I got up on a hand and looked down at him. “Fuck what, Mike?”
Mike pushed up too then, with his arm around me, he pulled me further up the couch to the armrest. He leaned back against the couch and pulled me to him, into his arms, my chest pressed to his, his hand in my hair.
Then he said in a way I knew he didn’t want to say it, “The story is ‘burg lore so someone’s gonna tell you, might as well be me.”
I waited.
Mike spoke again. “You know Feb and Colt’s story? How they were the big item in high school, even before, everyone said they were born to be together?”
I nodded.
“Well, Cal and his ex-wife, Bonnie, they were that way too.”
I blinked, not believing that, not for a minute. Not about the emaciated, lank-dirty-haired, filthy-slutty-clothed Bonnie who crashed to the floor after offering the tall, huge, strong, amazingly beautiful Joe the opportunity to take her up the ass if he paid for it.
“That can’t be true, I’ve met Bonnie, she’s –”
I stopped talking when I saw Mike’s face register out-and-out shock. “You met Bonnie?”
“Yeah.”
“Cal’s Bonnie?”
I didn’t like to think of her that way but I still answered, “Yeah.”
“Jesus, how’d you meet her?”
“I was over at his house, she came over.”
“You have got to be shittin’ me.”
I shook my head and said, “No.”
“You sure it was Bonnie?”
I nodded my head and said, “Yes.”
Mike looked away and he muttered, “Jesus Christ.”
I was confused and I explained why. “It wasn’t pleasant but I got the impression it happens a lot. She was asking for money.”
Mike looked back at me and he looked pissed. I’d never seen him look pissed and it was kind of scary. Not Joe-pissed-scary but still, pretty freaking scary.
“She came to Cal’s house and asked Cal for money?”
“She was wasted, and high, a total mess.”
“She wanted money for drugs,” Mike surmised.
“Or booze.”
“No, Violet, she wanted money for drugs,” Mike stated firmly and I stared at him.
“Okay,” I replied slowly.
“She’s a junkie,” Mike informed me.
That wasn’t surprising, she definitely looked and dressed the part, not to mention acted it.
“I guess so.”
“No, she is. Look up junkie in the encyclopedia, sweetheart, Bonnie Wainwright’s picture is right there. The bitch has been a mess for years.”
It seemed out of character for Mike to refer to anyone casually as a bitch so I started to get scared.
“Maybe you should tell me the story,” I suggested.
“Nab our wine, honey, we’re gonna need it,” Mike ordered, I didn’t take that as a good sign but I twisted out of his arms, nabbed our wine off the coffee table and came back, giving him his and taking a sip from mine.
Mike shifted a leg under me so he had one foot to the floor, his thigh angled on the seat, me mostly in his lap, partly between his legs, his other leg the length of the couch, still tangled with both mine.
This was a comfortable position, one of safety, togetherness.
It didn’t register on me as I braced for Mike’s story.
“Like I said,” he started, “Bonnie and Cal were an item, like Feb and Colt. But Bonnie’s Dad was an asshole. Big wig at the church, holier than thou, but not so holy, he didn’t go home and beat the shit outta his wife and kid.”
I closed my eyes and dropped my head.
“Yeah, sucks normally but this was bad and I mean bad. Asshole didn’t try to hide it. Both of ‘em on a regular basis walked around with their eyes blackened, lips split and swollen, arms in slings, limpin’, holdin’ themselves funny. Christ, I was a kid, one year ahead of Cal at school, we went to the same church and I saw ‘em all the time and even I knew what they caught at home.”
I opened my eyes and looked at him.
Mike kept talking. “Everyone knew but those two were so cowed, they never called the cops, no one could do shit about it if they didn’t report it and they didn’t. She was pretty back then, Bonnie was, God, beautiful. All the boys thought so, even young, in junior high. But she only had eyes for Cal and he only had eyes for her. They started it when they were young, twelve, thirteen, somewhere ‘round there. Never apart. Always together, Cal and Bonnie, after they hooked up, I never remember seein’ one without the other.”