Dead to Her(6)

Keisha ignored him and ducked under the water again, childlike in her joy.

“She’s quite the live wire, isn’t she?” Iris said, but there was no hint of disapproval. If anything, she sounded surprisingly impressed. What would Eleanor make of her best friend embracing her replacement so quickly?

“She needs to learn to control her urges,” William grumbled.

“Oh, she’s just young,” Iris said. “So much energy. I can see why she caught your eye, William.”

Marcie could see why Keisha had caught William’s eye written all over Jason’s face. He’d pushed his glasses on top of his head and was looking down at the glittering water and the woman in it. Marcie slid her arm through his, the feel of his cotton shirt and the taut arm under it both familiar and exciting, but he didn’t respond. It was as if she wasn’t even there.

Keisha, squinting in the sun, one arm shading her eyes, was looking up at him. “You guys should come in! I dare you!” No one said a word, and Marcie, hot and queasy, thought how nice it would be to strip to her underwear and jump from the godawful boat, but she wasn’t a novelty like Keisha, the new pet, the unreal girl in their midst, and Virginia would have it all around the club that Marcie Maddox was basically naked on Judge Cartwright’s boat and trying to compete with William Radford’s gorgeous new wife.

“Never mind the alligators,” Keisha said. “I’m surrounded by chickens!”

William looked around the group, disgruntled and in no shape to strip and swim in the creek. “I’ve done my exercise for the day. One of you will have to entertain my wife.” His eyes fell on Jason, who, as if he needed no more encouragement, pulled his arm free from Marcie’s and started to unbutton his shirt.

“What are you doing?”

“What does it look like I’m doing? Someone has to go in.”

“This isn’t the office,” Marcie hissed. “You don’t have to do what William says.”

“Until he officially retires I do. It’s fine. Don’t make a deal of it.”

Marcie bit her lip. She wasn’t making a deal of it. She just didn’t see why it had to be him. “Maybe I should go in instead.”

“Don’t be stupid. You hate the creek. And I’m half-undressed now.” He was unzipping his pants, kicking them away and leaving just his black Calvin Klein shorts, a trail of dark coarse hair spreading from his flat stomach up across his broad tanned chest. How must he look to Keisha next to William? Desirable.

She caught Virginia’s sharp eyes registering her displeasure and she quickly turned her frown into the grimace of a smile as they joined the others.

“I’d go in myself,” she said, “but I’m not wearing any panties.” No one laughed, all watching Jason as he dived over the side, splashing Keisha and making her squeal. “I’m kidding.” Marcie picked up her glass from the table and leaned over the railing. “Of course I’m wearing underwear.” She was smarting. If Keisha had said it, they’d all have found it funny. What was so different?

She drank some more wine, large swallows, as they gathered, crows on a wire, observers of the sport below. Jason ducked beneath the surface, invisible for what seemed liked forever as Keisha twisted around looking for him, and then, finally, she shrieked as he pulled at her feet.

“You bastard!”

He popped back up, laughing and coughing as she splashed water into his face. It was like watching teenagers. What was William thinking of this display? Jason was at home in the water in a way that Marcie never could be. She liked to see what was around her. The creek could be murky and that word, alligator, was never far from her thoughts. Keisha and the potential alligator merged in her mind, a predator waiting to consume her husband. She drank more wine, her thoughts hardening. Keisha might learn the hard way that Marcie was hardly prey herself.

As it was, Keisha didn’t stay in the water much longer and was soon back on deck and wrapped in a robe Iris spirited up from a cabin below, yawning happily. Jason sat beside Keisha—don’t want to get creek water all over you, honey. “You should have come in,” she said to Marcie, all nice as pie. “Jason’s like a fish, isn’t he?”

Yes, slippery, she wanted to answer. “I prefer poolside to creek water. You never know what you’ll catch in there.”

“Or what will catch you,” Virginia murmured with a smile. She’d been drinking steadily since she’d arrived and was now on the tipsy end of sober, her hamster cheeks shining in the heat. Was that a snipe? Hard to tell. Virginia was Marcie’s friend because she and Emmett had known William forever, and so also, by default, Jason, but there were twenty years between the two women. Marcie could fake the church thing for the sake of appearances, showing up once a month or so and helping out at the soup kitchen, but she was never going to buy into God, whatever she put in the plate. Virginia, who could be so patronizing, but who’d never worked a day in her life.

No, maybe they weren’t friends. Maybe they just tolerated her for Jason’s sake. For all she knew they still spoke to Jacquie regularly. She looked at the beauty opposite her, fighting jet lag, but whose yawns were signaling the end of the afternoon. Keisha had a lot to learn about their set. Suddenly Marcie felt very alone. Out of place.

“Home time, I think,” she murmured.