Installment #16
Chapters 27 & 28
27
Diane’s house was a small, well-kept A-frame house near the west end of a quiet street. The late afternoon sun hovered just beyond the house, casting shadows over the garden and trellis in Diane’s yard.
Walt climbed the porch to the screen door. The door behind it was open. Instead of knocking, Walt peered in. Before he realized it, Walt glimpsed Diane pulling on a white blouse. She was half-turned away from him, and Walt saw her bare breast in profile.
He looked away. He’d seen her tits many times, he thought. Well, Amber’s tits anyway. But that was at the club, while she was working. This felt different. Felt wrong.
Walt knocked on the screen door. Diane came to let him in, even holding the door for him.
“Always were punctual,” Diane said.
“I try,” Walt said, stepping into the house.
“Don’t know why I just took a shower,” she said. “With this heat I’m already sweating again.”
“It’s a warm afternoon.”
“That’s what I’m saying, Walt,” Diane said. “Iced tea?”
“Sounds good.”
While Diane disappeared into the kitchen, Walt wandered around the living room. He caught himself hunching over. He was mindful of his elbows in the coziness of the room. He found it to be cluttered with too much rustic brick-a-brack and craftwork. Also, there were photographs everywhere. Of Geri alone. Of Diane and Geri arm-in-arm. At a party. At a beach. In front of a statue Walt didn’t recognize. Walt counted five painted portraits of Geri.
A Navajo blanket was draped over the back of the couch. Walt recognized the blanket as Geri’s. Its pattern was a repeating series of interlocked triangles, red, black and yellow and grouped in threes. Diane returned with their iced teas.
Walt took his glass with both hands and sat in a chair opposite Diane. She sat on the couch, leaning forward, elbows on her tan knees. Walt’s chair was small, uncomfortable.
“Nice paintings,” Walt said.
“You surprised a stripper can paint, Walt?”
“I”d say lately that’s about the least surprising thing I’ve heard.”
Walt sipped his tea.
“Nice blanket,” he said.
Diane leaned back against the Navajo blanket.
“Thanks. Joni…Geri gave it to me. Her daddy gave it to her for Christmas years ago.”
“Is that right?” Walt said. “That’s funny. Her daddy’s dead. She told me.”
Diane shook her head but couldn’t contain her smile.
“Walt, Walt, Walt. I met the man. Three months ago in Denver. I’m sorry but…I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” Walt said. “I gave her that blanket. Bought it in San Antonio. Romantic getaway.”
Diane lifted herself off the blanket, gathered it up and tossed it at Walt, causing him to spill a little of his iced tea.
“You want it back?” Diane said. “Take it.”
“I didn’t come here for the blanket.”
“Which raises the question—Why hell did you come here? How did you find us? Find me.”
Walt put his tea down on a coaster on the coffee table and wadded up the blanket.
“Would you believe I bumped into Roxy at the grocery store?”
“Her real name’s not Roxy. You know that right? Get this, her real name? Irma.”
“Roxy suits her better, no doubt.,” Walt said. “This was two nights ago when I ran into her. I was standing in the dairy section when I saw this tall, plastic-looking blonde woman. Lots of makeup, bleached hair piled high. We got to talking. She mentioned shipping some of Geri’s stuff up here a while back. Said she wasn’t supposed to say a word about it if she saw me.”
“That bitch never could keep her hole shut, Diane said. “Always running at the mouth in the dressing room. Made me actually want to get out on stage just to get away from that mouth of hers.”
“Well, she knew where Geri was. She didn’t mention you.”
“So who cares?”
“I’m just saying.”
“Just saying? You’re one hell of a debater, you know that?” Diane said. “Give me the damn blanket.”
Diane stood up, taking the blanket from Walt.
“Let’s get down to it, Walt,” Diane said, as she refolded the blanket. “Here’s what you want to know: Since about two months before she left you, that’s how long she and I were sneaking around behind your back. Happy?”
Walt said nothing, sipped his ice tea. Diane went on.
“I’m sorry, Walt, but come on. How long could it have lasted between you two? How long did you think she would find it romantic, seeing you every night at the club, hunched over your whiskey at the bar? Watching her grind on the lap of some fat salesman or some oily roughneck? Just how long could that have lasted?”
“Why are you so mad at me?” Walt said. “You’re the one she ran off with. She died loving you. If anybody’s got a right to be mad….”
Diane sat down and smoothed the blanket on her lap.
“For what it’s worth, Walt, we left because Geri didn’t want to hurt you.”
“Well, you’ll understand if I don’t applaud the gesture.”
“Oh, come on. Do you think you would have been able to stand it, seeing us together? Letting go is not what you do best, obviously. Tell me, after we left Tulsa, how long did you keep going back to the club? How many weeks of booze and fake titties and smelly damp carpet before you could face an evening alone? We had to leave town.”
“I just wish she hadn’t left me hanging. Was it your idea, the ‘we need a little time apart’ angle?”
“I never figured you would keep on this long.”
“You probably didn’t at that,” Walt said. “I keep hearing she was dealing drugs around here.”
“That’s horseshit,” Diane said. “Small town gossip.”
“Really? So you don’t know anything about it?”
Walt held her gaze until Diane looked away.
“All right, I’m not saying what she was or wasn’t doing. But if she was, and I knew about it, I could still go to jail maybe.”
“I’m not telling anybody,” Walt said.
“She wasn’t a dealer-dealer. Thank god for that. I lived with a dealer once. What a nightmare. Phone calls day and night, whacked-out customers dropping by at all hours. It’s worse than a fucking job. But Geri just manufactured it. She moved weight to others for distribution to customers.”
“Nicely put” “Walt said. “And you were okay with that?”
“I looked the other way. Geri stumbled into it, anyway. Wasn’t like it was her dream job. Vern introduced her to some biker dudes he knows. Some guys always come to buy old motorcycle parts off of him at his junkyard. Geri saw an opportunity to make some money.”
“I’ve heard that from her before,” Walt said. “How did she get hooked up with a guy like Vern anyway? It’s pretty obvious you didn’t introduce them.”
“That’s a whole other story. Basically, Vern saw her one day and kept on bothering her.”
“Vern seems to think they were in love. Or headed that way when she died.”
“He’s an idiot. Geri let on like she was into him but that was just business. You know how guys are, don’t you Walt? Believe what they want to believe about a girl like Geri.”
“Just guys, huh?”
Diane threw the blanket at Walt again. “Here. Take it.”
“That’s nice of you Diane, really.”
“If you gave it to her, I don’t want it in my house.”
Walt smiled, saying, “Well then. I guess it’s not so nice of you, after all.”
Diane rolled her eyes as Walt turned to let himself out. He climbed into his truck, Diane watching him through the screen door. She planned to watch him until he was gone.
But her phone rang.
28
“Hello?” Diane said into the phone. When she heard the voice on the other end, her voice went up:
“Hi! How are—what? Yeah, he just left. The jackass, he—huh? Okay. I’ll just need to unload a few bags of mulch from the truck and then—what? Why would I do that? Excuse me? Just do it? That’s how you talk to me? Just do it? You just do it then, you damn…what? But I don’t…okay…okay. Okay, I said. Fine. Yes. Okay. Bye.”
Diane hung up the phone. She checked out the window, making sure Walt was long gone.
“Just do it,” she said, mumbling to herself. “Kidding me? How about you just kiss my….”
She cut through her living room to the kitchen and out into the attached garage. She flipped on the light as she took the two steps in a single leap down into her two-car garage.
Her truck was parked in the nearer bay. There was a car under a canvass cover in the other. Diane rolled back the canvas cover, revealing a yellow Buick Regal underneath.
She slid in behind the wheel. The keys were in the ignition. The engine responded with only a soft click when she turned the key.
Swearing, Diane tugged the lever to release the hood, then got out of the car. She pulled a set of jumper cables from the bed of her truck. She got in her truck and started it, gunning it a few times.
She climbed out and popped the hood of her truck so she could connect the gator mouth clamps of the cables to the battery posts, red biting on positive, black biting on negative. Then went around to the Buick and connected the other end of the jumper cables, red clamped to the dead battery’s red post, black to the metal frame of the Buick to ground the connection. She slid behind the steering wheel of the Buick again and waited. After a few minutes, she tried the Buick again. The engine groaned stubbornly before finally turning over. She stomped on the accelerator a few times, then let it run to continue charging.
Diane fought a yawn. The two vehicles sat running side by side in the garage, one battery sucking the life from the other.
Diane rubbed her eyes. She blinked, glancing in the rearview mirror and seeing the garage doors behind her were still closed. Exhaust fumes accumulated around her. She took a deep breath, gunning the Buick.
I am not afraid, she thought. Not afraid.
She could easily just sit here. What had it all been for, anyway? Life, dreams, decisions, reactions to the world and the world’s reaction to her? What would everybody make of the final note?
Shit, a note. Can’t do it without a note. What’s the point if there’s no note?
Diane reached up and hit the remote to open the garage door. Blue exhaust billowed out of the garage as she stepped into the fresh hot air, laughing because she was not afraid.