Spiral

throat, then, ”Being the alpha wolf with the groupies, letting the other members of the band scratch for sloppy seconds.”
    Franker than frank.
    Held said, ”Hey, John, don’t be too shocked. After you’re around a rock band for a while, it’s just kind of hard to stay Polite in mixed company.”
    I waited a minute.
    The straight hair shook again. ”If you don’t have any more questions, I’d like to get back with Malinda, take my mind off things with what she can do, which is so good but so scary, too, that I almost have to brace myself for it.”
    I waited a minute longer.
    Held said, ”Hello?”
    ”Jeanette, I don’t think you answered my question.”
    ”I don’t think I even remember it.”
    ”I asked you whether you approved of Spiral’s comeback attempt.”
    The shield came down again, hard. ”Wasn’t a question of whether or not I ‘approved.’ Very was the heart of the comeback.”
    ”You were her mother, half of her parents.”
    ”Hunh.” Definitely a laugh this time, but no resigned smile. No smile period. Just the beginning of tears, the dog whuffing through its nose.
    ”I was Very’s mother, John. I remember giving birth to her in a shiny delivery room. I remember breast-feeding her and teaching her to walk. I even remember encouraging her to sing. Sing in the bathtub, sing in the yard, sing whenever there was nobody around to bother. I remember all these things, but that doesn’t mean I was her ‘parent.’”
    ”Jeanette, I truly don’t follow you here.”
    ”Then let me spell it out. After Spi and I got married, we decided to get me pregnant real quick because his father had disowned him after my husband—’Spiro,’ then-folded his underwear into a hankie and tied it on a stick. Spi’s running away from home tore the guts out of the old man, especially since his first wife’d died a couple of years before—having David, who turned out to be worse than no kid at all. You met David yet?”
    ”Not really.”
    ”Hunh. I don’t know what that means, but it’s probably3 pretty good answer where David’s concerned.”
    ”I’m more concerned about—”
    ”Then let me finish, okay? Spi and I decided to have Very because we figured it was the best way to get ahead.
    ”Get ahead?”
    ”Yeah. The Colonel’s second son turns into something out of the Twilight Zone, we figured the way to get Spi back into his father’s good graces would be to ‘present him with a grandchild,’ as Martha Stewart might say.”
    I thought I finally saw it ”You had Very to heal the family wound.”
    ”More to steal the family treasure.” Held softened again. ”Or not steal it, really. I mean, Spi just wanted what was his, and we would have put David in a real good home somewhere.”
    Off the beaten track and out of their ”normal” life. ”Jeanette, why are you telling me all this?”
    ”Because none of it fucking matters anymore.” The tears started rolling now, and Held tore some tissues from a dispenser she must have had on the far side of her, since I hadn’t seen it before.
    ”Why not?”
    ”Very was supposed to be our tunnel to the Colonel’s money, and she was doing a great job of digging it.”
    ”At least until the song at the birthday party.”
    ”Which I still don’t get. I mean, Spi and I ran after her, find out why she’d done it. And she just told the two of us to fuck off”
    ”Traces of cocaine were found—”
    ”And Spi denied Very got her junk from him, right?”
    ”Right.”
    ”Yeah, well.” The straight hair shook again. ”You haven’t known Spi very long yet, so maybe you can believe him on that”
    ”Jeanette, what happened after Veronica told you two to let her alone?”
    ”At the party?”
    ”Yes.”
    ”I thought Spi was going to blow his lid, so I got him back to his father in the living room, try to patch the hole a little.”
    ”And?”
    ”And everybody seemed to be doing that, drifting toward the old man. But when Tranh found Very, and I saw her lying there...”
    ”Jeanette—”
    ”It was just so stupid! Very always knew how to behave around her grandfather, buttering him up even before she knew how sexy she was.”
    Reluctantly, I thought back to Mitch Eisen’s ”incest” comment. ”Are you saying there could have been a sexual aspect to Veronica and the Colonel’s—”
    ”Oh, shove it, will you?” said Held, loudly enough to start the dog growling and even barking. ”Shush, Bowie, shush.” Then, back to me