Love Notes

by Penny Mickelbury

  “Sounds like you don’t like outsiders. Is this one of those places in books and movies where the residents are gentle and peace-loving until a stranger shows up? Then the stranger’s body parts begin emerging from the landfill—”

  “You think that’s funny?” Erin’s snarl was frightening. Her face no longer looked young and innocent and pretty. “You don’t have the right to laugh at who and what I am just because you’re from D.C. and probably think you’re so cool.”

  “How do you know I’m from D.C.? I could be from Baltimore.”

  “How many times, in how many different ways, are you gonna call me stupid?”

  Mimi inhaled and waited, but no words would come that could adequately respond to Erin’s accusation. As an observer and a chronicler of events and circumstances, she would certainly claim to be able to tell the difference between someone from Baltimore and D.C. by looking at her. Why wouldn’t she endow Erin with that ability? Especially Erin, a bartender, who was probably better at judging character than she was? “It wasn’t my intention to insult you, Erin, and I’m sorry if I did. I was just making small talk, trying for humor, and it seems like I picked a tender topic.”

  “Damn right it’s tender, Miss D.C.! Something happens to somebody and right away we’re like the people from that hillbilly movie—we must have done something to ‘em! But you’re right about one thing, and that’s how people who are different do stand out. I welcome anybody in my bar, but it is a lesbian bar. That’s who comes in here and that’s who I want to come in here.”

  Damn! Erin herself just opened the door to discussion of Ellie Litton and Mimi couldn’t take advantage because the other woman was angry with her. And justifiably so; she’d said some stupid things. Mimi released the breath she’d been holding. “You’re a tough one, Erin. What do I have to do to convince you that I’m not straight, that I’m not here to meet a straight woman that, at the very worst I’m playing hooky from my job, that I just felt like getting out of the city for a few hours?” She raised her palms in an I-surrender gesture. Erin looked directly at her, holding her gaze, then looked past her. Her eyes changed from sparkling blue to storm-cloud gray.

  “Tell me you don’t know her,” she said. “Tell me she’s not here for you.”

  Mimi turned around as the door opened, admitting, on a gust of raw, wet wind, as stunning a woman as she’d ever seen. “I don’t know her,” she said to Erin, “but I could do something about that if it would make you feel better.”

  Erin gave Mimi a dry, wry laugh, told her she was full of shit, and strolled off to the other end of the bar to resume her preparations for the Happy Hour crowd, and to check on the progress of her movie heroine. Mimi, annoyed at having lost the chance to probe Erin about Ellie and maybe Millicent Cartcher, took too big a sip of her drink, forgetting it was real alcohol, and choked.

  “Want me to slap you on the back?” The voice was low, slow, and pure southern. It held a hint of humor and quite a lot of genuine good will, and when Mimi continued to cough without answering, the woman clapped her on the back a couple of times. “Strong spirits can do that to you if you’re not careful.”

  Mimi swiveled around on the bar stool. “Thanks for the advice.” She extended her hand and introduced herself. Alice Long returned the gesture in kind.

  “Did you just get here?” Mimi asked, realizing as soon as the words were out of her mouth how rude the question was, and grateful that Alice found humor in the rudeness.

  “You think my accent’s thick, you oughta hear my sister, and she’s been in New York longer than I’ve been here. I guess we’re like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Henry Kissinger. No matter how long we’re in a place, we’ll always sound like we just got off the boat. But it hasn’t seemed to hurt them any, has it?”

  “Touché,” Mimi said. “May I buy you a drink to apologize?’

  “Sure, as long as it’s not what you’re drinking,” Alice said with a grimace. “I’ll let you off cheap. I’ll have a club soda with a twist of lime. And another bowl of those peanuts. I missed lunch today and I’m starving.”

  Mimi signaled Erin, who gave her a sideways look when she approached, and took the order without comment. But Alice commented and Mimi felt she had to explain what had transpired between herself and the bartender immediately prior to Alice’s arrival. “So she thinks you’re straight? Or that I am? And is she saying that this is some kind of rendezvous spot for local Ann Heches and Julie Cyphers?”

  Alice’s response put Mimi instantly on alert but she tried to cover her reaction. She shrugged and grabbed a handful of peanuts which she put into her mouth, one at a time, and slowly chewed, while she watched Alice take a long drink of her club soda. She watched Alice close up at the realization that she was being watched, leaving Mimi nothing to observe but what was there on the surface. Which, without a doubt, was well worth observing. Alice was dark brown with startling light brown eyes that held a steady but not threatening gaze, and Mimi guessed that they were about the same height. Alice wore heavy black tights that revealed the muscles in her legs, a black turtle neck sweater, and a leather aviator jacket, an old one with a fur collar. Doc Martens on her feet and a black watch cap on her head. Alice Long definitely wasn’t a local. And the way she relaxed her body but kept her eyes on alert was all too familiar to Mimi.

  “Are you a regular here?”

  Alice held Mimi in her steady gaze, growing surprised when Mimi didn’t blink. “My first time here, as a matter of fact,” Alice replied, lobbing back a question of her own: “How about you? You a regular here?”

  “I’m not a regular anywhere. I drop in now and again when and where it suits me.” Mimi slid forward on the barstool and planted her feet flat on the floor and leaned in toward Alice, encroaching on her space. Alice didn’t flinch.

  “And it suited you today to be all the way out here? Why is that?”

  “Probably for many of the same reasons you fled D.C. today,” Mimi replied. “Unless, of course, you really are a straight woman in hiding or denial.”

  “In which case you’d be pleased to save me from myself?” Alice was only half kidding and Mimi knew she was out of her element. Actually, she was rusty from a few years of good behavior. Marianne’s comment the other night about her past behavior had been right on the mark and it was the break-up with Beverly that had caused Mimi to take a close look at herself. Bev, who had urged her to “stay away from women if you can’t treat us any better than men treat us.” And she had stayed away until she met Gianna and her behavior had been impeccable. Until she met Alice Long, and though she hadn’t misbehaved, she certainly was considering it; had been from the moment the wind blew Alice into Happy Landings. Then she remembered that Alice Long most likely was a cop and her ardor cooled. One cop per lifetime was sufficient. She looked at her watch.

  “Well, damn,” Alice drawled. “That’s as major a dismissal as I’ve ever gotten. I’m guessing it was something I said,” she said.

  Mimi shook her head. “You can’t seriously believe that anybody could dismiss you, Alice, for any reason. You mentioned being hungry. I’m hungry, too, and I was checking to see if it made more sense to eat here or go back to D.C.”

  “You keep saying I’m from D.C. I never said I was from D.C.”

  “They used to make a pretty good shrimp salad plate here,” Mimi said, ignoring the bit about D.C., and before Alice could reply, the door blew open, letting in a stronger, colder, wetter gust of arctic air. Four women rode in on it, laughing and talking and stamping their feet and blowing on their hands. Erin began fixing their drinks before the door closed. Happy Hour had begun at Happy Landings. This is what Mimi had come here for. Alice, too, judging by the way she studied the women. They all appeared to be fifty-something and as they shed coats and scarves, their wardrobe suggested that they might be mid-level office workers: well-made pant suits all around, good but not flashy jewelry, short, well-maintained, beauty parlor haircuts, no make up to speak of. Three were white, o
ne was black, and they were relaxed and chatty, sailing into the bar like a ship too long at sea. By the time they’d hung their coats on a wall rack and seated themselves around the table nearest Erin’s end of the bar, she had their drinks on a tray along with two bowls of nuts, and was headed their way. The exchange among the women was light and easy, with lots of laughter, some of it raucous when accompanied by sly glances at the newcomers at the bar. Erin propped her elbows on the table and leaned across it; the four women leaned in close to her, and after a few seconds of concentrated silence, the room exploded with laugher.

  “Think we’re topic A?” Mimi asked.

  “Don’t be such a swell head,” Alice drawled, and Mimi chuckled. She had to keep reminding herself that not only was this woman probably a cop, but given her presence at this bar and her obvious interest in the clientele, she could well be connected to Gianna and the Hate Crimes Unit. Without that in the way, however, Mimi could, she thought, find herself fully enjoying the company of Alice Long.

  “How’re your drinks?” Erin said from behind them, and they swiveled around to face her.

  “Do you still have that shrimp salad plate?”

  Erin shook her head. “But we’ve got crab cakes tonight. My mama makes ‘em. But it’s just crab cakes and fries because we don’t have a full kitchen.”

  “If your mama makes good crab cakes, you don’t need a full kitchen,” Alice said. Then she squinted at Erin. “Can your mama make good crab cakes?”

  “The best this far west of the Eastern Shore,” Erin declared.

  By the time they were able to testify to the veracity of Erin’s claim about her mother’s ability with crab cakes, Happy Hour was in full swing and the crowd made the bar seem even smaller than it was. Mimi and Alice had moved to a table which they now shared with three other women who also devoured the crab cakes and fries and were willing to marry Erin’s mother sight unseen. The other four tables were full, as were the sofa and chairs around the fireplace. It was standing room only at the bar, which is also where the most noise was. Mimi realized that there was no music in this bar. Just the television, which at the moment, was tuned loudly to a basketball game. She didn’t know who was playing, only that there definitely was partisanship among the viewers. A loud cheer rose then abated as a commercial appeared on the screen. Mimi was about to tune back in to the conversation at her table when there was a definite energy shift at the bar. The raised voices were ugly and angry.

  “I said turn the goddamn thing off! I’m fuckin’ sick and tired of jiggling tits in beer commercials!” one voice roared above the others. “These stupid-ass beer ads are gonna make me stop drinking beer, I swear to God!”

  There apparently was significant support for that point of view because a cheer was raised in the room from as far away as the fireplace. The television station was changed. Somebody requested Xena and in a few seconds, the Warrior Princess, yips, yodels, grimaces and all, filled the screen and the warm fuzzies returned to the atmosphere in the bar.

  Mimi turned back toward the table in time to see Alice sink back into her chair and remove her hand from beneath her jacket. She doubted that anyone else had noticed but Alice saw that she had, and her eyes narrowed. “A friend of mine said the same thing just the other day about beer commercials,” Mimi said into the relative silence that now permeated the room.

  “I already quit drinking the stuff,” one of the women at the table said. “It’s insulting the way they use women. Like they can’t sell beer without tits.”

  “And do you think those young women who make those commercials give any kind of thought to what it is they’re doing?” asked another woman, to simultaneous snorts of “hell, no!” from her friends.

  “Somebody better tell ‘em that they’re gonna wake up one day and those firm tits and tight asses will be things of the past.”

  “Those young girls don’t want to hear that stuff, and wouldn’t believe you if you told ‘em. You didn’t when you were that age.”

  Mimi and Alice both were so tuned in to the talk swirling around them they weren’t aware that the latest gust of wind had delivered a member of the Maryland State Patrol who had walked purposefully to the bar. Erin immediately muted the sound on Xena, which is what got the room’s attention.

  “I’m not driving, Helen, I swear I’m not!” somebody called out from the back of the room, and the crowd, including Trooper Helen, cracked up.

  “You lie, Wanda,” Helen called out good naturedly, “and I’m gonna catch you one of these nights. And when I do!” Helen had to raise her hands to quiet the loud guffaws that spread through the room. “Hate to do this to you, Erin, but anybody who’s driving better hit the road now. The forecasters got one right for a change: The sleet and freezing rain is moving in fast. The secondary roads are already slick.”

  Helen’s voice was over-ridden by the sound of chairs scraping the floor as every woman in the place stood up. Mimi had already paid for her dinner and Alice’s, so she grabbed her coat and headed for the door, Alice on her heels, after they had exchanged hugs with the women at their table and the hope that they’d see each other again.

  “I hate ice!” Mimi exclaimed as the prickly moisture stung her face.

  “Me too,” Alice agreed, pulling her cap down lower over her ears. They faced each other in the parking lot, women rushing to their cars, engines starting, headlights creating the illusion of warmth. “Think we can get together again?”

  Mimi hesitated, unsure of herself for the first time in a long time. “How about at The Bayou, one evening next week?”

  “Which evening?”

  “How’s Wednesday,” Mimi asked, “about seven-thirty?” and, receiving an over-the- shoulder wave from Alice, she hurried to her car, praying that she’d make it home before the roads iced and became treacherous.

  Eric Ashby whipped the steering wheel from side to side, cursing under his breath and, finally, risking a light tap of the brake. The SUV regained traction and Eric and Gianna regained their heartbeats. “If I wreck my truck out here looking for some damn Irish gun runners, I’m going to seek retribution.”

  “Would you settle for reimbursement?” Gianna asked.

  “Hell no! I’d want to kick some Irish ass.”

  “Isn’t there something not quite right about cops seeking retribution?”

  “Only if it becomes public knowledge,” Eric replied, and Gianna made a zipping motion with her fingers across her lips. “I feel so much safer,” Eric said.

  “That makes one of us,” Gianna said. “I’m terrified. I hate ice.” She peered ahead into the darkness. Nothing but blinking red taillights as far as she could see. They were just south of Richmond, on I-95 and traffic would be dense this time of evening anyway. But with the roads icing and the Department of Sanitation trucks spreading salt and sand, traffic was at a virtual standstill. “But if we can’t move any faster, they can’t, either.”

  “I just hope there isn’t an accident or something that pulls our guy off before we can establish surveillance.”

  “I’ll second that,” Gianna said, and looked at her watch. It had been exactly thirty-two minutes since their last contact with the Virginia State Trooper who had first sighted the blue van with the mismatched D.C. license plates on northbound Interstate 85 in Southern Virginia, acknowledged the APB, and then followed it toward Washington. Their plan was that the D.C. officers would intercept the van just south of Richmond, where I-85 and I-95 merge, and, assuming that the van would travel 95 north into D.C., take over surveillance and stop the truck as soon as it crossed the line into D.C., the illegal tags being sufficient reason for a stop. In a way, the weather was working in their favor, since the presence of cops on the highway in a weather emergency would be expected and would give the guys in the van no reason to worry. But given the Florida mechanic’s assessment of the condition of the van, Gianna could only pray that it would survive another couple of hours on icy roads. She checked her watch again. “Our exit’s com
ing up.”

  Eric had already seen the sign announcing it. He picked up his cell phone, hit a button, and waited. “Can you get permission for us to ride the shoulder for one eighth of a mile? That’s all it is, I swear! I can see the sign. But traffic is at a dead halt going south and it’s moving northbound. The bastards’ll pass us while we sit here...of course she’s here!” He rolled his eyes and gave her the phone.

  “Who is this?” she snapped, only half her irritation feigned. “Of course I’m right here, where else would I be?” She held the phone away from her face and gave it an evil look before replacing it to her ear. “Yes, Sergeant, the request applies to Officers Gilliam, McCreedy and Watkins as well. They’re right behind us. We appreciate your help. You probably insured the success of our mission this evening.” She punched off the phone, tossed it back to Eric, rolled down the window and put the light on top. The truck shimmied a bit as it left the highway but Eric quickly regained control, hit the switch that activated the light, and reached the exit in a less than a minute, the sedan carrying Bobby Gilliam, Tim McCreedy and Tony Watkins riding their bumper.

  It took almost half an hour to reach the road from the exit ramp and cross over the freeway and re-enter it heading north, but just as they did, the radio crackled. At the same moment, they saw the Virginia State Trooper car that they’d been in communication with for most of the day. And Gianna saw the blue van carrying the four Irish nationals and they didn’t know how many weapons. She picked up the radio and thanked the trooper with the promise that if he ever needed any help from D.C., he was to call her directly. She promised again—she’d made the same promise at least half a dozen times that day—that she and her people would take no aggressive action while in Virginia, and it was a promise that she’d keep. The Virginia Trooper was needed back at his barracks and the worsening weather situation meant that there would be no extra bodies to assign to help out a neighboring jurisdiction.