Old School Bones (24 page)

KEVIN Singleton, baggy jeans/Jimmy Hendrix T-shirt, slouches in his metal chair in the courtyard at Au Bon Pan in Harvard Square. Looks up with blue, hungry eyes as Gracie drops her backpack to the ground and settles into the chair across the table from him. It’s after seven o’clock in the evening, the shadows are long, but the air is still unusually warm for May.

“You’re late.”

She can feel his gaze on her. Phantom hands feeling the weight of her breasts through the tight, rayon turtle neck, the thighs flexing in the green tights. Her denim mini riding up so high as she sits down. Ninja Girl better cross her legs immediately … or his eyes, those phantom hands, will be going right up her legs.
Even scared, he can’t stop thinking about booty.

“Where have you been?”

“Chill, Kev. I’m here, OK?”

“Yeah. Like whatever. This is your gig.”

She thinks,
He’s touchy. Try another tack, girl.
“Come on, cutie, don’t be like that.”

He raises his brows, purses his lips, James Deans her. “You’re not really my favorite person right now.”

“Give me a chance. I just got here.”

“That’s my point. You up and vanish from T-C one day. No goodbye, no nothing. No calls. No email. Now all of a sudden, weeks later, I’m your favorite person. Like hey, Kev, meet me for coffee in the Square. Tonight, dude! Like this is ‘life or death.’”

“I didn’t say life or death. All I said is that we need to talk. That you need to watch your back.”

“What the hell’s that suppose to mean?”

She pops the top off her latte, stirs it. “Look. As far as Red Tooth is concerned you’re low man on the totem pole.”

“Did you tell that cop that was hanging around with Doc P that I sold you stuff?”

“He figured it out on his own.”

“Thanks a lot, Gracie!”

“So now this cop’s coming for me or what?”

“He knows that Red Tooth is your pharmaceutical connection. And he thinks somebody in Red Tooth killed Lib.”

“What?”

“You know how she really died, Kev? Someone put a shit-load of GHB in her Red Bull. Knocked her out. Then dropped her in the tub, turned on the water, and slit her wrists.”

“No.”

“Yes! Good old Fantasy, Liquid E, Cherry Meth. Same stuff we were mixing with our drinks that night with Tory and your bro in SoCal.”

“Are you trying to freak me the fuck out?”

She takes a long sip of her latte. “Hey, I’m here because you’re my friend. I don’t want to see you take the fall for something you didn’t do. Know what I mean? Like I know you really cared about Lib.”

“Aw Jesus.”

“I know you guys were having some off moments. But she loved you, Kevin.”

Tears are welling in the corners of his eyes. “Shit. Fuck. I don’t know.”

“Listen, OK? This morning Michael and Doc P had a heart-to-heart with Bumbledork. He’s ready to give you up for the murder. It seems your alumni brothers want to feed you to the sharks. They got lots of stuff to hide, and they don’t like feeling the heat.”

“I’m dead. I’m just fucking dead. Those dick weeds. I don’t even like their stupid-ass society. It’s a lot of old-school horseshit. You know that?”

“Don’t let them fuck you.”

“Why …? How …?”

“Michael doesn’t think you killed Liberty. But he thinks maybe you have an idea who did.”

He puts his face in his hands. “I don’t know shit.”

She can’t help herself. She reaches across the table, strokes his wild brown curls, his neck. Hears Michael’s voice in her head.
Maybe this poor slob doesn’t even know what he knows. You’re going to have to dig, Gracie.

Yeah, dig, Ninja Girl!
She draws her hand back from his hair. “Who beat on me the night before I left school?”

“What?”

“Why did you run Michael’s jeep off the road back in February?”

“Huh? I never. —”

“The car that hit him from behind was a silver Murano. Just like yours. Fact.”

He rubs his eyes. “That’s my father’s car.”

“So your father ran Michael into the woods?”

“No!” A sudden flash in his eye. “I remember something. We didn’t even have that car then.”

“Yeah, you did.”

“No. That was like the last week of winter term. I wanted to use the car one day. My dad said no dice. He lent it out. Somebody was having car trouble.”

“Who?”

He looks away. His eyes following a bus up Mass. Ave. “I don’t know.”

“Come on, Kevin. You want to go down for murder? Jesus Hell. Don’t hold out on me. These people aren’t going to protect you!”

His eyes still on the bus. His teeth suddenly gnawing on the knuckle of his thumb. “Can I ask you something personal, Gracie?”

She looks at him, wonders where this is going, what secret she’s going to give up for the killer’s name. “Like truth or dare?”

“Yeah.”

“You know who borrowed the car?”

“Maybe.”

“One question.”

“Did you and Liberty ever …” He puts the fingers of both hands together, squeezes them in and out, like an accordion. “You know?”

“Get it on?”

“Yeah.”

“Fuck you, Kevin.”

“Hey, be nice.”

“What? Why would you ask that? It get you off?”

He shakes his head no. “I don’t know. I got the feeling Lib was seeing someone else. You know, besides me? Those last couple of weeks. She seemed distracted.”

“You know smoking too much weed can make you paranoid. The girl was mad deep into our history paper. That’s all.”

“I really loved her.”

“Then tell me who borrowed the car.”

He stares at his feet. A pair of red Chucks. Size twelve. “The dean.”

“Denise Pasteur?”

“I didn’t think I would ever see you again.” Danny’s voice breaks as the words burst from her mouth. Wet ghosts of memories, desire.

She thinks the dean’s face has been transformed. The confident butch gone. Danny now a gawky adolescent girl again. Jeans and a violet fleece. Eyes darty, lips thin and pale, trembling like the fingers she takes in her hand.

“I’m here … I had to come.”

“But why here? Of all places. We never …” She leans forward, bends down so she can press her forehead to the small woman’s. Strokes Awasha’s long black hair with her free hand.

“Why not? A fantasy. Maybe if we had come here sooner.” There’s no way she can finish this sentence. She hates regrets, and now she’s caught up in the scene around her.

Mid-afternoon. A hot Saturday in late May, and Provincetown is already in summer carnival mode. The weekend crowd of lesbian couples, gay dudes, straight day trippers clot Commercial St. The drag queens are out in the street in front of the Crown & Anchor touting their shows.

A bass beat pounds from a boutique, blends with
bossa nova
filtering out the front door of an erotica shop. The scent of Portuguese pastries, fried clams, perfume, rising tide, mammals in heat swirls among the crowd. The horse-drawn carriages, the women jugglers tossing their pins in front of the town hall.

And Awasha’s here in the middle of it all. On the steps of Vixen, a girl’s club. Light blue peasant blouse. White clam diggers that grab her hips just right. Ruby lips rising to kiss away Danny’s fears. Eyes just catching a glimpse of Michael and Gracie watching from a table in a bistro across the street … And her mind wondering if she’s playing her part right. Her heart trying not to feel her confusion about where this all is heading. Trying not to seize with the cold blood of dead girls tightening in her veins.

She steps back from the embrace, still holding Danny’s right hand. “Walk with me. Let me see P-town through a girlfriend’s eyes.”

So they walk. Arm in arm. West. Past the fudge shops. Past the army surplus place. Past the boy bars. Past the skateboarders hanging in front of Spiritus Pizza.

Until they hit the Pied Piper.

“Let me buy you a drink,” says Danny. The old tennis-pro handsomeness starting to stiffen and color her cheeks, chin.

They get
mojitos
and take a table where they can look out at the harbor. Sip. Hold hands.

“I’m not a fool. I know you want something from me.”

She’s not ready for this. Not yet. Danny’s tough shell growing back so quickly. The imperious, take-charge, no-bullshit Amazon just minutes away from total regenesis.

Great Spirit, what a little hand-holding can let loose. Michael … I think I need you!

And now, she’s without the right words, feeling off balance. But Wonderwoman is on the move. Leaning across the table. Putting a strong hand behind her neck. Drawing her face close. Kissing.

Mashing her. Crushing her lips. Sliding a hot tongue between her teeth. And,
fuck,
her own tongue’s rising to tango. The old larceny of stolen moments.

Her thighs are starting to sweat, when she suddenly hears Gracie howling in her head.

Did you see the blood? A barrel of wine poured out of Liberty. Poured over Liberty … Her head, her black hair, her long braids … She was sticky with it. Her nose and mouth buried in it …

Aaserah whispering. You cannot come back here again, Nippe Maske. The
isabaat musallah
has been here …

And Michael. Sweet Michael touches her. It is the first time all over again. She pulls him tight against her hips, slides her hands over the lobes of his buns. Knows the ecstasy of seals.

She breaks the kiss. Searches Danny’s eyes. Just inches away from those gray-diamond teasers. Clears her throat with a little gasp.

“I need you to be honest with me. I need you to tell me what you know about Roxana Calderón. Or … Or Michael’s going to tell the police that he has proof you were driving the Singleton’s car the day it ran him off the road.”

A fire flares, fades in Danny’s eyes. “You met my half brother, didn’t you? You get a sense what a bastard he is, baby?”

“Jean-Claude used Roxy to get at those assholes in Red Tooth.”

“How?”

They are sitting on the Long Point dike now. Talking, watching the sunset, the last of the flood tide rushing through a culvert beneath the massive granite blocks into the salt pond.

“She was a Latin bombshell and a flirt. Loved attention … And they were a bunch of privileged, arrogant, horny boys who thought the world was their oyster, that pussy was their prerogative.”

“Jean-Claude used her as a spy?”

“A prep school slut. She would fuck anything that moved … for a price.”

“A price?”

“Information she could use in trade with Jean-Claude.”

“Trade for what?”

“Roxy liked her drugs.”

“So I’ve heard. But couldn’t she get it from her lover boys in Red Tooth?”

“Jean-Claude had some kind of nearly magical control over her.”

“He was blackmailing her maybe.”

Danny shrugs. “I don’t think so. It was a chemistry thing. She craved him, for some sick reason. What a total fucking waste of her time!”

She feels the heat in these last words. Actually leans away.

“What?”

“The little bitch loved playing his secret agent games. Sucking his cock. Taking it up the ass for him.”

“But he’s gay.”

“He kept that in the closet, honey … ‘til later.”

“Because he wanted that power over her. This was all about controlling the gambling and drug profits at the school? About Club Tropical trouncing the Red Tooth boys?”

“That was part of it, for sure. And controlling Roxy. Feeling superior over females. He likes that. They made her an HONORARY member of their stupid-ass little club in the attic of Hibernia House. The only girl they ever let in.”

“Their pet?”

Danny gives another shrug, stares at the green and red afterglow of the sunset lacing the clouds on the horizon. “Roxy was handling this dweeb from Red Tooth, the winter before she died. Went to the Tolchie Snowball with him, spent an illegal night in a Boston hotel with him. Just to get information about a drug deal Red Tooth was working.”

“The one that went sour. The one where Red Tooth got jacked by some guys from the street.”

“You know about that?”

“Jean-Claude set up the hijack, right?”

“After Roxy came through with the details. Where. When. Who.”

“It was quite a victory for Club Tropical.”

“Those assholes were elated. Jean-Claude thought he was king of the world.”

“How about Roxy?”

“She was impossible to be around.”

She hears something in Danny’s voice. Not bitterness. Something else. Something raw. “You two were friends?”

“She lived right next door to me for two years at Coates.”

“You introduced her to your brother?”

“How stupid was I, huh?”

“Did you have a crush on her?”

“Please.”

“How did she die?”

Danny looks at her with vacant eyes. The gray diamonds now flat, shadowy pools. “You think those are Roxy’s bones you found in Hibernia House?”

“Don’t you?”

“Those stupid little shits! When we came back for our senior year at Coates, the school told us that she had disappeared. On her flight home.”

“You never thought Red Tooth or the Club Tropical had anything to do with it?”

She has tears in her eyes. Stands up. Turns to walk back across the dike toward town. There’s a deep purple cast to the air now. And a chill. “My heart hurts. It just fucking aches!”

She watches Danny start to weave her way over the collage of the dike’s granite boulders toward the lights of town. “Hey!”

“Yeah?”

“I have to know. Why did you borrow the Singleton’s car and run Michael off the road?”

Danny turns, faces her. Bites her lip. Doesn’t answer.

What seems like minutes pass.

“I was jealous, OK?”

WHEN he and Gracie finally find Awasha, she is wandering along the edge of MacMillan Wharf, staring vacantly down at the fish boats rafted alongside.

“Are you OK?” He sees waves of emotion surging over her face. Feels her trembling as she pulls him into a hug.

“Do you guys need to be alone?” asks Gracie.

He nods.

“Give us a couple of minutes.” Her voice is wet, broken.

So they are alone. As alone as any couple can ever be in P-town. Locked in an embrace on the end of the wharf. Fog drifting in off the bay. The boats, the piles of nets, just shadows. Red light flashing from the end of the breakwater. A warning horn groans at long intervals from the lighthouse at Long Point. Or maybe Wood End. He can’t tell.

He wants to ask her what happened, wants to know whether that witch hurt her. Or whether she’s suddenly missing the love of women. Whether their night in the bait shack, the hours of love the next day, were just some kind of rebound. Whether those hours rocked her heart the way they rocked his. Or is she going to leave him when this quest for the killer is over? Leave him like Cassie left him. Like Filipa left him.
Cristo,
even Tuki, the drag queen client from hell, left him.

Where do we stand?
His heart wheedles for an answer. His tongue aches to pose the question. But his soul tells him to just hold her until she stops shivering. His dead mother’s voice counseling as always.
You have a good hug. Don’t be cheap with it, Mo.

Cristo,
I’m trying. But is it enough to quiet the dead?

Her lips press against the tender spot below his Adam’s apple. The rose tattoo.

I seen bitch-bit a thousand times. But you something special, mon.

He’s not sure when he first feels her tongue on his throat, his chest. Or when she spreads her legs and pulls him down with her onto a mound of old fishing nets.

“Don’t say anything,” she says. “Just kiss me.”

And he does.

A long, desperate kiss. The air heavy with the musty scent of scallops, fish. The thick night. The oboe calls of seabirds. Almost as before in the shack.

When they went down like seals.

She unbuttons his shirt, tastes his breasts. His neck again.

His arms cradling her as she slips out of her thong. Releases the belt on his jeans. The fly. Kisses him until he sees lightning behind his eyelids.

And then she raises her dress and guides him to the place where they meet, join.

“Let me feel you. Good god, let me feel you.”

Her legs, short as they are, stretch, wrap around his waist. Rock him.

He hears himself moan.

All his blood burning out through his pores.

And her lips, teeth, feast on his neck.

Like before …

Their torsos surging, plunging.
Spiraling creatures,
diving through schools of silver
fish. Racing the currents into
the planet’s molten core. A place
of bones and no bones. Back
to his
vóvó’s
breast, his mother’s,
the driving rhythms of Africa. Until
they break the surface. Whole
once more. Together.

“Could you ever love me?” Her voice a breathless whisper.

“Could I ever not?” he says.

Then he opens his eyes. Sees Gracie standing on the other side of the wharf, just now turning her back to them.

What you gone tell you mama now?