Red Helmet (17 page)

Song idly wondered if Omar would carry Caliph's book in his store, or if anyone in Highcoal would order it off the Internet, and she had to smile to herself and shake her head. The ravings of a lunatic professional criminal might be of interest to these sophisticated New Yorkers, but not to the mining families in Highcoal. Except perhaps the constable. In the short time she'd spent with him, it seemed to Song that Constable Petrie had a powerful intellect combined with a great deal of common sense. She considered what her fellow partygoers would make of the constable. Likely, they'd put him down as a hillbilly cop not worth their time or interest. Yet there they were, fascinated by the opinions of a lowlife loser and believing everything he had to say! Now that she'd given it more thought, Song decided she wouldn't buy the book. She was thinking she might like to read a history of the coalfields of Appalachia instead.

She was thinking about Highcoal again!
Just stop it
.
It's in the past. You'll never
go back there. What's done is done.
She swore to herself that she would not read about the coalfields.

Kitty Franks, author of a best-selling novel titled
The President Sucks
, about a vampire who sucked the blood from a president, then became president himself, pressed into Song's hands the advance reading copy of her newest,
The Last
Christians (Thank God)
.

“You'll love it, Song,” she said, “especially considering your recent experience.”

“What experience would that be?” Song asked.

“I'm sorry, dear, but your recent foray into Appalachia is very much part of the conversation in this room. How horrible was it?”

Before Song could reply, Franks went on. “I can just imagine how crushing it must have been in a place rife with ignorance and right-wing religious zealotry. My novel takes place in those same hills where you were almost trapped. It's about the religious screwballs who live there.”

“Did you go there to research it?” Song asked.

“Go to that nasty place? No, I have better things to do with my time.”

“I see.” Song looked at the cover of the book, which showed a bullet-riddled wooden cross lying in a pool of blood.

“To summarize the plot,” Franks went on, “the hillbilly children rise up and murder their parents.”

“They do
what
?”

Frank's smile diminished, then widened. “Good. I've shocked you. Shock guarantees sales. The story begins with a schoolteacher from New York who finds herself assigned to a nasty, run-down school in Appalachia. She meets a man, a Latino, who is supporting himself as a carpenter. His backstory is that he was a hero of the revolution from Cuba who defected, but now after seeing the atrocious life of people in the United States, has come to regret it. He and the teacher become lovers. At her invitation, he instructs her students on the glorious lessons of Cuban socialism. Inspired, the children rebel against their parents, using their own guns against them. The parents are all slaughtered, then the repressive federal government comes in and kills all the children. It's a metaphor. I know you will identify with the teacher, dear,” she said, then flitted off to collar another partygoer with her books.

Deliberately and with a great sense of satisfaction, Song dropped the novel behind a potted plant. She wondered what Preacher would say about the novel. Probably, she thought, he'd only shrug and go about his business. Novels were novels, and life was real, and Preacher had real work to do. Song allowed herself to recall Preacher for a moment. She'd liked the man, and thought she might have liked his wife and children as well, if she'd taken the time to get to know them. But now it was too late. She would never see any of them again, of that she was certain, and that realization made her sad. It also made her think of Cable.
Again
.

After Song had left Highcoal, she hadn't heard from her temporary husband for three long and miserable weeks. Sure, her note had ordered him not to contact her, but she never thought he'd take it so literally! That demonstrated more than anything else how he didn't really care about her. When his letter came, its contents, so cold and distant, were a shock:

Dear Song,

I've been thinking about what I did or we did, however you want to put it. It was
all my fault from the get-go, getting married down in St. John and then bringing
you to Highcoal and expecting you to want to stay here and have kids and all that.
I grew up in this town and I love it, but how could I expect a New Yorker like you
to like it? It was just plain foolish. I know that now and I'm sorry. I can't blame
you for leaving because. Maybe I'm hardwired or something, but I have to stay here
and do my job as long as they'll
let me. Anyway, the long and the short of it is if
you want to take care of the paperwork, I guess I'm saying you can send it on.

With honest and true respect,

Cable

P.S. The constable told me what the church women said about your clothes. That
wasn't fair. I got on their case and they said they were sorry.

Song had read the letter dozens of times, putting every word under her feminine mental microscope. She keyed in on the crossed-out word
because
.
Because
what, Cable?
She had probably spent more hours worrying over Cable's missive than the acquisition of the two battery companies. At once enraged and heartbroken, she had called Saul Tollberg, the family attorney, and told him to get cracking with an annulment. Saul had asked her what she wanted the grounds to be, and then gave her a list of possibilities. She'd picked fraud, just like Chesney and Zellwegger, but told him to put her down as at fault.

“That's not wise, Song,” Saul replied, but she told him to do it anyway. She knew Cable well enough to know he'd never sign anything that said he was dishonest. She'd take the hit, just to get the thing done.

How she hated that man! But then, when she least expected it, during a meeting, when she was on the phone, or walking down the street, she would recall him again, and that sweet dimple in his cheek. Who was seeing his dimple now? The divine Governor Michelle Godfrey? She took another drink, not even bothering to taste the wine, just getting it down her throat. She wished it was Omar's ouzo.

“A penny for your thoughts.” Song looked up to find none other than Michael Carr, the man who had been her love interest before Cable, the man who'd stopped calling her, the man who'd thrown her out of his life like a dead mouse.

“A penny would be too much,” she answered as she forced the image of Cable out of her mind—
poof
—like vapor.

“Why don't you let me be the judge of that?” Michael asked, in his smooth, dulcet tone, so unlike Cable's twang.

Michael steered her onto the balcony where the city lay beneath their feet. “I've missed you,” he said.

“Then I suppose you should have returned my calls,” came her clipped reply. “Or maybe you shouldn't have left the voice mail you finally did.”

He took away her empty glass, then took her hands. Her immediate thought was that Michael's hands were weak and cool, not strong and warm like Cable's. She berated herself for making the comparison. Michael was here and now; Cable was there and yesterday.

“You can't know how much I regret that call,” Michael said, his eyes turned puppy dog. “I was overwhelmed with work and was nearly out of my mind. It was all so oppressive, and I was angry at the world and lashed out at you. It was the dumbest thing I've ever done. Please let me make it up to you.”

“You can start by getting me another glass of wine,” she said, to buy time while she thought about where this was likely heading. Cable's face flashed in her mind again, his big dumb face. That stupid dimple. That crooked smile.
Go
away, you dumb coal miner!

“Hello? Song?” Michael was back with two glasses of wine. He peered quizzically at her. “Are you all right? You were far, far away.”

She smiled. “I'm sorry, Michael. Lately I've been having trouble focusing. It's nothing, really.” She accepted the glass of wine he was holding out to her. “Thank you.”

“A delightful Sancerre,” he said. “The Delgossis do not stint.”

It was indeed good wine, and she appreciated it. Cable didn't have the slightest concept of what good wine tasted like. He just tended to toss whatever was in his glass down his stupid throat.
Stupid man. Stupid, stupid man!

“Hello?” Michael said. “I think you were slipping away again.”

She blinked back. “No, I'm here. How have you been, Michael?”

Michael clinked their glasses together. “A little lonely, I'll confess. But, no matter, here's to us, darling.”

“Us?” she asked. “Is there an us?”

He produced his sad little-boy smile, which she had once thought was so endearing. That was before she'd seen Cable's smile. “Tell me everything,” Michael said. “I've heard all the gossip, of course, and believed little of it. I'm on your side, Song. I always have been, even when you thought I wasn't. Tell me what happened to you in that awful hog wallow of a place and let me be your strong shoulder.”

She started to deny him the pleasure, considering how he'd jilted her, but then she took a healthy swallow of wine and told him some of it—of the mine and the miners, of Doctor K and Squirrel Harper, and also about Young Henry, Rhonda, and Preacher. She was feeling just a little unsteady on her feet now.
Too
much wine, girl
, she told herself.
You're vulnerable. Take it easy
.

Michael's response was, “If I may say so, it sounds like the makings of an excellent memoir. It has everything—pathos, humor, hillbilly rustics, and you, a bright city-fish dunked into dark coal country water.”

Song giggled. “Michael, I'm just telling you about the people I met, not pitching a book.”

He lowered his head in pretentious modesty. “You'll have to pardon me. As senior editor of Variant Press, everyone is always suggesting a book to me. My heartfelt apologies. Still, it would be a funny, clever book in the right hands, similar to the novels of Garrison Keillor where he slyly puts down country folk while pretending to praise them.”

“I'm not a writer,” she said firmly. “And I don't want to be one.”

He looked at her through his soft brown eyes, so unlike Cable's hard blue orbs that could look right through you.

“What are you, Song?” Michael's eyes bored into hers. “Besides being drop-dead gorgeous, of course, and impossibly intelligent.”

She looked out over the city. “I'm just me. You ought to know; we spent a lot of time together. Maybe you've forgotten.”

“I haven't forgotten. I know I grossly underestimated you.”

“Most men do.”

“You're marvelous. What more can I say?”

Song had once lived for Michael's praise. “Thank you, sir, for your good opinion,” she said. She felt as if she had climbed onto some kind of emotional roller coaster. Cable had never praised her, not like that. He probably saved all his praise for one of his mining machines. Or perhaps the governor!

“When I heard you had married that bumpkin,” Michael continued, his voice going low, “I
knew
it wouldn't work. Trailer trash is not my Song's style. I told everybody that. For a penny, I would go to West Virginia and soundly berate that man even now.”

Song imagined Cable being “berated” by the pompous editor. She also imagined Michael flying through the air after Cable tossed him like a human glider. It was imagination enough to make her smile. Michael, uncertain what her smile meant, frowned, then put down his glass, took her glass away from her, and slipped his arms around her. His cologne had a musky aroma. Cable never wore cologne, but he still had an intoxicating scent. It was, Song had decided, pure
man
.

But it wasn't Cable here with her, no. It was Michael Carr, her ex-boyfriend who'd dropped her like she was something nasty and distasteful, and not so long ago. Yet here he was, kissing her, his lips so gentle, with nothing of Cable's eagerness.

Song kissed Michael back, her needs propelling her.

“Mmmm,” she said, as their lips parted. “Wow.”

Michael instantly moved his hand to
cup her breast, and she felt a thrill travel up her spine at his familiar touch. He whispered into her ear, “Why don't we go back to my place and use each other like we used to do? No strings attached. I sense you want that, and so do I.”

She looked at Michael, and it all came back to her, the heartsick days waiting for him to call, and how she'd felt when she'd gone for a walk in Central Park and seen him arm in arm with another woman she recognized as a young, blonde intern at Michael's publishing house. They could scarcely keep their hands off one another, and she assumed they were headed to an afternoon tryst.

Then she thought of Cable and that first night they'd made love beneath the stars of St. John. Could anything
ever
top that? No. Nothing. Never.

Before Cable, she might have simply laughed Michael's tawdry suggestion off, or maybe even gone along just for the pure physical pleasure of it. But now, equating sex with utility was repellant. Cable, she realized with an arc of joy, had changed her and her expectations of the physical act of love, even including how it was described. She and Cable had soared, flowed, merged, even morphed in the arms of one another, but never had she felt
used.

Song peeled Michael's hand from her breast and stepped out of his arms, allowing her anger to build until it was exactly where she wanted it. No matter the wine, she was completely in control.

“I have a better idea, Michael,” she said carefully. “Why don't you go back to your place and do whatever you like with the person you love the most?
Yourself
.”