by Dan Jolley
Brenda said, “Now. Honey. You’ll do whatever I tell you, won’t you?”
Jay nodded.
“And you like using that knife, don’t you?”
Jay’s neck muscles strained. His keening grew louder. He nodded again. “Good. Real good. Now, Jay, drop your pants for me, will you?”
Seven hours later Brenda walked away from the raging torch that used to be her home, the shadows of her and her suitcase thrown long and wavery on the driveway.
Things happened quickly after that. She didn’t go to jail. Instead, a man in a dark suit spoke to the sheriff and the Georgia Bureau of Investigations officer assigned to the case. Brenda was promptly released into the man’s custody, and asked to accompany him to Savannah where, he said, a few new options might be opened to her.
The man walked with a silver-headed cane, and said his name was Stamford.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Friday night came, and Janey Sinclair tried very hard not to fidget.
Tim had a first-floor apartment, two doors past the elevator. Janey knocked five times, quietly, and stood waiting with her hands folded in front of her. Then she decided she didn’t like the way that posture looked, and held her hands behind her back, but she was afraid that made it look as if she were drawing attention to her breasts, plus her messenger bag purse got in the way. When Tim opened the door, Janey’s arms hung loosely by her sides, and she wore what she hoped was a steady smile.
“Hi!” Tim said brightly. “Wow…you look great.” He was dressed casually, in new running shoes, faded jeans, and a brilliant white Oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. “C’mon in, I’m on the phone, sorry, it’s work, it won’t take a second.”
Janey stepped inside and looked around. Tim’s apartment was a mirror image of hers, and it struck her how different the reversal made it look. The kitchen to her left, on the right in her apartment, seemed bigger here, and the hallway didn’t look the same length. Several cardboard boxes were stacked in one corner. He hadn’t quite finished unpacking yet.
Janey caught sight of her own reflection in a mirror, and it almost startled her. She’d forgotten how much a bit of mascara and eye-liner could make her blue-gray eyes flash. Maybe the makeup was worth it…now and then.
Tim’s taste in furnishings was definitely classier than hers. It looked as though he actually spent time and effort in picking out items to coordinate with each other, as opposed to Janey’s technique, which was more like a blind stab at furniture store clearance sales. Tasteful prints decorated the walls. The coffee table was oak, she thought.
As Tim stood in the kitchen, talking to someone about installing carpet, a big fuzzy gray cat wandered out of the bedroom. The cat stared at Janey with enormous yellow eyes, and as she watched, the animal’s tail puffed up.
“That’s Elmer,” Tim said, his hand over the phone. “Don’t worry, he’s harmless.”
Janey didn’t move. She knew where this would go, and lost her smile.
His stare never wavering, Elmer began growling. Low in his throat at first, the growl rose in volume as Elmer’s ears flattened back against his skull, and as Janey winced, Elmer hissed and darted back into the bedroom.
Janey glanced over at Tim. He had finished his phone call, and was staring after Elmer.
“Sorry! I don’t know what that was,” he said. “I’ve never seen him act like that before. He even loves the vet.”
Janey shook her head sadly. “Animals don’t like me much.” He seemed to be waiting for her to go on, but she didn’t have anything else to tell him. “Maybe I smell funny.”
Tim hesitated, but then laughed. “Crazy cat. Who knows what got into him. Well. Ready to go?”
A lot of people trusted their animals’ judgments. Was that why he hesitated? Was Tim deciding maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, but going through with it anyway?
A familiar train of thought ran through her mind. What the hell am I doing? I should be training. Or patrolling. Or painting. I shouldn’t be here. This is selfish.
Instead of any of that, Janey said, “Sure.”
Tim opened the door and smiled. “After you.”
She tried to match the length of her strides to his as they went to the car. She’d often been told she walked too fast. Is that too…what? Accommodating? Subservient? Let him catch up with me if he’s walking too slow! In the middle of a rising storm of conflicting thoughts and emotions, Janey realized she had forgotten entirely how to go on a date.
“So, uh...how was your day?” She ground her teeth and wondered if she could sound any more inane.
“Not bad. A lot like yesterday. This full-time job arrangement...y’know, it takes up a lot of time.”
“I’ve heard that. Guess that’s why it’s called ‘full time.’“
“Yeah.” Tim chuckled.
He laughed! He laughed at the lamest comment I could possibly have made, but he laughed! The tiny step forward boosted her flagging confidence.
They took her car. Janey explained that she never got into a guy’s car on a first date, and Tim agreed her policy was sound. So his old Monte Carlo sat in its reserved spot, and Janey drove her Civic.
“I’m...a little nervous,” she said as she turned the ignition. “I figured I’d go ahead and tell you, in case it wasn’t obvious.”
“Okay. Why is that?”
“Why am I nervous? Well...I haven’t done...anything like this, ah...any kind of social engagement in a couple of years. I’m not sure I’ll remember how to act.”
“Oh yeah? Why such a long time?”
She shook her head. “Long story. Long boring story. I’ll tell you some time when you’ve got insomnia.”
“I don’t know. I doubt any story you told could be too boring.”
Janey didn’t respond to that. Instead she said, “So. What’s the place we’re going? What’s it called? It’s a vegetarian place, right?”
“Right. You do like vegetarian food? I hope?”
“Yeah, yes I do. I guess we should’ve ascertained that before now, huh?”
He cocked an eyebrow at her, and one corner of his mouth quirked up.
“What?”
“‘Ascertained.’ You just used that word in a regular sentence.”
Janey cringed.
“Oh, hey, no, I liked it! Spend too much time on Twitter—which I will admit I do—and you forget that people have actual vocabularies.”
A pause, as Janey thought about that.
“I, uh…never really got much in the way of education.”
Tim shrugged. “Could’ve fooled me. Besides, it’s not like I’m using my degree. I mean, except for paying for it. Which I’ll be doing until I’m dead.” He smiled to lighten the words. “So, no college for you?”
She shook her head. “Wasn’t in the cards.”
“Nobody can teach the kind of talent you’ve got anyway.”
“Thank you.” She felt her cheeks get a little warm.
They didn’t say anything else until they got to the restaurant. It was a small, narrow brick building on North Highland, not far from Taco Mac, with a couple of wrought iron tables and chairs outside. The whole front wall was glass, and Janey saw about a dozen people inside, seated and eating. She followed Tim in.
A waitress greeted them. “Sit wherever you want to, I’ll be right there.”
Tim gave her a questioning look, and Janey shrugged. “Maybe that table in the corner?”
Tim nodded and led the way. Janey took a chair backed up to the wall, and Tim said, “Do you want your back against the wall so nobody can sneak up on you?”
Janey glanced behind her. “Hey, now that you mention it, that is kind of nice.” Tim chuckled again. That’s twice. Am I doing something right? “It’s actually a sort of neurotic derivative of my movie-watching habits.”
&nb
sp; “Which are?”
“Well, I guess it’s only one habit. I like to sit in the very back row.”
“Why? So you can neck with your date?”
“No...so nobody can throw popcorn at me.”
Tim laughed at that, a full-blown real laugh, and Janey felt the knot of her insides begin to untangle. Tim opened his mouth to say something, but the waitress showed up again. She gave them each a glass of ice water, silverware wrapped in a paper napkin, and a menu.
“Are you both ready to order now, or do you need a few minutes?”
Tim opened his menu, but didn’t really look at it. “I know what I want, but I think you’d better give us some time.”
Janey opened her own menu and was bombarded by dishes she’d never heard of before. “Yeah, I think I’ll need a couple of minutes at least.”
The waitress, who wore a hand-made name tag that read “Lynn,” smiled and nodded and left them alone.
Janey felt Tim watching her as she looked over the selections. A silence stretched out, and Janey broke it with, “Uh, can you recommend anything?”
He seemed happy to make suggestions. “Well, everything they serve is good. Except the cornbread—they cook it with bits of purple cabbage in it, which is pretty weird, I think. But aside from that, everything is good. I can vouch for the lentil burger and the barbecued tofu especially, but I’m going to get the vegetable samosas and dal soup.”
Janey’s eyes wandered across the paper until she found what he meant.
“Ah. In the Indian section.” She peered over the top at him. “I guess that makes sense.”
He dropped his eyes, and Janey set the menu down on the table. “Did I just put my foot in my mouth?”
“No, no...” He paused briefly. “See, the first time I had any Indian food was in a restaurant.”
“No kidding?”
“No kidding. My dad was never all that interested in preserving my, ah, my cultural heritage. He used to go back to Mumbai, when I was little, to visit my grandma, but then he finally talked her into moving over here, and that was pretty much it. He kind of cut ties.”
“Your mom was okay with that?”
“My mother…my biological mother…died when I was four. Dad re-married about a year later. Met a perky redhead with freckles, and that was all she wrote, as they say.”
Janey cocked her head. “Did they have any more children?”
Tim nodded. “I’ve got a brother, and Mom—my step-mom—already had a daughter. Depending on what part of the country we’re in, we get a lot of confused looks when we’re all out together.”
Janey tried a smile. It felt good. “I can imagine.”
“So, in answer to your question, no, you didn’t put your foot in your mouth.”
“Thank goodness.” She chuckled—her own laughter foreign and new—and said, “That would have been number 146 on my List of Things To Do Around New People: ‘make offhanded racial slur.’”
Tim laughed again, and Janey went on: “That’s right after ‘complain of incontinence,’ and right before ‘comment on new person’s weight problem.’”
He laughed harder, and before Janey could think of anything else to say, Tim reached across the table and gently took her hand in his.
Janey drew in a deep breath. This didn’t seem real. Tim didn’t seem real.
His skin was warm and smooth and, as his laughter subsided, with the index finger of his other hand he slowly traced a line across the back of her knuckles. He slowly turned her hand over and glided his fingertips across her palm. “If I’d paid more attention to my grandmother, I might know how to read these lines.”
She flexed her fingers a tiny bit. “Best not to know the future.”
He grinned. “That fits in with something Grandma used to tell me. She always said, ‘Tim, there is only one thing in this world you can truly control. And that’s yourself.’”
Janey considered that. “She sounds like a smart woman.”
He nodded. “She was. She died last year.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t—”
“It’s okay. It’s okay. It was the kind of thing that, by the time it happened, it was a blessing.”
Janey carefully pulled her hand back, hoping she hadn’t finally managed to ruin the whole evening.
“So what about your background?” Tim asked. “Where’s your family tree planted?”
Janey made a sort of shrugging gesture with her eyebrows. “It’s more like a family hedge. I come from everywhere.”
“Yeah? How so?”
“Well, let’s see…” Janey started counting off on her fingers. “On one side Dad’s family was Scottish, Irish, and German. On the other side they were Cherokee and Jewish.”
Tim grinned. “Traditional! Okay. How ’bout your mom?”
“Mom’s folks were from Florida, with some Seminole influence—so they were a mix of Caucasian and Native American and African-American. Mom’s father went overseas and brought back a young lady from the Philippines, and Mom showed up not long after that. Then Mom and Dad got together and had me: an official mutt.”
“Wow. That is…”
Janey waited. “Yes?”
His grin widened. “That is the most American family I have ever heard of.”
“Isn’t it, though?”
“I can sort of relate. Growing up with my super-Irish-American step-mother and step-sister, and an Indian-born father who wears cowboy hats and drives a Dodge Ram.”
Janey’s eyebrows shot up. In what she hoped was a playful tone, she said, “Your dad…sounds a little bit like a certain Louisiana governor…?”
Tim groaned, but grinned while he did it, and threw his hands up. “I know! I know! I think Bobby Jindal is his hero. Don’t worry, though. I love my father to death, but we haven’t seen eye to eye on politics since I was about ten.” He took her hand again, and squeezed it. “But where I was going was, I recognize what you are. My friends and I used to talk about this in college—you’re a future of humanity person.”
Janey’s heart thudded. “I’m a what, now?”
“You’re what every human being is headed toward! As technology advances, and travel gets faster and cheaper and easier, human populations are blending. Y’know, instead of different, genetically identifiable groups—Africans and Chinese and Indians—we’re starting to meld together. Another hundred fifty, two hundred years, there’ll be a lot more humans who look like you than look like, say, Idris Elba.”
“I like Idris Elba.”
“Of course you like Idris Elba! What’s not to like? But that’s hardly the point.”
Janey nodded. “I get what you’re saying. I guess.”
Still holding Janey’s hand, Tim held his water glass up for a toast. “To the culturally ambiguous.”
Janey lifted her own glass. “To weird loners.”
“To Americans!”
“I’ll drink to that.”
They clinked their glasses and drank, and when Janey set her glass down, Lynn the waitress appeared next to their table. Tim grinned, just a tiny bit, and slowly pulled his hand away.
“Ready?” Lynn asked, tentatively, as if sensing the interruption. She had a small pad and pen.
“I think so,” Tim said, and turned toward the waitress. Janey couldn’t think over the whirring of blood in her ears. “I’ll have the samosas and dal soup. And iced tea.”
The waitress dutifully scratched the order down and turned to Janey. She said, “Same for me.”
Janey watched the waitress go, and after a pause that might or might not have been awkward, she couldn’t tell, mumbled, “So, uh...what were you saying?”
Tim leaned back in his chair, smiling. Something had changed, but Janey didn’t have the presence of mind at the moment to try to figure out exactly what. She decided to co
ncentrate on listening, and on observing basic table manners, such as not stabbing herself with a fork.
“Y’know, I can’t read you,” Tim said.
Janey swallowed hard before she tried to talk. “I’m not...” But her throat clamped shut, made her words come out quavery. I’m not hard to read. Say it! Instead she mumbled, “Whoo... Sorry.” She covered her face with one hand, and looked at Tim through her fingers. “I don’t get out much. In case that wasn’t really, really obvious.” She touched her cheeks. “Am I blushing? I feel like I’m blushing.”
Tim chuckled. “Maybe just a little.”
Janey grinned self-consciously. “It’s like I’m in seventh grade again. Okay.” She took two deep breaths, and put on a mock-serious face. “All right. I’m okay now. In control.”
Tim’s dark eyes glinted with humor. “As long as you’re sure.”
* * *
The dinner went smoothly from there. Janey didn’t have any more visible emotional spasms, and Tim graciously pretended she hadn’t had any in the first place.
She listened as Tim told her about his childhood, and the wretched time he spent in high school, and his four years in college. He asked her about her own past twice, but both times she sidestepped the question and asked him another one about himself. She could tell Tim was aware of the evasions, but he didn’t press her.
The food was good. The dark green dal soup was spicy enough to warrant long sips of iced tea, but not hot enough to burn the tongue, and the samosas’ crusts were wonderfully flaky and light. Janey had never tried either of the dishes, and was pleasantly surprised.
“So,” she began at one point as he set down his glass of tea, “does your family actually have these? At meals? Ever?”
Tim swallowed a bite of samosa and smiled, shaking his head. “No. That’s what I meant before. I first had this stuff at an Indian restaurant when I was seven. I’m not sure how authentic it was. For that matter I’m not sure how authentic this is. But that’s what I meant. I can’t tell, ’cause I don’t have any first-hand experience. They wouldn’t teach me to speak Hindi, either.”
He paused, drew in a breath as if to speak, paused again. Janey said, “What?”