by Woods, Karen
“I’ll send you to the morgue before I’ll go anywhere with you. I’m telling you this only once. I want nothing to do with either of you. Now, go away, and stop making a scene,” Rita said.
Peter snorted and tried to pull her closer to him.
Rita peeled his hand off her arm. “I don’t want the legal hassles that would come from maiming or killing you. Don’t touch me again. I don’t want you to touch me, talk to me, or even look at me. Go away. Leave me alone. Your attentions are unwelcome. I will not meekly allow you to assault me. I certainly will not allow you to drag me off and rape me, as you just threatened to do. I will defend myself. You have been warned.”
“You heard the lady. Go away, Pete!” Jim said.
“Sit down guys,” she ordered. “I’ll handle him. It’s cleaner if you aren’t involved. He’s been warned. He’s not backing down. He’s assaulting me and there is an imminent threat of both battery and rape at his hands. You heard him. The whole room full of people heard him. If he pushes this, I will defend myself, whatever it takes.”
Jim said. “I’m on the clock.”
“Good,” Rita replied.
Peter grabbed her arm again. “You are coming with me to the bar. Then you and me, and Greg, are going to blow this joint, for our private party.”
She let Pete pull her a couple of steps away from the table, so that she could get some room to work in a relatively open area.
Once she had room to act, she utterly refused to move. She peeled Peter’s hand off her arm, again. “Listen carefully, Peter Allen Quinn. I don’t want anything to do with you. I certainly am not leaving here with you. Don’t touch me, again. My patience is at an end.”
He turned and looked at her in disbelief. “Come on. We’ll get out of here and party like we would have if you had been this foxy in high school.”
“I have no desire to have anything to do with you. You are not taking me anywhere. I don’t know why you can’t seem to get that through your thick head.”
He took hold of her braid and tugged. “Come on, Butter Butt.”
She stood her ground. Grabbing his thumb, she peeled his hand away from her hair. He was obviously drunk. Was he drunk enough to give her an edge? That was the question. No matter what, she wasn’t going to leave here with him. That wasn’t going to happen. She’d suffered enough at their hands, as a child. She wasn’t going to leave herself open for further injury.
Rita twisted his hand and stepped to the side and then went behind him. She kept hold of his hand and put him in an arm lock. With pressure on his arm, she forced Peter down to his knees.
“Let me go,” Peter demanded, fear and building rage in his voice. He tried to work his way free, but she kept the pressure up, increasing the torque on his arm with every effort of his to get free.
She knew the pressure had to hurt, quite badly.
It was the first time she had ever heard fear from the man. It wasn’t the first time she had heard rage come from his mouth.
She increased the twist on his arm. It wasn’t enough to break the bones, but he had to have definitely been feeling pain. The fear was flowing from him. Fear and anger.
“OWWWWW,” he moaned. “I’m going to kill you for this, Bitch!” He tried to hit her with his free arm, swinging it wildly back towards her. But an old football injury of that shoulder limited his range of motion.
She increased the twist on his arm again. “Listen closely to me, because you clearly haven’t heard me, or haven’t paid attention, until now. Leave me alone. I’m not interested in having anything to do with you. Keep your bitter, acidic, unreasonable hatred to yourself. Otherwise you are going to have more trouble than you want to deal with. Do you read me, Mister?”
“The whole damned room heard you,” Peter complained. Then he cussed her, thoroughly.
“You never were any too bright, were you, Peter?” she asked as she increased the twist on his arm.
“Damnit! You’re breaking my arm!”
“Not quite yet. But just a little more will be sending you to an orthopedist,” she told him. “You did far worse to me in the past. You just threatened to do much worse to me, tonight. I won’t take being abused from you, or anyone else.”
Pete’s cohort in crime, Greg, approached. Rita fixed him with a look that could have frozen lava. The diagnostician in her recognized immediately that Greg was not well. His coloring told her that it was probably his liver. Cirrhosis, maybe. Maybe something worse. At any rate, he was definitely not well. “Back off, Greg. This is between Peter and me. If you insist on involving yourself, I’ll have to stop you. That won’t be pleasant, for you. Although I have to admit, I’d find a certain, long overdue, satisfaction sending the pair of you to the hospital, or the county morgue, if you make me kill you. Do us all a favor and stay out of this.”
Greg stood there watching, about twenty feet away. If he rushed her, she knew, it would get messy. But she’d do what she had to do. In spite of the fierce rhetoric, Rita only hoped she didn’t have to kill anyone.
“She’s trying to kill me,” Peter whined.
“Hardly. If I’d wanted you dead,” she dismissed, her voice absolutely cold, “you’d already be sprawled out on the floor, well on your way to achieving room temperature. All I want is for you to leave me alone.”
“Fight back, Pete,” Greg encouraged. “You can take her. She’s skinny and weak.”
“Listen carefully to me, Peter. If you want to be neck deep in more trouble than you know what to do with, just keep harassing me. Understand me, boys?”
Greg nodded in agreement.
“I can’t hear the rocks in your heads rattle from over here. Speak up, boys. Do you understand that the only thing I want from you is for you to leave me alone?” Rita demanded.
“Yes, m’am”, came the reply from Larry.
“I hear you,” Pete said, through his gritted teeth.
She put more of a twist on his arm. He screamed in pain.
“Do you understand I am the absolutely last woman on the face of the earth whom you want to harass, Peter?”
He spat out vicious names for her, calling her vile epithet after vile epithet.
“Poor Peter. Not so much fun to be on the receiving end of a public humiliation, is it?” she said in mock sympathy as she increased the twist on the arm, just a bit more. The bone didn’t have much more play in it before it would break. “Do you understand everything I’ve told you? Yes or No.”
“Yes,” he bit out.
“You promise, before all these witnesses, to leave me alone? Answer clearly, yes or no.” Rita was proud of how deadly calm her voice was.
“Yes,” he shouted.
“Yes, what, Peter?”
“Yes. I promise I’ll leave you alone. You have my word.”
“Now, what’s the word of a lying scoundrel worth, I wonder?” she asked.
Rita looked at his buddy. “Greg, what I’ve told Peter goes for you as well. Any trouble you make for me, you’ll get back a hundredfold. I will not actively seek retribution for past injuries, in spite of how tempting that prospect is. Nothing can change the pain or humiliation you inflicted on me during our school years. I have forgiven you for that. I have not forgotten. And I will not take any fresh abuse from either of you. Is that clear?”
She waited for response. None came. “Is that clear?” she demanded again. “Do you understand me?”
“Yes” and “Let me go, Bitch!” came the answers from Greg, and Pete, respectively.
She increased the pressure on Peter’s arm incrementally. “I see you haven’t gotten any smarter in your old age, Peter. Now, do you understand me? Yes or no.”
“Yes,” Peter cried out.
She continued, “But, I will hurt you, if either of you come near me again with intent to do me any kind of harm. Do you understand that I won’t ever start a fight, but I won’t run from it, either? If you start anything with me, I’ll finish it in ways you will not like, if you are still breath
ing at the end of it. Do you understand this is your one and only warning?”
“Yes,” the pair of them replied in near unison.
“Good. Now, you are dismissed. Go in peace, or stay and find yourselves in pieces. I’ll play this hand out either way, without hesitation. But, I recommend, for your sake, that you all walk away while you still are able to walk. If you want a fight, you may both leave here in body bags, or at least in ambulances. That is your only warning,” Rita said as she pushed Pete forward with considerable force.
His nose impacted the floor. She moved back quickly out of striking distance.
Pete rose to his knees then to his feet. He turned to face her. He retrieved a handkerchief from his suit jacket pocket and dabbed at the blood that dripped from his nose. “This isn’t over, Pig!” he threatened as he moved his arm and flexed his hand.
“Pig?” Greg said, not quite believing what he’d heard. “That fox is Piggy? Oh Man! You let Old Butter Butt get the best of you, Pete? You’re losing it, man.”
“It had better be over, Peter,” she warned at the same time as Greg spoke to Peter. “Don’t even come near me, again. Not either of you. You’ll regret it, if you live long enough.”
He called her a string of vile obscenities and stormed off, with his companion, to the bar while rubbing his arm.
As they walked away, there was a round of applause from the class members. “Yeah, Margarita!” came several voices.
She sighed. “Can we please have some happy music?”
The DJ started the music again. The conversation in the room picked back up.
She watched as Roger, the current county sheriff, went to the bar. The look on that man’s face said he was unhappy, fiercely so.
She returned to her seat at the table. “Here’s to friendship,” she said as she lifted her bottle of water.
“Old friends are the best friends,” Kevin said in agreement.
Chapter Ten
Congressman Mike Flaherty went to the microphone a few moments later. “Welcome, one and all, to the forty-year reunion of our graduating class. The dinner buffet will be available in a few minutes. Beer, hard cider, coffee, tea, lemonade, and water will be available all evening. The cash bar will be open all evening. And after dinner, a band will play for dancing. Ballots are on your tables. They’ll be collected before the dancing begins. Don’t forget to vote. Marty Caldwell, for those of you who don’t know, is a Catholic priest and the only clergyman from our class. Father Martin, will you bless this meal?”
Marty Caldwell, in clerical blacks, walked up to the microphone. Marty had gone completely bald. But, looking around the room, baldness seemed to be a common enough condition among the male members of the class. With the baldness and the weight he had gained, Marty looked as if he could easily be put into a Franciscan habit and play the role of Friar Tuck in an amateur theater production of Robin Hood. He offered a standard Roman Catholic meal blessing.
The “amen” was echoed by most in the Hall. Tanya and her staff brought in the chafing dish inserts.
Rita hadn’t thought the food would be anything outstanding. But, she was surprised. The entrée options were roast pork loin with mashed potatoes and gravy or linguini with red clam sauce. There were five cold salads; broccoli salad with cheese and bacon, a mixed field greens salad with assorted dressings on the side, a greek chopped salad, a Caesar salad, and a caprese salad. There were also four hot side dishes: steamed baby carrots; carmelized onions, mushrooms, and peppers; green beans with bacon; and fried apples.
Rita took a small serving of the pasta, all the hot vegetables, except the beans, as well as a serving of a mixed field greens salad with a couple of wedges of lemon to serve as a dressing.
She picked up the ballot at her place after they had returned from the buffet line. The ballot was the standard reunion nonsense; King and Queen of the Reunion Party, Graduate who changed the most for the better, Graduate who was the most like he/she had been in school, etc. The ballot held no interest for her.
Em was looking at her in concern. “Are you okay?”
“Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You seem… quiet.”
A small band consisting of a keyboard, drum, and guitar, started playing about the time Tanya and her staff cleared away the entrees from the buffet table and brought out the dessert spread. The band played mostly soft and gentle ballads. It was a great relief to be rid of the DJ who had been providing music until this point in the evening.
“Would you like to dance, Rita?” Kevin asked.
“Take your wife out on the floor. I’ll sit this out,” she replied with a smile.
“Not like you to pass up a dance,” Em replied. “You love dancing.”
“It’s lost its appeal since Dryusha died. The last time I danced was at my son Kiril’s wedding a year ago.”
Mike Flaherty came back to the microphone. “We’re still tabulating the ballots on most of the elections. However, we are overwhelmingly agreed on one. The graduate who has changed the most for the better is Margarita Aleksandrova Melnikova Zornova. Rita, come up here and talk to us.”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Come on, Rita,” Mike urged from the microphone. “I see she needs a little encouragement. Come on, classmates. Let’s give her a warm welcome.”
Among the sound of applause were two male voices loudly disapproving, from back near the bar. Everyone turned to face them. One by one, people in the crowd stood and continued clapping and cheering, to drown out the catcalls of Greg and Peter.
Rita went to the microphone, against her better judgment.
“Yeah, Margarita!” Glenna called out.
She sighed as she faced the crowd. “It’s been more than four decades since we left Township High. Some of us have changed in that we have made our mark on the world, and some of us have changed because the world has made a mark on us.”
“Sit down and shut up, you Ruskie sow! No one wants to hear anything you’d have to say! PIG!” Peter called out, drunkenly.
Greg shouted, “Sooey, PIG!”
“And there are a few members of our class who have steadfastly refused to change,” she added pointedly. “That’s their loss, and our pain.”
Nearly everyone laughed, but it was nervous laughter.
“One hundred thousand dollars cash to someone, if he will put the Pig permanently out of our misery and make it look like an accident!” a very drunk Greg shouted.
“Still getting other people to do your dirty work, Greg? Well, that hasn’t changed.” She shook her head, sighed, and continued, “Back in high school, some of you talked to me, from time to time, mostly when you needed help on your math, science, or foreign language homework. But, much of the time, you simply fell in line with the three bullies in our class who tried to make my life a living hell. Mostly, I imagine, that was out of fear of them. God knows they were fearsome enough as children. You saw what they did to me, and how only a handful of people stood up to them, and you didn’t want them putting mice, tarantulas, dead pigs, or rattlesnakes in your desk. You didn’t want them inciting others to beat you half to death. You definitely didn’t want them to burn your church to the ground.”
There was a murmur of surprise and many in the Hall sat up straighter.
“Saint Konstantin’s burned down because of a lamp falling, didn’t it?” Tanya replied, her voice loud enough to be heard, her tone uncertain.
Rita shook her head negatively, “No. The three of them set the church on fire with gasoline. Matushka and I saw it. I was in the Church when they came in with the gas cans. I ran for help. But there was no stopping them. Peter’s father responded with the volunteer fire department and threatened, in no uncertain terms, to kill us if we said anything different from his story that the fire was caused by a falling lampada. It certainly wasn’t the first time the sheriff had covered up those boys’ crimes. I was too scared of the sheriff to come forward with the truth, then.”
“Bit
ch!” Peter shouted.
Rita sighed and replied keeping her voice amused and her tone gentle, “Say what you want. Calling me that name doesn’t make it so… I really can’t blame the rest of you for taking care of yourselves. You watched them get by with all of their actions without consequences. I understood that you were all just doing what you thought you needed to do in order to survive. I forgive you for that.”
Pete and Greg were a quarter of the way across the room before anyone realized what was happening. The pair of them were clearly looking for trouble.
“You guys used to avoid witnesses to your ganging up on me. In fact, you used to be careful to hide your tracks. So, maybe you’ve changed, too. Or are you just too drunk to care about going to either jail or the morgue?” Rita challenged.
Greg, his drunken voice full of hate, screamed, “Ruskie Pig!”
Rita dismissed, “Just go back to the bar, guys.”
They approached and stood just in front of her.
“Outside, Rusky sow!” Greg commanded, flipping open a lock blade hunting knife. The large, obviously very sharp, blade glimmered in the light. “It’s pig sticking time.”
“Back away, from her, both of you,” Don Jones called out in his best “cop” voice.
“Or what, Donnie? You gonna shoot me? Over her? Really?” a very drunk Greg dismissed. “’Cause I don’t think so. You never liked her any more than we did.”
“Fold the knife and put it away and you won’t have to find out,” Don Jones commanded.
“Let her alone,” Glenna shouted at them. “Just leave Margarita alone, you bastards!”
Greg turned, in clear surprise that someone would stand up to him, and looked at her. “We’ll get to you, later, Glenna. You remember the parties we used to have with you when we followed you home from school our senior year?”
“I remember the knives at my throat…the pistol at my head…the way you all took turns… I remember the threats that you would kill my family if I told anyone,” Glenna said, her voice pained, tears streaming down her face. “I’ve had nightmares for decades, remembering the three of laughing. I remember how you quietly taunted me in school about it… The way that you would grab me when no one was looking… But I’m not afraid of you, anymore. Peter, your father is no longer the county sheriff, willing to cover up for you, willing to make trouble for anyone who spoke against his precious son and the pack of animals he ran with.”