Poison Flowers

by Nat Burns

  “And it did.”

  Dorry paused. “We had a little over a year together…she visited Francie often. Francie knew about our affair, I think, but she loved us both and didn’t care. She would have had to be deaf and blind not to see our joy and our affection. Then she got sick.”

  “What happened?”

  Dorry took a seat in a forest green Queen Anne chair next to the bar. She sat slumped with legs spread apart as if for support.

  “She got sick,” she repeated dully. “At first I—we—thought she was just not happy here, and I began making plans for her to return to Europe to her parents. But I knew something just wasn’t right. She ran persistent fevers and looked…she looked gray, sickly. Isabel came in and we took her to the doctor.”

  “The hospital?”

  “No, just Doc Hastings, here in town. He ran tests and sent us on to a specialist in Myrtle. And she never got better.”

  “So why did everything fall apart? How did the newspapers get involved? How did…?”

  Dorry sighed and sat up straighter in her chair. Gulls called outside, the sound mournful.

  “Isabel and I were stupid. We always slept together when she was here and we especially needed one another during that time for comfort. Nicky seldom came here because he was so tied up in his business. When he did he always phoned first. He didn’t one time while Little Bit was under treatment and he’d been over to the hospital. He found us sleeping like two peas in a pod. Naked.”

  “Oh, my God,” Marya murmured.

  Dorry nodded agreement. “It seemed as though the earth had cracked wide open. Isabel’s new pain terrified me, alienated me, and I realized how stupid I’d been to let myself get involved with her. Now all four lives were destroyed.”

  “And that’s why he brought the charges against you?”

  “Mmhmm, that’s why.” She lifted her drink, found it empty and absently held it in her lap.

  “But it doesn’t make sense. Why would he accuse you and Francie of being together when it was actually you and Isabel?”

  “I wondered that at the time. I found out later that he hadn’t said anything at all about her lifestyle and about Isabel and me. That came from someone else, an ‘anonymous tip’ delivered to Ed at the paper. I’ve always wondered who hated me enough to betray me that way.”

  She paused and watched Marya. “I’ve thought it was Isabel, as a way of assuaging her own guilt. At times I’ve thought it was Ed, just voicing something he suspected. I don’t think Nicky would have said that about his daughter. Not like that.”

  “Why didn’t you say something? Defend Francie?”

  Dorry’s smile tugged at Marya’s heart. “Why? Why feed the monster? Little Bit was gone; papers were selling like mad. I couldn’t care about anything at that point.”

  Marya understood how it must have been during that time and compassion welled in her. She wanted to touch Dorry, smooth her arm and let her know it would be all right. She could only sit there, a stone trapped full of swirling emotion.

  “So, that’s my story. If you want to write it, go ahead. The old ghosts won’t stir and media sensations are even more short-lived now than they were then. I don’t much care.”

  They sat then in a rocky but amicable peace and watched the candles that flickered around them. The house of sadness lent quiet to the night, Marya savored it before returning to the world of reality pressing in from outside. She reached into her pocket and drew forth the bracelet she’d found in the bedroom of the cottage. She rose and moved next to Dorry’s chair.

  “This was in my bedroom. Did you leave it there?”

  Dorry squinted at the bracelet, setting aside her empty glass so she could take it from Marya. “My God, I haven’t worn that since college,” she muttered. “Where’d you get it?”

  “I told you, from the bedroom, at the cottage. It was left in my bed.”

  Dorry looked up at Marya, eyes darkened by shadow. She reached out one hand and rested it against Marya’s denim-clad flank. The heat of her palm sent electric lacings throughout Marya’s body. She stiffened. Dorry continued to stroke her outer thigh, moving her palm slowly up and down. If she didn’t stop, Marya was going to swoon.

  “I didn’t leave it there, Marya. And you need to go now.”

  Dorry took her hand away from Marya’s leg and lifted it to her mouth as if quietly scolding it for its presumptuousness.

  Marya walked to the door, moving through a thick jelly of desire. She wanted to get away as badly as she wanted to press her body against Dorry’s. She needed to figure out what was going on, to ponder these feelings. Never before had she felt them this powerfully.

  Marya closed the door behind her and, buffeted by sea wind, made her way across the sand. Once home, she stripped to T-shirt and panties and sprawled across the bed. She regretted returning the bracelet, no longer able to fondle it in lieu of Dorry as she drifted toward sleep. What had driven Dorry to touch her? Did she too feel the attraction?

  She lay still, listening to the ocean noises—the clank of a buoy bell at the end of the cove, the sound of the wind tickling the treetops into dance, the knock of her hanging flowerpots as they swept the porch uprights—willing them to lull her to sleep. As she did, a new sound registered, the cautious creak of a step on sand. It was repeated, making slow, careful progress toward the house. Her heart leapt in her chest. Who was out there?

  She rose and made her way to the bedroom doorway. She had drawn the curtains earlier so she could not see beyond the windows. She could no longer hear the footsteps either; her heart was beating too loudly to make them out. Cursing roundly to herself, she used every technique she had learned from the martial art, calming herself until she could hear the stealthy footsteps again. She started when the porch step creaked under someone’s weight.

  Whoever it was seemed to be intent on coming in for a visit.

  Scanning the room for a weapon, Marya settled upon a heavy wooden candlestick. Plucking it from the kitchen table, she hoisted it high. She waited a long beat but nothing happened. Had he gone away? She moved toward the door, still wielding the candlestick, swallowed her heart and flung the door wide.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  I hated Lucy. I hated the way she teased me. She said I could hope all day to be pretty like her but that it would never happen. She said I was ugly and smelled bad and that no one would ever want me.

  “What are you doing?” Mama asked as she poked her head around my bedroom door.

  “Studying,” I told her, holding up the oversized blue manual as if in proof.

  “You should do well,” she said with a nod of her head. Her hair was wrapped around a dozen curlers, and she had on her glasses so I knew she’d been reading even though I’d heard the television droning earlier. “I’m off to bed. Work tomorrow.”

  “Goodnight, Mama. Sleep well,” I said dutifully.

  She studied me with her dark, weighing eyes. “Don’t stay up too late, hear?”

  “Okay, I won’t.”

  Her thoughtful gazes had been making me uncomfortable lately. It’s like she was weighing possibilities. Was it about me? Whether or not she should continue to let me live here with her? It had worked well all these years. It’s not like she could abandon me in the woods again. The way she had done when I was little.

  She closed my door, and I heard the squeal of her bedroom door as she closed it as well.

  “Don’t stay up too late,” I mimicked, then grinned. I knew what I was going to do. I was gonna be up very, very late.

  After a couple of infuriatingly long hours had passed, I raised my window and slid through it one leg at a time, taking it slow so that I made no sound at all. I left the window open for later and crept along the wall, away from Mama’s bedroom. She was a light sleeper so I had to be careful.

  Once out on the road, I was able to get some speed up, veering off to the left after about a quarter mile of fast walking. I knew this shortcut well.

  Before, w
hen I still liked Lucy, I had gone over there almost every day after school, plus lots of Saturdays. Most of the time when I was getting there she was just getting up from a long night at the lounge. Mama never cared if I went there as long as I was home for dinner and never said anything about her and who she is. Not that Lucy would have cared.

  I did have to make up a big lie about who my daddy was because Lucy asked about that a lot in the beginning. Guess she wanted to see if she’d slept with him yet. I said he was an astronaut down at Cape Canaveral. That way I could just say my mama was a stay-at-home wife, another lie but it was one that had shut that nosy Lucy up.

  Nosy Lucy. I was tired of her nosing in my life and then using what she found out to say rude things to me just to hurt my feelings.

  Lucy’s house loomed in the darkness. Luckily she had no dogs. The Grisham family’s hound two blocks over set in to baying, though. I guess he heard me even though I was trying to be as quiet as possible. It was also lucky that Lucy’s place was on a large lot with no neighbors close by who would see me.

  Lucy was probably drunk anyway and wouldn’t even hear me come into the house. I just hoped she didn’t have a man with her. I knew she often picked up losers from Smithy’s lounge then brought them home for sex. I’d done it once or twice myself which is how I met Lucy all those years ago.

  I crept to the dark side of the house where I’d be hidden from the streetlights on Lawson Avenue. I slowly, patiently rounded the two dark sides feeling each window. Just as I began to fear I’d have to break one, my hand found a screen that was loose over an open window.

  Carefully, ever so slowly, I used my fingers as soft pry bars to pull the screen from its frame. I lowered it to the ground and listened at the window. There was no sound. I closed my eyes, trying to remember which room this window let into. After a minute or two it came to me. It was the bathroom. This window was over the bathtub.

  Feeling a bit more confident that I wouldn’t be heard from the bedroom, I raised the window and lifted myself onto the wooden sill. I swung one leg over and levered my body over and into the bathtub. A plastic bottle fell with a muffled thud and rolled to and fro in the bottom of the tub. I waited for it to still before I moved again. All was still silent in the house, and I made no sound as I stepped from the tub and onto the pocked linoleum floor. I was worried about floor creaks so I stepped carefully into the hallway. I turned right and made my way into the bedroom.

  I could see that she was asleep by the glow of the night- light. She looked almost angelic lying there. I crept close and pushed my shoes off, then lifted the sheet and slid into the bed next to her. She didn’t move.

  I listened to her gentle snoring for a moment. Power filled me. She didn’t know I was there. I was in complete control of the situation.

  I turned to face her and caught the faint tang of alcohol on her breath. A man had been there recently; I could smell him on the sheets and on her.

  How should I wake her?

  She was wearing a sheer, very short nightgown. I touched its nylon softness, rubbing the fabric between my fingertips. One spaghetti strap had fallen to the side as she sprawled on her back and the rounded side of one breast gleamed in the dimness. I laid my palm against it, gently, softly. The sleepy warmth of her seeped into me, empowering me further. I teased one finger against the fabric covering that nipple. To my delight, it hardened beneath my touch.

  Lucy moaned and stirred so I stilled until she fell into slumber again. I smiled. I was not ugly. I was beautiful, just as beautiful as Lucy. And I could make her body respond to me. I slid my palm along her belly until I reached the end of the short nightgown. My hand found fur and dampness. I laughed silently. Yes, a man had been there.

  “Who was he?” I whispered. “Was it Roy? He’s always had the hots for you.”

  She didn’t answer, but I could sense her struggling toward wakefulness. I pressed my fingers against the fur and moved them, applying pressure. She moaned and turned toward me, a sleepy smile on her lips. I pressed my mouth to hers. She responded at first, wrapping one arm around my neck, keeping her eyes closed. At some point she must have sensed my difference for she began to push away. I held her as I laughed quietly.

  “No,” she said. “No, I don’t want that.”

  I pressed my fingers upward and they entered her easily.

  “Yes, yes, you do,” I said, even as I pushed harder.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Dorry stood on the porch, gazing into the trees where Denton’s body had been found. When Marya’s door flew wide, she turned and looked at her, eyes filled with pain.

  Marya suffered an onslaught of emotions then. Would Dorry hurt her? Was she the killer? She held the candlestick high, wondering if she could defend herself against the master. She was so powerful, so well trained. Did Marya stand a chance?

  Dorry looked at the candlestick and dropped her head to her chest, shaking it in disbelief. “I’ve never killed anyone, Marya. Never intend to, if I can help it. You, of all people, should know what I’m about, should feel it in your bones.”

  Marya studied Dorry and trusted her own inner knowledge. She dropped the candleholder to the floor, and it rolled noisily toward the table as if going home.

  “Dorry, I…”

  Dorry came toward her and Marya was in her arms. Dorry held her a long time, then pulled back so she could see her eyes.

  “Chemistry?” she asked, her gaze both tender and compelling.

  “Chemistry,” Marya answered.

  Their first kiss would never leave her. Dorry’s lips branded Marya hers as surely as any commitment ceremony would ever do. Marya found herself pulled into her, her goodness and sweetness, and the coldness of their past relationship evaporated into so much ocean spray.

  Marya pulled back to study Dorry with amazement. Perhaps, as the poet Keats had so aptly put it, there was richest juice in this poison flower. Dorry kissed her again and they were inside the cottage, door closed to the night outside. The kiss lasted another lingering eternity and she found herself transported. Dorry’s sinuous lips and tongue nibbled at Marya’s, possessing, releasing, possessing, releasing in a sensual ebb and flow.

  Her body began to ache, her limbs grew heavy and sluggish as they swelled with the blood of desire.

  Dorry’s lips left hers, breath moist and fragrant across Marya’s skin. They followed a languorous sampling course, tasting her cheeks, her throat, her ear—knowing just the right feather touch whisper Marya needed there—before conquering Marya’s lips again. The sudden possession caused a deep throbbing—a persistent drumbeat—in the center of her being. Moisture welled and her thighs dampened as she pressed them together.

  “Oh, Dorry, what’s happening?” she asked in a murmur. She’d never experienced such arousal.

  “What is it, what’s wrong?” Dorry searched her face with a worried gaze.

  “I feel…here,” Marya let one hand slide across her lower belly.

  “You feel what? Desire? Need? Do you want me?”

  “Oh yes, all of that,” she answered.

  “Then have me, baby. Don’t be afraid. I’m yours.” Passion trembled in Dorry’s voice.

  Their eyes met in the dimness, Dorry’s deepening with that ardent energy Marya was becoming so familiar with, and she leapt to return Dorry’s insistent kisses. Prompted by the fire in her body, she slid her hands along Dorry’s solid waist and up to her breasts. Allowed at last to heft their marvelous weight and softness, she was delirious with gratitude. She closed her eyes, focusing on the sensation.

  Dorry touched her, under her shirt, hot palms trailing a fiery essence along her skin. Breath hitched in Dorry’s throat and she trembled as her hands reached higher, finding Marya’s nipples erect and needy. Marya lifted apologetic eyes but found Dorry’s gaze steady into hers, demanding. She quaked inside as the lightning in those eyes roused an ionic storm within her. She began to change subtly, her own need rising and taking her over as Dorry’s hands cares
sed her skin. Dorry knew her, knew what she needed, what she wanted. She could read her. Marya had realized, at last, the intricate intimacy she had been craving from a lover. It was here, in Dorry’s full understanding of her need.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Her body entwined with the strong one next to her, Marya listened to the gentle pull of Dorry’s breath. It matched the ocean sighing outside. Dorry’s face was lovely in sleep—more serene than she’d ever seen it. The pale blue sheet draped across her like sky across clouds. Marya reached to run one fingertip across a crease pulled taut across one breast.

  “That feels nice,” Dorry said, startling Marya.

  “You’re awake,” Marya told her unnecessarily.

  Eyes of cornflower blue found and studied her, searching for signs of damage or regret, Marya supposed, or perhaps acceptance. She smiled to show Dorry the way it was.

  Dorry pressed heated lips to Marya’s forehead.

  “Dorry, last night…I can’t begin to tell you…”

  “The sex is good and this thing between us is even better.”

  Marya blushed at the candor. “Well, for me, yes.”

  Dorry smiled and Marya could see a delicious sense of contentment in her. “And me, as well. I am totally smitten with you and that’s that. I tried not to fall head over heels because I like my life simple and this is complicated.”

  Marya mused over the words, realizing she understood what Dorry meant. Relationships implied complication. Two instead of one. Endless compromise and adjustment. But wasn’t that what she had been seeking?

  “I can’t pinpoint what it is that draws me to you,” Marya said finally. “It seems I wait for the days I’ll see you, whether at class or the way you keep popping up in my life. At first I was annoyed, but now I’m eager for any glimpse of you. Being in your bed is like prayer.”