Megan Abbott - Bury Me Deep

“Marion likes to have fun,” Louise asserted, straightening up slightly. “She’s always ready for high times.”

“There is a difference, Louise, that may be subtle for you but is actually legions wide and fathoms deep,” Joe said. “Mrs. Seeley may be alone in these parts, left to fend in our wilderness, but she retains her proper bearing, her breeding, her fine womanly ways. She does not degenerate, she is evolved. She does not come here and let herself be transformed into a backward thing. She is Mrs. Seeley from a good family, good and proper still.”

Ginny plucked one of Floyd’s banjo strings with her outstretched finger. “Well,” she said, feigning to scratch her underarm, “guess I’d better twist myself a banana.”

Louise’s face was tight, but Marion was too distracted to pause over it. Instead, Marion felt herself unspool inside and it was lovely and she wanted to touch Joe Lanigan’s arm, lightly, as she wanted to smile to him and even curl herself at his feet.

He knew her, he knew her, he knew even as he dallied and caroused and sauntered through red rooms everywhere. He might let spangles and sin cover his upturned face so handsome, but in his heart… In his heart…

“What are Ginny and I, then, Joe?” said Louise, mouth just a shade hard. “Some Friday-night taxi dancers?”

“I wasn’t speaking of you, Louise. Nor Virginia. I was speaking of Mrs. Seeley, whom we have made uncomfortable, which is the last thing I would want.” He reached for his jacket slung over the back of a chair and put it on.

“Aren’t we talking high tone,” Louise started.

“Don’t fluster, Louise,” Ginny piped. “Gent Joe is just brushing his boots clean on our bosoms to flatter our lady. What’s the harm? Sing us some more, Floyd. Sing us out of our hungover blues.”

“This one’s dedicated to my stalwart former employer, King Copper,” Floyd said, “for whom I toiled the smelter, 1924 until they took my breath away.” With great flourish, he raised his arm and dropped it down fast like a jackhammer on the strings, peeling into a frenzied jazz number.

“That’s the stuff,” Ginny said, and she leapt up from the sofa as if the picture of health and commenced dancing. Marion had never seen her move a hundredth as fast. Her legs kept twisting around each other and kicking backward as she spun so fast, Marion was sure she’d collapse, but Floyd only played faster and faster and Louise was finally laughing. Looking over at Marion, she said, “Get a load of that jig trot. She made us four bits on that once when we were broke outside Albuquerque.”

And Marion looked up at Ginny’s face, steaming red, and stone-cold ecstatic, like Saint Bernadette.

MARION STAYED and Joe Lanigan kept his suit jacket on, even as Floyd, three slugs into the new round of drinking, stripped down to his undershirt and suspenders and threw Ginny round the room.

Louise dragged out a big punch bowl and filled it with gin, black pepper and a can of consommé.

Marion could feel Joe Lanigan standing behind her chair, but she did not look back.

“Lou-Lou, don’t we got some tomato juice to toss in there?” Ginny said, breathless, still dancing.

“Mrs. Seeley, would you like a glass?” Joe Lanigan was saying, and he set one hand on Marion’s shoulder and the tremble through her body, well, she felt the floorboards might crack.

“No thank you,” she said.

“Mims is a two-finger girl,” Ginny said, finally stopping long enough to run for a can of tomato juice and slinging it into the bowl. “She’ll do two fingers of sherry. Two fingers of champagne. Maybe two fingers of crème de menthe if you push it. But never more than two fingers a night.” She cocked the bottom of the can for one more glug and added, grin broad, “Just you try to get more than two fingers in her, Joe Lanigan.”

“Tut-tut,” Louise said, grabbing the can from Ginny. “That’s enough.”

“It makes my head hurt,” Marion explained, now the only one sitting. She felt surrounded.

“That’s ’cause you’ve been drinking bad hooch, doll,” Floyd said, taking a glass from Louise’s hand. “Try the new medicine, doctor approved.”

“Which doc?” Ginny said.

“Why, Doc Joe,” Floyd said.

Joe walked around Marion’s chair and looked down at her, folding his arms across his chest. “Mrs. Seeley, I know you don’t generally partake, but it might do you some good. And you’re among friends.”

“How’s she look, Doc?” Floyd said.

Marion let him meet her eyes. She felt like the killjoy. The church girl at the beer blast. She wasn’t sure what to do. She showed him everything in her face and let him decide.

“Hmm, the patient looks pale,” he said, and his hand reached out and touched her chin, tilted it up. And everyone saw. But it seemed so natural and no one said a word. “One might even say consumptive. She likely needs to go home and rest.”

“Eh,” Floyd said, waving his hand dismissively. “How about a second opinion?” He strode over, skin as white as his undershirt only bluer, carrying a fresh glass. “Dr. Floyd prescribes an immediate transfusion.”

“She should go home,” Joe repeated. “No good can come from this. She is a delicate thing.”

“Guess we’re a couple of log-splitters,” Louise said, rolling her eyes. “Marion, don’t let these gees tell you you can’t have fun. You might be a taxi dancer yet.”

“I don’t wish to go home,” Marion blurted out. “I don’t wish to. I will have a glass. I will.”

“How about five fingers?” Floyd said, eyebrows mast high.

“Five fingers full,” Ginny hiccupped from behind her.

And Marion took a sip.

HE GAVE HER her first taste and it set her teeth on edge. He’d slugged it with long shots of sugar to cut the grain sting and it swelled in her mouth, a gritty cotton-candy swirl, then a rush of heat sending tears to her squinting eyes ( My, did he love that, laughing, calling her baby snooks ). Her belly warm and loose and everything turning, stretching, she reached for his hands, wanted them, urgently, on her. She’d never taken a man’s hands like that, placed them on her, on her thighs so his fingers fell between. Those soft, peppermint-oiled, half-moon-nailed hands that’d find their way in there, in everywhere, as the hooch bloomed, just bloomed.

IT WAS AN HOUR LATER, maybe two, and Joe Lanigan had his arms around her and they were outside, a hot gust twining her skirt between her legs and he pointing to his car, and Marion held on tight because she was spinning, like she was doing the jig trot in her head.

And before she knew it, they were in his car, all leather and chrome, and the backseat big and the leather soft and his hands on her stockings, her only good pair, and his hands between her legs and it was raining softly outside, the first time in weeks, wasn’t it, and then she felt his whiskers prickling along her stomach and thighs and then she felt the rocking start and then she felt and then there was all feeling and the rain, like a t-pit, t-pit, t-pit and…

MONDAY, THE CLINIC ,Marion sat at her desk, still blurry-headed, no sleep, long hours spent writing and unwriting Dr. Seeley and reading his latest correspondence over and over again, its skeiny pages tattooed blue with India ink:

My dearest Marion, I am heartsick to hear of your loneliness. There is a song the natives sing at night, when drinking. It is called “La Golondrina” and it is all about a wandering swallow caught in storm and wind, so far from home. También yo estoy en la región perdida, ¡Oh, Cielo Santo! y sin poder volar… It is the most beautiful of all songs, Marion.