Real Bad Things(57)
“Jane. With a J.” She looked at his hand and lifted hers in greeting instead. “Murdered my stepdad.”
He slowly removed his hand and placed it in his pocket. “I should probably be going.”
“No,” Diane whined. “Don’t you let her scare you away. You said you was gonna take me out tonight.” She tugged his belt loops again. “Take me out.”
Jane cringed at the way Diane draped herself onto him, drunk and horny. But Gerry gently moved her away.
He adjusted his glasses so they weren’t so low on his nose. He wasn’t bad looking. Seemed to be nice. What the hell was he doing with Diane? Especially if what Georgia Lee said was true.
“Heard you found the body.” Jane was intent on making Diane suffer. “That true?”
Diane loosened her grip on Gerry, launched daggers at Jane with her eyes, and wandered to her pack of cigarettes.
“I know how this may look,” he said.
Jane raised her eyebrows. “No worse than my mom letting me stay with her after I confessed to killing her husband.”
He wasn’t sure what to say. He looked back and forth between her and Diane.
Jane walked to the cupboard where Diane kept her liquor and drank from the first bottle she could find. The liquid slipped and leaked down her chin. She wiped it with the neck of her shirt.
“Y’all headed to Crawdaddies?” she asked. The booze hit her hard, especially after day drinking and then sweating and then getting riled up during her long walk from Family Fun. “I always wondered what it was like, seeing as it’s basically my mom’s second home.” Primary, more like it.
“You never been?” Gerry asked, trying to redirect the conversation away from the fact that he was dating the widow of the dead man he’d pulled from the river.
“Nope,” she said.
“Ah, I bet you’d like it. Real nice bunch. Why don’t you join us?”
Diane looked like she could put a knife through his throat.
“Well shit, Gerry. That’s about the best idea I heard all day. I’d love to.” Jane let her voice get high, so high it screeched. “Might be my last chance for a hurrah before they ship me to the big house.” The room felt hot, her teeth throbbed. “That is if you don’t mind, Mom.” She emphasized the word, drawing it out nice, long, and sharp.
Diane glared at her, so quick that by the time Gerry looked to her for the A-OK, she’d already clutched her head, her cigarette so close to her scalp Jane prayed she’d catch fire and burn the whole place down.
“I got a headache,” Diane said to Gerry. “Some other time.”
Berated, Gerry backtracked. “Oh, I was . . . we could just—”
“Not tonight.” Diane headed toward the hallway and her bedroom at the end. Before she disappeared behind the wall, she gave a stone-cold look to Jane.
Jane turned to Gerry. “Welp. Guess it’s just the two of us. You driving?”
The inside of Crawdaddies looked like everything and nothing. For years, while Jane and Jason did homework, watched TV, and then slept (or tried to) in this home or that, Diane had made her home within these ripped-posters-of-random-people-Jane-had-never-even-heard-of walls. Lights flickered randomly. In the corner of the room, a group of middle-age men flipped their hair like girls did in the ’80s to refeather it and then tuned their instruments. If any of her former coworkers in Boston had seen this, they would have called it authentic as fuck. Authentic meaning sticky, smelly, and full of patrons who looked as pickled as the eggs in the jar that a woman on a barstool dipped her bare hand into for at least a minute before finding the perfect specimen to pop into her mouth whole.
Vomit spiked Jane’s throat. A hand touched her arm. She jumped. Gerry’s eyes grew big, concerned.
“Sorry,” she said. “You got any Rolaids? TUMS?”
“Uh,” he patted his pockets. “I’m sure someone will have some. There’s a table over there. Why don’t you go sit, and I’ll see what I can scrounge.”
He pointed. Smiled. What was he doing with Diane? Had to be a serial killer. No other explanation.
He bought the first round, and they talked that special nontalk that all bar patrons knew and engaged in: Oh, I love this song. How’s your beer? Good, how’s yours? Good. The burgers are good. The fries are good. Buffalo wings are better across town. Check out ole fancy pants over there cutting a rug. Occasionally, Gerry would brighten and wave at someone familiar to him. He introduced her to a few folks on their way to or from the restroom. Never her tabloid nickname, always “This is my friend Jane.”
That made her cry. The alcohol didn’t help. Or the knowledge that Diane had learned what Jason had done and instead of being proud of Jane for protecting Jason, she’d pretended not to know. She’d called her names, screamed, told her she was going to rot in hell. Damn near pushed her toward the electric chair. Would probably ask for a front-row seat if she got the chance.
Why? That’s what she didn’t get. Even if Diane did hate her, did she hate her enough to want her to die?
At the sight of her tears, Gerry sucked in some air, patted her hand, pushed a fresh drink toward her, and asked if she wanted to talk about it. That only made her cry harder.
“Why are you being so nice?” She yelled the words through her tears. Everyone was drunk. The band was loud. And at least three other women were crying at their tables. The bar felt like a protective womb. No wonder Diane spent so much time here. “Are you gonna murder me, Gerry with a G?”