Martha asked Delores again if she was sure she wanted to hear the rest. Delores said she did.
“Because some of it ain’t very nice. I got to be up front with you about that. Some of it’s worse’n the sort of
magazines the single men leave behind em when they check out.”
Delores knew the sort of magazines she meant, but could not imagine her trim, clean little friend in
connection with any of the things pictured in them. She told Martha again that she wanted to hear, and after
getting them each a fresh beer, Martha began to speak again.
9
“I was back home before I woke up all the way, and because I couldn’t remember hardly any of what had
gone on at Mama Delorme’s, I decided the best thing was to forget all about it – to put it behind me. But one
thing I knew I best not forget was the little twist of powder I’d taken from the bottle I found in johnny’s
sport-coat. It was still in my dress pocket, wrapped up in a twist of tissue paper. I was pretty sure she’d never
even looked at it, and all I wanted to do was get rid of it – maybe I didn’t make a business of going through
johnny’s pockets, but he surely made a business of going through mine, ‘case I was holding back a dollar or
two he might want.
“So I made a move to grab it and that was the first I knew that I already had something curled up tight in my
hand, the way a kid keeps the money his momma gave him for the movies on Saturday afternoon until he gets
a chance to spend it. I took it out and looked at it and that was the first I was completely sure I’d seen her,
although I still couldn’t remember what words might have passed between us.
“It was a little square plastic box with a top you could see through and open. There wasn’t nothing in it but an
old dried-up mushroom – except after hearing what ‘Tavia had said about that woman, I thought maybe it
might be a toadstool instead of a mushroom, and probably one that would give you the night-gripes so bad
that you’d wish it had just killed you outright like some of em do.
“I decided to flush it right down the commode along with whatever that powder was he’d been sniffing up his
nose, but when it came right down to it, I couldn’t. Felt like she was right there in the room with me, telling
me not to do it. I was scairt to look up in the little square of mirror in case I might see her.
“Well, there wasn’t no in-the-apartment commode, like what’s right here if we want it – and with beer bein so
full of vitamin P as it is and the champagne to boot, I guess we will – it was down at the end of the hall, one
bathroom for the second and third floors. Well, one of the little Parker kids from downstairs started
whamming on the door and then kicking it, not giving me no chance to think or get my willpower together.
“So I stuffed that little plastic box back in my dress pocket and I took it back to the apartment and I ended up
putting it in one of the kitchen cabinets, way in the back. Where I forgot all about it.”
10
She stopped for a moment, drumming her fingers restlessly on the table and then said, “I guess I ought to tell
you a little more about Peter Jefferies. He was in World War II and he wrote books about it. Novels. My
Pete’s book is about Viet Nam and his time there; Peter Jefferies’s were about what he always called Big Two
when he was drunk and partying up with his friends. He wrote the first one while he was still in the service,
and it was published in 1946. It was called Blaze of Heaven.”
Delores looked at her for a long time without speaking and then said, “Is that so? Is that really so?”