Shakespeare’s Trollop

Chapter Eight

I slept late the next day. I must have punched down my alarm button without even knowing it, because when I finally checked the clock, I saw that I was supposed to be at my first Saturday morning cleaning job. I left my bed unmade, my breakfast uneaten, and arrived at Carrie’s office barefaced and groggy. There was no one there to see me in any condition at all, so I accelerated my pace and got her office finished, then scooted over to the travel agent’s.

I’d gotten my adrenaline pumping so effectively that I actually finished early. When I got home I collapsed at my kitchen table, trying to figure out what the rest of the day held. My Saturdays were usually spent grocery shopping and cleaning my own place. I tried to recall what else I had going.

Well, there was Deedra’s funeral. Janet was coming by within the hour to accompany me to that. Then Bobo was coming over for some unstated purpose. And I still had to shop and clean since Jack was driving in tomorrow.

All I wanted to do was sleep, or rent a movie and sit in a silent lump on my double recliner to watch it. But I hoisted myself to my feet and went to the bathroom for a hot shower.

When Janet thumped on my front door forty-five minutes later, I was in my black suit, made up, with hose and pumps making me feel like a stranger to myself. I had just completed my makeup, and as I opened the door to her, I was pushing the back onto my left earring.

“Lily, you look good in black,” Janet said.

“Thanks. You’re looking good yourself.” It was true; Janet was wearing a chestnut sheath with a brown-gold-green jacket, and it brought out the best in her coloring and figure.

It was time to go, so I grabbed my purse and locked the door on the way out.

“Oh, by the way,” Janet said, “I told Becca we’d stop by the apartments and pick her up.”

I shrugged. Why anyone needed to be accompanied to a funeral was outside of my understanding, but I had no objection.

Becca came out of the big front doors of the Shakespeare Garden Apartments just as we walked up. She was wearing a dark blue dress with big white polka dots, and she’d put up her hair somehow under a navy blue straw hat. With her usual dramatic makeup, Becca looked as if she had a bit part in a film about charming Southern eccentrics.

“Hidey!” she said, all perky and upbeat. I stared at her. “Sorry,” Becca told us after a second. “I’ve got to sober down. I just got a real good piece of news, and I haven’t got it out of my system.”

“Can we ask?” asked Janet. Her round brown eyes were almost protruding with curiosity.

“Well,” Becca said, looking as though she’d blush with pleasure if Revlon hadn’t already done it for her, “my brother is coming to see me.”

Janet and I exchanged significant glances. Becca had only mentioned her brother Anthony a time or two, and Janet had wondered aloud one time why the apartments had been left to Becca. Why not a fair split between sister and brother? I hadn’t responded, because it was none of my business how Pardon Albee had left his estate, but I had had to admit to myself that singling out Becca had seemed a little unusual. Now we’d get to meet the brother, maybe discover why Becca had been so favored.

In a polite voice, Janet said, “That’s real nice.” We were too close to the church to keep the discussion open.

Distracted by Becca’s surprising mood and news, I hadn’t noticed that our small street was very nearly in a state of gridlock. Cars were parked on both sides of Track Street and around the corner, as far as I could see. Track Street is the base of three streets laid out like a U tipped on its left side. Estes Arboretum fills up the empty part of the U, and the Shakespeare Combined Church is on the upper bar. It’s a fundamentalist Christian church with a pastor, Joel McCorkindale, who can raise money like nobody’s business. Joel is handsome and shiny, like a country-and-western star, with his razor-cut hair and perfect white teeth. He’s added a mustache trimmed so precisely that it looks as though he could chop his meat with it.

The SCC, as the Shakespeareans call it, has added two wings in the past three years. There’s a day care, a preschool, and a basketball gym for the teenagers. I was assuming they found time to have church on Sundays, sandwiched somewhere between Singles Hour, Teen Handbells, and classes like How to Please your Husband in a Christian Marriage. I’ve worked there from time to time, and the Reverend McCorkindale and I have had some interesting conversations.

The steeple bell was tolling heavily as we three strode up the gentle slope that leveled off in front of the church. The white hearse of Shields Funeral Home was lined up with its white limousine parallel to the curb directly in front of the church, and through the smoked windows of the limousine I could make out the family waiting to enter. Though I didn’t want to stare at them, I couldn’t seem to help it. Lacey looked stricken and hopeless. Jerrell looked resigned.

Janet, Becca, and I entered the main doors and were escorted by an usher to our seats. I made sure Becca went first so he grasped her arm instead of mine. The church was packed with pale people in dark clothes. The family pews, with the front one left empty for Lacey and Jerrell, were filled with all the cousins and aunts and uncles of the dead woman, and I picked out Bobo’s bright hair beside the dark head of Calla Prader. I had forgotten that Deedra was Bobo’s cousin.

The usher gestured us into the end of a pew about midway down the church. It was a good thing we’d come when we had, since it was the last place open that could accommodate three people. Janet glanced around the sanctuary with curiosity. Becca studied the program the usher had handed us. I wished I were somewhere else, anywhere. Jack would be here tomorrow and there was a lot I needed to do; I was worried about his visit, about the problems we faced. The scent of the banks of flowers filled the air of the church, already challenged by all these people, and my head began to ache.

Joel McCorkindale, in a black robe with even blacker velvet bands striping the sleeves, appeared at the front of the church after the organ had droned through several gloomy pieces. We all rose, and with due professional solemnity the team from the funeral home (one male Shields and one female Shields) wheeled the coffin down the aisle. After the casket came the pallbearers, two by two, each wearing a carnation in his lapel and walking slowly with eyes downcast. All the pallbearers were male, and as I scanned their faces I wondered how many of them had performed intimate acts with the body in the coffin preceding them. It was a grotesque thought. I wasn’t proud of myself for entertaining it. Most of them were older men, men the age of Jerrell and Lacey, who were coming in at the pallbearers’ heels.

Lacey was clinging to Jerrell, and he had to give her a lot of help just to make it to the front pew. As the couple went past the rest of the family, it occurred to me to wonder why Becca was sitting beside me instead of on the other side of the church. She was a cousin of Deedra’s, too, though she’d had little chance to get to know her.

It had been a crowded week for the Prader/Dean/Winthrop/Albee clan. I wondered how many of them were thinking of the burning of Joe C’s house the night before instead of the murder of the woman in the casket.

A few more people slipped in at the back before the ushers closed the doors. The church was packed to capacity. Not only was Deedra too young to die, she had been murdered. So perhaps the curiosity factor had a part to play in this crowd.

Maybe because I was stifling-the press of people and the heavy scent of flowers almost overwhelmed me-I found myself wondering if my own funeral would have been as well attended if I’d died when I’d been abducted years before. It was all too easy to imagine my parents following the coffin in, and I could even be pretty sure who my pallbearers would have been…

I yanked myself back to the here-and-now. There was something sickly self-indulgent about reviewing my own funeral.

The ceremony continued about like I’d expected. We listened to two singers plow through two old standards, “Amazing Grace” and “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” Since I can sing myself, the performances were interesting, but no more than that. No one here in Shakespeare knew that I used to sing at weddings and funerals in my little hometown, and that was just fine with me. I was better than the woman who sang “Amazing Grace,” but my range wasn’t as good as the girl who performed second.

I sighed and recrossed my legs. Janet kept her gaze fixed properly on the singers, and Becca examined her cuticles and removed a fragment of thread from the setting of her diamond dinner ring.

I might have known Joel McCorkindale would not let the occasion pass with a simple eulogy, if he’d decided there was a point to be made. To no one’s surprise, he based his sermon on the passage in Thessalonians where Paul warns us that the day of Lord will come like a thief in the night.

The preacher made more of a meal of it than I’d expected. His point was that someone had usurped God’s rights in taking Deedra’s life. I found myself growing stern and affronted. He was taking away the focus of the funeral from Deedra, who was actually the dead person, and focusing on the man who’d killed her.

To my alarm, the people in the congregation who were used to his style of preaching began to agree audibly with his points. Every now and then a man or a woman would raise hands above head and say, “Amen! Praise the Lord!”

I turned my head slightly to check out Janet’s reaction. Her eyes were about to pop out of her head, and she gave them a significant roll when she saw me match her own astonishment. I had never been in a church where it was the norm for the congregation to speak out loud, and by Janet’s facial expression, neither had she. Becca, on the other hand, was smiling slightly, as if the whole thing was performance art staged for her benefit.

I could tell the men and women who ordinarily attended this church were very comfortable with this, this… audience participation. But I was horribly embarrassed, and when I saw Lacey leaning forward in her seat, hands clasped above her head, tears rolling down her face, I almost got up and left. I never talked to God myself, having gotten out of the inclination for faith after that summer in Memphis; but if I did have such a conversation, I knew it would be in private and no one around me would know. In fact, I promised myself that.

Janet and I were so glad when the service was over that it was all we could do not to bolt from the church. Becca seemed intrigued with the whole experience.

“Have you ever seen anything like that before?” she asked, but not in a voice low enough to suit me. We were still close to the other mourners, who were scattering to climb into their cars for the drive to the cemetery.

Janet shook her head silently.

“Who knows what’ll happen at the gravesite,” Becca said in happy anticipation.

“You’ll have to catch a ride with Carlton,” I said, nodding toward my neighbor who was just coming out of the church. “I’m going home.” I started down the sidewalk. Janet trotted after me.

“Hold up, Lily!” she said. “I don’t think I’ll go to the cemetery either. That service kind of shook me up. I guess Methodists are too repressed for something that emotionally… open.”

“ ‘Open,’ ” I snarled, and kept on walking. “I didn’t like that.”

“You mean the church? The people?”

I nodded.

“Well, I wasn’t raised that way either, but it seemed to make them feel better,” Janet commented cautiously. “I don’t know, it might have been kind of comforting.”

I shuddered.

“Listen, what are you going to do now?”

“Call the hospital.”

“About what?”

“Joe C.”

“Oh, yeah, he had a fire last night, didn’t he?”

I nodded. “See you later,” I told Janet. I forced myself to add, “Thanks for going with me.”

Janet looked happier. “You’re welcome. Thanks for letting me use your driveway.” She got into her red Toyota and started it up, waving at me as she backed out.

The street was filled with cars pulling away from the curb, lining up to follow the hearse to the cemetery. As I stood in my front doorway, the street emptied of all its life like one of those time-lapse films. Only one Jeep remained parked farther up the street. I was alone with the trees in the arboretum across the street.

No, not quite alone. As I finally took a step back into my house I saw a man get out of the Jeep and begin to saunter down the street toward me.

It was Bobo, I realized with some astonishment, and remembered our appointment. As he walked, he was loosening his tie and pulling it off, stuffing it into the pocket of his dark suit. He loosened his collar button with two tan fingers, and raked back his blond hair.

Suddenly the postfuneral exaltation of being alive hit me. I felt the crackle of lightning about to strike. The man coming down the sidewalk toward me felt it too. He quickened his pace until he was actually hurrying, keeping all his attention focused on me. When he got to my door, without saying a word he wrapped me in his long arms and held me to him and kissed the hell out of me.

My brain said, pull away! But my body wasn’t listening. My fingers were twining in Bobo’s hair, my pelvis was pressed firmly against his, and I was kissing him back as hard as I could.

We were visible to any passersby.

That must have occurred to Bobo, too, because he pushed me a little and into my house we lurched and he spared a hand to press the door closed.

Bobo bit me on the neck and I growled and began grinding into him. The top of my suit was unbuttoned and his hand was inside, caressing me through my bra. Bobo ground right back, and my hands went under his suit coat to hold on to his butt, and our rhythm went on, and somehow he hit exactly the right spot and I saw stars. He groaned, and I felt the front of his pants grow wet.

Then there was only the sound of our panting.

“Floor,” Bobo suggested, and our knees gave way.

My living room isn’t large and there isn’t much floor space. I was sitting right next to the sprawled-out young man, and my blood was still humming through my veins.

But after only a few seconds, I was overwhelmed with the wrongness and stupidity of what I’d just done. And with someone I thought of as a friend. The day before Jack was returning.

All these years of trying so hard not to make a mistake had just gone down the drain.

“Lily,” said a voice gently. Bobo was propped up on his elbow next to me. His flushed face had returned to its normal coloring, his breathing was even. His big hand traveled an infinite distance to hold mine. “Lily, don’t feel sad.”

I was unable to speak. I wondered if Bobo was twenty-one yet. I told myself in the nastiest terms what a depraved moron I had been. I wanted to literally beat my head against the wall.

“It was the moment,” he said.

I took a deep breath. “Yes,” I answered.

“Don’t be so upset,” he repeated. “I don’t wanna be crude, Lily, but it was just a dry hump.”

I’d never heard the phrase before.

“You almost smiled, I saw your mouth twitch,” he told me, pleased.

I brushed his hair back from his forehead.

“Can we pretend it never happened?” My voice wasn’t as shaky as I’d feared it would be.

“No, I don’t think so. What it was, was fantastic. I’ve always had a thing about you.” He drew my hand to him, kissed it. “But I never saw this coming. It was just funeral fever. You know-she’s dead, but we’re alive. Sex is a great way to prove to yourself you’re alive.”

“You’re being wise.”

“It’s about time you got a break, let someone else do the wise thing.”

“I do plenty of things that aren’t so smart,” I said, unable to keep the bitterness from my voice.

“Lily, this won’t happen again, not ever. You’re not gonna let it. So let’s be real honest with each other.”

I wasn’t sure what that would entail. I waited for him to go on.

“There’s no telling how many fantasies I’ve had about you since you worked for my mother. When you know some beautiful, mysterious woman is cleaning your room, it’s just a sure thing you’re going to imagine… what if? My favorite one-”

“Please, no,” I said.

“Oh, all right.” He had the grace to look a little embarrassed. “But the point of this is I know… I know it was just a fantasy, that you’re real, that we’re not gonna have a relationship. I know that you just like me as a… buddy.”

A little more than that, I thought ruefully. But I knew better than to say it out loud. “You don’t really know me,” I said, as gently as I was able.

“There’s a lot I know about you that you won’t admit about yourself,” he retorted.

I didn’t understand.

“You pull old men out of burning buildings. You saved Jack Leeds’ life and almost died in the act. You’re willing, and brave enough, to risk your life to save others.”

What a misconception! “No, no, no,” I protested angrily. He made a kind of dampening gesture, patting down the air with his free hand. I sat up and reached over to the pile of folded laundry on the chair, laundry I hadn’t had a chance to put away today. I passed him a hand towel, and he began dabbing at the front of his pants, trying hard not to be embarrassed.

“You did those things. You are brave.” He sounded flat, and final.

I didn’t want to hear a booster speech from Bobo Winthrop. I was going to feel bad about what had just happened for a long, long time.

“And you’re smart, and hard working, and really, really, pretty.”

All of a sudden, tears stung the back of my eyelids. The final humiliation, I thought.

“You have to leave,” I said abruptly. I leaned over to kiss Bobo on his cheek. For the last-and only-time, I pulled him close and hugged him after we stood up.

“Now, you go, and we’ll be okay in a week or two,” I told him, hoping that I was telling him the truth. He looked down at me very seriously, his handsome face so solemn I could scarcely bear it.

“I have to tell you something else,” Bobo insisted. “Listen to me, Lily. I’m switching subjects here.”

I nodded, reluctantly, to show him I was waiting.

“That fire was set. The fire marshal came and told Calla this morning, and she called all of us in the family. Not Lacey, naturally, but all the others. Someone tried to kill Joe C, but you stopped them.”

I didn’t listen to the renewed pat-on-the-back part of Bobo’s speech. I was thinking about his opening sentence. I wasn’t surprised by the news. In fact, I’d been taking it for granted that the person I’d seen in the yard of Joe C’s house had actually started the fire. Trespasser + sudden fire = arson.

“How was it set?”

“A package of cigarettes. Not just one cigarette was lit, but a whole pack. They were left on the couch to smolder. But the flames ran away from the couch, didn’t consume it, and the traces were still there.”

“How is Joe C?” I asked.

He looked surprised for a minute, as though he’d been expecting me to exclaim and ask a different question.

“Nothing can kill Joe C,” Bobo said, almost regretfully, pushing his hair back off his forehead. “He’s like a human cockroach. Hey, I saw that twitch again!”

I looked away.

“Lily, this isn’t the end of the world.”

I saw I was hurting him, and I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to have done any of the things I’d done today.

And I was determined to stick to an impersonal topic.

“If Joe C had died, who would have inherited?” I asked.

Bobo turned red. “I’m not supposed to know the answer to that, but I do,” he confessed. “ ‘Cause I saw a copy of the will at Joe C’s house. He had it stuck in the old rolltop desk. I’ve always loved that desk. Gee, I guess it’s all burned up now. But I played with it since I was a little boy, you know, looking in the secret compartment that he’d shown me.”

“The will was there?” I prodded when memories seemed to wrap him up.

“Yes. The last time I went to see Joe C… last week, I guess it was… I was sitting with Toni in the living room while Aunt Calla was helping Joe C get his shoes on after his nap. He’d asked all of the greats to come over- grandchildren, nieces and nephews. Deedra, me, Amber and Howell Three, Becca. The other three live in North Carolina… So, I was showing Toni the little place you push to open the compartment. And there it was. I didn’t mean anything by reading it, I promise.”

After a brief period of being his sex bunny, I was now back to being Bobo’s wise woman who had to approve of his actions. I sighed.

“What did it say?”

“There was lots of lawyer language.” Bobo shrugged. “But what I could tell, I guess, is that Great Uncle Joe C left one thing, one furniture item, to each of us Winthrop kids. So Amber and Howell Three and I could each pick something. I was hoping I’d get the desk. I was thinking I’d try to pick first. Now everything’s burned or water damaged, I guess.” Bobo smiled his beautiful smile, amused at the confounding of his greed. “Of course the main thing is the house. Joe C left proceeds from the sale of the house to his great-grandchildren. Walker’s three kids, and Alice Whitley’s two, and Lacey’s… oh, but…”

His voice trailed away. “But Deedra’s dead,” Bobo resumed slowly.

I digested this slowly. I thought that whom Joe C’d included was just as interesting as who he’d left out. “Nothing for Calla,” I pointed out. “She’s a granddaughter.”

Bobo actually looked horrified. “But she’s taken care of him all these years,” he said.

I remembered Bobo’s grandfather. He’d only been a brother-in-law to Joe C, but they were from the same mold. I wondered what Shakespearean mothers had fed men-children in those days to make them so mean.

“Did anyone know this besides you?” I asked.

“Yeah. Well, I guess I don’t know,” he muttered. He still seemed stunned at his great-uncle’s mean-spiritedness. His thoughts must have followed the same trail mine had, because suddenly he said, “What kind of people do I come from?”

“You come from your parents, and they’re both nice people.” I had reservations about his mother, but this was no time to think about that. “Your father is a nice man,” I said, and meant it. “Your grandmother is a true lady.” That encompassed some less-than-desirable attributes as well as some great ones, but there again, I was always more clever at not saying things than saying them. Sometimes that was the better characteristic.

Bobo was looking a little less miserable.

“You’re a good man.”

“You mean that?”

“You know I do.”

“That’s the best thing you could’ve said to me.” He looked down at me soberly for a long minute before his smile cracked through the serious facade. “Other than calling me your incredible stud and permanent sex slave.”

All of a sudden, I felt better. I could see that the brief sexual connection we’d had had faded out of existence and that our old friendship might replace it; that we might actually forget this past twenty minutes, or at least make a good enough pretense of it.

But Jack was still coming the next day, and any reprieve from self-loathing I’d felt was washed away in the flood of anguish the idea of seeing him caused me.

Bobo raised a hand to touch my hair, or caress my neck, but something in my face stopped him.

“Good-bye, Lily.”

“Good-bye,” I said steadily.

He opened the front door and buttoned his suit coat to cover, at least partially, the stain on the front of his pants. He half-turned when he was almost over the threshold.

“Do you think Calla could do that?” he asked, as though he were asking a student of the dark parts of the heart. “You think she could do that to Joe C? Set the fire? The door was unlocked. She has keys.”

“I think she could want him to die if she knew about the will,” I told him honestly.

He was startled, but he took my word for it.

Shaking his head, he headed off down the street to find his Jeep and go home to his girlfriend and parents.

Then I was left alone with my own damn conscience.