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PART II
ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS

52

MARINA WAS SURPRISED when Trey slogged in the back door at ten. She had just arisen from her evening nap and was at the kitchen table looking through fashion magazines, trying to figure out what would look best on her as her belly and breasts grew. As far as she was concerned, nothing looked good on any pregnant woman. She was going to need Dot’s objective eye.

“Oh, hello,” she said, hurrying to greet him and make him comfortable.

“Thanks, Sugga,” he mumbled as she helped him out of his suit coat.

“Is something wrong? Are you hurt?”

“Neh,” he muttered. “Well, yeah, somethin’s wrong, but I don’t know how to say it an’ I don’t wanna talk about it anyway but we gotta and—”

Marina waited. “Trey,” she said softly, “I’m not going to laugh at you.”

“Well, I know that!” he snapped.

Marina stepped back to give him some space. Dot only got snappy when she was frustrated about a situation she couldn’t control. Marina hadn’t figured out everything that made Trey snappy, but being embarrassed was certainly one of them.

“I loved the picture show,” she offered. “Thank you for taking me.”

“You’re welcome,” he muttered.

“Do you want some coffee? I made a pot.”

“No. I’m tired and I wanna go to bed.”

She blinked. “Oh, well of course you’re tired. You work very hard and never get enough sleep.”

He dropped in his chair at the kitchen table.

“I made you a plate,” Marina murmured and gathered up her magazines. “I’ll get it.”

She did, and took a fresh bottle of milk out of the refrigerator, then sat across from him.

He picked up his fork and dug in without a word, then stopped. Chewed thoughtfully. Looked down at the plate. Took another bite. “Goddamn,” he whispered, cutting into the meatball with gusto.

Marina released the breath she’d been holding. “I guess you like it?” she asked hesitantly.

“Do not ever,” he said around his bite, “let anybody I know have these meatballs.”

Marina didn’t know what to think about that.

“The meatballs you had at Correggio’s, the ones you didn’t like. That’s Marie Lazia’s recipe. They’re godawful, as everyone in town knows, but if you want your Italian restaurant to do any business, you make ’em or God help you if Brother John finds out. Your meatballs goin’ head to head with Marie’s could cause a war.”

“Oh, that’s sweet of him.”

“Yeah, but everybody else in town pays for it.”

Marina laughed.

“I like it when you laugh,” he said throatily, looking at her the way he’d looked at her at the concert. Her smile faded and she grew nervous.

“Why are you looking at me that way?”

“I wanna fuck you.”

Marina choked, her heart thumping, her breath short.

“But I’m not gonna.”

She closed her eyes and her body relaxed.

“For a while.”

She opened her eyes. “Well, of course. When we want another baby.”

“Sex ain’t just for makin’ babies,” he said matter-of-factly, still eating even though his plate was nearly empty. She arose to refill it. “’Preciate it. Damned tired of steak and fried chicken.”

“Are you going to argue about this again?”

“Argue, no. Try to explain my position better, yes.”

“And it’s important enough for you to come home from work early?”

He nodded. “My girls. The ones who quit over you.”

“Um … ”

“Now, I’m tellin’ you straight up because I want somethin’ from you I gotta earn but I don’t wanna do it the way they want me to.”

Now Marina was completely confused. “I thought you wanted to be indecent with me. That’s what you said.”

“I know what I said. I just now sorted out why I said it.”

“Because you don’t want our friendship to change. That’s simple. It makes sense.”

“Well, that, but—” He took a deep breath. “I wanna be your best friend. Not Dot.”

Marina’s mouth dropped open. That was not a mystery she could have solved even if she’d been given all the clues.

“I don’t like Dot because I’m jealous,” he muttered. “I have been from the second I met you.”

“Dot and I have been best friends since we were six. I haven’t even known you six months.”

He gave her a gallic shrug. “That’s it, laid bare. That’s what I want. My people seem to think bumping Dot off the number one spot means I have to fu— I need to be indecent with you.”

Marina’s only real experience with anger was at Dot, and then only on the rare occasions Dot pushed her too hard. Then they made up. Otherwise, Marina had never known enough or felt enough to be angry. Now, here, with the new husband to whom she wanted to be a good wife, it was disconcerting, all this anger welling up inside her. But the more she learned, the angrier she got. Soon she’d be nothing but a roiling mass of anger if she didn’t learn how to control it.

“Sister Albright,” she began carefully, “said that you were right about indecency between friends ruining everything.”

Trey drew back in surprise. “I don’t know what I think about you talkin’ to people about our home life.”

“Well, I would talk about it with you if you made any sense at all!”

Horrified, she clapped her hands over her mouth, her eyes wide.

Trey was just as shocked, but then the corner of his mouth twitched up a bit. Then he started snickering, which turned into laughter. “I knew you had it in you, Sugga. I knew it. The way I know you have—” He clapped his mouth shut and turned his attention back to his plate. Now he wasn’t eating. He was fiddling.

Marina harrumphed and crossed her arms over her chest. She should apologize, but she wasn’t sorry and she wasn’t going to lie, not even by making her body lie for her.

After a long, awkward silence, he cleared his throat. “So, uh, she agreed with me?”

“You didn’t let me finish,” she muttered resentfully. “She said when friends get married, being indecent makes their life together easier.”

“That’s basically what I was told, too.”

“But you’re still going to see me as a loose woman.”

His fingers curled into his palm. “I am going to try to teach you how to be with me without me thinking that. What I came home to talk about is if you think you can help me do that by not thinking of me as a chore.”

Marina clasped her fingers and began to wring them. “Tonight?” she whispered.

“No. I need to— I have a plan. Don’t know when I’ll want to do it, but I’m asking, when we’re both in our right minds, if you’ll participate a little bit and not just lie there and let me do what’ll make me come. Orgasm, I mean.”

She gave him a pained grimace.

“Yeah, I don’t like that word, either.”

“Why would you want to make me give Dot up?” she whispered.

He shoved his hand through his hair in frustration. “I’m not asking you to give her up! I’m asking you for the number one spot. I have been told in no uncertain terms that to do that, we have to be indecent.”

She blinked. “Oh. But— We have to be? I don’t understand how the process gets started, but I think it involves uncontrollable lust.”

Trey burst out laughing again and sat back, putting his hands over his face while he roared his delight at the ceiling.

Marina watched him, simultaneously surprised and pleased with herself that she could be clever enough to make him laugh like that.

Now that he’d brought his jealousy and frank request to her, her anger dissipated. She’d never had anyone but Dot want to be her friend, so this desire of his was unfamiliar. It was really rather nice that anyone was jealous over her at all.

Dot wanted to keep her from straying. Trey wanted to wrestle her away from Dot. That it was the two people she liked most in the world was going to be a problem. It always had been, from the very first, and now there was no Gene to distract Dot. But … she kind of liked it.

His laughter wound down, then he opened his eyes and looked at her, a wide grin on his face. “The idea is that I help you work up to uncontrollable lust, which will help you help me work up to uncontrol­lable lust.”

Marina’s pleasure faded, however, when she realized—

“What’re you not sayin’, Sugga?”

She gulped and looked down at the table. “Why are you angry I asked Sister Albright about … it? I need help to understand some of these things and you confuse me.”

“I can allow as how that’s true, but it isn’t her business.”

“It’s not your employees’ business, either. You’ve told them so much they have to tell you what to do and how to do it.”

His jaw went up and down like a fish’s, his eyes wide. “Lawyering on me again?”

“I don’t know why you keep saying that,” she murmured, hurt. “It’s just common sense. I’ve never had to ask someone how to be Dot’s best friend, and when we argue and hurt each other’s feelings, we talk about it and then apologize. I don’t run to Sister Albright to ask how to get back in Dot’s good graces.”

His mouth tightened. “It’s not the same.”

“If you want to be my best pal, it is,” she said earnestly, trying to make him understand.

“You sleep with me!” Trey snapped.

She gasped. “Because you make me!”

He sat stunned.

“Making me sleep with you when I don’t want to isn’t going to make me want you to be my best pal. And then not wanting me to ask for help when you can’t explain even though you talk about it a lot and then go and talk to a whole lot of other people about us. Well,” she said with quiet dignity. “I’m going to keep asking Sister Albright about your problem because you’re going to keep talking to your people about your problem as if I have refused you, which I have not. You can make me sleep with you and you can make me be indecent with you, but you can’t make me think of you as my best pal. Dot wanted to protect me from you, and she was right that you wanted something from me, but I didn’t listen to her. You forced your way between us, and we fought, but we stayed best pals because that’s what best pals do.”

He couldn’t seem to say anything. His face was ashen and the hand around his fork was trembling.

“I like you,” she finished softly, “in spite of everything. You’re trying, and I appreciate that. Even knowing everything I know, I would choose to live with you over Mother. So when you’re ready to try being indecent with me without thinking of me as a loose woman, I’ll try not to think of you as a chore.”

He threw his fork down and stood so fast the chair tumbled backward and clattered on the floor. “Looking like you’re going to the goddamned gallows isn’t my idea of trying,” he snarled before storming up the stairs.

Marina sat for a long time, looking at Trey’s half-eaten plate of spaghetti and meatballs but not seeing them, feeling lost and alone and helpless.

52

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