Twenty-seven
JEAN STEPPED OUT of the shower, drying off with a towel she’d brought in from the clothesline. It was stiff and knobby and brought the blood to the surface of her skin. She turned to the side, examining herself in the full-length mirror mounted on the inside of the bathroom door. She sucked her stomach flat. Her arms and shoulders and legs appeared unblemished, darkened from working in the garden. She smoothed lotion on, twice on her elbows, knees and heels.
She sat in her terry-cloth robe at the vanity in the bedroom, applying makeup, returning to the bathroom to wash it off, settling on just a hint of eyeliner and a pale lip gloss. She didn’t want the effort to show.
She drank iced tea and smoked four cigarettes on the sunporch waiting for her hair to dry, then went to the bedroom and shucked her robe off on the floor and brushed her hair until it shone, drawing it away from her face and securing it with a silver clasp. This was her best feature. Men stared at her hair even before moving their gaze to her breasts, her hips. Silver pendants in her ears. No necklace. She didn’t want to break the long, graceful lines of her neck.
She slipped into the powder-blue panties and bra she’d bought at Victoria’s Secret and stood in front of the mirror again, pushing her breasts up and together, drawing her hands away slowly. Her reflection was nodding.
She chose the jeans that made her ass look like she ran thirty miles a week, brown leather sandals with no heels, the beige silk-and-linen twinset that showed off her tan. She studied herself in the vanity mirror. This wasn’t man-pretty. That was something entirely different. This was down-to-business pretty. Then she took his grandmother’s pearl ring from her jewelry box and slipped it on, extending her hand to appreciate its simple beauty. She closed her hand into a fist.
She drove to the Hub with the windows up and the AC on low so she’d arrive fresh. There were a dozen cars and pickups in the lot, another dozen Harleys backed in against the concrete divider set in front of a hedgerow of caragana. She parked around the side of the log building and sat for a minute watching the tops of the cottonwoods to make sure the wind wasn’t up. The women’s bathroom wasn’t well lit and she didn’t want to have to fix her hair again.
She hadn’t had a drink all day. With her eyes closed she could imagine the first one, the warm flush spreading across her cheeks like a shawl over her shoulders. But not yet. Right now it was all about attitude, about having the edge.
She walked in through the side door and stood at the end of the bar, leaning into the padded bumper. She loved the odor of bars, especially in the summer. Damp, cool and yeasty, like a sip of beer.
The men sitting near her stared and looked away. She watched their reflections in the mirror set behind the rows of bottles, the bikers and cowboys and businessmen.
The bartender slid a coaster in front of her, tapping it with a forefinger. “It’s margarita night,” he said.
He wore black slacks and a white shirt with a pleated front, black garters snapped above the elbows to hold the sleeves back. It’s what passed for a uniform at the Hub.
“How’s it going, Jamie?”
“Same old same old.” He tilted his head back, his lips pursed like an old man’s, studying her. “I’m glad to say you aren’t looking your age.”
“You’re a sweetheart.” But he was too young, and spent too much time in the gym to be interesting. She pushed back from the bar. “I’ll order something with dinner,” she said.
“You want me to send Crane in when he shows?”
“Who?”
“Your husband,” he said. “If he comes in through the bar.”
“If he does, I’d buy a ticket to that event.”
She weaved through the tables, pausing in the archway to the dining room. Deep red carpeting, red draperies, flocked wallpaper crowded with pale watercolors, their prices printed on little white cards stuck to their frames. There was a banker and his wife from Sheridan she recognized, a real-estate agent working a client, a dozen families of tourists in their shorts and T-shirts advertising the places where they’d last vacationed. Helen sat at a table by the salad bar, both hands around a glass set on the red paper placemat in front of her. She wore a long-sleeved blue T-shirt and jeans. The scene held a strangely patriotic quality.
She walked across the room with her shoulders squared and her chin up. When she sat down she made sure her eyes were cold, and when Helen smiled she just stared.
A waitress appeared at her shoulder. “Would the lady like a cocktail?” She had an Eastern European accent.
“I sure would.” Jean leaned toward the girl’s nameplate—Ksenia—and wagged a finger toward Helen without turning to her. “I’ll have what she’s having.”
“It’s a gin and tonic.” Helen held the glass up as a woman might in an advertisement.
“Bombay in mine.” Jean lounged back in the chair.
“Yes, ma’am.”
The girl backed away, bowing slightly at the waist, and Helen sipped her drink. She coughed, holding her napkin to her mouth.
“I don’t normally drink,” she said.
Her voice had been shaky on the phone when Jean called. Now it was just flat, but her body was sharp and shapely under the loose clothing. If she was nervous she’d made no effort to dress it down.
“I do,” Jean said. “Every chance I get.”
Helen nodded as Ksenia placed Jean’s drink before her and took out her order pad.
“We’re not ready yet,” Jean said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
They watched her backing toward the kitchen.
“They can’t get American kids to work,” Helen said.
Jean sipped her drink, then set the glass near the center of the table. Like shooting fish in a barrel, she thought.
“He’s got Lou Gehrig’s,” Helen said.
“Right.”
“I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”
“You’re full of shit.”
Helen’s lips were still moving, but the words had become slurred, the music on the sound system slowing. Jean sat back in her chair and finished her drink in two gulps. She laughed. “You’re telling me my husband’s dying?”
“Yes.”
“And he came to you?”
“I don’t think he meant to. But yes, he did.”
“Like an accident?”
“No. It wasn’t an accident.”
“And he couldn’t tell me?” Helen’s voice was coming clearer now, but Jean didn’t feel like laughing anymore. “Did he tell you why?”
“I don’t think they know why anyone gets ALS.”
“Why he couldn’t tell me.”
“He said he didn’t want to worry you.”
“Really?”
“Something like that.”
“He didn’t think f*cking his ex-wife would worry me?” This wasn’t like shooting anything in a barrel.
“We never did make love. If that’s any consolation.”
“It’s not.”
Helen was folding her napkin into a triangle. “But we tried,” she said.
“Did you hold him?”
“I don’t understand.”
“When you weren’t making love. When you were trying to comfort him.”
“Yes.”
“Did he cry?”
Helen nodded.
“You know what this is, don’t you?” Jean was searching the room but there was no Ksenia. “This whole f*cking conversation? It’s a Salvador Dalí painting. In the goddamn extreme.”
“I thought you’d want to know.”
“I wish he’d been f*cking you,” Jean said.
Her hand was on the table in front of her, the fingers tapping. They both looked at the pearl ring flashing dully. Jean brought the hand into her lap.
“I would too,” Helen said. “If I were you.” She stood, bringing her purse up from the seat of the chair beside her. She slung the strap over her shoulder and walked straight out without looking back.
Ksenia asked, “Would the lady like another cocktail?”
Jean pushed against the arms of the chair to stand, and when she lost her balance the girl caught her under the elbow. She pulled her arm away. “I hope you’ll like this country,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Jean smoothed her hands over her hips, turning toward the archway. “The lady will have her next in the bar,” she said.
Now the music was louder, and she was tapping the rim of her margarita glass and Jamie was coming toward her behind the bar.
“There’s a fine piece,” she heard, and turned with her elbows hooked back against the edge of the bar. She wanted to feel like a fine piece.
“So tell me, boys,” she said, and when only the men at the nearest table turned she repeated it loud enough that they stopped playing pool at the end of the room, leaning against their cues. She brought the fresh margarita up for a sip. “So tell me, boys,” she said again, pausing, “who’d like to f*ck the sheriff’s wife?”
They stared at her, then glanced at one another like kids at a dance, and she began to laugh and couldn’t stop, didn’t even try to.