Charlie was back on the air. Eli kept me posted. Apparently, Charlie had lost none of his edge, but one day the sadness in his voice had become so overwhelming that Eli called the station and invited Charlie to meet him and his psychiatrist, Dan Kasperski, for coffee. The two men had hit it off so well that, when Charlie asked, Dan accepted him as a patient.
Alex came home with a fresh tin of hemp oil that we managed to empty by the end of his first week back. After one particularly gratifying hour of lovemaking, Alex lay back on his pillow and grinned at me. “As Truman Capote once said, ‘Home! And Happy to Be.’ ”
I rolled over and snuggled in. “Imagine a kid from Standing Buffalo quoting Truman Capote.”
Alex kissed the top of my head. “You forget,” he said. “I’ve been to the big city.”
Busy with Alex, plans for the boys’ graduations, Taylor’s endless end-of-term activities, and my own marking, I never seemed to get around to calling Bebe Morrissey. Characteristically, Bebe took matters into her own hands and invited me over.
Rain was threatening the afternoon I pulled up in front of EXXXOTICA, but the marigolds in Ronnie’s iron pots were cheery, and Kyle, who was installing a cinder-block front walk, was cheery, too. As soon as he recognized me, he threw down his shovel. “Great to see you,” he said. “I’ll take you up to Bebe. There’s a ton of customers in the store. Rainy days and full moons are good for business, at least that’s what Ronnie always says.”
Business was indeed booming. Ronnie was at the cash register, ringing up a stack of videos. She waved when she saw me. “Come talk to me before you leave,” she said.
“Absolutely,” I said. Then I followed Kyle up the narrow stairs to Bebe’s room.
There were fresh circles of rouge on Bebe’s wizened apple cheeks, and her white hair was brushed into an aureole as insubstantial as dandelion fluff. “Well, we got her,” she said by way of greeting. “We got our murderer, that Livia Brook. I’ve made a whole scrapbook on the case. It’s over there on the chest. I thought we could look at it together while we had our snack.”
As I drank my chocolate milk and perused Bebe’s album, I thought there were worse ways to spend a rainy afternoon. The milk was comforting and, mounted in the scrapbook, the grainy newsprint pictures of people I had known so well already seemed distant, part of a painful but receding history.
When I closed the book, Bebe’s blue eyes were bright with interest. “So what d’ya make of it?”
“You did a terrific job,” I said. “Not just on the book, but on identifying Livia. You probably saved a woman’s life. After you called that night and told me it was Livia who had quarrelled with Ariel, I went straight to the university. Solange Levy – you have her picture in your book – was already bleeding badly. She might have died if I hadn’t made it in time. She has you to thank for the fact that I did.”
“So she’s going to be okay?”
“Yes,” I said. “It’ll take her a while to recuperate, but she’s going to be fine.”
Bebe burrowed through the basket of dolls on her knee. Finally, she found what she was a looking for: a Barbie with platinum hair piled high, a tiara of bubble-gum-pink hearts, and a ballgown with a bodice comprised of two hearts that covered Barbie’s breasts like shields and a skirt of stiffly crocheted flowers. “Give Miss Hearts and Flowers to that Solange,” Bebe said. “It doesn’t matter how old a girl is, she always feels better if she gets a new doll.”
Ronnie was reshelving videos when I got back downstairs. She was in a checked shirt and bluejeans, and she was very tanned.
“Have you been away?” I asked.
“Nah,” she said. “Just a tanning salon. I’ll never be beauty-pageant material like her,” she said, pointing to the Barbie I was holding. “I figure the least I can do is look wholesome.”
“It works for you,” I said. “I like the way that gingham ribbon in your hair matches your shirt – very Doris Day.”
Ronnie swished her ponytail. “You know, Joanne, one of the things I like about you is that you never once asked me about the gender thing.”
I smiled at her. “That’s because I know it’s tough being a woman.”
Ronnie clapped her massive hands together and roared with laughter. “You’ve got that one right, friend,” she said. “But I’ll let you in on a little secret. It’s no bowl of cherries playing for the other team either.”