Turkey tetrazzini and salad in fridge. Miss Louise left facks on your desk about wedding magazine lady. Sen. Farrell called, also Monike Darsey (twice—will call in a.m.) See you Monday
Graciella
Ana tore the scribbled note off the kitchen cupboard, shaking her head. She’d have to speak to Graciella again about taping these damn messages on the clear glass panes of the maple cupboards. That’s what refrigerators are for, she mumbled to herself as she crumpled the note and tossed it into the trash compactor. Turkey. If she had another bite of anything turkey today, she’d barf. But the salad sounded perfect.
They’d wrapped for the day an hour before, and Harry Damone was due at her doorstep any minute. Drained after more than fifty takes, Ana had barely paused to let Molly reclaim her false eyelashes before she’d slipped out of her costume and into the waiting studio limo, wanting a quick shower and light dinner at home. It had been a relief to change into purple sweats and Nikes, scoop her hair into a ponytail, and scrub the makeup from her face. If she was quick, she’d manage to scarf down some dinner before Harry Damone arrived.
She was famished, she realized, her stomach growling as she caught sight of the cellophane-wrapped pita bread beside the bananas on the counter. Pita bread with Graciella’s artichoke butter would be wonderful with the salad, she thought. She reached for a dinner plate, wincing as her bandaged finger closed over the edge of the heavy peach-colored stoneware.
Eric still had the power to hurt her. But not for long. She’d had enough, enough pain for a lifetime.
Her thoughts raced ahead to the meeting with Harry Damone. She’d have to make it clear that she didn’t want Eric killed or maimed, only roughed up enough to scare the shit out of him, to convince him that there was no future in trying to blackmail her. She was stronger than he was now, and she wouldn’t even have to scrape a knuckle to cause him more pain than he could imagine.
When he understands that, he’ll slither quietly away. Ana was certain of it. He might be vicious, vindictive, and vengeful, but he wasn’t stupid.
It was when she was pulling out the salad from the crisper that she spotted the bowl of spaghetti on the middle shelf. The moment her eyes locked on the thick red meat sauce clumped atop the twisted strands of pasta, the familiar feeling of nausea clogged her throat.
Graciella knows I hate spaghetti. She must have fixed this for Louise, she thought, slamming the refrigerator. Leaning against the cool white door, she closed her eyes, trying to block out the image of hundreds of limp strands of airborne spaghetti—gummy and dripping with curds of red-sauced meat—flying full force through the air, spraying, splitting, spoiling everything...
And her father’s voice, raw with liquor, screaming at her the last words she had ever heard him say: “You can’t do anything right around here, you worthless stupid little snot. All gussied up like a bridesmaid, are you? Well, little girlie, looks like you just better think again. You ain’t goin’ nowhere!”
The memories flooded back, sucking her down like an undertow. Ana was no longer in her spotless, southwestern-styled kitchen with its curving bar of aqua-veined agate, its huge stone hearth and the bright jungle of potted cacti and geraniums spiking upward toward the skylight. Instead, she was back in the dingy eight-by-eight-foot kitchen of her youth with the green linoleum floor that looked grimy no matter how hard she scrubbed, the chipped enamel stove, and the folding chairs set around a wobbly wooden table. She was back in Tennessee, back in the house her mother had fled from when Ana was ten. The house her father ruled with a bottle and a bellow, and which her grandmother had tried desperately to make into a home.
She could see it all. The worn eyelet curtains on windows sealed shut by years of yellow paint, the television set that transported her each week into the worlds of Dynasty and Dallas—worlds of powerful women and seductive men, worlds of wealth and glamour light years removed from the small town of Buck Hollow.
The threadbare rag rug in the dining room was the only thing of her mother’s left—that and the simmering frustration and anger that seemed to pervade the crumbling five-room house.
Once again she could breathe in the scent of the magnolia trees flanking the high school that last spring, inhale the musky sweat of Buddy Crocker mingled with his Aqua Velva aftershave, smell the exhaust fumes belching from the ancient school bus.
“Hey, Ana, wait on up—you got a cigarette?” Buddy hollered across the school parking lot as Ana hitched her scruffy vinyl shoulder bag and hurried toward the bus. Buddy sprang up the steps behind her, shifting his books and brushing the long, greasy hair off his forehead.
“You boys know there ain’t no smoking on my bus,” Mrs. Hewitt bellowed, closing the doors with a grunt.
A chorus of voices hooted down the aisle, and Buddy grinned at Dennis and Jesse laughing like hyenas in the back of the bus.
Ana slipped him a pack of Kents as they flopped into their customary seats across from Dennis and Jesse, with Shirleen and Bobbie Sue slumped right in front of them. Buddy passed the pack around and lit up surreptitiously, cracking the window and grinning as Mrs. Hewitt called, “Nothin’ funny goin’ on back there, is it?”
“Course not, ma’am. We’re just doing our homework,” Dennis sang out. He pretended to rake a hand through his shoulder-length russet hair, flipping the bird at the heavyset bus driver. Ana guffawed and Buddy pulled her on to his lap, nuzzling her neck and trying to slide his hand up her short black skirt as the bus jostled them down the country road.
“Yeah,” Buddy chuckled in her ear, “I like doin’ this kind of homework. You’re my favorite subject, baby.”
Ana smiled. Here in Buddy’s lap she felt sexy, grownup, and desirable. She kissed him so noisily that Shirleen and Bobbie Sue turned around and giggled.
“Jesse, did you get your brother to buy us those six-packs for tonight?” Bobbie Sue’s high-pitched voice chirped over the rumble of the bus. She leaned into the aisle, fluttering her white-blond lashes and blowing smoke rings toward the boys.
“You bet your sweet ass, darlin’.” Jesse was shorter than the other boys, but had a huskier build and an ever present five o’clock shadow. He reached out and yanked Bobbie Sue into his lap. “Party starts at eight at the Dairy Queen.”
Shirleen was watching jealously as Buddy tussled with Ana in the backseat. “I saw Mr. Touchdown talking to you today, sugar,” she drawled with a wink at Bobbie Sue. “You invitin’ him to the party?”
Buddy sat up. He stared at Ana through suddenly suspicious brown eyes. His reaction was akin to that of a young wolf who hears the howl of another male in the woods. He tossed his cigarette down and crushed it into the floor with the toe of his boot.
Buddy Crocker had the wiry build and heavy-lashed eyes of a young James Dean. Not exactly handsome, he nevertheless possessed a rough, cock-sure charm that had a lot to do with the arrogant gleam in his eye and the defiant set of his shoulders. The way he held his cigarette, the way he looked out at the world from those coffee-dark, go-to-hell eyes, touched a chord in Ana. A chord of rebellion. Like Buddy, she sizzled with the desire to thumb her nose at the world.
“Whoa, now, baby doll.” He grasped Ana’s chin and tilted it, forcing her to meet his eyes. “What’re you doin’ talking to that jerk? You fixin’ to try out for cheerleader?”
Ana tossed off a laugh, shrugged, and shot Shirleen a furious look. “Don’t be an asshole, Buddy.” She put her arms around Buddy’s neck and nestled against him. He continued to study her warily.
“He just wanted to ask me when that chemistry report was due. He missed class today, that’s all.” She met his gaze head-on, and smiled breezily, hoping Buddy would just let this go.
“You sure it was old man Wilcox who put y’all in the same group?” Buddy asked suspiciously. “Or did Roy Cody fix it that way ‘cuz he’s got the hots for you?”
“If I was you, boy, I’d kick his ass,” Jesse told Buddy, reaching for another cigarette.
Ana’s heartbeat quickened in alarm. She slid her hand along Buddy’s chin, tracing his stubbled jawline with a tapered finger. The smoky shadows in his eyes seemed to glow more intensely at her touch, and she felt a surge of relief at the power of her feminine wiles. “Buddy honey, don’t be a bigger fool than you already are,” she murmured sweetly. “Everybody knows that I’m your girl.”
“Just so long as you don’t forget it.” Roughly, he grabbed a handful of her thick, burnished hair and pulled her head down. He kissed her hard, his teeth nipping into her bottom lip, his hands groping possessively down her buttocks.
Ana writhed against him, triumphant. She scraped her fingernails across his back, digging into the hollows of his shoulder blades. She knew Buddy was trying to prove something here, and she was perfectly ready to help him do it, but a small secret part of her kept wondering all the while Buddy kissed and pawed and grunted, what it would be like to be kissed by Roy Cody. The strapping blond quarterback would never fit into her crowd—or she into his. She was known at school as one of the wild kids, the kids who drove too fast, drank too much, and flirted with drugs, who cruised the Sonic drive-in and the Dairy Queen every Saturday night, roaring up and down the strip, honking, waving, and making out while the car radios blasted anything but country. Roy Cody was Mr. All-American, with a football scholarship and law career ahead of him, an uptown address in a stately old Victorian home on Main Street, and a straight-A average.
Ana pulled Bs without studying. She knew she was smart, but she didn’t have time to study, not when she had to keep the house clean, cook her father’s meals, and party with Buddy every night. It was knowing she was Buddy’s girl that kept her going when her father started in on her. She’d tune out her father and think about Buddy. About how proud she was to be his girl. Ana liked being stared at as they swaggered through the halls, hearing the whispers, seeing the looks. It almost made her feel like a celebrity. She knew that those girls who whispered about her in the john, who told stories about her and Buddy making out behind the lockers by day and at night along the dark back roads, were just horny, jealous prudes too scared and prissy to get any action themselves.
Buddy cared about her, he was tough and cute, and he paid attention to her. Her father sure as hell didn’t—the only thing he cared about was his Budweiser, his bowling ball, and the latest waitress to jiggle her hooters in his face down at J.T.’s Bar.
The only time Ana had seen him sober in the past two years was at her grammaw’s funeral. At least he’d had the decency to wait until after the last shovelful of dirt had been tossed on his mother’s coffin before starting on a bender that had lasted for three days.
When Buddy drank, it was different. He didn’t throw things or yell and cry like her old man did. He got horny and cracked jokes, and when he pulled her down on top of him in the backseat of the car and kissed her, his hands sweaty and urgent as they slid up and down her body, she could almost forget the dismal house across from the railroad tracks where drunken curses peppered the air and rage hung like a cloud of hornets ready to swarm down without warning.
And yet, this afternoon, when Roy Cody had stammered out an invitation for a movie date, something in her blossomed like a flower in sunlight. She never thought anyone like Roy would consider dating her, but he blushed so adorably that his freckles popped to the surface. Roy Cody. What would he want with hell-raisin’ Ana Cates from the wrong side of town?
But the funny thing was, Ana thought as the bus lumbered up her street, Roy didn’t look down on her like some of the other straight kids did. And when her arm had brushed his while they’d worked on the chemistry report in the library, she had felt something like electricity charging through her.
But she was Buddy’s girl, she told herself. Buddy was her type. His father had worked in the same auto repair shop as hers for the past eight years, bowled in the same bowling alley, drank the same beer. His mother wasn’t dead, but she might as well have been. Ana had often seen the same bleak look in her eyes as she’d seen in her own mother’s before she’d escaped. She and Buddy, Shirleen, Bobbie Sue, Jesse, Dennis, and the rest all shared the same world. A world louder, dirtier, and emptier than the realm inhabited by the uptown jocks and princesses of Davison High. She was definitely no princess, so why would a drop-dead handsome jock like Roy Cody want to go out with her?
For my bod, Ana concluded with a bitter twist of her mouth as the bus lurched to a stop at her corner. Well, she’d find out soon enough. She just hoped Buddy didn’t find out she and Roy Cody had a date for Friday night.
“See you at eight,” Shirleen called through the dirt-streaked window as Ana and Buddy headed down the pebble-studded asphalt arm in arm. They disappeared beneath the dipping branches of the weeping willows as dust kicked up by the retreating bus swirled in a hazy cloud. Buddy walked with Ana until they reached the edge of the dense woods flanking Ana’s yard.
“Wear somethin’ real pretty tonight, you hear?” Buddy called as Ana trudged up her front steps.
“Don’t I always?” she called back.
To her surprise, her father was snoring away on the sofa, newspapers spread across his stomach and beer cans littering the coffee table. A hoarse snore stuck in his throat as the screen door banged behind her and he lurched up, eyes bulging.
“Daddy! What are you doing home so early? Are you sick?”
“Yeah, I’m sick. Sick and tired of being jacked around by that friggin’ son of a bitch Dixon.”
“What happened this time, Daddy?” Ana cautiously moved into the room and cleared a space on the coffee table for her books. Her father didn’t look too drunk yet. He must have slept it off, she concluded, relaxing her guard slightly.
Warren Cates was an ox of a man, well over six feet tall, with fists the size of half-gallon moonshine jugs. He’d done some boxing before his hitch in the marines, and he still had the burly frame and surprising agility of a trained fighter. The crooked nose that squatted on his face like a sweet potato and the scar under his left eye attested to the fact that Warren Cates had taken his licks, but he’d told Ana time and time again that no one had ever KO’d him, not once, and he’d always given as good as he got. Even when his target was a woman, Ana had often reflected to herself, for she dimly remembered the black eyes and mysterious bruises her mother had worn.
Strangely enough, he’d never struck Ana with those fists. When he was in a roaring rage he screamed and threw things—once an open can of beer and once the living room lamp—but mostly he tore into her with words, cutting, belittling words that left her in no doubt about how worthless she was.
She was biding her time. Only one more year until graduation, and then she was getting out of Yuck Buck Hollow for good. She planned to live in a big city and get a proper job, maybe work as a bank teller or a bookkeeper. She had a head for numbers—hadn’t her math teacher told her she should try business school after graduation? With a steady job, maybe she could even save enough to take night courses at a business college.
No matter what Daddy said, she knew she was smart. Her grades proved it and her grammaw had made her believe she could really be somebody. Of course Buddy didn’t know about her plans. He’d laugh and say she was dreaming. But Grammaw had said that if you held on to your dreams and worked hard to make them come true, anything was possible.
Her father groaned, yawned, and popped the top of another beer can as Ana gathered up the empties. “Dixon sent everyone but Ellis home early. Said things’re slow and there ain’t enough work for all of us to just be sittin’ around like maggot-covered roadkill. Shit. Now, you tell me how I’m supposed to make a goddamn living?” He swilled down the warm liquid and his heavy-lidded tobacco-colored eyes narrowed. “Shit. This tastes like cat piss. Girlie, go get me a cold one and turn on the TV—gotta be a ball game on here somewhere.”
I am getting out of here, Ana vowed to herself. She fled into the kitchen, sickened by her father’s beer belly and the bristly two-day stubble fringing his massive jaw, by his greasy crew cut and the permanently embedded filth beneath his ragged fingernails. She hated this house, hated sitting down to dinner with him and listening to his belches and grumbles. But most of all she hated him for driving her mother away, and doing his damnedest to make her feel like dirt.
Yep. I’m getting out of here, Ana promised herself as she opened the refrigerator and rooted out a Budweiser. And no one’s going to stop me—not Daddy, not Buddy, not even Roy Cody. The minute I get my hands on that diploma, I’m leaving this shithole behind.
But three weeks later Ana was having second thoughts. Roy Cody had called her every day and taken her out the past two weekends. Suddenly, things were different.
She no longer rode the bus with Buddy, Shirleen, and the others. Now Roy Cody drove her home in his J2000 with the sunroof open to the balmy spring breeze and the scent of magnolias floating between them. He’d asked her to the prom and she was going. They were double-dating with Cindi Jo Harris and Al Whitcomb, both student council hotshots. Kids who’d never spoken to her before were now greeting her in the hallways and inviting her to parties.
She felt bad about Buddy and wished they could still be friends, but Buddy wouldn’t even talk to her. None of them would. They treated her as though she were invisible. It didn’t bother her that Shirleen oozed all over Buddy like sap stuck to a tree. But it did bother her that Buddy’s eyes which once had glowed hotly into hers now stared icily right through her. That was the hardest thing to take.
But she didn’t want to go back. Roy listened to her. He made her feel as if all her dreams were within reach. He saw something in her, something other than her tits and her dimples, something she could barely recognize in herself. She felt special, smart, and pretty and hopeful—alluring in a way that had nothing to do with groping and grunting in the backseat of a car. When she kissed Roy she felt cherished and beautiful. Buck Hollow was no longer a dreary prison, but a Fairyland of promise. Ana felt like Sleeping Beauty awakened by her prince’s kiss and the prom would be the magical grand ball, the most memorable night of her life.
Roy’s sister, Ashleigh, had even helped her get an after-school job car-hopping at the Sonic. Ana figured that with the money she was earning she would have enough by the first week of June to pay for the prom dress she’d put in layaway.
The instant she’d laid eyes on the dress, she’d known she had to have it. It was a mouth-watering confection of creamy white satin and Chantilly lace highlighted by a pearl-trimmed sweetheart neck line that swept over her shoulders and dipped nearly to her waist in back. Ashleigh had shown her how to pile her hair on top of her head and had suggested long dangly crystal earrings. Ana couldn’t afford to buy the earrings, but she would be perfectly content with the tiny pearl studs her grammaw had left her along with the matching teardrop necklace. It was the only real jewelry Ana possessed, and she would be proud to wear it when she swept into the prom on Roy’s arm, as elegant and glamorous as a movie star.
On the Friday of the prom Ana rushed out of school and slid into the bucket seat beside Roy, feeling as if she would burst with anticipation.
“Ashleigh told me you’ve picked out some pretty dress,” Roy commented as he pulled out of the parking lot on to Grainger Road. He turned his head quickly and shot her a teasing smile. “Just remember who your date is when all the guys zero in on the most gorgeous girl in the room.”
“Who my date is... who my date is...” Ana repeated, feigning bafflement. Then she laughed aloud, exulting in the joy of being with him, in the joy of being alive. She had a million things to do when she reached home: bathe, wash her hair, fix dinner for Daddy—she was far too excited to even think of eating anything herself. Tonight was going to be perfect, she knew it. Things were changing for her, her life was suddenly brighter than it had ever been. For the first time since Grammaw died, she felt that someone actually loved her. The way Roy looked at her, talked to her, and treated her in front of his friends convinced her that his feelings were genuine. Tonight he’ll tell me he loves me, I know it, she thought as the J2000 eased up the gravel drive to her house.
“See you tonight, Ana.” Roy tugged her back as she started to open the car door. He leaned over the gearshift on the floor, his muscular body seeming to fill the small car as he caught her chin in his hand. Roy was strong, probably nearly as strong as her father, but his touch was gentle. His lake-blue eyes gleamed into hers, mirroring the same eager happiness that soared through her. “Thank God Wilcox made us lab partners,” he whispered. His familiar lopsided smile, the one that made his eyes crinkle sexily at the corners, leapt out to warm her all over. “Otherwise, I might never have gotten to know the greatest girl in the school.”
He kissed her gently at first, then the kiss deepened. Ana clutched his muscular shoulders, her heart racing. A flush swept over her cheeks and neck as Roy’s tongue played with hers. He loves me, she thought.
Roy was breathing hard. Ana could barely breathe at all. When his hand moved to her breast beneath her Harley T-shirt, her nipples hardened.
Suddenly a childish voice yelled out: “Race you to the garbage can!”
Jerking backward, Ana saw eight year-old Willie Fenton and his best friend Tyler Moss roller-skating past at breakneck speed. “Damned brats,” she gasped. “They scared the hell out of me.”
“Me too.” Roy laughed, but she could see he was embarrassed too. “Guess I’d better go on down and get my tux. Hate to leave, but tonight I promise you, Ana, there won’t be any interruptions.”
Ana stood a moment on the wooden porch until the blue car disappeared around the corner. No interruptions. An entire evening together. She could still feel the heat of his hand on her breast, smell the clean, woodsy scent of him that was as natural and enticing as his easy grin. Roy and Ana, she thought dreamily, turning toward the house at last. Roy and Ana Cody.
Has a nice ring to it, she thought, swinging through the back door. Mrs. Roy Cody.
The next few hours dissolved into a blur of feverish activity. She prepared her daddy’s favorite meal, spaghetti with meat sauce, and while the sauce was simmering on the stove she dashed uptown to the florist to pick up Roy’s boutonniere. When she tucked it in the refrigerator and pulled out a head of lettuce for her daddy’s salad, her mind was drifting ahead to the moment she would pin the crisp white carnation on Roy’s lapel. With a silly grin on her face she set the table and folded her father’s socks. In the ten minutes it took for the spaghetti to cook, she soaked in the tub, treating herself to a bubble bath and scrubbing her hair with honey-scented shampoo.
By six-fifteen Ana stood before the bathroom mirror, clasping the teardrop necklace around her throat. She had brushed her long, coppery hair until it sparked flames even beneath the dim bathroom bulb. She piled it high, securing the curls with hairspray and fine hairpins, and then pulled down several casual tendrils for that flirty look she’d studied in Seventeen magazine. From the little jewelry box inside the medicine cabinet she took her grammaw’s earrings and carefully slipped them into place. The last touch was a splash of perfume behind her knees, behind each ear, and deep in the crevice between her breasts. Resist me, Roy Cody, if you can, she challenged.
She studied the alluring woman who smiled back at her from the mirror, that glamorous creature in the floaty white dress and brand new heels. She stepped back and swiveled from side to side, loving the way the lacy poufed skirt billowed suggestively about her legs, the way the satiny bodice hugged her waist and emphasized the fullness of her breasts. She swept on a second coat of mascara, dropped her lipstick into her purse, then waltzed into the living room to await Roy’s arrival.
Ana glanced at the kitchen clock visible through the archway. Her timing was perfect. Roy should be there in less than ten minutes. Her heart began racing as she imagined the expression on his face when he saw her.
Just then she heard the screech of tires over gravel and peered out to see her daddy’s Ford pickup splaying pebbles as it gunned up the driveway. Oh, God, is he plastered already? she thought in dismay, thankful that his dinner was ready. At least he couldn’t bitch at her about that. The covered spaghetti platter was waiting on the kitchen table alongside the salad bowl and a steaming dish of green beans and bacon. Ana hurried into the kitchen and scooped a cold beer from the refrigerator. She was carrying it to the table as her father slammed through the screen door and stopped short at the sight of her. He filled the front doorway, his shoulders bulging beneath his grease-stained work shirt.
“Where the hell d’ya think you’re goin’, little girl?”
Oh, God, he was drunk, shit-faced drunk. Ana swallowed. She had hoped to introduce Roy to her father tonight for the first time, but now she’d have to run outside before he came to the door. She took a step backward, listening for the sound of Roy’s car, and said as pleasantly as she could manage: “Tonight’s the prom, Daddy. You remember. Roy Cody? Do you like my dress?” She pivoted, holding out the skirt for effect, but her hopeful smile died as her father looked her over with growing contempt.
“Where the hell’s the top half of it? You look like a goddamn slut! You ain’t settin’ one foot outside this here door until you put on somethin’ decent, you hear me?”
Put on something decent? Like what, Ana wanted to scream at him, like my blue jeans or that old plaid skirt I wear to church? She clenched her hands and held her ground. “Daddy, please calm down. Everyone wears dresses like this. C’mon, your dinner is all ready. I kept it nice and hot for you.”
His massive arms churned the air as he staggered toward her. “You ‘spect me to eat alone?” he roared.
“Daddy, just this once. It’s a special night.” Ana pleaded, thinking of all the nights she’d eaten alone while he was off at J.T.’s. The ugly glint in his eyes frightened her. This was no ordinary drunk. This was one of his mean drunks, the kind she dreaded. Oh, God, no. Please, not tonight of all nights. Where was Roy? she thought desperately, stealing a glance out the kitchen window. If I don’t get out of here soon, Daddy’s only going to get worse.
“Daddy, just look. I made your favorite, spaghetti,” Ana coaxed, lifting the cover off the platter, hoping the steaming aroma of basil-laced tomato and garlic would entice him to sit down at the table.
At that moment she heard a car turn into the driveway, and glancing out the window caught sight of Roy, glossily handsome in his white tuxedo, shifting the sports car into park. Her heart stopped as she glimpsed Cindi Jo Harris and Al Whitcomb snuggled in the backseat—Cindi Jo wearing a sparkly red dress and Al sporting a matching red carnation on his lapel.
“I won’t be late, Daddy,” she promised hurriedly, holding her breath. The last thing she wanted was for anyone in that car to see him in this condition. She snatched up her purse and made a grab for Roy’s boutonniere, but in Ana’s haste her elbow hit the can of beer and sent it skimming off the table, the contents bubbling across the linoleum. She gasped and looked up, staring across the living room as Roy knocked at the open screen door.
He was incredibly handsome, his broad shoulders accentuated by the elegant cut of the tuxedo, a clear plastic box holding an orchid corsage tucked under his long arm. Her daddy was too drunk, too single-minded in his fury to notice him, but Ana’s eyes were dismayed as they met Roy’s through the archway. Then Warren Cates’s roar drowned out all hope of avoiding a scene.
“Look what you’ve done, you clumsy idiot!” A purple rage suffused his face, spreading upward from his thick neck, staining his clenched jaw, exploding in his eyes.
“Daddy, please, I’ll clean it up...” Ana tried desperately, starting to edge toward the living room to explain to Roy that she’d be out in just a minute, but her father slammed his fist on the table, rattling the plates.
“You can’t do nothin’ right around here, you worthless stupid little snot!” He leaned toward her, filling the gap between them with his beer breath. His veins bulged with the rage beating in them. Spittle foamed at the corners of his lips.
“All gussied up like a bridesmaid, are you?” he sneered. “Well, little girlie, looks like you just better think again. You ain’t goin’ nowhere!”
His massive fist scooped up the platter of spaghetti and hurled it before any of them knew what was happening. Ana watched, feeling as if everything were playing in slow motion. The heaping platter sailed like a Frisbee toward her. It splattered across the Chantilly lace skirt, dumping its steaming contents upon the delicate fabric. Ana gasped in pain and shock as burning sauce penetrated to her thighs. She scarcely felt the plate crack at her feet or the jagged crockery edge that tore through her panty hose, slicing into her ankle. All she saw was her beautiful billowing dress dripping with spaghetti, the sauce hot and red as blood as it oozed down the lacy netting and into her shoes. All she felt was pure disbelief.
“What the hell is going on here? If you’ve hurt her...”
Roy’s voice floated to her as if from another planet. Slowly, dazedly, Ana raised her head to see him advancing upon her father with an expression of fury tautening his features to fine-honed steel. Her eyes dulled as she looked away. If she looked into his face, she was certain she’d see either pity or contempt, and she couldn’t bear either one. A paralyzing numbness seeped through her.
“Ana.” Roy stopped short at the vacant expression in her eyes. She looked as though she were about to topple over in a faint. He reached out, ready to grab her, but like quicksilver she backed away. “Come on, Ana, let’s get out of here,” he muttered hoarsely.
She shrank from his touch. She stared blindly from Roy’s agonized face to her father’s shocked one, then down at her dress. Ruined. Everything was ruined. Hatred bubbled up within her, hot, ugly, raw as a reopened wound.
Above the ticking of the kitchen clock she heard a car door slam. Cindi Jo’s and Al’s laughter pealed through the open screen door as they crossed the porch. “Hey, folks, how long does it take to pin on a corsage?” Al demanded.
Something snapped inside of her. It all came together in a surreal blur: the sounds of her father’s raspy breathing, the ticking of the clock, Cindi Jo’s low-pitched giggle. She saw the half-horrified, half-defiant look on her daddy’s face and closed her eyes, rocked with hatred. The pungent, overpowering smell of spaghetti assailed her nostrils.
Ana bolted for the kitchen door.
“Ana! Wait!”
She heard Roy’s cry but never looked back. She was across the yard before he could run after her. Before the screen door had slammed, she had slipped under the rotting wooden fence, across the alley, and into the dark tangle of the woods, bramble tearing at what was left of her gown. Then all she could hear was the pounding in her ears as her blood pumped furiously and her feet slammed into the soft, springy earth.
She cowered in the darkness with only the gnats and mosquitoes for company until Roy and the others had given up searching for her. At four in the morning, when she knew her father would be passed out colder than a stiff in a coffin, she crept out of the woods, across the yard, and back into the house. This is the last time, she told herself, the last time I ever set foot inside this door.
Everything was exactly as she had left it. The beer and broken crockery still littered the floor, the dried crusty pasta and meat sauce had hardened on the linoleum. Fighting back nausea, she picked her way to her room. With trembling hands she peeled off the now stiff, sour-smelling dress and hurled it into a corner. She ran a cold washcloth over her skin, fearful of waking her father if she turned on the shower. Dressing hastily in a T-shirt and jeans, she stuffed shorts, tops, and underwear into a gym bag and emptied her Coke-bottle piggy bank into her denim purse. $23.17. Better than nothing, Ana thought grimly.
She stared around her bedroom at the stuffed animals and Cabbage Patch doll on her patchwork quilt, at the scuffed cowboy boots under her Elvis poster, at the shoebox on her dresser containing all of her lipstick, blush, and half-used bottle of Avon nail polish. A sob caught in her throat as she opened the top dresser drawer and took out the framed photo of her mother, faded to pale yellows and reds. She studied the young, hopeful face smiling up at her, the face of her mother before she was married, then abruptly slammed the photo back into the drawer. Mother left me and this house. Now it’s time for me to leave too.
Her gaze swept to the other framed photo in the bedroom, the one of Grammaw taken at a family picnic the summer before she died. Ana squashed it into her gym bag, then carefully removed the pearl earrings and necklace she still wore. Listening in trepidation to the sounds of her father’s snores from down the hall, she stuck them with shaking fingers into the coin section of her wallet. Whirling about, her throat tight with unshed tears, Ana made a final check of the room. Then she grabbed her denim jacket from the rocking chair.
She stooped over the orchid corsage still nestled in its plastic box near the front door. She reached for it, then pulled her hand back.
No, she whispered. Leave it. Leave it in this house. Leave it to wither and die, like everything else in this place.
And then she was gone.
She hitchhiked her way as far as Las Vegas, to the town of tawdry tinsel and neon lights. A town as far removed from the gritty gray gloom of Buck Hollow as she could get.
And in Las Vegas she met Eric Gunn.
* * *
The chime of the doorbell snapped Ana back to her airy kitchen with a jolt. She drew in a deep breath. It had all happened so long ago, yet it felt as if it were yesterday.
Ana scrubbed her clammy palms across her sweats and started toward the door as the chime pealed again. Eric Gunn was every bit as much a supporting player in her past as was Buddy Crocker, Roy Cody, and her own father. But his was an even larger, uglier role—the heavy who’d been written out of the script, but like Freddy Krueger refused to exit for long.
But Harry Damone is going to fix that, Ana told herself as she opened the pickled-oak door.
Harry stood there, a wad of gum cracking in his mouth, a baggy warm-up suit covering his squat frame. He was a short dumpling of a man with merry elfin features and a salt and pepper toupee. He packed a .45 in his shoulder holster and a package of peanut M&Ms in his back pocket along with pictures of his three grandkids. He might not look like Bogey, Ana thought as she led him into the sunken living room with its turquoise walls and coral leather sofas, but he’s every bit as shrewd as Philip Marlowe.
“I haven’t had dinner yet, Harry. Can I get you something?”
“A Perrier and a Pepto-Bismol, my ulcer is killing me.” Harry sank into the overstuffed peach leather armchair and settled his feet atop the matching ottoman. He crumpled a silver gum wrapper between his fingers and aimed for the ceramic bowl in the center of the coffee table. “Ech. So I don’t get two points,” he grumbled as the wrapper skidded on to the floor.
Ana regarded him with affection. Harry was going to help her get rid of Eric. He didn’t look much like a knight in shining armor, but that’s what he was. By the time Harry and his dauntless companions finished with their little task, the dragon—if not slain—would at least be reduced to a limping lizard bereft of power, danger, and fire.