“I finished high school, where I got a reputation as a bad girl. In fact, I slept with boys, men and women, too, whoever wanted me. I didn’t mind, so long as it wasn’t Daddy. He got knifed by one of his whores and lost a kidney when I was in my last year. He didn’t get no sympathy from me, and followin’ graduation I went to junior college in Tallahassee, Florida, where Bitsy was livin’; that’s where she met Del Parker. I guess I got bored there and took off with a stupid boy from New Orleans named Tosco Orchid to Mexico. He got sick in Mexico City and almost died from typhoid fever or somethin’, so soon as he was recovered enough to travel again he went back to N.O. I stayed and got tangled up with Abstemio, whom I met while I was workin’ illegally as a dance hostess in Tepito. He spent a lot of money on me and we got drunker than usual one night and I married him. You about know the rest.”
“You can’t stay here,” Pace said. “I need to be by myself and finish the book I’m writing. Company won’t cut it.”
Punzy put her drink down on a side table, stood up so that he could appreciate her nifty figure, then stepped over to Pace and leaned down so that their noses almost touched.
“Tell me true you don’t want to play Two-Cobras-in-a-Bag with me,” she said.
Pace gently pushed Punzy away, rose from his chair and opened the front door.
“Please go, Punzy,” he said. “I don’t want to be mean, I just have to figure things out and I won’t be able to if you’re here.”
Punzy dropped to her knees and began sobbing. Pace watched and listened to her heave and cry until he couldn’t stand it any more and closed the door.
She looked up at Pace, smiled weakly and said, “I’ll let my hair grow long again if you want me to.”
21
Rapunzelina did her best to not be too much of a distraction to Pace. She went to the library in Bay St. Clement and did the proper research regarding gaining admission to nursing schools and very soon began sending out applications. When she wasn’t at the library or running errands, such as buying groceries, Punzy spent most of her daytime hours in Dalceda’s house, which is where she and Pace regularly had dinner. At night they slept together in the cottage. Pace’s writing was going well and he was pleasantly surprised by Punzy’s understanding of his need for privacy. Pace enjoyed their time together and, despite the sadness caused by the death of her sister, Punzy seemed genuinely happy.
Then one evening six months after her return, she did not show up back at the house and did not call. Pace fixed his own supper and afterwards went back to the cottage and read until he fell asleep. It was after two in the morning when Pace was awakened by loud noises coming from Dalceda’s house. He looked out his bedroom window and saw the Subaru and a red Dodge Ram pick-up parked in the driveway. Lights were on in the big house and terrible techno music was blasting from it. Pace got up, put on his pants and shoes and went over to find out what was going on.
He found Punzy and two bearded, middle-aged men snorting lines of cocaine off a counter in the kitchen. One of the men had a patch over his left eye and was naked from the waist down. The other man was completely naked and was swigging from a fifth of Jack Daniel’s in between inhaling coke through a rolled up twenty dollar bill. Punzy was fully dressed. Her eyes were only half open and she staggered over to a chair and passed out with her head on the table.
“Who’re you?” shouted the man with an eyepatch when he noticed Pace. Before Pace could say anything, the other man began urinating on the floor. Pace took off and ran back to the cottage, grabbed his Remington .332 over-and-under shotgun and two shells from the bedroom closet, loaded the gun and walked quickly back to the house.
The two men were still in the kitchen. The one with the eyepatch was shaking Punzy by her right shoulder, trying to get her to wake up. His cock was at half-mast and he was yelling.
“Come on, honey gal, suck Porter’s hairy old dick again!”
Pace leveled the shotgun at him and said, “Get out.”
The other man threw his whisky bottle at Pace. It missed and Pace turned the .332 a few degrees and shot him in the groin. The man screamed and fell down.
“Take him and get out!” Pace shouted at Eyepatch, pointing the gun again at him.
Eyepatch lifted up his partner, who was howling and writhing in pain while bleeding copiously onto the floor, and dragged the wounded man out the back door. Pace stood in the doorway and watched as Eyepatch dumped him in the bed of the truck, then got behind the steering wheel and drove away.
The men’s clothes were scattered around the kitchen. Pace walked into the dining room and fired the other shell into Punzy’s Bose, blowing it apart and off the table they had become used to having dinner on, then went back into the kitchen. Punzy had slid off her chair onto the floor, where her head rested in a pool of the wounded man’s blood.
Pace sat down in the chair in which Rapunzelina had been sitting and placed the shotgun on the table. It was quiet now in the kitchen except for the gurgling sound of Punzy’s troubled breathing. Words from the Fourth Circle of Dante’s Inferno came to his mind and he spoke them:
“Not without cause our journey is to the pit.”
Pace did not move for a very long time. He looked down again at Punzy and wondered what would become of her. Her breathing feathered out and she slept now like a child. Pace looked up and imagined Sailor was sitting across the table from him, smiling.
“Well, Daddy,” Pace said. “I’ve got my answer now. You had Mama’s everlasting arm to lean on and I don’t. That was your secret, wasn’t it? Havin’ Lula there for you made it possible to go on.”
Pace knew what he wanted to write now. He got up and walked back to the cottage.
Part Four
1
The one person Pace could think of that he wanted to see and whom he believed would understand his state of mind following the bizarre and highly unsettling events of the past few months was Marnie Kowalski. Marnie lived in New Orleans, and during his first few weeks back in the city in which he’d grown up, after his divorce from Rhoda Gombowicz, Pace and Marnie had been lovers; but their mutual saving grace was that they had become good friends into the bargain and remained close despite the waning of their short-lived romantic entanglement. Pace trusted Marnie and he knew she trusted him, so it was to Marnie Pace turned in his most recent of darkest hours.
“Pace, it’s so good to hear your voice. I’m glad you’re callin’ ’cause I’ve thought of you often since you moved to North Carolina. How’re things, darlin’?”
“Marnie, you know I’ve seen and gone through some more than passin’ strange episodes in my life but lately there’ve been several goin’s on have about got me puzzled as to God’s plan.”
Marnie laughed and said, “Pace, honey, you of all people know He ain’t never had one. Don’t give me any details ’til you get here. You are comin’ to see me, aren’t you? Isn’t that why you’re callin’ now? Not that you’d ever have to phone first, you know.”
“Thanks, Marnie, yes. It’s good you’re still so prescient about most things. I’d like to get back to N.O. for a little while and I was hopin’ you’d be up for takin’ me in. If anything, Bay St. Clement ain’t turned out to be any more peaceful than anywhere else. I’m writin’, though, and that seems to be pretty much holdin’ my mind together. What about you?”
“I opened a bakery over on St. Philip. Goin’ pretty good so far. I call it Kowalski’s Cake & Pie Company. Open from five A.M. ’til two P.M.; then I go swimmin’ at the Y. What’re you writin’?”
“The story of Sailor and Lula; it’s a novel.”
“Can’t wait to read it, babe. When you comin’?”
“It’ll take me a couple of days to close up the houses and pay some bills. I’ll drive over once that’s done. Now you got me thinkin’ about your lemon meringue pie. Nobody in N.O. besides you could ever get it to come out right.”
<
br /> “People don’t understand the weather here like I do, that’s why. It’s the weather affects the bakin’. Well, this is Sunday, so I’ll be expectin’ you around Thursday. If I’m not at the house I’ll probably be at the bakery, corner of St. Philip and Burgundy.”
“Thanks, Marnie. You know I love you to death.”
“Love you to death, too, Pace. Drive careful.”
Pace hung up. The last time he’d seen her, Marnie was living with two rescued and supposedly rehabilitated pit bulls she’d named Milk and Honey. She had a boyfriend, too, an ex-Navy Seal—Bigger or Digger, Marnie called him, Pace couldn’t remember. He wondered if that guy was still around. Marnie hadn’t mentioned him.
Pace was not entirely certain that he should be leaving at all, but he did feel the need to create some distance for himself from the killings and reprehensible behavior of Rapunzelina Pasternak Cruz. Where she had gone Pace did not know and did not want to know. Perhaps she would make it to the Congo one of these days and do some good for mankind like she hoped, though Pace had his doubts.
The night before he left for N.O., Rapunzelina appeared to Pace in a dream. She was naked, adorned only by numerous bracelets on each arm, rings on every one of her fingers and indecipherable tattoos on her breasts. Punzy extended her arms toward him, turned upward the palms of her hands and said, “Do not forgive me. The river is mine and I have made it.”
2
Driving to New Orleans, Pace realized that the route he was following from Bay St. Clement was the same one his mother and her lifelong best friend, Beany, had taken on the last trip of Lula’s life. At the age of eighty she had gone on the road to visit Pace, which she had, and stayed with Beany at Marnie Kowalski’s house on Orleans Street. All had gone relatively well until a dilemma in Beany’s family caused the women to cut short their time with Pace. It was on their way to Beany’s daughter’s home in Plain Dealing, Louisiana, that Lula suffered a heart attack and died.
Lula and Beany had encountered a spot of trouble in South Carolina after a young man they had given a ride to was stabbed to death by a disturbed woman he met during a stopover. Both Lula and Beany had been unnerved by this incident but Pace did not think it had anything to do with his mother’s subsequent passing. Lula had experienced many worse situations in her lifetime and managed to weather them all. Her heart, strong and wild as it was, had finally just quit. Pace missed his parents but was satisfied that they had lived their lives as best they could and passed on to him their spirit of adventure, decency and generosity. As far as legacies go, Pace figured, that was about as good as one could get.
By the time Pace arrived at Marnie’s late Thursday afternoon, he was exhausted both mentally and physically. He had stopped on the way only to sleep, eat and get gas, keeping conversation with anyone, such as the motel clerk, waitress or station attendant to a minimum. As soon as he had parked his Pathfinder on Orleans Street, two houses down from Marnie’s, Pace fell asleep in the driver’s seat and did not wake up until Ms. Kowalski herself knocked on the front passenger side window.
“Pace Ripley! Here I am, darlin’, the one you can’t live without.”
Pace opened his eyes and saw his old friend standing on the sidewalk grinning at him through the glass. The sun had gone down and Marnie’s short blonde hair glowed in the gray-green light of the New Orleans evening. He got out of the car and embraced her.
“It’s true,” Pace said. “Other than the unlikely event of Sailor and Lula bein’ resurrected, there ain’t nobody on the planet other than you whose company I believe I could tolerate.”
Marnie laughed and said, “That either don’t speak so highly of the human race or of you, Mr. Ripley, sir. Which is it?”
“I’m tryin’ to decide.”
Pace picked up the few belongings he’d brought with him and followed Marnie into her house. Milk and Honey barked furiously at the sight of him, so Marnie put them out into the yard.
“What about Bigger, or Digger, or whatever his name is?”
“Digger’s on his fifth tour of duty in Afghanistan. I don’t expect him back for another six months. That’s if he makes it back, of course.”
“A lot can happen in six months, Marn.”
“Sure as shit,” she said.
Marnie removed two Abita Ambers from her refrigerator, opened them, and handed one to Pace. They clinked bottles.
Marnie took a swig, grinned and said, “And I’m hopin’ somethin’ will.”
Pace swallowed half the contents of his bottle and smiled back.
“Did the thought ever occur to you, fine progeny of Sailor Ripley and Lula Fortune, that everybody’s dodgin’ bullets one way or another whether they know it or not?”
“It’s a good thing for us then that most folks can’t shoot straight.”
Marnie sidled up to Pace, kissed him softly on the lips, and said, “Think you could give me a straight shot where I need it the most?”
“Right now?”
“Rat now, as my Grandmama Elsie Buell in Nacogdoches used to say, bless her heart. I do believe history is still made at night.”
As Pace followed Marnie up the stairs to her bedroom, he recalled his daddy telling him that once when he was in high school following a girl up a flight of stairs like this Sailor reached up, put a hand between her legs and the girl turned and said, “Oh, what a bad boy you are.”
Pace put his right hand between Marnie’s legs and without stopping she cooed, “I never could get enough of you bad boys.”
In her bedroom Marnie pulled down the shade over the window facing Orleans Street, then threw her arms around Pace’s neck.
“Tell me, darlin’,” Marnie said, “don’t it feel like home?”
3
It was two o’clock in the morning and Pace was lying in Marnie’s bed listening to Etta Jones sing “Don’t Go to Strangers” on the radio. “When you need more than company,” she suggested, “don’t go to strangers, come on to me.” Pace had always loved this song and Etta’s tangy delivery, the way she let it curl gently into the night air. He also dug Skeeter Best’s dignified guitar solo, not subtle but unobtrusive, just right, which was the way Pace felt this very moment. It was the first time he’d been able to relax since the insane series of events occasioned by his dealings with the Pasternak sisters. A remarkably cool breeze from the river snaked in through the slightly open bedroom window, causing Pace to pull a sheet up over his chest. The thought hit him that he had not felt really peaceful since leaving N.O., and he had to come back to get it. Etta Jones’ final soft figure segued into Willis “Gator Tail” Jackson on tenor playing “This’ll Get To Ya” with Brother Jack McDuff filling on organ. Marnie was downstairs in the kitchen making omelettes for them. They had not eaten dinner, having fallen deeply asleep after making love. Pace savored the moment. Craziness was never far from home, wherever that might be, but you didn’t have to sign up for it. He closed his eyes and shivered a little from the breeze. When he reopened them, Marnie, completely naked except for a leopard print scarf tied around her neck, walked through the doorway holding two plates.
“Guess what, darlin’?” she said. “Day after tomorrow I’m puttin’ you to work in the bakery.”
4
Pace didn’t have much time to write. He’d never baked a cake in his life, so he had to learn from scratch. Marnie put him to work making Magdalena Kowalski’s Krakow yellow cake, named after her mother, from Magdalena’s recipe. Pace enjoyed doing the basic preparation, measuring the dry ingredients, sifting the cake flour, then re-sifting it with the baking powder and salt, creaming the butter and sugar, adding egg yolks (never the whole egg), vanilla and grated lemon rind—using both, Marnie explained, was her mother’s secret—and adding the sifted ingredients to the butter mixture in three parts with thirds of milk. After Pace had poured this into pans prepared with parchment and put them into the oven, he left the
filling and frosting to Marnie or her second in command, Dolores Silva, a native of Jalisco, Mexico, who had lived illegally in the United States for forty years, since she was ten. Her parents and grandparents had all been great cooks and passed their collective culinary knowledge on to Dolores. Marnie told Pace that Dolores made the best white pozole on the planet, and he was eager to try it whether or not he had a hangover.
While Marnie went swimming in the afternoons, Pace usually took a nap, then wrote for a couple of hours before having a cocktail with her. They had dinner together and went to bed early. After four weeks of this routine, Pace felt renewed, the poison of the previous months having drained from his system almost entirely. Other than taking Milk and Honey out to run in Toni Jones Park behind Dillard University, Marnie and Pace stayed close to home. This suited Pace and he and Marnie got along with “nary a ripple” as she said old Elsie Buell would have put it.
Pace was awakened from his nap on a Thursday afternoon by Marnie, who came into the bedroom holding a sheet of paper and an envelope. She sat down in a rocking chair next to the bed and shook her head from side to side.
“What’s up, Marn? Why aren’t you at the Y?”
“Special delivery letter arrived just as I was goin’ out the door. Digger got blown up by an incendiary explosive device along with three other guys in a jeep on the outskirts of Kabul. Those three are dead. Digger survived but he lost a leg—it doesn’t say which one—and was permanently blinded. He’s already in D.C. at a rehab center. They’re gonna release him this Saturday and fly him to N.O. I’ve got to take him in, Pace. He’s got no place else to go.”
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