Page 61 of Making His Bones

Excuse the fuck out of me? I tried to laugh, but this was getting weird. “Was I playing with myself, or did I have a partner?”

“Playing with yourself,” she giggled.

“Then how were the pigeons hit back to me?”

“Pigeons.” She didn’t appear to have heard my question.

“Listen, can I help you inside?”

“Help inside?” She looked at her house. “Oh yes, indeed, handsome. Help me inside.”

Of course she couldn’t find her keys, and I had to go back to the car to pick them off the ground. I waved at Elektra, peeking out from behind the mobile home, and pointed dramatically at my white bag of DNA goodies. By the time I went indoors, Narcissa was in her kitchen, her gold purse dangling at her neck, pouring straight vodka into a used mug. I took it from her, sniffed, and determined the mug had contained old coffee.

That was odd behavior, even for someone that majorly crapulent. I took the vodka bottle from her. “You shouldn’t be drinking on your medications.”

Narcissa shimmied her shoulders. I realized her flame-red hair was a wig. “Nice to meet you, Nurse Shirley. I mean, my name is Nurse Shirley. And I’m nice to meet you.”

“Oh, you’re a nurse? Listen, I think you should go to sleep.”

“And I think I should play with you, doctor. Would you like to play doctor? Would you like to take my temperature?”

“Not really, I’ve got a big tennis game tomorrow. Come on, Shirley. Let’s get you to bed.”

I steered her down the depressing, fake wood-paneled hallway and into the first and perhaps only bedroom. The light switch on the wall didn’t do anything, but I could see from the moonlight coming through the tiny window the shape of a bed, and I pressed her down onto it.

She fell willingly, but she still yammered. “You play tennis? I used to bowl. Yes, I did. I used to bowl 190. Oh yes I did, before my life fell to shit. To shit!”

“Oh yeah? And how did that happen?” Maybe I could get some intel.

But it was not to be. “Shit shit shit! My grandpa is a pervert! And I’ll never make enough money to remodel my kitchen! Sure, I can be on the nursery school board and go to clambakes and yard sales, but who is ever going to respect me? What am I going to do about my wall-to-wall carpeting? Nobody has wall-to-wall carpeting anymore. It’s all that wood veneer stuff.”

“All right just calm down. Get some sleep.” I couldn’t pull the blanket up past her feet, so I left it. After all, it’d been a hundred out that day.

“Oh, don’t tell me what to do, you asshole! We’re playing cowboys and Indians one day and then you’re telling me I’m disowned.”

I thought. “In what way is your grandfather a pervert?”

My approach didn’t work. Narcissa chose this moment to curl on her side in a fetal position, almost as though she would suck her thumb. “I was a great bowler . . . “

I took my leave. It had been a long day, and I hoped we’d gotten the evidence we needed from the garbage. I was glad to get out of the stuffy trailer. I wondered where Narcissa’s daughter, Hannah, was. The girl was old enough now to have gotten out on her own. I hoped she’d made the big escape, maybe back to where they’d kidnapped her from. This androgynous person sure had enough skeletons in the closet.

My white bag behind the can was gone. I joined Elektra a block up the street and took the bag from her. We walked uphill to my scoot.

“Man, that woman doesn’t know whether to scratch her watch or wind her balls,” I said. “I can’t tell if she’s the good twin or the evil twin. Was she always that bad?”

Elektra shrugged. “Sane enough to run a daycare without anyone complaining. Though after Delilah’s death and the bullshit about the suitcase in her driveway, her uncle Upton tried to defend her as being schizophrenic. I just heard her yelling at you about tennis. What’d she say when she got inside?”

“She started telling me her bowling scores. Well, I venture to guess we’ll get an idea what she’s on once we read those empty pill bottles I gathered. I got a couple soda bottles she might’ve drank out of, too.”

At my ride, we paused so Elektra could go through the ripped plastic bag of bottles. “Alprazolam,” she spat. “Xanax. My Delilah’s tox screen came back positive for this shit. Ativan. Ambien. Aygestin. Flexeril. Abilify. Seroquel. These last two are antipsychotic drugs. Don’t suppose they’re working.”

“Ambien?” I asked. “I used to date this chick in LA. Never noticed anything weird until she called me up at one in the morning begging me to come and fuck her. Of course I went. But when I got there, she was acting so weird I changed my mind.”

“Weird in what way?”

“Well, she kept acting like her name was Norma, which it wasn’t. She was dressed in a weird combination of clothes, like a straw farmer’s hat with an evening gown and gardening gloves. Hiking boots. Like a little kid had dressed her. She kept begging me to ‘dip my wick.’”

“Hm. Sounds like sleepwalking. That happens a lot on Ambien. Sleep sexing.”