night, calling…who?”
“I’m only trying to get you to see,” said Tiff in her most patient and reasonable tone, “that we basically know nothing beyond the fact that someone hit him and then drove away.”
“Huh. Pardon me. We know he was in the Paseo, on foot, after midnight.” The Paseo, the old Spanish district, with its stucco buildings and clay-tile roofs, was best known for its thriving artists’ community. Ralphie was no artist. He didn’t live in the Paseo, have friends there or do business there that the Queens knew of. “I ask you,” said Rose. “What was he doing there?”
Tiffany blew out a hard breath. “I’m only saying, why assume it had to be murder?”
Rose had her margarita glass in her hand again. She took a big gulp and set it down hard. “Because it was Ralphie who got killed, that’s why. We all know how he was. Everybody loved him—except for when they hated him.”
Phoebe had heard enough. More than enough. She grabbed the cast-aluminum ice scooper from the top of the ice machine, pulled open the slanted steel ice machine door, braced her free arm on the rim and stuck the scooper in there. Taking a wide stance for balance on her pointy little heels, she used the scooper to beat at the ice. It had been clumping for a few days now, which meant the machine was leaking. She’d need to call a repairman.
Haven’t done that in a while, she thought as she pounded away. Not since Ralphie came back to the city—to stay, this time, he’d told her—and started in with Darla Jo.
“Tiff, you are in denial,” she heard Rose insist.
“I’m in denial….?”
Phoebe pounded harder, glaring into the globs and clumps of ice as she attacked them with the scooper, every blow beating back the voices behind her.
She pulverized that ice and in her mind’s eye, he took form.
Ralphie…
She could just see him, see that road map of a face with the laugh lines etched deep as craters on either side of his fleshy mouth, see the wild hair he dyed a reddish-black not found in nature, which in the past few years was thinning so high at the temples, the bare spots threatened to meet at the top of his head.
He’d always been handy with machines. “Step aside,” he would say when the equipment started acting up. “Let Ralphie work his magic—and hand me that wrench over there, will you, babe?”
Phoebe beat the ice harder. She wanted to smash every clump to a sliver, crush it all into powder.
“Phoebe, hon.” It was Rose. Phoebe slammed the scoop into the ice one more time. Rose shouted, “Hey!”
Squinting hard to hold back the gathering tears, Phoebe pulled her head out of the ice machine and sent a glare over her shoulder at the Queens.
Rose told her tenderly, “Honey, put that scoop down.”
Phoebe tossed the scoop into the machine, slammed the door and whirled to face her friends. “I am sick of hearin’ about it.”
“Sorry,” said Rose.
“Not another word,” vowed Tiffany.
Phoebe wrapped her arms around herself and looked down at her high-heeled sandals. They were red as the roses on her dress. Red was a power color—she’d heard that somewhere. Lately, since Ralphie’s death, Phoebe felt like she needed all the power she could get.
Tiff said weakly, “Aw, Pheeb. Come on.”
Phoebe squeezed her arms tighter around her middle, lifted her head and jerked her sagging shoulders back. “I miss that sorry sleazeball, I truly do.” Her throat locked up. She had to whisper the rest. “I just can’t believe he went and got himself killed.”
There was a silence, except for Gwen Stefani bopping on the jukebox, singing that “Hollaback Girl” song.
Rose got that soft-eyed, mother-hen look. “Oh, honey…”
Phoebe pressed her lips together and tightly shook her head. “Uh-uh.” She put out a hand. “I am not going to lose it. I am going to be fine.” There’d been enough crying. Darla Jo had done plenty of that for all of them.
“It’s okay,” Tiffany said in a careful voice. “Sometimes a girl can’t help herself. She just needs a good cry.”
But Phoebe wasn’t going to cry. Not now. Not today. She gulped to clear the tightness from her throat, pressed her fingers under her eyes to ease the burning ache of tears unshed and drew herself up tall again. “So. ’Nother round?”
But the fun was over and they all knew it. Phoebe looked from Tiff to Rose and back to Tiff. They both wore that shiny-eyed, tears-on-the-way look. One more drink and things would get seriously weepy.
Tiff, who’d driven Rose, pushed her half-full glass Rose’s way. “Finish that if you want it. I need a quick minute and then we’re outta here.” She got up and went to the ladies’ room, past the stage and down the hall.
Rose looked into the depths of Tiffany’s unfinished drink and then up at Phoebe. “I took the whole day off. Come on over to my place for a while. Give yourself a damn break for a change. It is your birthday.”
Phoebe considered, but decided against it. “Thanks. No.” She swept out an arm, indicating the mostly empty room and the lone biker down at the end of the bar. He wasn’t looking their way. Instead, he stared straight ahead at the rows of bottles on the mirrored back wall, as if pondering the mysteries of the universe. “Who’ll handle all these customers if I take off?”
Rose forced a chuckle, then asked doubtfully, “You sure?”
“Positive. And Bernard’ll be in at six.” Bernard, one of Phoebe’s two full-time bartenders besides herself, had the closing shift that day. “If things stay slow, I’ll go home when he gets here. Put my feet up. Call my mother. Floss my teeth…”
Rose groaned. “Pheeb, you need to watch yourself.”
“Oh? And why’s that?”
“Lately, your life is becoming downright boring.”
“And you know what? I like it that way.”
“But a girl needs a thrill now and then.”
“I’ve had enough thrills to last me a lifetime—and then some.”
Peruvian earrings dancing against her white neck under the soft waves of her blond hair, Tiffany emerged from the back hallway. “Y’ all ready to go?”
Rose took a long pull off Tiff’s abandoned drink and set the glass down with finality. “Ready.”
Phoebe followed them to the door, answered their duet of goodbyes and happy birthdays, and moved to the wide window to watch them as they got into Tiff’s ancient, perfectly maintained Volvo sedan, which Ralphie had presented to her two years ago when her rattletrap compact car finally gave up the ghost. They hooked their seat belts and Tiff backed onto the street.
The gorgeous old
