Jim acknowledged his arrival with a lazy wave. “Chad. Join us.”
Chad nodded and approached the table, pulling out a wicker chair opposite Jim. “I see you’re deep into the day’s meditations.” He settled into the creaky chair and set his beer bottle on the dusty wooden table.“Uncovering any new universal truths today?”
Jim’s eyes were hidden behind dark sunglasses, but a lazy smile slowly formed at the corners of his mouth. “What we’re doing, Chad, is engaging in the ancient ritual known as getting fucked up beyond all recognition.
You should join us.”
Jack Paradise lifted a glass containing two fingers of brown liquid and chuckled before taking a drink. “Jim’s getting fucked up. Me, I always indulge at a slow maintenance level.” He stared at the glass cupped between his large hands. His eyes had a haunted look. “After all, the shit could hit the fan at any time.”
Jack was seated next to Jim on the opposite side of the table. Directly opposite Jack was Wanda Lewis, formerly known as “Wicked Wanda” during her time Below. Wanda’s dark hair was drawn back in a ponytail. She wore form-fitting dark clothes. A thin brown cigarette smoldered between two fingers of her right hand. She looked at Chad with a soft, druggy smile and said, “And I wouldn’t exactly say I’m fucked up, but I ain’t quite sober either.” She laughed and leaned back in her chair, bringing her hand to her mouth to puff at the brown cigarette. “Could be me and ‘fucked up’ will be having a rendezvous sometime in the near future.”
Chad noticed a simple plastic bong at the center of the table. It was the sort of thing a frat boy might buy for fifteen bucks at a campus head shop. Next to it was a .45 automatic, a clip for the .45, and an open box of ammunition. As Chad watched, Jim picked up the empty clip and fed bullets into it. He did this slowly and with much deliberation, clearly determined to perform this task with precision despite his high level of inebriation. Then he flipped the safety on and set the gun back on the table.
Jim removed his sunglasses and tucked them in his shirt’s front pocket. He leaned across the table and regarded Chad with eyes that were bloodshot but somber. “So what’s on your mind, friend?”
Chad picked up the Budweiser bottle and twir led the long neck slowly between his fingers without taking a drink. “Things are still weird between Allyson and me. I don’t know what to do about it. And I keep wondering whether bringing her to this place was the right thing to do. Maybe I was wrong about that. A girl like Allyson was made for life in the city. I can sense her getting restless already.”
Jim’s expression grew more intent even as he reached for the bong. “You need to have a serious talk with that girl, Chad, regardless of whether things are ‘weird’ between you.”
Chad leaned back in his chair and let the Bud bottle hang by his side. “Yeah, I know, okay?” He watched Jim fire up the bong and wondered whether a hit or two of the potent weed might improve his mood.
He was reaching for the bong when Wanda said, “Maybe I should have a talk with her.” She shrugged when Chad showed her a puzzled look. “Hey, why not? She might feel more comfortable talking this shit out with a woman.”
Jim passed the bong to Chad and said, “I agree. Let Wanda talk to her. Open up some new channels of communication and see what happens.”
Chad accepted the bong. He put the lighter to the bowl, covered the carb with a fingertip, and inhaled a lungful of smoke. He held the smoke inside for a full twenty seconds before blowing a white stream at the ceiling. A few moments later he felt some of the tension go out of his body. He did a few more hits and felt even better. At some fuzzy point the sitar music gave way to the Velvet Underground. Chad was aware of laughter, but his sense of the ongoing conversation became garbled and disjointed. He hardly noticed when Wanda stood up from the table and left the cabin.
Allyson’s fingers were starting to cramp from all the hours she’d spent chopping vegetables for Camp Whiskey’s cooking crew. A big feast was in the works for the evening and all day long the mess hall’s kitchen had been a bustle of activity. But now it was late in the afternoon and the other women she’d been working with had knocked off for a final break before the last big pre-dinner push. They hadn’t invited her to join them outside, which was typical of the way she’d been shunned from the beginning. Though Chad denied it, she suspected the thinly disguised ill will toward her was a result of Jim’s lingering distrust of her.
Allyson’s life prior to arriving at Camp Whiskey had not been an easy one, but she was pretty and personable and so had always managed to find a way to fit in wherever she went. This ostracism was something new. Being surrounded by people who would barely talk to her or look at her was worse by far than merely being alone. It hurt her in a fundamental way that she’d never truly experienced before. And, of course, they all knew of her past in the porn industry. Someone—
Jim, she thought, her blood boiling.
—had decided to share this bit of information with his inner circle. And the juicy tidbit had filtered down through the grapevine until everyone knew about it. Chad’s apparent unwillingness to stand up for her made it worse. It was almost as frustrating as her several failed attempts at seducing him. He didn’t seem at all interested in her physically anymore, and Allyson was beginning to feel it was pointless to keep trying.
Thinking about it caused her to grit her teeth and start chopping the carrots faster. She wielded the gleaming blade in her hand with a swift efficiency. Something about the task made her recall how easily the axe blade had punched through the flesh of the men sent to retrieve Chad and Jim. She imagined the blade in her hand pressed to Jim’s throat. Saw his eyes go wide as she eased the sharp wedge of steel into his flesh and drew blood, his pleas for mercy going unanswered as she made him pay dearly for the humiliation she’d suffered. But the fantasy brought no real satisfaction. Her wounded pride aside, she ached to fit in and be accepted. Ached to have Chad like and respect her again.
She didn’t realize her eyes had filled with tears until she heard the sound of boot heels on the kitchen floor. She wiped her eyes with the back of a hand and looked up to see Wanda Lewis entering the kitchen from the mess hall. The woman was tall and slender, and possessed of a striking prettiness that made Allyson want to touch her. Which was just odd. Allyson had performed sexual acts with women before, but never outside the context of porn films. Hetero was her default orientation and she was happy with it, so it was a strange thing to feel that little tingle of arousal every time she saw Wanda’s face.
There was a small, enigmatic smile teasing the corners of the woman’s mouth as she approached Allyson and placed a hand on her arm. “Come for a walk with me, Allyson. I’d like to talk with you about some things.”
Allyson looked into the taller woman’s luminous green eyes and felt something melt inside her. Maybe Wanda had approached her as a peacemaker. Perhaps she’d even been sent by Jim for that very purpose. The prospect of being accepted at last by the inner circle made her heart skip a beat. She felt like crying again, but she managed to keep the tears at bay. She dared not get her hopes up too soon.
She let go of the knife and wiped her hands on the dirty apron tied about her waist. “Okay.” She untied the apron and tossed it over the back of a chair. “I’m about sick of this women’s work bullshit anyway.”
Wanda smiled again and moved toward the screen door at the rear of the kitchen. Allyson followed her outside and noted at once the mixture of disdain and curiosity playing across the faces of her co-workers. Most of them puffed at cigarettes and pretended not to notice her, but one man, a soldier who’d moved away from the nearby woods to talk to the gathered women, looked her in the eye for a moment. A flicker of some unreadable emotion passed over his face and disappeared.