The Siren's Tale (42 page)

It is Thanksgiving of 1979. In the restored kitchen of the pink house, Lila Coffin Drake is reading an
invitation Marlena has posted on the refrigerator door. The invitation, designed like a snowflake, is held in place by a Devil's Tower magnet. It requests that Marlena take an honored seat on the reviewers' dais at San Francisco's Snowflake Parade, to be held on the winter solstice, December 21, 1979.

Marlena's
former roommate Kit is the organizer of the new event. Marlena has been generous with her time, her advice, and her donations.  

Lila declares to her friend, who is bustling around the kitchen:
“Go, Marlena, why don't you? Have some fun for a change! Just because you're bucking for mother of the year, you don't have to be a total stick-in-the-mud. I volunteer Bryce to make sure your mother does not run off with the twins. Bryce is a natural nanny, and he wields a big stick—or at least that's what I hear.”

Bryce has just come into the kitchen. Lila's nudge is followed by a bashful grin. Bryce S
cattergood and Lila Coffin Drake are now an item of interest in the Alta grapevine. Lila loves bossing around Wyoming's foremost land preservationist, almost as much as he enjoys the amazingly muscular pussy she sports under her designer widow's weeds.

“
Back me up on this,” Lila says to Dr. Ron, who has been standing there watching the interchange. “Marlena is the Queen Mother of PR. She needs to get back out there. You will go with her, of course.”

“
Of course,” he answers. “I just hope no one expects me to wear a purple tiara.”

Ultimately it is Dr. Ron who convinces
Marlena she can safely leave the twins in the care of the extended family.

“
It will be a good excuse for the two of us to get away for a few days, darling. And you will get to support an old friend.”

A few days before departure, R
on comes into the house with a glum expression.

“
What’s up, darling?”

“
Oh, hello, Lila.” He puts down the case of wine he is carrying. “There is a hitch in the travel plan. Pastor Dodge needs an appendectomy.” Lila immediately offers to go in Ron's place, and after more discussion, the new travel arrangements are phoned in.

“
By the way, Marlena, your ex called while you were out,” Lila says. “He told me some Native American who lives in Alta will be visiting him while you're in San Francisco. Did you know about that?”

“
Do you suppose he means Dakota Lawless, the carpenter who works for Bates?”

“
Yep, that is the one. Apparently they bumped into each other at a bar after Harry's funeral. They have stayed in contact ever since. They even write letters back and forth.”

“
That's odd. You don't hear about guys doing that sort of thing unless they are gay. Coddie is certainly not gay. Do you suppose Dakota is?”

Lila
shrugs. “Beats me. All I know is that Coddie has invited him out for a long weekend, and it happens to be the same time you will be there. So he hopes you will come by for a drink, yadda yadda.”   

“
Sure thing. But you mean 'we,' don't you?”

“
Oh no you don't. I'll travel with you, but sloppy exes aren't my bag.”

Getting on the plane in Rapid City,
Marlena looks out the window at the wintry landscape and thinks how life has changed since the birth of the twins. Now every time she flies, her heart is in her throat. Lila's lively company is enjoyable, but she wishes Ron were with them. Whenever she and Ron are apart for a few days, she feels a wee bit afraid of something unknown coming at her. Just to be safe, she is wearing Cassandra's traveling cloak on her journey, the one that mysteriously protected her from harm on the evening of the Christmas Fire Night Ball in 1977.

Marlena
and Lila find the City in December is the same lively, colorful scene it always has been, a sea of energy swarming up and down the seven hills under a gray sky. In the Davis Cup, USA has beat Italy (5-0). Bath houses are in full swing. There is still talk about the Reverend Jim Jones, the People's Temple, and last year's mass suicide events in Guyana. Bruce Springsteen and The Darkness Tour are playing a repeat gig at the Winterland.

Though
Marlena expects Lila to wander off and hook up with her old drinking friends across the bay at the Sausalito Yacht Club, Lila sticks to Marlena like a second skin. The night before the parade, the two sirens, one black-haired and one redheaded, are sitting cross-legged in a circle with Kit's girlfriends, on the floor in a high-ceilinged Castro flat.

Lila whips
out from her Louis Vuitton bag a gilt photo album and proudly passes it around. The photos are of Marlena's twins. The women ooh and ahh, and Marlena blushes happily. She says, “I have become more skeptical as I grow older. But I believe everything I hear when my children are being praised to the skies.” 

The party is
hosted by Jenny, a bisexual friend of Kit who has just left her husband. Jenny is unsure of her gender identity; she is dating an assortment of what she calls “lipstick lesbians and older father figures.”

As Lila listens to the young women gossip, she is
taken back to her own adventures luring rich bachelors on the Eastern seaboard into her net. The biggest one she landed, of course, was the West's most elusive bachelor, forty-year-old Harry Drake.

Marlena
turns to Lila and whispers into her ear. “Go ahead and tell them a story, won't you, Lila? These girls think they are the first women on the planet to bed a man for selfish reasons.”

Lila
's eyes light up with laughter. “Okay, but only because you are too chicken to tell any of yours.”

When Lila
clears her throat to get attention, obediently the circle quiets.

“
Ladies, when I was young, I dated a distinguished elderly Boston doctor. Hal's mother was a Rockefeller, and Hal was a college friend of my father. He looked like someone's uncle, but he was kind, and he adored me, especially in bed.”

“
Details, details,” the girls chorus. 

“
Well, only because you insist.”

There
are giggles all around.

“
After I had my orgasm, old Hal would pound away for an hour or so. His cock was propped up with an experimental penile implant.”

“
Omigod!” shrieks Jenny.

“
Over a long Thanksgiving weekend, I yielded to pressure. I agreed we would meet at his vacation home in the mountains near Yosemite. I wanted to go out West, and this was as good an excuse as any. Have I mentioned, by the way, that Hal was a retired gynecologist, internationally famed for his reconstructions of vaginas?”

They all scream.

“So, I arrive at Hal's house, which is nondescript, but it has this great view of the mountains. I am in his bedroom, obligingly pulling off my clothes, when this huge, black dog comes roaring in. Hal has never mentioned he owns a Rottweiler. I'm not big on slobbering dogs. Well, this one weighs 200 pounds and is entirely untrained. The damn thing is pawing at my nipples. When he begins to gnaw on them, I try to get Hal's attention.”

“
Where was Hal?” asks Jenny.

“
Sitting with his back to me, on the phone with his ex-wife. She volunteered at a halfway house for women. They were discussing a vagina he was going to rebuild for a woman his ex had rescued.”

“
So he and the ex still talked?” 

“
Ad nauseum. There I was, in peril of death from the Rottweiler and trying to keep it from eating my private parts. Meanwhile Romeo's got the phone welded to his good ear, discussing the technicalities of vaginal repair with his ex. So, I say to myself, Lila, what is wrong with this picture? I walk out of the house, bare naked, and get into his Mercedes.”

“
Did you ever see Yosemite?”

“
Nope. I threw that ancient fish back in, pronto.”

“
So you don't advise dating an elderly man, even if he is rich?” asks Jenny.

Lila
shrugs. “Not unless plastic dicks with liver spots are your thing.”

The solstice parade does not get quite the turnout hoped for, as the weather is not cooperating. By noon, the whole thing is over. Mid-afternoon,
Marlena boards a city bus alone. She is on her way to Solid Hollow Lane to see Coddie. She is feeling a tad uncomfortable for having allowed things to slide for so long; they are still legally married. Though she will never return to him, neither has filed that signed, final paperwork for a California divorce.

It feels odd to be knocking at the door, but
Coddie is delighted to see her. Dakota Lawless is lounging on the screened patio, a newspaper across his knees. He puts away his cheroot when Marlena comes in.

“
You two met?” asks Coddie.

B
oth nod in a neutral way, having met a few times in Alta. Marlena is thinking about her mother's comment after seeing Dakota. “There is something weird about that half-breed Indian Bates has hired. He gives me the willies. I know, I know. Native American. But he still gives me the willies.”   

After a few minutes of polite
conversation, Coddie comments they are almost out of wine. Dakota offers to go to the corner store and pick up a bottle. Once they are alone, Marlena asks Coddie what he knows about the young man. 

“
Tough life, but he has great talent. He runs numbers in his head like an adding machine. Never saw anyone who could do such a thing.”

It occurs to
Marlena her mother has that same talent, which strikes her as a humorous coincidence. Who would think the Native American would have anything in common with Faith Bellum?

Now that she is
seeing firsthand what great pals Coddie and Dakota have become, Marlena feels guilty about having ignored the Native American newcomer. She makes a point of grilling him when he returns.

“
What brought you to our corner of the globe, Dakota?”

He shrugs.
“It's a free country.”

“
But Alta is such a tiny place. There must be a reason.”

“
My father had a relative who lived in Alta. I came to look him up, but he was already dead. I got a job at the hotel washing dishes and stayed on.”

“
I heard you do carpentry work now for Bates.”

He gives
a single nod.

“
Just like that, Master Bates offered you a job building custom coffins? Our dour undertaker is famously tight and not easily impressed.”

His answer is a fleeting smile. So, she thinks,
Coddie is right. There is more than meets the eye to Dakota, not that his eyes aren't dazzling to look at. She was having difficulty keeping her eyes from his.

“
Where are you from, Dakota?”

“
Around.”

“
Any family?”

“
I lost my mother a month after I was born. My father died in Rapid City in 1976, ma'am.”

“
I am sorry. Well, consider us your family from here on out. Please start by calling me Marlena. Ma'am is a name for an old lady. Are you planning to stay in Alta?”

“
Yes, Marlena. But I would like to find a different line of work, something outdoors.” 

A
s he expresses his wish, he looks her directly in the eye. There are points of light in his topaz eyes that mirror hers, giving his gaze a preternaturally bright, mesmeric quality. She finds the experience uplifting, like a shot of adrenaline.

“
My friend Apollo Nelson is giving up his cowboy post at Mill's Creek. Now he is involved with Bryce Scattergood's operation, he doesn't have time for it. Might you be interested?”

Dakota gives an assenting grunt
. 

On t
he plane ride home, Marlena recalls the power of Dakota's gaze. There was a repelling force when their eyes first connected, like the collision between two magnets with positive poles. Afterward, they chatted like old friends.

She decides Faith is wrong in her suspicion of Dakota. Though he is mysterious, he is a kindred spirit and definitely not nefarious.
She, of all people, should be sensitive to what a closed society Alta can be. She resolves henceforth to champion Dakota. She will make him a pet project.

As soon as
Marlena gets home, she speaks to Chloe Vye about hiring Dakota Lawless as Apollo's replacement at Mill's Creek. She is not altogether pleased to hear from Ron that in her absence, Zaddie played Mozart on the zither.