Bed & Breakfast

by Lois Battle

  “He may have been a tyrant, but he was never a bully,” Cam corrected. “He hated bullies.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “A tyrant,” Reba began, wiping down the countertops, “is someone who exercises power because he—or more rarely, she—is at the top of the pecking order. A bully is someone who preys on those who are weaker.”

  “I still don’t understand.”

  “Bear had,” Cam said in a flat voice, “had a special code of conduct. He lived by it and he expected you to live by it. You didn’t argue; you knuckled under. Or you rebelled. I think he secretly respected rebellion more than compliance.” She stared out the kitchen window, then turned. “Now, Susan, you’re on KP. Know what that means?”

  Susan said, “Sure. Even Mother says KP.”

  “So get off your butt and carry these shrimp shells and corncobs out to that compost pile in your grandma’s garden.”

  “Yes, sir. I mean, ma’am.” Susan scrambled down from the stool, collecting the full colander and heading out the back door.

  Cam leaned against the sink, head down. Reba put her hand on Cam’s shoulder. “I’ll finish up here,” Cam said, turning to her. “Why don’t you go on into the living room?”

  “And watch Evie and Jasper do that barnyard courting dance? Talk about strutting and ruffling of feathers!”

  “It’s pretty disgusting, isn’t it? Think Mama’s noticed?”

  “She’d have to be blind not to. And believe me, your mama’s got twenty-twenty when it comes to what’s going on.”

  “Oh, Christ,” Cam said with a shudder, “what am I going to do?”

  “Until you check with a doctor you won’t know for certain if—”

  “Sure, sure. And even then I won’t have to make a decision, right? I’ll just have a convenient miscarriage, like all the sympathetic women characters in the movies always do.” She turned the faucet on full and bent forward again, holding her hands under the stream, muttering, “Oh, Christ. What am I going to do?” while Reba picked up a dishtowel.

  Thirteen

  WHEN SHE GOT out of Bedford’s car at the corner of her mother’s block, Lila felt like Dorothy being dropped back into Kansas after her adventures in Oz. The night air was moist and still, some houses were dark, the residents having gone away for the holiday, others were festooned with colored lights, and Christmas trees could be seen through the windows. There was a single light in an upstairs bathroom of her mother’s house but the front of the house was ablaze and she could hear voices raised over a record from Bear’s early jazz collection. That’s the Original Dixieland Jazz Band doing “Livery Stable Blues,” she thought as she heard cowbells clang in the energetic, goosed-up tempo. She complimented herself for recognizing it. Her mind seemed sharp, her senses almost painfully acute, but she had trouble thinking ahead, even to the next simple action. It wasn’t until she felt the gravel in the driveway cut into her soles that she realized with a sort of dreamy panic that she was barefoot.

  Opening the back door of her car she saw that the presents and her change of clothes and overnight case were gone, but after a flash of concern she realized that someone would have taken them into the house. She moved toward the darkened kitchen. She would sneak upstairs, bathe and change, and . . . then what?

  She pulled back the screen door so slowly that its characteristic whine was broken into three small squeaks, turned the doorknob so carefully that her fingers felt sticky and . . . Josie stepped out from behind the kitchen door. Lila’s hand went to her throat. “Mama, you like to give me a heart attack!”

  “I like to give you a heart attack!” Josie whispered furiously. “My God, girl, where have you been?” She grabbed Lila’s arm, pulled her in, and closed the door. She smelled of lavender soap and hairspray and even in the dim light Lila could see that she was dressed in her periwinkle shantung dress with her best pearls, but she looked as distraught as when she’d lurked behind the door in her candlewick robe waiting for Cam to come home in the middle of the night. “I said, where have you been?”

  Lila sniffed, wiped her nose with the back of her hand, and kept it close to her mouth, not wanting Josie to smell her breath. “I went for a walk on the beach.”

  Josie took in her rain-flattened hair and the man’s plaid wool shirt. “Christmas Eve and you went for a walk on the beach?”

  “Is everybody here?”

  “Everybody’s been here for hours. Ricky’s gone but he’s supposed to be right back. We’ve already had supper. Orrie was about to call the police.” Josie drew in her breath. “Mrs. Beasley said she saw you leave from the upstairs window and—”

  “Oh, Mrs. Beasley!”

  “—she thought you’d been abducted.”

  “Abducted?” She snorted. “From The Point?” The music stopped. They both froze. From the living room, laughter like a small explosion of a glass being dropped, Cam’s voice dominating, “And Bear always loved this,” then “Minnie the Moocher” blaring out.

  Josie said, “Dear God, you look like something the cat dragged in. Your clothes and overnight bag are upstairs in my room. Go on! Get upstairs. Get cleaned up. Fix yourself.” She propelled Lila into the hallway, guiding her to the foot of the stairs. “Do you need me to help you?” she muttered, so close that her breath tickled Lila’s ear.

  “No. I’m a grown woman.”

  Josie fixed her with a basilisk stare, hissed, “Then, dammit, act like one. Go!” and waited, watching Lila hold onto the banister as she climbed. She walked back into the kitchen with heavy steps, switched on the light, and said, in a voice that carried, “Oh, Lila, you’re back! We were all so worried.” Paused, then said, “Surely. Go on upstairs and get ready. I’ll tell everyone you’re here.” But what was she going to tell them? That Lila had gone off with some friends and (thank God Mrs. Beasley had finally gone over to her niece’s and wasn’t expected back until tomorrow afternoon) the storm . . . she would say Lila had been caught in the storm and hadn’t been able to call because the power had been knocked out. Plausible enough, and Lila would just have to take it from there. She’d just mention the storm. What else could she possibly say? Because she knew, sure as God made little apples, that Lila had not just been out with, but had been with, a man.

  Lila pulled her sweater over her head, then sniffed it. She thought she could detect the smell of marijuana but couldn’t be sure. Her slacks, still damp from the rain, were hard to get off and as she pulled at them, the sand lodged in the cuffs spilled onto the tiles. She reached behind her, found her bra already unhooked, realized she hadn’t done it up after Bedford had undone it, shook it loose, and let it drop to the floor. She didn’t feel cold but goose bumps stood out all over her flesh and her nipples were the color of strawberries. She looked at herself in the mirror. She did look like something the cat had dragged in. Her hair, tangled and flattened, looked darker, more like her natural color. Her face had a smudge of mascara under her right eye, her mouth was swollen and pink as a child’s. Worst of all, she couldn’t read her own expression. If she could just sink into a hot bath for twenty minutes, then take a nap . . . But she couldn’t do that. She had to construct some sort of alibi. Stepping out of her underpants and turning on the shower, she wondered how much Mrs. Beasley—damn her eyes—had seen. But she couldn’t concentrate on Mrs. Beasley either.

  Pictures flashed in her mind as though she were watching a movie—or, more accurately, a movie preview—because she saw only quick cuts—his bare chest in the firelight, the black-and-red Indian blanket, the storm squalling out of the sky as the two of them raced for cover, the fish hook on the sleeve of her sweater—all vivid, but disjointed, out of sequence. She tried to put the images in order, to remember what had led up to and come after them. The drive out to the island was pretty much a blur—realizing that she’d actually gone with him had left her in a kind of shock. The conversation had started innocuously enough—something about sighting dolphins, and shrimpers’ fighting the imposition of
the Turtle Exclusion Devices. Neither Cam nor Orrie had been mentioned, for which she’d been extremely grateful.

  The first thing she could remember with clarity was Bedford’s hand—sunburned, with dark hairs, a moonstone ring on his index finger—switching off the ignition as he’d pulled into the sandy drive next to the cabin. She’d said, “I thought we were going to the beach,” sounding so much like a teenager afraid that she was about to be seduced that she’d felt like a fool when he’d shrugged and said, “The beach is right over there. I thought you wanted a jacket.”

  The cabin was on stilts. She followed him up rickety stairs, surprised when he opened the door without a key, asking, “You don’t lock up?”

  “I’ve finally got to the point where I don’t have anything worth stealing.”

  “Like Mahatma Gandhi,” she said slyly, remembering gossip about his Wall Street killings. “You don’t own stocks?”

  “Sure, but I understand those thieves better.”

  The place smelled of woodsmoke and coffee grounds with a sweetish overlay. The living room had a battered wicker couch and chair with pillows in expensive but faded upholstery with a palm-tree motif (his mother’s?), a fireplace that needed to be cleaned, and a prodigious woodpile. Next to it, stacks of books and magazines on the bare pine floor, a coffee table that looked like a shrine holding a semicircle of sand dollars, the tail feather of a grackle, a stalk of sea oats, and a bone shaped like a fish hook. Nothing on the walls but a bulletin board with a snapshot of a turtle thumbtacked alongside a Parks Department schedule of tides.

  Hearing him rooting around in the other room, she’d looked through the door, seen a double bed covered in a red and black Indian blanket. She’d turned her attention back to the tide.

  He came out carrying a red-and-green wool shirt, patting the pockets. He unearthed a joint and held it out to her. She shook her head with what she hoped was nonchalance but he laughed and said, “Oh, Lila, from the look in your eyes you’d think you’d just seen Reefer Madness at a high-school assembly. If you don’t want to, do you mind if I do?” She did mind but she couldn’t say so without sounding like a prude, besides which, he’d already taken a wooden match from a container on the mantel and lit up. The sweet, resinous smell filled the room. She’d smelled it on her son’s clothes but Ricky had looked her straight in the eye and denied it. She said, “We’d better hurry.”

  He grinned and took a deep drag. “Lila, you’re hurrying your life away.” His voice sounded strangulated because he was holding in the smoke. More annoyed with herself than with him, she went out to sit on the steps. If she’d shown Orrie such an open annoyance, he would have hurried, or at least offered an apology, but Bedford took his time. Strangely, after sitting there for a while, listening to the surf, her impatience evaporated. Maybe she had what the kids called a “contact high.” Maybe she should have had a few drags. Oh, sure. The middle-aged wife of a state representative lighting up in a beach cabin! What was she thinking of?

  “Ready?” he asked, going past her down the stairs, as though she’d been the one who was holding things up. “Just leave your shoes here.” So, she’d thought, relieved, it wasn’t going to be a seduction, it was going to be a guided tour. She slipped out of her shoes, rolled up the cuffs of her slacks, and followed him to the beach.

  There wasn’t a soul in sight. He strode ahead of her, pointing out the marvelous visibility of the winter sky, the erosion that left powdery piles of sand on the high beach. “Hey, there ...” He took her elbow and looked up. “See those sentinel gulls?” She smiled as though she were an eleven-year-old on a field trip, wondering why she never went to the beach in winter, in fact, rarely went in summer unless she and Orrie had out-of-town visitors. He released her arm and she moved away from him, splashing into the water, feeling a delicious shock as it hit her ankles, shins, and thighs. Feeling him watching her, she stood firm, fearless against the waves, holding up the tails of his wool shirt as water drenched her crotch. She looked out to sea, pretending to ignore him until she realized he wasn’t watching her anymore. Turning, she saw that he’d left her and was walking along the beach.

  She straggled out of the surf and waved; he waved back and kept walking. But that was all right. It was like Robinson Crusoe and his man Friday, or better yet, like Blue Lagoon—one of the sexiest movies she’d ever seen—where a boy and girl were shipwrecked on an island, built a hut, lived on fruit and fish, got rid of their tattered clothes and inhibitions, and went about near-naked and wildly in love. Now she was thinking like an eleven-year-old! But she didn’t care. The anxiety of playing hooky dissolved into the sheer excitement of freedom.

  She ambled along, admiring the ripple marks in the sand, poking her toe into pinholes and sand domes, bending to examine the flotsam of seaweed, cast-off crab claws, and coral, watching the miniature deltas drain swash back into the sea.

  There was no sunset to speak of, just a gradual waning of light so that it became harder to see him, even though he was only thirty or forty feet from her, crouched down to examine a piece of driftwood.

  “See,” he said, running his hand over it as she came up behind him, “it’s been worn by the surf and sand blast, and if you look closely, you can see where the shipworms have burrowed.”

  The sky had gone dark and squally and the wind picked up, puffing his shirt out from his back, blowing his hair around his face and shoulders.

  “It’s getting too dark to see anything,” she told him, backing off.

  “Then feel it.” He reached up, pulling her down next to him, guiding her hand onto the driftwood. It was damp, silky smooth, and hard.

  She stood up and hugged herself. “I have to be getting back.”

  It was that moment of absolute stillness that comes just before a storm, producing a curious blend of fear and anticipation.

  And then the rain came cracking down.

  “C’mon,” he yelled, rising in one svelte movement, grabbing her hand, and pulling her close to the shoreline so they could run faster on the hard-packed sand.

  It came down in sheets.

  She let go of his hand, running against the wind, outdistancing him—oh, so free—barely hearing him shout, “Here! Here!” as he turned toward the treeline and ploughed up to the cabin.

  “Want a fire?” he asked, as she stood drenched and heaving at the door.

  “No . . . I ... uh . . .” She laughed, breathless, shaking herself like a dog. “I, uh ...”

  He rubbed her head with an oversized towel that was already damp, blotted her forehead and neck. Their eyes met briefly, then locked and she felt a shock run through her. He draped the towel around her shoulders like a shawl, and went to the fireplace, kneeling and blowing onto the kindling. “There’s a bottle of Courvoisier near the toaster. Why don’t you pour us one?”

  She peeled off the sopping wool jacket, wiped back her hair, and went to the kitchenette. A bottle of Courvoisier was shoved next to a toaster that looked as though it had come from the Salvation Army. She opened the cabinets: a package of blue corn chips, brown rice, Yucatan Instant Black Beans, a strangely shaped tin of imported liver pate with truffles and green peppercorns (she’d assumed he was a vegetarian), two plastic plates, two plastic glasses, and a single crystal snifter. “There’s only one . . .”

  “You got something against sharing?” he called, poking at the fire, bringing it to flame, sitting back on the red-and-black Indian blanket he’d carried in from the bedroom. “I s’pose you do. Of course you do. Being a Republican, I guess you want your own glass.”

  “Oh, Bedford, give it a rest,” she said with a tired drawl that made him laugh. She carried the bottle and snifter to the coffee table and took a seat on the wicker couch. He poured a double shot and offered it to her. She shook her head.

  “You don’t drink either?”

  “Rarely. I’ve seen how much trouble it can cause.”

  “Haven’t we all, but, as the politician said: if by liquor you mean that dest
royer of homes, that wrecker of dignity, that curse upon mankind, why, then I’m against it; but if, by liquor, you mean that healer of pain, that balm of conviviality, that sweet sharing of pleasure, why then I’m for it.” He took a sip, opening his mouth slightly and sucking in air as he swallowed. “That’s the way to get the full effect,” he explained. “Pool it between your bottom teeth and the root of your tongue, then breathe in to aerate it.”

  “I know how to drink it”—though in fact she’d never seen anyone do that before—“I just choose not to.”

  “Lila.” He looked into her eyes again. “You can’t possibly think I give a damn about Republicans and Democrats, can you? I just can’t resist teasing you ’cause you rise to the bait every time and when you do, you’re so”—he shrugged—“cute. There’s no other word for it. You’re cute.” She wished he’d said beautiful or interesting. “Don’t you want to get out of those clothes? I mean . . .” Seeing her reaction, he shook his head at how that might have sounded. “I mean, I have a robe in the bedroom and you could let your things dry in front of the fire.”

  “No. I can’t stay that long. In fact—”

  “Well, I’m drenched.” He unbuttoned his shirt, loosened his belt buckle, snapped open the top studs of his jeans. For a minute she thought he was going to strip them off too, but he gave her another “gotcha” smile, pulled his shirt free and peeled it off so unselfconsciously that it would have seemed prudish for her to react or even seem to notice. Different people had different standards of conduct. What seemed seductive to her was probably no more than sociable ease with someone like Bedford. When he offered the snifter again, she took a small sip, holding it between her bottom teeth and the root of her tongue—had she ever been aware of that sensitive little cavern before?—sucking in, swallowing the sweet fiery liquid. Tears came to her eyes.