More Bitter Than Death (5 page)

I looked at him, surprised. “No. Why?”

“Little spat over domestic duties.” He smirked.

I shrugged, annoyed with him. “Please. That was a discussion. Brian and I are both lead dog–types, and sometimes, without anyone else around, we start both trying to lead at the same time. We know what’s up.”

“I’m surprised with your enlightened view of the world, you’d be so unsympathetic,” Carla said to Brad.

“Not at all,” he replied. “It’s just that we schedule everything out so there is no distraction from what’s important in life.”

“Well, if you all aren’t going to ask her, I am,” Lissa said to the table at large. “What the heck are you doing, wearing a jockstrap?”

“Like I said, it’s a female groin protector.”

“Groin protection. Breast shields.” Lissa chewed that over. “What are you and Brian up to? I’ll give you credit, you’re into some advanced stuff. Most of us just muddle along with nubbly condoms and vibrators.”

“Ha. Ha.” I looked over my cards. “It’s for my Krav Maga, to keep from getting kicked or punched somewhere fragile.”

“Krav Maga like Kama Sutra?”

“Do you always have to take the low road, Liss?” Carla asked. “It’s E’s fancy self-defense class, Israeli martial arts.”

Brad shuddered. “You’re going to ruin your joints with all that violent stuff. You should try yoga. More yin, less yang.”

“Right.” I made a face. “In my abundant spare time.”

Brad was insistent. “It would help with your stress. And by the way, you were late tonight, Emma. It’s not like you to keep us waiting.”

I wasn’t about to tell him what I’d actually been up to; Carla and I had a thing about playing practical jokes on each other. “I ran into a student of mine,” I said as casually as I could; it was true anyway. I just made a detour after that. “She wanted to ask me something before her paper. Besides, Jay was here only a minute before me and Sue’s later than both of us.”

Carla was eyeing me hard, and I worried she smelled a rat. She made a rude noise. “And Jay? Where were you?”

“Oh, I was talking with our illustrious guest of honor,” he said, stacking his chips. “Garrison had some questions for me. More like demands.”

“Ha!” Carla snorted. “I hear that.”

Jay continued. “But where’s Sue anyway? She trying to save money by not showing up to let me take it?”

A knock at the door answered her before we could, and I got up to find it was the woman herself. Her eyes were red, her fair skin was blotchy under the freckles, and while nothing could shift her fan of strawberry-blond hair—shellacked into looking permanently windblown—her clothes were rumpled.

“Where’ve you been?” I said. “You ducked out of there pretty quick.” When she didn’t say anything, I tried to joke. “And you missed me trouncing Jay. It was beautiful.”

Jay glared at me. “Evening’s young yet. Not even near over.”

“After I got done in the ladies’ room, I got caught in the bar,” Sue explained. “Took me a while to get free. Lots of sympathy to deal with.”

“I’m sorry.” I handed her a beer. “Everyone knew that Garrison was talking about your project.”

“And he’s two seconds away from permanently retiring!” Her words came in a rush. “It all comes down to a difference of opinion, and he’s got to screw five years worth of work. Bastard.”

“You had to know it was coming,” Chris said.

“Yeah, well, as far as I knew, it was a go until
he
got tapped for the advisory board. They all suck up to him. Then…phhht.”

The news I’d heard about the project didn’t give me exactly the same vibe, and I thought that Sue was working toward an extreme long shot, but I wouldn’t have said so for the world.

She sat down, put her head down between her knees.

“You okay, hon?” Lissa asked, patting her on the back.

“Yeah,” came the muffled reply. A long shuddering sigh followed. “Just give me a minute, okay?”

We exchanged looks; there was nothing more we could do. I opened my mouth to say we didn’t need to play cards tonight, this was too important, but with a determined shake, Sue sat up and immediately changed the subject.

“Gimme some damned cards. Did you know this place is haunted?”

“Get out of here,” Chris said, dealing.

“Yes,” said the rest of us. We all looked at him. He stopped dealing.

“Well, clearly I didn’t get the chance to study up on the hotel, like the rest of you. I didn’t schedule, clearly, Brad, and I spend my free time enjoying my family life. Besides, it’s in New Hampshire and it’s after eighteen fifty, so why should I care?” Chris had his own priorities, running a small historical district visitors center in western Massachusetts. He resumed dealing the cards.

“Anyway,” Sue said, after a moment, “it’s this whole thing about a bride on her wedding night. Found out her groom was unfaithful, beat him to death with a poker.”

“Cool,” Carla said.

“So let me guess, he wanders the halls trying to make it up to her?” Jay asked. He was chewing on his bottom lip this time, and I figured once he straightened up that his hand wasn’t all that great.

“No, she wanders the halls with the fireplace poker, looking for him in case he comes back. I guess she died a month later. She had the room so she stayed there. Died of a broken heart.”

“So why wasn’t she hauled off to prison?”

“I think it was rumored that she killed him; the plaque says that he probably fell down the stairs and broke his neck.”

“See, ghost stories never make any sense,” Scott said. “Waste of time.”

“I think they’re great,” Lissa said. “Really fascinating.”

“You would. All spooky and romantic and all that horseshit.” He threw his cards down in disgust. “I’m out.”

“No, it’s because these stories tell you what people
wanted
to believe,” she replied hotly. “Give me another card.”

Betting followed; Lissa, Carla, Scott, and I were out and it was left to Brad, Jay, and Sue. The stakes got pretty high, well, high for us, and there might have been forty dollars in the pot at point.

The remaining players sized each other up. Brad glared at the other two, breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth like he was invoking his yogic calm and it wasn’t coming. Jay and Sue stared at each other, small smiles playing around their lips. Finally, in the last round, Jay and Brad folded, and Sue scooped the pot over to her pile.

“Come to mama. Well, at least one good thing came out of this evil night.”

Brad was picking up the cards that Sue had discarded. “Hey! You were bluffing. You had two threes, that’s all!”

“You jackass, since when do you get to look after the fact?”
Carla slapped at Brad, but he’d already backed out of range.

“Look, she was bluffing,” he said, showing the cards to Jay, who scowled.

“You have to pay to find out, Brad. That’s the rules. No snooping around after the fact,” Sue said.

“Don’t be such a pussy,” Jay said. “Suck it up, man.”

“But she was bluffing! And you bought it too!”

“Yeah, man, you always bet too much at the wrong times,” Chris said to Jay.

He shrugged. “You gotta have faith in the cards.”

“No, I have faith in beer. I always know exactly what beer will do for me in any given situation,” Chris said. “Cards are too unpredictable, or have you forgotten the strip poker game that gave you your nickname, Jay-Bird?”

“As in nekkid-as-a?” Carla said. “Huh. I always thought it was because he was noisy and pooped all over the place.”

“Well, that too,” Chris assured her. “This particular event was sometime during that extended holiday Jay took after high school. Undergrad shouldn’t take six years, dude.”

Jay shrugged. “You go with your strengths, Chris. I was good at spring break.”

“Speaking of strengths,” I said, “if you can’t tell when Sue’s bluffing, then you shouldn’t be betting,
Brad
.”

Brad made a face. “But I had a
good
hand!”

“So you should have stuck with it.”

“Whatever.”

The game shut down soon after that and Brad, perhaps still miffed by his loss, bullied me into meeting him in the gym the next morning.

“But my session’s first thing,” Carla complained. “Aren’t you guys coming?”

We seldom made it to each other’s panels.

“I don’t want to get up that early,” I said to both of them. “Why do you want to work out anyway?”

“Didn’t you bring your stuff?”

“Yes, but I didn’t expect—”

“Meet me down there at seven, no better make it six-thirty. We can catch up.” Brad raised his eyebrows in what I suppose was meant to be a meaningful fashion, and I reluctantly agreed. He usually didn’t bother with subterfuge, and I was curious.

“Fine, but you’re going to get what you deserve,” I muttered, throwing my cards away. My luck had run out for the night. “And since I’ll be getting up at the crack of dawn, Carla, I’ll be sure to catch your paper.”

Scott said he had to wash out his underwear or go commando the rest of the weekend. Brad, of course, had his schedule to keep and wanted to make sure he got enough sleep to counteract his present sleep deficit. Jay was going to another room to catch the basketball game, on which he claimed to have a sure bet. Lissa announced she was going back downstairs, and hit the bar. I had figured to go back to my room, but said I’d go with her, because Sue was going too and looked like she could use some friendly faces at the moment.

Carla yawned, fit to swallow a pig. “Well, I’m going to sleep, if my room’s warmed up any. It was as cold as hell when I left for the plenary, and they said they were going to work on it.”

“Funny,” I said. “Mine was as hot as hell. Must be Château Dante we’re staying in here.”

We walked down to the bar, and it was packed: The conference bar is like the watering hole on the veldt, with everyone stalking everyone else. I noticed Duncan over in one corner, holding court with the same effortless magnetism I remembered from years ago. He caught my eye, but didn’t do anything else, so I just followed Lissa and Sue to where they were going and hoped that the service would be a little better than it was this evening after the plenary. Sure enough, there were three waitresses pushing their way through the crowd. I hoped
they were getting well tipped; the bar was nearly as hot as my room was.

We got a seat with Laurel Fairchild, who always seemed to occupy the same spot in every bar at every conference she went to. As far as I knew, she left only to present her own papers; she believed that she would run into everyone she wanted to simply by staying put and letting the world come to her. This time we lucked out, and got seats during a lull in her evening.

From a distance, Laurel resembled someone who’d been frozen in time at the last heyday of the hotel: black turtleneck, black cardigan, black Capri pants, a brunette bobbed Beatnik with cat’s-eye glasses. Closer up, you realized that she was maybe in her late forties or fifties, but it seemed like she’d always been at the conference and would always be. She swore like a trooper and would still be chain-smoking unfiltered Camels, if it hadn’t been for the fact that cigarettes were prohibited almost everywhere she had a reason to be.

Lissa said, “Good Lord, Laurel. Don’t you ever get bored of just sitting there, like a lump?”

“Christ, no. Not when I’ve got entertainment like the floorshow that’s been going on here for the past hour.” She gestured over to the corner, where Duncan was telling a joke, an energetic pantomime. I noticed that there were brownish spots on her hands now, something I didn’t recall from previous years. Yikes. It didn’t seem right that she should be showing signs of age.

She continued. “And my feet are killing me. I shouldn’t have worn shoes that weren’t broken in.”

I looked down and saw that she’d taken off her new pumps—pointy-toed, achingly narrow, and far too fashionable for me—and was rolling an unopened beer bottle with her stockinged foot. It was an old trick I knew from the field, but I usually saved it for more private venues. She was
drinking a glass of wine, so I didn’t know what she was going to do with that beer when it warmed up…

“You could wear sensible shoes,” I said.

Laurel agreed so politely that I knew that my suggestion had been dismissed out of hand. “How you doing, Sue?” she asked, looking down past her glasses to the other woman. The effect made her look even more avian than ever, with her beaky nose and sharp, dark eyes. “Garrison unloaded a real shit-storm, huh?”

Sue nodded. “I’m okay, now. You always think you can deal with this better than you do, you get the rug pulled out from under you like that. I felt like I was going to throw up for a while there.”

Laurel nodded, looking sympathetic, and somehow at the same time gestured to the waitress as she passed with a tray of loaded drinks. Laurel had better bar karma than almost anyone I knew, and that was on top of her propensity for giving large tips. We’d be well looked after tonight, as long as we could stand the noise and the heat.

“Let me get this. Happy New Year,” she said. “Or to a better year after this, I should say.”

“Amen to that.”

There was no talking among us after that. Sue sat and drank steadily, but although her shoulders were slumped with obvious fatigue, it didn’t seem as though she was getting destructive about it. I sipped at a bourbon, more for something to have in my hands than any real interest in the drink. Laurel held court from her chair, keeping track of a ridiculous number of meetings with apparent effortlessness, all arranged at the top of her voice to be heard over the din. Lissa went up to the bar for some popcorn and had never made it back; someone had waylaid her and the pair of them were talking animatedly, unheard over the racket. Somewhere in the background the bar’s sound system thumped and provided not so much a soundtrack as an underlying percussive struc
ture to the cacophony. I was just glad that there was no smoking, else it would have been pretty nigh unbearable. As it was, it was only my friends who were keeping me there, and they were all in their own little worlds.

I glanced across the room through a temporary gap in the bodies and saw Duncan holding forth, expressively and charismatically, alternating humor and seriousness. People were clustered around him, either because they were truly interested in what he had to say—his information was usually interesting and useful, if nothing else, and he had influence in the field as a professor at an important department in New Hampshire—or to bask in his reflected glow. Larger and larger concentric circles formed around him, satellites gravitating toward a bright star. At one point he leaned in, as if speaking confidentially, and the people around him leaned in too; then he exploded up, nailing whatever punch line or conclusion to a shout of laughter.