Marcia Talley - This Enemy Town

Precisely the opposite was true. I had just attacked Paul for not having the sense that God gave a houseplant, chiding him repeatedly for not warning me about Jennifer Goodall, et nagging cetera, until he’d lost what was left of his savoir faire and suggested I put a lid on it.

“That’s true,” I agreed, with a withering glance at Paul over the top of my menu. “Your brother-in-law is a nincompoop. I have nothing further to say on the matter.”

I had decided to order an ice cold margarita. Maybe that would help quench the fires of rage still burning up my stomach lining. Or maybe I’d pour the drink directly over Paul’s head. Only time would tell.

The server took our orders, with Ruth asking for a Bass ale for the still absent Hutch. Ruth was bringing us up to date on the buying trip she was about to make to Hong Kong, when Fintan Galway, who managed the restaurant for his brother, appeared at our table. He was clutching a sheaf of papers, the first of two trivia quiz sheets, each bearing fifteen questions. “Eight P.M.,” Fintan announced, laying a quiz sheet on the table in front of us. “Your team’s playing tonight, right?”

Paul slipped his wallet out of his pocket and laid a ten dollar bill on the table. “The Puddle Ducks are ready!” he announced.

The previous week the Puddle Ducks came in second, losing out to the Sea Dogs by one question when the Sea Dogs knew that topless saleswomen were legal in Liverpool, England, but only in tropical fish stores. All the money went to charity: soup kitchens, needy local families, the SPCA. That week it was the Box of Rain Foundation that honored Lee Griffin, a local sailor, who had been brutally murdered during a senseless car jacking just a short block away from where we were sitting.

Paul, our resident brainiac, moved his beer to one side and spread the sheet out on the table in front of him. He started filling in the blanks, while Ruth and I chatted about some renovations she was planning for Mother Earth. Her shop was a perpetual work in progress.

Paul looked up. “What color is Mr. Spock’s blood?”

Ruth and I had been discussing carpet tiles versus wall-to-wall, so alien blood was a huge leap. We looked at each other. Ruth shrugged. “Ask me about native island cultures,” she suggested blandly. “I got an A-plus in cultural anthropology.”

It’d been ages since I’d seen an episode of Star Trek , but I couldn’t imagine alien blood being anything but green. Blue maybe; red in some galaxies. “Green?” I guessed.

“Is that your final answer?” Paul asked.

“Final answer.”

Our three heads huddled over the quiz sheet, and we had moved on to puzzling over what a turkey was in bowling alley slang when Hutch arrived, reeking of cigarette smoke and full of apologies. “Sorry, got caught outside my office by a client. Wanted to tell me all about this idea he has for investing in the company that’s going to start developing Parole.”

Parole was Annapolis’s first shopping center, long ago deserted by the department stores and specialty shops where my daughter and I used to shop for her school clothes. Sears had been the last holdout, moving to an anchor spot in nearby Annapolis Mall in the mid-nineties. Once Sears was gone, poor Parole had become a blot on the cityscape as deal after deal with its out-of-state owner had fallen through. In recent days, the bulldozers had been busy, pulverizing Sears, flattening Woodward and Lothrop, demolishing Hickory Farms and the Hallmark store, loading their remains in dump trucks and hauling them away. Old Parole was only a memory.

Hutch’s lips brushed Ruth’s cheek and he sat down. Ruth slid an ale in his direction. Hutch took a long sip, sighed, and smacked his lips. “So, where are we?” he asked, referring to the quiz.

“‘Who was the first U.S. presidential candidate to attempt the macarena in public?’” Paul read out loud.

Hutch knocked back another slug of ale before answering with some confidence, “Al Gore.”

Paul wrote “Al Gore” in the blank. “Okay,” he forged on. “How about this? What game begins with a corking?”

“Your fiftieth birthday party.” Ruth laughed.

I shrugged. “Don’t have a clue.”

Darts. The word buzzed around the restaurant like gossip about the latest scandal on Capitol Hill. Darts. Darts. Darts. Everyone, it seemed, had arrived at the question simultaneously.

“Darts,” I said with confidence.

Paul scribbled darts in the blank. “What soft drink, introduced in 1982, was the number three U.S. seller within two years?”

Ruth raised her hand for this one. “Diet Coke,” she said. “I remember it came on the market when Eric and I were on our honeymoon in Atlanta. But that’s another story.”

Eric was Ruth’s ex. And the story wasn’t pretty. They’d been married for nine years when Eric began easing the pain of advancing middle age by taking up with a succession of bimbos-du-jour. Until recently, he’d maintained a half interest in Mother Earth, but last summer, with Hutch’s help, Ruth had bought the jerk out.

Ruth’s knight in shining armor took her hand, tucked it under his arm, and leaned forward over the quiz sheet, reading aloud flawlessly, although the page was upside down. “What ‘founding mother’ was the first real woman to appear as a Pez dispenser head?”

We guessed Martha Washington on that one, but we were wrong. It was Betsy Ross.

After all the forms were collected and the scores tallied, we narrowly lost the game to the Axis of Evil team, playing from the cozy comfort of the bay window in the adjoining bar.

Looking a trifle crestfallen, Paul excused himself to go to the restroom, while Hutch wandered off in the direction of the bar, carrying his empty mug. I seized the moment to tell Ruth about Jennifer Goodall.

“Shit.”

“My sentiments exactly. And why the hell is she hanging around Mahan Hall? She doesn’t have anything to do with the musical.”

Ruth looked surprised. “You sure?”

“Positive. I’ve been working on it for over two weeks. If she were doing sets or costumes or makeup, I’d have noticed by now.”

Ruth frowned. “That girl you said she was talking to, Emma? Perhaps she’s in Goodall’s company.”

I shook my head. “No, she’s not.” I turned my glass by the stem until a fresh layer of salt was facing me. I raised the glass to my lips.

“I think I know,” said Paul.

I nearly dropped my glass. Until he spoke, I didn’t realize he’d been standing right behind me.

“I just ran into Jim Harle in the men’s room.” He smiled down at me. “You remember Jim. Computer services?”

I nodded.

“Well, Jim told me that Goodall’s the academy’s SAVI officer.”

“Savvy?” Ruth and I said it at the same time.

“S-A-V-I.” Paul spelled it out. “It stands for sexual assault victim intervention. One of her duties would be to provide the victims of sexual assault with an advocate.”

“Sexual assault…” I could barely go on. “You have got to be kidding!”

“Ironic, huh?”

Ruth stuck in her oar. “The I-word I’m thinking of is ‘insane.’”

“Knowing her,” I grumbled, “I bet she probably requested the assignment.”

Paul settled back into his chair, but whatever he’d been intending to say was interrupted by the arrival of our order-fish and chips for Ruth and me, Irish stew for Paul, and, I couldn’t help laughing, shepherd’s pie (without any actual shepherd) for Hutch, whenever he returned from the bar, that is.

As I munched my way through the succulent fish, I thought about the concerns Emma had shared with me about Kevin. I’d seen her talking in an animated way to Jennifer Goodall; then I’d seen Jennifer talking to Kevin. If Goodall was the SAVI officer, was it possible that Emma had been reporting Kevin as a harasser? Kevin was showering Emma with attention, it was true, mooning over her, but that didn’t necessarily count as harassment. But then, who knew what went on between them when they got back to Bancroft Hall?