David reclaimed his hand, then kicked at a lump of snow. He didn't look happy.
"Jo, I can find an apartment of my own, a place we can be private. Living with the band, that's kind of weird, anyway. Some kind of mystic brotherhood bullshit. Thought we'd practice more that way, build 'rapport,' fuse into one soul with five pairs of hands. All we needed was a magic well and the harp of Brian Boru to make it work. Let her stay."
"Screw it, David. I'm not Christian enough to be my sister's keeper. It's not just you. This has been wearing at me for years now, my own Chinese Water Torture. 'Watch out for little Maureen, dear, keep her out of trouble.' 'You're older, it's your responsibility, dear.' 'This wouldn't have happened if you'd been more adult, dear.' Screw it!"
David shook his head. "I'm going to hate myself for this, come morning. I can't let you kick Maureen out for me. I'd feel like one of those damned seal-hunters, clubbing little loveable white babies for their fur. She's got that same helpless look in her eyes."
"Helpless, bullshit! That little twit carries a gun everywhere she goes!"
David stopped short and stared at her. "A gun?"
"Frigging .38 Special. Sleeps with it, takes it to the john with her, even packs it with her swimsuit when we go out to the lake."
"Jeezum."
"You want to know what she thinks about men, watch her shooting silhouettes. She gets this look on her face like she's some kind of executioner. Scares the bejayzus out of me."
David rubbed his eyes. "What do you mean, how she thinks about men? Targets are kinda unisex, aren't they?"
"I saw her flat-out shred the crotch of a target--five shots, speed reload, five more shots. I could have put my fist right through the hole."
His hands dropped, instinctively covering the target area. "Christ! You keep talking like that, babe, you'll have me sleeping alone tonight. Maybe I need to take some time to think over that little question of yours. Yes, your crazy sister bothers me."
Jo blinked back tears. The weather they'd been having, she'd freeze her frigging eyelids shut. Even salt-water would freeze, get it cold enough. Things were getting awfully cold around here, all of a sudden. She re-snapped her jeans.
They trudged on through the snow, heads down and walled off in their own separate worlds. Jo felt like a yo-yo, up and down in the passion department. Even off-stage, little Mo sure knew how to kill a party. Or maybe it was hormones.
David took her hand, kissing the back of her glove with a courtly bow like some Renaissance poet. The yo-yo headed up again, spinning madly.
The streetlights picked up a tender smile. "You redheaded witch, it'll take more than that to break your spell. What do you know about that Brian character she was with tonight? Maybe we can patch things up between them, get him to whirl Maureen off into Never-Never Land. God knows, he's built like a knight in shining armor."
Jo shrugged, got her throat working. "Voice on the phone." She probably sounded like a crow, trying to talk after crying.
She swallowed and went on. "Never even saw him until we met at The Cave. Seems polite enough, good looking if you like the type. I kind of . . . maneuvered . . . him into being there, to take the heat off us. Never expected her to blow up all over the place."
Maureen, she remembered, Maureen frothing at the mouth. Dumb-faced blonde hunk of muscle jerking back in shock. The "R" word and instant rage. Genuine surprise.
Memories.
Damn.
A curly blonde, blue-eyed boy built like a brick shithouse. Did that ring any bells? Anyone she'd known?
Oh, hell!
Jo staggered over to another telephone pole and leaned against it, her head spinning. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit! All her blood seemed to nose-dive to her feet, abandoning her brain to run on fumes. All it could come up with was a flickering montage of a red-eyed, red-haired child cowering in a corner, mixed in with flashes of Jo's first hormone-racked expedition into the wondrous Land of Sex.
Buddy Johnson.
Fucking ghosts from the fucking past. Brian looked a hell of a lot like Buddy Johnson. That was the missing link.
David gripped her shoulders, held her up by both shoulders. It was a good thing he did. Otherwise she'd be sitting in the snow with a strip of phone-pole splinters up her ass.
Memories cascaded over each other: times she'd come home to find Buddy already there, times Maureen had moved funny, looked funny. Bruises Jo had seen when they were getting ready for bed at night, bruises she'd blamed on Dad. Maureen white-faced in the john off their room with blood on the toilet paper, years before she'd had her first period. She'd said she'd scratched herself. Things that never connected before.
"Jo, snap out of it! I had no idea watching out for her was that big a strain. We'll get you some help, move her into a group home, something . . . ."
"David, don't pile anything more on that Maureen guilt-trip. I've got enough on my conscience, already."
"Conscience?" He twirled her like a puppet until he was staring down into her eyes. "How in hell can Maureen be a load on your conscience? You program her brain when she was a baby, peel back her scalp before the soft-spot closed and punch in the codes for some particular breed of mental bug?"
Those eyes. She really didn't want to tell him some things and look into those eyes while he thought about them. The far side of the street looked awfully interesting, right now.
"Not the schizophrenia, not all the paranoia, not talking with the trees. Her thing about men, especially men with a certain kind of hair, a
