Bad Company Page 7

  "I hate to sound ‘un-feminist’...," Gwen began.

  "Go ahead," Stoner said. "It's too early to be politically correct."

  "...that woman is..."

  "Strange," they said simultaneously.

  "I wonder what Dr. Kesselbaum would think," Stoner said with a grin.

  Gwen tossed an imaginary gauze scarf over one shoulder. "Strange, Stoner dear?” she said in a perfect Edith imitation. "Do you mean strange enough to be interesting, or strange enough to be in trouble?"

  "Good question."

  "She's exhausting. I keep wondering who I'm really talking to."

  Stoner sneaked a look at the elderly women. "Of all the women here I'd like to meet," she said, "those two are my favorites."

  Gwen glanced over their way. "Go ahead. You deserve a little pleasure."

  "We have a job to do first."

  "Oh, Stoner," Gwen said with a sad smile, "you're such a workaholic."

  "Am not."

  "What do you call it, then?"

  "I just like..." She searched for the right words. "...to keep my priorities in order.”

  As it turned out, they didn't have to wait until the rehearsal to start meeting the Demeter women. Stoner decided they should languish about in the living room for a while, to do some casual observing as the women left the dining room. "To gather first impressions," she said. "Before we get cluttered up with knowing people's personalities."

  "Easy for you to say," Gwen grumbled. ''Your first impressions are usually right. Mine are usually wrong." She curled up in a corner of a hard horse hair sofa.

  "We should look as if we're doing something," Stoner said.

  "I am doing something. I'm going back to sleep."

  She looked around the room. In the far corner stood a cloth-draped table with a coffee urn, hot water for tea, and tiny, demitasse-sized cups, saucers, and silver spoons. Little linen napkins lay in a row like soldiers. There was a tiny silver bowl of sugar, and another tiny silver bowl containing packets of Sweet 'n Low. Muffins, fruit, and bar cookies lay on a silver, linen-covered tray next to a stack of tiny plates and more tiny napkins. She should have known Sherry would provide all the niceties of civilization for her guests. "We could pretend to be having a second cup of coffee," she said.

  Gwen looked around at the refreshments and diminutive china and dollhouse silver. "I feel as if I just fell into Gulliver's Travels," she said. "Or we're off to see the Wizard. You don't suppose she's getting ready for a conference, do you?"

  Oh, great, just what they needed. More people. More confusion. Less chance for sneaking. People who'd never been there before and probably never would again, wandering through the halls, lost, showing up in unlikely and suspicious places...

  A wild-looking woman sailed through the door to the upstairs like a two masted schooner taking the wind. Her hair was the color of lemons, and radiated from her head like rays of sun. She wore baggy, brightly colored cotton Arabian Nights pants, and a white peasant top and Birkenstocks. Her skin was pale and massively freckled. Her eyes were grey, her expression tight and slightly suspicious. Over one arm, she carried a huge straw Kenya tote bag. On her other hand perched a frog hand puppet. She tacked over to the refreshment table and poured herself a cup of coffee, much of which landed in the saucer.

  She had to be a Demeter. In fact, she looked as if the group could have been named for her.

  Stoner got up. "Back in a minute," she murmured, and went to the coffee urn.

  "Hi," she said cheerfully and casually as she reached for a cup.

  The woman gave a loud shriek and threw her packet of Sweet 'n Low into the air.

  "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to startle you."

  "'S all right," the woman said, fanning herself with one hand. "Nervous, that's all. Always been nervous. Maybe early menopause, maybe not. World full of danger, you know."

  "I know." Stoner held out her hand. "My name's Stoner. We just checked in last night."

  The woman engulfed her hand in a tight grip. "Rita." She held up the frog puppet. "This is Seabrook."

  "Pleased to meet you." She wondered what the etiquette was concerning shaking hands with frog puppets. Well, better safe than sorry. She took one of Seabrook's feet between two fingers.

  "Nuke Jane Fonda!" Seabrook shrieked, and pulled back violently.

  ”Sorry about that," Rita said, looking genuinely sorry. "He doesn't like to be touched. Early childhood trauma. Probably."

  "I understand," Stoner said.

  "Nuke Helen Caldicott," muttered Seabrook.

  "Shut up, Seabrook," Rita said, and stuffed him into her tote bag. She pulled out a package of Fig Newtons and thrust them in Stoner's direction. "Fig Newton?"

  "Fig the Newtrons," Seabrook muttered from inside the bag. "Fig Olivia Neutron-Bomb."

  "Seabrook was active in the anti-nuclear movement back in the seventies," Rita explained. "Maced. Had a lasting impact. Banana?" She brought out a small bunch of bananas.

  Stoner shook her head. "Thanks, but we just ate."

  "Don't eat the food here."

  “Why not?"

  ”Microwave ovens." She pointed to Stoner's watch. "That thing glow in the dark?"

  "I don't think so."

  "Radioactive. Use radioactive paint. Glows in the dark. Wear it long enough, you'll glow in the dark."

  Stoner looked at her watch. "I didn't know that."

  "Hah," said Rita. Her face grew progressively redder as she spoke. "Not surprised. People all over the world in trouble, don't even know it. Wear one of those glow-in-the-dark watches, you're a walking Chernobyl."

  "Oh," Stoner said.

  Rita plunged her hand into her bag again. "Apple?"

  Speechless, Stoner shook her head.

  ”Gotta go," Rita said, and took a huge bite out of the apple. "Stay away from television sets."

  She billowed through the front door and tacked across the lawn.

  Stoner looked after her.

  "Who," Gwen said at her elbow, "was that?"

  "Rita."

  "She's amazing. What on earth did you say to her?"

  "I'm not sure."

  "She looked angry enough to kill you alive."

  “We were getting along fine," Stoner said. "I think so, anyway. She's disturbed about nuclear energy. Seabrook doesn't seem to share her politics."

  "Seabrook?"

  "The frog."

  Gwen gazed across the lawn to where Rita was flowing steadily toward the barn. "She's a Demeter?"

  "Looks that way."

  The barn was huge on the inside. Deep and high-raftered, with the perpetual odor of dust and hay indigenous to old barns. The stalls had been dismantled, the openings that used to serve as Dutch doors to the outside converted into large, light-inviting windows. Some of the floor was still packed dirt, but a low stage had been built in the far end. Industrial-sized orange and tomato juice cans fitted with hundred-watt bulbs hung from beams and served as lighting. Gray metal folding chairs were scattered about in no particular order. Nearly every one was covered with bits of clothing, paper bags, notebooks, knapsacks, or unidentifiable clutter. A card table, probably the director's desk, sat squarely in front of the stage.

  The actors were apparently finishing warm-ups. Some were stretching cat-like toward the ceiling, others making "puh-puh-puh" sounds and flapping out their cheeks. A small group was chanting "red leather, yellow leather," in rapidly increasing cadence and volume.

  Stoner looked for Rita and found her, Seabrook in hand, reaching for the rafters and twirling about in a circle and coming dangerously close to the edge of the stage. Not a long drop, but sudden and deep enough to sprain an ankle. With truly amazing agility, she whirled forward, gyrated back to safety, swirled closer, pirouetted away. Despite her size, Rita was breathtakingly graceful.

  "She's like a dancer," Gwen said admiringly.

  "She certainly is."

  "I'd like to have that much grace just for one hour."

  ''Yo!''
A voice sailed toward them across the room. "Stoner. Gwen." Sherry detached herself from the "red leather, yellow leather" group and trotted toward them. She hooked her elbows through theirs and addressed the troupe. "Sisters! May I have your attention! Gwen and Stoner are guests here at the Cottage. I told them they could watch a rehearsal or so. Any problem with that?"

  Nobody had a problem.

  One woman, dark-haired and sultry, excused herself from "puh-puh-puh" and approached them. She was, simply, voluptuous, with the kind of cleavage many women went to plastic surgeons to acquire. But this woman's was clearly her own, and she drew attention to it with a low-cut flowered blouse. She was also wearing pale blue polyester slacks and straw sandals topped with straw daisies.

  "Hi," the woman said. Her voice was as sultry as the rest of her. "Is your name really Stoner?"

  Stoner nodded. "Stoner McTavish." The woman began to seem vaguely familiar.

  "Name's Roseann," she said. "I have a last name but it's ugly and anyway it's my father's and I don't want to think about him more than necessary, if you know what I mean."

  "I do," Stoner said.

  "Anyway," Roseann went on without breaking stride, "I know your aunt. And I met you one day when you picked her up after a blue rinse."

  It all came together. "Roseann," Stoner said. "Thelma's Cut 'n Curl." ‘

  “Yeah.'' She reached out and shook hands, casting a quick glance at Stoner's nails. "Good cuticles. Well, we call it the Galaxy Unisex Styling Center now, which shows you how long ago it was when you met me. Thelma says we got to keep up with the times. I dunno, feels like something out of'Star Trek,' plastic all over the place." She turned to Gwen. "You must be Gwen. I heard about you having to kill your husband. Bummer."

  "Thank you," Gwen said.

  "Listen, next time you see your aunt, tell her she was right on the money with those cards. Boy, she's really spooky with those things."

  "The Tarot?" Stoner asked.

  "Yeah, the Tarot (she pronounced it like 'carrot'). Couple of months ago she was in for a perm, and while we were waiting for her to set—takes longer than usual, with that thick hair, you don't often see hair like that on a gal her age—well, she was fooling around with those cards so I asked her to tell my fortune. My 3:45 had cancelled, which was just as well. That old Mrs. Boggs, hair falling out by the handfuls, for which she somehow blames me. I keep telling her, 'Mrs.Boggs, honey, you got to quit drinking or eat more animal fat.'"

  "Animal fat," Gwen said.

  “Well, she gets all huffed up like I accused her of having VD or something, which I know she can't 'cause there isn't a man, woman, or child alive about to hop into the sack with a mean old face like that one. And old man Boggs—calls him 'The Mister,' can you believe it, is this the nineties, or what?—he can't get it up any more. She told me herself. Listen, I could have blushed clean out of my uniform, some of the stuff those old cards told her about me."

  "Told Mrs. Boggs?" Stoner asked.

  "Told your aunt. So I says, 'Ms. Moore, I just want to know what's going to happen in the future.' I mean, if she was working up to being any more personal—gosh, there's some things you don't want getting spread around the Galaxy Unisex Styling Center, even if it did used to be Thelma's Cut 'n Curl, you know what I mean?"

  "Absolutely," Gwen said.

  " 'Well, Roseann,' she says, 'you keep your eyes open, because one of these days there's going to be some excitement.' Now, that makes me a little nervous, 'cause there's some kinds of excitement I already got enough of, if you get my drift. 'No, Roseann,' she says, studying those cards, 'I don't mean anything like that. There will be a change in your life,' she says. Well, I can sure use a few changes, all right, but she gets this kind of mysterious look on her face. You know that look?"

  "I know that look," Stoner said.

  '''In the area of communication,' she says. Well, what does that mean to me, except maybe I can pay the phone bill on time for a change, but she says it's something I never thought of in my entire life, and then she clams up as tight as a Presbyterian on pay day. That kind of made the hairs on the back of my neck prickle, you know what 1 mean?"

  "Only too well," Stoner assured her.

  "So that Friday night I'm sitting around the Shamrock, having a couple of beers on account of the heat and all, and a bunch of us start in to singing, just passing the time like we always do. I got a decent voice, the nuns at Our Lady always said so even if they knew I wouldn't amount to anything, and I was doing one of those English music hall numbers—I got a couple of albums of them back home for parties, you know, when things turn a little naughty?"

  "Uh," Stoner said. She could feel herself beginning to blush. Worse than that, she could feel Gwen staring at her. And laughing inside. ''Yes.''

  "So I was entertaining the crowd," Roseann went on, not noticing that Stoner was as pink as a foam rubber curler, "getting our minds off the heat and the Red Sox playing like mules on this current home stand, which makes the guys kind of mean. And this gal Rebecca..." She pointed toward the stage and in the general direction of at least five other women, any of whom could have been a Rebecca. "...she was sitting in the back and up she comes to me, says a bunch of gals are putting on a show and would I like to try out for it? Geez-Louise, I felt like Lana Turner or somebody, which isn't such a bad comparison when you stop to think of it. I mean, boobs like these..." She hefted her breasts in her hands like melons. “...don't come thirteen to the dozen, do they?"

  "They're very nice," Stoner said, and knew she looked like the main course at a lobster bake.

  "Next day I go down to where they're having these tryouts, on my lunch break, Thelma kind of looking at me sideways out from under those black eyebrows of hers that aren't real I happen to know for a fact 'cause she says she's a natural blonde, and you get a blonde with black eyebrows, one or the other's, got to come out of a bottle. Old Thelma's got her nose out of joint for sure, but I say to her, 'It's my lunch break to do with what I please and if you don't like it you can tell it to the Union.' That shuts her up for sure, she knows better than to get uppity with me, I got ten years' experience and plenty of offers, some of them even legit."

  The crowd on stage had broken up. Some were lounging about in small groups, talking. Others were looking at scripts. Sherry was approaching a slender brunette in chinos and white shirt with the back of the collar turned up and her sleeves rolled to the elbows. They glanced back in Stoner's direction. The other woman nodded.

  "So I go down and they give me something to read," Roseann was saying. "Everybody's looking at me and listening real hard, you know? Then this kind of spell comes over me. Next thing I know these fancy words are coming right off the page and out my mouth—it's like this made-up person I'm reading about has got inside me, talking through me, like in 'The Exorcist' or something. I'm telling you, Stoner, I was in another world. When I get to the end it's real quiet for a minute, and I thought, 'There you go, Roseann, bombed in Boston.' It was disheartening. Then everybody starts jumping up and patting me on the back and clapping and yelling. Not like down at the shamrock, with the guys half drunk and trying to cop a feel. Just real nice, and a couple of them are crying, even."

  Turned-up-collar was coming toward them.

  Roseann nudged her. "That's Rebecca. She's the director." She turned to face Rebecca with an expression of apprehension and awe. Stoner was sure she'd learned it at Our Lady.

  "Hi," Rebecca said. "Sherry says you'd like to hang out for a while."

  "If it's all right with all of you."

  "No problem. I'm Rebecca, by the way."

  Stoner and Gwen introduced themselves and explained that they were on vacation.

  Rebecca turned to Roseann. "Are you warmed up?"

  Roseann gave a throaty chuckle. "Wound up is more like it."

  "We'll start with Scene 4."

  "Great." She watched Rebecca walk away. "Isn't she neat?"

  Stoner had no idea whether Rebecca was neat or not, but she
couldn't bring herself to take even the slightest amount of wind out of Roseann's natural high. "So you got the part," she said.

  "Right then and there they tell me I'm going to be the star of this show. Acting and singing. 'Course by then I'm late getting back to work, but I feel so good I treat myself to a taxi. I stroll into the Galaxy Unisex Styling Center that used to be Thelma's Cut 'n Curl like I'm Bette Davis making a personal appearance. And there's my one o'clock trim flipping the pages of People Magazine waiting to ram it down my throat, and Thelma madder'n hell. And I'm just old Roseann Nobody again. But I remember how it was, all these gals sitting there listening so hard and all, and I tell her I'm gonna do this show, I'm gonna leave work at 4 pm every day, and I'm gonna take my vacation for an entire month in August. And if she doesn't like it, she can tuck her plastic curlers where the sun never shines."

  Chapter Four

  By the time they stopped for lunch, they had met most of the visible members of Demeter Ascending. They were invited to join the group in the dining room, but Stoner drew Sherry aside and requested a picnic for two. It would give them a chance to get away and compare notes. Gwen came up with a fresh legal pad and ball point pen, and they walked down by the lake.

  In some parts of the country, Stoner supposed, it would be called a pond. A small body of water, too wide to swim across easily but you could probably reach shore from the middle if you were a particularly good swimmer. The woods ringing the lake were mostly red pine and hemlock, interspersed with birch. Toward the north end, a small sparkling stream cut through tall grass to feed the pond. In the shallows at the south outlet, tall reeds rose from the swampy ground beside the water. A red-winged blackbird teeter-tottered on a cattail stalk and “muck-er-deed” to anyone who wanted to listen.

  The water was calm, a few insects lazily riding the air currents over the surface. A flash of blue darted from a high pine and dove into the lake, reappearing with a small silver fish dangling from its bill. Droplets of water like liquid diamonds dripped through the sunlight. The kingfisher flew back to its nest with its prize.