House of Blues

of argued about it—he didn't want it that bad. Then
when we got there he just sort of crashed on the sofa, and he was
gone before I got up."
    She shrugged. "Story of my life."
    Skip was about to say something, but Toni had an
announcement to make. "Boy, am I pissed."
    " I don't blame you. But what do you think he
wanted you for?"
    "He wanted to know where he could score."
    " Ah."
    "So I told him about Maya's. Just use my name, I
said; no problem—Maya'll take care of you. Shit! He's probably
there right now. The bastard"
    "Maya's?"
    "Yeah, Maya's—party, party, party, all the
time party. God knows what Maya's into—but let me tell you, she
hangs with some major creeps. Not exactly southern gentlemen, if you
know what I mean."
    "How's that?"

"Well, once I went in the bedroom, looking for a
bathroom, and the door closed behind me. I just had enough time to
see I was alone with two guys before the light went out." She
stopped and sipped, building suspense.
    " So what'd you do?"
    "Screamed." She shrugged. "It worked,
but Maya was a little put out."
    " How mad at Dennis are you?"
    "Pissed as all hell. Wouldn't you be?"
    "I can think of a great way to get even. Why
don't you take me over to Maya's?"
    A smile played at the corners of Toni's lips. "Maybe
I'll just do that."
    " Let me make a phone call."
    Suddenly Toni seemed much more alert than Skip had
imagined. "Uh-uh. I might take you—I just might do that. But
no one else." She drained her glass, and Skip wasted not a
moment.
    "Let me get you another drink." She
gestured to Phil, and then she changed the subject for a while. When
Toni had drunk half her wine and slowed down a bit, she brought up
Maya's again.
    "Listen, Toni, I can't go there without backup.
How about if they stay outside? Just you and I go in?"
    "Goddammit, okay!" She made a fist and
brought it down on the table. "I'm going to get that bastard for
what he did to me."
    Skip wasn't sure what he'd done to her. Nothing much,
it sounded like. But Toni was the kind of drunk who lost track of
such considerations. Skip hoped she stayed loaded long enough to get
her to Maya's.
 
 
    8
    People had brought food to Reed and Dennis's, and
Nina had sent some from the restaurant. Grady and his mother had sat
down together, but neither of them had really eaten. Sugar did not
talk about Arthur, about her loss—even about Reed and Sally. She
talked only about Nina, how she was ruining the restaurant, how she
couldn't do anything right, how nasty she was to sweet Sugar, herself
a paragon of behavior and business sense.
    That was okay for Grady, it was more natural—it was
the Sugar he was used to and for now preferred to the passive one,
the strange one of the night before.
    She was with some friends now, friends of Arthur's.
Sugar didn't really make friends, and she and Arthur had so little in
common they didn't have couple friends. Yet people had come over, and
Grady was grateful. He had no idea how to take care of his mother,
had never seen the possibility he'd need to. He'd devoted his life to
protecting himself from her.
    Grady had brought his computer over—a small
notebook that it had taken him a long time to be able to afford. He
was upstairs now, practicing his own peculiar brand of therapy—the
one thing that had gotten him through so far. He found that when he
wrote, when he created his own universe, he left this one behind. He
had problems with his father, a whole lot of problems, but he did not
want to think of what Arthur's death meant to him.
    What had happened to Reed and Dennis and Sally was
another matter. In his heart he didn't feel they were dead, and he
was feeling less and less sure they'd been kidnapped, because there'd
been no ransom demand, and it had now been more than twenty-four
hours. He and his mother had carefully left telephone messages at
both their houses, so there'd be no problem getting in touch. And
there was always the restaurant—anyone could call there.
    If they weren't dead, what? He didn't like to think
about it, what that might mean. And he thought it odd that his mother
wasn't trying to find them, wasn't bending everyone's ear with
cockeyed theories as usual. Instead she had turned her attention to
the restaurant, and to Nina, her newly declared enemy. There must be
a reason for that. And Grady thought he knew what it was. She had
fears about Reed and Dennis—the same ones he had.
    He wanted to stop writing about the vampires, to
branch out, to write about