Bad Juju & Other Tales of Madness and Mayhem (8 page)

When the shots ring out, the cowboy pisses himself in the shoe. He stays in the men’s room until a buddy gives him the all clear.

When he hears the Camry’s tires on the gravel driveway, Ray opens his eyes. It’s Gillian, back from town.

He’s sitting in an Adirondack chair facing the setting sun. The empty Old Crow bottle is at his feet, but hidden in shadow. He stands and raises a hand.

“Ray, honey, help me out with these groceries. Then I’ll make you a cup of tea.”

As he walks toward her, he notes there are no bloodstains on his khakis. Maybe I should lay off the hooch, he thinks.

Gillian kisses him on the mouth. Her body pushes into his. As his tongue chases hers, she shoves him away; then does a half-assed pirouette.

“Do you like my hair?”

“Looks about the same.”

“Ray, baby, how come you’re always such a fucking romantic?”

She sets her grocery bag on the table, shaking her head. Next she puts on the teakettle to boil.

“Personally, I need a pick-me-up.”

She waltzes into the dining room and comes back with a crystal tumbler half full of Cutty Sark, to which she adds ice.
Gillian never has a drink
, thinks Ray.

By now the teakettle is roiling and tooting. His stomach suddenly queasy, Ray chooses a mint teabag. An ill omen.

Ray sits at the table with its embroidered tablecloth made by some ancient relative of his or Gillian’s. Gillian sets the everyday teapot on the table. The scent of the mint steeping rises like a Levantine ghost. She sets a cup and saucer in front of him and a pitcher of cream.

“I baked this morning. A chocolate cherry cake. Your favorite.”

She puts the cake on the table. It’s fallen in the middle, like a subsidence above an old mineshaft. She cuts a huge piece and places it on a plate in front of Ray.
Gillian never bakes
, goes through his head, as he swallows the first bite. Gillian is staring at him. Waiting for something to happen.

He carves out another large hunk of cake onto his fork.

He knows, of course, that it’s spiked with a deadly poison that leaves no trace after five hours.

The things we do for love
, he thinks, as he chomps on the second bite and goes for the third.

Drive By

The girl strolling past the Delta Omega Alpha house—from whence Earl Thigpen gazes out an upstairs window—is attractive in a bordello sort of way. Big chest, tight tank top, rayon miniskirt extra short. Secondary details obtrude: blonde, wide mouth framed in black cherry lip gloss, expensive handbag, long legs with a hint of five o’clock shadow, faux-panther Minolo Blahnik shoes. It’s enough to make you pant and loll your tongue down to your chin.

Thigpen imagines she’s on her way to her fancy sports car parked in the student garage.

“Y’all wanta get some lunch?” he calls out on a whim in his slow-as-molasses Mississippi drawl.

Her eyes roll vaguely in his direction.

“What did you have in mind?”

Holy cow!
Thigpen thinks.
A live one.

He leaps to his feet, leaning his barrel chest across the windowsill, his head thrust into a thicket of leaves from the live oaks shading the front yard of the fraternity. Behind him his flipped-over chair spins like a top on one leg; then crashes to the floor.

“Do you like French food?” he asks. Then: “Come in for a drink.”

The woman, or girl, throws back her shoulders, tosses her golden tresses and saunters up the front walk.

“I hope you have some ice-cold beer, cause it’s damn hot out,” she says.

For an instant Thigpen stares at himself in the dresser mirror. Curly hair worn in a modified mullet. Last night’s heavy drinking evidenced by swollen cheeks. Romanesque nose broken twice from playing fullback in high school. Eager brown eyes looking the worse for wear. His clothes are frat boy prep: blue oxford-cloth shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbows, stained khakis, scuffed Docksiders.

Play it as it lays, he thinks, as he bounds down the stairs.

She’s waiting on the front porch, with its six white-painted fake southern-style columns and rotting rattan furniture.

Thigpen sticks his head out the French doors.

“Heineken or Shiner?” he queries.

Her black crow-like eyes consider Thigpen as if he’s a fat locust she might or might not choose to devour as an appetizer.

“Heineken,” say her cherry-stained lips. “
S’il vous plait
.”

Her French accent is as fake as a padded bra, but it’s all the same to Thigpen, who’s never been closer to Europe than a weekend trip to Atlanta for his brother’s wedding. He ducks back inside and dashes down the hall, past the mug shots of former Delta Omega Alpha SMU chapter presidents, to the ramshackle kitchen.

The twin Heinekens he grabs from the beer cooler clink together like a pair of sterling ideas whose time has come. When he flicks off the caps, a puff of smoke erupts from each bottle like the denouement of a cheap magic trick.

He rolls each green-glass bottle, already foggy with precipitation, in a paper napkin and hurries back up the hall. It seems like it’s taken an eternity to get all this done. But there she is sitting sidesaddle on the arm of the only Adirondack chair.

With a shit-ass grin to beat all shit-ass grins, Thigpen hands her one of the beers.

She draws it to her lips. For a second Thigpen thinks she’s going to French kiss the mouth of the bottle. But she just takes a long deep swallow.

“My name’s Earl,” Thigpen says. “Earl Thigpen from Biloxi, Mississippi.”

“Dandelion,” she says, holding out her hand. “Pleased to meet ya.” Her nails are the same deep purple as her lip gloss, but with little white edges the color of bass bait grubs.

“Is that a family name?” Thigpen asks to make conversation.

“Lord, I don’t know.” She pulls a handkerchief from her purse and uses it to mop her forehead. “But it sure is hot. Hot as Hades.”

“You can say that again,” Thigpen says.

A while later they’re in Dandelion’s silver Audi TT convertible. It drives like a wet dream. Thigpen can’t take his eyes off the lushness of her inner thighs, as she pumps the clutch in and out, maneuvering the
uber
-beast through lunchtime traffic.

Instead of French food, they end up at a burger joint called Snuffer’s on Lower Greenville.

“Sweet,” the parking valet says, as he hops in and revs the engine.

“You take good care of my baby,” Dandelion warns him. “No scratches and no joy rides. I wrote down the mileage.”

The attendant gives her a mock salute and guns the Audi down a narrow alley.

“Asshole,” Dandelion mutters. Then flashes Thigpen a big smile and clutches at his arm. “I’m hungry as a horse.”

Inside, Thigpen slips the
maitre d’
a ten-spot. Instantly they’re shown to an outside table with an umbrella. A waitress in a halter-top, camouflage capris and grease-stained Vans brings fresh Heinekens and a pair of flyblown menus.

Without looking at the menu, Dandelion orders them bacon jalapeno cheeseburgers, fried pickles and onion rings. The first round of beers are gone in less than 30 seconds. The waitress brings another.

“So,” says Thigpen, “You’re from …”

“Daddy was in the oil business.”

“Ah.”

“Mama had a breakdown right after she gave birth to yours truly.” Dandelion toys with a gold Zippo. “Never did recover. Daddy had to have her committed. After that there was a trail of gold diggers in and out of the master bedroom suite. Nearly broke my heart.”

She looks wistfully at the traffic pounding up and down Greenville Avenue.

“Then you got your trust fund and moved to Dallas.”

“I wish that were true, Earl. But Daddy’s wells dried up a long while ago. I came to Dallas ’cause I couldn’t bear watchin’ him make a fool of himself any more.”

“You’re doin’ graduate work at SMU?”

She laughs and starts a fresh beer, the deep green surface of the bottle heavy with moisture like meadow grass in early morning.

“Honey, I never finished high school. I was just killin’ time in the library. Lookin’ at magazines.”

A giant question mark hangs behind Thigpen’s eyes.
What’s up with this kitty?

Before Thigpen can come to grips with his cautionary intimations, the cheeseburgers and sides arrive. A flurry of activity descends around their table. Condiments and extra napkins are delivered. And, of course, more beers.

Thigpen and Dandelion dig in like there’s no tomorrow.

When the last fried pickle is chomped, when the last onion ring is crunched, masticated and swallowed, Dandelion sits back and works a toothpick through her teeth with ladylike aplomb. When she’s done, she flicks it off the deck into the parking lot.

Thigpen lights a cigarette he cadges off the
maitre d’
. Thigpen doesn’t usually smoke but they’ve had six beers apiece and despite the grease and grilled steer he’s feeling a little lightheaded.

“What if I told you I made all that up?” Dandelion asks.

“All what up?”

“You know. About Daddy and his oil wells and Mom goin’ into the loony bin. Even about reading magazines at the library.”

“Well …” Thigpen ponders the burning end of his cigarette, the defaced wood surface of the picnic table. The phrase
Jimmy loves L.D
. pops out at him. Then:
shit for brains.

“I guess I’d think you were a little bit dangerous. Like a moccasin hidin’ in a clump of water hyacinths.”

“Well, it’s all true,” she says. “Everything I’ve told you. As true as God’s word.”

Dandelion stands up, brushing crumbs from the front of her skirt.

“I need to pee.”

As Thigpen watches her buxom long-legged departure, lust flares from his anterior hypothalamus, down his spine and into the tip of his dick.

When he takes a sip of beer, it’s warm. He makes a face. Then realizes he desperately needs to take an elephant-sized whiz himself.

At the bathroom doors Thigpen waivers; then pushes through the one marked as belonging to the opposite sex. Dandelion and another woman with chapped lips and rosy cheeks are just finishing up a quartet of crystalline lines of coke.

Intimidated by Thigpen’s abrupt arrival, the other woman grabs her purse and leaves. Dandelion offers Thigpen the tightly rolled greenback. Shaking his head, he pushes past her into one of the stalls, where he pisses vehemently.

Behind him Dandelion vacuums up the final line. When her hands circumscribe Thigpen’s cock, he lurches sideways against the wall of the stall, scrawled as it is with
femme
-focused graffiti. His tumescence soars. She raises one leg like an egret, places the raised foot sheathed in a Minolo Blahnik pump firmly on the rim of the toilet bowl and mounts him. After a dozen or so erratic but energetic thrusts, he finishes, gasping for breath.

“Better than key lime pie?” she asks, adjusting her undies.

“Damn, sweetheart. I’d take that over key lime pie any day.”

Thigpen looks in the mirror and sees a disaster. He slams on the water full blast and slashes his face, combs his wet fingers through his disheveled hair.

A waitress sticks her head in the door and raises her eyebrows.

“What’s goin’ on in here?”

“We were just leaving,” Thigpen says.

At the cash register, he uses a credit card. Dandelion is already outside, retrieving her Audi. She checks the odometer, giving the attendant a look that could kill.

Hot damn!
Thigpen thinks, as he saunters through the door and down the steps, hefting up the waist of his khakis and tightening the belt.
Nobody’s ever going to believe this.

As Thigpen tumbles into the passenger seat, Dandelion lays rubber. The valet attendant dives out of harms way. Gravel flies.

“WEE-HAH!” Thigpen yells, as they speed down Greenville.

“Let’s get some drinks,” Dandelion says.

“Whatever.” Thigpen is ebullient.

Next thing, they’re in this dark trendy bar called Black Velvet. At 3:30 in the afternoon it’s deserted. The bartender appears stoned out of his gourd. Alt-rock cavorts from ceiling speakers.

Dandelion orders sippin
tequila con rocas
. For both of them.

“You a hunter, Earl? You know, camouflage duds, pump-action shotgun, the works?”

“We get some fine migratory birds down in Biloxi.”

“I knew it. The moment I saw you, I said to myself: That S.O.B. gets his rocks off blasting away at poor defenseless creatures.”

“That’s one way of lookin’ at it.”

“You bet. But it’s a different story over in I-raq. Over there it’s man against man. Kill or be killed.”

Thigpen takes another sip of
tequila
.
Where is she going with this?
he asks himself.
And who cares…?
Maybe I should get us a motel room.

“You ever killed anyone?” He waits for her to say “Earl.” But she doesn’t. She just looks at him with eyes like a surgeon’s hands. Or a pair of stainless steel meat cutters in the Tom Thumb deli department.

Slice and dice. Thigpen knows he’s in over his head.

But he can’t help himself. By the third round, Dandelion’s reliving
Black Hawk
Down
frame by frame.

“Let’s go back to the car,” she says.

The light is beginning to attenuate with the westward decline of the sun. They walk in the deep shadows of a line of live oaks, next to an
el cheapo
Mexican restaurant. Neon lights come on in the windows. Tacos. Enchiladas. Ptomaine poisoning.

The Audi’s parked on a side street.

When they get to it, she opens the trunk. Lying there on an old gray Army blanket in the dim trunk-light is an AK-47, clip in.

Wow,
Thigpen thinks. But he doesn’t say anything.

“Just point and shoot. Like a video camera.”

“Tell me again…”

“My parents are dead. My brother’s trying to kill me. Because I got everything.”