“They let all that through?”
“I knew what he wasn’t saying.”
“He always did hate blood. He’d even look away from the catsup they use in the theater. Poor Dev.”
“Yes,” Pea said, and stared at nothing in particular long enough for cigarette ashes to scatter on the quilt. She looked down, surprised, and brushed them off. “Tammy?”
“Yeah?”
“He said he’d had a strange dream and he wanted me to ask you … about that night backstage at the Pelican.”
Tamara flinched. Phyllis took a drag and peered through the smoke. “He said to put it just like that. He said you’d know what he meant. And you do.”
“It’s not … a good story, Pea.”
“That right?” Pea was breathing heavy. Her back hurt her more than she wanted to say.
Tamara went over to help her. “Why did Dev want me to tell you?”
“I’m not sure, baby. He just said it was in his dream.”
Tammy stopped short. “That kind of dream?”
Pea laughed. “We’re just drowning in dreams over here. What’s one more, is that right, baby?” But she was talking to her belly now. Tammy sat on her heels, forgotten. And is that how it would be if she took on the burden? Cursed and alone, with just the cards for company? Would the taint kill her instead if she tried to have a child? Oh, she’d probably live, that was the worst of it: she’d have to live badly while Phyllis lived well. There was grace in this world but—Job himself could have told her—not much justice.
Tamara tipped her chin up. She’d tell the story, then. What of it? What was the worst thing she’d done, compared to this woman’s sins? Who here could judge her?
Not Victor’s ghost.
Not Victor’s angel.
“It was Christmas Eve two years ago. We were at the Pelican, backstage. Drunk as three cats in a tub of gin. Well, I don’t know about Dev, he could be ossified to his eyeballs and still walk a straight line. But me and Victor, we were good and tight. The place was closed for the night and we were enjoying a bottle of scotch, Victor called it his Christmas present. It tasted like paint thinner and old hay to me, but do you know I got to like it by the third snifter. It got late, I don’t know, about three or four in the morning. Victor was playing with that Colt of his, the one with the nickel inlays. God, I hope they buried that with him. If ever there was a piece that could speak nightmares.
“Well, what do you know, Victor got it in his head that he wanted to test Dev. Yes, Pea, like that, he wanted to test his hands. He said, We can be scientific about the matter? And Dev and I just stared at him blank, because you never want to answer one of his questions. The only way he knew how to end a sentence was in a trap. No getting out of that one, though. He said to Dev, So touch me, and Dev said something rude, and Victor lifted that piece calm as you please and pulled back the safety. He said, Am I going to kill you, Dev?”
Tamara stopped abruptly. Phyllis moved, but Tamara hid her face. “What did you do?”
“I tried to get behind Victor, like he might forget about me if he couldn’t see me. Dev didn’t seem to notice. He said to Victor, You don’t know yet. Just like that. He seemed so calm, so sure. You’re like that too, Pea, with your knives. But I’d never really known Dev that way. It surprised me. Victor pulled the trigger and I screamed, but you know those big pistols, once you fire them everything else starts to sound like a mosquito buzzing around your head. So I was screaming, but I could barely hear myself, and Victor fell back with the recoil he was so stinking drunk and Dev just sat there and pulled a cigarette from his breast pocket. The bullet had put a hole in the wall a few inches to the left of his head. Jesus. Jesus. That’s all I could say. Victor was giggling and poured himself another drink. He said, Don’t worry, dollface. I just need your man for some business. Don’t start blubbering. Then raised that gun, smooth as could be, and it was me facing down that barrel.”
Tamara shuddered, thinking of it, and the rest of it. She swore for a moment she could see Victor panting and licking his lips just beyond the ice crusting the window.
“What did he want?” Phyllis said, and caught herself. “Oh. He wanted to know what Dev could tell from touching you.”
Tamara’s heart was racing, her palms sweaty, her neck pulsing with heat and cold. She couldn’t finish it. Not the real story. Even if it was just Phyllis, who had no right to judge. She found herself straightening crooked things out, making ugly things shiny; an old, bad, habit.
“He said, Am I going to kill her? You get one chance. And next thing I knew, Dev pushed me to the ground and he just stood there, facing the gun. He said he knew that Victor didn’t want to lose him, so he’d better stop threatening his girl. Victor seemed to lose interest in the whole thing then. He really was stinking drunk. Dev picked me up and we left.”
“He let you leave?”
Tamara looked away. “Victor had romantic notions—not with you, of course. But he wanted women to be like the harem girls in The Thief of Baghdad. You know, gauzy as ballroom curtains with bubbly for brains. The ones who cry a lot and faint easily and are forever getting kissed by men they actually want but don’t know it.”
Phyllis gave a small, knowing smile. “So you made sure that’s what he thought you were.”
Victor had expected her to fall to the floor. He’d expected to watch her eyeliner run in dirty rivers down her face
