She pulled a Daily Beacon off the bench and started reading the university’s weekly student newspaper. She’d sat there for 15 minutes, had finished the paper and was people watching when she saw her brother in the distance. He was a year older than her and was still deciding what major to choose. He had always been heavy on looks and superficial charm but lacked the drive and discipline it took to make good grades. He would rather charm his teachers than do the homework and earn the grade. It had worked in high school and a place on the varsity football team had resulted in passing grades but after he graduated from high school she was afraid he’d found that he was no longer a big fish in a little pond. The pond had gotten a lot bigger and there were many high school superstars at the university.
“Hey Michael. It’s about time. You want to get something to eat?” she said as he and his best friend Rodney walked up, like two peas in a pod.
“No sis. I just need to borrow your car for the weekend. Rodney and I are going to Gatlinburg with some truly dishy babes. We have his dad’s cabin and plan on doing some serious hot tubbing,” he laughed punching Rodney in the shoulder to emphasize the amount of fun they were going to have.
“Okay. You can have it,” Cat agreed as she dug her keys out of her backpack, “but it had better come back in one piece, with a full tank of gas and clean. Don’t you two be drinking and driving or doing anything disgusting in my car or it will be the last time you get it. Remember Dad’s already taken away your car due to your heathen activities.”
“You’re the best, Sis.” Michael grabbed the keys in case Cat changed her mind. Just then she caught a glimpse of the young man she’d bumped into.
“Michael. Focus for a moment. Do you know who that person is?” She grabbed her brother’s shoulder and pointing towards the young man. Michael looked in the direction of her finger, squinted his eyes and a puzzled look came over his face then recognition.
“It looks just like that kid Stephen from home except it can’t be. Stephen had blonde hair and those weird eyes, where that guy has dark hair; except for that though they could be twins,” Michael watched the figure walk across the plaza toward Clement Hall.
“He’s the guy who killed his sister, remember?” Michael continued.
“They didn’t prove that,” Rodney acknowledged looking in the direction Cat and Michael were focused.
“Hey Stephen Kane!” Rodney yelled at the top of his lungs. The figure stopped and turned looking toward the small group, then turned and walked on toward the building.
“That’s creepy. Stay away from him, Cat. He’s a killer,” Rodney reminded her in a hushed voice.
“I bumped into him a little while ago and I didn’t get that impression, but then he’s your age not mine and I didn’t really know him in high school. He’d already been sent away to reform school by then.” Cat turned back toward her brother when the figure disappeared once again.
“Okay you two. Have fun!” Cat yelled as Rodney and Michael ran across the plaza towards the student parking lot.
“Be careful with my car!”
Later that evening, Cat walked from the front of her dorm down a steep hill that was17th street and made up one end of what the students called “The Strip”. It was a two-mile stretch of stores, fast food, restaurants and bars which cranked up every evening with beer drinking, carousing, recently-christened, adults anxious to spread their wings for the first time away from the nest.
On the left hand side of the street was the backside of Massey Hall, an all-female dorm filled mostly with freshmen. She’d lived there when she first came to the University of Tennessee but quickly tired of the loud all-night partying, panty-raids in the court yard, community bathrooms at the end of the hall, and lack of air conditioning.
She knew that inside the building there were hundreds of 40 by 40 ft. white cinderblock rooms with immovable, matching built-in accoutrements including: 2 beds, 2 dressers, 2 closets, 2 desks all atop a black linoleum floor originally installed when the building went up in the early 1970’s. To her, the rooms looked like jail cells no matter how they were decorated.
On the right was an all-night mini-mart with adjoining deli which now teemed with customers ordering hoagies, the deep steamed delight of ham, pastrami, and cheese. She turned the corner down Lake Avenue past frat houses and married student apartments. About a ½ mile later, she stopped in front of a small brown house with a red tile roof. The sign out front said Ivy’s. The parking lot in front of the bar was packed with cars. The front door was surrounded by students, beer in hand in small plastic cups but guarded by a large football player turned bouncer.
He sat bulging on a three-legged stool inspecting driver’s licenses with a small flashlight. She could hear the pounding of the juke box from the street. “You never even knew me by my name…” poured from the door, an old David Allen Coe country song and one of the regular’s favorite tunes.
Cat stood in line as the bouncer stamped a black OK on the inside of each entrant’s wrist who was of age. Her senses were assaulted by the smell of cigarette smoke, stale beer and the sweet odor of what could have been marijuana. The music was even louder than before, pounding so hard that she could feel the rhythm of the song through her shoes. “Good ole Rocky Top, Rocky Top Tennessee…,” The singer wailed loudly. Wrist stamp in place, she entered letting her eyes adjust to the darkness. It was so crowded she had to push her way in.
“Hi Jo!” she said waving one hand to the owner, a bleached blonde 50-plus thin woman dressed in blue jeans and a tight white tank top. Jo was sitting on a bar stool at the corner of the bar with a cool beer at her fingertips.
Cat always imagined Jo was a beauty queen that couldn’t face the tirade that the passing years had waged on her and was trying desperately to pass for as one of her 20 year old customers.
Jo and her husband, Howard, owned not only Ivy’s but several other shops on The Strip and were well set financially. Jo lit a cigarette and continued talking to the young male bartender as she waved back.
Cat wedged herself between people, who were mostly taller than she, and at last reached a wooden booth filled with her friends. Four pitchers of beer sat on the table’s surface and the six occupants of the booth were playing quarters.
Quarters is the quintessential drinking game. It involves skill, luck, dexterity, and of course beer. It’s a cheap thrill because all you need are a quarter and a cup and you are ready to go. Quarters is best played on a hard wood table. The shooter tries to bounce a quarter off the table and into a shot glass full of beer. If the quarter goes into the glass, the shooter chooses a person at the table to consume the shot. If the shooter doesn’t bounce the quarter into the glass, their turn is over and it goes to the next shooter. There really isn’t any goal to the game other than to get one another so drunk that all the players can’t stand up.
Often individuals at the table would pick on one person having them drink every time the quarter made it into the cup. The rest of us would have a big laugh at our victim and then have to carry that person back to their dorm.
“Hi y’all,” Cat said waving at her pals and sitting down in a chair at the end of the table. She received a round of waves as the game continued.
“Sit down here girl and join the game,” a black haired boy with thin hawkish features said pulling her chair closer to his place on the bench.
“Thanks Tony. I will join in next time around.” Tony was her special friend. She’d had a crush on him since she started at UT. His dark Italian good looks, almost black eyes and swarthy skin had attracted her immediately. He was a country boy with boots and a baseball cap, but that was okay for now. Life was all about doing as much living as possible.
As the daylight hours waned and the evening took over, the bar became so jam-packed that the walls might potentially explode. The music blared louder and a general atmosphere of drunken gaiety permeated the crowd. Cat grabbed the corner of the table and stood up.
“I have to go to the bathroo
m,” she mumbled in Tony’s ear slurring her words a bit and realizing that maybe she’d had enough to drink for the night.
“Want me to go with you?” he asked.
“No. I am okay,” she assured him as she stumbled a little unsteadily through the throng. She got about half way there and suddenly tripped over something on the floor. Pitching forward a screech caught in her throat and she caught herself by falling into the outstretched arms of a male. As she grabbed him around the waist, he also seemed to instinctively grab her under her arms to keep them both from falling. He hauled her up on to her feet as if she didn’t weigh an ounce and shoved her against the nearest empty wall.
“I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to fall on you,” she said finally shoving her hair out from in front of her face and looking up into a pair of familiar dark brown eyes.
“You’ve had too much to drink. That’s obvious,” he said callously still holding her against the wall with one hand on the top part of her arms. She could feel his strong fingers gripping her so hard it hurt.
“Let me go. You are hurting me and I am not drunk,” she countered struggling a bit and pulling herself up to her full 5 foot 4 inch height which was no match for his six foot tall spread.
“Why? Don’t you like this? You can’t throw yourself at a man and not expect him to take advantage of it? He purred quietly, his face almost touching her own.
“Let me go,” she said punctuating each word; the anger starting to take over and the buzz from the beer gone. “I am in full command of my faculties and I insist you let me go. You’ve got no right to hold me here.”
“What if I said no?” he said quietly his lips at her ear.
“If you don’t let me go I’ll scream bloody murder. Oh, my God! I didn’t mean that you were a murderer. I meant…” She let the explanation wither. The chaos and throbbing of the bar moved about them in a steady crescendo but the space between them was like a stagnant bubble.
“Go ahead and scream. You’ll see if I am a murderer or not.”
Cat’s scream started in her throat ready to explode when his warm lips captured her own, stifling the scream and trapping it in her chest. His hands held her tight against the wall and he pinned the rest of her with the weight of his body against hers. She fought back pushing against him which just made him heave himself against her harder. His lips went from hard and rough to deep, wet and exploring. His tongue explored the inside of her mouth touching her own mixing their juices together in a long moist kiss. He took his lips away from hers for a moment and looked into her eyes searching for something but she was not sure what.
“I am no killer, Cat. If you look hard enough you might find out something you don’t want to know. Your brother and your father are the key reasons that I was sent away and lost my family and everything that I loved. Don’t mess with me. I don’t play games. If you do tangle with me you might just find out for sure if I am a killer, but in the meantime, remember me,” he growled as he pushed her away and shoved through the crowd out of her sight like red sea parting and then closing behind him as if he had never been there.
In a rush, Cat scrambled out of Ivy’s and ran back to her dorm. She stumbled to her room, the beer buzz mere memory, slammed the heavy wooden door and flipped on the lights. Thankfully, her roommate wasn’t there. She threw her purse on to the small narrow twin bed and sat heavily on the corner. A loud sigh of release passed her lips as she lay back on her bed reliving the events of the past hour. She looked around at the cement block walls soaked in several layers of white enamel and was sure she was the only 24 year old at U.T. home this early on a Saturday night. Normally, she and her friends would party until the wee hours of the morning and then stop at Krystal for hamburgers, fries and a thick chocolate shake, so thick you had to eat it with a spoon, before heading back to their dorms. Tonight was different. She heard the high pitched sound of female voices coming down the hall and then a knock on her door.
“Cat, you in there?” her sister called.
Cat sighed again. “Yes, I am here. Come on in.” she answered.
“What are you doing home so early?” her sister, Lynn Marie, queried as she walked across the small dorm room and leaned against a sturdy desk built in to the wall at least 30 years ago.
“I had something weird happen and just needed to come on home.” Cat said sitting up on the bed.
“So, what happened? Tell me.” Lynn said as she walked over to a small dorm refrigerator and took out a diet coke. Popping the top, she took a long swallow and perched back on the desk.
“Don’t you have some where to go?” Cat queried, moving slowly to the dorm refrigerator and removing a diet coke, she returned to her place on the bed.
“Yeah, well, I was just going to meet Joe. He and I are going to have dinner over at Ruby Tuesday’s, but when I saw your light, I thought I’d see if you wanted to come with us.” Lynn smiled. She’d started dating Joe within six months of her starting at U.T. and now they were a permanent pair. You’d rarely see Lynn Marie without also seeing Joe and vice versa. They were already making plans for a big wedding and an exciting life in Dyersburg, Tennessee once they graduated. Joe’s parents owned a large furniture and appliance store in Dyersburg, in fact, the only one within 2 hours of Memphis. Joe’s parents already had a job and inheritance outlined for Joe. He was heir apparent to take over the family business. His parents accepted Joe’s choice of mates and had already carved out a niche for Lynn Marie in their world. Lynn and Joe had their lives all pre-planned and it was a great picture. Cat envied her.
“No, thanks. I don’t want to be a third wheel.” Cat replied, taking another sip of her diet coke.
“Then tell me what happened. I have a few minutes. Joe can wait.” Lynn Marie pried her brow wrinkled with concern. “Is there some sort of trouble?”
“No, not trouble…it’s just I ran into someone from high school and it was unpleasant.” Do you remember Stephen? I can’t think of his last name. He was that guy with the light skin and almost white hair. He supposedly killed his sister or some of the other kids thought he did.
“I barely remember something like that but not really. You are at least two grades ahead of me and Stephen went to school with Michael. That would make him three years older than me at least. So what was he like?” Lynn Marie sat back on the desk and crossed her legs Indian style obviously settling in until she’d heard everything she wanted to know.
Cat took note that she wasn’t going to be able to avoid a conversation about Stephen, and pulled a bag of chips off the top of the dorm refrigerator and opened it. “You want some?” she offered Lynn Marie.
“No it will spoil my dinner,” Lynn Marie waved off the offer. “Tell me the story. Stop stalling.”
“You are making it out to be more than it is. I just ran in to Stephen at Ivy’s. I barely recognized him. He had dyed his hair, had darker skin and was wearing dark contacts, but I still knew who it was. There’s something about him that’s dangerous and attractive.” Cat admitted.
“You like him don’t you? I can tell.” Lynn Marie probed. “So what happened that made you come back early? Just being intrigued by Stephen wouldn’t have brought you home.”
“He kissed me.” Cat smiled.
Lynn Marie jumped at attention. “He kissed you! Did Tony see it?”
“No, Tony didn’t see us. It was a quick interchange while I was on my way to the bathroom. He trapped me against the wall and it was a kiss. Nothing special, just a kiss.” Cat said staring intently at her coke can.
“But if it was just a nothing special kiss and no one saw it, then why did you come back early? There must have been some reason.” Lynn Marie said again.
Cat sat up and squeezed her arms against her chest hugging herself. “I don’t know. There was something about that kiss that said our lives would be intertwined again someday. It was like a premonition. That was what was so weird.”
“That is kind of creepy.” Lynn Marie mused. “I don’t want to hear
any more about it. I heard he was involved with demons and witchcraft, so I don’t want know anything else.” With a frown Lynn Marie put down her diet coke and walked back toward the door.
“You should stay away from him, Cat. I have a feeling too. He’s more dangerous than you know.” Lynn Marie warned.
“Yeah, I agree with you. You know what. I think I will come with you and Joe after all. I don’t want to be alone right now.” Cat smiled. She picked up her purse and followed Lynn Marie out the door.
Chapter 5
"I’ll kill you bitch!" he screamed as he pushed her hard. Her back hit the wall knocking the breath out of her. Her legs crumpled underneath her and she sat down heavily on the floor. "You stupid no-good, worthless cunt. How many times have I told you not to fuck with me? All you ever do is fuck with me. You ruin everything you stupid whore,” he yelled slamming the door of their bedroom against the wall. The slamming door shook the wall knocking a picture off the wall. He grabbed a bottle of Jack and staggered down the hall towards his office.
The sound of breaking glass punctured the background. A little dog’s shrill barking rose to a staccato as it tried to scratch its way through the back door.
"Shut up you god damn dog,” he shouted turning back to the woman. The scratching continued.
He pulled her up off of the floor and half dragged her into the living room. She whimpered in fear as tears filled her eyes.
"Boo hoo hoo. Why don’t you cry for me some more, you crybaby? he teased, completely impervious to her tears. Her tears continued to fall, as she tried to stop them. "Can’t you ever learn? How long have we been together? You’d think you would know better than to fuck with me like you do. But no, you have to ruin my night by opening up that pole smoker and running that lip of yours,” he sneered. "And another thing, who gave you the right to say anything about where I have been and what I have been doing? It’s none of your god damn business and if you don’t like it you can just get the fuck out for all I care. Stupid bitch! You women are all alike,” he said stepping menacingly towards her with every word.
Coming Home (Norris Lake Series) Page 7