Min saw the rings in her mind’s eye, white gold with baguette-cut sapphire inlay, in a little black velvet bag in the third drawer of the jewelry box, where they’d kept them when both of their knuckles had swollen too large to wear them.
With a captive audience, R.C. launched into his plan to become Rhode Island’s top clown, and his need for money. He asked about the rings a second time—calm, almost friendly—but neither woman said anything until he waved the pistol in the air.
Gussie began to cry.
“You won’t give me no money so I need those rings—for clown school, I’ve already told you. You think the Boy Scouts of Providence would ever hire me? You know, to entertain the troops? I never did earn any badges for my mama. Planned to but didn’t. Never did bring home no As either. Matter of fact, after your class, Miss Gussie, my report cards didn’t have no letters on them at all. Checks. Just checks. No letters. That’s why I always said you was my favorite. Between me, y’all, and the gatepost, I don’t think you have to be too sharp to put checks on a piece of paper. I still got the report card Miss Gussie gave me, framed, hanging on the wall. Four Ds . . . an F in math . . . and a C in physical education. I think they let me into the Scouts on account of that C in gym. I think I took a shine to you, Miss Gussie, right then. Sky-blue eyes, big, wide smile, tall as a sycamore tree. Made it awfully hard when I got up in age and people started saying funny things about you and Miss Min. Even though I wasn’t yet tall, I wasn’t ashamed to stand up for you. I told them just ’cause you was kinda built like a fella didn’t mean you made believe like you was one in the bed with Miss Min. Problem was, the boy I mouthed off to was a whole bunch bigger than me. He asked me if I was calling him a liar. I told him if the shoes fit he didn’t have to buy them but he had to walk around the store in them. After I got my behind beat for you—all shades of blue—I asked my mama if what folks said about you and Miss Min was true. I imagine it is, she said. How my own mama imagined something like that was beyond me. Men got pricks and ladies got cooters and that’s just the way it goes. Who ever heard of two cooters—didn’t make no sense. Still don’t. One or both of you is gonna have to get right with God. Anyway, the way I see it, Miss Gussie chased my luck from bad to good with that report card, which is probably how I ended up in the Scouts. No other club took me before then or since. And all I’m saying now is that I need for her to do that for me again—be my luck, Miss Gussie.”
Gussie vaguely recalled that R.C. had been on medication when she taught him. She thought he must be on something now too. “If it’s money for medication, I’m sure your mother would help you.”
“Oh, I’ve got a special card for the drugs they want me to take. But I don’t never take them—” He fished around the inside of his jacket pocket, pulled out a small folded card, and tossed it on the table. Gussie could make out a blue anchor but the writing was too tiny to read. “’Cause the pills give me runs.”
“Clown school?” Min said, merely to say something. And she regretted it.
“At least give me one of the rings,” he said, growing agitated.
Gussie sobbed that she couldn’t do that.
“Alright then.” R.C. stood up and walked over to the kitchen door, grumbling.
He opened the door, complained that it was too damn hot, and what kind of heater did they have anyway? He pulled a long wool scarf off the hook and tied Gussie’s hands behind her back, looping the ends of it through the bars of the chair, a tight, sophisticated knot learned in the Scouts. When Min protested, he paused long enough to point to the gun tucked, temporarily, between his bare belly and his jeans.
“Funny how a thought will come to you, don’t matter where you at or what you’re doing,” he said, settling back down at the table with the gun before him like a plate of food. “You know what I was thinking about when I climbed into your basement? You ’member that talent show we had at the church? Miss Gussie, you had on a pretty white dress with a red carnation pinned up high. Pretty enough to frame. I couldn’t believe you was my teacher. Now, Miss Min, I didn’t know what to make of you—dressed up in a man’s suit—but I thought those red and white wing-tipped shoes was real sharp. Sharp as two tacks. ‘The Jitterbug Waltz’—that’s the song you two danced to. Maybe if you sing it for me, Miss Min, I’ll think about untying Miss Gussie so she can go get me one of those rings.”
Usually Min’s voice was an above-average soprano. Now, with a nervous stomach, she couldn’t breath right, and it sounded like a falsetto. A poor one at that. “The night is getting on, the band is getting slow, the crowd is almost gone, but here we are still dancing . . .”
R.C. jumped up and spun around, belting out: “Nothing to do but waltz!” He laughed, then turned sour, his words curling like the fingers of a fist. “Sounded better back in the nineties. What year was it, Miss Gussie?”
“Can’t say I remember exactly, R.C.”
“Miss Min, then.”