Shakespeare’s Trollop

Chapter Six

Jack called Friday morning just as I was leaving for my appointment with Lacey at Deedra’s apartment.

“I’m on my way back,” he said. “Maybe I can come down Sunday afternoon.”

I felt a flash of resentment. He’d drive down from Little Rock for the afternoon, we’d hop into bed, and he’d have to go back for work on Monday. I made myself admit that I had to work Monday, too, that even if he stayed in Shakespeare we wouldn’t get to see each other that much. Seeing him a little was better than not seeing him at all… as of this moment.

“I’ll see you then,” I said, but my pause had been perceptible and I knew I didn’t sound happy enough.

There was a thoughtful silence on the other end of the line. Jack is not stupid, especially where I’m concerned.

“Something’s wrong,” he said at last. “Can we talk about it when I get there?”

“All right,” I said, trying to soften my voice.

“Good-bye.” And I hung up, taking care to be gentle with the telephone.

I was a little early. I propped myself against the wall by Deedra’s apartment door and waited for Lacey. I was sullen and grim, and I knew that was unreasonable. When Lacey trudged up the stairs, I nodded a greeting, and she seemed just as content to leave it at that.

She’d succeeded in getting Jerrell to remove the boxes we’d packed the previous session, so the apartment looked a lot emptier. After a minimum of discussion, I began sorting through things in the small living room while Lacey boxed the linens.

I pitched all the magazines into a garbage bag and opened the drawer in the coffee table. I saw a roll of mints, a box of pens, some Post-It notes, and the instruction booklet that had come with Deedra’s VCR. I patted the bottom of the drawer, then reached back in its depths. That netted me a coupon for a Healthy Choice microwave meal. I frowned, feeling the muscles around my mouth clamp in what would be wrinkles before too many years passed.

“It’s gone,” I said.

Lacey said, “What?”

I hadn’t even heard her in the kitchen behind me. The service hatch was open.

“The TV Guide.”

“Maybe you threw it away Wednesday?”

“No,” I said positively.

“What possible difference could it make?” Lacey didn’t sound dismissive, but she did sound puzzled.

I stood to face her. She was leaning, elbows on the kitchen counter, her golden-brown sweater already streaked with lint from the dryer. “I don’t know,” I said, and shrugged. “But Deedra always, always kept the TV Guide in this drawer, because she marked the shows she wanted to tape.” I’d always found it interesting that someone with Deedra’s limited intelligence was blessed with a knack for small appliances. She could set her VCR to tape her favorite shows in a matter of minutes. On nights she didn’t have a date, Deedra had television. Even when Deedra was going to be in her apartment, if there was a man present, often she wouldn’t watch her shows. She’d set up her VCR to record.

Every workday morning, Deedra slid in a tape to catch her favorite soaps, and sometimes Oprah. She used the Post-It notes to label her tapes; there was always a little yellow cloud of them in the living room wastebasket.

Oh, hell, what difference could a missing magazine make? Nothing else was missing-nothing that I’d yet discovered. If Deedra’s purse was still missing (and I hadn’t heard that it had been found) then the thief hadn’t been after her keys for entry into her apartment, but had wanted something else in her purse.

I couldn’t imagine what that object could be. And there wasn’t anything of value missing from the apartment, only the stupid TV Guide. Oh, there might be some Kleenex missing. I hadn’t counted those. Marta would probably ask me to.

While I’d been grumbling to myself, I’d been running my hands under the bright floral couch cushions, crouching to look underneath the little skirt that concealed the legs.

“It’s just not here,” I concluded. Lacey had come into the living room. She was looking at me with a puzzled expression.

“Did you want it for something special?” she asked cautiously, obviously humoring me.

I felt like a fool. “It’s the only thing that’s missing,” I explained. “Marta Schuster asked me to tell her if I found anything gone missing, and the TV Guide is the only thing.”

“I just hardly see…” Lacey said doubtfully.

“Me too. But I guess I better call her.”

Marta Schuster was out of the office, so I talked to Deputy Emanuel. He promised to draw the absence of the magazine to Sheriff Schuster’s attention. But the way he said it told me he thought I was crazy for reporting the missing TV Guide. And I couldn’t blame him for his conclusion.

As I went back to my work, it occurred to me that only a maid would have noticed the absence of the TV Guide. And I had to admit to myself that I’d only noticed because once Deedra had left it on the couch and I’d put it on the kitchen counter: in the hatchway, though, so it was easily visible. But Deedra had had a fit, one of the very few she’d had while I’d cleaned for her. She’d told me in no uncertain terms that the TV Guide always, always went in the coffee-table drawer.

So a mad rapist molests Deedra, strangles her, parks her nude in her car out in the woods and… steals her TV Guided TV Guides were readily available in at least five places in Shakespeare. Why would anyone need Deedra’s? I snorted, and put the thought aside to work over some other time. But Deedra herself wouldn’t leave my thoughts. That was only right, I admitted to myself reluctantly. I’d cleaned her apartment for four years; I knew many tiny details about her life that no one else knew. That’s the thing with cleaning people’s homes; you absorb a lot of information with that cleaning. There’s nothing more revealing about people than the mess they leave for someone else. The only people who get to see a home unprepared and unguarded are a maid, a burglar, and a policeman.

I wondered which of the men Deedra had bedded had decided she had to die. Or had it been an impulse? Had she refused to perform some particular act, had she threatened to inform someone’s wife that he was straying, had she clung too hard? Possible, all three scenarios, but not probable. As far as I knew there was nothing Deedra would refuse to do sexually, she’d steered clear of married men for the most part, and if she’d valued one bedmate over another I’d never known about it.

The sheriff’s brother could’ve been different. He was attractive, and he’d certainly carried on like he was crazy about Deedra.

Deedra would sure have been an embarrassing sister-in-law for Marta Schuster. I was lying on the floor checking to make sure nothing else was underneath Deedra’s couch when that unwelcome thought crossed my mind. I stayed down for a moment, turning the idea back and forth, chewing at it.

I nearly discarded it out of hand. Marta was tough enough to handle embarrassment. And from my reading of the situation, I felt Marlon had just begun his relationship with Deedra; there was no other way to explain his extravagant display of grief. He was young enough to have illusions, and maybe he’d dodged the talk about Deedra with enough agility to have hope she’d cleave only to him, to put a biblical spin on it.

Perhaps she would have. After all, Deedra hadn’t been smart, but even Deedra must have seen that she couldn’t go on as she had been. Right?

Maybe she’d never let herself think of the future. Maybe, once started on her course, she’d been content to just drift along? I felt a rush of contempt.

Then I wondered what I myself had been doing for the past six years.

As I rose to my knees and then to my feet, I argued to myself that I’d been learning to survive-to not go crazy-every single day since I’d been raped and knifed.

Standing in Deedra Dean’s living room, listening to her mother working down the hall, I realized that I was no longer in danger of craziness, though I supposed I’d have fits of anxiety the rest of my days. I had made a life, I had earned my living, and I had bought a house of my own. I had insurance. I drove a car and paid taxes. I had mastered survival. For a long moment I stood staring through the hatchway into Deedra’s fluorescently bright kitchen, thinking what a strange time and place it was to realize such a large thing.

And since I was in her apartment, I had to think of Deedra again. She’d been slaughtered before she’d had time to come through whatever was making her behave the way she did. Her body had been degraded-displayed naked, and violated. Though I had not let myself think of it before now, I had a mental picture of the Coca-Cola bottle protruding from Deedra’s vagina. I wondered if she’d been alive when that had happened. I wondered if she’d had time to know.

I felt dizzy suddenly, almost sick, so I plopped down on the couch and stared at my hands. I’d gotten too wrapped up in my inner depiction of Deedra’s last minutes. I was remembering the hours in the shack in the fields, the hours I’d spent chained to an old iron bedstead, waiting to die, almost longing for it. I thought of the sickness of the phone calls Deedra had been getting right before she was killed. There are men who should die, I thought.

“Lily? Are you all right?” Lacey leaned over me, her face concerned.

I yanked myself back to the moment. “Yes,” I said stiffly. “Thank you. I’m sorry.”

“You’re sick?”

“I have an inner ear problem. I just got dizzy for a second,” I lied. It made me uncomfortable, lying, but it was easier on Lacey than the truth.

She went back to her task, casting an uneasy look back at me, and I began going through the tapes Deedra had had around the television, making sure there weren’t any pornographic ones mixed in with the ones marked ALL MY CHILDREN or SALLY JESSY ON THURSDAY. These tapes were all presumably still usable. I figured I’d make sure there wasn’t anything risquй on them, and asked Lacey if I could use the tapes. As I expected, she agreed, and I packed them in a box without finishing my evaluation. If I found anything objectionable in the tapes, I could pitch them at home more easily. Just another little cleanup job to complete.

We can’t leave this world without leaving a lot of detritus behind. We never go out as cleanly as we come in; and even when we come in, there’s the afterbirth.

I looked forward to karate that night more than I had in weeks. So much reflection, so much unwelcome remembrance needed to be worked out of my system. I liked to do, not reflect: I wanted to kick some butt so badly I ached. That’s not the right way to approach the discipline, and that’s not the correct mind frame for martial arts. My body twanged with tension as I took my place in line.

Attendance at the Friday-night classes tended to be a bit lighter than at the Monday and Wednesday classes. Tonight there were only ten people stretching at the barres along the wall. Bobo bowed at the doorway and strolled into the room in a white tank top and the pants-half of his gi. His girlfriend, Toni, had tagged along. Bobo kicked off his sandals and got into line two people down from me, pulling Toni in beside him. She was wearing black shorts and a purple T-shirt, and she’d pinned her dark hair back with an elastic band and a million hairpins. She was trying to look comfortable.

As always, Becca was first in line. She’d stretched on her own before class, smiling at Carlton when he wandered over to talk to her, but not saying much herself. Raphael, usually on my left, was at a dance; he and his wife were chaperoning his daughter’s Spring Fling at the high school. He’d told me he thought some of the restraining moves Marshall had taught us might come in handy if the boys went out in the parking lot to drink.

“You and Lacey ‘bout done cleaning out Deedra’s place?” Becca asked as we waited to be called to attention.

“We haven’t finished yet. But a lot of boxes are gone. Just a little left to pack, and the big stuff can be moved out.”

She nodded, and was about to say something else when Marshall put on his hardest face and barked, “Kiotske!”

We came to attention and exchanged bows with him.

“Line up for sit-ups!”

Becca and I usually paired up, since we were much the same weight and height. I moved to stand facing her and checked to make sure everyone in my new line had a partner. Then Becca and I sat down facing each other, legs extended in front of us and slightly bent at the knees. Becca slid her feet between mine and turned them outward to hook under my calves. I turned my feet in to latch on to hers.

Marshall had motioned Bobo’s girlfriend, Toni, to pair with Janet, who was much closer to Toni’s size than Bobo. Bobo, in turn, had to make do with the only man approaching him in height and weight, Carlton. The two men of the world, I thought, and watched as Bobo and Carlton silently contended over who got to be “outie” and who got to be “innie.” Becca and I grinned at each other as Carlton slid his legs between Bobo’s, who’d held out the longest.

“Put your hands under your butts, like this!” Marshall held up his hands so Toni could see. The index finger of his right hand touched the index finger of the left, and the opposing thumbs touched each other, but the matching pairs were spread as far apart as possible. “Your tailbone should be in the open space. Let yourselves lie back, but don’t touch the floor!” Marshall ordered, being specific since we had a visitor. He strolled down the line with his thumbs hooked in his obi. He examined himself in one of the mirrors that lined the wall, and smoothed his black hair with one ivory hand. Marshall’s one-quarter-Asian blood was his favorite fraction, and he did everything he could to emphasize his otherness. He thought it made him more effective and attractive as a sensei and a gym owner if he looked exotic, or as exotic as southern Arkansas would tolerate. He was right.

Meanwhile, Becca and I tucked our hands under our respective butts and leaned back very slowly, mirroring each other, until our shoulders were about two inches from the floor. I was looking at the ceiling, concentrating on the crack I always used to focus my attention. With the pull from our linked legs providing an anchor, we would be able to maintain this excruciating position for an indeterminate time. I rolled my eyes sideways to check out what our sensei was doing. He was straightening his gi. Bobo, right beside me, met my eyes and shook his head slightly in mock despair. Carlton, beside Becca, had already broken into a sweat.

I made a tiny, derisive sound, just loud enough to carry to our sensei. Marshall was preening while we were hurting, and the weakest of us would be worn out by the time we started the exercise.

“On my count!” Marshall barked, and we all tensed. Carlton was trembling, and Toni, hooked to Janet, seemed totally unable to pull up off the floor, where her entire body was firmly settled. At least she was providing good ballast for her partner.

“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten! One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, twenty! One, two…” With each count we tightened our abdominals, then relaxed them, our upper bodies rising perhaps six inches off the floor to relax down to two on the off count. Our row bobbed frantically to keep up, abdominals rigid with the effort of keeping our backs off the floor. I glanced to the right, checking my half of the row, since Marshall might ask me to correct their faults. Carlton and Toni were side by side on Becca’s row, which pleased me. Bobo looked to his left just then, and our eyes met. He grinned at me. He thought this was great fun. He had to have found another dojo in Montrose, to be in such good shape. I shook my head in wry amazement, and turned my concentration back to my own work. I closed my eyes and kept up with the count, knowing Becca would never give up and go slack.

“Get your elbows off the floor!” Marshal admonished, and the two new boys at the end of the row gasped and obeyed. I scowled at the ceiling as I heard the thud of a head hitting the floor only seconds later. That was on my side, and it was one of the new boys. After a few halfhearted attempts to make his abdominals obey, he openly gave up, and he and Toni did fish imitations together, mouths open and gasping. Toni had lasted maybe the first set of ten. Obviously, Bobo hadn’t met her in a gym.

Finally, only Bobo, Becca, and I were still going.

“One hundred!” Marshall said, and stopped. We three froze with our backs off the floor. I could hear Becca breathing loudly, and tried not to smile.

“Hold it!” commanded Marshall, and with an effort of will, I stayed up.

“Hold it!” he exhorted us. I began to tremble.

“Relax,” he said, and it was all I could do not to let myself collapse with the same embarrassing thud. I managed to detach my legs from Becca’s and let my shoulders and back ease to the floor without any urgency. I hoped.

Ragged breathing filled the room. I turned to look at Bobo. He was beaming at me from a couple of feet away.

“How ya doing, Lily?” he gasped.

“I could have done thirty more,” I said with no conviction. He giggled weakly.

Marshall didn’t tell us to put on sparring pads tonight. At least partly because of Toni’s presence (even the students we called “the new boys” had been coming a month) he decided to instruct us to practice breaking away. There were about four simple moves that each new class member had to learn. While the other people practiced more sophisticated maneuvers, I was set to teach these moves to Toni. She protested nervously several times that she was just visiting with Bobo-probably she would never come to class again. I just kept on instructing her. No one (least of all the timid Toni) would quite dare to just tell Marshall no. At least, no one I’d ever met.

My estimation of the girl rose as I worked with her. She gave it her best shot, though she was obviously uncomfortable with being in the class at all. I could like that determination-admire it, even.

“God, you’re strong,” she said, trying not to sound angry, as I gripped her wrists and told her to practice the breaking-free method I’d just taught her.

“I’ve been working at this for years.”

“You’re some kind of hero to Bobo,” she said, her eyes fixed on me to see how I’d react.

I had no idea how to respond to that. I wanted to ignore what Toni had said, but she refused to move when I took her wrist, playing my role of attacker. She just waited, her face turned up to mine.

“I’m not a hero in any sense,” I said curtly. “Now, break free from my hold!”

I got out of there fast when class was over. Janet had left even faster after letting me know she had a date, so she wasn’t there to chat with me on my way out, and the weight room was almost empty. I thought I heard Bobo call my name, but I kept marching forward. I’d see him tomorrow afternoon, anyway.