Lines

Chapter 2 Raye Hollow

Chapter 2 Raye Hollow

“I walk the line”

“Raye” I mutter to myself. “It’s your fault… bones beautiful from any forensic angle…couldn’t you A WRITER have shouted for help in a more ARTICULATE way?”

“I need help. COME BACK I had an accident”. Instead you whined…the sound track of our love…I stormed away… a b-line...”

“How was I to know you impaled your leg on a rotten board? Leroy’s Macon granny got your message by the way BUT SHE’S PYSCHIC”

“… how would this play had I been black and you white…”

I need to get a grip. They’ll want to know more about your visit. I remember the rental car…

…eased its way down the track. This was a rare event so we all stood on the porch looking like a black and white photo of servants lining up to greet the new master, or in this case mistress. Raye Hollow announced her arrival with a blast on the horn as if expected. She wasn’t.

I first met Raye in New York.  Our colleagues called her Guardian Angel because she wore a beret winter and summer over her shaved head. I later discovered she even wore them in bed from time to time, jewel green felt against taught brown skin.

Raye was a furniture snob/guru. Her column told those who wanted to know what to know and where to go. When shopping Raye would push you into an antique sofa and yell “let’s try out the springs-how they holdin’ up babe?”

When Raye pushed you down on her bed and said “try it out”, she didn’t mean lie there your feet together as if you were a customer at Bed Store deciding whether to buy. She meant roll around and have some fun. It was the rolling around that got us together.  Though in my head called her the sex-bully as she was too used to getting her own way.

Raye was exhausting ordering shop assistants to brew up tea so she could try out the Wedgewood. She was healthy though, all exercise and organic vegetables. Just the odd Saturday night party line and then a long cycle round Manhattan on Sunday morning.  Raye was extreme.

She burst out of the car, all arrogant energy. Uncle Theo the Elder bemused and Theo thoughtful.  After a short time she was photographing the house and swapping recipes. I felt her surf drag the sand bank from under my feet.

“Your Uncles are cute. I’d like to photo them outside…something moody…look away DixieLand…” God that’s what she had been humming all day.

Later the cute uncles admitted defeat and went to bed. I showed Raye to her room. She pushed me up against an antebellum armoire-the most expensive piece of furniture in the room-but before she could suggest testing furniture, I said “Goodnight.”  I left her bouncing on the bed and pulling open drawers.

I had a theory I could control the situation, stop it slipping away. I shut all the doors that night. However around 3 a.m. Raye decided her feet were cold so she padded along the hall to my room. I wasn’t there. Now Other People might go back to bed and either sleep or speculate. Not Raye. She strode over to Theo’s door and knocked politely as if she was at work. She then entered and cleared her throat. Theo slept oblivious as I jumped out of bed grabbed some clothes and followed her outside. She pulled my sleeve and together we stumbled off through the darkness towards the river. The sloping path was easy to follow in the dark. How different events might have been if Raye chose another path.

Neither of us was able to walk off our anger as the river cut us off.

Raye shook. I cringed. She took a long breath.

“What the hell…?”

She stopped herself with difficulty and paced about.

The rotten, old wood on the jetty complained under her feet.

“I came down here because I needed to talk…to you…I had an idea you might go back to London…I was going to ask you to stay with me in New York”

Raye had rehearsed this speech several times.

She folded her arms and waited for me to reply.

It occurred to me then I had not thought of Raye or New York since arriving at C….D’A….

She was irrelevant to my life but I wasn’t about to tell her that. I said nothing. Raye filled in the gap.

“God I come her with my heart in a bag” her voice rose, a bird flapped away from the bank.

“And YOU…your screwing YOUR UNCLE…”

“Where the fuck d’you draw the line?”

She laughed “Will you screw anyone now?”

A rat scurried across the jetty. My mind fused it all together. I thought she said “Will you eat anything now?” To Raye I looked worried but not for the reasons she thought. She delivered her kill shot a comment so vile I felt us both tip into an abyss with nothing left to hold on to.

I turned and marched towards the highway to a chorus of Raye stamping on the rotten boards and splintering wood.

The silence of the highway hurt my ears so I turned back to C….D’A…. I shut myself in the study did a line feeling sour -wasting good shit on a night like this. I paced about for two resentful hours then fell asleep face down on the couch to be woken by Deputy Strange.