Читать книгу The Pink House - Trish MacEnulty - Страница 21

Wednesday, June 28

Jen watched them wheel Lolly on the gurney into surgery. She had no idea how long it would take or when Lolly would be able to talk. Lolly was scheduled to stay in the hospital for at least one day after the surgery; the insurance companies didn’t let you lounge around for long. Jen stood in the hallway at a loss, the raw hospital smell like detergent in her sinuses. Any number of Lolly’s friends would have been happy to be here. They all doted on Lolly, but Lolly hadn’t wanted to tell people. One thing Lolly hated was pity. Maybe that’s why she asked Jen to bring her; Jen had never been capable of pitying her.

A couple of nurses bustled past Jen, and Jen looked around at the various doors leading to mysterious rooms of equipment and wondered where they kept the good drugs. Oh well, she did know where a good bar was located quite nearby. She could while away the afternoon there and come see how Lolly was doing later that evening.

Jen left the hospital and headed straight to the bar. She started drinking about three in the afternoon; rum and coke seemed like it would do the trick. The sugar alone would kill her. The bar was decorated in an island theme with a large patio area out back where bands sometimes played.

She had moved to Tallahassee when she was 26, already a senior citizen in the eyes of the college-going populace. In the past six years, she’d met her share of fellow imbibers.

A loud thunder crack overhead shook the place, but they all knew in fifteen minutes or so it would all be over.

Oh Lord, here came big tall Howard toward her table. He would surely offer to buy her drinks all night. She was a magnet for easy men. Lolly’s surgery would be done soon. She couldn’t allow herself to get sidetracked.

“Whatcha drinkin’, Lady?” Howard asked with a big smile.

----

It had been dark for a while when Jen sped along Tennessee Street in Lolly’s Civic. Howard had eventually gone home to his wife, and Jen had stopped at her place to change. Now she was out with the sultry night air licking her face. Amazing what power this little car had. She flew past the bars crowding against the strip, the stereo was screaming out “Radar Love” and she was screaming with it. She felt electric. She felt good for the first time in weeks. Sure, her sister was in a hospital somewhere with her breast lopped off, but Jen’s boobies were still there firmly planted and oh, the rum sang inside her. And she was ready to party. Where were her friends? Where was anyone? The sky above was a swirling gray and black. The young night was full of possibility and green lights. Go, she heard her blood whisper, fly.

The whoop of a police siren broke the spell. Jen slowed the car down. How fast had she been going anyway? The police car with its siren and steady beating blue light followed close behind her, admonishing her. Damn, she said, and I just got my license back. This struck her as terribly amusing. She pulled into the parking lot of a wooden building designed to look like a saloon where college students regularly obliterated their busy brain cells. Now, she was busted. At least she looked great if she was going to the hooskow. She was wearing her red dress that hugged her body and a pair of black, strappy sandals. Boy, it would really look bad if any of her former students were around. She laughed again at the thought of it and turned her car off.

The police officer shined a light into her car.

“Ma’am, have you been drinking?” he asked. There were two police cars.

“Yep,” she answered with a smile and handed over her license.

“Get out of the car please,” he said. She opened the door and stood up. My, my. A low whistle came from the other car, but they merely watched.

“Jennifer Johanssen, is it? Do you know how fast you were going?”

“No, I’m sorry. I wasn’t paying attention.”

“You were going about 90 miles an hour.”

“Wow. Ninety on Highway 90,” Jen said. “Sorry. That’s way too fast.” Way to go, friggin’, Einstein, she thought. Mmmm, stupid, stupid, stupid.

“I’m going to need you to take a sobriety test,” he said. “Please walk along this line here, placing one foot in front of the other.” He indicated a yellow line in the parking lot.

The thing about Jen’s drinking was that there was a little window in the intoxication process when she could perform all things flawlessly. She’d once won a pool tournament in the very bar next to the parking lot after having imbibed a considerable amount of tequila. Generally, after drinking a bit, her vocabulary suddenly improved. Big words—obsequious, quotidian, voluptuous, chastisement, loquacious, puerile—peppered her sentences and entranced more than one hungry man to follow her home. At these times things were sharper, clearer and easier. And then she usually went home, passed out, unable to remember the adventures of the night before. But she was nowhere near the passing out stage. She was in perfect form and easily moved over the line like a circus tight-rope walker.

“Okay,” the officer said. “Now stand on one leg.”

Jen did as she was told. Didn’t they have a Breathalyzer with them, she wondered, but somehow she knew she’d pass that, too. Speeding, reckless driving, they could charge her with those, but she was going to beat the drunk driving. She felt exultant. She felt charming. She tilted her head at the police officer. Did he want her to recite the alphabet. Backwards? Z-Y-X-W-V-U-T . . .

He shook his head and told her to get in his car. She slid into the front seat and he got in the other seat. He glanced over at her and she smiled. His glance lingered. Gotcha, she thought.

“So do you like being in law enforcement?” she asked.

“Well, I do meet some interesting people,” he said.

His radio crackled. “We’ve got a break-in in progress on ….” The other police car pulled up alongside his and the officers spoke to each other through their open windows.

“We’ve got to get over there, Zack,” the woman officer in the passenger side of the other car said.

He turned and looked at Jen again.

“What are we waiting for, Zack?” Jen asked. “Let’s go bust someone.”

Zack rolled his eyes heavenward, chuckled, put down the ticket he was in the process of writing and sped out of the parking lot. Jen was thrilled. She hoped it would be full of drama, a hostage situation, and she would be called upon to negotiate with the desperate gunman. But the excitement turned out not to be much. A homeless man looking for a place to bed down for the night had set off the alarm of a barber shop. The cops ran him off. The other two gave Zack a knowing grimace and drove away.

“You hungry?” he asked.

“Starving,” Jen said.

“Let’s get something to eat.”

**

After a few cups of coffee and a couple of waffles at the Waffle House, Zack drove to the two-story brick apartment building on Franklin where Jen lived. She liked being in the front seat of the cop car. It was like auditioning for a role on “Law & Order.” Now that would be a good gig. He pulled onto the hard-packed driveway and into the lot behind the building.

“I’m going to walk you upstairs,” he said.

“Good idea,” Jen said. “Who knows how much trouble I might get into.”

He followed her up the stairs to her apartment. The hallway illuminated him. He was attractive, but she’d already seen that at the restaurant. She wasn’t sober yet, but she wasn’t sloppy drunk.

“Want to come in?” she asked, slipping the key inside the lock and turning.

She shoved the door open and turned toward him expectantly. He grinned but shook his head.

“I’ll take a rain check,” he said. She shrugged and walked inside.

“See ya later, copper,” she said flirtatiously and shut the door. Oh, what a night. She’d almost gotten busted bigtime and instead had spent the late hours of the night hearing about Zack’s exploits. It was funny. She was spending her Saturdays with convicts and her Wednesday nights with cops. And she found both of them fascinating.

Teetering in her heels, she fed her cat, Manny, who was meowing cantankerously. Manny was an assertive beast, and she did her best to appease him.

Then she pulled the red dress off and crawled into bed. Shutting her eyes she suddenly remembered Lolly. She sat bolt upright. She didn’t even know how the operation went. She was supposed to have gone back to check on her. But not only had she not gone back to check on her sister, she had gone and left Lolly’s car in the parking lot of a student bar on Tennessee Street. Then another thought occurred to her: What if Lolly had died? Jen felt a ball of lead in her gut as she slowly sank back into the bed.