Laura Lippman: Hardly Knew Her

Molly motioned to me and I got out of the car, although a little reluctantly. It was, like, you know that scene in Star Wars where the little red eyes are watching from the caves and suddenly those weird sand people just up and attack? I’m not being racist, just saying we were outsiders and I definitely had a feeling all sorts of eyes were on us, taking note.

“We’ll go to my place,” the guy said, all super suave, like he was some international man of mystery inviting us to see his etchings.

“A shooting gallery?” Molly squealed, all excited. “Ohmigod!”

He seemed a little offended. “I don’t let dope fiends in my house.”

He led us to one of the townhouses and I don’t know what I expected, but it certainly wasn’t someplace with doilies and old overstuffed furniture and pictures of Jesus and some black guy on the wall. (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., I figured out later, but I was really distracted at the time and thought it was the guy’s dad or something.) But the most surprising thing was this little old lady sitting in the middle of the sofa, hands folded in her lap. She had a short, all-white Afro and wore a pink T-shirt and flowery ski pants, which bagged on her stick-thin legs. Ski pants. I hadn’t seen them in, like, forever.

“Antone?” she said. “Did you come to fix my lunch?”

“In a minute, Grandma. I have guests.”

“Are they nice people, Antone?”

“Very nice people,” he said, winking at us, and it was only then that I realized the old lady was blind. You see, her eyes weren’t milky or odd in any way, they were brown and clear, as if she was staring right at us. You had to look closely to realize that she couldn’t really see, that the gaze, steady as it was, didn’t focus on anything.

Antone went to the kitchen, an alcove off the dining room, and fixed a tray with a sandwich, some potato chips, a glass of soda, and an array of medications. How could you not like a guy like that? So sweet, with broad shoulders and close-cropped hair like his granny’s, only dark. Then, very quietly, with another wink, he showed us how to smoke.

“Antone, are you smoking in here? You know I don’t approve of tobacco.”

“Just clove cigarettes, Grandma. Clove never hurt anybody.”

He helped each of us with the pipe, getting closer than was strictly necessary. He smelled like clove, like clove and ginger and cinnamon. Antone the spice cookie. I couldn’t help noticing that when he took the pipe from Molly’s mouth, he replaced it with his lips. I didn’t really want him to kiss me, but I’m so much prettier than Molly. Not to mention thinner. But then, I hear black guys like girls with big behinds, and Molly certainly qualified. You could put a can of beer on her ass and have her walk around the room and it wouldn’t fall off. Not being catty, just telling the literal truth. I did it once, at a party, when I was bored, and Molly swished around with a can of Bud Light on her ass, showing off, like she was proud to have so much baggage.

Weird, but I was hungrier than ever after smoking, which was so not the point. I mean, I wasn’t hungry in my stomach, I was hungry in my mouth. And what I wanted, more than anything in the world, were those potato chips on the blind lady’s tray. They were Utz salt ’n’ vinegar, I had seen Antone take them out of the green-and-yellow bag. I loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooove Utz salt ’n’ vinegar, but they don’t come in a light version, so I almost never let myself have any. So I snagged one, just one, quiet as a cat. But, like they say, you can’t eat just one. Okay, so they say that about Lay’s, but it’s even more true about Utz, in my personal opinion. I kept stealing them, one at a time.

“Antone? Are you taking food off my tray?”

I looked to Antone for backup, but Molly’s tongue was so far in his mouth that she might have been flossing him. When he finally managed to detach himself, he said: “Um, Grandma? I’m going to take a little lie-down.”

“What about your guests?”

“They’re going,” he said, walking over to the door with a heavy tread and closing it.

“It’s time for Judge Judy!” his granny said, which made me wonder, because how does a blind person know what time it is? Antone used the remote control to turn on the television. It was a black-and-white, total Smithsonian. After all, she was blind, so I guess it didn’t matter.

Next thing I know, I’m alone in the room with the blind woman, who’s fixated on Judge Judy as if she’s going to be tested on the outcome, and I’m eyeing her potato chips, while Antone and Molly start making the kind of noises that you make when you’re trying so hard not to make noise that you can’t help making noise.

“Antone?” the old lady called out. “Is the dishwasher running? Because I think a piece of cutlery might have gotten caught in the machinery.”

I was so knocked out that she knew the word “cutlery.” How cool is that?

But I couldn’t answer, of course. I wasn’t supposed to be there.

“It’s-okay-Granny,” Antone grunted from the other room. “It’s-all-going-to-be-Jesus Christ-okay.”

The noises started up again. Granny was right. It did sound like a piece of cutlery caught in the dishwasher. But then it stopped-Antone’s breathing, the mattress springs, Molly’s little muffled grunts-they just stopped, and they didn’t stop naturally, if you know what I mean. I don’t mean to be cruel, but Molly’s a bit of a slut, and I’ve listened to her have sex more times than I could count, and I know how it ends, even when she’s faking it, even when she has to be quiet, and it just didn’t sound like the usual Molly finish at all. Antone yelped, but she was silent as the grave.

“Antone, what are you doing?” his granny asked. Antone didn’t answer. Several minutes went by, and then there was a hoarse whisper from the bedroom.

“Um, Kelley? Could you come here a minute?”

“What was that?” his granny asked.

I used the remote to turn up the volume on Judge Judy. “DO I LOOK STUPID TO YOU?” the judge was yelling. “REMEMBER THAT PRETTY FADES BUT STUPID IS FOREVER. I ASKED IF YOU HAD IT IN WRITING, I DON’T WANT TO HEAR ALL THIS FOLDEROL ABOUT ORAL AGREEMENTS.”

When I went into the bedroom, Molly was under Antone and I remember thinking-I was a little high, remember-that he made her look really thin, because he covered up her torso, and Molly does have good legs and decent arms. He had a handsome back, too, broad and muscled, and a great ass. Brandon had no ass (con), but he had nice legs (pro).

It took me a moment to notice that he had a pair of scissors stuck in the middle of his beautiful back.

“I told him no,” Molly whispered, although the volume on the television was so loud that the entire apartment was practically reverberating. “No means no.”

There was a lot of blood, I noticed. A lot.

“I didn’t hear you,” I said. “I mean, I didn’t hear you say any words.”

“I mouthed it. He told me to keep silent because his grandmother is here. Still, I mouthed it. ‘No.’ ‘No.’” She made this incredibly unattractive fish mouth to show me.

“Is he dead?”

“I mean, I was totally up for giving him a blow job, especially after he said he’d give me a little extra, but he was, like, uncircumcised. I just couldn’t, Kelley, I couldn’t. I’ve never been with a guy like that. I offered him a hand job instead, but he got totally peeved and tried to force me.”

The story wasn’t tracking. High as I was, I could see there were some holes. How did you get naked? I wanted to ask. Why didn’t you shout? If Grandma knew you were here, Antone wouldn’t have dared misbehave. He was clearly more scared of Granny than he was into Molly.