Odditorium: A Novel (39 page)

“Nice day for weeding,” she said.

“Mmm.” Painstakingly, he tied a long green strand around her ring finger, clipped off the dangling ends with his thumbnail. “Too tight?”

“No, perfect. You have good taste in jewelry.”

“I should open a store.” He frowned and let go of her hand. “So what’s all that moanin’ I heard in there?”

“Nature taking its course. Pay no mind.”

“Couple of sickos if you want my view, but go on back and babysit ’em if you want. Don’t worry ’bout me, I’ll just doze off in my hammock.”

“It’s not exactly what I want.”

“Then you shouldn’ta invited ’em in the first place.”

“I didn’t.”

“Shit.” Karl pawed the air. “I naturally figured … They just showed up like strays you mean?”

“Strays.” Tildy pondered that one. “Maybe not.”

“Point is, you didn’t ask ’em and that’s a different-colored horse. I don’t like their sniffin’ around. Not one bit.” He stood purposefully, mopped his face, made for the hammock. “What you should do is help ’em decide to clear off.”

“I already had that idea. But today, I don’t know, I can’t seem to wake up.”

Later on, though, Tildy roused herself to take the girls for a drive. She had mad notions of abandoning them out in the piney woods to starve away like a couple of unwanted puppies. Wheeling up the gravel road, past where mailboxes gave out, she saw their rag-wound apparitions ducking from tree to tree. A monotonous hissing in the air out here; earth that would soon disguise anything you dumped. But the endless chatter in the car drubbed her back to reality. A couple of plain Janes who wanted to run a gas station.

Tildy doubled back to R.C.’s; it was all delusion, another byproduct of the day’s stupor. Motion rather than action. Anyway, M.J. and Flora were no worse than reminders of past lapses, past injuries. Still, the vision of swallowing woods pursued her. She parked with a lurch and pressed her forehead to the steering wheel, taking shallow breaths. Flora asked if something was bothering her.

“Nothing new.”

Inside the store, you could hear the coolers humming. No signs of life. But Tildy remembered seeing a car outside, an army surplus Jeep. She called out.

“Back here,” a childlike voice came back.

She was clicking away with a price gun in the beverage section. Pleated brown wattles hung from her neck and pebbled growths ran down the flanks of her huge nose and across her cheekbones. Her chin seemed boneless, a slack bag like the dress she wore. She had frozen orange juice cans in her hair for curlers.

“Liddie.” Tildy waved. “I’m just gonna grab a couple six-packs of Gatortail and leave them up front while I get my other stuff together.”

“Call when you need me.”

M.J. stole a backward look, spoke furtively, as though her teeth had locked. “You know that beast?”

“Lydia Estes,” Tildy said at normal volume. “Used to be Rhino Girl at the Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Museum in St. Pete. She’s retired now.”

“Yeah, right. There’s a call I have to make.” Flora retreated, fluffing her hair. “I’ll meet you out by the booth.”

Tildy grabbed a red plastic basket from the stack and started filling it at random with the first can or box her hand would fall on. Plums in heavy syrup. Instant spaghetti sauce.

“Here. We don’t look to freeload.” M.J. palmed her a greasy twenty. “I’ll be outside.”

Tildy nodded expressionlessly and picked up a carton of cigarettes for herself. They’re afraid of Lydia, she thought; couldn’t bear standing near her while she rang everything up. Flora wasn’t really calling anyone.

But they were both coming out of the phone booth when Tildy looked through the window. And as she started the car, revved it to keep from stalling, backed out, there wasn’t the slightest chatter from either one. Sunlight glared on the tin Bunny Bread sign over R.C.’s door.

Karl greeted them effusively in the driveway. “It’s lookin’ like a real party.” He put the six-packs under his arm and walked ahead, pulling Tildy after him. He dug at her ribs. “Guess who’s here.”

“The chief of police.”

“It’s that Crisco guy took you off to New York last year.”

Dizzying, the way things converged. Most of all she wanted to run, but where? No time to think or compose because there was that dark head erupting from a window. His gaze was sheepish and tender and she hated him for it.

“Say somethin’.” Karl caught the grocery sack as it began to slide from her hands.

Christo pressed his palms together and made a deep bow as Tildy approached. Their faces swayed inches apart in tentative reconnaissance, and for a moment they were old friends, old lovers queasy with regret at a thing not done wrong, but hardly at all. It passed.

“Don’t mess with a psychotic.” She sighed. “You can’t win.”

“I missed you too.”

“I never expected to see you again.”

“And how do you like it so far?”

Tildy sensed the others looking on and half turned. “Well, I suppose the least I can do is give you lunch.”

So she went in the kitchen and started making sandwiches as fast as she could. Simple, repetitive work was just the ticket. She was in no state to put things together and draw a conclusion from them.

That left Karl to make introductions and try to get his party off the ground. In being up to the task he was all by himself. Even physical positioning was awkward, furniture suddenly in everyone’s way. The sizing-up was surly; no one came within handshake range. The women turned down repeated offers of beer and stood watching the floor like they were at a train station.

“So, Crisco, how’s business? Been promoting anything lately?”

“You’re confusing me with the shortening.”

“How’s that?”

“You’re confusing me …”

“All the same, it’s sure good to have another man around. I was gettin’ to feel outnumbered.”

“No problem. The cavalry’s here.”

Christo leaned to one side of the chair but Karl, determined to keep his attention by standing directly in front of him, blocked the view. Christo could only see Tildy’s hands whirring over the mayonnaise jar and the stack of olive loaf. Another minute for her to arrange her mind and he was going in there, get a few things straight. The astonishing elation that came just from looking at her also forced him to admit what a gamble he’d taken in coming.

Karl searched desperately in his head for an ice-breaker, but came up empty and chose retreat. “I’ll go on and see what’s keepin’ the eats.”

Tildy had made close to a dozen sandwiches, but hadn’t touched the head of lettuce in front of her. “Quiet out there,” she said.

“They don’t say nothin’. It’s like a row of headstones.”

“Take the food. At least they’ll have something to do with their hands,” Tildy said.

“What about you?”

“Go. I’ll make coffee.” Anything to stay hidden.

“Big help.” Karl snapped his fingers. “All right then. Less you have any objection to make, I’m goin’ out there, get myself sauced and fuck all the rest of it.”

Fine, she thought. Just keep everyone eating and drinking and we’ll get through this. Eventually someone will get fed up and leave. Maybe me.

“No appetite?”

That dark head again. Oh well, you’ve got to trust someone. “Too rattled,” and Tildy kissed him quickly, found something to do at the sink.

“With you, I could never tell.” Christo smiled encouragingly.

“Sure. Talk is cheap.” But she smiled back. “Anyway, you have no reason to care. You’re supposed to be in the fast cash and flying first class by now. I know, you came in a cab from Tampa. You’re on your way to check on some overseas investments.”

“I got news for you. I’m flat broke and on foot. The last few miles anyway.”

“Damn you.” The scarred white plate left her hand and broke against the faucet. She whirled on him. “If you came down here looking for assistance, you can fucking well get in line with the rest of us.”

Christo didn’t flinch, but he looked as deadpan as she could ever remember. “Believe me, I didn’t scope it out that way. I only knew I had to move and move fast. I had that booby-trapped feeling, and unless I got going I’d be staring at another set of hospital walls. And maybe this time when they finally let me out it would be too late.” He rolled his eyes back, let his tongue droop out. “Vegetable soup.”

“You couldn’t handle city life anymore, eh?”

“That’s safe to say.”

“And the big score you were planning, what happened to that?”

Christo waved it away. “Jinxed. The black cat had kittens.”

“I’m sorry. But I don’t have room for one more sad story.”

Christo had let the moment escape. He wanted to confront their unfinished emotional business, wanted to let all the rest of it slide and talk about that elusive part of her he’d come chasing after. Then Flora poked her head in and asked to borrow some olive oil, she and M.J. were going to do some sunbathing.

“What a good idea,” Tildy said cheerfully. “But it’ll have to be margarine, that’s all I have.”

“Never mind. We’ll risk a burn.”

In her eagerness to get her former teammates out the door, Tildy practically pushed them through it.

“Maybe you’d like to join us,” M.J. said provokingly.

“You go establish a beachhead and maybe later we’ll all come along.” And Tildy bustled her along with towels and pillows and a net bag of navel oranges.

Christo thought: God she looks divine, my little shortstop, but she can’t keep me out of the hospital if I’m really ready to go.

Meddlers. Filthy deviates. Karl watched with disgust from the window as they stripped to their underwear, lay down on a checker-work of towels right next to their car. He remembered with untinged delight emptying the box of grape Jello-O into the gas tank while they were out shopping with Tildy. Five or ten miles and that motor would seize up forever. He popped a fresh beer on that, saluting his genius.

“Want ’em out of here by dark.” He belched. “You got to handle it. I’m gettin’ sauced, remember?”

“Yes, dear,” Tildy singsonged.

Then Christo pulled her aside and breathed into her ear, “There are enough kinky vibes floating around to choke a shrink. You ready to fill me in now?”

She nodded, turned to her husband. “We’re going to have a little business meeting in the other room. It’s for your benefit too, so just sit tight and go easy on the beer.”

“Okay. But if I pass out, don’t tie my shoelaces together.”

Christo saw consolation just ahead as Tildy ushered him into the bedroom and closed the door.

“I wish there was a lock on it,” she said.

His skin tightened like a drum head. “Risk always adds a little something,” he said, reaching for her.

Tildy dodged away, crackling with annoyance. “If that’s what you’re expecting, forget it.”

His fingers brushed lightly against her contracted face. “Haven’t you been thinking about me since New York?”

“Not that way. No more than a couple of times.” She turned away, leaned her sudden weight on the dresser like a seasick passenger at a ship’s railing. “If you drifted down here looking to bolster yourself somehow, I’m sorry. It’s the wrong time, I’m the wrong girl. The list goes on and on.”

“A wishful misunderstanding then. No harm, no foul.”

There was an odd delicacy about him now. And Tildy appreciated it, even if it meant he’d been pounded in the last few months, tenderized like a piece of veal.

“How is it for you when the booby trap goes off? Does gravity get stronger? Do you withdraw?”

“Sometimes. Sometimes I take all the drugs they’ll give out and I’m just a cloud of vapor inside pyjamas.”

“How do you feel right now?”

“Strong as an ox, but that could change.”

“The weather’s never right,” Tildy lamented. “Why the hell couldn’t you have shown up weeks ago when I really needed you?”

“I thought about it. I thought about you all along.”

“So much for telepathy.” Tildy went to her knees, lifted a flap of bedspread and reached underneath. “You want to be filled in? I’d love to.” She tugged and scuffled until the trunk was clear and she could raise the lid. “But this is the only thing I’m sure about.”

At first sight, the conglomerate sheen of nuggets and metal was like a cold draft on the eyes. Christo flinched and there wavered in his brain, if only for a moment, the urge for flight. Then envy took over, then apprehension. He stammered.

“Gorgeous. It’s a … sweet Jesus … It’s trouble.”

“Pandora’s box,” Tildy said.

“And I’m not hallucinating?”

“I wish you were. That I could handle.”

Christo took her hand and pulled her up. He stared into her flat eyes. “Who did you rob?”

The story she had to tell did not lend itself to synopsis and the deeper into it she got, the more blurred it became, the little men in Karl’s dream as outlandish as the real-life characters. She lost her hold on the precise sequence of events. By the time she arrived at the collision in Sparn’s office, the words were baffled and running together.

“Throttle back a minute. Your old boss, he figured out where this bonanza came from?”

“That’s what I thought. But he hasn’t contacted me, hasn’t made a move since.”

“Your dyke friends out there? How much do they know?”

“Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. That’s what I mean. I can’t handle it. Don’t you see? It’s too much weight for me to carry, far too much. Dammit, I’m just a stupid small-town housewife.”

“And all you needed me for was my criminal expertise?”

Tildy instantly repented of any appeal she had let slip. “It’s not your problem. You’re free to disappear. Go on, I’m not asking you to stay.”

He kicked the trunk lid shut. “You already did. The moment you showed me what was inside.” Walk away from a score this size? he thought. Not a snowball’s chance in hell. He pressed her reluctant head to his shoulder. “I may not be as sharp as Machiavelli, but you’re no stupid housewife either.”

In the face of her better judgement, Tildy softened against him, let her fingers walk across his upper lip. “What will we do?”

“I don’t know yet. But at least I know what kind of stakes we’re playing for.”

Elsewhere, the afternoon was running out like a slow leak in a tire.