Fay: A Novel

by Larry Brown

  He stepped over to the glass door and opened it. Out on the deck he leaned on the rail and looked at the water for a minute and then sat down at the table and put his feet up and lit a cigarette. He heard her call for him and he hollered at her and she came to the door holding on to her wine cooler.

  “You like those things?” he said.

  “They’re good,” she said, and walked out onto the deck. She’d already kicked her sandals off somewhere. Her toenails were painted a bright crimson. She had pretty feet. And when she went to the rail and lifted her drink and leaned forward he knew she was letting him get a good look at her rear end, the tight white denim framing and sculpting her bottom. He looked at the seam that ran down between her legs. And who knew, once he had two or three drinks? Would it matter? Would it make anything better than it was now and would it comfort him any?

  She turned. Maybe she was a spy sent by the department to try and get him to talk. He wondered what it would be like to get her in there on the couch and just fuck the living hell out of her. Fuck her brains out. Just get drunk and fuck all night long and not worry about a damn thing. Just get numb.

  “How’s your hands?” she said.

  “They’re better.”

  “I’ve missed seeing you get your coffee. I hope nothing else happens to you.”

  “I do too.”

  She probably wanted to ask about Alesandra. She wandered across the deck, letting him watch her.

  “You sure got a nice place here.”

  “Thank you. I like it myself.”

  She went to the railing on the other side of the steps and leaned up against it.

  “You been fishing any?”

  “Not lately. Not with these hands the way they’ve been.”

  “Oh.” She nodded and drank some more while he sipped at his bourbon. He couldn’t think of a single reason she’d be over here if it wasn’t fucking.

  “Why don’t you sit down?” he said.

  “Okay,” she said quietly. She came over and pulled out a chair and sat down and then scooted it and turned it so that she was facing him.

  “What’s been happening at work?”

  “Aw nothin. Same old shit.”

  “Did they ever do anything to Joe Price?”

  “You mean over that stuff with that woman?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Three days suspension. Was all that true?”

  He thumped some ashes onto the deck. His drink was nestled comfortably in the folds of his pants.

  “I don’t know what you heard. You can’t ever tell about all these rumors.”

  “I heard he had some woman in his patrol car. That ain’t all I heard, either.”

  “I don’t know,” he said, and grinned. “I wasn’t there.”

  “I’ve heard a lot of stuff about him.”

  “Is that right?”

  “He’s hit on me before.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  She looked at him funny for a second or two and then a sly smile eased onto her face. She put one foot up on the arm of his chair and just barely touched the hair on his forearm with her big toe. She turned up the rest of the wine cooler and drained it.

  “You want me to make you a drink?” he said.

  “I don’t know. What you got?”

  “I’ve got some whiskey.”

  She made a face. “I don’t much like whiskey.”

  “Well,” he said, “I’ve got some Cuervo in the house and I think there’s a can of margarita mix in the freezer. I could make you a frozen margarita in the blender.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I love those. We go over to the Best Western in Oxford sometimes and get those. They have two-for-one night for ladies on Wednesdays.”

  “Who do you go with?”

  “Some of my girlfriends.”

  “You don’t get in any trouble over there, do you?”

  “Shit,” she said. “We get in all kinds of trouble.”

  He got up with his drink and went around the table.

  “It may take me a few minutes,” he said. “You can wait on me if you want to or come in with me either one.”

  She was already getting up. “I’ll just go in with you.”

  He turned the light on in the kitchen and bent to a low cabinet door and found the blender and plugged it in. She leaned on the counter watching. In the freezer he found the can of concentrate and in the cabinet he shoved some whiskey bottles aside and reached in for the tequila. In a few minutes he had a pale green ice slush whirring inside the blender. He cut it off and found a big wine glass and poured it full. He’d put three whole shots of Cuervo into the blender so she could have a couple more. She’d probably be drinking whiskey by that time. He wondered if he had food here.

  She made it as far as getting his pants open and he was hard and couldn’t help that because he’d been kissing her for a while and trying to stop, but now he pulled her head up before she could get her mouth on him, when it would be too late.

  She’d dimmed the lights earlier and now she knelt on the floor and looked up at him as he fastened his pants back together. Her blouse was open, her bra in disarray because her thick nipples had been in his mouth. She was breathing hard.

  “What’s wrong?” she said.

  “Nothing.” He got up from the couch and picked up his glass from the floor, almost dropped it, then got a good grip on it and carried it over to the sink where the bottle and cans stood. “I just don’t need to be doing this right now.” He opened the freezer top and reached in for an ice tray. He glanced at her. She hadn’t moved.

  “You don’t like that?”

  “You mean …?”

  “Yeah.”

  What to tell this heaving woman? She was all revved up now. He was too and he was afraid to get too close to her again. Then he started to just forget the drink and go right back over there again. But he made his clumsy fingers shake out a few cubes into the glass.

  “I like it fine,” he said.

  “Then come back over here. I want you to fuck me.”

  “I better not.”

  “Please.”

  He didn’t answer her and she didn’t say anything for a while. He knew it was embarrassing the shit out of her and he hadn’t meant to do that. But nothing was going to make her feel better now.

  “Because of that dead girl?” she said in a low voice.

  And all lies were one. If you told one you might as well tell a million.

  “Yeah,” he said, and he looked up at her long enough to see what looked like fear in her eyes.

  “She was your lover.”

  “Yes she was,” Sam said, and poured some whiskey into the glass. He’d be sure not to tell Joe Price about this. Or anybody. It was very quiet when she spoke again.

  “I can make you feel better. I know I can.”

  He topped off his drink with some Coke from a can that he’d already opened. It fizzed some then quit.

  He could feel her watching him and he thought he could feel some pity coming his way.

  “I guess I’m just not ready,” he said.

  “Well fuck,” she said, and got up from the floor. “Goddamn it.” She was almost crying. “How much of that whiskey you got left over there?”

  When she passed out he lifted her from the couch and carried her back to his bed and dumped her on the right side, where she said something about shoes and rolled over and then was already beginning to snore while he arranged the covers for her. She seemed very innocent lying there. And then she started snoring louder and it caused him to groan at the thought of trying to lie down and sleep beside her.

  Standing back in the kitchen in nothing but his blue jeans he pondered whether or not to have another drink. Instead he made coffee and locked the doors and pulled out sliced turkey and mayonnaise and bread and ate two sandwiches while he watched that old movie about the sea captain with one wooden leg and a top hat who at all costs was dead set on harpooning a big white whale.

  MO
RNING CAME THROUGH the glass doors, a glare rising across the railing of the deck and the actual ball itself sitting on top of it to shine right into his eyes when he blinked and came awake and groaned and turned over. Please, he thought. Let her be gone. And lying there knowing he wasn’t going to be able to sleep anymore and the whole room around him lighting up he reasoned it would only take a peek over the top of the couch where he was lying to see how things were. He put it off, kept lying there trying to remember if he had heard anything during the night, noises of departure, doors closing. But nothing came to him. He remembered only stretching out, turning his face to the fabric of the couch’s back. He sure hoped she was gone. He didn’t want to have to mess with her as bad as he felt. But rotten ass luck would have it to where she’d slept solidly through the night, was still sprawled back there just like she had been when he’d gone back to check on her one last time. Or she’d want breakfast maybe. Jesus Christ. He wondered if he could go and get in Fay’s bed now. He could lock the door. Loretta might bang on it. How his head would pound then. He turned over on his back and looked up at the ceiling. He was really glad he didn’t fuck her.

  All he had to do was raise up and look over the back of the couch. He knew it was still out there. The top was down on it, too. She didn’t go back out there before she passed out. Dew would have already fallen on the seats. He knew the floorboard was probably full of McDonald’s sacks and stuff. Gum wrappers. Plastic straws. He saw too often the things people left in their cars. Some of them even left their children in their cars.

  She’ll have a wet ass when she gets in it. Unless she stays long enough for the sun to dry them out.

  He thought about waking her. It probably wasn’t even seven o’ clock, though. He guessed that beer in the fridge was cold by now. And he might as well go on and have a shower. Brush his teeth. But he was definitely kicking her ass out by ten o’clock.

  At a little before eight he was showered and shaved and dressed in clean clothes, a T-shirt and shorts. He’d eased into his bedroom in his boxer shorts to go through the closet looking for his clothes, careful not to wake her. She’d been piled up under the covers, her head on one pillow, another clutched in her arms. Her snores were long and drawn out with a halting, choking sound vibrating through her nose and across her palate. He didn’t know what he was going to do with her.

  Now he picked up the towel from the bathroom floor and unlocked the front door and took it out into the yard with him and leaned over the sides of the convertible and wiped down the seats, turning the towel and mopping at the little beads of dew, the sun rising up over the house to send rays of light through the branches of the big pines. He hung the wet towel over the back of his pickup and went back in the house.

  By peeking in on her again he could see through the crack of the door that she was balled up in the sheets now with her head under the pillow. She didn’t move at all as he stood there looking at her the way he had done so many times with Fay. He eased the door shut and went back up to the kitchen.

  He thought about making some breakfast but instead he picked up the rest of the drink he had fixed and finished it, sliding the limes out into the sink in a mush of red juice and melted ice cubes. He rinsed the glass and set it back in there and grabbed a beer from the icebox.

  The sun was already hot out on the deck and he went down the stairs in his bare feet and stood for a minute on the low dock, drinking the beer and looking out across the water. He needed to get a cover for his big boat. Thinking about that dew on her car seats. He needed to go by Tri-County Marine one day and see if they had one that would fit it. Or could order one.

  He went down the steps and walked along the fringe of the water. Dead branches and debris lay awash at the edge of the shore. A dead fish bleached a pale lemon and its eyeless sockets staring into the sun. He walked slowly and drank his beer. It was going to be another pretty day.

  He stopped and stood facing the water with it almost touching his toes. He thought of Alesandra in that boat that night, of the rain that had fallen on her. He wished he could find out what time it had happened. In the autopsy report, probably, but probably no way for him to get his hands on it. Maybe if he ever talked to Tony McCollum he could find out. But knowing that wasn’t going to tell him where Fay was now.

  There was plenty of driftwood on down the little beach, ivory limbs twisted in a nest of roots. A breeze was blowing into his face off the lake and he sipped from the bottle. He glanced back toward the house. He guessed he’d have to go in there and get her up. If she’d get up. She might be one of those people who had to have thirteen hours of sleep or be in some shitty mood.

  The empty place where she used to lie next to him and never beyond the reach of his hand, her hair pulled over her face. The thing that gnawed at him was worrying that he might never see that again.

  He wandered, looking and drinking the beer. He’d already run all kinds of scenes through his head, trying to imagine what had gone on that night. Had it happened here? Or in the house? Had there been blood washed away that he hadn’t seen?

  It could have happened right here, behind the house. Alesandra might have come over in her boat and waited for Fay to come out. What was McCollum waiting on?

  He was going to drive himself crazy thinking about all of it. And what if people started asking questions about Fay? He didn’t know if Grayton had seen her at Amy’s funeral or not. But Tony had. And Tony could tell Grayton if he was that kind of guy, a guy who’d help hurt somebody if it would improve his own situation.

  The beer was about empty, and the foam in the bottom didn’t taste good. He tossed the bottle up into the bushes that stood in the ragged grass going up the hill, and the sun winked on something shiny lying in the sand. He walked over and looked down for a long time. Then he bent over and picked up one of them. He held it up, squinting at the tiny numbers of the end of the case, trying to tell what caliber it was.

  SHE DIDN’T KNOW where she was when she first woke up, then saw Arlene’s ceiling and Arlene’s walls. Her hand as soon as she moved it touched his broad back. His arm was out from under the covers. He breathed through his mouth. She rolled over and tried to go back to sleep. The curtains were drawn and she didn’t know what time it was. She could hear cars on the road outside. She remembered going upstairs.

  She touched her belly and then scratched at the tangle of hair below it. She stretched in the bed and yawned, then shivered slightly and pressed her face up against his back. He had lots of freckles. She closed her eyes, breathing him in. His skin was warm. She slept again.

  Later she woke and he was gone from the bed. She got up and washed her face and the morning sickness didn’t come. She was glad for that but she had not been able to get the image of the falling plane out of her mind. Her face in the mirror looked pale and thin.

  In the bedroom she pulled her gown over her head and looked down at her breasts. They were growing. She touched one with her finger, indented the flesh just above the nipple. She cupped them in her hands, lifted them, felt their weight. They were getting heavier. She had to get to a doctor.

  Through the glass doors near the kitchen she could see him sitting on the back steps, drinking coffee. On the counter the pot was nearly full, the red warming light shining. She fixed herself a cup. There was no food laid out. Arlene still gone and no guests to feed and she’d never seen Aaron cook anything. He seemed to live mostly on food from burger joints.

  She went out balancing the hot cup in the palm of her hand, then switched to holding the handle when it almost burned her skin. He didn’t turn. He was wearing only a pair of jeans.

  “Hey,” she said.

  He turned briefly. “Hey.”

  There was a white iron table out there on the back porch with two chairs next to it. She pulled one out and sat down, put her coffee on the table. The truck was gone and the El Camino was back, parked under the old oak.

  “Where’s the truck?” she said.

  “Arthur’s done com
e and got it.”

  She sipped at her coffee, studying his long red hair, thinking about the little girl in Reena’s trailer and how she looked. Already getting tall.

  “You sleep all right?” she said.

  “Yeah. Fine.”

  “I was give out. I just barely remember us comin in. I woke up one time and you were still asleep. I guess you got on up.”

  “Yep,” he said.

  “I love to sleep late. Don’t you?”

  “I don’t sleep too much,” he said. “I have nightmares. Bad ones. Always have.”

  “I’ve heard you talkin in your sleep before.”

  “Only time I sleep good’s when I’m drunk.”

  She didn’t know what to say. He was acting like he was in one of his moods again and already it seemed to her that she was being trained in how to act around him when he was like this. So she sat there quiet and drank her coffee, just watching him. For a while she did. She couldn’t just sit there and not try to talk to him.

  “When’s your mama gonna come back?”

  “It’s gonna be a while longer, I guess. She left a message on the machine.”

  “How’s Henry?”

  “She didn’t say.”

  She leaned back and crossed her legs. There was no need in trying to make him talk to her if he didn’t want to. He drank some more of his coffee, then put his knees together and held the cup with both hands. He sat that way for a long time. There were so many questions in her mind. She wanted to ask him about her doctor’s visit but now wasn’t the time. Didn’t seem to be.

  “When you want to take that trip?”

  She’d been thinking about looking in the icebox to see if she could find something for breakfast when he spoke.