Peter Abrahams: Last of the Dixie Heroes

There hadn’t been any tools in the series of small apartments he’d grown up in with his mother. This was Roy’s first set. He liked using them. Sawdust sprayed in gold arcs lit by the hanging overhead bulb. Roy sawed, sanded, drilled, screwed the frame together, then started cutting the shelves from long pine boards. He lost himself in the sound of the saw, the grain patterns in the wood, the smell of cut pine. Especially the smell: it brought back memories, not specific memories, more the feeling, of when he was very young and they-ma, pappy, Roy-were all together, up in Tennessee.

A hand touched his shoulder.

Roy jumped inside his skin, spun around, his finger still on the trigger of the saw, and there was Marcia, the blade buzzing between them. He shut the thing off, got ready for her to be angry about something-the school, Rhett, his visit to her house. But Marcia didn’t look angry. Neither did she look sick or hurt; if she’d been in the hospital, it couldn’t have been serious. Marcia looked great-was still the best-looking woman he’d ever seen. That was his honest reaction. Roy tried to suppress it stillborn, but it popped to life in his head anyway.

Marcia looked up at him. “Thanks for handling everything today, Roy.”

In the silence-a special silence in the aftermath of the sawing and what with being down below street level-Roy heard every subtlety in Marcia’s voice, all the tones, all the vibrations, as though he could see the sound being produced by her throat, mouth, tongue. She had a beautiful voice. He started having the air supply problem again, bad enough for the inhaler this time, but he wouldn’t reach for it with Marcia there.

“How is he?” she said.

“Sleeping.”

“I looked in,” Marcia said. “But I didn’t want to turn on the light.”

“He’s got a black eye, is all.”

“How did that happen?”

“Some schoolyard thing,” Roy said.

They looked at each other. “I guess Barry didn’t hear the phone,” Marcia said.

“Too busy making money.”

“That’s a good one.”

Roy didn’t get that. Wasn’t busy or wasn’t making money? Couldn’t be the latter: Roy had seen the brand-new Benz with the BARRY vanity plate, and more than that, he could tell that Barry was the moneymaking type, just from the way he pointed his chin at you when he was talking.

Marcia was looking at Rhett’s shelves, coming together on the workbench. “Roy?”

“Yeah?”

She started to say something, changed her mind. “Got anything to drink?”

“Coke?”

“A grown-up drink, Roy.”

“Have to look.”

They went upstairs, Marcia leading, Roy trying to keep his eyes off her body. Marcia was in better shape than ever. How amazing that there’d been a time when a woman with a body like that had shared his bed.

Roy opened the fridge. He had a six-pack of Bud, one bottle gone.

“Any Chardonnay?” Marcia said.

“Sorry.” Roy wasn’t much of a drinker. Not that he didn’t like booze: he knew that he liked it a little too much. His father had gone that route.

Roy opened two bottles of Bud, poured one into a glass for Marcia. She drained half of it in one gulp.

“Barry said you were in the hospital.”

She nodded.

“You okay?”

“Just having my lips done, Roy.”

He didn’t understand.

“My lips. It’s something I’ve always wanted.”

Roy hadn’t known; hadn’t known she’d been dissatisfied with her lips, hadn’t known what bothered her about them, didn’t see anything different now.

“What do you think?” she said, smacking them together, sticking them out at him.

Roy studied her lips.

Marcia laughed. “You’re hopeless,” she said. “Don’t you see how much fuller they are? Not those pencil-thin little miss priss things anymore. Full, Roy. Generous.”

“Generous,” Roy said. The word seemed strange in the context of lips, but it got him thinking.

Marcia laughed again. “You’re something, Roy. You surely are.” Meaning something stupid, he thought, ignorant when it came to changing lips, shorting Yahoo, all that. But then her foot touched his under the kitchen table.

Just for a moment.

He took a sip of beer, glanced at her over the bottle. Couldn’t tell anything about the lips, but now that he thought about it, her hair seemed a little different, kind of copper-colored in a way that reminded him of the sky on the way to work that morning.

She was looking at him too.

“Did it hurt?” Roy said.

“Hurt?”

“The lip implant.”

She laughed, spraying Bud across the table. “Implants are for tits, Roy. This was just an injection.”

“Of what?” Roy said.

Marcia shrugged. “Something they shoot in there.”

Tits: he remembered the ugly thing he’d said to Barry but the truth was he’d forgotten what Marcia’s breasts looked like. Not that he wouldn’t recognize them, he just couldn’t picture them. Funny thing, though, he could recall the springy feel of them with a precision that made him uncomfortable.

“Another beer?” he said.

“You’re not drinking.”

“I am.” He took a sip, fetched another bottle, refilled Marcia’s glass. His forearm happened to brush her shoulder. She didn’t shy away; the opposite, if anything.

He sat down.

“How’s work?” she said.

“Work?” said Roy. “Not bad.” He was tempted to tell her about being in line for a promotion. That awkward moment or two in Curtis’s office, the mix-up with the train, none of that would add up to much. The important things were that Rhett was home safe in bed, and here was Marcia sitting around having a beer. “How’s yours?” he asked.

She made that contemptuous little upper-lip movement of hers. Roy noticed the change then. “Busy,” she said.

Marcia took a big drink, her lips a double crescent on the rim of the glass. Yes, they’d changed: sexy lips, no doubt about it. Her new lips reminded him a little of the lips of Curtis’s girlfriend, who worked in the mayor’s office and had once been on the cover of Ebony; maybe not the kind of thought you were supposed to have.

“I was in your house today,” Roy said.

Marcia paused, eyeing him over the glass. “I’m sorry if there was a scene.”

“No scene,” Roy said, “but it’s pretty impressive,” and when she didn’t reply, added, “your house in Buckhead.”

“Buckhead,” she said, almost like she now had some problem with it. Was it possible that she’d changed, that she’d come around to thinking that some simpler place was just as good? He took a close look at her, thought he detected changes other than the lips, internal ones.

“You lost some weight, Roy,” she said.

He knew that wasn’t true.

“Working out some?”

“Not much.” Not at all-he’d let his gym membership lapse, was getting soft around the middle, didn’t care. Maybe he seemed in shape compared to Bar “I’m of a mind to do something pretty crazy right now, Roy,” she said, draining her glass.

“Like what?” Roy said. He thought: She’s going to give me custody of Rhett.

Marcia reached across the table, laid her hand on his. Roy felt a jolt right through his body. The fact that she wasn’t wearing the wedding ring he’d given her, had a big green stone, a real emerald, maybe, in its place, did nothing to lessen his reaction, possibly increased it. He gazed into her eyes, tried to stop, couldn’t.

“Remember that time up in Tennessee?” she said.

He did, just from that.

“What was the name of that crick?”

“Crystal.”

“Yeah,” she said, getting up and coming over to him, standing behind his chair, close. “Crystal. I’ve been thinking about Crystal Crick lately.” She touched him, very light, on the back of the neck, sent another jolt through him, this one with cold tingles at the end.