Bones by the Wood (6 page)

“I know.  I know.”  Thea sighed heavily and stared into her coffee for a moment.  Then she shook off the gloom for the time being and tried to smile for Annelle as she changed the subject to the one the whole town was whispering about.  “So anyway, dish.  You must’ve met the guys from the new MC by now.  What’s the gossip?”

“Sure, I’ve met ‘em.  Don’t know much about ‘em though, only that the home charter’s in Louisiana and that they used to do business with the Rabids.  All sounds a bit suspicious to me, them movin’ in after the Rabids went AWOL, but I gotta say, they’re an improvement.  You ain’t seen ‘em in the store?”

“Sure, a time or two.  I’ve seen the scruffy lookin’ one, the two fuckin’ massive ones and the one with the President patch.  Dizzy, he said he was called.”

“You two been chattin’?”  Annelle cocked her eyebrow at Thea.

“Hardly.  I was teasin’ him a little bit last Friday.  Not seen him since.  Why?”

“He might be Dizzy by name, but definitely not by nature.  That man’s got a solid head on his shoulders.  He pays attention to detail far better than Jimmy ever did, takes a lot more care.”  Annelle’s face broke into a wide grin.  “Sounds like he’s got quite the head between his legs as well, if Myla’s to be believed.”

Thea knew all the girls that danced at the club. Myla’s stage name was Orchid.  It suited her; she was delicate and unusual looking.  She was a skinny thing, but an expert on the pole thanks to years of gymnastics.  She looked like a little half-naked elf with long blonde hair and widely-spaced, big blue eyes.  Thea could just imagine her catching the attention of the top dog. 

The previous week had been the first time Thea had spoken to Dizzy, but she’d noticed him before then, she’d definitely noticed him.  He was tall, but not skinny with it.  Of course he wasn’t anywhere near as big as two of the others that had dropped by several times for booze and rubbers, but they were about the biggest fellas that Thea had ever seen, freak show big.  Dizzy was always polite, and he had an aura of authority and experience that she found compelling; she immediately understood what Annelle meant about him seeming more competent than Jimmy. 

Thea’s taste in men usually ran to younger than Dizzy, much nearer her own age; and, if she admitted to herself, a lot dumber.  She definitely preferred to have the upper hand in her relationships, not that she’d had all that many since leaving Josh’s father.  None of them had ever warranted being introduced to Josh as anything more than an acquaintance.

Her brief conversation with Dizzy had had an edge of flirtation to it. There was something there that stirred Thea’s interest, something that she’d already decided to ignore since her track record with men only seemed to be getting worse.  So she couldn’t quite pin down why she felt a little bit jealous of Myla, especially since Myla was someone that Thea considered a friend.

Annelle was looking at her speculatively.  Thea couldn’t decide if she wanted the gory details so that she could live vicariously, or whether knowing exactly what Myla had gotten up to with the MC President would bring back her gloomy feelings.  Since it really was none of her business who the man fucked, she opted to change the subject again instead.

“Last time I saw Myla she was ravin’ ‘bout a new girl you’re takin’ on.”

Annelle examined her a little longer before she took another cookie to nibble on while she talked.  “Kinda.  Lyla Lyssa.  Lyla’s her real name, Lyssa is a stage name.  She’s the old lady of one of the new patches.  She’s really takin’ off, national magazine shoots, the works, but she wanted to move back to Texas.  She’s a much bigger name than we could ever have hoped to have gotten at the club, but apparently she likes keepin’ things real and she wants to do a guest spot one night a week, unless she’s out of town.  She’s real sweet.  She’s gonna teach Myla how to do the burlesque stuff she does.  It’s gonna make us look real upmarket.  Of course, Lucy’s bein’ a bitch about it all, but that girl wouldn’t have a kind word to say about the Pope.”

Thea took it all in while she sipped her coffee. She’d had her own share of run-ins with Lucy.  Usually Thea managed to get along with everyone she met, or at least managed a state of polite civility, but Lucy had seemed to hate her on sight and made no secret of it, so Thea had given up even trying to be nice and just ignored her when she could.

“Talkin’ of Lucy.”  Annelle continued slowly. “She was gossipin’, well, bitchin’ is more like it, and she came out with somethin’ you ought to hear before you see them next.”

“Really?”  Thea couldn’t imagine what Lucy had to say about her now that she hadn’t already said.

“Yeah, the girls were comparin’ notes on the new guys and Lucy mentioned somethin’ about one of ‘em havin’ a better dick than Elvis.”

Thea went cold.  “What the fuck would she know about Elvis’ dick?”

“Turns out your guy was gettin’ it sucked on the regular at the clubhouse if you weren’t there.”

Thea pushed the last of her coffee away in disgust.  “Jesus fuckin’ Christ.  I know they have rules about runs and shit and I know not bein’ his old lady meant I didn’t much exist in the eyes of the club, but you’d think in a town this small he could have kept it in his pants.”

“That would have been the nice thing to do.  Apparently it was beyond his abilities.”

“Fuckin’ aces.”  Thea muttered.  It explained some of the superior airs that Lucy had been giving out whenever their paths had crossed.  Now that Lucy’d been showing off to the other girls about getting it on with Thea’s guy, she’d be even more impossible.

A knock at the door saved Thea from having to dwell on her ex-man’s wandering dick, or the mouth it had been wandering into.  The thought crossed Thea’s mind that him being dead didn’t seem like such a bad thing now, but then she berated herself for thinking something so cruel.

She checked the peephole out of habit, but when she saw that it was her neighbor, Thea opened the door wide.

“Mornin’ Thea.”  Clarice Wells had the apartment across the hall and had been Thea’s neighbor since Thea and baby Josh had moved into the building.  Having just retired at the time and looking for something to occupy her time, Clarice had offered to babysit Josh while Thea worked. 

“Oh I didn’t realize you had company.”  Clarice had spotted Annelle across the open plan living space.  “I just wanted to let you know that I made lasagna.  Josh was askin’ for it the other day.  I’ll bring it round in time for you to grab some before you go to work and then I’ll stay with him.”

In Thea’s humble opinion, this white-haired widow with a taste for bizarrely patterned leisurewear was one of God’s angels on earth.  “Thanks Clarice, that’s lovely.  But he really shouldn’t be makin’ requests to you.”

“You know it’s no trouble, my dear.  I’m happy to spoil that boy, and you need someone to take care of you now and then.”

“Hear, hear.”  Annelle shouted over from her place at the table.

Clarice smiled at Annelle over Thea’s shoulder.  Thea thought the two women might very well get on, but hoped that Annelle didn’t offer the trim seventy-two year old a job.

Clarice carried on without giving Thea an opportunity to speak.  “I won’t keep you from your guest.  I’ll see you later, dear.”

Thea kept the door open and watched as Clarice returned to her own apartment.  Her neighbor had taken a tumble after missing a step at the bottom of the staircase.  Thea was keeping an eye out to check that she didn’t need to goad Clarice into a trip to the doctor’s.  Satisfied that the older lady’s limp was getting better, she closed her door and returned to her guest.

“She’s not wrong, you know,”  Annelle said as Thea sank back into her chair.  “You should have someone around to take the load off now and then.”

Thea was unnerved by the spark she saw in Annelle’s eye.  “Whatever you’re thinkin’, Nell, shelve it. I’ve managed this long, I can go a bit longer.  And if I’m past the point of even keepin’ a puppy like Elvis interested, then there’s no hope for me.”

“Maybe that was the problem, hon.  I think you’re settin’ your sights too low.”

“And you have ideas about where I should be settin’ them?”  Thea wasn’t sure she wanted to know just what kind of target her friend had in mind.

“I can think of one or two guys.”  Annelle was smirking.

“No.  Just, no.  You are not settin’ me up with anyone.”

“I wouldn’t set you up with just anyone, hon.”

Thea held her palm up.  “I don’t care.  I’m callin’ Do Not Resuscitate on my love life.  Consider it dead and buried.  The moment Josh moves out I’m gonna get me a herd of cats and they can eat me when I die alone, in front of the TV.  It’ll save on funeral expenses.”

“Thea...”

Thea interrupted whatever it was Annelle had been about to say.  “Do not tell me I’m too young to decide I want to die an old maid.”

“You’re far from bein’ an old maid in the technical sense, hon,” Annelle drawled.

“You know damn well what I mean, Nell.  I don’t need a guy to take care of me, and I’m beginnin’ to think there aren’t any out there worth spendin’ the effort on to find out if they’re even worth keepin’ ‘cause they’re fun to have around.”

“Whatever you say, hon, whatever you say.  Anyway, I need to get to the club.  I’m goin’ to take a couple of these to see me through the day.” 

Annelle lifted some cookies from the plate.  Thea found a paper napkin for her to wrap them in before Annelle slipped them into her handbag. She walked her friend to the door, and they hugged briefly before Annelle left.

Thea returned to the little table to collect their mugs ready for washing and to put the remaining cookies back into their Tupperware container.  She snagged a cookie to nibble while she considered the morning’s conversation.  She would have liked to say that she was surprised to find out that Elvis had been spreading himself around, but she wasn’t. 

The thought of truly giving up any hope of finding someone, if only to share time with occasionally, filled her with a loneliness that spread an inky darkness over her soul, but the thought of being used and taken for granted over and over again depressed her much more.  Unfortunately, Thea had a bad feeling that Annelle had only been pretending to drop the subject of her romantic life.  Annelle wasn’t a meddler, she usually had more respect for a person’s boundaries, but Thea thought maybe she was motivated by the presence of new blood in town.  It didn’t matter, they were all the same, whether they wore MC patches or not, and Thea was tired of the whole goddamn game.

~o0o~

It had been a shitty week anyway, and Annelle’s revelation that morning had only made it worse.  To cap everything off, Thea was working a double shift, and if that wasn’t bad enough, a thunderstorm blew up in the early evening.  It was a brief exhibition of thunder and lightening, but the heavy rain soaked the dirt, and she’d spent the rest of her shift mopping muddy footprints away in an effort to keep the crappy floor of the convenience store clean.

It was getting close to closing time in the very early hours of the morning when three teenagers wandered in.  Thea’s nose told her as soon as they stepped in the doors that they were stoned, and she knew that meant she was in for a hell of a long wait while they sauntered up and down the aisles giggling at fuck all.  She bit back a stream of curses at the sight of all the mud that they’d tracked in.  Eventually, after the predictably long wait, they left, having bought armfuls of sugar-laden, munchie-busting junk. 

Thea set to mopping away their dirty footprints.  It looked like they’d made a deliberate effort to get mud over every inch of the floor.  What they’d been looking at frozen chicken fillets for, Thea couldn’t imagine.  She followed the footprints past the section containing toilet paper with some trepidation, but it seemed that they’d only been intent on relieving the needs of their stomachs.

She’d had to empty and refill the mop bucket twice to tackle all the mess.  As she swept the pine-scented water over the last muddy splotch, she looked up to check the clock over the doors to see if her shift was finally at its end, and that was when she saw the whole new set of dirty prints at the end of the aisle.  She slammed the mop back into the bucket, and used it to shove the bucket back down the aisle to the new patch of mess.  Doing so caused filthy water to slop over the sides of the bucket and she cursed again in frustration, having just made more work for herself.