1 Margarita Nights (32 page)

After wishing the bastard dead a thousand times I’d finally got my wish only to discover it wasn’t exactly what I wanted after all.

The thing was, I’d always been Jimmy’s girl or Jimmy’s wife. My identity had been tied up with Jimmy for so long, I no longer knew who I was. It was stupid but that’s what it all seemed to come down to. His dreams had been my dreams. I had seen so clearly how life was supposed to be for Jimmy and in many ways I’d cared more about his success than he had, and even though I’d walked out I still hadn’t forged a new life, hadn’t found my own dreams. Maybe I didn’t have any.

I was still in bed sorting through the pain two hours later when someone dropped Ruth Ann off. She didn’t seem to think it was strange I’d crawled home to my mother’s bed for comfort and I didn’t protest when she got on the phone and told the Sunset I wouldn’t be in for a few days. But when I heard her talking to the doctor’s office I dragged myself out of the pink haven. This was serious. She hadn’t even called a doc tor when I fell off the roof and broke my arm. It hadn’t been until the next day, when my teacher had the school secretary take me to the hospital and they did the x-rays, that we found out it was broken.

“Well, who’s to know? You’re always so dramatic,” Ruth Ann said when she came to the hospital to pick me up.

The truth, at least my truth, was that she was so busy with the latest “love of her life” that she wouldn’t have noticed if I’d expired at her feet. Ruth Ann believed in love, believed that love could conquer all, even though her life was a bad soap opera of wasted chances, broken promises and failed relationships. Now what I once thought of as stupidity was beginning to seem like bravery in the face of a brutal reality.

I padded out to the kitchen. “Forget the doctor. I’m fine.” “You’re not. I just want to get something to settle your nerves.” It must be the hormone changes that were making Ruth Ann act so impulsively and motherly now.

I pressed down the telephone rest of her old pink princess phone. “Just leave it. My breakdown is over.” I wasn’t at all sure it was true but as long as I didn’t think too closely about what had happened over the last week I might just squeak by. “Can I do anything for you, darling?”

I thought about it for a heartbeat. “Yeah, you can. How about going out and getting
Casablanca
for me?” She stared incomprehensibly at me.

“You know the movie . . . Bogart and Ingrid Bergman.”

“You want to watch a movie? Now?”

“That’s just what I want. Take the truck.” I dug the keys out of my jeans and skidded them along the table to her.

She wrung her hands, afraid to argue with me in case she set me off again, the same fear I’d had with Andy. At last she picked up the keys. “All right, sweetie.” Being nutty definitely has some advantages.

While she was out I called Marley and told her both Andy and Jimmy were dead for sure.

When we stopped crying at each other she asked where I was. I told her.

“I’m coming,” she said. Maybe it was just so unbelievable that I’d run home to Momma that she had to see for herself.

“I’ll just cancel the rest of my appointments.”

“Isn’t necessary,” I protested.

“Maybe not for you but it is for me,” she said and hung up the phone before I could argue.

The three of us had a group hug, a communal bawl and a discussion that went nowhere. Then we sat lined up on the sofa watching
Casablanca
and crying our heads off for lost love and wasted romance, while eating popcorn and drinking cold beer.

It wasn’t until the last frame of the movie that I figured out where Andy had hidden the tape.

In the movie the exit visas from
Casablanca
were hidden in Sam’s piano. That’s where Andy had hidden the tape, in a piano, and as sleep crept over me I remembered where I’d recently seen a piano that Andy had access to.

A hand covered my mouth and a hushed voice breathed, “Shhh,” and then, “Get up.”

“What’s happening?”

“There’s someone outside,” Ruth Ann whispered. “And I smell gasoline.”

She whipped back my covers and tugged on my arm, repeating, “Get up.” Going to the window and sliding open the glass, she pulled out the screen and tried to hoist herself up on the ledge. I was mesmerized by black lace slipping up over a black satin thong.

The window was too high. She darted to the desk and grabbed the small chair. Setting it beneath the window, she looked back to me and whispered, “Hurry.”

I was awake now. I rolled forward onto my feet and catapulted off the end of the bed. My bag was hung over a spindle at the bottom of the bed. I grabbed for it and finished up next to Ruth Ann at the window.

She was already on the chair. Turning sideways she planted her behind on the ledge, swung one bare leg over the sill and then the other one and dropped out of sight.

I slung the bag strap over my head and threaded my left arm through it as I climbed onto the chair. I braced myself on the sill, the metal channels biting into my hands. Below me in the dark, Ruth Ann crouched. I swung over the sill and dropped down beside her.

She pointed to the next trailer and dashed across the ten feet separating the units, dropped down to her belly and started shimmying into the fourteen inches of space beneath the trailer. I followed.

I was halfway under when there was a giant whoosh and the night lit up. I moved like lightning, scuttling up beside Ruth Ann. Debris rained down on the tin roof above us, making a hell of a racket, as she reached out a hand to stop me from going any further.

“If this trailer catches on fire we’re going to fry here,” I protested.

“Just wait,” she replied, never letting go of my arm. It wasn’t easy to stay still. When it stopped raining junk, Ruth Ann said, “Okay,” and shimmied forward on her elbows like she’d been practicing for this her whole life. And maybe she had.

I was off like a shot until my hand touched something, something soft and living.

It yowled and shot away from me into the blackness beneath the trailer. I cursed. “Shhh,” Ruth Ann warned.

Ruth Ann held me back again at the edge of the trailer, sticking out her head to look around. Outside, an excited and frantic voice began calling and giving orders. “Okay.” She squirmed out from beneath the trailer.

I followed but slower, hesitating with only my head protruding, prudence overcoming panic. Out there was still someone who had tried to burn us alive.

Ruth Ann didn’t hesitate. She was already at the next trailer. I shimmied the rest of the way out and cautiously followed.

Ruth Ann tried the door before retrieving a key from over the light, opening the door and going in. I couldn’t figure out what was happening so I hunkered down in the shadows, waiting for Ruth Ann to reappear.

Around us doors opened and people in various states of undress piled out. Then the overhead lights went out. Now the only illumination was from the fire but it was still enough for someone to find me by. I slid down the stairs and pressed deeper into the shadows of a shrub, wrapping my arms around myself to stop the shivering. It was cold, probably only in the forties, but that wasn’t the reason I was shaking.

People came towards the fire like bugs drawn to a porch light and I watched for anyone familiar, sure that someone was out there waiting for me but not knowing who it was. But then again, maybe they’d gone, thinking they’d taken care of me just like they had Jimmy and Andy. They hadn’t counted on Ruth Ann . . . Rambo in a thong.

She appeared now, carrying an armload of clothing and a flashlight, although the fire spread a dim light around us.

“Here,” she said, handing me half of her bundle. “Ken and Joanne are both deaf. I had to wake them.”

I wondered, in our little adventure, when she’d had time to think of that.

“They gave me some clothes for us. You must be freezing.”

An hour later most of the Shoreline people had drifted away, back to the warmth of their own dwellings but here and there little groups talked in hushed tones. Even though it was frigid, Ruth Ann and I refused all offers of shelter. Wrapped in blankets we sat on the concrete steps of the trailer next to Ruth Ann’s, watching the three remaining firemen patrol the embers of Ruth Ann’s home. The oversized man’s tracksuit and the heavy pair of sport socks I’d pulled on did little to keep out the chill and not even the acrid smell of burnt wiring, plastics and other carcinogenic things I didn’t want to think of could drive us away. We were compelled to hang in until the bitter end.

Ruth Ann’s hair hung in ragged hanks around her face. In the harsh morning light with no makeup she looked every day of her age and more. “Sorry, Mom.” She put her arm around my shoulder. “What for?” she asked. “This is my fault. I brought this on you.” She gave a small shrug. “Perhaps it was George.” She saw my questioning look and responded with, “The guy you saw me with the other night. The pig. I think he did this.” Seems we had our choice of nut-case arsonists. “It could be worse,” Ruth Ann said.

“How? How in flipping hell could it be any worse?”

“I could have owned that piece of junk.”

“Still you’ve lost everything.”

“I was due for a new wardrobe.” She wrapped the blanket tighter around her shoulders. “But I’ll miss the pictures of you kids.”

“I won’t. How come I had so many teeth? That’s all you could see, great big teeth.”

“I read that the nose is the only part of the body that keeps growing throughout your life.” Her voice was full of amazement, like she’d just found the solution to world hunger.

Silence.

“And?” I asked.

“And what?”

“What’s the point of the nose story?”

“Maybe as your nose grew it balanced your teeth. Your teeth weren’t too big; your nose was too small.”

“Gee thanks. I feel loads better.”

“You’re welcome, dear.”

Crazy giggles bubbled out of us. The trailer folk standing in small clusters broke off their soft conversations and looked at us. The firemen turned to look at the mad women. Their blank expressions sent us off into uncontrolled laughter, tears rolling down our cheeks, our bodies convulsing.

I wiped the tears from my cheeks with the flat of my hands. “I don’t know if it’s safe to stay at my place. Jimmy was mixed up in something bad. I think the trailer was set on fire because of Jimmy.”

She took it like Ruth Ann takes everything, like it was just what she expected out of life and one more thing to be endured. “If there’s bad stuff going on, you should go stay at your daddy’s.”

The crazy Vietnam vet with the hair-trigger temper was the meanest son of a bitch in the valley, with nothing to fear from anyone. Besides, he lived among an arsenal of assault weapons. “You’ll be safe there.”

“Yeah, but will Daddy?” This set us off once more. When I could breathe again, I told her, “I swear, in twenty-four hours I’d cut his heart out.”

“Then come to Bodilla’s with me. She’ll put us up ’til we find something.”

I thought about it. “I have a place.” No more collateral damage.

We watched the fire marshal bag some stuff. We’d already been interviewed upside down and backwards. Ruth Ann said, “I’ll have to get new cards for everything.”

“You can do it from my place.”

Ruth Ann shook her head. “I’m going to work. It’s payday. I plan to take the whole thing and buy clothes from the skin out. I’m looking forward to it.” She’d definitely spent her whole life getting ready for this one bizarre tragic moment.