Long Black Curl (31 page)

Bronwyn pushed herself up from the chair with a grunt of annoyance. They had just reached the door when Jeff said, “Let me make sure I understand your offer. I help you deal with Bo-Kate, and my exile is over, whatever the results of that. I mean, you're getting my best effort, not a guaranteed result. Are we clear?”

“Yes,” Bronwyn said.

“And I'm allowed back unconditionally and without any reservation. It's like it never happened. Right?”

“Right.”

“So I'll be able to sing, and play, again?”

“Yes.”

Something struck him. “Can Bo-Kate sing and play?”

“She can. We have no idea how.”

He nodded. “I'll think about it. But don't get your hopes up.”

They left, and Jeff went to the window to stare out at Manhattan as he thought of mountains and guitar strings beneath his fingers.

*   *   *

“What are you doing?” Melanie said sleepily, and stretched on the bed. Her long legs slid against the sheets, inviting his gaze with their linear perfection. One thing about a model, Jeff thought: they knew how to present themselves in every situation. “Wishing we'd bought that weed from those guys at the club?”

Jeff sat on the edge of the bed, gazing out the window. “It's not a good idea to buy weed from strangers, especially in Manhattan.”

“They're not strangers. They're our new friends with weed.”

“If you're so desperate, look in the top drawer.”

“I'm more desperate to know why you're still wide awake. Usually you're fast asleep before I stop breathing hard.”

“Thinking,” he said. “About my hometown.”

“Down South?”

“Yeah. Some people from there came by today and invited me to come back.”

She smiled the same half smirk that teenage boys masturbated to all over the world. “That explains it.”

“Explains what?”

“Why your accent was so strong tonight. You must've said ‘y'all' a dozen times.”

He slapped her bare behind. “I'd mock
your
regional culture, if you had any.”

She play-pouted at him. He kissed her. Then he walked to the window and gazed up at the starless city sky.

“I thought you said you didn't want to go back,” she said as she sat up.

“I said that because it was better than the truth. Until today, I thought I
couldn't
go back.”

“So that's good news, right?”

“Maybe. They also said my ex-fianc
é
e is causing trouble, and they want me to help get her back under control.”

“Why is that your problem?”

“I'm not sure it is. That's part of what I'm thinking about.”

She got out of bed, unself-conscious as only the truly beautiful can be when they're naked, and came up behind him. She put her arms around his neck and kissed his shoulder. He felt her breasts against his back. “Tell me about it.”

“About what?”

“Well … about her.”

“Her name is Bo-Kate.”

Melanie laughed. “That's an unusual name. What does she look like?”

“A lot like you—tall, slender, with dark curly hair and a great pair of tits.”

“So you have a type, then?”

“I do.” He turned and kissed her again. “We met when we were little kids, but we didn't start dating until we were teenagers. You can't imagine how beautiful she was then, all smooth and soft, like something on a vine just at the right point of ripeness. The first time I saw her naked, she was coming out of a pond where she'd been skinny-dipping. It was like seeing something elemental.”

Melanie nipped at his earlobe. “I see it's a vivid memory.”

“Well, to be fair, you're adding to the 3-D effect.”

“Tell me more about her.”

“We couldn't keep our hands off each other. Every chance we got, we'd get together. We skipped school, we ignored our friends, we ignored our families. That was a mistake. You see, we came from opposite sides of our community. We weren't supposed to fool around, let alone fall in love.”

“A blood feud, like the Hatfields and McCoys? Mmmm, that's kind of hot.”

“You can joke about it if you want, but believe me, it's pretty fucking serious when you're in the middle of it. And it wasn't just our families. It was the whole Tufa community. Nobody wanted us together, and we couldn't stay apart.”

“So what happened?”

He looked back out the window. This high, it was almost—almost—like riding the night winds. His voice grew heavy with unaccustomed emotion. “They … banished us, I guess you'd call it. They told us never to come back. And we lost … we lost a lot of the things that were important to us.”

He fought to hold it back, but the emotions were too strong. There was no one way to describe to this beautiful woman the things he'd lost. How did you tell someone what it was like to hear music, to feel it and be around it constantly, yet be unable to make it? To have hands that once mastered the intricacies of twelve-string guitars now useless when any instrument was placed in them? To never be able to harmonize, to hear pitch accurately, to stay on beat?

And there was simply no way to describe Tufa flight to a non-Tufa.

Melanie turned him to face her, and wiped the tears from his cheeks. “Wow, Jeff. I'm sorry I brought this up, I didn't meant to upset you.” She paused, then asked, “Do you still love her?”

“No,” he said without hesitation. “She's a monster.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I don't see as I really have a choice. And they know that, which pisses me off. I don't like being manipulated.”

“Because you're a manipulator?”

He looked down at her and smiled. “Do I manipulate you?”

“I'm a model, it's my job to be manipulated.”

“You think you're on the clock when you're with me?”

“I think that I'll do whatever you tell me. Because I want to make you happy, if I can.”

“What if I want to make
you
happy?”

“Hm. I can think of a couple of ways that might happen.” She put her hands on his shoulders and firmly pushed him down to his knees. Then she draped one perfect, world-famous leg over his shoulder, her smooth thigh against his cheek.

But even as he paid attention to Melanie, Jeff pondered and fumed over what the two Tufa had told him about Bo-Kate. Not only had she killed people, but she now wanted to destroy the careful balance that allowed the Tufa to continue to exist. She did have to be stopped. But how would he do it? He couldn't just ask her to come back to him, not after the way things ended. And he didn't want that. He wanted to put his hands around her neck and choke the life out of her.

He also, he hated to admit, wanted to do to Bo-Kate exactly what he was doing to Melanie. Because no matter how much time went by in the human world, or how many beautiful women he seduced with his power, influence, and money, she was still the best he'd ever had.

*   *   *

At the Holiday Inn on Twenty-ninth Street, Bronwyn sat in one of the padded chairs noodling on her mandolin. She missed Craig, and her parents, and everything about her home, even though she hadn't been gone twenty-four hours yet. She'd never felt like this when she was in Iraq, and put it down to one more thing the baby in her belly had changed about her.

There was a soft knock at the door. “Bronwyn? It's me, Junior. You awake?”

She opened the door and let him in. She wore a man's undershirt and flannel pajama pants, and the shirt didn't quite cover her belly. He was barefoot, in jeans and a T-shirt.

“Excuse me for sitting back down,” she said, and plopped heavily on the bed. “What can I do for you, Junior?”

“I was just passing by on my way to the ice machine and heard you playing.” That wasn't entirely the truth; he'd actually stood with his ear to her door until he caught the strains of her mandolin.

“You can hear me in the hall? I'm surprised the front desk hasn't called up with a complaint,” she joked. In a Yankee accent, she said, “‘We don't allow that kind of redneckery, folks.'”

“This is New York City, they'll just send up some Eye-talians.”

She laughed. “You might as well sit down, too. There's nothing on TV, and I'm not up to wandering around Manhattan like a tourist.”

“Me, neither, and I ain't even pregnant.” He settled into one of the padded but uncomfortable hotel chairs. “How do you think it went today?”

“Oh, fine. I can't imagine he won't say yes. Can you?”

“Does seem unlikely.”

“Then we can only hope he's up to the challenge.”

After a moment, Junior said, “Did you hear what Bo-Kate said the other day at the Pair-A-Dice? About her plans?”

“I heard
about
it. I got there too late to hear it firsthand.”

“It's sure had me thinking. It doesn't sound like it would be that bad, does it? Everybody making money, everyone having jobs. What's bad about that?”

“The cost.”

“Changing the name of the town?”

“Not that. It'll cost us our identity. Junior, when I was in Iraq, I wasn't a Tufa, I was just Private Hyatt. There was nothing special about me. I had a good job, and a secure future if I wanted it. If we change everything the way Bo-Kate wants, then yeah, we'll all maybe be a little more comfortable and secure, just like I was. But we won't be Tufa. We'll be way too entangled with the world to ever ride the night winds again. There won't be anything special about us.”

“Then why does she want to do it?”

“Because she hates us for what we did to her, and to Jefferson.”

“And he doesn't hate us?”

Bronwyn said nothing. The question was unanswerable until it was too late. They had to trust him.

“I reckon,” he said, “that's something only Mandalay knows.”

She looked at him seriously. “Junior, tell me. Do you
really
want to step in for Rockhouse?”

“I know what you think, Bronwyn. It's what everybody thinks. I ain't smart enough, I ain't sophisticated enough, I ain't scary enough. But you're all wrong. And you know, the proof's sitting right here.” He patted his chest. “I got myself in on this trip without too much trouble, didn't I? And this is some important shit.”

“It is,” she agreed. “And you're actually doing a good job, Junior. I'm impressed.”

Junior could handle criticism without blinking, but he had no idea how to react to compliments. To change the subject, he nodded at her stomach and said, “How's your little pea pod doing?”

“She didn't like the flight much. But she's okay now. I think she's sleeping.”

He looked away, out the window that showed a view of another nearby building. “My wife's pregnant, too.”

“I know. I saw her at Rockhouse's funeral.”

“It ain't bringing out her best qualities.”

“It's a hard thing for some women, Junior.” She winced and wriggled in the chair. “Ow. Guess who's awake now?”

“Did we make too much noise?”

“Probably just me getting wrought up.”

“I'm amazed my baby ever sleeps, then,” he said a little bitterly. “Loretta is always wrought up.”

Bronwyn had no problem seeing Loretta acting that way. She'd always been a whiner, even when they were children, and it was doubtful that bearing a child had made her any nicer. “Sorry, Junior. Maybe she'll stop taking it out on you when the baby's born.”

“She was doing it long before the baby came along,” he muttered.

Bronwyn picked up her mandolin and began to pick, precise little notes that didn't really develop into anything. Junior fished a harmonica from his pocket.

“You don't sing?” Bronwyn said.

“Whenever I have a problem, I sing. Then I realize my voice is a lot worse than my problem.”

He patted the harmonica against his palm a couple of times, then put it to his lips and blew soft, mournful wails in counterpoint to what Bronwyn played. If anyone had heard, they would've been moved to tears. But no one did.

 

23

“Tell me,” Jeff said seriously, “exactly what you expect me to do. I mean, exactly. I don't want any misunderstandings.”

They were in the hotel's little continental breakfast caf
é
, seated at one of the faux-rustic tables. Bronwyn leaned as close as her belly allowed and said, “We want Bo-Kate stopped, and back out of Cloud County. However you need to do that. If it means killing her, that's all right, too.”

“Wow,” Jeff said. “That escalated quickly.”

“It's always been life and death.”

“So how did she manage to get back in the first place?”

“We don't know,” Junior said. “She just showed up, with this black guy in tow, and the shit hit the fan. She cut off Rockhouse's extra fingers, and he died that night. She gave them to Peggy Goins to show she meant business.”

“Who's the black guy?”

“He seems to just be an assistant,” Bronwyn said. “He's certainly not the one in charge. And he's British, if that means anything.”

Jeff sipped his coffee. He hadn't touched his bagel. “Okay. As far as I know, as far as I can tell, I'm still banished. How do we fix that?”

“It's fixed,” Bronwyn said.

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

“So I'll be able to find Cloud County again?”

“Like you never left.”

“How did you manage that?”

She shrugged. Truthfully, even though they weren't 100 percent certain he would agree to help them, they had followed Mandalay's instructions and asked the night winds to listen to them sing “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” an inane and obvious choice but one that embodied the right spirit. Even in New York City they were heard and their wish accepted. She only wished every request could be that simple.