Unexpected Dismounts

by Nancy Rue

  “Rehab is a joke for somebody like Zelda,” I said.

  “But it’ll keep her from killing herself with another overdose.”

  I shivered, but I nodded.

  “I’ll stay on it and keep you posted,” Chief said. “What else do we have on the agenda?”

  “Brain food,” Hank said. She tapped the edge of the tray. “Anchovies are proven to be good for thought processing.”

  “That must be why I am clueless about half the time,” India said. “But do let me taste that cheese. Now that looks like it could put a few more dimples on my thighs.” She smiled again. “Which means it is absolutely scrumptious.”

  Chief was looking at me.

  “I got nothin’,” I said.

  Actually, that wasn’t true. I had plenty of God-work to keep me busy over the next several days. There was the usual counseling of Sister meltdowns and backslides, as well as the chauffeuring of everybody to NA meetings and the never-ending dental appointments to repair meth damage. Plus the hauling of Desmond to the Harley store for yet another pair of boots.

  Still, Zelda crammed herself into my thoughts. I was talking up C.A.R.S. to HOG friend Rex, whose Toyota needed a paint job, and suddenly there she was in my head, ramming somebody’s vehicle into a utility pole. Who did it belong to? The same guy who gave her a cocktail she couldn’t handle?

  Anything could trigger the questions. I walked past the front door on Palm Row where she had first come to me and found myself aching. What happened? Why was she so anxious then to do anything to change, and so angry now at the God who tried to change her into herself? I spit in the sink while brushing my teeth and felt the pain all over again, the pain that asked, Why did she so easily take drugs from Satan, when we were offering her Jesus?

  I tried to see her, despite Chief’s protest. I say protest. It was actually just a look that said, You’ll regret it. Just sayin’.

  And of course, I did. Evidently Chief’s being hot was no match for Detective Kylie’s new edict that only attorneys were allowed to see their clients during anything but visiting hours. Those were held on Sunday, which by that time I’d already missed. I told myself that maybe that was a God thing. Maybe I needed that time to figure out how to get Zelda back to God. Because if she wasn’t willing to do that … Yeah, maybe I needed time.

  Meanwhile, there were the Sisters’ baptisms to prepare them for. And Desmond’s. With the women, it was a delicate dance, trying to balance their enthusiasm for denying themselves everything and their deeper need to go within. Desmond just wanted to give up homework for Lent.

  We had a rousing discussion in the living room at Sacrament House the Wednesday after Ash Wednesday. Jasmine and Mercedes and Sherry and Hank and Desmond set about discussing their respective “stuff.” If left to their own devices, the Sisters would have referred to their struggles as their—well—some form of excrement. Stuff, though somewhat euphemistic, served us well. At least the three Sisters, and even Hank, were able to put words to their confusion and begin to untangle it. Desmond was less forthcoming, although he did begrudgingly admit that he still had a snack-hoarding habit—shocking—but he was working on it.

  “I’ll get that beat ’fore I get baptized,” he told us.

  As for me, I played moderator. Fortunately nobody called me on my lack of transparency about my own where-is-God-what-am-I-doing “stuff.” But I couldn’t avoid it in the silence we observed before the communion.

  As we stood around the table in the dining alcove, chins to our chests, eyes fluttered closed, Sacrament House settled into a quiet so still I was afraid the rumblings in my head would rattle the Sisters out of their private conversations with God. All conditions were right for hearing the Divine Voice—the just-cleaned smell of Mercedes’s relentless scrubbing discipline, the singe of the candle curling heavenward, the peace so thick it even settled over the furniture and made it seem less shabby. It should have been easy to hear God, detect a Nudge. And in fact, I almost felt one.

  Almost.

  “Almost,” my father used to say, “is just another word for not good enough.” The veins in his neck would bulge when my ninety-two average was almost an A, or the tennis ball I hit nearly cleared the net, or the job I took came close to what a Chamberlain ought to earn. It infuriated him so much that by age fifteen, I deliberately did almost enough in everything, just to see his jaw muscles twitch. In my mind, if he didn’t like it, it must be good. Almost became a habit for me.

  It never bothered me before God started forcing me to reach past almost. But now, being so close to whatever was niggling at the edge of my brain was like Chinese water torture. Hearing wash their feet yet again, without knowing what it meant, was palpably painful.

  Wasn’t I doing that already? Hadn’t I washed enough blood and vomit and sweat from these women to show I got it?

  You’ve got it, Allison. But do they?

  I opened my eyes. The rest of the heads were still bowed. Desmond’s was wagging back and forth like an imitation of Stevie Wonder, but he clearly hadn’t heard what I’d heard. I closed myself into darkness again. All right. If this was where we were going …

  Who? Who doesn’t have it? I cried out in my head.

  Wash their feet. All of you—wash their feet.

  It came like an unwelcome emotion this time, like anger you can’t express without committing a Class B felony, like frustration you can’t take out—on anybody.

  “Dang it—whose feet?”

  My eyes came open. Jasmine stopped moaning, and Mercedes scowled like she was about to belt somebody before she realized I was the one who had broken the silence.

  “It ain’t my feet smellin’,” Desmond said.

  Mercedes did start to whack him, but I put my hand up and turned to Hank.

  “Let me say this before I talk myself out of it,” I said.

  “Go for it,” she said.

  I closed my eyes. “We need to tell India that the fund-raiser is going to be at my house—on Palm Row. And we’re not going to bring in caterers and servers and all that. We’ll prepare the meal ourselves, like the kind of feasts Jesus used to go to. All of us are going to prepare it, and we’re going to serve the people we’re asking to serve us. That’s all I know.”

  I let my eyes come open. They didn’t look convinced, necessarily, or inspired, but nobody was looking at me as if medication were the next logical step.

  “I don’t mean to be dense,” Sherry said, “but I don’t see what this has to do with feet.”

  “Forget that,” I said. “It’s just an image that—never mind, that part’s complicated.”

  “I trust you want me to head up the cooking end of this,” Hank said, mouth twitching.

  “Oh, Lawd, don’t you let Miss Angel do it,” Mercedes said. “Nothin’ against you, Miss A, but girl, you the only person I know can ruin a baked potato.”

  “I don’t want to do no cookin’,” Desmond said.

  “That’s good news too,” Hank said.

  “But I could be like the Mother D.”

  “Mother D?” Jasmine said. “Whatchoo talkin’ ’bout, boy?”

  I tried to keep the chortle out of my voice. “Do you mean maître d’? Like the head waiter?”

  “The one gets dressed up real sharp and lead the ladies to their table,” Desmond said. “I seen it in a movie.”

  “That would be so you, Desmond,” Hank said. “But I don’t know if that’s what your mother has in mind.”

  I didn’t really know what God had in my mind. We were clearly talking metaphor here, and I didn’t have the whole meaning yet.

  But at least it was closer than almost.

  Chief’s Road King was still in its parking place on Palm Row when Desmond and I got home.

  “Mr. Chief gonna spend the night?” Desmond said
as we hung our helmets in the garage.

  “No!” I said.

  “You don’t need to get all up in my dental work, Big Al,” he said. “I was jus’ wonderin’.”

  I didn’t even know what to say to that. Maybe I could put Chief on it. I did manage, “Okay, no hanging out with Mr. Chief tonight. You need to finish your history homework before bed. You remember what he said about if you try to bring your grade up, he’ll take you riding on the beach.”

  Desmond danced backward in front of me as we crossed the lane. “Try? Ain’t no tryin’ about it. Imma get a A-plus on my next test. Mr. Chief gonna have to take me all the way to Daytona.”

  “You can never tell,” I said.

  He stopped at the bottom of the side porch steps. “You serious?”

  “Only one way to find out.”

  Chief looked understandably surprised when he opened the kitchen door and Desmond swept past him with a perfunctory, “Hey, Mr. Chief. I gotta study.”

  “Did you check his pulse?” Chief said when Desmond had disappeared into his room.

  “That’s your doing,” I said. “He thinks if he aces the test you’re taking him on a road trip.”

  I waited for at least a half smile from Chief, but he barely seemed to have heard me. He glanced at Desmond’s closed door and nodded me toward the living room. My heart began a slow descent.

  “What?” I said.

  But he waited until I was perched on the edge of the chair-and-a-half. He sat on the ottoman facing me.

  “This can’t be good,” I said. “What’s going on?”

  “I didn’t have a chance to tell you this after the board meeting.”

  “Tell me what?”

  “I finally found the right person to talk to.”

  “About?”

  “Jude Lowery. Sultan.” Chief winced. “He hasn’t been declared legally dead, and he won’t be until either they find his body or seven years have passed.”

  “No! He dead! That man dead!”

  My head jerked so hard toward the figure in the dining room doorway, I could feel the tendons in my neck wrench. Desmond’s normally creamy face was bleached, and his mouth couldn’t seem to hold itself still. The newly prominent Adam’s apple worked painfully up and down his neck.

  “He is dead,” I said.

  “Then why you sayin’ he ain’t?”

  “Come here, buddy,” Chief said.

  Chief held his arm out and waited until Desmond crossed to us. I moved over to make room for him in the chair with me, but he just stood there.

  “I know he’s dead too,” I said. “I was there, remember?”

  “Then how come they sayin’ he might not be?”

  “Because somebody took the body,” I said. “But don’t worry about it, okay?”

  I was apparently completely unconvincing because he swallowed hard again and turned doubtful eyes to Chief. “How come somebody took him?” he said.

  “Because they’re cowards,” Chief said.

  I sat up straighter in the chair. Chief’s voice had an edge I hadn’t heard before.

  “Sultan had a bunch of losers working for him. They knew as soon as Sultan was gone somebody else would take over their territory because they don’t have the goods to protect it. You see what I’m saying?”

  “Maybe.”

  “If they made it look like Sultan was still alive, somebody else, somebody stronger, wouldn’t be so likely to try a takeover.” Chief nodded at Desmond as if they were both man enough to get this. “Sultan was a bad dude. Nobody’s going to try anything like that until they’re sure he can’t come back and mess them up. That make sense?”

  Desmond pressed his lips together. The color still hadn’t returned to his face. I’d seldom seen him take this long to snap his coping mechanism back into place.

  “What about Zelda?” Desmond said, to me this time.

  “I told you she left.”

  “You didn’t tell me she flip out in the street and got busted. I hadda hear you talkin’ about it when Barnum and Bailey and them was here.”

  “What are you, half bat?”

  “What kinda drugs make her lose her stuff like that?”

  I looked at Chief, and he nodded.

  “It was a speedball,” I said. “That’s—”

  “I know what it is,” Desmond said. “And ain’t nobody can get that on King Street ’cept Sultan.”

  “Or one of his lackeys now that he’s gone,” Chief said. “Look, I’ll tell you what. I’ll do some investigating and see if I can find out what’s going down on West King right now—who’s controlling what, who’s getting what, all that. Then you can let your mind rest. Sound good?”

  “How long you think thatta take?”

  The waver in his voice caught in my own throat. The kid was genuinely scared, and even Chief wasn’t able to chase that fear away.

  “Give me a week,” Chief said. “Meanwhile, just so you know, nothing is going to stop the adoption. You’re going to be stuck with Big Al no matter what.”

  “Bummer,” I said.

  Desmond finally made an attempt at a smile, and his Adam’s apple stopped bobbing. It would only be a matter of time now before he’d be suggesting that a package of Peanut M&M’s would set the whole matter to rest. I beat him to it and told him to grab something from the drawer before he went back to studying.

  “Imma ace the test,” was his parting shot. “Then we goin’ all the way to Miami.”

  “I hope that test happens soon,” Chief said when Desmond was as safely out of earshot as he was ever going to get. “Or we’re going to wind up in Key West.”

  “Chief.”

  He sat back down on the ottoman and parked his forearms on his knees.

  “You’re still not okay with this,” he said.

  “No, and neither is he.” I lowered my voice to a whisper. “You have to tell me if you really believe this is just Sultan’s people protecting their turf.”

  “I’ve got my eye on it, Classic,” he said. “I have ever since the night he was shot.”

  It was almost as good as the kiss I wanted. Another almost.

  Bonner had yet another almost for me when he called Friday morning, just as I was heading out the door.

  “I’m going to walk while you talk,” I said into my cell. “I’m already late meeting Hank at the Galleon.”

  “She gets you every Friday,” Bonner said. “She can spare me five minutes. Besides, you want to hear this.”

  I hoped he was sure about that. People were telling me a lot of things lately that I didn’t want to hear.

  “I talked to Dexter Taylor.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “He owns the place across from Sacrament House.”

  I stopped at the corner of Palm Row and Cordova and sat on the low wall that ran along the sidewalk. The palm trees along the side of the Lightner Museum slapped their fronds together in the March wind. “Talk to me,” I said.

  “He said his original plan was to rent it out again, but somebody told him the house across the street—ours—had a bunch of hookers living in it, so he decided to sell.”

  “I hope you set him straight.”

  “I did.”

  “And unlike me, you did it without making him want to press charges.” I let a half-empty sightseeing trolley pass and crossed Cordova.

  “He said he’s definitely selling, and … are you close to anything breakable?”

  “Why? Am I going to want to throw something?”

  “You might.”

  “This has something to do with Troy Irwin, doesn’t it?”

  “Taylor told me that the Chamberlain Foundation just bought another house down the street and he was hoping maybe th
ey’d make a bid on his once he put it up for sale.”

  “He can’t.”

  “There’s nothing stopping him, Allison. I couldn’t even ask Taylor to hold this house because we don’t know if we’re going to have the funds to make an offer. He did say he wasn’t going to list it until he fixed it up some. Evidently the last tenants were pretty rough on it.”

  “How much time does that give us?” I said.

  “Not much. When’s the fund-raiser?”

  “The seventeenth—two weeks.”

  “Then let’s just do what we can with that window, okay? Don’t hurl any projectiles yet. Are you at the Galleon now?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. Hank’ll keep you in line.”

  As I hung up and shoved through the door into the coffee shop, I wasn’t sure even Hank could keep me from erupting. She took me in with a glance from our usual table and called over her shoulder, “Patrice, we need an emergency chamomile tea out here. Make it a double.”

  “It’s a personal vendetta now, Hank.”

  “You talked to Bonner.”

  “You know.”

  “Sit.”

  I wanted to pace around and throw random pieces of reproduction armor, but I punched myself down onto the chair and proceeded to shred a carrot raisin muffin.

  “It’s not enough to redline all of West King. He’s got to take our street. He doesn’t need it. He’s not going to get investors to open restaurants and bed and breakfasts back there. This is just to get to me.”

  “We are talking about Troy Irwin.”

  The lion-haired woman who owned the Galleon placed a cup of tea at my elbow. “You sure you don’t need something stronger than that?”

  “Am I making too much noise?” I said.

  She looked around at the empty tables. “Yeah. You’re disturbing all the other customers.”

  “Business not good?” Hank said.

  Patrice shook her head. “We’re closing the fifteenth of this month.”

  “Tell me she isn’t selling to Chamberlain too,” I said when Patrice returned to the kitchen with the decimated muffin.