Whisker Of Evil

26

Emotions are messengers.” Carmen, her own nails buffed to a high luster, filed down BoomBoom’s. “And I realized that the anger I felt was just covering up the sorrow and the loss. Which meant I had a lot of love, and I can love. I just have to get through this.”

“What are you going to do?” BoomBoom leaned back in the comfortable chair, the light jazz music in the background competing with hair dryers and conversation.

“Review my relationships. Not just the last one but all of my relationships with men. My father. My brothers. I have unrealistic expectations.” She breathed in through her nose, as a thin, colored cigarette was firmly clamped between her lips. “And I like bad boys. I’ll like a nice guy for a while and then I get bored.”

Since this was Carmen’s beauty parlor, she would damned well smoke if she wanted to and she defied the “health Nazis,” as she called them, to stop her.

“Don’t we all?” BoomBoom laughed, her bosom, and the reason she endured her nickname, heaving upward.

“I suppose. And I suppose they have some pretty stupid ideas about us.” Carmen put BoomBoom’s left hand in a slanted bowl so her fingertips would be washed in emollients.

“I know.” BoomBoom, born and raised in the country, did know. Having graduated from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, with honors, she was well educated and intelligent. Her major had been English, so if she had not married very well, she could have been taught to do just about anything. However, women as beautiful as BoomBoom always marry well unless they are stone stupid.

Carmen hopped to a variant of her topic: men. “Well, that Dr. Langston is as cute as a bug’s ear. He said these days very few doctors can diagnose rabies or even Lyme disease because they mimic other diseases, and he said another hard one is syphilis. He said they all have some things in common, but I said I was a lot more worried about AIDS, and he said he was, too. These little dots of whatever a virus is can evolve quickly. It’s like they have intelligence.”

“It is strange and frightening.” BoomBoom closed her eyes, her long lashes dark against her suntanned skin.

“Boom,” Carmen’s voice rose.

“What?”

“Want me to shut up? I can go on, I know. And I’m upset over Sugar dying, so I’m blabbing more than usual. I just open my mouth and whatever I’m thinking pops out.”

“I’m thinking, too.”

“Boom,” Carmen lowered her voice to a whisper, “have you ever been truly in love?”

“In high school.” BoomBoom laughed, opening her eyes.

“Who?”

“Charlie Ashcraft. That lasted two months.”

“He was gorgeous, though. Died the death he deserved.” Carmen snapped her mouth shut like a turtle, for Charlie had seduced and abandoned women for all of his thirty-seven years until it finally caught up with him in the men’s locker room at Farmington Country Club. “One has few defenses against such male beauty. People say that about you.”

“Oh, that I have male beauty?” BoomBoom giggled.

“Hey, hold still.” Carmen squeezed BoomBoom’s right hand tighter. “You know what I mean. Men can’t resist you.”

“Men are easy. Now, seducing women, that would be a challenge.”

“Boom!” Carmen pretended to be scandalized, then lowered her voice again. “Would you?”

“I don’t know. All I know is I’m very, very happy alone. Do you know, Carmen, I haven’t been alone since I graduated from college? Even after Kelly died, I had one affair after another. This New Year’s I made a resolution to take a year off. I might go out, I might date someone steadily, but I am not sleeping with him. I’m not making any promises until I arrive at next New Year’s.”

A long, long pause followed, then Carmen dipped BoomBoom’s right hand into another slanting bowl. She reached for a terry-cloth towel, removed BoomBoom’s left hand, rubbed it vigorously. “I don’t think I could do it.”

“Be alone for a year?”

“I’m too scared.”

“Didn’t you just say that emotions are messengers?”

“Yes.”

“Fear is a big, big messenger. Pay attention. If you listen, fear will bring you courage.”

Carmen slathered BoomBoom’s left hand in a thick pink cream. “But when I’m alone, things rattle around in my head. I need someone to love me.”

“You need you to love you. And you know who taught me that without trying?” BoomBoom said as Carmen shook her head. “Harry.”

“Harry?”

“When her marriage broke up, she put her head down and kept working. She didn’t run out and grab the first man who winked at her. And she’s been alone for years now. And she kept her mouth shut. Still does.”

“But he still loves her.”

“She didn’t know that for a good, long year, and that doesn’t mean she’ll take him back, although he’s worked hard at—well, at himself.”

“How many years have they been divorced?”

“Umm, four, I think.”

“Four years is a long time to be alone.”

“Maybe, but you certainly get used to your own company. And while I’m hardly Harry’s closest confidant, I think she’s learned a lot. I think she has forgiven him and she realizes how much he means to her. Are you putting me in the heated mittens again?”

“I am. While you’re sitting there waiting for the color to work”—Carmen had added some lightener to BoomBoom’s blond hair—“we might as well go the whole nine yards. I’m going to do your feet, too.”

“Full service.” BoomBoom wriggled her toes in her sandals. “I’m not in the advice business, but time alone won’t hurt you.”

“The thing is, if only Barry hadn’t gotten himself killed. I kind of thought the relationship was over. But we’d screamed and hollered and thrown things at each other before, and then time would go by and there’d be a full moon.” She sighed.

“So you thought maybe you’d find him again during the full moon?” A wry smile played on BoomBoom’s full lips.

Carmen shrugged. “Who knows, but now I’ll always wonder.”

“You’re doing the smart thing, reviewing your relationships with men. Everything will sort out; it always does.”

The door opened and Tavener Heyward came in for his haircut.

“I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you quite this way.” Tavener chuckled as he sat next to BoomBoom.

“Be careful.” BoomBoom narrowed her eyes, feigning revenge.

“Oh, I am. We’re all careful around you. Beautiful women must be obeyed.”

They both laughed, as did Carmen, now slathering BoomBoom’s right hand in pink goo. The mittens, plugged in, were just reaching the right temperature.

“Are you going up to Timonium?” BoomBoom mentioned a regional thoroughbred sale held at the Maryland State Fairgrounds. She didn’t discuss Sugar’s passing with Tavener, as they’d spoken on the phone early that morning. She’d called about Keepsake, the mare in foal, and the conversation got around to Sugar.

“Thought I’d go take a look at Orion’s Sword’s babies. I’ve been tracking this stallion, and if I like the babies, I’m going to try to bring him back to my place. He’s a Mr. Prospector grandson, and you can’t go wrong there.”

“That will give you six stallions. Not that you shouldn’t get some Mr. Prospector blood, but, Tavener, you’ll need more staff.”

“Oh, I know it.” He turned his head from BoomBoom to stare in the mirror as Henry Dickie snipped, the silver hairs falling to the ground. “Still, I’ll never live down that I didn’t buy Ziggy Dark Star when Marshall Kressenberg found him in Kentucky. A full brother to Ziggy Flame, and I foolishly let him get away. Oh, how I have repented my economies.”

“You’ve certainly got some good stallions.”

“Well, Captain Kieje put me on the map.” Tavener mentioned the stallion, sire of many graded stakes winners. “And, at least, I bought a share in Dark Star. That was something.”

The Captain had lived to the ripe old age of twenty-five. His son, Kieje’s Crown, was as potent and successful as his sire.

“Tavener, I hope our state fairgrounds, being constructed even as we speak, will look better than Maryland’s.”

“It will,” Tavener said with confidence.

“All the money in the state of Maryland and they build that bland thing in Timonium.” She would have thrown up her hands but the mittens were plugged in to an outlet restricting her movement.

“Well, we can tease our Maryland friends all we want about Timonium, but they’ve got the Maryland Hunt Cup, the Preakness, and some damned good horses.”

“Chalk it up to being a border state during the War Between the States.” BoomBoom smiled. “That’s when Virginia lost our equine hegemony.”

The thoroughbreds, often called blooded horses, led by grooms and women, had walked through two mountain ranges and forded deep, swift rivers to another border state, Kentucky. Given the economic devastation as well as the appalling loss of human and equine life after the war ended, those animals that had managed to avoid consumption never returned. Many were hidden so they wouldn’t go to the war.

One could barely even find a mule or donkey after 1865 in Virginia, much less a man between the ages of twelve and seventy who had all his limbs and mind intact.

“We’ve done precious little to get it back.” Tavener, a stalwart on every thoroughbred and racing commission in the state, had fought the good fight for over two decades. When Virginia finally voted to allow racing, they put the track outside of Williamsburg, not the best place at that time. However, the buildings were lovely and the turf track was one of the best in the country. Perhaps in time the population would grow south of Richmond to support the track. It sure was a long haul for horsemen, though, most of whom were in central or northern Virginia.

“Now, you’ve spearheaded every group, you really led us to racing. And, Tavener, you can’t blame yourself for the location of Colonial Downs. No, it isn’t convenient to the largest population in our state, which clogs up every artery in northern Virginia.” She smacked her lips. “Occupied Virginia.” They laughed and she continued, as Carmen soaked BoomBoom’s feet in soothing oil. “But you’ve done your share.”

“If we don’t get more Off Track Betting sites, BoomBoom, you can kiss it all good-bye. And I am just tired of fighting these entrenched interests who think gambling will lead us to the devil. The equine industry pumps one billion dollars into our state economy, and if we can expand racing and Off Track Betting, I guarantee another billion in two years’ time. I mean it, I’d bet my life on it.”

“Now, don’t you think foxhunting brings money into the state?”

“I do.” His eyes opened wide. “I do, but wagering, BoomBoom, hundreds of thousands of dollars of handle on race days—all to the public good.” He used “handle,” which meant the money flowing through the betting windows.

“Dr. Heyward, sit still.” Henry rapped him on the shoulder with the scissors.

“Sorry. I get hot about this.”

“And other things.” BoomBoom blew him a kiss just to torment him.

“Whooee.” Carmen fanned herself, adding to the merriment. “Dr. Heyward, Barry always said you ran a tight ship. He said he was going to give you a run for your money someday.”

“Oh, he did, did he?” Tavener smiled broadly.

“Said he was going to get good stallions, and he already had those mares. He and Sugar—” She stopped. “They had big dreams. He read everything. He said he studied what Mary Pat did, too. He asked questions about her and looked for notes and stuff.” She smiled. “But he said you were really, really smart.”

“I’m flattered. It’s hard to believe they’re gone.” He snapped his fingers. “You never know.”

A silence followed this, then Carmen said, “Barry wanted to know everything. He used to watch you. He said he learned a lot from Fair about reproduction, but he said you knew the blood, knew it in your sleep.”

“You watch a lot of horses, you study a lot of pedigrees.”

“A little luck never hurts.” BoomBoom smiled. “And you had the good fortune to see Mary Pat’s organization when you started out.”

“Impeccable. Tell you another one I studied: Peggy Augustus. Her mother was good, and Peggy—what an eye, I tell you.” He folded his hands under his smock. “Paul Mellon. Any chance I had to drive up there to Upperville, I took it. Another great breeder and a great man. Learn from the best.”

The door opened as Little Mim came in, and Pewter scooted right between her legs.

“What the—”

“Pewter, what do you have?” BoomBoom called out.

“Mine. All mine!” The gray cat dropped a fried chicken wing, then picked it up, hurrying to the supply closet, door open.

Just then Harry pushed through the door, her face red. “Pewter.”

“She’s not here,” Pewter called from the closet.

Carmen pointed to the closet, as did the others.

“Your lunch?” Tavener laughed jovially.

“Worse. Herbie’s.”

“It’s half a block from the post office to here. That’s a long haul for such a tubby pussycat.” Tavener thought this was pretty funny.

“The Rev is back in the post office blessing her this very minute.” Harry strode to the closet. “I see you in there.” She stooped down, scooped up the cat, who would not release the chicken wing from her jaws. “God will get you for this, Pewter.”

The cat refused to open her mouth.

As Harry left, Tavener laughed and laughed. “Would you like to hear Herb right now? The air is blue. Then he’ll remember himself and apologize profusely.”

“It’s amazing how strong a little animal can be when it’s defending itself or wants something.” BoomBoom loved all animals.

“That’s what upsets me about Barry.” Carmen looked up at BoomBoom. “His throat was ripped out. Why didn’t he fight? I think there’s something out there.”

“Now, Carmen, don’t let your imagination get the better of you,” Tavener said soothingly.