Leather Maiden (9 page)

I was glad I wasn't there. I wouldn't have wanted to see it or know about it, at least not firsthand. It all happened in the parking lot, same place where Booger had inserted the antenna. Bottom line is, somewhere in Arkansas, a vacuum cleaner company is missing a salesman.

“I don't think I'd want to be the one that told Runt I was taking his place.”

“Oh, hell,” Booger said. “I'll tell him.”

“No. That's all right.”

“How about another beer?”

“I've had all I want of this one. I'm about to get behind the wheel.”

“Hell, you could drink three or four of those before you needed to worry.”

“No thanks.”

Booger looked at me in that way that made me hope I hadn't somehow offended his hospitality; it was that little shift I saw in his eye that made me decide, right then and there, I had had enough of Booger.

I got up and smiled and stuck out my hand.

Booger stood up. He shook my hand like he was pumping water, then slapped me on the back.

“Damn, boy,” he said. “We had us some time over there, didn't we?”

“We did,” I said, remembering it a whole lot less fondly.

“I miss getting up every day and looking forward to blowing some Man Dress out of his knickers.”

“Well, got to go,” I said.

“You missing out,” Conchita said. “I got some business, baby. I can shoot Ping-Pong balls out of it. I had some, I'd show you.”

“As enticing as that is,” I said, “I'm going to leave.” I turned to Booger. “Okay, man. I'm out of here.”

Booger grabbed me and hugged me, shifting one of my ribs a little. “You need anything, call me.”

“I will,” I said.

“Good.”

As I started out, Runt yelled, “See you, Cason.”

“So long, Runt.”

“Hey,” Conchita said.

I turned. “Yeah.”

“You don't say bye to me?”

“Bye.”

She shifted on the stool, smiled, said, “You ever want some stinky on your dinky, you know where to show. And maybe you bring some Ping-Pong balls, I can show you that trick, man.”

“I'll certainly give it some thought.”

I went away then, hoping, praying, I'd never see any of them again.

Well, maybe Conchita.

But now that I had heard Booger's voice on the phone, I felt a strange kind of yearning to see the crazy bastard. And the fact that I wanted to bothered me.

         

Back at the paper, I forced myself to write a column that had nothing to do with Caroline Allison. I wrote a moderately humorous piece on how much I had loved Tarzan when I was young. Jimmy had got me thinking on this. I told about being up in the tree in my underwear and getting sunburned, but I left the part out about my cooked testicles. A mention of that would have had Baptists on the paper's doorstep, all of them carrying pitchforks and yelling Bible verses.

When I typed my last line and glanced up, there was Belinda. She looked good, and I got the distinct impression that she had just finished dabbing on fresh makeup. She had a way of wearing it light, so that it didn't hide her freckles. I liked that. I liked those freckles.

“Is that offer of a coffee after work still good?” she said.

“Absolutely,” I said.

“Could we make it drinks instead of coffee?”

“Absolutely.”

16

I went to see Mom and Dad and drank some coffee with them in their kitchen and told them about my new job, and tried to dress my life up as much as I could without making everything seem like one big, obvious damn lie. I mentioned that I was seeing someone, or at least I was about to, and I think that pleased them. Nobody said the Gabby word, and I tried to make sure they knew, without saying it, that I had moved on and that she was a thing of the past.

I hadn't moved on, of course, but I wanted them to think I had, and while I was telling that whopper, I wanted to believe it myself.

I finished the coffee and Dad and I talked a little about baseball, then Mom and I talked about Belinda. I told her just enough to satisfy her, and not enough to get her worked up into thinking we were about to elope and start making grandchildren, then I left.

As I came to the curb, was about to reach for my car door, instinctively I looked up in the elm. Jazzy was up there on her little platform.

“Hi, Jazzy,” I said.

Jazzy swung out on a limb and twisted and hung upside down and clung there like a sloth, dangling her head backward and looking down at me.

“Hi Mr. Statler's little boy,” she said. “I was hiding from you.”

I grinned at her. “You going to stay up in that tree?”

“I like it up here,” she said. “You don't live here no more?”

“I've moved.”

“I wish I could move.”

“Do you?”

“Can I come stay with you?” Jazzy asked, swinging back around until she was stretched out across the limb like a long lizard.

I slowly shook my head. “Sorry, Jazzy. You can't.”

“Why not?”

“The law, for one thing. They won't let you. It's complicated, kid.”

“I see.” She didn't, of course. “You going to come back?”

“Soon. Right now I have to go.”

“What you going to do?”

“I have a date.”

“With a girl?”

“Yep. With a girl.”

“Some guys date guys. I seen it once on television. They aren't supposed to.”

“Can't say as I care one way or another.”

“Guess I'll see you when you come back.”

“Sure will. And kid, you need anything, you go see my mom and dad. They'll help you out.”

“You're my best friend, Cason.”

I found it hard to say anything for a long moment. “Okay,” I said. “We'll be good friends.”

“I like you,” she said.

“Friends should like one another. You play safely, okay?”

She nodded and I got in my car and drove away from there.

         

I fought against it, but I wheeled by Gabby's clinic. Her car was gone and the place was locked up tight, but something about driving by gave me a boost, then a few minutes later the boost went away and I felt my stomach go as sour as if I had eaten something rotten.

I went home and had another cup of coffee. I was beginning to get a little tight on caffeine, felt as if my hair was going to detach from my head and weave itself into a potholder. I decided after drinking yet another cup, then half of another, that I ought to quit. I poured my last bit of coffee in the sink and rinsed out the cup and put it in the dishwasher.

After showering and brushing my teeth, I got dressed and made ready to meet Belinda. She called and said she was back at the paper, doing something or other, and would I come by there and follow her home and could we go in my car.

I went to the paper and followed her home and she parked her car and I drove us to a hotel bar, which she suggested. She had a fruity drink of some sort. I had a beer, which helped mellow out my caffeine, and we talked.

“I like your hair, long like that,” she said.

“And I like yours too.”

“It's not longer.”

“But I like it. You've done something different with it.”

“I had it recut. A few extensions added. Last time, my hairdresser tried something that didn't work and I tried to fix it myself, and that really messed things up. I looked like someone had cut it with a Weed Eater. But I went to someone new and they did a better job.”

“You added extensions but it's shorter?”

“Don't try and figure the mysteries of women's hairdressing, it'll just give you a headache. Basically, to fix it, I had to cut it short, add extensions that helped it look better than it did, but they are shorter than my hair was before I cut it.”

“I like it,” I said. “That's all I'll say.”

“That's the safe thing to say. It was expensive, I can tell you that. On my pay, too expensive. It cost me an arm and a leg, and once a day I have to go see the hairdresser and wipe her ass.”

I grinned at her. “Well, it still looks good.”

Unconsciously, she moved her hair a little with her hand. “You don't look like a happy man, Cason.”

“I just try and look that way so I'll seem mysterious.”

“You have that part down,” she said. “You're mysterious, all right. What I wonder is, when you got back from Iraq, why didn't you go back to Houston and work there? What in the world could a little rag like the
Report
hold for you?”

“There's Mrs. Timpson. She's a peach. And Oswald. I guess it's the friendship that I find most rewarding.”

“You got the job because everything Oswald writes is as dry as Mrs. Timpson's cunt.”

“Do I sense some bitterness?” I asked.

“Oswald got the reporter job I should have gotten.”

“Ah ha. You aren't just a nice pretty girl with a good heart.”

“Damn right, I'm not. Hey, you know what? You managed to change the subject.”

“From?”

“Why you came to work here instead of a larger paper.”

“How about the weather? I like the weather here. That could be the reason. How about this? Houston smells bad and there's all that traffic.”

“I can understand that being a reason. But I can't understand it being THE REASON.”

“My parents are here. My brother and his wife. That's a lot to do with it.”

“But not all?”

“All right,” I said. Straight shot. “I got fired from the paper in Houston.”

“Ouch. I heard you almost won a Pulitzer. That ought to have been a pretty strong recommendation for keeping you on.”

“I don't know about almost won. I got a nomination. The firing had nothing to do with my writing, my performance at the paper.” I hesitated only a moment, came out with it. “Thing is, my editor, I had a thing with his wife.”

“That'll do it.”

“It will. And when you have a thing with his stepdaughter, that does it even more. I got it from both ends. The wife and him. No one was happy with me. And that includes me. But I do want to add that neither wife nor daughter were innocents in all this, and the daughter was a grown woman.”

She picked a cherry out of her drink and ate it in such a way as not to get it in her braces. “Are you wiser now?”

“I don't know.”

“Are you looking to bang me?”

“I believe this is where I say ‘I beg your pardon?'”

“Is that why you took me out?”

“No…well, of course it crossed my mind.”

“If it hadn't crossed your mind,” she said, “I would have been disappointed. I thought I might let you. But that's all hypothetical, of course.”

“Of course.”

“Would it be stupid of me to ask you to take me to dinner?”

“I like a woman who knows her mind.”

We went to a place that was a kind of cross between a club and a honky-tonk. There was a hipster country band up front with a pretty female singer at the microphone, and there were a few people dancing. It wasn't a big place, but they had some good steaks.

We ate and drank, and pretty soon we danced. I pulled in close to Belinda and we swayed to the music. Her breath was on my neck. It was sweet and warm. When the song finished, we took each other's hands and headed for the door.

         

It was odd, but we didn't go to her place and we didn't go to mine. Which was probably a good thing. I doubt the aroma of rotting rat in the wall would have been conducive to romance.

I drove us back to the hotel where we had had our drink, and without trying to hide anything, I rented us a room and we took the elevator up. The door to our room wasn't closed good before we were at one another, practically tearing our clothes off.

Belinda and I fell onto the bed, went together hard and quick. When that was done, we went at it slow, taking our time, enjoying ourselves, prolonging it. Belinda had to ask me to kiss softer, because her braces were cutting her. She said I was bleeding on my upper lip. I kissed softer. Finally it all ended, and I felt as if I had washed up on some distant shore beneath cool moonlight and the sound of the ocean, but it was the light through our window, from the patio below, where a jazz band was playing softly. We lay in each other's arms, kissing gently from time to time. Then at some point we closed our eyes and slept.

         

We awoke late morning, and though I really didn't have to do it, I called on my cell into work, said I wouldn't be coming in today, that I wasn't feeling up to snuff. Then Belinda called on her cell, saying she was sick. “They're going to put two and two together,” she said.

“Let them. They don't know for sure, and they can't fire us for what they don't know. Hell, anyone can get sick.”

“Are you sick?” she asked.

“Lovesick.”

“Really?”

“Well, there are signs.”

“I'm just afraid that seeing me now, in the daylight, naked, you'll feel like those guys who wake up and realize it was closing time that made a woman look good, and that they've discovered they've gone home with the college mascot, a goat.”

“You look better in the morning light. And I wasn't drunk. But you know what would be nice?”

“What?” she asked.

“If you could make goat noises.”

Belinda laughed, reached out and touched my lip gently with her finger. “Your lip is swollen some, from the kissing.”

“It was worth it.”

“I get this wire out of my mouth in a couple weeks, maybe three. I'll be less dangerous then.”

“And you won't be picking up radio stations anymore.”

She gave a thin grin. “Do you know how many times I've heard that?”

“Bunches?”

“Bunches on bunches with bunches thrown in.”

         

We ordered up some breakfast. Belinda stayed in bed, and I put on my pants and took the tray at the door. I balanced the tray in bed and we ate. When we finished we put the tray aside and found each other again. We went at it that way, off and on, fueling up for another run until it was nearly time to check out of the hotel.

“I'm going to go in half a day,” Belinda said. “Unlike you, the big-shot columnist, I don't really get sick leave. Not paid anyway. And I have a set time to be there.”

“Damn. I didn't think about that. Sorry to make you miss.”

“Don't be. I liked what I was getting last night and today just fine. But I want you to know, and believe me, I don't just jump in bed with people, not on the first date, and sometimes not after several dates. It's not that I'm against sex, as you can confirm, but I don't want you to think I'm flopping for anyone with a pulse. You were special.”

“I never thought anything of the sort,” I said. “You sure you're going to work?”

“I am.”

“You're a doll and a real trouper,” I said. “But me, I have sick leave without time gained, and it is oh so sweet.”

She whacked me with a pillow. “Dirty devil,” she said, and giggled like a little kid.

I grabbed her and pulled her to me and we kissed, gently. When I let her go, I said, “Give my regards to Oswald.”

         

Back at my place I began to think I would have been better off going to work. Sitting there, I started thinking about Jimmy and his blackmail problem. I looked toward my bookshelf where the DVD was hidden, and had a strange urge to pop it into the player and look at it again, but didn't. The idea of seeing Caroline was okay, but to see my brother mounting her was disconcerting.

The activity of the night before finally caught up with me. I leaned back in my La-Z-Boy and cranked up the footrest and closed my eyes. I replayed in my head all Belinda and I had done, fore and aft. I felt my feelings shifting toward her and they felt the same way as when they had shifted toward Gabby. It gave me pause. It scared me. I didn't feel trustful of anyone or anything anymore. Especially myself. I drifted off to sleep, and then my cell phone rang. By the time I got myself awake and found my cell it had quit ringing.

I looked at the number to see who called. It was Jimmy. I called him back. It rang once and he answered.