Snake Face

by Amber Foxx

  “Are you all right?”

  “No.” She knew the feeling all too well. Her right ankle, sprained twice before, had collapsed yet again. “I need some ice. And to get away from everybody.”

  Stamos guided her out to the porch. A few of the guests made sounds of dismay, but most were too wrapped up in the dancing to have noticed her stumble. He helped her sit in the porch swing. “I will be back with ice.”

  Mae put her leg up in the swing. The street was quiet except for the Tsitouris party. Christmas lights and TV flicker glowed from nearby houses. Mae half expected to see Sylvie’s black BMW creep up, although she knew Sylvie was in Texas, waiting for Joe Wayne’s tour to end—and for Jamie.

  “Sorry I took so long.” Stamos let the door bang shut behind him and laid a bag of crushed ice on Mae’s ankle. “Mother asked a million questions about your injury. She enjoys things she can worry about.” He pulled up a plastic chair that was black with mildew and sat close by her. “I’m sorry you got hurt.”

  “That ankle’s bad.” Weakened from repeated injuries, at perpetual risk of a fall, it somehow made her think of Jamie’s mind. Christina’s prediction had gotten to her. “And I’m not used to heels. I wear these shoes about once every two years.”

  “Should I be flattered?”

  “I reckon. I dressed up for you.”

  They fell silent again. On a green lawn across the street, an inflatable snowman bobbed in the breeze, celebrating some imaginary winter. Why had she come to this party? Was she just curious about Christina? Being honest with herself, Mae knew she’d also come thinking she ought to feel something more for Stamos. He was so attractive, and they had truly tried to connect. They had to drive back together. A gentle, regretful tension was all that remained between them, though, like a miniaturized version of the way she’d felt when she and Hubert had split up.

  The Greek music reminded her why this new relationship had ended already. Jamie brought the worst out in Stamos. He was stuck in his past, plugging in Jamie for Joe Wayne and Mae for Diana.

  It would probably be the end of even a friendship if Mae were to bring up Diana, especially for getting Joe Wayne’s personal phone number. Maybe he’d read his car club e-mail, and she wouldn’t have to. He could be calling her right now for the address to ship Jamie’s things. “Could you get my purse? I need my phone.”

  “Because Jamie might call you.”

  The pain in her ankle frazzled her patience. “Yes, he could. Or Joe Wayne Brazos.” The second the words were out, she knew it was the wrong thing to say. It had sounded like a dig, and the controlled explosion in the way Stamos stood told her he’d taken it that way. “That wasn’t some mean joke. I really tried to reach him about the weird stuff Sylvie is doing.”

  “To Jamie.”

  His resentment was exasperating. “Yes. To Jamie. Could you bring me my phone, please? It’s not about you. It’s—he’s my friend.”

  Stamos went back inside and returned shortly with Mae’s purse and her coat, which he draped over her shoulders. There was no tenderness in his touch, only good manners. She checked messages. Nothing from Jamie or from Joe Wayne. She wrapped her hands around the phone and looked up at Stamos.

  “Sylvie’s done crazy things stalking Jamie. It’s not normal. But Jamie won’t contact the police. He thinks she’ll hurt his cat. She’s his former student and I think that may get to him, too. I thought Joe Wayne could have his pet sitter or whoever she is ship Jamie’s stuff. I e-mailed him through the car club and asked him, but I haven’t heard back, and it’s been a while. I need to talk with Joe Wayne. I don’t want Jamie to meet up with Sylvie, and that’s the only way to stop him.”

  Stamos lowered himself into the stained plastic chair again. “I talked with her.”

  Startled, Mae knocked the ice off her ankle, and leaned forward to readjust it. “Sylvie? When?”

  His mouth lifted at one corner. “My inglorious exit. When you told me to get a taxi.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I’m not sure. I don’t drink much or often. I was not at my best.” He gazed at the nearest porch pillar for a while. “No, that’s a poor excuse. True, but not adequate. I was angry with you and with Jamie. It didn’t matter if I met his nemesis. I was in no mood to wish him well.”

  “Did she threaten him?”

  “Not directly, no. This is very strange, what she did. I started walking. As I said, I’m no friend to alcohol, and I had some foolish urge to walk all the way here. This BMW started creeping along beside me. She rolled the window down, and said, ‘Want a ride, cowboy?’ I declined, saying I didn’t know her. I had not recognized her yet. Then—I found this bizarre—she sang to me.”

  “She was that weird and you still didn’t tell me?”

  He held up empty hands, then looked away. “Her voice was like a ghost in a cartoon. On key, but a strange quality. It went something like this, though I may not have it exactly right, considering the state I was in.” Slightly off-key, he sang an upbeat country melody.

  “I met you on Route 66, do you think I could forget

  The rocket tail lights and the wife to match on that fifty-five Coronet.”

  Stamos intertwined his fingers and leaned his elbows on the chair arms. “So of course I knew her then. I stopped walking and said the names of her dogs. She leaned out the window as if she thought she was sexy and asked me again if I wanted a ride now that I remembered her. I still turned her down. Told her I’d get a taxi.”

  “And that was it?”

  “No. She said something else. Before she drove off. Something like, ‘Don’t you worry, handsome.’ ” He mimicked her accent, not very well. “ ‘You and me are gonna come out on top.’ ”

  “The only way I can picture her thinking you and her come out on top is if she does something bad to Joe Wayne. Maybe she’s already done it, using Jamie to make him jealous. But on top of Christina’s prediction, it kinda scares me.”

  Stamos raised one eyebrow. “So now you are worried about Brazos?”

  “Yes. I’m so sorry to ask this, but your ex-wife had his personal number. Is there any chance you could ask her to—” She saw the fury in Stamos’s eyes, as if she’d slapped him. “Please. It’s not about you.”

  He took a deep breath, letting it out with his restrained and measured speech. “Her name is Diana Gomez. She took back her maiden name. We don’t speak. You can look her up. I will not call her. I have deleted her number. As she may have deleted his.”

  “Does she still live in—”

  Stamos stood and strode to the door, yanking it open. “Hatch. Damn it, she moved to Hatch.”

  The door fell shut behind him. Not lucky in love at all. And not over Diana. It had been kind of him, with all that pain, to give Mae so much help. She liked him better for it. Understood him more. Felt the loss of him more deeply.

  Would she be able to drive back to New Mexico with him after this? In her mind she heard Hubert’s joke about making Stamos take a plane as well as a taxi. She couldn’t do that, but limping inside to make peace right now was out of the question. Stamos took days to get over things like this.

  It was time to go. For Mae, the party was over. She wriggled her ankle. It hurt. Could she drive? Maybe after a few more minutes with the ice. She could stop at a drug store and get a compression sleeve and ibuprofen. Automatically, the thought of not running popped up and annoyed her, but she let it go. Jen could get her a pool pass. She’d be all right. It was trivia compared to everything else.

  She adjusted the ice pack and called information for Diana Gomez in Hatch, New Mexico, hoping Diana had a landline and was in a directory. If so, this was going to be the most awkward conversation Mae had ever had. There was no such listing. Not surprising. A lot of single women chose to be unlisted. A lot of people didn’t have landlines.

  There seemed to be no way to get through to stop whatever Sylvie had set in motion. Jamie was still on the road and Joe Wayne on tour through tonig
ht. Mae wasn’t sure which one would get to Austin first, or whether Sylvie really intended to harm both of them. She’d read that into Sylvie’s promise that she and Stamos would come out on top. If the danger was real, there was only a small window of time in which to intervene.

  Southern instinct told Mae to say goodbye and thanks to her host and hostess. The pain of walking erased it, and she limped to her car, carrying the ice bag. The air-filled fake snowman, triggered by her passage, emitted a canned holiday song in a jolly voice. Mae wanted to stick a pin in it.

  She dropped into the driver’s seat of her car, close to using a few words from Jamie’s vocabulary. Who was she so angry with? Stamos? No. Herself. She was the fool who’d put on those silly shoes and come all the way up here to make doubly sure of a man she should have known was a bad match. The story of her life. Another wrong choice of a man.

  She hung the ice bag over her ankle, hoping it wouldn’t fall under the gas pedal. One bad idea she didn’t have to act on. She dropped it onto the passenger seat floor and started driving. The pain made her want to cry—or something did.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The sound of his phone dragged Jamie from the depths of a nap. Darkness filled in the crack between the curtains he’d closed hours ago against the late afternoon sun. As soon as he moved, something that disguised itself as hunger gnawed at him, although he’d fallen asleep stuffed. The call had to be Mae or Wendy. Or his parents. They’d read the Greenville review, seen the performance cancellations on his web site, and begun checking up on him. If they’d known where to find him, they probably would have flown out and traveled with him.

  He felt monitored, like when he’d been in a mental hospital. People had hovered, making sure he swallowed his pills and didn’t hold them in his cheek like a chipmunk to horde for suicide. Watched him shave so he didn’t keep the razor. Though he’d slipped close to the state that had landed him in the nuthouse, it was depressing to think that anyone suspected him of it.

  At least texting let him lie. No one expected much from him in that mode. Incoherence could pass for normal. He needed to make people think he was surviving. Mae especially, after she’d seen him collapse in Greenville.

  Wendy, of course, couldn’t be fooled about the financial part of his fall. She knew the bottom line. The tour was supposed to promote music sales, the only real profit in the venture. If he’d had solid crowds, all buying music, he should have come out ahead. But between missing Memphis, the storm almost wiping out Richmond, the benefit in Virginia Beach, and the cancellations and extra expenses, as of tonight in this hotel north of Austin he was reaching the end of his travel budget, and the tour was running deep in the red.

  Should have slept in the van. He rolled over for the phone and lay back down, wondering what he could say—type—if it was Mae. If she could see him wallowing in this gray lethargy, she’d want to fix him. He was broken and knew it, but she couldn’t know. She had to imagine some strength in him.

  It was her. Get in touch right away.

  Fuck. She was worrying. He stared at the ceiling. The phone fell from his hand and landed soundlessly on the carpet near the bed. He should move. Pick it up. Answer her. It was too hard. Pushing himself out of bed was work. Even when he’d gone swimming in the hotel’s shallow, undersized pool, an act which normally freed him of the weight of both his body and the world, he’d felt like he was dragging an extra person through the water.

  Aside from his short and weary swim, he’d done nothing for two days but drive, eat and sleep. A heavy dose of pasta could knock him out like a drug, to wake up feeling dazed, fat, self-loathing and sad, ready to sleep again. He would have to wake up and function in the morning to meet Sylvie, though. Get his things and Gasser, without talking, if possible.

  And then he could do that final show in New Orleans. It seemed pointless, as failed as this tour was, but a pinpoint of light in the back of his mind, like a keyhole seen from inside a locked closet, told him that if he could just perform again, he might at least slow this downhill slide of his mind.

  Getting Gasser back would help. If he had Gasser, he wouldn’t be like this. He’d have someone to love and take care of. Jesus, he missed him. Gasser needed Jamie, too. The thought gave him the energy to set the alarm for early morning, and he fell back into his cloud bank of sleep.

  The phone beeped several times. He glanced at it. Wendy. Too difficult. She was already trying to plan some tour in Canada next summer, and he didn’t ever want to leave New Mexico again except on a plane to Perth. The next call was Mum. He couldn’t face her. The third one was Mae. He finally answered. What was she doing up in the middle of the night? The others were night owls, but not her. Was she that worried?

  Are you okay sugar?

  Y. Fn

  You’re supposed to stay in touch.

  Soyyr. He had to get the conversation onto something positive. Hw are yrou kids? Having ggod visit?

  Thanks for asking. Yes. We had a great day together. How soon can you talk?

  Troat dsn’t hurt naym ore. Still not tlaking. Scared whatl come otu. Craoks. Jesus.

  For two days, he hadn’t spoken to another person. He’d pointed at menus, written notes to desk clerks, smiled against his will at people in convenience stores. Without his voice, he was no one.

  Be careful. Don’t hurt yourself. Especially when you meet Sylvie.

  Y. An implied promise not to yell at Sylvie again.

  Remember not to be alone with her. She may just want to torment you or make Joe Wayne jealous, but don’t trust her.

  Y.

  I know you hate to type but are you sure you’re ok?

  She cared so much, and he wasn’t worth it. Tears made an impotent appearance but didn’t fall. His chest tightened, but there was no release. Even crying had become too hard. Y.

  I never got through to Joe Wayne. I sent him a new message tonight, but I don’t think he checks his car club e-mail. I just checked his tour schedule and he did his last show tonight. He might be home by the time you meet her. I asked him to make sure Sylvie doesn’t mess with you or Gasser.

  Thnaks.

  Are you sure you’re okay?

  F. Qiut aksing im fien fien fine fine im bloody fcking fine.

  Jamie ended the call. Jesus. He’d lost control. If that had been speech he’d have yelled at her.

  Why this rage at Mae again? She was his soul mate, his best friend, his one true partner. Why was he driving her away like this? He sent her a quick Sorry and sat on the edge of the bed. The remaining messages beeped their nagging presence. A cold, unwelcome wakefulness crept into him. He didn’t want to answer his mother or Wendy, but if he didn’t they’d worry. He sent short replies stating he was alive and safe and that it was too late to chat. And now what? Finally shower and undress, now that he was getting out of bed?

  In the bathroom he faced his shirtless reflection. The inch needed a new name. The fucking fat cell alien invasion, area fifty-one, or whatever his pants size had been when he was young and enormous. Area forty-eight. He had to get this decline turned around. Had to. Or he’d be back in those pants, and the nuthouse.

  Hair brushed smooth, he showered and lay with the roo, leaving a light on for reassurance and his phone near at hand in case Mae called back. Why should she, though? He’d text-yelled at her.

  He’d have to get himself in order before she got back to New Mexico—driving with that bloody perfect Greek. Reason number five hundred and ten not to let her see area forty-eight or the misery Jamie had become while he was voiceless. He had a lot to accomplish to compete with the Greek. The tour hadn’t won her. The man he’d be when he got home would have to do it.

  That would be uphill work. Pushing the great rock of doom. How could he get out from under it?

  He’d feel like an adult if he could have his own place, though he had no idea how he would afford it. Getting back to perfect-one-seventy-five would help, too. The creeping fat was depressing. Yet so was fighting it. Wa
s there any peace, ever, in having a human body? Would he always be at war with it, or trying to crawl out of it? He only felt at home in his flesh and bones while dancing, climbing, doing something ecstatic. Making love. Loving Mae—but that was so far off. If ever.

  At least being in Santa Fe again would make a difference. Knowing where the good climbing sites were, and the good bars for dancing. Knowing people, knowing every street without fear of being lost. Wendy could somehow keep him busy without leaving the state. She’d have to.

  Then he’d recover. When he did, Mae could love his healed, whole self and not keep trying to take care of him. Even Gasser would be in better shape. Jamie would build him a little fat-cat climbing gym and take him for walks. One more show and he could live this life. One more show, and Sylvie.

  As he drifted off again, another message came in. Mae accepting his apology?

  It was Sylvie. See you in the morning, cowboy. Miss you. See what you think of the Western Black Widow.

  A picture message followed. Jamie almost didn’t open it, expecting a spider, but she might have something important to show him. Some trick to trip him if he ignored her. He had to look.

  What in bloody hell was the matter with this woman? Was this her idea of a joke? The picture was of Sylvie, one hand resting atop a guitar that stood beside her, and the other hand hiking her short black leather skirt up one skinny thigh, like a tawdry album cover shot. Her sheer hose, fancy Western boots, and hat and tailored leather jacket were all black, interrupted by a red silk blouse. Dylan Roybal would be proud of her. He’d give her a black belt in bullying. She’d dressed as the cowgirl version of a western black widow spider.

  After a few wrong turns and backtracks, Jamie found the right Starbucks in Austin. Every time he reacted too late to the GPS voice’s directions, the robotic woman chanted, Recalculating, recalculating. It was what he wished he could do with his life, or at least his tour. Every wrong turn. Recalculate.