Casa Parisi (11 page)

"Even if you weren't, who could compete with this?"

"I'm glad I don't have to find out." Georgie frowned as though Lucia's true meaning had begun to sink in. "Hey, watch what you say. This place may not be fancy, but it's all mine and I'm proud of it. I'm doing what I want to do and I'm my own boss. What more could I possibly want?"

"Not a damn thing, I'd say," Lucia said. "How about getting me a drink?"

"Will do." Georgie slapped a coaster down on the bar in front of Lucia. "What brings you in here on this boring old Thursday night?"

"I thought about drinking at home, but they say that's a bad sign."

"Last I heard," Georgie said, "So is drinking yourself numb in some bar."

"Why the fuck should you care? I'm spending my money on your overpriced vodka. That's all you should care about."

"You're in a mood." Georgie leaned on the bar. "Just for the record, my vodka is the good stuff and it doesn't cost any more than anyone else's."

"I stand corrected," Lucia grumbled, stewing in her own juices. This wasn't the first time she'd shown Georgie her ugly side. She was probably damn sick of it by now.

"And also for the record, I
am
grateful for your business," Georgie added. "But that doesn't mean I'm not interested in you as a person."

"Forget I said what I said," Lucia grumbled. "Forget everything I said. Now would you please get me a drink?"

"Sure. No problem." Georgie moved to another section of the bar for a brief time and when she came back, she plunked Lucia's drink down in front of her.

Lucia lifted the glass and took her first long swig, flinching as the vodka stung her throat. "That's more like it." She wrestled a wad of crumbled bills out of her pocket and threw them onto the bar. "Keep them coming."

"Things that bad are they?"

"Yeah, things are that fucking bad. What of it?" As soon as those nasty words flew out, Lucia wished she could bring them back. Yesterday she'd been mean to Juliet and now she was attacking Georgie. No one was safe in her presence.

Georgie shook her head. "Can't seem to stop with the attitude, can you?"

Lucia didn't answer. She vowed to herself that she would make more of an effort to be civil. "Are you alone tonight? Where's Bernie?"

"Bernie has the night off. I don't make her work every night, no siree, not me. I just make her work every weekend." Apparently, Georgie had enjoyed her remark. Her sturdy laugh sounded as if it had rattled the bottles on the shelves behind her.

"What about your wife? Did she get lucky and get the night off too?"

"You are such a hoot," Georgie said. "Joan's at home and I don't make her work at all, not that it's any of your business. She comes in a lot because she enjoys being here with me. How'd you get on this shit, anyway?" Clearly, Georgie was no longer amused by their little repartee. Her brow was wrinkled, her lips clamped in a thin line.

"Oops, I guess we'd better talk about something else." Lucia scanned the bar. Some of the regulars were hanging out at a few tables and two women were seated at the other end of the bar. "Same old boring crowd, huh Georgie?"

"That same old boring crowd, as you call them, keeps me from going out of business during the week. Saturday night comes once every seven days and that won't do it."

"I only meant it was slim pickings," Lucia clarified.

"Does that mean you're on the prowl?"

"You sound like you disapprove."

"Hell, no, I don't have a problem with that. I'm privy to a lot of dyke drama around here and I'd be the last one to judge anyone for what they do. It's hard to believe looking at me now, but I was a heartbreaker in my younger years."

"You don't fool around now that you have Joan, do you?"

"No way. I value the life we have too much to bother with that crap. These days my world is getting narrower and my waistline is getting wider, at an alarming rate I might add." Georgie paused to snicker at what she'd said.

"That's cute, Georgie."

"I'm serious. My life is simple and I love it. I adore my wife and my dogs and I love this bar and that's plenty good enough for me."

"You're lucky. You're surrounded by love." Lucia's speech sounded slurred, even to her own anesthetized ears. God knows what she sounded like to Georgie.

"I am lucky and I'm no fool. Joan would beat my head to a pulp with that baseball bat she keeps next to our bed if I ever cheated on her."

"That's an incentive to behave." Lucia lifted her glass. "As to being on the prowl, this is all the company I need tonight." She made a show of draining her glass. "Looks like it's time for a refill. Why don't you get me one?"

Georgie grabbed the glass and got Lucia a fresh drink. Lucia downed half of it in two gulps. She would never pick up one of the locals and run the risk of running into her over and over again. Her rules were simple. The women she hooked up with were not told her name and she never took them home. Even Georgie didn't know where she lived or what she did for a living.

Georgie busied herself and chatted with other women at the bar, but no matter where she went she kept one vigilant eye on Lucia. Eventually, she must have run out of things to do and people to talk to because she leaned against the counter near the cash register with her arms folded across her chest.

Lucia waved her empty glass in the air. Even though Georgie was trying to be subtle, Lucia knew she was watching out for her.

Georgie frowned when she came over. "Another one?"

"Don't look at me like that. Just get the drink."

Georgie didn't say anything until she came back with the drink. "You should go easy on that stuff. I don't like to meddle in the personal affairs of my regular customers, but I'm no stranger to pain. Your pain will still be there when that vodka wears off."

"It helps for a while even if it doesn't last."

"That may be true, but here's what bothers me. You drove here and I don't want you driving home drunk."

"All right,
Mother,
I'll slow down."

Georgie snapped her comeback. "Calling me names doesn't upset me. I'd be more upset if I had to read about you in the newspaper tomorrow."

"You won't have to read about me. I'll be fine."

"So you say." Georgie leaned closer. "I'm all ears if you need to talk about what's eating away at you. It might help."

"First you're my mother and now you want to be my therapist?"

"Look, you--" Georgie shook her head and pursed her lips. "I don't want to be your mother or your therapist and right about now I don't want to be anything to you. Excuse the hell out of me for caring." Georgie turned a cold back and scooted to the other end of the bar to wait on a couple of women who were waving at her.

With her elbows on the bar, Lucia rested her face in her hands. When she took her hands away she caught sight of her reflection in the mirror behind the bar. The washed-out, brooding woman who stared back at her looked like a total stranger, and a miserable one at that.

Georgie came back a few minutes later with an unreadable face and an indifferent attitude. She cleared Lucia's empty glass without making eye contact and then sopped up the moisture on the bar with a rag. "Ready for another?"

"No." Lucia swung her legs around and slid off of the stool, holding onto the edge of the bar with one hand. "I'm going home. See you around."

"Leaving so soon?" Georgie's surprise registered in her voice. "Are you sure you're feeling okay to drive home?" "Don't worry about me. I'll drive slowly." "I'd sure like to see you drink some coffee before you go." "No thanks. I'll see you later." Lucia turned and left.

ONCE SAFELY INSIDE her cottage, Lucia went into the bathroom to get ready for bed. After changing into her pajamas she went into the living room and stretched out on the sofa. The decision to come home had been a wise one. She hated how she had treated Georgie, the things she'd said to her. She hated the cynical, bitter person she'd become. And she had left the bar because she knew that all the booze in the world wasn't going to help her tonight.

"Shouldn't I be doing better by now?" she asked the ceiling. Not so long ago, Luke's answer to that same question had been that it would take as long as it would take. He also reminded her that the world was a beautiful place and someday she would think so again. As implausible as that seemed to her, she prayed that he was right and with all her heart she longed for that day to come.

Her stomach reminded her that she hadn't eaten in some time and her head throbbed, but she didn't feel like moving. Maybe after she shut her eyes for a while she'd feel better and she could get up and eat something, take a couple of Tylenol.

CALMLY AND DELIBERATELY, Lucia advanced through the endless series of rooms in the house. The floors and walls appeared off kilter and they wobbled and shook as though the entire structure was in danger of toppling over. Everything seemed blurred, unfamiliar, and distorted and yet she moved forward with purpose as if she'd been there before and knew exactly where she needed to go.

Like a warning gong, her heart hammered loudly against the inside wall of her chest. Something horrible awaited her, something she simultaneously dreaded and felt drawn to, something she had no strength to turn away from.

One creaking stair at a time, she ascended toward the muted glow of light emanating from the upstairs hallway. Soothing music floated in the air and she noticed that the door to one of the bedrooms had been left ajar. Pushing it open, she entered and paused just inside the room. There, in front of the bay windows, Devin sat in a chair with her back facing the door.

"Is that you, honey?" Devin's thin, lifeless voice dissipated into a puff of air before it reached Lucia. "Where have you been? I've been waiting for you for so long."

"You have? I thought that--they told me you--" Lucia could hardly speak. Devin had died, hadn't she? So, how could she be talking?

Lucia edged closer, her legs practically paralyzed with fear. The unearthly sound of Devin's voice, her ghostly form, and the fact that she had never turned around, terrified Lucia beyond comprehension. Step by step she forced herself to proceed. Her breathing had been reduced to short ragged bursts, her mouth was dry and her heart felt as though it would cease with each subsequent pounding. Still, she was powerless to resist the horror she knew awaited her.

"I missed you so much," Devin whispered as Lucia came closer.

"How can you be here?" Lucia began to sob. "You're gone. You died. You--you were in an accident." The woman she adored, the woman she ached for night after night, was sitting in front of her no more than a foot away. She reached out with a tremulous hand to touch Devin's hair. "I love you. I've missed you so much."

"I love you, too. I got the cake, Lucia, like you told me to. I got it, but I don't know where it is. Am I late for our party? Am I, Lucia? Am I?"

A bloody chunk of Devin's hair stuck to Lucia's hand as she pulled it back. She stared at it in abject horror, a feeling of foreboding ripping a hole in her gut as Devin slowly rotated her head. A scream tore out of Lucia, a scream that sounded as if it had been savagely ripped from her throat by the claws of a wild beast. Devin's hideously disfigured face was covered with thick, dark blood. Her left eye, dangling from a single bloody cord, was swinging on her crushed cheek bones as she moved. A glistening band of bone peeked from beneath the torn skin and shredded muscles of her forehead which had been split open from one end to the other. Lucia's screams reverberated off the walls of the squalid room. "Oh, God! Oh, God, I'm sorry! I'm so sorry."

LUCIA SAT BOLT upright on the sofa while her lungs fought to suck in enough air to keep her alive. Her pajama top was drenched and her head throbbed more than it had before she drifted off. Tears scorched rivulets down her cheeks and her eyes darted here and there as she tried to figure out where she was. The dream had been so real and so terrifying. She lay back down, but the heavy darkness in the room covered her like wet mud, threatening to smother the very life out of her.

Convinced that nothing would ever be all right again, she stood on unsteady legs and made her way into the kitchen. With shaking hands, she reached into the cupboard for a glass and filled it with ice water from a container in the refrigerator. After gulping half of it in front of the open refrigerator, she pressed the cold glass to her forehead.

As soon as she could breathe again, she closed the refrigerator and reached for the bottle of vodka she'd left out on the counter. After dumping the rest of the water, she poured a generous three fingers of vodka into the glass. The first mouthful shot through her veins like a jolt of electricity and the second mouthful eased its way into her being, bringing with it a preview of the blessed oblivion she craved.

The gentle embrace of sleep would not cradle her in its arms tonight. Past experience had taught her that. All she could do was turn on the television and wait until she saw the first glow of morning peeking over the lake. Maybe then she would sit on the dock and watch the sun rise and when it was light again she would go inside and try to sleep for an hour or two.

ON FRIDAY, FOLLOWING an entire day of bottling, Juliet dabbed at the mixture of perspiration and water droplets that had splattered all over her face with the cuff of her denim shirt. The humidity in the cellars had caused her to perspire and the water droplets had splashed on her face as she hosed down the floor. Deep in thought, she gathered the hose and coiled it neatly in a corner near the spigot. She was so deeply immersed within her mind she jumped when she heard Lucia call her name.

"I didn't mean to startle you," Lucia said.

Juliet turned. "I was concentrating so hard I didn't hear you come in." She wiped her hands on her denim overalls and approached her boss. Even though it had been more than a week since the incident on the deck, she felt wary about being with Lucia. Instinctively, she crossed her arms tightly over her chest.