The Last Good Kiss (43 page)

sleep, dreamless, but broken by fits and starts of

waking out of darkness into the unfamiliar room-like

the first few nights back from the bush in the base camp

at An Khe-a treacherous sleep. And the second time I

woke up, around three A.M., I didn't want to go back

into it. I untangled myself from Stacy's arms as gently

as I could, but she woke up too.

"Every time I close my eyes, I see that room with the

mirror exploding like knives," she murmured dreamily,

"and I don't understand why I don't feel bad . "

"The good guys won," I said, loosening her grip on

my neck.

"Where're you going?"

"The john," I said.

"Come back," she whispered. "I don't feel bad but

come back, okay? I don't understand why I don't feel

bad."

"I'll be back," I said, climbed up and closed the

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connecting doors, then went to the john. When I came

out, she had taken off her clothes and lay naked above

the covers, her hands holding her small breasts as if

they were as painful as wounds.

"It's not like hers," she said quietly-she didn't have

to explain who her was-"but it's all I'm ever going to

have."

"You're lovely," I said.

"I know you want hers," she said, trying to smile and

cry all together, "but make love to me."

I lay down and held her as the sobs rippled "like

convulsions through her slim body, held her until she

cried herself to sleep. I covered her up and went to the

bathroom to make a drink, meaning to drink until I

could sleep again, but I heard a tapping at the

connecting doors. When I opened them, I wasn't

surprised to see Melinda waiting there.

"I guess we should talk," she whispered, then held

her index finger up to her pale lips. Sometime during

the night, she had scrubbed the make-up from her face,

but even wrapped in a sheet and wearing a wan face,

the beauty I hadn't been able to see at first was as clear

as the troubled look darkening her eyes.

"I guess we should talk," I echoed her, then led her

into the bathroom and closed the door. She sat on the

floor, cross-legged, her elegant feet rosy in the harsh

light. I sat down on the toilet seat in my classic thinker's

pose. "I seem to be having a lot of conversations in

johns tonight."

"I'm sorry," she said, as if she could reach back and

change it all now. "I'm so sorry. "

"Me too," I said, "but it's too late to d o anything

about it. Way too late."

"How do you know when it's too late to change

things?" she asked with a sad smile. But she didn't want

an answer. Not to that question. "What did take you so

long after Trahearne and I left the house?"

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"I had to clean up the mess," I said, "talk to Torres

and Hyland about the details." It didn't seem necessary

for her to know that Stacy had killed Hyland. I didn't

want anybody else to know.

"What details?" she asked casually.

"Like what to do with your body if you don't come

up with the forty thousand," I said, and she dropped

her face into her hands. "You can't steal from those

people," I added. "Didn't you know that?"

"I didn't have any choice." She raised her head to

stare at me. For the first time since I had known her, I

could see Rosie's influence on her features. She had the

same patient eyes, the same cocky defiance in the tilt of

her chin. "I just couldn't make another movie," she

said. "I couldn't . . . couldn't do it . . . Hell, I can't

even say it anymore . . . I couldn't fuck any more

strangers. When I first started it seemed like a lark. I

mean, it seemed like fun, you know, I was stoned all

the time and fucking everybody anyway, so getting paid

for it seemed like a great bonus. What I did with my

body didn't matter. Only the mind and the spirit

mattered, I thought. But I was wrong. Everything you

do matters. Every action causes complications, repercussions. I learned that in jail. "

"What happened?" I asked.

"Nothing all that dramatic," she said. "I went in

thinking that I was Betty Sue Flowers-a little fucked

up, right, and thirty pounds overweight, but still

' smarter and prettier than any of that trash in jail. I was

wrong. I met a woman who was brighter and betterlooking than I could ever hope to be, more talented, more promising in school. She was also the meanest,

toughest person I had ever met. She beat me senseless

the first night, and humiliated me every day and night

after that, but the worst thing she did was tell me that in

ten years I would be just like her. She was dead right, of

course, so when I got out, I knew I had to change my

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life. The money gave me that chance, and I had no

other choice, so I took it."

"What did you do with it?"

"When I left Selma's, I went to stay with a friend of

hers in St. Louis, and she got me admitted to Washington University as a special student-."

"The great American dream," I interrupted, "finance an education with mob money."

"It seemed like a good idea at the time," she said

quietly. "So I went to college until I discovered ceramic

sculpture. Once my pieces started to sell, I came back

out West. Everything was fine until . . . until all this

happened. "

" I don't know if all this was Trahearne's fault or

mine," I said, "but I'll apologize anyway."

"That's not necessary," she said. "If it's anybody's

fault, it's mine." She sighed. "What's going to happen

now?"

"You have any of the money left?" I asked.

"I have about thirty-five hundred in the bank," she

said, "and I can raise some more-maybe another

three or four thousand-if I sell all my finished pieces.

That isn't forty thousand, is it?" She chuckled. "Maybe

they'll let me pay them back on the installment plan."

"Us," I said.

"Us?"

"I'm on the hook now too," I said. "I've bought a

little time, but I don't have a big enough edge to keep

them off our backs forever. They're really touchy about

their money. They'll spend a hundred grand just to get

the forty back, and then they'll cut off our hands."

"What can we do?" she asked tiredly.

"Borrow it from Trahearne," I suggested.

"He's so broke, I have to buy groceries on his

BankAmericard," she said.

"How about Selma?"

"She's done too much already," she said.

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"Ask Trahearne to borrow it from his mother," I

said.

"I'd let them cut off my hands first," she said, then

held them out in offering. The long, darkly red fake

nails had been clumsily pasted over her own. As she

looked at her trembling fingers, tears of anger gushed

from her eyes, and she started tearing at the fake nails,

scraping and biting, ripping nail and cuticle and flesh

until the ends of her fingers were covered with blood,

then she jammed her hands into the folds of sheet

bunched at her lap. She stared at the stains and

whispered, "I've made such a mess of things, and

people I don't even know have to come to my rescue

again and again . . . Maybe I should call Hyland and

tell him I'll come back to work."

"I don't think that would work," I said.

"Why not?"

"He told me he never wanted to see you again," I

lied.

"And I've probably made a mess of your life now,

too," she said.

"It's always been a mess," I said lightly.

"You've done so much," she said, "and .I don't even

know why."

I didn't either but I reached for my wallet and took

out her high school picture and handed it to her.

"I killed that girl a long time ago," she said quietly,

"you've been looking for a ghost." She touched her

face in the picture, smearing it with blood. She didn't

sob, but tears coursed unbidden down her cheeks.

"That cameo was my grandmother's, you know, the

only thing she had left when they got to Californiathat cameo and seven kids and a husband with a cancer behind his eye," she said. "She raised them all, made

them all finish high school. She ruined her feet and legs

slinging hash in a truck stop in Fresno, and when she

got too old to work she went to the county home. She

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wouldn't live with her kids, wouldn't trouble them that

way. When I was. a little-bitty girl, my mother would

take me to visit her, you know, and I hated that dry

stink of the old folks. They were so crazy with

loneliness, they always came out of their rooms to

touch me and fuss over me, and I hated it, just hated it.

"While she talked to Granny, my . momma would

kneel down in front of her chair and rest her legs on her

shoulders and rub the varicose veins in Granny's legs,

rub them until her hands began to cramp. Then she'd

ask me to rub Granny's legs for a minute while she

rested, and I wouldn't do it, wouldn't touch those veins

like big ugly worms under her stockings. I couldn't

make myself touch them, those legs she had ruined so

her children would finish high school.

"Jesus God, why didn't I understand?" she moaned.

"I didn't go to her funeral because I was playing at

being tragic in Antigone . . . Playacting, my god, what

a foolish child I was . . . a foolish child I have been."

Then §he stopped and stared at me, tears and blood

smudged on her cheeks, like some ancient mask of

grief. "Why?" she asked simply.

"I don't know," I said, and she tucked her legs under

her, let her head fall into my lap.

"I haven't dreamed in ten years," she said, her voice

muffled against my thigh, her breath hot against my

skin even through the fatigue pants. "They say I dream

and don't remember but I know I don't dream at all.

My hands dream for me," she said as she rocked back

on her knees and held her hands out again, offering

them to some angry god. I reached for the hands, but

she grabbed my face between them, clutched my

cheeks and pulled me toward her, kissing me through

the tears, whispering against my mouth, "Lie down

with me, make me forget, please, please . . . "

With the last strength of my hands, I took her wrists

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