Slice Of Cherry (31 page)

Ilan laughed with her. “You know those pancakes on a stick? Swear to God, that’s what you taste like.” He kissed her again, and the urge to laugh dissolved. She tried to decide what he tasted like, but could only think of rain. Something fresh and wet like that. Summer rain.

When he stopped again, she was on her back and he was on top of her, though she had no memory of lying down. He was panting, a sound so unromantic she had to laugh again. “You must really like pancakes on a stick.”

“I
love
those things.”

Fancy felt pressure on her hip and gasped. “Just like that cackler!” She reached down and grabbed his crotch.

Ilan did some gasping of his own and scurried off her.

“Not quite mating season for us yet. It won’t be if you get the hell on indoors.”

“Don’t talk to me like that.”

“Would you please get the hell on indoors?”

“No.” Fancy sat up and wrapped her arms around him.

“Damn it, Fancy.”

She kissed his ear. “Don’t be mad.”

“I ain’t mad. I can’t even blame you. You
told
me you like to torture guys.”

They kissed again, and she wondered if she would ever stop being startled by his tongue.

A door slammed.

Fancy let him go, reluctantly, and he peered through the mahonia bushes. “That’s Gabe,” he said. “I better go catch up.” But when she tried to follow, he stopped her. “You wait till we’re gone.”

“Why’re you trying to protect him?” she said, feeling an intriguing mix of arousal and irritation. “He tried to kill
me
.”

“He’s only like that when he sleepwalks. You’re like that all
the time. So stay here.” He pulled her in for one last kiss. “I’ll call you, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Bye.” He ran through the mahonia bushes. “And be sweet, for Christ’s sake!” he called over his shoulder.

“I’ll try!”

Fancy watched a surprised Gabriel relinquish the driver’s seat to Ilan and decided it had been a sort of romantic first kiss. Didn’t the full moon make everything romantic?

She reached up and picked another moonflower. She would be sweet tonight like Ilan thought she was. Pancake sweet. And tomorrow? Pure poison.

I
LOOKED AT MY GARDEN OF TREES IN THE HAPPY PLACE.
T
HE DANCER, THE OLD MAN, MADDA,
I
LAN.
T
HEY WERE ALL THERE AND GROWING.
T
HE ONLY PROBLEM WAS
K
IT.
S
HE WAS STUNTED AND GRAY AND A WEIRD FUNGUS WAS GROWING UP HER TRUNK.
S
HE BEGGED ME TO CHOP HER DOWN.
I
JUST LAUGHED.

Fancy was lying in bed, snuggling with Bearzilla, sulking about Gabriel, and staring at the ceiling. It was painted sky blue to discourage insects, but a pale green luna moth fluttered against it. Fancy wanted to smack it and put it out of its misery, but it was too hot. Besides, it was bad luck to kill anything green. She had to settle for intense glaring.

She started at the tap on the screen door and cheered a bit when she saw it was Ilan.

He came inside and sat on her bed, just made himself right at home. “What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing. I’m bored.”

“Aw, do you want a glass of juice? Or maybe a coloring book?”

Fancy stopped feeling cheerful that he had come. “I told you to stop babying me.”

“Then stop acting like a baby.” Ilan snatched Bearzilla from her arms and then did a double take. “What the hell is this?”

“Bearzilla.”

“But . . . what
is
it?”

Fancy snatched it back, not liking the way Ilan was staring at her toy like it was a freak. “It’s the head of a dragon sewn onto the body of a bear.”

“Why would anybody . . .” Ilan remembered who he was talking to and didn’t bother to finish the sentence. “Why don’t you go find some people to help if you’re so bored?”

“What’s the point? It doesn’t make me happy.”

“So you think happiness is gone fly in here and give you a hundred bucks?” Ilan batted the bear/dragon out of her hands and hauled her to her feet.

“Bearzilla, no!” Fancy exclaimed as her toy hit the floor.

“You and Bearzilla can terrorize major cities
later
. Now stop whining and come with me. I wanna show you something.”

Fancy let him drag her outside to his sand-colored Oldsmobile. In the front seat sat a little boy with a bloody bandage wrapped around his forehead. “You do that to him?”

“Ha-ha, funny girl. That’s not what I wanna show you.” She followed him to the back of his car, where he unlocked the trunk. A different boy was bound and gagged inside, glaring at them and blinking sweat from his eyes. “
That’s
what I wanna show you,” Ilan told her, as proud as if he’d brought home a deer for dinner. “I brought him for you.”

“Like a present?” Fancy asked, touched.

Ilan scuffed his foot against the driveway. “You don’t seem like the flowers and candy type.”

Fancy gave him a hug, which seemed an inadequate expression of what she was feeling. Kit would have known the right way to respond to such a great gift. “It’s really sweet,” she said. “But I don’t think killing will make me feel better.”

Ilan laughed at her. “Then don’t kill him. You don’t have to kill
everyone
. Sometimes the worst thing you can do to someone is to let him live. With the pain and guilt.”

Fancy thought about this and then went back to the passenger window and studied the blood encrusted all over the little boy’s face. “Did the boy in the trunk do that to you?” she asked, pointing at the bandage.

The boy nodded and frowned into his lap.

“What’s your name?” Fancy asked.

“Egbert.”

“Egbert?”
Fancy gave the boy a pitying look, taking in his dork haircut, potbelly, and short pants. “That’s too bad. So what? Did he get bored of pantsing you on the playground and putting Kick Me signs on your back?”

“Nobody puts Kick Me signs on me,” said Egbert, offended. “Everybody likes me. I don’t know why George doesn’t.”

“George is the boy in the trunk?”

Egbert nodded. “Can you make him take back what he did? Ilan said you could.”

“What did he do?”

Egbert unwrapped the bloody bandage. Carved deeply into the boy’s forehead was the word “faggot.”

She helped Egbert rewrap his injury and walked back to the trunk where Ilan was waiting expectantly. “Still bored?” he asked.

Fancy frowned at George. “All of a sudden, I’m feeling real lively.”

Fancy and Ilan were sitting beneath the Tony tree holding hands and listening to the mini Tonys sing “Why Do Fools Fall in Love” when Egbert ran up to them grinning ear to ear.

“How was it?” Fancy asked after she’d dismissed the
minions who had escorted Egbert to his appointment.

“Great! It didn’t even hurt.”

“Now that George is taken care of, let’s take care of your forehead.” Fancy stood and went to the godfather tree.

“How
did
you take care of George?” Ilan asked.

“Can I show him?” Egbert was practically imploding with the need to show someone.

“Hold on.” Fancy studied the skinlike leaves until she found the right one for Egbert. She plucked the leaf and placed it over the word on Egbert’s head. The leaf matched his skin tone and adhered so well it could have been the boy’s own perfectly unmarked skin.

“
Now
can I show him?”

Fancy shrugged and smiled, and Egbert ran to Ilan, turned, and pulled down his shorts.

Ilan laughed. He laughed for a long time. “They tattooed a picture of George on his ass?” But Ilan’s laughter stopped abruptly when the tattoo began to move.

“That’s not a picture,” Fancy told him. “That’s George.”

George rippled colorfully across Egbert’s pale butt cheek. Only the left one—he couldn’t seem to cross the great divide to the other side. Within the space he had to maneuver, he
flitted this way and that, like a trapped fly butting its head against a window.

“Pull your pants up, pervert,” Ilan said after the cellar walls suddenly closed around them. “We’re in the real world now.”

Egbert pulled up his shorts with a satisfied sigh and touched the smooth skin of his forehead. “Is it still on?”

“That’s your skin now,” Fancy said. “Of course it’s on. Just remember, Egbert. If you decide you don’t want George on your butt anymore, let me know, and I’ll remove him and set him free in the happy place.”

Egbert smiled at Ilan. “Thank you for coming to my rescue.” Then he turned to Fancy. “And thank you.” He reached in his pocket and brought out three quarters and a dime.

Fancy took the money automatically, but then wavered. “That’s okay,” she said, giving him back his change.

After Ilan got Egbert settled into his car, he went around to the driver’s side, where Fancy was waiting for him. He put his arms around her. “I can go hunting for you again, if you want. Or we could even go together.”

“Okay,” Fancy said, feeling inadequate. Ilan always knew just what to say to make her feel . . . perfect. But she never knew what to say back.

“That was sweet, what you did.”

“You mean what I
didn’t
do.”

He kissed her and smiled against her mouth. “Yeah. Pancake sweet.”

The pancake sweetness lingered a surprisingly long time. Fancy felt so sweet that the idea of being mad at Kit no longer made sense, and so Wednesday, after class, she decided to make peace.

Kit was in the living room practicing scales when Fancy sat next to her on the piano bench and held her Daisy Duck compact before Kit’s face.

She hit a discordant note and stopped playing. “Daddy?”

He was in an orange jumpsuit, sitting in his single-person cell, reading a book—
Bleak House
by Charles Dickens.

“Is that really him?”

“If I was making it up,” said Fancy, staring into the mirror, “I’d make up something a
lot
more interesting.”

“Yeah, you would.” Kit laughed and watched the unentertaining spectacle of Daddy reading for several minutes as though it were the most fascinating thing she’d ever seen.

Kit tapped the mirror as if trying to get Daddy’s attention. “I know he hurt all those people, but how can somebody
just decide that you and me don’t deserve to have a father anymore?”

Fancy considered this. “You’d think the least they could do is provide a replacement.”

Kit bumped her shoulder. “Nobody could replace Daddy. Unless it was, like, Bill Cosby or something.”

“I been thinking about going down to visit him.”

“Really? I don’t know if I could watch it. I know we’re allowed, and that lethal injection is painless, but I don’t know if I wanna watch him die. Besides, it’s only seven minutes long and he won’t even twitch or anything, so what’s the point?”

“I mean visit him
before
he gets killed.”

“You think Madda’ll let us?”

“
She
wouldn’t want to go, but she wouldn’t keep us from going. Long as you promise not to drive like a maniac.”

“Let’s go next weekend! A road trip, Fancy, just like in the movies. With boys! You think the boys’ll go with us?”

“Boys?” Fancy’s enthusiasm for the road trip died almost as soon as it was born.

“The Turner brothers. You don’t think they might want to come and confront Daddy? Maybe get some closure?”

Fancy slammed the compact closed so forcefully they both
heard the mirror crack. Fancy shot off the bench and fled across the room, taking refuge by the credenza.

“It’s like you never want it to be just me and you anymore. Like you’ll use any excuse not to be alone with me.”

Kit looked as though Fancy had punched her in the gut, which wasn’t fair because that’s how Fancy felt.

“It’s not just you and me anymore. Gabe is a part of my life now.”

“But—”

“And that’s it! I’m not having this conversation again.”

“If you wanna joyride all across the state with that sleepwalking weirdo, count me out!”

Kit turned back to the piano and played a D-minor scale. “We’ll send you a postcard.”

“Girls?”

Madda came out of the hallway that led to the bedrooms wearing a deadly serious expression, the same expression she’d worn when she’d told them Daddy wasn’t coming home ever again. Even worse than her expression was the letter in her hand. The sisters looked at each other and held a silent conversation with their eyes:

Didn’t you get the mail?

I thought
you
did.

Madda paused behind Kit and looked at each daughter in turn. “Why am I getting letters about your ‘contributions to Portero’?”

The sisters were speechless.

“‘Your daughters have handled problems before,’” Madda read, “‘and I was wondering if you could ask them to handle one of mine. My ex-husband is trying to win custody of my child, but he is a drunk and doesn’t deserve to raise her. You are a mother and understand what it is to have a horrible husband. Could you please ask your girls to take care of this for me? Thank you.’”

Madda smacked her hand against the letter as if it were someone’s face. “Y’all have something to tell me?”

The sisters hovered on the brink of a precipice, and neither wanted to be the one to tip them all over the edge into the abyss.

Madda turned her gaze on Fancy. “I told you how I feel about finding things out secondhand.”

“You haven’t found anything out, Madda,” said Kit blithely. “Fancy, come turn the pages for me.”

Fancy went back to her sister’s side, happy not to have to
stand alone against Madda. She stared at the sheet music for a song called “Strange Fruit,” the notes meaningless black specks that gave her something to focus on besides Madda’s darkening expression.

“I wanna know what’s going on around here,” Madda said, the words falling brokenly from her mouth as if she had to speak around something sharp lodged in her throat. “I keep hearing all this talk, this crazy talk about you girls, but . . . after everything we been through with Guthrie, y’all wouldn’t just . . . you wouldn’t—”