The Rabbit Factory: A Novel (34 page)

She unzippered the side compartment on the Lakers bag and was standing there looking through the stuff in it when she heard the door down the hall open. She stopped. There were some noises. It sounded like that whining again. Then there was some kind of hissing noise. Then the door closed again. What the hell was going on?

Damn he had a lot of stuff in his bag. Aspirin. Excedrin. Aleve. A tiny box of Kleenex. Baby lotion. What was that for? Bottles and bottles of pills. Toothpaste, and there it was. She pulled out the little blue box and slid the cover open. She got one of the joints out and put the box back in. Then she went back to the kitchen. She didn’t hear anything when she went by the door but she could smell again something that smelled kind of bad, just a whiff of it, and something that smelled like air freshener. When she got back to the kitchen, Merlot was sitting on one of the stools, smiling, and her glass of wine was already poured and sitting there, but he picked it up and got off the stool.

“Why don’t we go up front?” he said.

“I thought we were coming back here.”

“Let’s go up there where the fire is.”

He seemed to be kind of in a hurry. It was like he was trying to rush around but wasn’t moving very fast. What he acted like was that he was trying to get her out of the kitchen. So she turned in front of him and went back up the hall and into the living room, where the fire was burning.

And that was very nice. There were some overstuffed pillows on the couch. He set her wine down and walked behind the coffee table and sat down on the couch. She put the joint on the table and went over to the fire and sat down on the floor.

She started unlacing her boots and looking around. There were lots of tiny cars and some antique toys scattered around on shelves and small tables. A big calendar with two kittens in a sock, for December. Over the fireplace there was a low mantel that held some seashells and starfish and the horn of a goat, and there was that quiet sound of crackling embers and that good smell of wood smoke that reminded her of sitting and doing her school lessons at night on her mamaw’s hearth out in the country when she was little.

“You don’t mind, do you?” she said. “I’ve got to get these boots off my feet. And then I’d love to stretch my toes out toward that fire. I will if you’ll toss me one of those pillows.”

“Sure.” He reached over for one and it landed next to her. She smiled at him. Why was he spraying air freshener around? Maybe Marla smoked. Maybe he had something he didn’t want her to see yet. But if he did, that was okay. This was his home and maybe he hadn’t been quite ready for her to pay a visit and spend the night. Maybe he really was a sloppy bachelor and the old lady didn’t get everything completely cleaned up while he was gone. But she was pretty old, too, so that was understandable.

“You know,” Merlot said. “I think I’ll go wash some clothes.”

She took the first boot off her foot and looked up at him.

“Wash some clothes? You mean the ones you brought back? You didn’t even wear all of ’em, baby. What you want to wash now for?”

“Just to get it out of the way,” he said.

She just nodded.

“Well, whatever you want to do. I thought we’s gonna smoke this joint.”

“Oh, you go ahead. I just need to stick a few things in the washing machine. It won’t take me but a few minutes. Just stay in here and relax and I’ll be right back.”

And he set his wine on the coffee table and went down the hall. The room was made so that you couldn’t see all the way down the hall from where she was sitting. She heard his feet go all the way back. She started unlacing the other boot, listening. A few things banged back there. One sounded like the lid of a washing machine.

She stopped with the boot and leaned way over and got her wineglass and took a sip. She listened some more. She couldn’t tell what he was doing. Washing clothes, she guessed.

She set the wine back down and got the other boot off and stood both of them neatly beside the hearth. And it sounded like the back door slammed. She kept listening. It slammed again. He was doing something. And she had decided that he wanted her to stay in here while he went on and did whatever it was he was doing. So she did.

Well, there the joint was. She reached and got it and stuck it in her mouth, and leaned back and ran her hand down in her pocket, but her lighter wasn’t in there. Merlot had it. She took the joint out of her mouth to call to him.

The hall door opened. There were some noises. The hall door shut. She listened for about five seconds. The back door slammed. Then the back door slammed again. Then Merlot’s feet came back up the hall.

He poked his head in the door at an angle.

“You doing all right in here?”

She smiled and nodded.

“Yeah, baby. Have you got my lighter?”

He grabbed all his shirt and pants pockets rapidly with a blank look on his face and then pulled it out with a look of relief.

“Here go,” he said, and handed it to her.

“Don’t you want some?”

“I’ll get some later,” he said. “I’ve got to finish with these clothes.”

“What are you doing, taking your garbage out?”

“I’m just cleaning up,” he said, and ducked back out before she could say anything else. His feet went down the hall and she struck the lighter and put the joint back in her mouth. The paper fired at the end and she pulled on it and let the lighter go out. Then the door opened again. There were some more noises in there. But nothing like what she’d heard before. Not that whining sound.

She held the smoke in her lungs and crossed her legs on the floor. It was so nice and toasty warm by the fire. Maybe later Merlot would let her bring in some blankets and make them a lovemaking bed right in front of the fire and make some more sweet love with him. And then she could start to tell him about Gabriel. She blew the smoke out. Oh, how she could tell him all about Gabriel. She could tell him that he probably looked like a young black god by now. DeWayne had been a good-looking young man. And how long had he been dead now? Lord God, was it twelve years already? She guessed it was. He got shot one night at the Turning Point after she’d been a deputy for only three months. Hanging around all those people. Getting drunk. Running drunk. Running his mouth. Bunch of drunk fools with guns in their pockets thinking they were gangsters. That same bunch was still out there. All of them too sorry to work. Didn’t want to do nothing but smoke a crack pipe. Get somebody pregnant. Then just ignore the child. She knew all about it.

Merlot’s feet went back out and the door closed. Then his feet went some more. She heard the lid go down on the washing machine, and the very faint sound of water running into it. She guessed he
was
washing clothes.

She took another hit on the joint and thumped the ashes through the wire grate in front of the flames. She watched the fire. Red neon coals in the split oak were glowing and going out and coming back and changing shape, like worms crawling around under logs in the woods.

The back door slammed. Maybe that old lady made a lot of garbage while he was gone. Merlot had told her she liked to party. She hoped she could still do it when she got to be that age. She took another hit on the joint and then stubbed it out on the bricks, just below the grate. She put the roach on the coffee table and got another drink of her wine.

God, where was she going to start about Gabriel? At the beginning, when she was seventeen, she guessed. Kissing a boy and getting worked up. Wanting all of it, not just some of it. Just because it felt so damn good. But there wasn’t any need in telling him all that stuff because he already knew how making love was. She had something right here that was real good, real positive. He was such a smart man. He knew all that stuff from all those books. If anybody was smart enough to help her find Gabriel, it was probably him. And if they did find him, and he was happy, that was fine, and she didn’t have to meet him or interfere in his life in any way. If she wasn’t going to get him back, and she knew she wasn’t, it would probably be better not to meet him. Because that might hurt him. He’d want to know why she’d given him up maybe. And what would she say? She didn’t have to say anything. She didn’t have to meet him. She just wanted to look at him. She just wanted to see what he looked like. At a graduation or whatever it was.

The back door slammed again. There was a bump, a thud, a muffled bang, and Penelope heard Merlot clearly say: “Fuck!”

In just a few moments, his feet came back up the hall. Then there was some more hissing. Then his feet went back to the kitchen. Then it sounded like a cabinet door slammed. Then his feet came back up the hall. He walked in and sat back down on the couch and smiled at her.

“How you doing?”

She reached for the pillow and put it where she wanted it, up under her elbow, and pulled her wineglass closer. She smiled at him. She loved him so much already it was scary and crazy, but what was crazy about love when it came? What was crazy about having a man who drove you almost out of your mind with his need for you and satisfied your own with it? Who was always funny and not a deadbeat like so many men she knew? The washing machine started doing a chugging number somewhere back there. Faintly.

“I’m doing great. Your place is so comfy. You want to come over here and lay down beside me?”

“Well,” he said. “I got a few more things I’ve got to do.”

“What are you doing?”

He shook his head steadily for about three or four or five seconds.

“Oh, you know. Just the regular old shit you take care of when you get in from a trip. Just cleaning shit up. You know how it is.”

“Well, it looks pretty clean to me. You thought anything about supper?”

There was a horrific noise and bang at the back door, something that sounded like a cross between a yelp and a scream and a woof and a bark and Penelope said: “What is
that
?”

Merlot acted like he didn’t hear it. Then he did.

“Oh,
that
? Aw hell, it’s probably a coon.”

Penelope leaned toward him.

“Coon?”

“Yeah. We’ve got a coon or two that lives in the neighborhood and they come around and bang on the door once in a while. Hey, you want to listen to some music?”

Penelope was getting pretty stoned now and she knew she was smoking way too much these last few days. She’d have to slack off before she went back on duty and let it start getting out of her system because they had random pee tests sometimes. But it sure felt good right now. And some music would be really nice. But now, stoned, she suddenly wanted to see the coon.

“Cool, baby, put something on. You got any Alejandro over here?”

“Shit no,” he said. “Somebody borrowed my
Thirteen Years.”

The terrible noise at the back had subsided.

“I want to see the coon,” she said, and picked up her wineglass and took another sip. “Can I see the coon?”

“See the coon?” Merlot said.

“Yeah. See the coon. Can I see the coon?”

Merlot sat there with his hands between his knees.

“Well, I don’t know,” he said. “They usually run off if you try to look at them.”

“Can’t you just turn on the light and look through the back door?”

“I think my bulb’s burned out,” he said.

“Oh. Okay. Well, what about supper? What we gonna eat?”

And she turned her wineglass up and had another sip.

Merlot got up.

“I don’t know,” he said, and moved toward the stereo. “How about if we go out somewhere?”

She leaned back on her pillow. It felt so good here. It was so warm and cozy in here. The washing machine was still chugging. Faintly.

“Go out? Oh, baby. We just got back from a long drive. I don’t have any clothes ready. I think I want to just stay right here in front of this fire. I can eat a frozen pizza or anything. Or we could just order something and get somebody to bring it. All these places around town deliver.”

He was fiddling with the stereo, doing something. There was another noise at the back door. It sounded like something scratching at it.

“I wish your lightbulb wasn’t burned out. Have you got another bulb you can put in it? Or give me the bulb and I’ll put it in. I want to see that old coon.”

And she did, too. One of her mamaw’s neighbors, Harold Washington, had kept one in a rabbit cage he had out beside his barn, up under the shade of a huge catalpa tree. Fish-bait tree. In her memory it was the biggest one she’d ever seen, and in her memory she thought it was probably bigger than the one they had out at Ole Miss, beside the student union. And that one was enormous.

“I don’t know if I’ve got any bulbs or not,” Merlot said. “What you want to listen to?”

“I don’t know. Just put on something good.”

And that old coon would wash everything Mr. Washington fed him. Even if you fed him a biscuit, he’d wash it in a pan of water he had in his cage. She could remember petting that coon. It had long whiskers.

“There’s a new place in town I was thinking about trying,” Merlot said. “They’re supposed to have really good food. You sure you don’t want to go out? I’ve got all that casino money I won. We ought to go out and celebrate. I could buy you a big steak.”

She reached for her wineglass.