Okay, screw the brooding introspection. My life was what it was. If it had been tougher and bloodier than I’d ever imagined . . . that was a done deal.
Suspect Number One for “helping Sookie dispose of a body” came in right after that. My brother, Jason, was a werepanther, and though he hadn’t ever changed publicly, word had gotten around. Jason had never been able to keep his mouth shut when he was excited about something. If I’d called him to help me put a woman in a Dumpster, he would have jumped in his pickup and been there as fast as he could drive.
I waved at my brother as he walked in the door holding hands with his Michele. Jason was still stained and sweaty after a long, hot day’s work as a boss of one of the parish road crews. Michele looked perky in contrast, in her red polo shirt all the employees wore at the Schubert Ford dealership. They were both in the throes of marriage fever. But like everyone else in Bon Temps, they were fascinated by the death of a former Merlotte’s server.
I didn’t want to talk about Arlene, so I headed them off by telling Michele I’d found a dress to wear in the wedding. Their forthcoming ceremony took precedence over everything else, even a lurid death in the parking lot. As I’d hoped, Michele asked me a million questions and said she was going to come by to look at it, and she told me Greater Love Baptist (Michele’s dad’s church) was willing to lend their folding tables and chairs for the potluck reception at Jason’s house. A friend of Michele’s had volunteered to make the cake as her wedding present to the happy couple, and the mother of another friend was going to do the flowers at cost. By the time they’d finished their meals and paid their tab, the word “strangled” hadn’t entered the conversation.
That was the only respite I had the whole evening. Though I’d noticed the bar crowd was thin the previous day, an amazing number of people now told me they’d seen Arlene enter Merlotte’s. They’d all spoken to her personally before watching her go to the office. And they’d all watched her leave (either five or fifteen or fifty minutes afterward) with steam coming out of her ears. No matter how their stories varied on other points of interest, to me that was the important memory: that she’d left, alive and unharmed. And angry.
“Did she come to ask your forgiveness?” Maxine Fortenberry asked. Maxine had come in to have supper with two of her cronies, buddies of my grandmother’s.
“No, she wanted a job,” I said, with as much frank and open honesty as I could plaster on my face.
All three women looked delightfully shocked. “Not really,” Maxine breathed. “She had the gall to ask if she could have her job back?”
“She couldn’t see why not,” I said, lifting a shoulder as I gathered up their dirty plates. “You all want a refill on your tea?”
“Sure, bring the pitcher around,” Maxine said. “My Lord, Sookie. That just takes the cake.”
She was absolutely right.
The next moment I had to spare was spent cudgeling my brain to try to remember when I’d last seen that blue and green scarf. Sam had said he remembered me wearing it to church with a black dress. That would have been to a funeral, because I didn’t like to wear black and reserved it for the most serious occasions. Whose funeral? Maybe Sid Matt Lancaster’s? Or Caroline Bellefleur’s? I’d been to several funerals in the past couple of years, since most of Gran’s friends were aging, but Sam wouldn’t have gone to those.
Jane Bodehouse drifted into Merlotte’s close to suppertime. She clambered onto her usual stool at the bar. I could feel my face get tight and angry when I looked at her. “You’ve got some nerve, Jane,” I said baldly. “Why do you want to drink here, when you’re so damaged by the firebomb incident? I can’t believe you can endure coming in here, you suffered so much.”
She was surprised for a second until the cogs in her brain turned enough to give up the memory that she’d hired a lawyer. She looked away, ostentatiously, trying to brazen it out.
The next time I passed her, she’d asked Sam to give her some more pretzels. He was reaching for the bowl. “Better hurry,” I said bitchily. “We don’t want Jane to get upset and call her lawyer.” Sam looked at me in surprise. He hadn’t seen the mail yet. “Jane’s suing us, Sam,” I said, and marched to the hatch to give the next order to Antoine. “For her hospital expenses and maybe for her mental distress,” I threw over my shoulder.
“Jane,” Sam said behind me, genuinely amazed. “Jane Bodehouse! Where are you gonna drink if you sue us? We’re the only bar in the area that lets you in these days!” Sam was telling her no more than the truth. Over the years, most of the bars in the area had come to refuse to serve Jane, who was prone to make sloppy passes at any man in her immediate vicinity. Only the drunkest men responded, because Jane wasn’t as careful with her personal hygiene as she had been even a year before.
“You can’t stop serving me,” she said indignantly. “Marvin says so. And that lawyer.”
“I think we can,” Sam said. “Starting now. You even know what that lawsuit says?” That was a shrewd bet.
As if he’d heard us, here came Marvin through the door, and he was mighty mad. “Mama!” he called. “What are you doing here? I told you, you can’t come here no more.” He caught my eye and glanced away, abashed. Everyone in Merlotte’s stopped what they were doing to listen. It was almost as good as reality television.
“Marvin,” I said, “I’m just hurt down to my toes that you would treat us like this. All these times I’ve called you instead of letting your mama drive home. All these times we’ve cleaned her up when she got sick, to say nothing of the night I stopped her from taking a guy into the ladies’ room. Are you going to keep your mama at home every night? How are you going to cope?”
I wasn’t saying anything that wasn’t the truth. And Marvin Bodehouse knew it.
“Just half the emergency room bill, then?” he said, pathetically.
“I’ll pay her bill,” Sam said handsomely. Of course, he hadn’t seen it. “But only after we get a letter from your lawyer saying you’re not going to seek anything else.”
Marvin glared down at his shoes for a second. Then he said, “I guess you can stay, Mama. Try not to drink too much, you hear?”
“Sure, honey,” Jane said, tapping the bar in front of her. “A chaser for that beer,” she told Sam, in a lady-of-the-manor voice.
“Putting that on your tab,” Sam said. And suddenly the life of the bar was back to normal. Marvin shuffled out, and Jane drank. I felt sorry for both of them, but I was not in charge of their lives, and all I could do was try to keep Jane off the roads when she was drunk.
An and I worked hard. Since everyone who came in proved to be hungry (maybe they needed fuel to produce their gossip), Antoine was so busy he lost his temper a couple of times, an unusual occurrence. Sam tried to find time to smile and greet people, but he was hustling to keep up with bar orders. My feet hurt, and my hair needed to be released from its ponytail, brushed, and put back up. I was looking forward to a shower with a craving almost sexual in its intensity. I actually managed to forget my appointment—I wasn’t going to call it a date—with Eric for later that night, but when it crossed my mind I realized I hadn’t gotten a definite time or place from him.
“Screw it,” I said to the plate of curly fries I was carrying to a table of auto-shop mechanics. “Here you go, fellas. And here’s some hot sauce, if you want to live dangerously. Eat and enjoy.”
Right on the heels of that thought, Karin glided through the front door. She looked around her as if she were in the monkey house at the zoo. Her eyebrows elevated slightly. Then she locked in on me, and she made her way toward me with a smoothness and economy of movement I envied.
“Sookie,” she said quietly, “Eric needs you to come to him now.” We were attracting no small amount of attention. Karin’s beauty, her pallor, and her creepy glide were a combo that added up to Watch me, I’m beautiful and lethal.