Kisscut

by Karin Slaughter

  “Weird like…” Jeffrey tried to find the words. He did not really want to go into the Patterson interview with Sara, mostly because of what had happened with Lena. There had been something between her and the boy, something that set his teeth on edge. They both worked off each other somehow. “Weird like I don’t know.”

  Sara laughed. “I don’t think I can answer that.”

  “Sexual,” he said, because that was a good word to describe Mark Patterson. “He seemed really sexual.”

  “Well,” Sara began, and he could hear the confusion in her voice. “He’s a good-looking kid. I imagine he’s been sexually active for a very long time.”

  “He just turned sixteen.”

  “Jeffrey,” Sara said, as if she were talking to an idiot. “I’ve got ten-year-old girls who haven’t even started their periods asking me about birth control.”

  “Jesus,” he sighed. “It’s way too early in the morning to hear that kind of thing.”

  “Welcome to my world,” she told him.

  “Yeah.” He stared at the jersey on his wall, trying to remember what it had felt like to be Mark Patterson’s age and have the world in the palm of his hand. Though, Mark Patterson did not seem to feel that way.

  Jeffrey did not like this helpless feeling. He should be back in Grant, trying to figure this out. At the very least, he should be keeping an eye on Lena. For a while Jeffrey had felt she was on the edge, but not until yesterday did he realize that she was closer to falling than keeping herself balanced.

  “Jeff?” Sara asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m worried about Lena,” he told her, and the words felt familiar to him. He had been worried about Lena since he hired her ten years ago. First, he was worried that she was so aggressive on patrol, taking every collar like her life depended on it. Then, he had worried that she put herself in danger too often as a detective, pushing suspects to their breaking point, pushing herself to her own breaking point. And now he worried that she was about to lose it. There was no question in his mind that she would explode soon. It was just a matter of when. With a start, he realized this had been his fear from the beginning: When would Lena finally break in two?

  “I think you should be worried about her,” Sara said. “Why won’t you take her off active duty?”

  “Because it would kill her,” he answered, and he knew this was true. Lena needed her job like other people needed air.

  “Is there something else?”

  Jeffrey thought about the conversation he’d had with Lena in the car. She had not been exactly sure of herself when she told him the shot was clean. “I, uh,” he began, not knowing how to say this. “When I talked to Lena yesterday…,” he said.

  “Yeah?”

  “She didn’t seem too sure about what had happened.”

  “About the shooting?” Sara demanded, obviously irritated. “What exactly did she say?”

  “It wasn’t what she said so much as how she said it.”

  Sara mumbled something that sounded like a curse. “She’s just playing with you to get back at me.”

  “Lena’s not like that.”

  “Of course she is,” Sara shot back. “She’s always been like that.”

  Jeffrey shook his head, not accepting this. “I think she’s just not sure.”

  Sara mumbled a curse under her breath. “That’s just great.”

  “Sara,” Jeffrey said, trying to calm her down. “Don’t say anything to her, okay? It’ll only make it worse.”

  “Why would I say anything to her?”

  “Sara…” He rubbed sleep from his eyes, thinking he did not want to talk about this now. “Listen, I was just fixin’ to go to the hospital—”

  “This really ticks me off.”

  “I know that,” he said. “You’ve made it clear.”

  “I just—”

  “Sara,” he interrupted. “I really need to go.”

  “Actually,” she said, moderating her tone, “I was calling for a reason, if you’ve got a minute?”

  “Sure,” he managed, feeling a sense of trepidation. “What’s up?”

  He heard her take a deep breath, as if she were about to jump off a cliff. “I was wondering if you’ll be back tonight.”

  “Late, probably.”

  “Well, then, how about tomorrow night?”

  “If I come back tonight, I won’t have to come back tomorrow night.”

  “Are you being dense on purpose?”

  He played back their conversation in his mind, smiling when he realized that Sara was trying to ask him over. Jeffrey wondered if she had ever done something like this in her life.

  He said, “I’ve never been very bright.”

  “No,” she agreed, but she was laughing.

  “So?”

  “So…,” Sara began, then she sighed. He heard her mumble, “Oh, this is so stupid.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I said,” she started again, then stopped. “I’m not doing anything tomorrow night.”

  Jeffrey rubbed his whiskers, feeling the grin on his face. He wondered if there had ever been a time in this room when he had felt happier. Maybe the day he got the call from Auburn, saying he could go to college for free in exchange for getting the shit beaten out of him on the football field every Saturday.

  He said, “Hey, me neither.”

  “So…” Sara was obviously hoping he would fill things in for her. Jeffrey sat back down on the bed, thinking hell would freeze over before he helped her out.

  “Come over to my house,” she finally said. “Around seven or so, okay?”

  “Why?”

  He could hear her chair squeak as she sat back. Jeffrey imagined she probably had her hand over her eyes.

  “God, you are not going to make this easy, are you?”

  “Why should I?”

  “I want to see you,” she told him. “Come at seven. I’ll make supper.”

  “Wait a minute—”

  She obviously anticipated his problem with this. Sara was not exactly a good cook. She offered, “I’ll order something from Alfredo’s.”

  Jeffrey smiled again. “I’ll see you at seven.”

  AS a boy, Jeffrey had done his share of stupid things. His two best friends from elementary school to high school had lived down the street from him, and between Jerry Long, a boy with a curiosity about fireworks, and Bobby Blankenship, a boy who liked to hear things explode, they had managed to risk their lives any number of times before puberty took hold and girls became more important than blowing things up.

  At the age of eleven, the three had discovered the pleasure of exploding bottle rockets in a steel drum behind Jeffrey’s house. By the time they were twelve, the drum was as dented and pockmarked as Bobby “Spot” Blankenship’s face. By the time they were thirteen, Jerry Long had been given the name “Possum” because, when the drum had finally exploded, a piece of shrapnel had nearly sliced off the top of his head, and he had lain in Jeffrey’s backyard like a possum until Jean Harris had called an ambulance to take him to the hospital, and the police to scare the bejesus out of Jeffrey and Spot.

  Jeffrey had not earned his nickname until later, when he had started to notice girls and, more important, they had started to notice him. Like Possum and Spot, he was on the football team, and they were pretty popular in school because the team was winning that year. Jeffrey was the first of the trio to kiss a girl, the first to get to second base, and the first to finally lose his virginity. For these accomplishments, he was given the nickname “Slick.”

  The first time Jeffrey had taken Sara to Sylacauga, he had been so nervous that his hands would not stop sweating. They had just started dating, and Jeffrey had been under the impression that Sara was a little too socially elevated for Possum and Spot, and more than likely for ol’ Slick as well. Sylacauga was the epitome of a small Southern town. Unlike Heartsdale, there was no college up the street, and no professors in town to add some diversity to the mix. Most of t
he people who lived here worked in some kind of industry, whether it was for the textile mill or the marble quarry. Jeffrey was not saying they were all backward, inbred hicks, but they were not the kind of people he thought Sara would be comfortable hanging around.

  Sara wasn’t just what the locals would call “book learned,” but a medical doctor, and her family might have been blue collar, but Eddie Linton was the kind of man who knew how to manage a dollar. The family owned property up and down the lake, and even had some rental units in Florida. On top of that, Sara was sharp, and not just about books. She had a cutting wit, and wasn’t the kind of woman who would have his slippers and a hot meal waiting for him when he got home from work. If anything, Sara would expect Jeffrey to have these things ready for her.

  About six miles from the Tolliver house, there was a general store called Cat’s that Jeffrey and everyone else had frequented growing up. It was the kind of place where you could buy milk, tobacco, gasoline, and bait. The floor was made from hand-hewn lumber and there were enough gashes and scars in it to trip you up if you did not watch where you were walking. The ceiling was low, and yellowed from nicotine and water stains. Freezers packed with ice and Coca-Colas lined the entranceway, and a large Moon Pie display was up by the cash register. The gas pumps outside dinged with every gallon pumped.

  While Jeffrey was at Auburn, Cat had passed away, and Possum, who worked at the store, had taken over for Cat’s widow. Six years later, Possum had bought out the widow Cat, and changed the name to “Possum’s Cat’s.” When Sara had first seen the sign over the dilapidated building, she had been delighted, and made reference to the Eliot poem. Jeffrey had fought the urge to crawl under the car and hide, but Sara had laughed when she found out the truth. As a matter of fact, she had enjoyed herself that weekend, and by the second day there, Sara was lying out by the pool with Possum and his wife, laughing at stories about Jeffrey’s errant youth.

  Now, Jeffrey could smile at the memory, though at the time he had been slightly annoyed to be the butt of their jokes. Sara was the first woman who had made fun of him like that, and, truth be told, that was probably the point at which she had hooked him. His mother liked to say that he liked a challenge.

  Jeffrey was thinking about this, thinking that Sara Linton was, if anything, a challenge, as he turned into the parking lot of Possum’s Cat’s. The place had changed a lot since Cat had owned it, and even more since the last time Jeffrey had been in town. The only thing that remained the same was the big Auburn University emblem over the door. Alabama was a state divided by its two universities, Auburn and Alabama, and there was only one important question every native asked the other: “Who are you for?” Jeffrey had seen fights break out when someone gave the wrong answer in the wrong part of town.

  A day care was to the right of the store, a new addition since the last time Jeffrey had visited. On the left was Madam Bell’s, which was run by Possum’s wife, Darnell. Like Cat, Madam Bell had passed a long time ago. Jeffrey thought that Nell ran the place just to give her something to do while the kids were at school. He had dated Nell off and on in high school until Possum had gotten serious about her. Jeffrey could not imagine that same restless girl being happy with this kind of life, but stranger things have happened. Besides, Nell had been three months pregnant the week they all graduated from school. It wasn’t like she had been given a lot of choices.

  So he wouldn’t take up one of the spaces in front of the store, Jeffrey let the car idle outside Bell’s, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama” playing softly on the car’s speakers. He had found the tape in the box under the window in his room, and experienced a bit of nostalgia when the first chords of what was one of his favorite songs reached his ears. It was odd how you could love something so much, but forget about it when it wasn’t right under your nose. He felt that way about this town, and his friends here. Being around Possum and Nell again would be like nothing had changed in the last twenty years. Jeffrey did not know how he felt about that.

  What he did know was that seeing his mother in the hospital ten minutes ago had made him want to get back to Grant as fast as he could. There was something suffocating about the way she held on to him when she hugged him, and the way she let her voice trail off, saying things by leaving them unsaid. May Tolliver had never been a happy woman, and part of Jeffrey thought his father had been such a bumbling crook so that he would get caught and taken off to jail, where his miserable wife could not nag him every day about what a disappointment he was. Like Jimmy, May was a mean drunk, and though she had never raised her hand to Jeffrey, she could cut him in two with her words faster than anyone he had ever met. Thankfully, she still seemed to be functioning, even with enough alcohol in her to fuel a tractor for sixty miles. If May could be believed, a feral cat from under the neighbor’s house had startled her and she had fallen down the steps. Since Jeffrey had heard some cats over there this morning, he had to give his mother the benefit of the doubt. He did not want to admit to anyone, let alone to himself, how grateful he was that his mother did not need further intervention.

  Jeffrey stepped out of the car, his foot sliding a little on the gravel drive. He had changed into jeans and a polo shirt back at his mother’s house, and he felt odd being clothed so casually in the middle of the week. He had even considered wearing his dress shoes, but had changed his mind when he caught a glance of himself in the mirror. He slipped on his sunglasses, looking around as he walked toward Madam Bell’s.

  The fortune-teller’s building was more like a shack, and the screen door groaned when Jeffrey opened it. He knocked on the front door, stepping into the small front parlor. The place looked just as it had when he was a boy. Spot had once dared Jeffrey to go in and have his palm read by Madam Bell. He had not liked what she had to say, and never stepped foot back in the place again.

  Jeffrey craned his head around the door, looking into the shack’s only other room. Nell sat at a table with a deck of tarot cards in front of her. The television was on low, or maybe the air conditioner in the window was drowning out the sound. She was knitting something as she watched her show, her body leaning forward as if to make sure she caught every word.

  Jeffrey said, “Boo.”

  “Oh, my God,” Nell jumped, dropping her knitting. She stood from the table, patting her palm against her chest. “Slick, you ’bout scared me half to death.”

  “Don’t let that happen twice,” he laughed, pulling her into a hug. She was a small woman, but nice and curvy through the hips. He stepped back to get a good look at her. Nell had not changed much since high school. Her black hair was the same, if not a little gray, straight and long enough to reach her waist, but pulled back in a ponytail, probably to fight the heat.

  “You been over to Possum’s?” she asked, sitting back down at the table. “What’re you doing here? Is it about your mama?”

  Jeffrey smiled, sitting across from her. Nell had always talked a hundred miles an hour. “No and yes.”

  “She was drunk,” Nell said in her usual abrupt way. Her candor was one of the reasons Jeffrey had stopped dating her. She called things the way she saw them, and at eighteen Jeffrey had hardly been introspective.

  Nell said, “Her liquor bills ’bout kept us afloat last winter.”

  “I know,” Jeffrey answered, crossing his arms. He had paid his mother’s utility bills for some time now just to keep her in liquor. It was pointless to argue with the old woman about it, and at least this way he knew she would stay at home and drink instead of going out to do something about it.

  He said, “I just came from the hospital. They gave her a shot of vodka while I was standing there.”

  Nell picked up the cards and started to shuffle them. “Old biddy’d go into the DTs if they didn’t.”

  Jeffrey shrugged. The doctor had said the same thing in the hospital.

  “What’re you lookin’ at?” Nell asked him, and Jeffrey smiled, realizing that he had been staring at her. What he had been thinking
was that it was easier to talk to Nell about his mother’s alcoholism than it was to talk to Sara about it. He could not begin to understand why this was. Maybe it was because Nell had grown up with it. With Sara, Jeffrey tended to get embarrassed, then ashamed, then finally angry.

  “How is it you get prettier every time I come see you?” he teased her.

  “Slick, Slick, Slick,” Nell said, clucking her tongue. She laid a couple of cards face up on the table, asking, “So, why’d Sara divorce you?”

  Jeffrey startled, asking, “You see that in the cards?”

  She smiled mischievously. “Christmas cards. Sara’s had ‘Linton’ on the return address.” She put another card down on the table. “What’d you do, cheat on her?”

  He indicated the cards. “Why don’t you tell me?”

  She nodded, laying down a couple more. “I’d guess you cheated on her and got caught.”

  “What?”

  Nell laughed. “Just ’cause she don’t talk to you don’t mean she don’t talk to me.”

  He shook his head, not understanding.

  “We’ve got a phone, too, puppy,” she told him. “I talk to Sara every now and then, just to catch up.”

  “Well, then you must know I’ve been seeing her again,” he said, aware he was sounding like the cocky old Slick he had been, but unable to stop it. “What do your cards say about that?”

  She turned a couple more over and studied them for a few seconds, a frown tugging her lips down. Finally, she scooped the cards back into a deck. “These stupid things don’t tell you nothing anyway,” she mumbled. “Let’s get over to Possum’s. I’m sure he’ll be glad to see you.”

  She held her hand out to him, and he hesitated, wondering if he should push her on the reading. Not that Jeffrey believed Nell had the gift, or that anyone did for that matter, but it set his teeth on edge that she would not at least make something up so that he would feel better.

  “Come on,” she said, tugging at his sleeve.

  He acquiesced, letting her lead him out of the shack and back into the unrelenting Alabama heat. There were no trees in the gravel parking lot, and Jeffrey could feel the sun baking the top of his head as they crossed toward the gas station.