But that didn’t fly with the little voice in her head.
Don’t need to think it through,
it chastised her.
Ain’t nothin’ to overlook. ’Cause it ain’t no sin to be gay.
Stella closed her eyes and tried to savor the burn going down her throat, the lovely spreading heat in her gut.
“Oh, hell,” she muttered.
“Excuse me?” BJ gently took the empty cup from her and tipped her chin up with his fingers. “Are you all right, Stella?”
The sensation of his callused, rough thumb against the sensitive skin under her jaw was lovely. It went along extra-nicely with the whiskey puddle that was snaking along her nerve endings, and she couldn’t much stop herself from leaning into his touch. BJ didn’t seem to mind. He stepped a little closer and allowed his hand to close in on the nape of her neck, where he started doing something wonderful and vaguely wicked, his fingertips dipping down the collar of her top, grazing her hairline.
“BJ,” Stella sighed, letting her eyes flutter closed, “I just got to tell you something … ’fore we go any further.… I hope you’re gonna keep an open mind here and all.… What it is, is just…”
There was a knocking at the front door, and somewhere through the haze of Stella’s buzz and the lovely sensual delights of BJ’s ministrations, she heard the happy chatter of her daughter and her guests, the laughter and clinking of glasses, and she gave herself one last chance to take the easy way out—
—and then, because she was Stella Hardesty, and she didn’t take the easy way for anyone, she laid her forehead against BJ’s overdeveloped pectorals and asked him what was, really, the only thing she could ask:
“What do you think of lesbians, anyway?”
But when she opened her eyes to find out the answer, she looked over BJ’s shoulder right into the surprised face of Sheriff Goat Jones.
Chapter Twenty-three
After that, it got a little confusing. BJ made a sort of a hiccupping sound that launched into a coughing fit, bad enough that Stella felt obliged to give him a powerful wallop on the back. Goat, meanwhile, wavered in the doorway, half in and half out, while as if on cue, the music started thumping in earnest at high decibels, and a minor fracas broke out over the desserts.
“I
said
I didn’t want no jam bar, Noelle,” Joy exclaimed, and Stella turned to see her daughter holding cookies in both hands as though she intended to attack Joy with them. Her face was screwed up in a powerful fury.
“Might as well have a few,” her daughter shot back. “Never mind they’re messy. Hell, have some a this chocolate frosting and some spinach dip and a Jell-O shooter while you’re at it. Don’t matter none if it gets on you ’cause you’re just wearing a old
rag
again anyway.”
“You’re mad I didn’t wear that skirt you loaned me,” Joy said with exaggerated patience, as though she were talking to a toddler. “I understand. And I really did plan on it. Only it was just so cold out and all, when I got out in the driveway I figured this wasn’t the night to be doing any kind of fashion experiments, not when that wind was rushing up into my privates.”
“You got to
suffer
for beauty,” Noelle snapped. “That’s, like, the basis of my whole career. It’s my
passion.
”
“Now, when you say lesbians,” BJ said, evidently uninterested in the fight brewing a few feet away. “Are you talking, like, movie lesbians? Or regular ones?”
Stella bristled. “Why, would it make a difference?”
BJ seemed to pick up on her tone because he shook his head vigorously. “I’ve got no problems with it,” he said. “Lovin’s lovin’, you know?”
“Excuse me,” Stella said, giving BJ her best hostess smile and making for the door. Behind her, Noelle lit into Joy for scrubbing off the makeup she’d worked so hard to apply. The rest of the guests appeared to be trying to drown out the argument by singing along to the music and dancing in the little clearing Noelle had made in the living room.
“Goat,” Stella said as matter-of-factly as she could manage. “Imagine, coming here on a night such as this. What an honor. I would think you’d be positively swamped, what with the demands of the Porter case.”
Goat looked like he had half a mind to pick up the salami one of the guests had brought, and hit her over the head with it. Instead, he gritted his teeth and pushed past her to the bar.
“Don’t mind me,” he said to no one in particular. “I’ll just fix me a little something, seeing as everyone else seems to have got a head start on me. Brodersen, don’t you have a business to run somewhere?”
BJ bristled and pulled himself up to his full height, which was still an inch or two shy of Goat on a slouchy day. “I’m an invited guest,” he said stiffly.
Unlike some people,
his tone implied.
“You didn’t tell me this was going to be such a party,” Goat said, ignoring the jab. His blue eyes went deep indigo with anger, and he leaned far into her personal space, putting his face inches from hers and glaring. “Good thing I happened to be in the neighborhood.”
“It’s just casual,” Stella said. “Noelle and some of her friends. I didn’t have time to call a lot of folks.”
“And yet, there’s BJ,” Goat pointed out, stepping in between Stella and BJ as though the man didn’t even exist. “Funny how he knew exactly where the party was tonight.”
“It’s my
calling,
” Noelle’s shrill voice cut through the conversations all around. “Making people look hot is just what I do. It’s, like, a part of my
soul.
So when you do, do, do
this
—”
She gestured almost helplessly at Joy, taking in the canvas pants, the plaid overshirt.
“—and then your face!”
Joy frowned and paused with a Ritz cracker halfway to her lips. “If you find it so hard to look at my face when it ain’t got anything on it, well, maybe you aren’t as into me as you think you are.”
Noelle dabbed at her eyes. “Do you always have to be draggin’ out our personal little spats into public?” she stage-whispered, though no one but Stella appeared to be terribly interested. Someone had let Roxy in from the yard, and several of the guests were cooing over her. Roxy was submitting to their attentions amiably enough, but Stella knew the plump mutt was looking for a chance to snag the corner of a Fritos bag that sat perilously close to the edge of a TV tray.
Stella felt tugged in three different directions. Her hostess duties were overwhelming enough—corralling the dog, overseeing the snacks and drinks, all while keeping her hot evening look going. The face-off brewing between her suitors, which would probably be quite exciting if one of them wasn’t capable of tossing her in the clink if she pissed him off. And the romantic travails of her only child, which somehow had gotten condensed into one ill-advised and stormy new relationship.
Add to that the very real threat that photos of her were about to surface somewhere in the murky underlayer of society, photos in which she was reducing a gibbering, bound man to a pile of weeping, bleeding, remorseful man-flesh.
When those photos came to the surface—and Stella was very much convinced that, with their owner out of commission and on the run, or possibly even kidnapped or dead, whoever’s hands they fell into would find some advantage to making them public—Stella’s options were going to close in on her fast. Her worst problem would go from choosing between two hot-for-her hunks to choosing which bunk she’d be using in her jail cell.
It was all too much pressure, especially when Roxy made a well-timed leap for freedom, breaking free of her admirers and launching herself into the TV tray with such force that it toppled over, so that dog and tray landed in a tangle of snacks and collapsible aluminum tubing and scrambling paws. Noelle surveyed the wreckage with a horrified expression before bursting into the tears that had been threatening, and bolted down the hall, slamming her bedroom door behind her.
“Yo, Stella,” a familiar voice hailed from the living room. Stella whirled around to see Todd Groffe standing in a pair of frayed shorts that hung off his skinny butt, his mother’s gardening clogs, and a puffy down coat, shaking snow out of his hair.
“What, what,
what
?” she demanded. “And where the hell are your
clothes
? Did you happen to notice that we are having a winter
storm
?”
Todd shrugged. “I’m not cold. I was skatin’.”
Todd practiced his skateboard tricks all year long, flipping and careening up and down the street no matter what the weather, despite his mother’s constant threats to back her car over the board or light a match to it. Following through on her threats often fell far down on Sherilee’s to-do list, deprioritized by little things like going to work and cooking dinner.
“Your mom know you’re here?” Stella asked, softening her tone only slightly.
Todd shrugged, but his shoulders slumped a little more than usual, and his bored frown was a bit more forlorn. “Yeah. I told her you was gonna help me with my math.”
Stella looked at him closely; a little cloud of dejection seemed to have settled on his bony frame and angelic features, under his mop of badly cut hair. “That so.”
She took a deep breath and looked around the room. The music had gotten even louder, if such a thing was possible, some girl singer belting out how she wanted to give someone “a taste of the sugar below my waist,” and a couple of girls were playfully trying to drag Roxy back outside while her paws scrabbled for purchase and she clamped down on the chip bag in her jaws. Some of the other girls had climbed up on the sectional and were doing a sort of group bump and grind that was eye-poppingly suggestive, to Stella’s mind, and Goat and BJ were glaring and circling each other like a pair of starved coyotes fighting over one turkey drumstick.
“Guess you better tell me about it,” she said, grabbing a can of Fresca off the table and popping the top for him.
“Here?”
Todd looked around in distaste. “This is just as bad as at home when the twins get loose. I cain’t hear myself think. How about you and me cut out and go somewhere else?”
“Todd, this is a
party.
I can’t just up and—”
“I got money,” Todd said, jangling coins in the pocket of his shorts to illustrate. “I can buy us a slice. Long as you don’t order a drink.”
Stella took one last look around and figured the place wouldn’t fall down if she left it alone for half an hour.
“Okay, Slick. Through the garage. Let’s try for a clean getaway.”
* * *
The Hut hadn’t changed
much since Stella was in high school. The pizza was still marginal, the booths were still sticky, the amber-shaded light fixtures were still grimy with years of accumulated grease, and the lighting was uniformly unflattering to everyone.
“So what’s troubling you?” Stella asked after waiting for Todd to bolt down a quarter of a large pineapple, ham, and sausage pizza. She’d attempted a single piece, picking off all the pineapple, but it still tasted faintly fruity, which struck her as all wrong, so she contented herself with her beer.
Todd finished chewing and swallowed a hunk of pizza so huge that Stella figured she ought to be able to watch it go down, like those snakes that devoured entire rats at a time. Oh, to have a youthful digestive system again.
“Well,” he said, and then seemed to be at an uncharacteristic loss for words. He cast his gaze at the middle of the table, where the remains of the pie were cooling in a puddle of orange grease.
“Is it grades?”
“Huh?”
No, of course it wasn’t grades; Todd’s were unspectacular, but only his mother seemed to find that upsetting.
“Your sisters?”
Todd scowled. “They’re just the usual pain in the ass, I guess.”
Stella felt a little spiral of hurt unroll in her gut. She knew what she had to ask next, but she sure didn’t feel like going there. Todd’s father, an unemployed pipe fitter living somewhere up near the Iowa border, had missed calling on Todd’s birthday this year, and he hadn’t been around in months. What with spring break coming up, the kids were bound to be wondering if he’d make one of his rare appearances. The girls were too young to care much one way or the other about the man, but Todd remembered just enough to make the wound fresh every time.
Stella sighed heavily. As usual, the women were left to clean up the mess. “Honey,” she started gently, “Is it—?”
“It’s that Chanelle!” Todd burst out, suddenly raking his greasy fingers through the shock of hair that hung in his face in a gesture so redolent with angst and despair that Stella’s eyebrows shot up.
“Oh,” she said carefully.
Well. That was a whole other brand of trouble.
Girl
trouble.
Chanelle Tanaka was widely acknowledged to be the hottest girl in eighth grade, with perfectly straight silky hair and owlish eyeliner and a fetching little gap between her front teeth. Todd’s crush on her went back years, but so, unfortunately, did the spell she’d apparently cast on nearly every boy at school.
“They’re having this dance at school,” Todd said miserably.
“And you want to ask her.”
“What?
Hells
no, Stella, school dances are fuckin’ lame, nobody goes.”
“Uh … oh.”
“But a bunch of kids tell their parents they’re going and then instead they go over to the Arco, you know?”
Stella did know. It was a rare weekend night, any time of year, that you could drive by the Arco out on the east side of town without seeing a cluster of kids half hidden behind the car wash, the boys on skateboards, the girls in knots of two and three, hunched together like they were sharing state secrets.
“Todd,” Stella said disapprovingly. “Ain’t those the kids who’re smoking pot and drinking vodka out of water bottles and having sex in the bathrooms and all that?”
She watched his reaction carefully and didn’t miss the flicker of insecurity. Well, that never changed. The swagger that comes along with trying to hang out with the top dogs, it was a thin disguise for the staggering uncertainty underneath.
Stella knew that Todd was mostly a lone wolf among the eighth grade crowd. Part of it was that when the rest of the young hellions were out terrorizing the town, he frequently had to stay at home to help watch his sisters. Part of it was that his mother couldn’t keep up with the material demands of the hip crowd. Todd’s clothes came from the secondhand shop or, in flusher months, JCPenney. His haircuts were home jobs and his sneakers had to last an entire year before his mother could afford a new pair.