The Jealous Kind (Holland Family Saga #2) - James Lee Burke Page 0,111
head in her lap. The sun was gone, the sky turning from purple to dark blue. I could smell the cleanness of her dress and feel her fingers stroking my hair and tickling the back of my head. I closed my eyes and felt myself drifting away. The record changed, and “Marie” began to play. When the record changed again, the slow momentum of “Tommy Dorsey’s Boogie-Woogie” rose and fell and filled the yard and echoed off the walls of the house and garage as though we were seated in the midst of the orchestra.
“I didn’t know you had any Tommy Dorsey records,” I said, my eyes still closed.
“Those are the only two I have.”
“Your dad likes Tommy Dorsey?”
“Grady gave them to me.”
“Oh?”
“Oh what?”
“Nothing. I never thought he was a guy who’d like 1940s jazz or swing.”
“He liked it because his father didn’t. His father didn’t like anything connected with Negroes or Jews.”
I picked up her hand and stuck her fingers into my mouth.
“Why’d you do that?” she said.
“Because you taste good.”
“I’m afraid for you, Aaron.”
“Don’t be.”
“My father left me a gun. He said if any of those guys come to the house, I should call the police.”
“That’s good advice.”
“No, he said I should call the police, then kill the guys who were at the house.”
I opened my eyes. She was looking down at me. “Don’t listen to him. There’s always another way,” I said.
“Do you believe that?”
I wanted to say yes. But I couldn’t. I was carrying a stiletto; under my car seat was a .32 revolver rigged to circumvent forensic examination. I also had revenge fantasies. The truth was, I wanted to forget the New Testament and escape into the orgiastic violence of Moses and Joshua and my namesake Aaron. I wanted to paint houses and the countryside with the blood of my enemies.
“What is the other way?” she said.
I pressed her back down on the quilt and buried my face in her hair. I held her there for a long time, saying nothing, then placed my head against her breast and listened to the quiet beating of her heart.
BEFORE I WENT BACK home, I did something I had never done. I drove into the black district and asked a black man to buy me a six-pack of Lone Star and a half pint of whiskey. Then I drove to Herman Park and sat under a tree in the dark and drank all the whiskey and four of the beers. I think the only reason I didn’t drink the remaining two was because I passed out. When I awoke—or rather, when the world came into view again—I was driving my heap down Westheimer at 11:48 P.M. I did not know how I’d gotten from Herman Park to Westheimer. I passed the Tower Theater and the wood-frame ice cream store and the firehouse where we used to take our used tires and bundled newspapers and clothes hangers for the war effort after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
When I came in, my mother smelled alcohol on me and was upset. I hated that I had hurt her, but I hated worse the probability that she would punish my father for my drunkenness.
The next day creaked by in slow motion. I could not remember where I had been or what I had done between driving into the park and awakening miles away on Westheimer. At work I listened to the local news on the tiny radio in the office, wondering if I had sought revenge on the three guys who had trapped me in the alley. I bought the early-afternoon edition of the Houston Press and searched the crime reports. Nothing. I convinced myself I worried too much.
Just before five o’clock, Cisco Napolitano’s Rocket 88 pulled to the pumps, the top down. She was wearing black sunglasses and a white peasant blouse that exposed her breasts almost to the nipple. What was new about that? Nothing. But I couldn’t say that about the guy sitting next to her. It was Bud Winslow, the guy who liked to shove the faces of smaller kids into his genitalia.
I went out to the car with a rag and a bottle of window cleaner. “Fill her up?”
“Get in,” Cisco said.
“I’m working,” I replied.
“Better do what she says,” Bud said.
“Didn’t Loren tell you to get lost?” I said.
“What were you doing at Bud’s house last night, Aaron?” Cisco said.