16

Pace should have guessed that his taking up with Punzy would not sit well with Bitsy. He had just purchased a bottle of Barbancourt rum when Bitsy cornered him as he stepped out of Spike and Mike’s Liquor Room in Bay St. Clement. She was wearing white overalls to accommodate more comfortably her increasingly protruding stomach and a faded black Are You Experienced? Jimi Hendrix T-shirt. Her uncombed hair fell loosely around her shoulders and she was not wearing make-up. Still, she looked lovely and healthy, Pace thought, except for an expression on her face that made her appear as if she had just slaughtered a rabbit and bitten off its head. The only missing element was a smear of the decapitated creature’s blood around Bitsy’s mouth and chin.

“You just had to go and bang Punzy, didn’t you? Damn it, Pace Roscoe Ripley, you didn’t give a second’s thought about how it would make me feel. Bein’ pregnant and all, I mean. My emotional quotient ain’t two blips off the perilous line, anyway, and then I gotta get an earful from my daddy-complected little sister who’s practically the only person I’ve confided in concernin’ your probable complicity in the upcomin’ Great Event, about how she and you are romantically involved and she’s fast convincin’ herself that you’re the man of her just-past-adolescent dreams. For your information, this is the same shit she broadcast about that decrepit, washed-up lounge lizard Mexican boozehound had a hard eight won’t work any more, so don’t get carried away thinkin’ you’re so g.d. special.”

Pace stood and stared at this wild-eyed, wild-haired harridan whose acquaintance he had no recollection of ever having made before. Bitsy was winded from delivering her diatribe and was breathing hard. Pearl-sized sweat beads decorated her forehead and her mouth was locked in a paralyzed snarl. He waited until she seemed to have regained her composure before he spoke.

“What do you mean ‘practically’?”

Bitsy was puzzled. “Huh?” she squeaked.

“You said Punzy was practically the only person you confided in about us.”

“Yeah, so?”

“I thought it was our understanding that the possibility of my complicity, as you put it, was our secret to protect Del. And don’t forget your not playin’ straight with me from the jump.”

Bitsy stepped back and ran her white-coated tongue around her lips as if she were cleansing them of the last few drops of rabbit blood.

“Fuck it, Pace, I’m a girl.”

“I guess my grandmama Marietta’s Mob beau Marcello Santos was correct when he said, ‘Three can keep a secret if two are dead.’”

“Leave Punzy be, Pace, is all I’m sayin’. She’s damaged goods. You don’t know the whole story and no matter what she might have told you about herself it couldn’t be the half of it. Not only that but her crazy Aztec husband is due to come crashin’ out of the jungle any minute. Punzy didn’t tell you he’d be huntin’ her ass down?”

“She only said she wasn’t sure if he would or not.”

“Well, he’s comin’, and knowin’ Abstemio Cruz as I do, he’ll sniff Punzy’s cunt juice on your peckerwood pecker from a kilometer away.”

“Thanks for the warning, Bitsy. Now I’ll go back to the cottage and mix myself a mojito or two.”

Pace walked past Bitsy and got into his Pathfinder. Just as he was about to turn the key in the ignition, Bitsy ran to the driver’s side window and planted a kiss on the glass. Then she turned around and walked off. Pace sat there, confused, bewildered and dazed.

“All things bein’ equal, Daddy,” he said aloud, hoping Sailor might hear his lament, “they ain’t now and never have been.”