Dead to Her(11)

“You sure you’ll be okay?”

Keisha smiled. “I’m a grown-up. I’ll be fine. Why don’t I meet you somewhere for lunch when you’re done?”

“That’s a great idea.”

“Hey, why don’t you ask Jason and Marcie to join us?” The question was light, as if a momentary afterthought. “I should get to know them better.”

He held her tight and she didn’t flinch from the cooling sweat in the gray hairs of his barrel chest as they rubbed on her skin. Life insurance. Will. She luxuriated in those words instead, using them to build a hard shell around herself.

“Good idea.” He kissed the top of her head. “I’ll speak to Jason and let you know where to meet us.”

“It’s a plan. Now shower. Go!” She pushed him playfully away. It was a plan. Four months of Billy had left her aching for something else, something for her heart, and there was no crime in looking. She waited impatiently for William to dress and leave. A few hours to herself would be blissful. She’d take a Valium, keep the demons in her head quiet, play loud music, and have an hour-long bath to relax.

First though, once he was finally gone, she found herself back in Eleanor’s room, carefully picking through the dead woman’s jewelry boxes. She wasn’t going to take anything, but she wanted to see if the pieces Billy had thus far given her—expensive as they were—were not just trinkets in comparison. How was her worth measuring up?

“Are you looking for something, ma’am?”

Keisha nearly dropped the string of pearls she was examining. “Jesus shit, Zelda, you made me jump!”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I didn’t know that Mr. Radford was happy for people to come in here yet. I must have been wrong.”

Keisha looked at the diminutive black woman in the doorway. There had been definite disapproval in her tone. A slight distaste in her expression. Keisha’s hackles rose. There were too many people controlling her life. There always had been. She wouldn’t take it from a housekeeper. Who was she to judge?

“Billy won’t mind,” Keisha said, breezing out of the room. “He’s—we’re—only waiting for Iris to get back from vacation, then this will all be sorted and cleared out.” She paused and looked down at the housekeeper. Why was she even explaining herself? “And anyway, it’s my house now, I can go where I want.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Zelda said.

“I’d like some tea—English style—and bring it to my bathroom.”

She didn’t even want any tea. But she did want to be respected. No one had respected her at home. That wasn’t going to happen here. Zelda was going to have to change her tune, or Billy would be looking for new staff.

She ran the hot water, swallowed a Valium, and tried to shake off her irritation, even managing a thank-you when the drink arrived. Lunch, she thought, as she slid naked into the vast bath, submerging herself in the bubbles. Relax and think about lunch.





8.

In Southside, it always felt ten degrees hotter to Marcie and her hands were slick with sweat in her plastic gloves, but there was no way she was going to take them off. The community center that served as the Mission’s soup kitchen stank of stale summer sweat and the thick meaty stench of the paper mills, as if any breeze that passed over the city dragged it here where it could settle away from the polite squares and strollers in Forsyth Park. There were worse smells too, ones that emanated from the warm bodies, and there was no way she was going to touch any of the shuffling line of homeless degenerates lining up for stew and dumplings and a beaker of cherry Kool-Aid.

Unlike the other volunteers, who chatted together, Marcie kept herself to herself. They were all fully paid-up Baptists and she didn’t want to get absorbed into the inner congregation by accident. Another set. Savannah was full of sets.

Out among the tables Virginia was in her element, touching shoulders, relishing the gratitude. It was different for Virginia. She’d never been poor. For all the time she spent here, these people weren’t real. She didn’t see them as whole, good, bad, ugly, or somewhere in between. They were simply unfortunate, as if none had ever been part of his or her own downfall. Marcie didn’t like being around the homeless, but at least she didn’t diminish them.

She glanced down the line to where an old man, Harold, was slowly moving forward. His face was a portrait of etched unpleasantness and although she never acknowledged it, she was aware that his free hand went down to the crotch of his pants whenever he looked at her, a move designed to make her feel uncomfortable, a way to take a little power back.

She slopped the stew over the side of the bowl, spilling some on him.

“Oops, silly me.”

“Dumb bitch,” he muttered.

It’s not me who’s going to die on a street corner one day, stinking of my own piss, though, is it? she wanted to hiss back. Instead, she handed him a biscuit, as they glared at each other.

“Over here, Harold,” Virginia called. “Lawrence saved a seat for you.”

Lawrence and Harold. The most ridiculous names for two old drunks, if those were their names at all. It’s not like anyone here checked ID’s. Crude and foul though, both of them. The worst of the clients, as Virginia insisted the tramps be called.

Jason couldn’t understand why she always went back. Whenever she’d come home from helping she would bitch about Harold this or Lawrence that. How could she explain it to him? She wasn’t here just to cozy up to Virginia or fill a few hours with something after the embarrassing failure of her boutique; it ran deeper than that. She liked to remind herself of how life could turn on a dime. One bad deal at work, one divorce, a couple too many drinks, and then you’re sleeping in a square all day with everything you love in a brown paper bag. Life changed. And it could change fast. It never hurt to remember that.