Trouble in Rooster Paradise (22 page)

“
I have four older brothers. After
Mom died my dad thought I needed some female influences. So he
shunted me off to Seattle. I hated it at first. But Aunt Alexis
turned that around in a hurry.”

She talked mainly about her Aunt Alexis, and
how she’d idolized her. Alexis had worked as a legal secretary, but
her real passion had been for performing.

“
She could do it all. Act, sing,
dance. Ask Blanche Arnot. She’ll tell you the same
thing.”

Britt told me more details about what she
called the dark times, when a man Alexis was madly in love with had
abruptly ended their relationship. Britt’s aunt had been
devastated.

“
She had a nervous breakdown. After
that she never shook a malaise that led to a deterioration of her
spirit. She sought refuge in drink.”

Britt explained again how she’d curtailed her
own plans in order to take care of her failing aunt. Alexis’
alcoholic dementia worsened and led Britt to have her committed.
After she’d died, Britt had taken the job as Len Pearson’s
aide-de-camp.

I helped her clear the table and put the dishes
in the sink. She insisted on doing them the next morning. The wine
bottle was a dead soldier, so I grabbed another beer. She didn’t.
We went into the living room and sank together on a daveno that
matched her club chair for comfort.

We talked about poor Meredith. Britt said she’d
called her when she got home from work, but there was no
answer.

“
If I were her I’d be making lots of
Zs,” I said.

She smiled, agreed, and then said, “This
morning you mentioned you had a feeling Meredith had more to say
than she did when you talked. You said it was as if she was holding
something back. What did you mean by that?”

I told her of the telephone conversation
Meredith had overheard—how she listened as Christine made plans to
meet someone in Ballard, and had sounded hurt, like she’d been
cheated. I added, “Meredith was pretty certain it wasn’t Dirk she
was talking to on the phone. She thinks Christine was having an
affair with one of her customers.”

I saw a brief flash of comprehension in her
eyes. “Ah,
that’s
the main reason why you wanted the
list.”

“
Right.”

“
And so your suspicion springs from
more than just a theory,” she said.

“
Right again. I also believe
Meredith had more to say on the subject. I think she felt awkward
talking about it at work. I’m going to call on her in the morning.
I hope to get her to open up.”

“
Your line of work must be very
exciting.”

“
It can be. It has been in the past
twenty-four hours. More than I like.”

We talked some more about the attempts on my
life and Addison Darcy’s. Then we shifted to nothing in particular.
My beer was gone and our foreheads were maybe eight inches apart.
We stared at each other for a while in silence—long enough for our
breathing patterns to synchronize. We kissed. Her mouth was soft,
her lips supple. We kissed several times.

Britt got up and took my hand. I followed her
across the room like a dazed bovine led to shelter in a
squall.

At work Britt was a little playful but she
struck me as mainly officious, reserved, and genteel. I now met her
alter ego. Bolero dress and undergarments hit the floor with a
speed that would have horrified a veteran stripper like Mrs.
Berger. I had no complaints. I was going to ask if she worked hot
and did all the kicks, but I held my tongue. Sometimes you just
don’t ask questions.

At some point I drifted off to sleep. I dreamt
Britt was talking on the phone. It was a dream made to seem real
because I was awakened when she climbed back into bed.

She snuggled up close to me. Her clock said
11:45.

“
I should probably be going,” I
said.

“
So
soon
?” she purred,
coaxing me with her kisses into a repeat performance. I was
exhausted, but she
was
persuasive. And I was nothing if not
persuadable.

I stayed in Britt’s bed until almost 1:30 a.m.
It was a welcome conclusion to the past couple of days of madness.
I reluctantly pulled myself from the leg lock she had on me. As I
dressed she got up and put on her bathrobe.

At the front door we kissed. Unbelievably, she
wanted me to stay for an extra inning. But just as unbelievably, I
graciously declined. I was done in. Plus, as much as the idea
appealed to me, it went against my sense of propriety. I was
concerned what the neighbors might think. I didn’t want them to get
the
right
impression.

So instead, I courteously thanked her for a
great dinner and an even greater evening.

“
I’ll call you tomorrow,” I
said.

“
You mean you’ll call me
today
. And I’ll expect you to,” she replied. She then gave
me a genuine goodbye kiss with cool lips and an elfin glance that
disappeared coyly as she shut the door.

I hopped down her porch steps with Fred
Astaire’s light feet. Or so I liked to think.

Britt on the job was alluring. Britt at home
was downright ambrosial. I could see that an intelligent and
determined woman like her probably needed to compartmentalize her
life at work and her personal life. But what a delectable
contrast.

I was in love.

Well, I’d scratched a mighty lascivious itch,
anyway.

I drove home slowly. The alcohol was long out
of my bloodstream, but I had to fight nodding off. I wished that
the Chevy could make its own way home like some faithful Cayuse
with its frolic-sodden cowboy asleep in the saddle.

When I got to Mrs. Berger’s, my light feet had
grown heavy. I gave the street a reconnoitering scan before I went
inside. No killer appeared to be lurking in the shadows. I didn’t
utter a peep as I made for the stairs. I didn’t even glance at Mrs.
Berger’s cheesecake photos.

I went to brush my teeth and discovered vomit
in the sink and on the floor. Poor Walter. He probably thought he’d
hit his mark, but had been beguiled by the Black &
White.

It saddened me and took away some of my zest
from earlier.

The bathroom reeked of bile. I cleaned up the
mess with fresh towels that I rinsed off in the tub before sending
them down the laundry chute. I disinfected the area with Lysol and
then showered.

Since Walter, my sentinel, had taken the night
off, I set my .38 on the nightstand and wedged a chair in front of
the door. I balanced a water glass on the doorknob as an added
precaution.

It was 3:00 a.m. when I finally hit the
sack.

I didn’t go right to sleep. My clean-up duty
had rekindled my feelings of guilt for abandoning Cissy and Walter
in their time of need. I’d always intended to come up with a
definite system of ethics for myself. I figured I’d use Benjamin
Franklin’s moral algebra when I finally got around to it. I’d weigh
all actions with pros and cons. I figured that way I wouldn’t be
hounded by second guesses when these kinds of dilemmas
occurred.

I managed to shake off my guilt. I reasoned
that sometimes a guy’s got to go his own way—look after himself.
How else did he keep sane? I convinced myself that in a heartbeat
Cissy and Walter would have done the same thing if they were
wearing my ten-and-a-half Ds.

That last thought allowed me to drift off to
sleep feeling a little less critical of Gunnar the
Self-Seeker.

“
H
ave you
ever heard of Fletcherism, Kirsti?”

“
Pardon me?”

She looked a little flushed in the face. I’d
broken into her thoughts. Despite her modern views of sex and her
claim that she was no prig, I think my escapade with Britt caused
her prudish slip to show.

“
Fletcherism. Ever heard of
it?”

“
No.”

“
Well, Mrs. Berger was a fanatical
proponent of Fletcherism. The namesake of this practice was Horace
Fletcher. He believed a person should eat only when he was hungry
and that he should chew his food hundreds of times.”

“
Sounds radical.”

“
Very. Fanatically so. The practice
was popularized but later rejected by John Harvey Kellogg, staff
physician at that famous Battle Creek Sanitarium.”

“
The Cornflakes Kellogg?”

“
The very same. I’m surprised you’ve
heard of him.”

“
Oh, I get around. Why’d Kellogg
later reject this Fletcherism stuff?”

“
Something to do with too much
chewing breaking down fibers.”

“
Sorry I asked.”

“
Uh-huh. Mrs. Berger had learned
about Fletcherism years before from a dentist who’d wined and dined
her when she was new to burlesque. He called her his ‘greenhorn
ecdysiast.’ ”

“
His what?”

“
Ecdysiast. It’s a pompous way of
saying stripper.”

“
Oh.”

“
According to Mrs. Berger, the
dentist had encouraged her to become a star. She loved to tell the
story of how he kept insisting that practice was the key. Of
course, each time he took her out, he wanted her to do some
practicing for him and give him a private performance when the
evening was through.”

“
Yeah, right.”

“
In the words of Mrs. Berger: ‘He
was a damn good burlesque coach but had some funny ways when it
came to the baser needs department.’ She said she didn’t love him.
She knew she never could. As soon as he’d finished an overhaul on
her teeth and helped her perfect her hitch kick, she broke it
off.”

“
A real tragedy, I’m sure,” Kirsti
said, far from enthused.

“
Mrs. Berger was a devoted
Fletcherite ever after. I must have heard the dentist story a
hundred times. She even had Walter weave it into the play they
worked on. You see, her fictional heroine was a devoted
Fletcherite.”

“
Oookay 
….” Kirsti said
in a slow hollow tone as she goggled at me.

“
I mention Fletcherism and Mrs.
Berger’s play because as frequently happened, both came up in
conversation at the breakfast that followed my return from
Britt’s.”

I’d planned to call on Meredith Lane between
8:30 and 9:00 Saturday morning, but I didn’t exit Dreamtown till
8:45.

I dreamt that Walter and I were in a pet store.
We were buying a small cage. I insisted we needed one with a wheel.
We argued. The next thing I knew we came home and walked in on Mrs.
Berger teaching Britt Anderson and Len Pearson how to work her
prized Sittenberg fans. Both were fully clothed—but Pearson was in
drag. Mrs. Berger told Walter and me, “Strip down to your BVDs,
boys, and join us.”

I woke feeling disturbed by the dream and
grateful it was over.

Mrs. Berger didn’t serve a formal breakfast on
the weekends. Still, we all hit the kitchen about the same time,
which was a shocker, considering the shape we were in.

“
Gunnar, were you ever in an opium
den?” Mrs. Berger asked as I came in the kitchen.

I nodded.

“
What was it like? Did they lurk?
Was it like the ocean? You know, like moving waves of doped-up
heads splashing into one another? Oh … I like that one,
Walter. Try to remember it.”

“
I was running at the time,” I said.
“I didn’t notice any waves or splashing heads.”

Sten was busy at the stove. Sten was a
hollow-legged leader in the art of downing schooners. He was
scrambling eggs with the slow and calculating moves of a deluxe
hangover. He had the pan on a back burner, safe from the
ash-droppings from his cigarette.

I sidled up next to Sten and poured myself a
cup of coffee and then stood leaning against the drain
board.

Mrs. Berger sat at the table, chewing and
re-chewing a mouthful of buttered toast as she read the
Post-Intelligencer
. Her struggle with nail-biting wasn’t
going well. Only the tips of her thumbs, pinkies, and one index
finger wore tattered Band-Aid remains. She was wearing sun goggles,
which meant she either had a migraine or a hangover. Whichever, it
didn’t stop her from jabbering.

“
I was reading Sten’s
Black
Mask
magazine in the crapper yesterday. I got a wonderful idea
for the opening of the second act. Walter, let’s have Penny
innocently flounce into an opium den.”

“
Innocently
flounce
is a bit
oxymoronic, Nora,” Walter said.

“
Huh?”

“
What I mean is, it sounds a bit
contradictory. Perhaps we should have Penny innocently
wander
instead of flounce.”

“
Whatever,” she said waving the
matter aside with her hand.

“
Aunt Nora,” Sten said, “I thought
you had Penny the prisoner of a white slaver ring.”

“
I did. She escaped. Her cherry
still intact.”

Walter sat across from Mrs. Berger. He cleared
his throat and said, “Nora, about Penny’s escape from the white
slavers …. When she expresses her gratitude to her deliverers
for saving her from a fate worse than death … I think the word
‘maidenhead,’ or perhaps ‘hymen,’ would serve better than ‘cherry.’
I do wish we could discuss this some more before we go any
further.”