Back to Wando Passo, David Payne [little red riding hood ebook .TXT] 📗

from the scorers’ table, had to give the old man 10 for this.

“We were exclusive, though.” Deanna’s grin revealed that there were hot springs percolating in the permafrost and also told the world she could be sly, but Claire already knew.

Ransom laughed. “I like this girl…excuse me, woman! It’s woman, isn’t it? Sometimes I forget what decade I’m in—all that sex, you know, Deanna, all those drugs and rock and roll.”

And stern Deanna, in her severe black specs and vampire gabardines, actually laughed, and laughed quite volubly, at what seemed to Claire a tired and somewhat marginal attempt.

She watched this with the Tiresian eyes of one who, both as wife and onetime girlfriend, had seen it all before, seen the chilly, hip Deannas melt like ice cubes on the stove as the blaze came up in Ransom’s eyes, the sexual one, the power thing, little different now than it had been at twenty-five. Claire wondered if she’d been a bit of a Deannatype herself way back once upon a time, and if so, when she’d stopped liking it…or was it only when it wasn’t turned on her?

“There’s something inside.” When Ransom shook the vial, it made a liquid whoosh and an illiquid tink. He took the stopper out. “Here, Dee, take a whiff and tell us what you think.”

“I’m sure Deanna doesn’t want to smell that, Ran.”

“I don’t mind, Claire, actually.”

Ransom shrugged. “Dee doesn’t mind.”

“It’s kind of musky,” said Deanna.

“Musky…Hmmm…” Ran offered it to Claire.

“No, thanks.”

“Humor me.”

She took a wuff. “Perfumy…kind of sweet.”

“Musky? Sweet?” he said. “It smells like Pap Finn’s breath on a bad drunk to me. What the hell could this stuff be?”

Before they answered—assuming either could—his eye drifted over their shoulders, up and up. “Dr. J!” Grinning, Ransom swung his hand wide for a soul shake. “Hey, nigga!”

Pod by pod, the room went still around them, starting with Deanna, in whose little starry eyes the starry little stars winked out.

“What?” said Ran. “Oh, sorry, I guess I can’t say that either. Wrong decade again!” He looked to Deanna for salvation, but her eyes had turned indifferent as the sea.

“We used to call each other that on tour. He called me nigga, too—right, Cell?”

“Ran?” said Claire.

He looked at her.

“I’d drop it now.”

“Yeah, sure, okay,” he said. “As long as everybody understands it wasn’t, you know, prejudicial…I think the roadies started it, didn’t they, Marcel? Tyrell and James?”

“I don’t remember, actually,” Marcel answered, in a level tone.

“I’m pretty sure it was Tyrell and James….”

In the first moment, Claire felt murder in her heart. The moment after homicide came pity, a deep, aching pang. Less for Marcel, though, than for Ran, who befouled himself more with the epithet than he ever could their friend.

They used to love each other, she thought. What happened? Was it the money? Claire almost wanted to believe it was, the old dispute over the chorus of “Talking in My Sleep,” the rock that RHB came smash against so long ago. But in her heart, she knew the deeper answer wasn’t money or the chorus. She faced it now: The reason is because of me.

Repeating the same action and expecting a different outcome…Her therapist’s remark played back, so why the hundredth time Ran asked had she said yes? Was it because she couldn’t bear the thought of negotiating where the children would spend Christmases, because she wished the cup to pass? Having left him for a string of valid reasons, none of which had really been addressed, was it reasonable to believe that they still had a fighting chance? As she observed Ran now with his hazed eyes and vinous breath, an answer flashed at Claire from some deep place. She had agreed to let him visit because she wished—not only wished, but needed—to come to clarity about their marriage. It was time, and way past time, for that. And taking in his large and joyous indiscretion, so familiar against the unfamiliar backdrop of Marcel, another thought broke through. With Cell, she played her mother’s role, the center of attention: his. Whereas, in her marriage, for nineteen years, she’d been the gardener, while Ransom was the rose. She’d known that going in, though, hadn’t she? Claire had chosen willingly, and did she will it still? Do you get to change, and did she want to? Further questions for a rainy day—she had compiled a good long list.

“And they called me redneck,” Ran went on, digging his grave deeper as he tried to shovel out. “And Jethro—remember, Cell? Like, ‘Hey, Jethro, how’s your sister, I mean mama, I mean sister.’” Pushing his charm into overdrive, he did the Faye Dunaway slap slap slap routine from Chinatown. He’d tempted fate with “girl” and got away with it, but now, with “nigga,” Ran had sealed it tighter than a Pharaoh’s tomb.

“I’m bombing here, aren’t I?” he said, reading the writing on the wall the way he always did, eventually. “Sorry, guys, I don’t get out much these days. Throw me a line?”

“How are you, Ran?” said Marcel, manfully, showing who he was.

Despite the effort, Claire could see the tightness at the corners of his eyes.

“Doing pretty good, man. Thanks for asking. How about you? You put on some weight?”

“A bit.”

“Looks good on you. No kidding.”

“What have you been up to?”

“Me?” Ran said. “Oh, this and that. Today I wrote a song, took care of the kids, got started on a major house repair, cooked dinner, made a minor archaeological discovery. I was just telling Claire and Dee here…”

“Deanna.”

“Deanna. I found this buried pot in our backyard. It was wrapped with chain and full of shells and candle stubs and other shit…including this. Here, take a sniff and tell us what it is.”

Marcel leaned down reluctantly. “I don’t smell much of anything. Pond water maybe?”

Ransom laughed. “Pond water, musky musk, perfume, an old drunk’s breath…I guess truth is in the nose of the beholder. Hey, Charlie?”

Picking the rosettes off the large cake on the table, their son looked up with