Fic: Blue Alibi, Part VIII
The Front Porch
Dinner was quiet; the roast chicken tender and juicy, Reese made the sisters laugh with stories about his fake adventures in Zanzibar, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka. To Fusco’s surprise, it turned out Reese knew a lot about growing exotic spices and tea.
They finished off all the rice because he told them that the Wolof people of Senegal believe that for every grain of rice that’s dropped an angel sheds a tear.
The sweat investment in the ice cream paid off deliciously. To Fusco, the wild blue berries bursting in his mouth tasted like sex, sweet and wonderfully sticky.
Anthony Nix did not join the family.
Although he never saw him, Fusco still felt the old man’s presence floating over the dinner.
The entire evening, Anthony remained slumped in a wicker chair on the front porch. Ondine served him a heaping plate of food and brought out a small pottery jug filled with the white wine they were drinking in the kitchen.
When Allison and Fusco excused themselves and retreated upstairs, he hoped their departure would break up the company. But as they settled in bed, he could hear plinking sounds from Vivienne’s guitar and the casual notes of folk music drifted up to their window.
Fusco recognized some of the songs - “On Top of Old Smokey,” “Red River Valley” and other old Western tunes full of nostalgia and regret.
So come sit by my side if you love me.
Do not hasten to bid me adieu.
Just remember the Red River Valley,
And the cowboy that has loved you so true.
Once he even imagined he could hear Reese’s light tenor threading through a sea chantey, although he wasn’t certain.
O, Shenandoah, I love your daughter,
Away you rolling river.
I'll take her 'cross yon rolling water.
Fusco knelt on the floor next to the narrow bed and pushed Allison to lie down before him. Come and sit by my side if you love me. He pressed his mouth to her sex, letting the tastes of blue berries and cream flow from his lips to hers. Do not hasten to bid me adieu.
The voices below blended into Allison’s moans. And the cowboy that has loved you so true. Her mournful cry was delicate like a broken thing in the wild. Away you rolling river.
After they made love, Fusco fell into a sound sleep.
The swirling emotions of the long day played through his mind, but those dreams were so enticing, sweet and moist that he slept deeply, until long past the Sunday dawn.
xxxxxxxxx
When he came downstairs, Fusco found the four sisters in the kitchen as before, but this time pancakes rather than Reese’s omelets were sizzling in the skillet. They were dressed in long white skirts made of some kind of lacey fabric topped off with skinny undershirts in black or white.
They looked refreshed, their faces bright, their bare arms shiny and strong.
The women were chattering at such a clip that it took several tries before Fusco could get in a question on the whereabouts of his friend.
Ondine tipped her chin in the direction of the front porch but said nothing.
He could see Reese’s dark silhouette through the parlor window; leaning forward against the rail, elbows locked, arms stiffly propping his torso upright.
Fusco carried two mugs of black coffee out to the porch. Reese took a cup, holding it in both hands, studying the rising steam but not taking a sip.
The jeans and t-shirt of Saturday were gone. He was back in his city uniform - white dress shirt, black trousers. But his feet were bare and his hair was messy, the black spikes outlined against the white morning sky.
He didn’t acknowledge Fusco’s arrival or say thank you for the coffee.
Something was wrong, Fusco could feel it.
“Hey, you want some pancakes? Viv isn’t much of a cook, but she’s a real whiz with pancakes. You oughtta taste ‘em.” He tried to make his voice light.
Reese shook off the suggestion, but still said nothing.
After a few minutes and a few silent sips of coffee, Fusco went direct.
“Something happen last night?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you tell me about it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Whaddya mean you don’t know? You don’t remember? Or you don’t wanna know?”
“Yes.”
Beat.
“Both.”
Reese looked at Fusco, his eyes flashing that glassy gray they got when there were tears in them.
Fusco tried again.
“Tell me, John.”
Reese seemed to give up on some inner struggle then.
“I was asleep. Dead asleep. I didn’t hear the door slide open. I didn’t hear footsteps. Nothing.”
He paused, cocking his head to one side as if trying to hear back into last night.
“Then her hands were on me. Fluttering everywhere on me. And her mouth…In the dark…”
Fusco kept his voice soft, even though he wanted to shout.
“Who?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t see anything. Just feel her. Christ! Her face, her lips, her throat. Her hair like the pelt of some animal under my fingers.”
Reese clenched his hands on the porch railing and stared across the lawn. Seeing something invisible, feeling something unbearable.
“Like rolling in a river. Her tongue like a hundred fishes…It was…”
Fusco interrupted this misery.
“And you don’t know which one?”
“No.”
“Fuck.”
Reese continued with some strange urgency driving him onward.
“Then she closed the door. It was so dark. I fell asleep again. Hell, I don’t even know if I was awake or dreaming it all.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah.”
The two men stood shoulder to shoulder on the front porch like that for a long while, staring out at the broad sunny lawn sweeping down to the woods below.
They didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything to say.