4
Jodie made her way from the reception hall to the public bar at the far end of the complex without any of the dispersing guests noticing her departure. Leah, who would’ve noticed, was preoccupied with loading her son into a van with a half dozen other State-bound students. And all the other guests still remaining were busy checking their phones or making eyes at their newest conquest.
Dressed in her gown, Jodie struck quite a figure as she stepped through the swinging saloon doors into the dim bar decorated with wagon wheels and hay bales. Everyone in the bar noticed her, and several single men—regulars out trolling on a Saturday night—eyed her closely as she strode to the long bar at the back. But those desperate regulars turned their attention to other prospects even before she’d reached the bar. Perhaps it was her aloof scowl or the stiff-shouldered way she moved. Each fantasized she’d give him a hell of a ride if he could ever get close enough without getting kicked or flattened. But none was willing to take that chance.
She sat on the middle of three open barstools and ordered a ginger ale from the gray-haired woman behind the bar. “And you wouldn’t have a cigarette, would you?” Jodie asked.
The woman tilted her head toward the No Smoking sign behind the bar.
“Oh,” Jodie said. “I forgot.”
The woman laughed. “At least you didn’t light up. Since they started enforcing that law, I feel more like Smokey the Bear than a bartender.”
“Only you can prevent lung cancer from second-hand smoke!” Jodie laughed.
“Tell me about it.” The bartender slid her a stick of nicotine gum to go along with her ginger ale.
“Thanks,” Jodie said, though she dropped the gum in her small matching purse. She’d never been a regular smoker, just a compulsive fidgeter when alone in bars. Smoking kept her hands busy and her eyes squinty, softening the harsh surroundings.
She was into her second ginger ale and wondering where she’d go next and how she’d get there (and toying with the chain of plastic drink stirrers she’d absent-mindedly woven) when a handsome fortyish man in a gray tailored suit sat on the stool beside her. He was as out of place in his attire as she was in hers, but men can get away with that better than women. She stared at the side of his face. He had the faraway look and the soft set of jaw of someone who had just discovered, perhaps too late, that he had nothing left to lose. That look would’ve terrified most women, but it didn’t bother Jodie. She’d seen it plenty of times in her travels, more than a few times when looking into grimy restroom mirrors.
He waved the bartender over, asked for an imported beer, then turned on the barstool to face Jodie directly from no more than a foot away. “Dressing down this evening, I see.”
Jodie didn’t flinch. “Were you at our wedding?”
“I don’t know. Was I?”
“Redmond-Coulter.”
The man thought hard for several seconds, his eyes losing their glaze. “No, I don’t think so. I can’t remember their names, but that wasn’t it.”
Jodie laughed. “Close friend, I see.”
“Of the bride’s older sister, yes. But she kept her name from her first marriage.”
“And she asked you to come with her to her sister’s wedding.”
“Yes. I took it as a positive sign—meeting her family and all.”
“So what happened?”
“How do you know?”
Jodie laughed. “You’re sitting alone on a barstool talking to a strange woman.”
“Dead giveaway, I guess.” He sipped his beer then continued. “She was in the wedding party, one of the attendants at the front table. I got stuck off in the far corner with some of the other misfits.”
Jodie shrugged and turned back toward the bar. “Family responsibilities.”
“So I told myself. Then she danced with one of the groomsmen.”
“Goes with the territory.”
The man didn’t seem to hear her. His eyes were staring at the bottles lined up in front of the mirror behind the bar. “The dance floor was crowded. Everybody was drunk. She and her tuxedoed partner ended up in front of our table but I don’t think she noticed me. She was too busy dry-humping the guy’s leg.”
Jodie looked at him with a sideways glance.
After a few seconds he looked at her with a wry grin. “So what’s your story?”
She laughed. “Nothing as sordid as that. Flew in from the west coast yesterday to serve as Maid of Honor for my younger sister today to fly back tomorrow.”
“So where’s everybody else?”
Jodie shrugged. “Bride and groom rode off into the sunset. Party’s over.”
“But you’re still here.”
She looked around, as if confirming his statement. “Better than my old room at my parents’ house.”
“Meticulously preserved, I bet.”
She stared at him but said nothing.
“I have a nice room,” he said. “At a hotel downtown.”
“With the bride’s sister.”
He shook his head. “She’s like you—staying at home.” He paused then added, “Or maybe with that groomsman tonight.”
Now it was Jodie looking into the mirror behind the bar. She hardly recognized the woman she saw there. She tried to tell herself the disconnect was caused by the dress—when was she ever in a sleeveless gown? She turned away from the mirror, opened her tiny purse, dropped a couple bills on the bar, more than enough to cover both tabs, then stood up and walked toward the saloon doors, no word or gesture to her companion.
The man behind her hardly missed a beat before downing what was left of his beer and rising to follow. He caught up by the time they reached the main lobby, still crowded with diners waiting for tables, and forged ahead to lead the way out into the night and to his car.
When they were nearing town on the thinly travelled interstate, Jodie spoke for the first time since leaving the bar. “Do you mind taking a little detour?”
The man laughed at that. “Theme of my day.”
“Yeah, everyone’s.” She directed him off the interstate at the next exit then through a series of turns onto ever more narrow and poorly lit streets. As they neared her destination, they passed an entire city block that had been raised and looked like a moonscape of desolation in the wan glow of streetlights at each corner—piles of rubble and broken pavement interspersed with the yawning holes of former foundations. Jodie began to wonder if the place where she was headed even existed anymore.
But two more turns put them on a gravel road between rows of decrepit mill houses barely visible in the streetlamps that weren’t burnt out or broken, instantly familiar despite the dark—indeed, because of it (she’d never been here in the daylight). She gestured for him to pull over in front of what looked like an abandoned shack lurking in the shadows.
“Cut the lights,” she said quietly.
He did so but left the car’s engine running.
They waited several minutes in silence, staring ahead at the gravel road receding into darkness—no other cars, no people, no movement. Then there was movement on Jodie’s side of the car. A tall thin black man in gray sweats and a backwards ball cap emerged from the shadows and walked up to the car. They could only see him, and just barely, because their eyes had adjusted to the night.
Jodie lowered her window. “Bling around?”
There was a high-pitched cackle followed by a series of ever quieter snorts. After a pause to catch his breath, the man said, “Bling take his sparkle up to the stars.”
Jodie didn’t understand.
“Drive-by,” the voice continued. “Bout five years ago. Day say Wood done the deed, but now Wood dead too.”
“Too bad,” Jodie said. “Bling was a friend from school.” She counted off ten seconds in her head then started to raise the window.
“Business partner?” the voice asked before the window was all the way closed.
Jodie left the window open a few inches. “Yeah, sometimes.”
“When times
was good.”
“Yeah,” Jodie said.
“Who he?” the man asked, waving toward the driver.
“Nobody,” she said. “We just met.”
“He deaf?”
Jodie nodded. “Deaf and dumb.”
“Day all like that.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Yeah, right.” The voice paused a minute then continued. “I been looking for some new business partners.”
Jodie waited.
“How much you be looking to invest?” the man asked.
Jodie opened her purse tucked under the seat and put a twenty on the dash.
“Cost of investing gone up since Bling day.”
Jodie reached down and pulled out another twenty. She hung both bills on the lip of the open window. By the time she looked up from closing her purse, the bills were gone. The man was gone too, swallowed by the dark. But a voice trailed behind his departure, so low she could barely hear it. “My secretary bring you a receipt.”
They waited more than five minutes without a word or sound. Jodie refused to look toward her companion for fear he’d bolt.
Then out of the darkness appeared a girl in satin hotpants and a white tank top, both skimpy items of clothing bright and shiny against her black skin. She wobbled on high heels over the uneven terrain. She couldn’t have been more than fifteen. She stopped on the far side of the ditch.
Jodie lowered the window.
The girl extended her arm, her hand cupped palm down and appearing empty. The hand stopped just short of reaching the window.
Jodie reached out into the dark, her hand palm up.
Something fell from the girl’s hand into Jodie’s, light as a feather, almost imperceptible. The girl turned and wobbled off into the shadows.
Jodie looked at the small square of folded white paper in her palm, no bigger than a postage stamp. Her fist closed loosely around it as she raised the window. “We can go.”
“You’ll have to get me back to the interstate.”
“Start by turning around,” she said with neither humor nor impatience, more like resignation.
Still, he laughed, then turned on the headlights. They were momentarily blinded by the glare. She’d been clean six months twenty-three days and fifteen hours, if you adjusted for the time-zone change.