Boogie House: A Rolson McKane Mystery (34 page)

*  *  *

When she noticed me watching her, she said, “You want one?”

I shook my head. I was locking up the house. “Haven’t had the desire the past few days.”

She seemed to question it but only took a long drag on her cigarette in response.

She wore a modest skirt, red chemise, and her hair was pulled half-up and half-down, the way I liked it. She was finally healing, and the weight she’d put back on looked good on her. Before, she had been hauntingly thin, and it was like looking into a coffin, but now the future was brightening somewhat.

She finished the cigarette and returned to her former place on the couch, feet tucked underneath her, one elbow on her knee, the other on the couch's headrest. The air around her was pungent with smoke and yet was sweet with her natural scent and fruity body wash.

“You should probably stay with your folks for a few days,” I said. “Until I’ve got everything sorted out.”

“Where are you going to go?”

I shrugged.

“Rolson, you can’t just disappear. What’re you going to do, sleep in the Boogie House?”

It wasn’t an easy question to answer, mostly because I didn’t have one. I’d thought about where I might hide out, and I’d find somewhere, but the exact location was a mere question mark.

I had packed up a suitcase for her, tossed some clothes and toiletries into a duffel bag for myself. I felt the clock tightening on me, but for some reason I couldn’t tear myself away. Here I was, locking the doors and tightening up a place that might be worth burning down more than breaking into.

I was sitting on the couch, trying to think of some final words to say before we departed, when she did something shocking. The hand on her knee reached across and clasped my own. She slid her fingers between my thumb and forefinger, and I tightened my grip. A high-speed sledgehammer thrummed against my chest.

In a time in my life when nothing was clear or easy, when every day presented itself as an even more torturous digression from the previous one, somehow the warm, soft feel of her skin on mine made sense. Even as an addict, she had soft skin.

I allowed myself to give in to momentary weakness, recognizing nothing was under my control. The jurisdiction I had over my own life had grown smaller each day, and lingering just outside the circle were the old feelings I harbored against her.

She slid closer to me, shifting her weight so she could drape her legs over my knees, and I felt the swell of her breasts against me as her head drooped and then rested on my shoulder. I let go of her hand and placed one arm behind her, pulling her closer.

I leaned in and nestled my lips between her jaw and shoulder. Her hair covered her face, and I placed a gentle, timid kiss on the spot above her collarbone. She tensed, her neck and shoulder going rigid, but eventually she loosened so that I might kiss her again.

She was quivering, too, but what I had taken to be sexual excitement turned out to be quiet sobs working their way through her. She lost her breath and sucked in a harsh, tortured breath.

“I thought this is what you wanted,” I said, still unsure of how to proceed. I was confused, paranoid. I wanted her but didn’t know if it was something I’d regret later or not.

She didn’t answer, so I whispered to her, “Isn’t this what is supposed to happen now?”

She shrugged, but there was little uncertainty in the gesture. I sensed her pulling away from me, pulling away from this. Even if I didn’t know how much regret I felt, she was becoming more certain of hers.

She stopped crying but pulled her fingers loose from mine. I wanted to hold on, at least until I figured out what
should
happen next, whether I should make
the speech
now or not, but everything was moving too fast for me, now, so I just let it happen.

“Are you thinking about someone else?” I said, sort of blurting it out before my mind could deal with the jealousy.

Again, her shoulders raised in that most indifferent of gestures. She wouldn’t meet my eyes. Her head was tilted so that her hair hid her face. She was staring down in the direction of the source of my confused embarrassment.

"Choice is all we really have in this world,” I said. “The guy you were with, he set in motion his own trap, and there's nothing you could have done to stop it - just sort of holding him down - and you weren't in the shape to do that."

She started to shiver again, and though she ignored me, I kept going. "Plus, that isn't any way to live life, forcing people to do what's right for them. If they can't see that their shortcomings might be causing some pain, then you can't make 'em see it.”

There was a cold, still silence in the room. I reached out and brushed her hair aside, but she caught the motion and pushed my hand away. She then used the middle to fingers of her right hand to tuck her hair behind her ear.

Since there was nothing left but embarrassing things to say, I guess I thought it was time to say them. “There's days - and this might be something you don't want to hear - but there's days I wished I'd held you down so you couldn't run off and leave me. It would have been better for you to stay and work through your problems. I’d have helped you. But I could no more force you to do that than to make you keep on loving me. I let you go, and that was stupid, but hell, choice is what gives life meaning."

Speaking into my shirt, she said, "I don't even know that this is even about
him
."

I asked the obvious question.

She shook her head, pulling away just long enough to catch my gaze before returning her face to my shoulder, where the wetness of her tears soak through my shirt.

"Do you feel like you want to get high?" I asked, once she had mostly stopped crying. She began to shake her head no, to deny herself an honest answer. Thankfully, she stopped herself, nodding balefully.

The process of crying started all over again, but she caught herself before her feelings became uncontrollable. I said, "This isn't easy for me, either. My stomach has been prickly over the subject since you got here." I nearly said
home
but was grateful I didn't.

"It comes and goes," she replied. "Honestly, I've been keeping too busy these last few days to think about it." She paused, measuring my reaction. "But I can't lie: you've got me thinking about it right now."

"Have you thought about treatment?" Even as my mouth formed the words, I wished I could have grasped them with both hands and shoved them back in.

But there they were, hanging out there, just as I'd intended them, even if they were hastily thrown together.

"I may be plenty fucked-up,” she said. “That shit dug its heels in against me and led me so far off-track that I may never find my way back. But how fucking dare you tell me I'm the one with a problem."

"Listen, Vanessa."

"DUIs. Missed court dates. I may be running from something, but I know what the hell I'm running from. You don't even know that you're running right beside me, lost as you ever were."

"I'm not judging you."

"That's why we made such a good team. We were both lost, stomping around in woods so confusing we could never find the right path. But at least it made sense to us."

"I haven't had a drink in days."

"Now doesn't
that
sound like denial? Don't pretend like you have something you can hold over my head, Rol. This isn't about us. That what you were going to say? This isn't about us, this is about getting better, blah, blah, blah. How many times do you think I've heard this shit from my dad?"

"You came to me. I thought you trusted me."

"I came to you because I thought you would
understand
. I know I'm an emotional money pit, but I've come to terms with that."

I'd had enough. "Then how can you hold me hostage? You walked right into my house, cleaned yourself up, at least temporarily, and you settle into domestic life just like you had only just returned from a business trip. Then
this
happens, and you tell me you've come to terms with who you are? I don't buy that."

She glared.

I said, "I don't. I don't believe you. You're still looking for something, and people might not know what they're getting into with you, but they continue to because they see something still there. I still see something there, Vanessa."

With that, I reached out for her, but she flinched away like I had threatened to hit her.

She stood up, her fists balled, and went to yank open the door.

It was then I saw the flashing lights.

The cops had shown up, but at least they had given me time to destroy my tentative relationship with my ex-wife before doing so.

“Come on out, McKane,” said a familiar voice. It sounded like Ricky Walton, but the bullhorn distorted it so that I couldn’t tell.

I knelt down and scooted around to one side of the couch. “Close the door,” I whispered to Vanessa, who had frozen in the doorway.

There were multiple cruisers out there. Even though I hadn’t really paid attention to them pulling up, I knew they were out there. This had to be a big deal. If I was going to be tossed away and discredited, this had to be a big fucking deal.

Vanessa remained in the doorway, her back to me, despite my pleas for her to come back inside. It was a tense situation, and I didn’t want her to provoke them, to do something that would cause them to hurt her, but she didn’t seem to see it that way.

“Vanessa,” said the amplified voice outside, “Come on out now. Step aside and let us in. We’ve got a right to be here, and you’d best to get away from Rolson before he hurts you too.”

“Van, don’t listen to them,” I said desperately. “Just step back in and let’s think of the next move.”

When she finally did turn to face me, her eyes were filled with tears, but there was a smile on her face. She’d already made her decision.

She swung the door open wide and started yelling. “He’s in here! He’s got a duffel bag full of clothes and a pistol. He was planning on running from y’all. That’s what he told me!”

I didn’t stick around to see her run out into the front yard as though I had been holding her hostage. I couldn’t stand the indignity. Instead, I bolted through a ragged kitchen window and fled into the high grass behind my house.

It wasn’t the best solution, but I got a good ways away before I heard the sound of a half-dozen pair of feet in my house.

The ground was mushy from all the springtime rain, so I had to wade out a bit farther before I found solid ground again. Thankfully, I’d holstered up my pistol earlier that night, so I had it with me. I pulled it and cocked it and waited there in the darkness. I didn’t want to make any noise while I knew they were actively looking for me.

Flashlight beams skirted around the grass, but none hit me directly. Some of the fellas on the force pretended to see me and call for me to come out, but I stayed put and sooner or later they gave up.

They tried to comb the area, but they must have thought I had darted on farther down the field than I had, because they overshot my position by a half-mile or so. I watched their flashlights in the distance and slowly made my way back to the house.

One of them had stayed behind, but he fell asleep in the cruiser an hour later, so I was free. I snuck in through the window and grabbed a bottle of Beam and some beers, along with my duffel bag, before disappearing into the woods across the way.
 

Cure-all or not, tonight I could not be sober.

*  *  *

It only took two beers and a shot of Jim Beam to draw the devils out of their hiding places. I was in the woods, a good distance from my place but not within earshot of the Boogie House. It scared me to know what I might do - or what I might see - were I to go there.

Sitting with my back propped against an old tree, I waited to be found as I downed what remained of the booze. My ears burned, and I thought I heard the jangle of a distant guitar riff. Feeling the alcohol course its way through me, I began to realize that the existence of the visions was not contingent upon intoxication, but the level of intensity was.

So dumb, I thought. Should have figured that out the first day.

The devils came closer, slipping out of the shadows, driven into the light by my irresponsibility. Monsters splashed around in the pit of my stomach, and yet I kept drinking, sweating through my clothes. The edges of reality became melty, like plastic in a bonfire. The air around me thrummed with an electric energy, and anyone who's ever gotten drunk sitting down knows standing up is quite an event.

To hell with Laveau’s sickness, I thought. To hell with the cure-all. To hell with Vanessa. Goddamnit, to hell with Uncle K and Janita and Emmitt Laveau, too.

And to hell with me.

Being angry didn’t stave of the sourness in my stomach. At some point, I lurched two rows over and puked up a great deal of what I’d drunk. That didn't deter me. I drank until my eyes were physically incapable of staying open, and then I slipped headlong into a dead slumber, the sky spinning recklessly around me.