“Sookie, this is Arlene. I’m sorry about everything. I wish you’d come by to talk. Give me a call.”
I stared at the machine, not sure how I felt about this message. It had been a few days, and Arlene had had time to reconsider stomping out of the bar. Could she possibly mean she wanted to recant her Fellowship beliefs?
There was another message, this one from Sam. “Sookie, can you come in to work a little early today or give me a call? I need to talk to you.”
I glanced at the clock. It was just one p.m., and I wasn’t due at work until five. I called the bar. Sam picked up.
“Hey, it’s Sookie,” I said. “What’s up? I just got your message.”
“Arlene wants to come back to work,” he said. “I don’t know what to tell her. You got an opinion?”
“She left a message on my answering machine. She wants to talk to me,” I said. “I don’t know what to think. She’s always on some new thing, isn’t she? Do you think she could have dropped the Fellowship?”
“If Whit dropped her,” he said, and I laughed.
I wasn’t so sure I wanted to rebuild our friendship, and the longer I thought about it, the more doubtful I became. Arlene had said some hurtful and awful things to me. If she’d meant them, why would she want to mend fences with a terrible person like me? And if she hadn’t meant them, why on earth had they passed her lips? But I felt a twinge when I thought of her children, Coby and Lisa. I’d kept them so many evenings, and I’d been so fond of them. I hadn’t seen them in weeks. I found I wasn’t too upset about the passing of my relationship with their mother—Arlene had been killing that friendship for some time now. But the kids, I did miss them. I said as much to Sam.
“You’re too good,cher ,” he said. “I don’t think I want her back here.” He’d made up his mind. “I hope she can find another job, and I’ll give her a reference for the sake of those kids. But she was causing trouble before this last blowup, and there’s no point putting all of us through the wringer.”
After I’d hung up, I realized that Sam’s decision had influenced me in favor of seeing my ex-friend. Since Arlene and I weren’t going to get the opportunity to gradually make peace at the bar, I’d try to at least fix things so we could nod at each other if we passed in Wal-Mart.
She picked up on the first ring. “Arlene, it’s Sookie,” I said.
“Hey, hon, I’m glad you called back,” she said. There was a moment of silence.
“I thought I’d come over to see you, just for a minute,” I said awkwardly. “I’d like to see the kids and talk to you. If that’s okay.”
“Sure, come over. Give me a few minutes, so I can pick up the mess.”
“You don’t need to do that for me.” I’d cleaned Arlene’s trailer many a time in return for some favor she’d done me or because I didn’t have anything else to do while she was out and I was there to babysit.
“I don’t want to slide back into my old ways,” she said cheerfully, sounding so affectionate that my heart lifted . . . for just a second.
But I didn’t wait a few minutes.
I left immediately.
I couldn’t explain to myself why I wasn’t doing what she’d asked me to do. Maybe I’d caught something in Arlene’s voice, even over the phone. Maybe I was recalling all the times Arlene had let me down, all the occasions she’d made me feel bad.
I don’t think I’d let myself dwell on these incidents before, because they revealed such a colossal pitifulness on my part. I’d needed a friend so badly I’d clung to the meager scraps from Arlene’s table, though she’d taken advantage of me time after time. When her dating wind had blown the other way, she hadn’t thought twice about discarding me to win favor with her current flame.
In fact, the more I thought, the more I was inclined to turn around and head back to my house. But didn’t I owe Coby and Lisa one more try to mend my relationship with their mom? I remembered all the board games we’d played, all the times I’d put them to bed and spent the night in the trailer because Arlene had called to ask if she could spend the night away.
What the hell was I doing? Why was I trusting Arlenenow ?
I wasn’t, not completely. That’s why I was going to scope out the situation.
Arlene didn’t live in a trailer park but on an acre of land a little west of town that her dad had given her before he passed away. Only a quarter acre had been cleared, just enough for the trailer and a small yard. There was an old swing set in the back that one of Arlene’s former admirers had assembled for the kids, and there were two bikes pushed up against the back of the trailer.
I was looking at the trailer from the rear because I’d pulled off the road into the overgrown yard of a little house that had stood next door until its bad wiring had caused a fire a couple of months before. Since then, the frame house had stood half-charred and forlorn, and the former renters had found somewhere else to live. I was able to pull behind the house, because the cold weather had kept the weeds from taking over.
I picked a path through the fringe of high weeds and trees that separated this house from Arlene’s. Working through the thickest growth, I made my way to a vantage point where I could see part of the parking area in front of the trailer and all of the backyard. Only Arlene’s car was visible from the road, since it had been left in the front yard.
From my vantage point, I could see that behind the trailer was parked a black Ford Ranger pickup, maybe ten years old, and a red Buick Skylark of approximately the same vintage. The pickup was loaded down with pieces of wood, one long enough to protrude beyond the truck bed. They measured about four by four, I estimated.
As I watched, a woman I vaguely recognized came out of the back of the trailer onto the little deck. Her name was Helen Ellis, and she’d worked at Merlotte’s about four years before. Though Helen was competent and so pretty she’d drawn the men in like flies, Sam had had to fire her for repeated lateness. Helen had been volcanically upset. Lisa and Coby followed Helen onto the deck. Arlene was framed in the doorway. She was wearing a leopard print top over brown stretch pants.
The kids looked so much older than the last time I’d seen them! They looked reluctant and a little unhappy, especially Coby. Helen smiled at them encouragingly and turned back to Arlene to say, “Just let me know when it’s over!” There was a pause while Helen seemed to struggle with how to phrase something she didn’t want the kids to understand. “She’s only getting what she deserves.” I could see Helen only in profile, but her cheerful smile made my stomach heave. I swallowed hard.
“Okay, Helen. I’ll call you when you can bring ’em back,” Arlene said. There was a man standing behind her. He was too far back in the interior for me to identify with certainty, but I thought he was the man I’d hit on the head with a tray a couple of months back, the man who’d been so ugly to Pam and Amelia. He was one of Arlene’s new buddies.
Helen and the kids drove off in the Skylark.
Arlene had closed the back door against the chill of the day. I shut my eyes and located her inside the trailer. I found there were two men in there with her. What were they thinking about? I was a little far, but I stretched out with my extra sense.
They were thinking about doing awful things to me.
I crouched under a bare mimosa, feeling as bleak and miserable as I’ve ever felt. Granted, I’d known for some time that Arlene wasn’t truly a good person or even a faithful person. Granted, I’d heard her rant and rave about the eradication of the supernaturals of the world. Granted, I’d come to realize that she’d slipped into regarding me as one of them. But I’d never let myself believe that whatever affection she’d ever felt for me had slipped away entirely, transmuted by the Fellowship’s policy of hate.
I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket. I called Andy Bellefleur.