The-Hummingbird-s-Cage(13)

When she finished with me, she turned to Jim. “I hear you’re still on the force. Congratulations—never thought you’d last.” She smiled over her shoulder at her burly friend. “Where are my manners? Allow me to make introductions. Jim, this is my hombre, Sam. And, Sam, this is the reason I got my Jim Is a Prick tattoo.”

Sam chuckled.

Bernadette leaned back against Sam and stroked his stubble lovingly. “He laughs because it’s true.” She turned to Jim. “Want to know where I put it?”

Now others at the bar were beginning to laugh, too. Jim’s face was turning white; I could feel him vibrate with rage.

With an effort he spat out between clenched teeth: “And how does Sam here like worn-out *?”

Sam shifted forward menacingly, but Bernadette raised a finger that stopped him in his tracks. She was appraising Jim now with the dead calm of a stone Madonna. When she smiled, it was beatific.

“Once he gets past the worn-out part,” she purred, “he likes it just fine.”

The bar burst into roars of laughter. Still smiling, Bernadette leaned back against Sam, who clasped her in a bear hug and spun her on her heels back to their bottle of tequila.

When Jim became aware of me at last, he wrenched my arm so hard I thought his fingers would tear muscle. Before he pulled me toward the exit, I threw a last glance at Bernadette, who caught it as she turned toward us from the bar.

The look on my face wiped the laughter from hers.





May 20





Around two thirty in the afternoon came the growling racket of a motorcycle muffler in the drive. Then a knock on the front door. I didn’t answer. I didn’t intend to, but the knock came again. Then again. And, finally, a voice:

“I know you’re in there.”

With a jolt, I recognized the voice: it was Bernadette’s.

She was the last person I expected on my doorstep, and a small part of me was intrigued. The rest of me, though, was shot through with panic. And curiosity alone couldn’t tamp that down, nor stir me from my blanket on the couch. I held myself as still as I could. I didn’t dare breathe.

Knock knock knock knock.

“I can keep this up all afternoon,” she called out, but it sounded more like determination than threat, so I called back, my voice croaking from disuse: “Jim’s not here.”

“I’m not here to see that bastard,” she said quietly. “I’m here to see you.”

My first instinct was to batten down the hatches. To look around for something heavy to defend myself. To make up some story to shoo her off my porch and back on her bike, heading west toward Wheeler. But both would have taken more strength than I had in me.

It took a while to push myself off the couch and shuffle to the door, clutching at my bathrobe. I slipped the chain from the lock and pulled the door wide. I let her look at me.

She didn’t speak for a long while. Then she muttered, “Holy shit.”

I couldn’t look her in the eye. I waited for her to have her fill, to assess me one more time, then leave me alone. Instead she said:

“Let’s have some tea, Joanna.”

She stepped inside and gently took my elbow as I shuffled painfully back to the couch. She eased me back onto the blanket. She pulled off her leather jacket and pushed up her shirtsleeves, heading to the kitchen. She put the kettle on to boil and rummaged in the cabinets for cups and tea bags and sugar. She fixed a tray with china cups in their matching saucers, napkins, some saltine crackers, a box of tissues and a bottle of ibuprofen. She was efficient, with an eye for detail. She sat opposite me in the overstuffed chair, and we sipped Earl Grey in a weirdly companionable silence. Then she smiled.

“You ever have a tea party with a biker chick before?”

I laughed despite myself, but I felt out of practice, and it came out more of a hiccup, which hurt my sore ribs. I hiccupped again, and then again. It became a sob. My hand flew to my mouth, where the bottom lip was split and stinging. Tears sprang to my puffy eyes, one still swelled nearly closed, spilling down my bruised cheeks. Swiftly, Bernadette was beside me on the couch, handing me tissues, letting me cry it out, in no particular hurry.

When I was done, she didn’t ask what had happened. Instead, she said, “Let me show you something.”

She cocked her head and pushed her long black hair to the side, holding it back so I could see the spot she was pointing to just above her left ear. I could clearly make out a gnarled white scar running five inches along her scalp.