Рита Браун - Whisker Of Evil

“Review my relationships. Not just the last one but all of my relationships with men. My father. My brothers. I have unrealistic expectations.” She breathed in through her nose, as a thin, colored cigarette was firmly clamped between her lips. “And I like bad boys. I’ll like a nice guy for a while and then I get bored.”

Since this was Carmen’s beauty parlor, she would damned well smoke if she wanted to and she defied the “health Nazis,” as she called them, to stop her.

“Don’t we all?” BoomBoom laughed, her bosom, and the reason she endured her nickname, heaving upward.

“I suppose. And I suppose they have some pretty stupid ideas about us.” Carmen put BoomBoom’s left hand in a slanted bowl so her fingertips would be washed in emollients.

“I know.” BoomBoom, born and raised in the country, did know. Having graduated from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, with honors, she was well educated and intelligent. Her major had been English, so if she had not married very well, she could have been taught to do just about anything. However, women as beautiful as BoomBoom always marry well unless they are stone stupid.

Carmen hopped to a variant of her topic: men. “Well, that Dr. Langston is as cute as a bug’s ear. He said these days very few doctors can diagnose rabies or even Lyme disease because they mimic other diseases, and he said another hard one is syphilis. He said they all have some things in common, but I said I was a lot more worried about AIDS, and he said he was, too. These little dots of whatever a virus is can evolve quickly. It’s like they have intelligence.”

“It is strange and frightening.” BoomBoom closed her eyes, her long lashes dark against her suntanned skin.

“Boom,” Carmen’s voice rose.

“What?”

“Want me to shut up? I can go on, I know. And I’m upset over Sugar dying, so I’m blabbing more than usual. I just open my mouth and whatever I’m thinking pops out.”

“I’m thinking, too.”

“Boom,” Carmen lowered her voice to a whisper, “have you ever been truly in love?”

“In high school.” BoomBoom laughed, opening her eyes.

“Who?”

“Charlie Ashcraft. That lasted two months.”

“He was gorgeous, though. Died the death he deserved.” Carmen snapped her mouth shut like a turtle, for Charlie had seduced and abandoned women for all of his thirty-seven years until it finally caught up with him in the men’s locker room at Farmington Country Club. “One has few defenses against such male beauty. People say that about you.”

“Oh, that I have male beauty?” BoomBoom giggled.

“Hey, hold still.” Carmen squeezed BoomBoom’s right hand tighter. “You know what I mean. Men can’t resist you.”

“Men are easy. Now, seducing women, that would be a challenge.”

“Boom!” Carmen pretended to be scandalized, then lowered her voice again. “Would you?”

“I don’t know. All I know is I’m very, very happy alone. Do you know, Carmen, I haven’t been alone since I graduated from college? Even after Kelly died, I had one affair after another. This New Year’s I made a resolution to take a year off. I might go out, I might date someone steadily, but I am not sleeping with him. I’m not making any promises until I arrive at next New Year’s.”

A long, long pause followed, then Carmen dipped BoomBoom’s right hand into another slanting bowl. She reached for a terry-cloth towel, removed BoomBoom’s left hand, rubbed it vigorously. “I don’t think I could do it.”

“Be alone for a year?”

“I’m too scared.”

“Didn’t you just say that emotions are messengers?”

“Yes.”

“Fear is a big, big messenger. Pay attention. If you listen, fear will bring you courage.”

Carmen slathered BoomBoom’s left hand in a thick pink cream. “But when I’m alone, things rattle around in my head. I need someone to love me.”

“You need you to love you. And you know who taught me that without trying?” BoomBoom said as Carmen shook her head. “Harry.”

“Harry?”

“When her marriage broke up, she put her head down and kept working. She didn’t run out and grab the first man who winked at her. And she’s been alone for years now. And she kept her mouth shut. Still does.”

“But he still loves her.”

“She didn’t know that for a good, long year, and that doesn’t mean she’ll take him back, although he’s worked hard at—well, at himself.”

“How many years have they been divorced?”

“Umm, four, I think.”

“Four years is a long time to be alone.”

“Maybe, but you certainly get used to your own company. And while I’m hardly Harry’s closest confidant, I think she’s learned a lot. I think she has forgiven him and she realizes how much he means to her. Are you putting me in the heated mittens again?”

“I am. While you’re sitting there waiting for the color to work”—Carmen had added some lightener to BoomBoom’s blond hair—“we might as well go the whole nine yards. I’m going to do your feet, too.”

“Full service.” BoomBoom wriggled her toes in her sandals. “I’m not in the advice business, but time alone won’t hurt you.”

“The thing is, if only Barry hadn’t gotten himself killed. I kind of thought the relationship was over. But we’d screamed and hollered and thrown things at each other before, and then time would go by and there’d be a full moon.” She sighed.

“So you thought maybe you’d find him again during the full moon?” A wry smile played on BoomBoom’s full lips.

Carmen shrugged. “Who knows, but now I’ll always wonder.”

“You’re doing the smart thing, reviewing your relationships with men. Everything will sort out; it always does.”

The door opened and Tavener Heyward came in for his haircut.

“I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you quite this way.” Tavener chuckled as he sat next to BoomBoom.

“Be careful.” BoomBoom narrowed her eyes, feigning revenge.

“Oh, I am. We’re all careful around you. Beautiful women must be obeyed.”

They both laughed, as did Carmen, now slathering BoomBoom’s right hand in pink goo. The mittens, plugged in, were just reaching the right temperature.

“Are you going up to Timonium?” BoomBoom mentioned a regional thoroughbred sale held at the Maryland State Fairgrounds. She didn’t discuss Sugar’s passing with Tavener, as they’d spoken on the phone early that morning. She’d called about Keepsake, the mare in foal, and the conversation got around to Sugar.

“Thought I’d go take a look at Orion’s Sword’s babies. I’ve been tracking this stallion, and if I like the babies, I’m going to try to bring him back to my place. He’s a Mr. Prospector grandson, and you can’t go wrong there.”

“That will give you six stallions. Not that you shouldn’t get some Mr. Prospector blood, but, Tavener, you’ll need more staff.”

“Oh, I know it.” He turned his head from BoomBoom to stare in the mirror as Henry Dickie snipped, the silver hairs falling to the ground. “Still, I’ll never live down that I didn’t buy Ziggy Dark Star when Marshall Kressenberg found him in Kentucky. A full brother to Ziggy Flame, and I foolishly let him get away. Oh, how I have repented my economies.”

“You’ve certainly got some good stallions.”

“Well, Captain Kieje put me on the map.” Tavener mentioned the stallion, sire of many graded stakes winners. “And, at least, I bought a share in Dark Star. That was something.”

The Captain had lived to the ripe old age of twenty-five. His son, Kieje’s Crown, was as potent and successful as his sire.

“Tavener, I hope our state fairgrounds, being constructed even as we speak, will look better than Maryland’s.”