by Ron Fisher
Kelly caught me smiling.
“What are you grinning about?” she asked.
“I was just thinking how seriously Natasha takes her part in this guise. She thought we should exchange intimate secrets, things we would know about each other if we were in a romantic relationship, just in case someone gets to prying. She says I’ll probably meet an ex-husband and an old boyfriend, who might still be a bit jealous and give me a hard time. She says she wouldn’t put it past them to grill me about our relationship just to see how far it’s evolved.”
“What kind of intimate secrets?”
“She told me she has a mole on her inner thigh, a scar on her butt, and gets loud when she makes love.”
“Oh my,” Kelly said. “And she thinks someone will ask you about this?”
“I know. I thought it was pretty ridiculous, too.”
“What did you tell her about yourself?” she asked.
“I told her I was hung like an elephant and crowed like a rooster when I made love.”
“Well, the part about the rooster is true,” Kelly said, with a straight face.
“Actually, I didn’t tell her anything,” I said. “Since the whole damn thing is a charade and no one knows anything about me, I told her to make something up if the need arose.”
“So what’s next?” she asked.
“Lunch with gossipy friends, and a big steeplechase-week party tomorrow night where she says I can meet everyone I need to meet. She says the party will go late, and I shouldn’t try to drive back here when it’s over, especially if I’ve had a few drinks. She’s invited me to stay the night in her guest bedroom. She even told me to tell you not to worry because the bedroom door has a good lock, so I’ll be safe.”
“She said to tell me that?”
“Yep. Obviously, she thinks you don’t trust her.”
Kelly laughed and said, “She still thinks a lot of herself, I see. She believes she’s a threat. Tell her I’m not worried. I’m not that naïve little girl from college anymore. And it sounds like a good idea. Maybe even for the next couple of days. You’ve got work to do and you shouldn’t have to spend several hours each day running back and forth over here.”
“You trying to get rid of me?” I said, and laughed.
“Of course not. I’ll miss you terribly, but it’s the practical thing to do. You’ll probably have another late night or two ahead of you.”
There was that “practical” element of our relationship rearing up again. But where I would spend the next couple of nights appeared settled, and we didn’t speak of it again.
We finished the meal and sat on the sofa in her living room drinking another glass of wine. We ended up necking, and surprise of surprises, ended up in her bed.
Not once during the night did I give thought to Taylor or Jamal Johnson, Natasha, or the day’s events. Kelly Mayfield occupied every nook and cranny of my mind, and I tried to occupy every nook and cranny of her body. We finally fell into an exhausted, satiated sleep.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Wednesday at a quarter till noon, I arrived at Natasha’s, pulling a carry-on bag. She was waiting for me at her house, ready for our lunch with her friends.
She saw the luggage and said, “Oh, good.”
She smiled, and showed me where to put it. She had lied to me. There was no lock on the guest bedroom door.
The weather had turned cooler, and she wore pants and a sweater. I couldn’t help noticing, (forgive me, Kelly), that her pants fit her shapely derrière so well they looked like they were made from a pattern shaped from an exact mold of her butt.
As we left for lunch, it began to rain, not hard, but enough to darken the soil and put a sheen on the tree leaves. We headed to Landrum, where we’d met Jamal’s girlfriend Monique, but this time our destination was a restaurant in the center of town. As we drove, Natasha told me about the friends we were going to meet. For some reason, I had expected them to be female but was surprised to learn they were both men. The more I thought about it, however, the more sense it made. Natasha wasn’t the type to have many female friends. She’d said so herself.
One of them was Teddy Crane, whom she said was a friend since childhood. She told me that both of Teddy’s parents died in a house fire years ago. Teddy, an only child, was raised by an uncle, deceased now, too, who had lived next door to Natasha and her family. She said she and Teddy grew up like brother and sister, with romance unthinkable, too much like incest.
She also said she heard that Teddy had run through his inheritance, but she had never spoken to him about it, nor had he to her. If it were true, Teddy would face the necessity of getting a job for the first time in his life, and it would kill him, she feared. All he had ever known was the role of a renaissance man and bon vivant. She said he was a little boy who never grew up—but to her, that was part of his charm.
The second friend I would meet was Chuck Norman. Originally from up east somewhere, and bit older than us. Never married, he lived with his mother, and usually, wherever you found Teddy, you’d find Chuck. Some people thought him gay, she said, others, that he was a bit slow, but she said Chuck was just a confirmed bachelor with his own peculiar and fussy ways, shy around women, extremely polite, and with the mannerisms of someone from another era. She said Teddy often called him ‘Grandma Norman,’ but Chuck didn’t seem to mind. “He’s like a Sancho Panza to Teddy’s Don Quixote,” she said.
We arrived at the restaurant on Rutherford Street in Landrum called the Hare and Hound, beating her friends there. We found a table for four in a corner in the back, and no sooner sat down when two men came through the door, spotted Natasha, waved, and made their way back to us. I easily recognized who was who by Natasha’s previous description. Teddy Crane was tall and dark with good looks, hair just long enough to be hip, and was sizing me up as they joined us. He looked at me with a slight snarky curl at the edges of his mouth that suggested he and I probably weren’t going to get along. He was wearing an old-time ankle-length cowboy duster, an Australian flop hat with the chin strap hanging loosely around his throat, and flat-heeled boots with a buckle on the side, looking like a nineteenth-century Australian cowboy. My guess was he spent a lot of his time living in somebody else's movie.
Chuck also fit Natasha’s description. He was an average looking guy, as tall and thin as Teddy, but prematurely balding, and not as handsome. The bare round spot on the crown of his head looked like he was wearing a skin Yarmulke. He dressed, I’m sure, as his father before him had dressed: a plaid, button-down short-sleeved shirt, khaki pants, and brown dock-siders—no socks. All that was missing was a Shetland ‘Shaggy Dog’ crewneck sweater thrown over his shoulders and tied by the sleeves around his neck. He wore black horn-rimmed glasses and was the epitome of an aging Ivy leaguer.
Natasha made the introductions and we all nodded, but no one offered to shake hands.
“So, you’re Nat’s latest,” Teddy said right away, as he sat down, studying me like a bug in a jar.
“How did you guys meet?” he asked.
“On a shopping trip to Atlanta,” Natasha answered for me. “J.D. was standing at a watch display in a Jewelry store at Lenox Mall. He was looking at a Patek Philippe. We struck up a conversation, and he asked me to dinner. How could I refuse such a gorgeous man,” she added and beamed adoringly at me.
I thought we’d agreed to say we’d met in a bar, but I guess she decided to ad lib and dress up the story a bit for Teddy. I think she was annoyed by his attitude, too.
“You didn’t get the Patek, I guess,” Teddy said, glancing at the inexpensive Hamilton on my wrist with a look that said he wouldn’t be caught dead wearing it.
Even the least expensive Patek Philippe cost more than my Jeep, and the closest I’d ever been to one was looking at it in a magazine ad.
“No,” I said. “Too expensive for me.”
I’d play along with the boyfriend thing, but I wasn’t going to put on airs for it. I probably couldn’t pull that off an
yway; there was too much redneck in me.
I took a moment to look Teddy over more carefully. Most women would consider him handsome, and he obviously knew it. He wore a perpetual look of arrogance that I immediately detested. If Natasha thought he was such a great guy, she’d have to stand in line. I got the feeling nobody thought more of Teddy Crane than Teddy Crane.
Natasha told him I was a sports writer and was doing a piece on the steeplechase race and the horse community. He quickly warned me not to even think about writing a novel about it; that was reserved for himself.
“You may be the first person she’s dated who works for a living,” Teddy said.
“I’ve heard that,’ I said. “Do you have horses like everyone else around here?”
“I have two,” he said. “One is a jumper, and the other one is just for riding and keeping my jumper company. The jumper is something special. Great bloodlines. I’ve thought about getting into the breeding game, but it’s such a time-consuming venture that I would have no time for my writing.”
“What about you, Chuck. Are you a horse person?”
“When I was younger, but I gave it up after my father died. We have no horses now; my mother sold them.”
“I’m sorry to hear about your father,” I said. “When did he die?”
“When I was fourteen,” he said.
“I’m not much of a horse person, myself,” I said. “I’m surprised Natasha has anything to do with me.”
“Nat likes only two things,” Teddy said, “horses and fucking. So, you must be good at one of them.”
Natasha didn’t seem to take offense, and both she and Teddy laughed. But I didn’t find it funny. Nor appropriate, being the new boyfriend, even if it was a charade. Teddy didn’t know that. I was about to react but then thought otherwise. Teaching Teddy manners wasn’t why I was here. But another black mark went down in my book of Teddy. I noticed Chuck didn’t react one way or the other. He just looked on with a flat expression as if he was used to this kind of banter between Teddy and Natasha.
“Do you live on Hunting Country Road like Natasha?” I asked Teddy if for no other reason than to change the direction of the conversation.
“No. I live up on Hogback Mountain Road. Those big old barns on Hunting Country Road aren’t my style—no offense, Natasha—but you know my personality doesn’t fit there.”
Now he was concerned with offending her. What a phony.
Natasha took no offense. She smiled broadly at him, and said, “Teddy lives in a restored hunting lodge on Hogback Mountain that practically hangs off a cliff,” she said. “Massive timbers and quite rustic, but with all the modern conveniences. It’s really cool.”
“It ought to be, I’ve spent enough money on it,” Teddy added.
“And you keep horses up there?” I asked.
“Oh no. I board them at Chuck’s family’s stables. My place doesn’t have pastureland or room for a barn. Too steep and rocky up there.”
I turned to Chuck. “How about you, Chuck, where do you live?”
“You ask a lot of questions,” Teddy said.
“I’m an investigative journalist,” I said. “That’s how I investigate.”
“I thought you were a sports writer,” he said.
“Sports is my main investigative field. Right now, it’s steeplechase racing. I turned back to Chuck. “So what about it Chuck, where do you live?”
“I live with my mother in one of those big old barns on Hunting Country Road,” he said.
He’d said it so completely deadpan, without change of expression, that I took a closer look at him. There was wit in this guy I hadn’t noticed.
“What do you guys think of that boy who shot the horse?” I asked. “Jamal Johnson. You think he did it? His family says he didn’t.”
Teddy shrugged. “I barely know him. It’s not like we run in the same circles. Chuck knows him better than I do. He’s done odd jobs at his place.”
“He worked for my mother, not me,” Chuck said.
“Yeah, but you’re happy to have him do it, Chuckie boy,” Teddy said. “Whatever the kid did around your place meant you didn’t have to do it. I do more work around there than you do. Chuck and manual labor are sworn enemies,” he added.
Picking on Chuck seemed to be part of the usual repertoire between the two. Chuck sat listening with a forced smile, but couldn’t hide the microsecond’s glint of annoyance that flickered in his eyes. If Chuck was gay like Natasha said some believed, it was probably Teddy he had a crush on.
I thought I might learn more out of Chuck if I got him alone for a few minutes. Perhaps he would even have interesting things to say about Teddy. Or was that just wishful thinking because of my growing dislike of the man.
“What about the dead horse’s owner, Wilson Kroll? Do you guys know him?”
Teddy and Chuck glanced at each other, and neither spoke. Something passed between them, but I couldn’t determine what.
“I know him to speak to, but that’s about it,” Teddy said. “Chuck doesn’t like him, though.”
Once again, Teddy had deflected the question to Chuck. Chuck was still staring at him, his expression unreadable, but something was going on between them over Wilson Kroll. Another reason to get Chuck alone.
“Why don’t you like him?” I asked Chuck.
“My mother finds him quite offensive. She thinks he’s rude and boorish,” he said. “New money,” he added as if that explained it.
It struck me as odd that he answered more on behalf of his mother than himself. I waited for him to say more but he didn’t.
Our lunch came, and I spent the rest of the time tagging along with a conversation carried on mainly between Teddy and Natasha. Chuck seemed content to sit on the sidelines with me, smiling—or frowning—at the appropriate times.
I learned that some of this small clique of wealthy horse lovers, like any other social or economic demographic in America, were not opposed to taking the occasional toke off a joint or a snort of cocaine. I got the feeling I was sitting with at least two of them. I didn’t get the vibe from Chuck. It made me wonder where the affluent horse crowd would get their drugs. I couldn’t see them driving up to a street corner in a seedy part of Tryon or Landrum in their GMC Yukon Denali and riding breeches and asking for a dime bag. But then again, this was America, the land of opportunity. Drugs were everywhere.
After lunch, we all exited the restaurant together and stood on the sidewalk saying our goodbyes. Natasha hugged them both, and I shook their hands. Teddy tried to break my fingers, and I gave it to him right back. He’d managed to bring out the childishness in me, too, and I disliked him even more for it.
As Natasha drove us away, I saw Teddy and Chuck get into a Prius parked on the street. Chuck got in behind the wheel. “Prius,” I said and grinned at Natasha. “It fits him.”
She laughed. “Probably the only one in the Dark Corner. That's our Chuckie boy,” she added, still smiling.
On the way back to her place, I asked, “Where do you get your drugs?”
The question threw her. “Who says I do drugs?”
“C’mon, Natasha, I’m your boyfriend. You can tell me.”
She looked across the seat at me for a long moment. “What are you, a narc?” she asked and laughed.
“Just curious,” I said. “You guys were talking, and I wondered how you would get it in a place—” I waved my hands around at the large country estates we were driving by on Hunting Country Road—“like this?”
“I only do it in the rare recreational moment,” she said, “but I get it from Teddy.”
“Teddy?” I said. I probably shouldn’t have been surprised. It fit, somehow. “I know you said he’d run through his inheritance but isn’t this a risky way to supplement it?”
“Oh, I think Teddy was doing this long before he ran through his money. Teddy likes to consider himself the quintessential counter-culturist.”
“I can see that,” I said.
“We
ll, just don’t go telling Kelly that I’ve become a druggie.”
“I would never say a word. Besides, been there and done that once upon a time. I was just wondering if Jamal was into to it, too.”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “He’s a good kid. A straight arrow.”
“You know Jamal, I don’t,” I said, “but I doubt that you know everything about him.”
“You’re right,” she said. “But if Jamal is into drugs it would come as a shock to me.”
“Where would Teddy get the drugs?” I asked.
“You mean who is his supplier? You’re sounding more and more like a narc, J.D.”
“I’m just curious. Your trust fund friends are a whole new world for me.”
“I know Teddy has shady friends. My last husband Ashley and I ran into him in a bar in Greenville once and saw him talking to a guy Ashley said was Eddie Smoke, a notorious local hoodlum and drug peddler. Ashley played at lawyering and hung out at the courthouse, and knew these kinds of things. Later, I tried to get Teddy to tell me what he was doing with a guy like that, and he said he was just an acquaintance of an acquaintance, and had just run into him at that bar. He said he barely knew him.”
“Sounds like what Teddy said about Jamal and Wilson Kroll, too.”
“What are you inferring?” Natasha asked, giving me a sharp look.
“Just wondering how much of what Teddy ever says is the truth.”
“Jesus Christ, J.D.,” she said. “I wish I’d never told you any of this,” she said. “So, Teddy supplies a little pot to his friends. Big deal. He’s my friend.”
I’d touched a nerve talking about Teddy. She was overly sensitive when it came to him, with loyalty I didn’t think he deserved.
“Just saying,” I said, and left it at that. I needed Natasha’s help and making her mad at me wasn’t the way to get it. But Teddy knew things about Wilson Kroll and Jamal Johnson he wasn’t telling. I’d bet my autographed Peyton Manning Super Bowl football on it, and it wasn’t my instant dislike for him that made me believe it. Well, maybe that was part of it, but my gut told me Teddy was a bad actor. I just needed to keep my suspicions to myself around Natasha.