Running From Mercy

by Terra Little

  Pam drove up a few minutes later, spotted him through the window, and came inside. From behind her dark glasses she took in the smattering of old men seated at the counter, then angled her head so she could peruse the filled booths. Amused, Miles lifted a hand and beckoned her over to the table.

  “Were you looking for the paparazzi?” he joked as she slid into the booth across from him. A wry smile touched Pam’s lips. She plucked the glasses off her nose and dropped them inside the Cavalli tote she carried. “I don’t care about the press. I’m used to them. I was checking to make sure the coast was clear of certain townsfolk, who I don’t really want to see and who shall remain nameless.”

  “How can you get onstage and entertain a hundred thousand people without breaking a sweat and be afraid of a few harmless old folks?”

  “Afraid is a strong word, and I know plenty of old folks who aren’t all that harmless. Hello, Peaches,” she looked up as a waitress approached their table.

  “Hey, Pam.” Peaches was a short, pleasingly plump woman with a wide smile and mischievous eyes. She and Pam had hung around together for a few months during their sophomore years in high school, before Peaches had gotten pregnant and been forced to slow down. She had six kids now. “How you doing?”

  “I’m good. Today anyway. How’s them babies?”

  At the mention of her children Peaches brightened considerably. “Shoot, the oldest is damn near grown now and the baby is eleven, so they ain’t babies no more, thank goodness. They’re good, though. You know I hated to hear about Paris.”

  “Thanks.” She remembered Miles and motioned across the table in his direction.

  “You remember Miss Moira, Peach? This is her stepson, David. He says he’s in here all the time.”

  “He sure is. You want the sourdough melt with homefries, right?” Her pen was poised to scribble.

  “Right,” Miles said, smiling. She scribbled his order down and turned to Pam expectantly.

  “Does Willie still do that patty melt on marble rye with the Irish potatoes?”

  “Sure does, but I thought I read somewhere that you was a vegetarian?”

  “That story was in the same rag that reported finding Martians living in the White House, Peach. You know better than that. There probably are a few little green men hiding in the bowels of our nation’s capitol, but you know I need my burger fix.”

  “So you really didn’t marry that African man so he could stay in the country?”

  Pam cringed good-naturedly. Miles thought she did an admirable job of covering her irritation. “The African guy was a musician. He did the track for one of my songs, and his wife and I were pleased with the results. A lot of that shit they print is lies.”

  “Oh,” Peaches looked stumped for a moment. Then she grinned. “I don’t suppose I could get an autograph for my daughter, could I? She loves your new CD.”

  “I’d love to Peach, but I may not be able to keep my hand steady long enough to write. I’m starting to shake from lack of sustenance. Help a sista out and bring me some food, huh? I’ll sign whatever you want me to sign, just please feed me.”

  Miles watched Peaches move away, then folded his hands on the table. “So what was the real deal with the music producer?” He was referring to another one of the rampant rumors in which Pam had been featured. This one, he knew, had a little more truth to it than most, but he wanted to gauge her reaction.

  “Not you too, David? I’m supposed to be hiding out here.”

  “From the mean old folks?”

  “Them and the press. Between the two extremes, I don’t know which is worse.”

  “Which reminds me. Melva Howard still thinks you were the ruination of her son. Junebug, I believe she said his name was.”

  A while later, Pam picked up the water glass Peaches set in front of her and took a sip. Done mulling over the accusation, she said, “Gregory Howard was gay long before I got hold to him. All I did was encourage him to be who he really was. It’s not my fault he’s a male stripper now, is it? Hell, he looks better in full makeup than I do, and he was the one who taught me how to use liquid eyeliner.” Melva Howard was full of shit.

  His eyes skimmed her freshly scrubbed face lightly. “I just thought you should know what they were saying in the beauty salon before you went to get a haircut or something and got blindsided.”

  “Melva Howard can be the first in line to kiss my ass. What were you doing in the beauty salon anyway?”

  “Picking Moira up. I borrowed one of your CDs from her and listened to it last night,” he told her. Peaches brought their food and he dumped a mound of ketchup on a corner of his plate, soaked a fry. “I was pleasantly surprised.”

  “Moira has one of my CDs?” Moira was every bit of seventy-five, if she was a day.

  “All six of them, and I think a poster or two.”

  “Hmm. And you turned off your classical music long enough to listen to my stuff?” She picked up half of her sandwich, took a big bite, and chewed slowly. Nobody did a burger like Willie. Here was another thing she had truly missed in all her years away.

  “Yes, I did. Why does that surprise you? Almost half of your fan base is non-black and your music consistently crosses over. Did you notice that trend starting before or after your torrid love affair with Jose Marillo?”

  “After,” Pam blurted out. She immediately realized what she’d said and closed her eyes for the space of three seconds. Jose was the music producer he’d asked about earlier, the one who was also married with four children. Just as he had been ten years ago, when he and Pam began working together.

  Pam concentrated on eating her food, taking reasonably sized bites and chewing thoroughly before swallowing. “I didn’t mean for that to come out,” she said after a while.

  “It’s not like the press didn’t have an inkling,” Miles said, wanting to put her at ease. Besides the fact that he needed to keep her talking, the haunted look in her eyes made him uneasy. “You haven’t scandalized me.”

  “If you know anything about me, you know I neither confirm nor deny any of the silly rumors that circulate from time to time about me.”

  “You hardly talk to the press at all.”

  “Exactly, and there’s a reason for that.”

  “Which is?” He looked at her steadily.

  “I don’t have anything to say to them. My life is my own, and I’d just as soon not have the world know everything there is to know. Just because I sing a song and you like it enough to buy it, does that mean you have the right to know everything about me?”

  “I wouldn’t say so, no.”

  He wiped his mouth with a napkin and processed what he’d confirmed so far. The affair with Jose Marillo was true, and he knew he could pull together at least a chapter’s worth of information on that subject alone. Marillo was a hit maker, savvy and powerful, and he recalled the man’s vehement denials of an affair with Pam, saying that they were just good friends and industry associates. Miles hadn’t believed it for a minute, and he was more than a little satisfied that his instincts were on the mark. Marillo and Pam had worked together on three of her albums over a six-year period, and Miles was willing to bet their affair had lasted just as long.

  “I read somewhere that your favorite dessert is banana pudding,” he teased her. Something in the set of her shoulders warned him not to ask any more questions.

  “That’s probably one of the few things you read about me that’s actually true. Willie makes the best banana pudding this side of the Mason Dixon.”

  “That’s what I know. You want to split some with me?”

  “No, but you can order your own,” Pam said, pushing her plate away and smiling at him. “Some things I won’t share, and banana pudding is one of them.”

  SEVEN

  Pam parted ways with Miles outside the diner and set off on foot toward Holmes Funeral Home. She hadn’t seen or talked to Jasper since the night before Paris’s funeral, and she had a sudden inspiration to visit him. A few t
imes over the years she had called him. Other times she’d written him short notes and mailed them or sent him a postcard from wherever she was vacationing at the time. He’d never written back, but she hadn’t needed him to. It was enough that he knew she was thinking of him, which was usually the extent of her notes. Doing okay. Thinking of you. Love, Pam.

  A blast of cool air greeted her as she walked into the home and she lifted her hair off the back of her neck to cool the skin there as she made her way to his office. She found him sitting behind his desk, feet propped up on a corner and a newspaper spread open in front of his face. A smile curved her lips.

  “Don’t you have some work to do, old man?”

  The paper lowered slowly and his eyebrows shot up.

  “Just got done tussling with Wilma Thomas. Even in death that woman won’t cooperate. Got her in the back. You want to take a look at her?”

  “I don’t think so. She’d probably rise from the dead just to point a shaky finger at me and call me a whore.” She left the doorway and dropped into a seat on the couch against the wall. “She finally keeled over, huh?”

  “The good Lord couldn’t put off taking her home any longer and not have a good excuse,” Jasper said dryly. “Got some hogshead cheese and some crackers in the refrigerator upstairs.”

  “And that’s where it’s going to stay, too. Nobody eats that shit but you. A beer would go down good though.”

  He dropped his feet to the floor and came to a sitting position as he folded the paper. “Got that in the refrigerator right next door,” he said and left the office. A few minutes later, he returned with two bottles and handed Pam one on his way back to his desk. “Saw you racing around town with Nikki earlier in the week.”

  “Uhhmm. She needs the distraction. I do too, come to think of it.”

  “And what about Chad? How’s he doing?”

  “Okay, I guess. I’ve been avoiding going over there to see for myself, but I have to go today. After I leave here, as a matter of fact.” She tipped the bottle up and took a long drink. “Can’t put it off any longer.”

  “Been what, two weeks?”

  “Since Paris died, yeah. Chad wants me to help him go through her things.” She looked at the floor, then brought her eyes back to Jasper’s face. “I don’t want to.” She set her beer on the floor by her feet and fished around in her bag for her cigarettes, lit one. “Packing up her stuff makes everything real.”

  “It’s real whether you pack up her stuff or not. How come you ain’t been over to the house before today?” Bushy brows rose toward the ceiling as he leveled a serious look at her.

  “I go by and pick up Nikki.” She caught his look and didn’t pretend not to know what it meant. “Hell, Jasper, you know why.”

  Jasper knew what a lot of people didn’t know, and his question was loaded with the knowledge. For Pam, it wasn’t as simple as going to the house where her sister had once lived, though that was part of it. Her reasons for keeping her distance had more to do with what the house represented and who was still there.

  “Seems to me the time for running is long gone, Pam. You gotta go over there and help your sister’s husband pack her stuff up, whether you want to or not.” Jasper swallowed the last of his beer and set the bottle on his desk with a click. “You might as well go through all that other shit and pack it up too, while you at it.”

  “Can I come here and hide out if things get ugly?”

  “Hell, you used to come here and do everything else, I don’t see why not.” The startled expression on her face had him throwing his head back and cackling with laughter before he could catch himself.

  “Where’s Nikki?”

  “She went over to a friend’s house.” Chad closed the door and locked it. “She didn’t want to be here. I’m supposed to call her after we’re done.”

  Except for a dim light in the kitchen, the house was dark. Pam’s eyes darted around nervously, looking for some place to land other than on his face. He was still dressed for work in khakis and a navy blazer. Underneath it an oxford cloth shirt was unbuttoned far enough to reveal the neckline of his undershirt. He looked tired.

  “Long day?”

  “It’s about to get longer. You sure you can do this?” He took his glasses off and swiped the back of his hand across the bridge of his nose.

  “You don’t think it’s too soon?”

  “Is there a timetable?”

  “Isn’t there?” she snapped, meeting his eyes, then looking away again.

  He took a long time looking at her, silently willing her eyes to stop skipping around and stay on his and slightly angered that she wouldn’t let them. When his fingers itched to reach out and touch her, he smoothed them over his head instead. “I didn’t buy the handbook for this kind of thing, Pam. But somehow I don’t think maintaining a shrine will help either.”

  “What if I can’t do it?”

  “Just do what you can do, okay?”

  She followed him up the stairs on stiff legs and crossed the threshold into the first bedroom on the left, the one Chad gestured to wearily as he continued down the hallway. From the doorway, she watched his back until it disappeared from sight and then felt along the wall for the light switch. Both nightstand lamps flickered on and the room came alive for her searching eyes.

  Pink. Nearly everything was some shade of pink. The drapes and duvet were a deep rose, the chaise and walls a soft pink. The furniture was white washed oak, contemporary in style and functional looking. There was a stack of paperback books on one nightstand and a cordless phone on the other. On the dresser, Paris’s jewelry box was open and various pieces of jewelry spilled out, as if she had been rambling through it just minutes ago trying to decide between a silver pendant and a gold brooch. Pam went over and lifted a slender gold chain from the box. She held it up to the light and noticed Chad leaning against the doorjamb. He had changed into jeans and a polo shirt.

  “You haven’t changed a bit.”

  “Gained a little weight here and there. I could say the same about you.”

  “It’s different with me. You’ve seen me on television or wherever.” She put the necklace back where she’d found it and looked around the room. “I didn’t know what to expect with you. Didn’t know if you’d gotten fat or gone bald or what. You weren’t in many of the pictures I got, the videos either.”

  “I wish I could describe for you what I felt the first time I saw you on television or heard your voice on the radio.” He came away from the doorjamb and moved deeper into the room. “Nikki would be having a fit, jumping up and down and screaming at the top of her lungs and I’d be sitting there like a block of ice, stunned. I always thawed out long enough to tell her to be quiet, so I could hear, though.”

  “She still has the tape I gave her from the time I took her in the studio with me.”

  Nikki was seven and bursting with energy, asking every five minutes to do something. As if walking around the zoo for hours on end until Pam’s feet were throbbing was nothing. After ten o’clock had come and gone and Nikki still wasn’t asleep, Pam had carted her off to the recording studio with her; Snoopy house-shoes, ballerina pajamas, and all. They had spent an hour in the soundproof booth, singing Stevie Wonder’s “I Just Called To Say I Love You” before Nikki finally conked out on a couch and Pam could get down to business.

  “She played it every night for a month. I thought I saw Stevie coming out of her room one night, it got so bad,” Chad joked. They laughed together and some of the tension eased away. “Paris was so proud of you.”

  “I was proud of her,” Pam said. “Out of the two of us, she was the one who stuck it out and made a life for herself.”

  “You have a good life.”

  “Not the one I wanted.”

  That gave Chad pause. He didn’t know what to say, so he didn’t say anything and Pam didn’t seem inclined to elaborate. There was so much she wanted to say and so much he wanted to ask, but time and distance divided them, kept their eyes
away from each other’s. Finally, he suggested they start the process of sorting through Paris’s clothing by emptying the closet and drawers and making stacks on the bed. Pam slid the closet door open and stepped inside, grateful for the distraction of having something purposeful to do, even if doing it might kill her before she was done.

  Paris’s tendency toward obsessive neatness and order was evident in the structure of the closet; the arrangement of the clothes hanging on the rack. Pants, then skirts, then jackets, and then blouses. Shoes lined up neatly on the closet floor by pairs, sneakers in the far left corner and dress shoes on the right. Loafers and casual flats front and center.

  Pam brought an armful of pants over to the bed and glanced at Chad, who was doing the same with a stack of shirts from a drawer, and turned to retrace her steps. At the one-hour mark, Chad reached over and turned on the bedside radio to keep them company.

  Pam caught herself humming along and singing under her breath and stopped abruptly. She shot a look at Chad and found him leaning against the armoire, watching her.

  “What?”

  “What kind of life did you want?”

  Pam dropped the shoes she was carrying on the bed and wiped her palms on the seat of her pants. “I don’t know, the same as everybody else, I guess. I figured I’d have a couple of kids, a husband, and a pain-in-the-ass mother-in-law. The whole deal.”

  “You never met a man in California you wanted to marry and have kids with?”

  They looked at each other. “I didn’t go there looking for a man, Chad.”

  “So you went there to get away from one?”

  “Is that what you thought?”

  “What else was I supposed to think? Paris couldn’t or wouldn’t tell me why you left and you never answered any of my letters. I came to the only logical conclusion there was. You no longer wanted what we had and you left to get away from me.”