Charming Grace

by Deborah Smith

  This time, there was no waiting period.

  You two make a good team, Harp whispered.

  A coil of shock tightened and loosened inside me. The most profound sorrow wound around the bittersweet image of Harp—fading just a little in my memory, the edges of his face just a little soft, the idea of his scent, the feel of his mouth and body, the fullness of him inside me, the timbre of his voice, all receding in a painful, necessary moment of beginning to let go. I couldn’t bring him back with imaginary conversations, and now I was hearing him bless my feelings about Boone.

  When Boone received the standing ovation he looked surprised—and then he turned toward me for help. How do I get outta here, Gracie? he mouthed. I walked over to him, took the microphone, thanked him, thanked the students, then took his hand and walked with him off the stage.

  In the shadows, out of public view, he clutched my hand in a big, sweaty fist that shook with astonishment. He had never been applauded, recognized, or celebrated before, and he didn’t know what to think of himself. Gazing at me as if I had performed some kind of suspicious voodoo on him, he cuddled my hand to his chest and said, “I’ll get you for this.”

  “Probably,” I answered, smiling, but quickly turned away.

  Chapter 11

  Grace owed me for pulling that stunt on me at the high school. Not that it hadn’t been for my own good. Not that I’d ever have quite the same opinion of my place in the scheme of things, again. I mean, an auditorium full of tough kids stood up and clapped and made me feel like a . . .hero. Go figure. But still.

  “I did my part to talk some sense into your junior-sized gangsta fans,” I told Grace. “So now you have to have dinner with me. Payback. But just to show you I’m an okay guy, and since I’m a big celebrity now, I’ll treat.”

  And she said, “Do I have a choice, Monsieur Cajun de l’Ego Grand?” and I said, “No, I’m a celebrity, and that means I’m irresistible.” And she said, “Don’t count on it, bayou bubba.”

  But she said okay to dinner, so I was happy. Happy enough to pretend she didn’t look uncomfortable about spending time alone with me. She did like me, I could tell, but I could also tell it made her unhappy. Which made me, well, unhappy to be happy. Damn. In the meantime, Dew, Mika and Leo went down to Savannah’s riverfront tourist strip to browse for trinkets and listen to jazz at one of the clubs.

  “Don’t hurry back,” I said to Leo. “And don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

  He grinned and nodded. “I’ll take care of the ladies. Kick ass if anyone so much as crooks a finger at them in an ungentlemanly way. Mutter in French when I hear a song by Eminem, the Bee Gees, or any punk band that isn’t even fit to wipe the spit off Bruce Springsteen’s microphone. Just like you.”

  “Just don’t kick anybody’s ass. That’s my job. Call me.”

  He promised. After they left I checked my cell phone twice to make sure the battery was good. “The kid’s trying hard to be Stone Senterra’s son,” I explained to Grace. “Who knows what he might do to impress Mika? Chug two gallons of beer. Dis a Hell’s Angel. Try to calculate the value of pi on the back of a cocktail napkin.”

  She watched me with unhappy but admiring eyes. “Dew will keep them out of trouble. She’s a cross between a convent chaperone and a Baptist Sunday School teacher. Her girlfriend calls her Sister Hallelujah.”

  “Gracie,” I said, “your family is made up of strange women and nervous men.”

  “You think you’re joking. At a family brunch not long ago someone took a group picture of me, Dew, Mika, and G. Helen. I heard Aunt Tess mutter something about a ‘crazy beauty queen, a lesbian, a colored girl and an old trollop.’”

  “My kind of babes. Lots of variety.”

  “You’re a gallant man.”

  I just smiled to myself. Not gallant enough to let you off the hook for dinner.

  Nighttime on the Georgia coast will break a man’s heart or make him do things he might regret in the morning. It has the voodoo feel of an ancient place on the edge of the world; the sex-scent of water and wilds, the old naughtiness of a bad-ass beauty winking from the shade of her silk-covered bed. The sky was full of the kind of dark early-summer clouds that can soak you when you’re already too drunk to care. Grace and I sat alone in the small courtyard of our inn. Most of the ground-floor rooms opened onto the courtyard. I had a door. Grace had a door. Mika and Leo and Dew had doors. All God’s chillen had a door. Grape vines and hot-pink bougainvillea draped over us; the mermaid fountain splashed softly; the night felt close and damp and intimate.

  A candle flickered in a crystal globe on the table between us. The caterer I’d hired had just disappeared with the scraps of a five-course lobster dinner. Grace held a champagne flute in front of her like a shield and looked everywhere but at me. She’d changed into soft jeans and a long white silk blouse, a sweet-hot look that made me think of gourmet vanilla ice cream with a double-shot of raw tequila on the side.

  I took a deep breath, leaned across the darkness and the espresso cups, and laid a computer disc in front of her. “There’s the finalized script for Hero. The one Mika was planning to steal with Leo’s help.”

  Her hand shook as she set the champagne down. Her eyes, tired and haunted, gleamed with surprise. She picked up the square black disc and turned it like an ace in a poker game. “Why are you doing this for me?”

  “Because it’s the right thing.” I paused. “No strings attached.”

  “Would Stone forgive you for this breach of faith?”

  “That depends on what you do with the information.”

  “It won’t change my opinion of his film, if that’s what you’re hoping for.”

  “All I care about is your opinion of me. I’ll settle for that.”

  “My opinion of you is. . .open-minded, already. I think I’ve made that clear.”

  “Good. So don’t look a gift Cajun in the mouth.”

  She laid the disc down. “I need more explanation than that. Why are you doing this to me?”

  To me, she’d said. Not for me. She looked like she might cry, kiss me, or bolt.

  Tell her. Just tell her how it is.

  I settled back in a wrought iron chair under the stormy night sky. “I realized I loved you,” I said quietly, “on the day your husband died.”

  On that day my body-guarding schedule called for nothing more exciting than an ice-cream run for Stone’s daughters. I was about to load Shrek, the girls, and their nice little Irish nannies, Mary Kate and Rosemary, into one of Stone’s fifty-thousand-dollar Humvees.

  “Hey, Sir Boone, not so fast there,” a female voice said behind me with a Midwest plow-the-fields flatness. Kanda cornered me by the potted Italian cypress in the courtyard of Casa Senterra, Beverly Hills, California. “Only one cone each for the girls,” she lectured. “And don’t let them beg you into making any stops at the Godiva store on the way home.” She wagged a finger at me. “And no secret gallon of vanilla praline for you-know-who. He has to be on the set of Commando Renegade in two weeks—looking like he can actually survive in the jungle as leader of the world’s most elite covert recon team—not looking like a sumo wrestler in a flak jacket.”

  Stone was three hundred pounds of disciplined gristle, so she was mostly kidding. Except she wasn’t. “No vanilla praline,” I said solemnly. “But when he fires me I’ll tell him you said so.”

  “You won’t get fired. I’ll tell the big sweet lug to behave.”

  “Thanks. He hates it when I call him a big sweet lug.”

  “And no pecan caramel cookies for Shrek. They make him fart. God forbid. I should kill him but my parents would never forgive me if I ate him. Next time we’re getting a kosher pet.”

  “Single cones. No Godivas. No vanilla praline. No nuts for the pig.”

  “I mean it. Tell Stone and the girls Mother said so. Because face it: Under that fearsome hide you’re a soft touch, and just like Stone, they know it.”

  She had figured me out. Most pe
ople never looked past my hide and its accessories. I liked Kanda. Kanda had knighted me with a tap of her Wisconsin Dairy State ceramic cheese spreader: Sir Boone, Protector of My Daughters and Keeper of the Kosher Cheddar. “I’ll be fearsome,” I deadpanned.

  I drove the oinking, giggling, faith-and-begora, kiddie-piggie-nannie crew down from the Beverly Hills hilltops into an area of shops so expensive they were spelled shoppes. Casa Senterra overlooked a palm-tree-and-Rolls Royce part of greater Los Angeles you’d recognize from TV and celebrity magazines if the local show biz royalty let you past the gates and the security guards and the private knuckle-crackers like me, who will pound you for trespassing.

  Thirty minutes later I was standing in the shadow of a pink hibiscus shrub outside a fancy pink ice cream parlor, drawing nervous glances from the shoppers going by on the pink sidewalk. Like I wasn’t standing in front of a pink ice cream parlor and leashed to a three-hundred pound calico pet pig with a pink tail. Shrek sidled around to the other side of the shrub, slobbering and grunting as he nosed a china plate filled with mocha munchie something, his favorite flavor next to pecan caramel. The nannies and the girls ate waffle cones at little pink marble tables inside the pink parlor.

  I heard crying and peered through the hibiscus. A handful of upset ice cream scoopers in pink jeans and pink blouses were huddled on the shop’s outside cafe, some of them wiping their eyes as they stared up at a television on the pink stuccoed wall. Only in southern California will you find TV’s even on the patios at kiddie ice cream parlors. Everybody’s in show biz or wishes they were, and they don’t want to miss a minute of the boob tube.

  But this time it wasn’t entertainment news. The tube was tuned to CNN helicopter footage of cops rushing around the roof of some high-rise building. And the colors were all dark and real.

  CNN Breaking News appeared in big letters on the bottom of the screen. Year’s Siege of Terror Ends. Turn-Key Bomber Killed A newswoman’s voice started explaining that the scene was a hospital rooftop in downtown Atlanta, Georgia, that only an hour ago local news helicopters had filmed a dramatic hand-to-hand fight between the Turn-Key Bomber and the GBI agent who had been tracking him for months. The agent had been shot but still managed to nail the Bomber with a twelve-inch hunting knife before the Bomber could push the button on a remote detonator that would have blown up the hospital. The hospital was safe, and the Bomber was dead.

  I stood there thinking: This agent didn’t learn to gut a man with a twelve-inch hunting knife at the police academy.

  “But we’re now sorry to report,” the reporter said quietly, “that the heroic law enforcement agent is Harper Vance of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the agent whose unconventional methods, often referred to in the media as ‘mountain man science,’ caught the admiration of millions of people in this country and our international audience, the man in charge of this case for many months, has sacrificed himself to stop the man alleged to have killed or injured more than two-dozen public officials in small towns across the South.” The woman paused for effect. “Hospital officials have just confirmed, yes, that the valiant GBI agent whose courageous, self-sacrificing efforts were chronicled here by helicopter news crews just a little over an hour ago suffered fatal gunshot wounds and has, yes, died downstairs as the hospital staff he had saved worked frantically, but futilely, to save his life in return.”

  The pink ice cream scoopers made soft moans. “Why do all the good men die young?” one said.

  “Heroes almost always die young,” another woman answered. “Look at James Dean. And Elvis. And Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan.” Everyone nodded. And cried some more.

  “Harper Vance,” one of the pink women went on, “is going to be a legend.”

  “And famous,” another said.

  Harper Vance. Just a stranger crossing my path. I didn’t hate men of the law anymore than men of the law hated men like me who had lived outside the law. You get set on a certain path—lucky or unlucky—so you walk it. And I’m not cold-blooded about a man dying. It’s just that there weren’t many heroes on my planet. Harper Vance, Mother Mary May He Rest In Peace, was probably up at the pearly gates wishing he’d taken a cigarette break when God started handing out invitations to be special.

  “Hey, you ugly piece of pork shit,” someone said behind me, slurring a little. “Whas a damn pig doin’ in front of an ice cream shop-ee?”

  “Yeah, I come here to have a espresso rainbow sundae,” a second surfer-dude voice said. “Not to look at fat chicks eatin’ off the sidewalk.”

  “It’s a pig, you shit-for-brains. Not a chick.”

  “Oh. Okay. Well, Porky, wanna little smoke? Want to be smoked bacon? Get it?”

  I pivoted to find a greasy pair of old rock stars trying to feed Shrek a hand-rolled smoke. From the aroma it wasn’t a smoke made of tobacco, if you get my drift. The old rockers’ limo was parked on the curb behind them. I’m not mentioning names, but let’s just say you only see these wasted tokers on reruns of their thirty-year-old hit music videos. Mummified bull balls have fewer wrinkles. And better manners. A bodybuilder chauffeur in black leather and a Harley do-rag waited by the front bumper, frowning and flexing his biceps.

  I stepped in front of Shrek. “The pig gave up smoking for Lent. Leave him be.”

  That set the old dudes off on a vodka-perfumed yelling spree that included some choice words you don’t say to me in front of a pink ice cream parlor, especially when ma petite cheres and their nun-raised nannies are inside. I raised a fist, gently tapped one rocker on the forehead, then girl-slapped the other one. They wobbled then sat down on the pink marble sidewalk. “I warned you not to dis the pig,” I said.

  Their beefy chauffeur ran over. I tensed, but he stopped far enough away to bolt if I even crooked a finger. “Don’t pound me, too, man. I’m like you. Just a babysitter.”

  “I’m betting you don’t want cops nosing around your bosses and their stash.”

  “Not even within a hundred yards, man.”

  “Then get ‘em out of here.”

  He nodded and helped the old rockers to their feet. They mumbled and wobbled and held their heads, but let him lead them to the limo. Probably not worried about getting busted for drugs so much as having their fans find out they’d gotten their asses kicked in front of an ice cream parlor.

  I raised my fist and studied it as if it was a bad dog who’d run away from a good home. I’d spent nine years in prison deciding I had better answers than the five-knuckled salute, but when push came to shove I still shoved. Glorified babysitter. Frowning, I turned to find the pink scoopers staring my way, and not happily. They looked scared of me.

  Shrek oinked and drooled ice cream on my shoe.

  I was no hero.

  Not like Harper Vance.

  I stood there trying to look noble. The pink women weren’t fooled and sidled inside the little shop building with nervous twitters. A dull weight settled on me. Alone except for the pig, I hunched my shoulders and gazed up and down the sunny, convertible-friendly street, pretending to just watch the world go by.

  Except I really was watching the world go by me.

  On the patio television, the woman news anchor started talking about Harper Vance’s incredible personal story. His devoted wife…an extraordinary story of star-crossed childhood sweethearts…Southern beauty queen, Atlanta TV personality. . .by his side when he died an hour ago. “Heel, Sausage,” I said, and led Shrek toward the patio. I wanted to know what kind of woman had loved lawman Harper Vance since childhood, loved him and been devoted to him and his not-standard-issue methods for saving the world.

  “Grace Vance is one of the most popular morning hosts on Atlanta television. Over recent months she has refused to discuss her husband’s role in tracking the Turn-Key Bomber, saying that not only was the case very sensitive but that her husband was a very private man. Clearly, her husband was on her mind this morning. Around eight-thirty a.m. Atlanta time she was conducting a live interview
with former President Jimmy Carter.”

  The screen filled with a face.

  No. Not just any face. Her face. Grace.

  She was a big, classy redhead with a tough jaw and stop-your-heart green eyes. A dark pants suit and no jewelry looked like a trip to Paris on her. She had curves no model could abide and no man would turn down. She couldn’t quite hide the rich-girl drawl in her TV voice, and she talked with long, ballerina-farmgirl hands, waving and gesturing as if she was going to politely twist the old President into peanut-shell origami while she interviewed him. She didn’t look interested in what he had to say about world peace; she looked tired and worried and distracted. She knew something was going on out there beyond the camera, where her husband was cornering a killer to preserve the peace of a smaller world. But she was keeping it all to herself and doing her job, probably the way he’d want her to.

  Grace Vance. I had never seen her before in her life, but I recognized her.

  In prison a wise man spends his dark hours piecing together fantasies he can hope for—jobs, family, money, women. Those pieces are like days off for good behavior. They save your sanity. They give you a hand hold on the climb out of the pit that’s become your life. I’d had my image of a clean-spirited, kind, strong, smart woman who would say to me, “I’m here for you, and the past is all behind you, now.” She had been a soft idea like a kaleidoscope image I kept shifting without ever letting it click into focus. Now, it had.

  This stranger. Grace Vance. As simple as looking at a sunrise and knowing you’ll want to get up every morning to see it again.

  Suddenly, she stopped talking to President Carter. Stopped pretending she could concentrate as he spoke about his recent Nobel Prize. She touched the tiny speaker hidden in her ear, listening. Something broke behind her eyes.

  “I have to go, Mr. President,” she said. “I apologize, but I have a bad feeling my husband needs me.”

  “Surely. Go on, now, you just go,” the former President of these United States said. It’s always good to have a kindly old Leader of the Free World With A Nobel Prize in your corner.