by Naomi Niles
POKED
By Naomi Niles
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 Naomi Niles
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Chapter One
Marshall
Sometimes I wondered if I made a mistake leaving Texas.
Don’t get me wrong, Summerville had its pleasures—I had never regretted attending Clemson with Sean, where I had spent the best five years of my life. South Carolina in early spring was a place of spectacular beauty. As I drove down I-95 and the Ashley River Road on a March morning, a brisk wind stirred the elms and azaleas on either side of me. Moss grew over the ruins of old plantation homes, and alligators lazily pawed through the dark waters.
But there was a sameness to my routine that was beginning to feel suffocating. For example:
Right now, I was sitting on the hood of my car outside the lumberyard where Sean worked. Sean was a licensed attorney, but he also had a part-time job hauling lumber and doing odd jobs for his grandfather, a fact that never failed to perplex me. Whenever I asked him why he was slumming it in a lumberyard when he could be making bank as an attorney, he coughed into his hand and found a way of changing the subject.
It was a quiet morning in mid-March. I had laid out a deck of cards on the hood in front of me and was practicing my poker face in the windshield. After about six months of practice, not even my best friends could tell when I was bluffing. A chickadee with white plumage and a black breast sang melodiously in an elm at the front of the drive leading up to the yard. Through the shop window, I could see Mr. Wood leaned against his desk as though fast asleep. At this hour, the yard was a perfect picture of tranquility.
But it wouldn’t be that way for long.
In a few minutes, with a rumble like thunder, Sean would pull around the corner in a front-end loader holding an enormous tree trunk, kicking up white dust and rocks as he went. Because it amused him, he would begin doing doughnuts on the gravel with one hand over his head like a cowboy. As if on cue, his grandfather would stir from his morning slumber and fling open the window, fist raised, hurling obscenities into the air.
I knew this because it happened every morning.
By now I had lived through this exact scene more times than I could count. It was enough to make me wonder if I was living some sort of hellish Truman Show existence where my friends and acquaintances were being handsomely compensated to enact the same routine every day for the delight of a watching audience. Surely—eventually—Sean would tire of acting the cowboy, and Mr. Wood would realize he was just wasting his breath. But it never happened.
Sure enough, within a few minutes, the chitter of birdsong was replaced by the roar of a motor and the mad laughter of my best friend. He was still grinning wickedly as he pulled the truck up beside me. He seemed pleased with himself and surprised at his own audacity, as if he had never done this before.
“You keep that up, Sean,” I said with a shake of my head, “and you’re going to get yourself fired. I don’t care if your grandfather does own the place.”
“We can only hope,” Sean replied, still grinning. “Anyway, doesn’t it feel great out here? Give me a second to clock out, and we’ll head uptown to my favorite bar. Drinks on me!”
“It’s nine in the morning!” I shouted, but he was already gone.
I had met Sean during my first semester at Clemson. I’d walked out of my room at 3:00am one morning to find him standing in front of a crowd of guys who were all chanting his name. He held an entire gallon of milk in one hand. As we watched, he began to slowly drink it. Within an hour, he had drunk the entire gallon. I was so impressed that I went up to congratulate him—whereupon he vomited on my blue fuzzy slippers. We had been best friends ever since.
“So what did you do last night?” he asked me on our way to the bar. “Were you out late partying?”
“Sean, I don’t know about you, but I’m getting too old to party.” I stretched my arms and yawned as if to underline the point. “Things change when you’re in your early to mid-twenties. You can’t stay out as late as you used to.”
“Speak for yourself,” muttered Sean. “I was out until two in the morning, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at me. I had been talking to this girl for about an hour and had almost convinced her to come back to my apartment when I mentioned that I have a law degree.”
“Why did you mention that?”
“I was trying to impress her! But then just out of the blue her sister showed up and told her to get in the car.”
“You should’ve just told her you work in a lumberyard.”
“That was what I led with, but then we got to talking, and I let my confidence get the best of me. Also, I was slightly drunk, and we got into an argument about the Eagles. She didn’t seem to care much for the Eagles.”
“Nobody under the age of forty likes the Eagles, Sean.” Through the window, I could see the remains of a slender-columned plantation. “There are several bands it’s not wise to mention on the first date. In your case, you would be better off not talking about music at all.”
“I can’t help it that I’m a little old-fashioned,” Sean said with a defiant sneer. I had never understood his love for what’s known as “dad rock.” In college, he had started a garage band that mostly played covers of Genesis and Tommy Petty and the Heartbreakers. Tom Petty’s longtime drummer had heard the band play at a wedding and reportedly described them as “solid.”
There was no one either ahead of us or behind us on the road now, so Sean pressed down hard on the accelerator and brought the car up to ninety. At this speed, the woods and glens on either side of us melted into green blurs. “You know, I really thought I would’ve made it big by now. Would you believe Springsteen released Born to Run when he was only twenty-four? Bowie was in his early twenties when he recorded most of his best work. Every Bowie song you’ve ever heard was released in his twenties or thirties.”
“You’d better get a move-on,” I said, only a little sarcastically.
Sean shrugged. “It’s hard being a musician. If you haven’t broken into the music industry by the time you’re thirty, you’re probably never going to. Can you think of a single great artist who recorded their best music in their forties? By that point, most singer/songwriters are releasing their greatest hits collections. Hell, by the time Paul McCartney turned twenty-eight, the Beatles had already broken up. The Rolling Stones haven’t made a decent album since their twenties.”
“If you wanted to become famous, maybe you chose the wrong hobby.”
“Maybe.” There was still a trace of doubt in Sean’s voice as if he couldn’t quite bring himself to admit it. “If I was a writer or painter, I’d have a few more years. Grandma Moses didn’t start painting until she was in her late seventies.”
“Not sure I would call her a great painter,” I muttered.
“Still. You’ve got a better shot in some professions than in others. Actors usually make it big when they’re young or not at all, although there are a few exceptions. Hans Gruber was Alan Rickman’s first major film role, and he was forty-six. If you’re an athlete over the age of thirty, you can forget it! Sports is for the young.”
“You’ve given this a lot of thought.”
Sean drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, looking agit
ated, but the tone of his voice was surprisingly earnest. “I’ve got to make it out of this town, Marshall. I’ve been stuck here too long. I’ve wasted some of the best years of my life doing odd jobs for my grandfather when I ought to have been playing lead guitar in a band. In my dreams, the girls are screaming so loud we can barely hear ourselves play.”
“But what’s the point of even playing if nobody can hear you?”
“I think you’re missing the point here.” Sean was beginning to sound irritated. “I really thought there would be more my life than this,” he gestured broadly, “whatever the hell it is I’m doing.”
“Maybe you set your expectations too high.”
“Maybe. But The Boss had big dreams for his life, and he went after them. I don’t think it’s a sin to aim high. The only real sin is to aim too low.”
He put on Born to Run and cranked the stereo up to its full volume so that the seats rattled. We sat there in silence for a few minutes listening to Bruce’s wail of despair for his hometown and the misbegotten dreams of youth. Sean wasn’t quite ready to grow up yet, and in a weird way, his grandiose dreams for his life were a manifestation of that. I had already resigned myself to the fact that I was never going to be somebody big or somebody people had heard of. With my degree in mathematics, I could have gone into teaching or accounting, but I wasn’t ready for that yet, either. Besides, I had made too much money playing poker to desire any other profession.
Sean pulled into the parking lot of Montreux and brought the car to an abrupt halt. “You think maybe we’ll ever grow up?” he asked.
“Maybe someday,” I said, and got out of the car.
Chapter Two
Lori
I had been out later than I intended the night before.
My sister, Sam, had urged me to come home and have dinner with her. “I’m making a chicken and rice pilaf, and I want you to tell me how it turns out. I’ve always wanted to make this particular recipe but never had the courage. But now…” She drew a deep breath. “I think now is the time.”
I promised her I would be home in an hour or two. “We’ve been stuck in the bakery all week, and this is the first night I’ve had off. I was up late last night doing some research on Norse mythology, and apparently, the library has Neil Gaiman’s new book, the one I keep having to talk myself out of buying. I want to check it out before somebody else does.”
“I think you’ll be fine,” said Sam. Like me, she had strikingly blonde hair, but whereas mine fell to my waist and took about an hour to wash, she had cut hers just above the shoulders. That, along with the flannels and jeans fashionably torn at the knees, had the effect of making her look hip and modern. I looked hopelessly old-fashioned in my pencil skirt and blue cardigan. “I just think you ought to eat something before you go. What did you have for lunch?”
Now that she brought it up, I couldn’t remember whether I had eaten lunch or not. “Tuna salad or something? I don’t know.”
“No, the tuna salad is still in the mini-fridge, or it was until about ten minutes ago. I threw it out before we left because it was starting to smell bad.”
“I guess I forgot to eat, then.” The Boltons’ wedding was coming up, and I was putting the finishing touches on the pound cake they had ordered for the reception on Saturday. It was a grave responsibility that required patience, persistence, and copious amounts of salt and butter. Twice that morning, I had fled to the bathroom to escape an oncoming panic attack. Working in a bakery was like having a major exam every other day.
Now, we were standing together in the parking lot. Across the street behind Beck’s Paint and Hardware, the sun was setting, casting a dusky purple glow over Summerville. Sam leaned back against the pink lacquered doors and pulled a cigarette out of her front pocket. I glared at her, and she glared back, as if daring me to tell her not to light it.
“I wish you would take better care of yourself,” she said in a tone of mild exasperation. “There’s forgetfulness, and then there’s a complete lack of concern for one’s health.”
“My health is fine, and you worry too much.”
“We both do,” said Sam quietly.
“Yeah.”
We were both silent for a moment. As different as we were, the one thing we had in common was our tendency to freak out over the smallest things. But of course, how could that be avoided given the way we had grown up? I had been lucky to escape when I did. Sam hadn’t been so lucky.
“Anyway,” she said finally. “I hope at some point you’ll remember your sister who just wanted to eat dinner with you. I know how you get when you’re around books—you completely lose track of time and forget all social and familial obligations.”
“Ma’am, you are too kind,” I replied. “Would you like me to bring you something back?”
Sam shook her head. “I’m still reading Zadie Smith’s latest.”
That was another thing I loved about my sister: our shared enthusiasm for obscure music and literature. We had both been English majors, though she had dropped out of OSU after her sophomore year when Jamal proposed. The rest of America probably could not have cared less who Zadie Smith was or why she was important, but we knew.
I left Sam standing there smoking her cigarette and drove to the library. There I spent some time browsing through the 398s—my favorite section. There was a book on Slavic mythology, a book on the Arthurian legends, and an 800-page collection of fairy-tales called Spells of Enchantment. I had wanted to read that one for ages, but the length intimidated me. I picked up Norse Mythology and a collection of Andersen’s fairy-tales and headed toward a table in the back, radiant and eager.
But of course, it wouldn’t be the library if boys weren’t hanging about looking to distract young women from their studies. I hadn’t been seated for more than a few minutes before a boy wearing a brown beanie and thick hipster glasses came over and sat down beside me.
I was tempted to get up and leave the moment he sat down. I prefer sitting alone in the library and hate having my space invaded. But he sat quietly for a few minutes flipping through a coffee-table book of Audubon’s bird paintings, and I relaxed a little thinking maybe the danger had passed.
Alas—not so!
“Hey, Neil Gaiman.” He had turned in his chair and was perusing my book with interest. My book. “Did you know he’s married to Amanda Palmer of The Dresden Dolls?”
“I did not know that,” I said, hoping the annoyed tone in my voice would dissuade him from any further discussion. But in this, too, I was disappointed.
“There’s a really cute story about how they were engaged. They drew rings on each other’s fingers with black Sharpie. I think if I had their money, I would just get a ring, you know?”
“I think it’s cute,” I couldn’t resist arguing.
This opinion seemed to surprise the young man, for he sat there for a moment with his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water. “Say, have you read Coraline?”
I closed my book with a snap. “Are you going to sit there and continue to pester me all night?”
He flinched, looking thoroughly taken aback. “I don’t know about all night. The library closes in an hour.” Sensing that his joke had fallen flat, he added, “Anyway, I was just being friendly. You haven’t even told me your name yet.”
“It’s Lori, and I like books, and I like being left alone when I read them.”
“Well, gee…sorry.” He made a pouty face and turned back to his bird book. “Guess I shouldn’t have bothered you.”
As I was checking out, Jeneca, the assistant librarian leaned over and said in a low voice, “Sorry about that. I see them in here every day—boys who have mistaken the library for a coffee shop.”
I wouldn’t tolerate that kind of behavior in a coffee shop,” I said, still fuming. “If I had known I was going to be bothered while I was reading, I would have brought my headphones out of the car.”
“It’s funny because that’s actually how I met my husband,�
�� said Jeneca. “We were at KU. I was sitting in one of the alcoves reading for women’s studies when he came and sat down at the empty desk. After about an hour, he turned around and asked me a question, and at first, I was annoyed, but then we got to talking, and then I was laughing hard enough that one of the librarians came over and asked us to leave. So we went out for coffee instead, and we’ve been together ever since.”
“I can’t imagine that ever happening to me,” I said with a shake of my head. “Nope. I think the shock of being interrupted would poison me against them forever.”
“It can be pretty obnoxious if you’re not interested in talking.” She handed me the books from across the counter. “Luckily, that night I was very interested.”
“If a boy wants to get my attention, he can write a book, and maybe I’ll read it.” I tucked the books under my arm and turned to leave.
I continued to brood over Jeneca’s story as I drove home that night. Now that my irritation had begun to fade a little, I wondered if I had been too hard on the boy. He probably thought I was a mean, horrible person for wanting to be left alone. What if I had just scared away a potential husband? What if we were supposed to be married, and now the whole future had changed because I had driven him away?
By the time I reached home, I was panicking again. I didn’t particularly feel like talking to anyone. I wanted to grab some food off the stove and go hide in my room and watch The Great British Bakeoff. But I knew better than to try to avoid Sam. The moment I scurried out of the kitchen trying to avoid being seen, she would know something was up. And in fact, she could tell from the moment I came through the door.
“Hey, what’s up?” She waved a hand lazily at the recliner. “Come sit down and talk to me.”
Reluctantly, I set down my purse on the coffee table, though I continued to clutch my books close to my chest. I sat down on the edge of the chair as though prepared to spring up and flee at any moment.
“There’s chicken parfait on the stove,” she said. “I thought I wanted to make the pilaf, but I decided I wasn’t up to it. I figured I’d wait until a night when either you or Jamal were here to help me.”