Deep Fried and Pickled (Book One - The Rachael O'Brien Chronicles) (6 page)

Back at our corner table a girl I’d never seen before had seated herself on my barstool. With Maybelline looks, and a bra size comparable to Macy’s, she flicked her Aphrodite highlighted hair. Katie Lee made a round of introductions. “Rachael’s my roommate. And this is Macy. She lives across the hall from us. Y’all,” Katie Lee continued, “Bridget lives in Grogan. She’s studying nursing.”

Bridget batted her eyelashes. “I recognized Katie Lee from across the room.”

“She saw my rough landing, and came over to check on me.”

Bridget turned to Hugh, “Are you from around here?”

“I’m a South Florida transplant. My dad lives in Wilmington, and my mom’s in Fort Myers.”

Bridget lifted a camera from around her neck. Using her pointer finger as a rocking pendulum she instructed us to squeeze together and snapped a photo. “Which one of you, is Katie Lee’s roommate?”

I guess she didn’t hear Katie Lee a second ago, so I wiggled my fingers. “I’m the lottery winner.”

Bridget put the lens cap back on. “You’re so lucky. Katie Lee is the sweetest person I’ve met on campus. My roommate’s a sophomore. I never see her.”

“Don’t worry,” Katie Lee said. “You can hang out with us anytime.”

Tonight I half listened to Bridget talk about growing up in Columbia, South Carolina, and Hugh’s class schedule. The She-Devil altercation had fueled an overdose of adrenaline, and the hot guy sighting injected me with a hormonal imbalance that threatened to tip my equilibrium. I had the attention span of a new puppy learning to sit. Intermittently my schizoid-gaze locked with Hugh’s mustache.

“Macy,” I whispered. “I have a case of FHF – facial-hair-fixation. I’m worried I’m sending Hugh the wrong impression. He caught me sneaking looks. Probably thinks I’ve been scoping him out.”

Leaning into my ear Macy cupped her red nails over her mouth. “Some fixations can’t be explained or corrected.”

Hugh must have thought Macy and I were hot for him. Repositioning himself between us, he asked Macy “W” questions. “What dorm do you live in? Where is that darling accent from?”

Macy held her body in a rigid, I-am-not-interested stance, not acknowledging him unless she had to. I had trouble deciding if this was a drunken Macy, a New York standoffish Macy, or a you-have-no-chance-in-hell Macy. Hugh used cocktail courage, to numb the sting of rejection and continued his one-way conversation with her, occasionally tossing me a question. His conversational resiliency was as impressive as a daddy Long-legs growing a missing limb.

If I changed my mind about Hugh, I’d have to work for his affection. Although Macy wasn’t interested in him, Bridget giggled at every syllable he uttered. Flashing a come-hither pouty-smile, she rattled her ice cubes. He fetched her a drink, and when he returned, she slid her hand across his to retrieve it. Sadly, I realized I was a complete novice when it came to men. I needed to find an opportunity for hands-on training.

NOTE TO SELF

The Holiday Inn turned out to be better than expected, minus my drink blunder, ripping my favorite shirt in a fight, and the man of my dreams leaving with She-Devil under his arm.

Girl-fighting, Sport or Art? There are some tricky moves and cutting insults involved. Katie Lee and Macy undoubtedly have experience.

Should’ve asked the Pus for an extra roll of quarters. If they let us back in the Holiday Inn, I’ll definitely run out of laundry money before Thanksgiving.

SEPTEMBER 1986

5

W
elcome
T
o
T
he
B
ern

Katie
Lee woke up with a welt on her head, making the raw scab directly under my bra strap look like a mere shrapnel scratch. Macy loaned me a tube top to wear under my clothes. Figuring the bar brawl bitches would seek revenge, Katie Lee, Macy and I mutually agreed to avoid the Holiday Inn for a few weekends. The bar scene had given me a party fix with an ending I didn’t want to repeat. We planned to search for another venue, where I hoped I’d have a resighting of the guy in the green jacket. I’m the kind of girl that preps for tests and picks out clothes the night before class. For an in case encounter, I jotted down one-liners that ranged in topic from ‘I’m lost’ directional-type questions, to compliments on shoes.

Saturday afternoon I hadn’t found the strength to shower and nursed an ice water from a straw. The only energy I mustered came from shifting my butt, so it didn’t go completely numb in Macy’s black beanbag. Katie Lee lounged in her floral robe and debriefed us on the latest in the Nash-car-accident turned trespassing-forgery-saga.

“Y’all, Daddy’s not pressin’ charges. Nash went over to our house and apologized. He’s goin’ to wash and wax our cars and boats to pay for the grief and minor damage he caused at the house. The entire misunderstanding has been forgotten.”

I stared at Katie Lee in wonderment.
Did she make this stuff up?
A car wreck that involved detectives from the police department, patrol cars at the 7-Eleven, a pharmacist, and Dr. Brown’s office receptionist. How could Katie Lee and her parents’ brush the incident aside?

When Katie Lee’s updates wound down, my eyes hung on her in a hypnotic stare. I wasn’t sure of an appropriate response and an uncomfortable silence clouded Macy’s room.

Macy drenched a cotton ball with polish remover and offered her two cents of insightful feedback. “That’s fucked up.”

I laid my head back and closed my eyes. “You need to find another boyfriend.”

I LAUNDERED MY BEDDING every Monday, whereas Katie Lee was of the do-laundry-when-you-run-out-of-clean-underwear mindset. She hadn’t developed a relationship with the basement washing machines and electric dryers since we arrived and her closet floor held an avalanche of clothes. I suspected she regarded her underwear as reversible.

Frustrated that I wasn’t in a regular party scene and hadn’t met a selection of available guys, except Hugh, I slumped around our dorm room and smoked cigarettes. After squaring the corners of my freshly laundered sheet, I sprawled on my bed and told Katie Lee, “Waves of guilt wash over me regarding my newly acquired habit of nicotine consumption.”

Huddled over her notebook, with her back to me, Katie Lee wrapped her ankles around her desk chair legs. “Fortunately your memory becomes a blank slate when you pick up a lighter.”

I bent a row of matches back before I ripped one out.“The nagging conscience I possess is the kind that only extremely crafty PUs are capable of instilling in their children, even though they are physically hundreds of miles away.”

“Come on, Rachael. You feel guilty even though your mother’s in Sedona? She hasn’t even called. Her behavior doesn’t exactly set an example.”

“Maybe it’s because Mom’s gone. Like I should be the model student, perfectly behaved otherwise I’ll end up like her, chasing illusions.”

Pretending to have a spasm, I dropped to the floor and winced. “PTT, Parental – Telepathy - Transmission coming through.”

The slim white filter I placed between my lips bobbed like a teeter-totter as I spoke. I pointed to it. “I have a love-hate relationship with these. Damn. Two transmissions. One from Ohio--and another which pisses me off, from Arizona.”

Without glancing up from the love letter she penned to Nash, Katie Lee asked, “What’re they telling ya?”

“It’s serious. I can’t shake the image. I’m being escorted by the earlobe into the order of ‘The Nuns of Perpetual Silence’ for permanent residence to refurbish Bibles--forever.”

Capping the pen, Katie Lee licked the back of a lavender envelope. “Damn Rachael, where do you come up with this stuff?”

I didn’t have an answer. 

She relocated her backside on the edge of my desk and bummed a Benson and Hedges slim cigarette from an open pack. “Next weekend is New Bern’s high school homecoming football game. Wanna come? All my girlfriends will be there. It’ll be a blast, and I’ve found someone to drive us.”

“Who,” I asked.

“Hugh.”

“The guy from the Holiday Inn who wore a beer down his pants?”

She nodded. “He’s headed to his dad’s house in Wilmington, and he’ll drop us off along the way. My mom will pick us up from Warsaw.”

More than once, Katie Lee droned on about how her hometown on the coast “is an official historic North Carolina tourist location, founded in 1710.” She would ramble, “New Bern is the second oldest town in North Carolina with over one-hundred-fifty landmarks-some dating to the eighteenth century.” She also swore it was a hell of a place to party.

Katie Lee liked drama, her boyfriend was proof, and she had a tendency to exaggerate. I suspected she added umph to the New Bern fun factor attributes, but it didn’t matter. I kept my expectations low. Going away for a relaxing weekend, eating normal food, and getting ahead on my studies were my only requirements. “I’d love to visit New Bern,” I told her and meant it.

KATIE LEE AND I WERE meeting Hugh in half an hour. My head was in the clouds and I’d dawdled outside my Friday Psychology class feeling bittersweet. Wait until I told the girls. Mystery man has been behind my back, literally, since day one. The lecture hall I’d left had over two-hundred students and I always sat near the front of the auditorium, away from the arctic air conditioning vents. Plus, I liked to decipher the scribbly notes the professor etched on the board in case they ended up on a test. Today I had a
Where’s Waldo
sighting. The hot guy in the green jacket that I’d spotted at the Holiday Inn freakin’ sits in the nose bleed section. On the plus side, I didn’t see any tall, blue-eyed redheads near him. Maybe someone had the foresight to lock her in a padded room. Now, I just had to figure out if hot guy and She-Devil were involved.

HUGH DROVE HIS POOP-COLORED rusted Datsun hatchback well below the speed limit the entire trip. He and Katie Lee carried on a conversation in the front seats of the car, which I couldn’t hear above the busted muffler that hummed in my ears. Shifting in my seat, I leaned forward to avoid the cracked, plaid-plastic upholstery stuffing that pricked at my shoulder and the underside of my knees. The gray duct tape that held the passenger door together had lost its money back guaranteed adhesive-stick, and I listened to shredded strips flap like a flag in high winds. Driving above fifty would’ve left generous mementos, in the form of vital engine parts on highways across the state, so neither Katie Lee nor I complained to granny-snail-speed behind the wheel.

By the time Mrs. Brown picked us up, an hour outside of New Bern, daylight had succumbed to dusk. The trip across the state took four excruciating hours, and Katie Lee complained, “As sweet as Hugh is, his car is a dump. We’re lucky we made it to meet my mom.”

Mrs. Brown had a heavy foot, and in no time, her headlights reflected past magnolia trees to a detached garage. I stepped out of the car, and inhaled a pine tree, woodsy smell. Clustered like matchsticks, the dried needles formed a carpet along the berm. Soft churns of rippling water lapped the shore and a night owl called.

“Come on y’all,” Mrs. Brown said. “Let’s get inside.”

Gas porch lights flickered on a two-story brick home. Moss baskets draped with beech-ferns and vinca-vine hung between half a dozen columns on an elevated porch. Rushing past a pair of high back plantation rocking chairs, Katie Lee moved inside the front door. I stopped to admire the handmade needlepoint bolster pillows and watched the rockers sway in harmony with the night breeze. Mrs. Brown rested her hand on my shoulder. She whispered, “Late at night, I sit here to rest my bare feet on the floorboards and ponder. It’s my favorite spot.”

I turned to her. “If I take one of these chairs for a test rock, I may never go back to school.”

“Hey Daddy,” Katie Lee shouted above hound howls. Dr. Brown’s neck rested against a soft leather recliner in the living room. I guessed the two furry companions with droopy ears had kept his feet warm until we arrived. She wrapped her arms around him from behind and planted a kiss on the peak of his graying hair before cooing the dogs that stuck their wet noses into her knees. “Okay Uncle, okay Sims. Settle down.”

Folding what looked like a medical periodical, Dr. Brown stood and hugged Katie Lee. I’d briefly met him the first day on campus, and he was dressed exactly the same, khaki pants with pressed creases down the center. He probably rotated between dark polo shirts in the winter and bright ones in the summer. Tucking the folded paper he held between the arm of the chair and the cushion, he greeted me, “Well hey there, Rachael.”

“Y’all must be hungry,” Mrs. Brown said. “Come on into the kitchen, I have crab cakes and slaw waiting.”

Mrs. Brown liked decorative plates, and Dr. Brown killed furry things. Both their tastes merged in a display on the high shelf that wrapped around the eat-in kitchen.

“Mama, you shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble. I hope you don’t mind, we have to eat and run otherwise we’ll miss the game.”

Pulling the crab cakes from a warming drawer, Mrs. Brown placed them on a Lazy Susan. She offered me a clear ketchup bottle with pink sauce. “It’s my secret recipe. Puts kick in your crab cakes.”

“Daddy, I still get the van tonight, right?” Katie Lee confirmed. She’d told me that her dad was particular about who drove the van and normally only used the vehicle for special occasions and on road trips. Tonight Katie Lee had volunteered to chauffeur. She told her parents, “I’m picking up a few friends, and there’s more room in the cruiser.”

Mrs. Brown lowered her red-rimmed glasses down the bridge of her nose. “What friends, exactly, are y’all drivin’?”

“The usual. Patsy, Shelby, and Addie.”

With piercing eyes, Dr. Brown told Katie Lee, “No Nash. Understood?”