31 DOG COLLAR

31

DOG COLLAR

As Vida attends to dinner, Nash Deacon rises from his chair and moves around the table to pour a third serving of wine for her. He could have reached her glass while sitting down, but he means to loom over her and brush against her as he undertakes this task.

He seems even taller and more formidable than when he first entered the kitchen. As her options for resistance have decreased, she feels as if she has been diminished physically.

"Now you put out the meal you first intended, darlin', whatever you meant to go with paper napkins and plastic cups, before you knew about my new exalted status, before our little come-to-Jesus meetin' when you got a truer sense of the situation. Don't fancy it up to please me. I want to see where your mind was at when I arrived."

After Deacon returns to his chair and freshens his wine, Vida sets out a dish containing a full stick of Danish Creamery butter, and with it a box of saltines. Then she sits across the table from him once more.

He's smiling, genuinely amused. "No water for the cups?"

"No. They were for wine in case you brought any. But then you knew where to find the glasses."

He opens the box of saltines and extracts a sleeve of crackers. "Did you think I'd be angry?"

"I thought you'd get the point."

"The point bein'?"

"This won't be easy for you."

"Now you know I'm sheriff, what do you think?"

"This won't be easy for you," she repeats.

"What's worth havin' is never easy."

He takes six crackers and slides the open sleeve across the table to her.

"I'm not a rude guest. If my hostess wants to serve me nothin' but sour lemons, I'll eat them, rind and all."

He spreads butter on two crackers and makes a sandwich of them.

He eats it in two bites.

"Good butter. So what about you?" he asks.

"What about me?"

"Are you angry?"

"Hell yes."

Buttering two more crackers, he says, "As angry as when I first came through the door?"

That is a question to which the answer must be calculated if she's to lead him where she wants him to go. After a hesitation, she lies. "I guess not. I should be even angrier, but then I ..."

"Then you what, darlin'?"

"Then I think—what's the point?"

"Is that bitter resignation or just practical adjustment to changed circumstances?"

She dwells on the question in silence. Then: "Both."

"So maybe this will be easier for me than you first thought."

"No."

"No?"

She says nothing.

After consuming the second pair of crackers, he takes a little wine and says, "Eat somethin', darlin'."

Because a man like him believes that women are always driven by emotion rather than reason and that under stress they will always prove weak, he expects her response to be puerile. What she says must support his perception that she's sliding into submission whether she realizes it or not. She says, "This is stupid. Why're you doing this? I don't want to do this anymore."

"Don't be childish, darlin'. Poutin' doesn't become you. You had your reason for layin' out this feast, and I have my reason to enjoy it. You need to finish what you started and eat your dinner like a good girl."

He butters two more crackers, presses them together, reaches across the table, and puts them on her plate.

As Deacon fishes more saltines from the sleeve and makes a third sandwich for himself, Vida says, "Belden Bead has been under my meadow for eight months. Why are you just now after me about it?"

"Like I do when I'm off duty in my Trans Am, Belden drove a car made before GPS, a '70 Plymouth Superbird Hemi, so no authorities could ever track where he went. When he disappeared, car and all, some thought he got wind of a Drug Enforcement Agency operation comin' down on him, so he skipped to Mexico, left the Superbird there, and flew out to where he kept his offshore money. It didn't make good sense he'd do that, but then no other explanation made any sense at all. Eat your buttered crackers, darlin'."

"I'm not hungry."

"Eat them anyway."

He devours his third pair of saltines before continuing.

"Three weeks before Belden visited you, you went to see Morgan Slyke, callin' yourself Ceecee Cooper, but the boy didn't realize who you really were. The kid is totally wasted that day, passes out, and when he wakes up, he can't remember what he might have told you, though he recalls talkin' about Belden. The kid is worried sick. He right away goes lookin' for Connie Cooper, these new neighbors, but seems they don't exist. Now he's panicked. Takes him more than two weeks before he dares tell his buddy, Damon Orbach. The description of this Cooper girl doesn't ring any bell with Damon, who never met you. Without tellin' Morgan, Damon goes straight to Belden, who supplies him with spiced dabs and other shit. Damon means to get special treatment by sellin' out Morgan. The description of this Connie is so vivid, down to your dimples, that Belden, who thought you were the hottest thing he'd ever seen, realizes you could pass for eighteen. He doesn't tell Damon that Ceecee is you. Belden's alarmed you're pokin' into what happened to Nochelobo. Apparently, without tellin' anyone, he came to see you eight months ago—and he's been missin' ever since."

As Deacon talks, he butters two more saltines and drops this second sandwich on her plate beside the first.

Playing to his expectations, she says, "I don't want it."

"I know you don't, sweet thing. But if you won't eat your nice little sandwiches, I'll feed them to you. I won't mind doin' it, if you want. You need to keep your strength up for our next date."

She engages in a brief staring contest but then picks up a pair of buttered crackers. She loathes him and can't conceal it; however, his narcissism allows him to interpret loathing as fear and continue to believe that she can be made to submit to him and like it.

"Belden's parents, Horace and Kathie Bead, are county royalty," Deacon continues, "upstandin' citizens. They can't breach the wall between the family's legit and dark-side businesses. So they bring in a man named Galen Vector to run Belden's operation until they hear from their son, which they never do. The new boss is on the job for seven months before Damon Orbach rats out Morgan Slyke yet again, tellin' Vector how Morgan, flyin' high, told some girl about Bead payin' them to prank José Nochelobo with water bottles and how a few weeks later Bead disappears. Galen comes to me. I hear a description of this Connie Cooper, I know she can't be anyone but you. Those eyes that are as much green as blue, and all the other qualities that are put together so damn well in you. Even if Morgan Slyke hadn't been high that day, he might've spilled his guts to you hopin' you'd let him plant some seed. So I came sniffin' around, eventually brought a good cadaver dog, found what I found, started runnin' surveillance on you all by myself. And here we are, fallin' in love in spite of I'm sixteen years older, our first date drawin' to a successful close, finishin' our wine before we kiss good night, dinner tomorrow already set, and more than dinner. Now, darlin', be a good girl like I know you can be and eat the crackers I was so sweet to butter for you, and tell me what went down between you and Belden."

Calculatedly, Vida eats the first pair of crackers with slow and exaggerated chewing, as might a mulish child who knows she has lost a contest of wills and wants to delay acknowledging the fact. She lingers over her wine before consuming the second saltine sandwich almost as slowly as she did the first.

If amusement lies behind his venomous smile, it's the amusement of a cobra. His eyes bring to mind Poe's raven, for they have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming .

He says, "You mock me, so I'm supposed to think you're a rebel and not scared in the least. Ah, missy, you're such an innocent. All you just accomplished was make cracker eatin' more arousin' than any porn film. Now tell me about Belden—my dear departed cousin, who is so much missed."

Vida grimaces and closes her eyes and massages her temples with her fingertips. "Tomorrow."

"What about tomorrow."

"I'll tell you all of it when you return tomorrow."

"The night is young, darlin'."

"I drank too much wine too fast, on too little food. I have a vicious headache. I'm nauseous. I'm ... just ... very, very tired and confused. You came here with big news that changes things, so many things, you being the sheriff. I've got to think. Think it through. Right now I can't. I can't think clearly right now."

He is silent for a minute or so, and then he says, "Before I leave, you unwrap what I brought you."

As he slides the gift across the table, she opens her eyes. The small shiny-blue box is tied with red ribbon shaped into a lavish bow.

"I saw your hobby room," he says, "whatever craft thing it is you're doin' there with all those colorful stones. You'll look good in this. You'll look just right."

She slips the ribbon off the box and removes the lid. The item is wrapped in folds of pale-blue tissue paper. It spills into the palm of her left hand. The flexible silver-mesh necklace is an inch and a half wide. A polished black bead of what might be sphalerite is inset in the center of the woven silver. The piece is designed to fit snugly around the neck. A jeweler would call it a "choker." Others might refer to it as a "dog collar."

The necklace is lovely, but she will neither say so nor thank him for it. Such a premature surrender will sharpen his suspicion.

He gets up and comes around the table.

She rises to her feet, not sure what to expect, ready to put up a fierce struggle if it comes to that.

When he says, "I'll put it on for you," she considers throwing it on the floor, considers politely declining the gift, considers saying she'll wear it tomorrow evening. However, intuition tells her to say nothing and allow him to put the necklace on her. She will resist if he tries to give her that good-night kiss he promised.

As he takes the choker from her hand, she doesn't look at him. He stands behind her, gently pulls the mesh tight, and fixes it in place with the clasp. He doesn't press himself against her, although he kisses the nape of her neck.

She startles at the kiss, but then he turns from her and steps away.

He retrieves his cowboy hat from the chair on which he left it. He looks at her, his expression as smug as she could have wished it would be. He believes the dog collar already has an invisible leash attached to it. Her head is partly bowed. She lifts her chin in defiance, but she presses her lips together as though biting back words that might anger him—conflicting responses that he is likely to read as evidence she's come halfway toward the submission he desires.

"Clear your mind, girl, and think things through like you need to. I'm a patient man, though it would be purely stupid not to put an excellent dinner on the table tomorrow. Wear that white dress of yours. With high heels." He places his hat on his head, adjusts it, slides his pinched thumb and forefinger around the brim as though to say, Good evening, ma'am. He steps out of the kitchen, leaves the house, and closes the front door behind him.

Vida remains where he left her until the engine noise of the Trans Am recedes into silence.

Reaching behind her neck with both hands, she releases the clasp. She puts the dog collar on the table.

She knows what she has to do, and she knows what peril lies before her. Even if she's fortunate, even if she's able to dispose of Nash Deacon—who will come after her next?