a nice body. You’d think they’d want to talk to her more often. The last few months at school, hardly anyone had talked to her. They’d avoided her as if she’d had the plague. She’d had bad luck, true, but a lot of people had bad luck. She wasn’t alone in that respect. In fact, a lot of people on this stupid boat were unlucky.

They couldn’t have imagined how unlucky they were.

Polly had left the hot water in the tub running in a trickle. A drain prevented the water from overflowing. It was an old trick; it kept the water always hot. She liked it that way, so hot her skin turned cardinal red whenever she took a bath. She’d first learned the trick in a book she had read on the Mafia. It seemed that whenever a mob member got thrown in jail for life, his buddies on the outside would provide for his family if he’d take a hot bath and slit his wrists. Those mob guys were always afraid that anybody in jail would eventually break down and talk. The hot water was important; supposedly when you bled to death, you got real cold, and then nauseated. A good bath made the whole experience much more comfortable. Leaving the water trickling was the key; if you sat all night in a tub with the hot-water faucet turned on a little and your wrists slit, in the morning most of the blood would be gone. No vomit, no blood, and naked as a babe. When Polly thought about it, she imagined it wasn’t such a bad way to go. Much better than, say, being trapped in a room overflowing with icy seawater.

An open razor blade rested on the soap tray next to Polly’s head. She picked it up and let the overhead light reflect off the sharp edge into her eyes. White light, star bright. Sitting up, she transferred the blade into her left hand. Like Alice, she was left-handed. Some things ran in the family.

Like bad luck.

“You should have gotten the paper cups when I told you the first time.” Polly whispered, taking the blade and pressing the tip into her right wrist. For a second nothing happened, and she wondered if she had a dull blade. Then a drop of blood drew a line down the pink flesh of her inner arm, dripping off her bent elbow into the clear water. It was interesting to watch how the red dissipated when it hit the water, how quickly her blood was lost. Maybe when she was through bleeding, her body would dissolve, too; it would be as if she had never been. She started to push the blade deeper.

“Polly,” Clark said. He stood outside the bathroom, a lamp at his back; she could clearly see his shadow on the bathroom door.

“What?” She set down the blade.

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing. What are you doing?”

“I’m waiting for you.”

“I’ll be out in a few minutes.”

Clark thought a moment. “Why are you taking so long?”

She had been hoping he would come in and join her, make love to her before he killed them all. It had really hurt her feelings that he’d had her pose nude all those times and not once stopped painting to touch her. The drops of her blood continued to drip off the end of her elbow. “I don’t know,” she said.

“I don’t believe you.”

“Go, do what you’re going to do without me. I want to stay here.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“You know why.”

She felt a stab of pain across her temple. “I’m not going.”

“If you don’t come, Alice will have died for nothing.”

“I don’t care about Alice.”

He entered the bathroom. At first she thought he was bleeding, too—from the head. His red hair was ablaze, as were his eyes. But it was only hate. “And where do you think you’re going?”

She crossed her arms over her breasts, trying to hide her wrist. The red spilled over her nipples. “I accidentally cut myself.”

He strode to the tub and leaned over, grabbing the razor blade and holding it inches from her face. “I’ll show you an accident. I’ll cut your eyes out.”

“No,” she cried, suddenly terrified.

“I’ll cut your tongue, make you eat it. Then you can bleed all you want.”

“I won’t do it again, I swear. Stop it, Clark!”

He stood and threw the blade aside. Then he picked up her hair dryer and flipped it on. “You’re getting out of that water this instant. It’s too hot for a bitch as cold as you.”

He threw the hair dryer into the tub. The electrical shock hit Polly’s brain like a fistful of exploding dynamite, just as it had when she had been in the hospital as a child. She began to scream.

The Lakers had called a time-out. There were ten seconds left on the clock. They had the ball. They were down by two points. Never in her wildest imagination could Sara have dreamed a stupid basketball game could make her feel so miserable.

“What if they don’t make it?” she asked Nick, who stood beside her. With the exception of Maria, the whole room was standing. On the screen, the Lakers’ coach drew diagrams on a big white sheet of paper while the players huddled in a semicircle at his back and nodded their exhausted, sweaty heads. On the left side of the lounge, Bubba paced along the top of the bar, shouting out encouragement.

“My men!”

“If they miss and don’t rebound the ball, they’re dead,” Nick said.

“But they don’t get any points for a rebound, do they?” Sara asked.

“No. They’d have to put up another shot quick. And it would have to go in.”

Sara clasped her hands together. “I’m going to kill him.”

“Who?” Nick asked.

“You’ll know when you see the body.”

The time-out came to an end. Both teams walked onto the court. The noise in the Fabulous Forum and the lounge of
Haven
settled down. Sara bit her lower lip. The referee handed the ball to a Lakers player and blew his whistle. Immediately the players of both teams scattered across half the court. A second went by, two seconds. The guy wasn’t going to have time to inbound the ball!

“Shoot!” Sara yelled.

“He can’t shoot from out of bounds,” Nick said.

The player inbounded the ball to a teammate at the top of the key. The guy faked to the right, dribbled to the left. Then he leaped; it was a magnificent leap. He floated through the air toward the basket. Green uniforms sprang up to block his way. Sara thought they were too late. The time on the corner of the screen went to six seconds.

“Shoot!” Sara yelled.

“He doesn’t have the ball,” Nick said.

Nick was right. The player had passed the ball to a teammate in the left corner. The guy was all alone, far from the basket. He was going for a three-pointer! If he made it, the game would be over! There would be no need for an overtime!

“Shoot!” Sara yelled.

The clock went to three seconds.

He shot it. The ball sailed high through the air. It had beautiful arc, seemingly perfect touch.

“No!” Sara screamed along with the rest of the room.

It missed. A Celtic grabbed the rebound. The Lakers tried frantically to foul him. They were too late. Time expired. Sara collapsed into the chair behind her.

I will not kill him. He is fat and slimy, but he has a working heart, functional kidneys. I will force him to sell his organs to pay off the debt.

“Excuse me,” Sara said to Nick and Maria, standing and making her way through the crowd to the bar. The mood of the lounge was gloomy, but compared to Sara’s mood, the place was in seventh heaven. Yet Sara wasn’t exactly angry. The pure fullness of her anger had transformed it into something quite the opposite, into an almost perverse joy. Bubba no longer had a hold over her. She could say what she wanted to him, do what she wanted. There were so many things she would do to him.

Bubba sat atop the bar, his head bowed in misery, an empty bottle loosely clasped in his chubby fingers. Clair was not around.

“Bubba,” she said sweetly. He looked up, rubbed his red eyes.

“It’s you again?”

She nodded. “Outside.”

He did not protest. They exited the lounge and stood on the deck. A lot of kids had just come out for a breath of fresh air, however, and Sara decided their “talk” would go better in private. She steered Bubba down a companionway and into a deserted hall. The locked passenger staterooms stretched the length of the boat away from them on either side. Bubba slumped to the floor and leaned against a wall. Sara stood above him, her hands on her hips.

“They should have gone for the tie,” Bubba said sadly. He looked up at her as though he expected her to offer him comfort. “I should be coaching that team.”

“I don’t care about the Lakers.”

He was shocked. He was even more drunk than before. “I’ve followed them since I was a little Bubba.”

She knelt in front of him. “Bubba, do you know how close you are to having terrible things happen to you?”

He was interested. “How close?”

She held her thumb and index finger up a quarter of an inch apart. Then she squeezed them together. “This close”

He was
very
interested. “What are you going to do?”

She leaned closer. “I
need
the money you promised me. I need you to get it for me. I don’t care
where
you get it. Do you understand me?”

Now he was disappointed. He brushed off her remark with a sloppy wave of his hand. “I bet your money on the Celtics.”

“What?” Sara fell back on her butt. “I don’t believe you.”

“You can have all the money you need tomorrow evening.” Bubba wasn’t much interested in the discussion. He clenched his fist and pounded his knee. “They should have gone for two points.”

“Why would you bet against the Lakers? They’re your team. You just said it—you grew up with them.”

He nodded. “I knew in my heart it was time for them to take a fall.”

Sara laughed. Then she did something that could have ruined her reputation for all time had there been anyone around to see it. She gave Bubba a big hug. “I never will understand you.”

“My true nature is unfathomable,” he agreed.

Sara suddenly remembered the bargain she’d made. She quickly sat back. “I suppose now you’ll expect me to put out for you?”

He hesitated. “Does it mean that much to you, Sara?”

“My body?”

He spoke in a regretful tone. “I suppose I could make love to you, give you a night you could carry happily to your grave, but I’d hate to do that to Clair. Faith and trust and not screwing around mean so much to her. Do you understand, Sara?”

“Are you saying you
don’t
want to have sex with me?”

“It’s not you personally.”

Her usual distaste for him returned. “But you’ve been dying to sleep with me all year? Or was that just an act?”

“Well…”

“You don’t find me attractive?”

“Now I didn’t say that.”

Sara leaped to her feet and paced in front of him. “What about me don’t you like? Is it my face? Is it my legs? Come on, don’t worry about my feelings. I don’t care what you say.”

He studied her a moment. “I’ve never liked the way you walked.”

She stopped. “I walk just like any other girl. Just like Clair does.”

He shook his head. “No, you walk like you’re in a hurry. A lady is never in a hurry. Good things come to a lady. She doesn’t have to chase after them.”

“What else?”

“Your clothes—”

“You said that earlier. I’m getting new clothes for the summer. What else is wrong with my body?”

“Nothing. Your body’s fine.”

“Fine? China and silk are fine. Come on, what don’t you like? Is it my ass?”

“I’d have to see you naked before I would be willing to express an opinion in that area.”

“Hold it right there, slime ball. I’m not taking my clothes off for you. No way you’re going to trick me into that.”

“All right.”

“What do you mean, all right? You don’t want to see it?”

“Not at the moment.”

She sagged against the wall, feeling totally un-wanted. “You really don’t think I’m very sexy, do you?”

Bubba gathered himself off the floor and put his arm around her shoulder, the odor of a half dozen of the world’s most famous distilleries in his breath. “Sara, if I had met you before I met Clair, I honestly believe things would have been different between us. Of course I think you’re sexy. You have a great ass. A few private lessons and I’m sure you could have made me very happy.”

She realized he was feeding her a crock of pure BS. It was amazing—not to mention ridiculous—how much it meant to her. She kissed him on the cheek. “I bet you’re still a virgin.”

He reached around and pinched her butt. “If I am, I was born with incredible natural talents.”