Sugar Run: A Novel

by Mesha Maren

  “I was messed up in the head,” Jodi said. “I didn’t mean to.”

  Her words hung there, weak and ugly, and Jodi felt suddenly angry that Miranda had forced her to say them.

  “Your boys were playing with a copperhead snake,” she said, opening her eyes.

  “What?” Miranda sat up straight. “Wait, what happened?”

  “Farren killed it. But you left those boys here alone. They could have been bit.”

  “I was only gone for a minute,” Miranda said. “They were playing out back with Ricky when Justin come by and I was only gonna be gone . . .” She held her hands up in front of her face and stared at them, brought her index finger to her lips and licked it, then inspected it again. “I was only gonna be gone for a minute.”

  “You abandoned them before?” Jodi said. She knew that if she took hold of the conversation now and steered it right, they wouldn’t have to talk about Paula again. “That’s how come Lee didn’t want you near them?”

  Miranda was still sweating despite the cool wind, her hair plastered to her forehead.

  “What else was I supposed to do?” Her eyes were wild with emotion. “After we left Nina’s it was just me and them in the hotel room and I had to leave them there when I went to work.” She stuck her fingers in her mouth, then took them out and kept talking. “I guess they got tired of waiting for me. I guess maybe they run out of snacks. Donnie pulled the TV down off the stand and busted it. I’d told Kaleb to keep the door locked so nobody would come and hurt them.” Miranda took a deep breath. “I told him never to open that door, so he climbed out a window on the second floor.”

  She started crying then, big ferocious sobs, and Jodi gathered her in her arms, rocking gently. She could hear the wind in the grass and the motor of a car wending away somewhere down the mountain.

  June 1989

  If Jodi closes her left eye the stripper girl disappears. But when she blinks the girl is there again, in the corner near the bathroom, leaned up against that folding contraption that’s supposed to hold your suitcase. They don’t have suitcases. The girl’s got nothing but her minidress and six-and-a-half-inch heels. Paula and Jodi have everything they need in a ratty orange Mexican carpetbag.

  The girl tucks her head down into her arms, and her shoulders shake. She cries in a practiced, showy sort of way and when she pulls her knees up to her chest the triangle of her pink panties is visible between her legs. Jodi leans back against the plywood headboard and runs her finger down the barrel of her .38. The girl’s been cooperative the whole time and she hasn’t had to hold the pistol on her since they jumped her, out back of the Crystal Club, but she likes to keep it out to remind her that this is serious.

  Paula scoots down to the end of the bed and leans toward the girl.

  “Look, honey, we ain’t gonna hurt you,” she says. “As soon as Jonno’s ready to make the drop, this’ll all be over.”

  The room is dim and crowded, rust-colored carpet, a nicotine-yellow lamp and wallpaper with big purple flowers blooming like mildew stains all across the walls. Paula improvised a trash can cooler beside the bed for their beers. It leaks slowly, making a wet trail toward the TV where a muted Roseanne Barr waddles back and forth, mouthing off silently.

  “Aren’t we supposed to be the ones who call the shots?” Jodi says, looking at Paula’s hunched back. “Aren’t we supposed to tell Jonno when to make the drop?”

  Paula doesn’t move, doesn’t say anything, just keeps staring into the corner at the girl’s tousled blonde head with brown roots showing through. It was supposed to go fast, just one-two-three: grab the girl, call the guy, trade, and go.

  Jodi wipes the pistol with the edge of her daisy-print tank top until it shines in the dull lamplight. “Aren’t we supposed to threaten he’ll never see his favorite little stripper ever again?”

  The girl’s head jerks up. Her eyes are dry, eyebrows arched like thick spider legs. “Dancer,” she says. “I’m a dancer.”

  Paula stands and walks into the bathroom, cigarette smoke trailing behind.

  “You might as well just fucking call him up and tell him where we are,” Jodi says. “Tell him not to worry about paying us, just come on over to the Mariann Motel and blow our brains out.”

  “Jodi, get in here,” Paula hollers in her best gruff-husband voice.

  The girl has her head tucked down in her arms again. Jodi unplugs the phone and carries it with her, pistol in one hand, phone in the other. The bathroom smells heavily of piss and sulfur water. She sets the phone down on the cracked counter beside the sink.

  “What the fuck did you bring that in here for?” Paula’s got her face all scrunched up, blue eyes angry, mouth like a pink bruise.

  “Are you fucking serious?” Jodi kicks the door halfway closed.

  The fluorescent light makes a constant buzz. Taking Paula’s cigarette, she places it between her lips, inhales and blows out a stream of smoke and tequila breath. She never did think this hostage thing was a good idea. Paula plays it cool but Jodi sees the tremor behind the hard jaw. They need to get Ricky away from Dylan and once they do that, Paula insists, they’re going to need more money than she can make at the card tables.

  Jodi drops the cigarette into the toilet bowl and they both watch it bob.

  “Paula,” she hisses, beginning to feel now the shiny softness of the Seconal she swallowed with her last beer. “That girl’s a stripper but she’s not stupid. She—”

  “Dancer.” The girl’s voice floats in. “I’m a dancer.”

  Paula and Jodi lock eyes. Jodi reaches up to smack the smile off Paula’s face but Paula grabs her wrist, pins it to the counter, and whispers, “Shut the fuck up.” She leans close, hip grinding into Jodi’s crotch. “You hold the gun. That’s all you gotta do, baby, I got the rest.”

  They move out into the room, Paula’s arm around Jodi’s shoulders, a united front. Jodi holds the gun out toward the stripper but the girl’s not even looking so she settles onto the bed and turns up the volume on the TV. So first, Roseanne says, you gotta get rid of all the stuff his mom did to him. And then you gotta get rid of all that macho crap that they pick up from beer commercials.

  Paula bends to plug the phone back in and the soft mounds of her hips show over the hem of her jeans. The Seconal shimmers in Jodi’s veins and she reaches out and wraps her arm around Paula’s waist. She pulls her toward the bed but Paula pushes her hand away. Touching is always on Paula’s terms. She flips up Jodi’s skirt, rips off her top anytime she likes, but in the ten months she’s known her Jodi’s never seen Paula all naked.

  “I gotta go pee,” the girl says, and Jodi jumps up, her legs faltering under her, knees bending together. She pulls herself straight. “All right,” she says, nodding toward the bathroom and holding the pistol out, admiring how, with the gun in her hands, her arms seem so strong and tight.

  Paula says calm down but Jodi’s having fun. The girl hovers over the toilet seat, her little pussy shaved bare, a lollipop inked on her skinny thigh. Away from the stage lights she’s not all that pretty, not even that young.

  Jodi marches her back to her corner.

  “You want a beer, baby?” Paula waves the gun aside and passes Jodi a Budweiser. She lights her a cigarette and the room is warm again, glowing with the fact that everything is going to be all right. Settling back on the bed, Jodi closes her eyes and exhales a thin stream of smoke up toward the ceiling.

  “What about you, honey? You want one too?” Paula walks over to the girl.

  Jodi turns to watch Paula. “We don’t have that many beers,” she says. “I don’t want you sharing with that fucking stripper.”

  “Shut up,” Paula says.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, I mean dancer.”

  The girl glances past Paula and her eyes jolt Jodi. Raccoon ringed with makeup but solid and unafraid. Jodi lifts the pistol, cocks it.

  “Don’t fucking look at me,” she says.

  Roseanne goes off and Jodi flips past Married w
ith Children, animals in Africa, a Mexican soap opera, and then there’s that song—far through the heart—and the Gemini on some bright stage, Lee Golden up front with his white jeans and gold guitar—Our land, our land is far through the heart of this snow. . . .

  “Paula,” Jodi calls. It’s their song but Paula is in the bathroom again, fixing up a shot.

  Jodi wakes to laughter in a dark room. She surfaces out of dreams of mountains, wet green ridges under banks of morning clouds, and the lamp beside the bed is off, the clock blinking 4:43 a.m. Over the hum of the TV talk-show host Jodi hears bubbling laughter and through the half-closed bathroom door a path of light spills across the floor.

  She sits there, blinking and staring at that light, trying to unscramble the events of the past few hours. At some point she remembers the beers were gone and she felt drowsy and had fixed herself a little wakeup shot just to keep alert but then she and Paula were arguing, Paula telling her she was too amped and anxious, and so she’d swallowed a few more of those little red dream-time pills.

  “Paula?” Her sleep-soaked voice barely cracks a whisper.

  In the sheets she finds the pistol, cocks it, and crosses the carpet. There in the bathroom mirror, she sees skin. The shower is running and the girl is naked, blonde hair frizzed out wildly and her ass beautifully firm. Pinned between her and the wall is Paula.

  The buzz of the fluorescent light mixes with the hiss of the shower and scratches around inside Jodi’s brain.

  “Come on,” the girl says. “Didn’t your mama ever tell you? You gotta take your clothes off to get in the shower.”

  Paula laughs. The laughter is Paula’s. Paula is the laughter.

  Jodi strains to turn up the noise in her brain. The buzzing has morphed into shaking now. Cold. It’s cold in there. The air conditioner chugs and Jodi tries to concentrate on the hiss, tick, buzz but the girl’s voice slices right through.

  “Here, I’ll help you.”

  She reaches for the top button on Paula’s shirt. Jodi grips the pistol. There’s not enough air. Pepto-Bismol pink nails fumble open the button on Paula’s shirt. Glossy nails on button number two and Paula puts her hand on the girl’s ass, fingers resting on the brown mole right there above the crack. Buttons three and four fall open and the girl looks up at Paula’s face. Jodi raises the pistol; she needs to feel that taut-arm strength again. She remembers the look on Paula’s face the night they were supposed to rescue Ricky, the vacant stare and promises of soon, soon, soon.

  The fluorescent light keeps on buzzing, bouncing bright. The girl bends to unbuckle Paula’s belt and her ass jiggles. Paula looks at the reflection of that ass in the mirror. Her eyes move up to the door. She sees Jodi there. She tilts her head back. She smiles, those full, dark lips opening wide. Jodi’s heartbeat thrums up and she’s not cold anymore, not shaking. She’s not there. She stares straight into Paula’s mouth and pulls the trigger.

  September 2007

  The backseat of the Chevette was loaded with groceries but Miranda could not go back to the cabin. Not yet. She circled the IGA parking lot slowly, the heat crackling up from the pavement in great waves. It was September but still so hot. She couldn’t sleep at night; no electricity at the cabin obviously meant no air-conditioning, no fan, nothing to stir the heat. She couldn’t stand that unbroken heat. She’d lie there in bed with this heavy panic, a feeling like she was on a bus going who the hell knows where and had missed her stop long ago but just gone on pretending everything was okay.

  Lately she’d taken on extra shifts at the bar, working almost every night now, and afterward she drove down the river past little clusters of trailers and then on beyond into the deep woods. She arrived back at the cabin at dawn, exhausted and anxious, and crashed there, restless in the bed for a few hours, the boys’ voices scratching into her thin sleep.

  She’d lost weight too, she thought, looking down at the sagging skin on her legs. She fidgeted, slowed the car, and lit a new cigarette, then circled the parking lot again. Back beyond the loading dock a field opened up, a swath of brittle grass and a cluster of trees. In the shade a group of cattle stood dumbly waiting. Everywhere she looked there was this heavy waiting.

  She pitched her cigarette and cut the wheel sharply; a gallon of milk slid off the backseat and bounced onto the floor. She pictured the milk spilling up under the seat but did not stop to check.

  It was hot inside Slattery’s Girl, dry and yeasty smelling but comfortingly dark. She’d been told never to come here during off hours but she had a key and the bar had a phone.

  She poured herself a glass of whiskey, drained it, and poured another. She took the phone from its cradle and watched her fingers as they punched those familiar numbers.

  The phone was ringing.

  Miranda paced the bar.

  It was twenty-three steps one way but always twenty-four steps on the way back. She let her mind play with the curiousness of that fact while the phone rang. Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, she reached for her drink.

  “Yeah?”

  That voice.

  “Hello?”

  Miranda heard herself laughing.

  “Lee, it’s me.”

  She lowered herself to the floor.

  “Miranda, baby.”

  She lay down across the dusty floor and balanced her glass of whiskey on her stomach. “Lee.”

  “He found you?”

  “I’m tired Lee, I—”

  “Where’d he find you?”

  “I, I’ve got . . .” She closed her eyes to try to make the words come out right. “I mean, I came down to town to get groceries.”

  “Valez finally fucking found you. I sent him looking for you like—”

  “No, I want you to find me.”

  She was crying.

  “I’m tired, Lee, I’m tired all the time. I need to come home.”

  The glass of whiskey was rocking, sloshing in great waves inside the little glass while her body shook.

  “Hey, stay with me, baby.”

  “I’m here,” she said. His voice was coming out of the phone and mixing in with her own and in it she heard a solidness. In their fucked-upness they completed each other, she thought. Alone they were both too wobbly but together they could balance each other out.

  “Just keep talking to me, baby, tell me more,” he said. “Where are you? I’ll be there, just keep talking to me.”

  Lynn’s garden was draped in gauzy silk, the bushes cocooned in white and strips of chiffon dangling from the trees. The lawn was bustling with uniformed women carrying silver chafing dishes and men unfolding long wooden tables.

  Jodi wandered into the house and found Lynn in the living room, bent over the floor. Sharp dashes of light leapt up as she moved and it took Jodi a moment to realize that she was picking up pieces of a fractured mirror.

  “I can’t decide,” she said, holding up a palm-size fragment. “I love the idea but I don’t want to go too rococo.”

  Jodi shivered at the sight of the broken mirror and its cold, watery light.

  “Besides, how would we hang them? Drill little holes? Wrap the whole piece in wire?” She turned and looked at Jodi. “It’s too much, probably, right?” She stood and walked over to the far side of the room. She held the mirror fragment and the light followed her, bouncing out of her hand. “I always like preparing for a party better than I like the party itself.”

  She wore a feathery dress, long in the back and short in the front, layers of cream and white under a thin top shift of deep blue. Her black shoes were high and blocky, all sharp angles in contrast to the frothy dress.

  “Sit down,” she said, setting the piece of mirror on the mantel and picking up a white-and-gold pack of cigarettes.

  Jodi did not move.

  “What’s wrong?” Lynn held out her hand.

  Jodi let Lynn lead her over to a long white couch. They settled into the cushions, Lynn’s leg pressed close, her skirt spilling over onto Jodi’s lap. Her cigarette smelled like ci
nnamon.

  “I have a gift for you,” she said, and from the bosom of her dress she retrieved a tiny metal box that sprang open to reveal six pills. “Have one.”

  Jodi shook her head and reached into her own pocket for her cigarettes. “What are they?”

  Lynn smiled. “Part of the experience.”

  Jodi laughed and lit her Marlboro but then reached out and took a pill. A small blue circle with a tiny crown printed on one side.

  Lynn slipped off her shoes and leaned back. She pressed her bare feet up against Jodi’s leg and her dress shifted around her with a shushing sound. There was a breeze coming in through the windows and it played with the edges of the thin fabric, lifting it up to expose her white-blue thigh.

  “They’re sweet kids?” Lynn said. “Your girlfriend’s boys?”

  Jodi looked away. She set the blue pill carefully on the back of her tongue and swallowed. “Your party’s starting.” She pointed out toward the garden, which had begun to fill with guests.

  “It’s good to make them wait,” Lynn said. “And besides, I really actually hate parties.” Jodi looked back at her and Lynn smiled. “You’re surprised?” she said. “You keep insisting that we’re so different but I don’t think so really. I mean, these parties are useful but it’s not like I enjoy hanging out with those people.” She waved her hand at the glass doors.

  In the garden the men pumped one another’s hands and smiled broadly while the women hung together in small herds, the heels of their shoes sinking into the soft earth.

  “Sometime I’d like to have a whole party and never join,” Lynn said. “Just watch from in here. Watch them being watched. A panopticon party.”

  Jodi thought to say something but then it seemed unnecessary. She felt a liquid building, a rush that started in the deepest part of her and reached out in a glittering sheet to the edges of her body. A bell was ringing somewhere and the rhythm of it matched her ripples of pleasure.

  “I’m in the mood for white,” Lynn said, standing and floating across the room toward the bar.