Hardscrabble Road(27)

“What?” “I know, I know,” Ellen said. “It wasn’t the most sensible thing. I know it wasn’t. But I couldn’t help myself. Whoever it was had an awful voice, and he just went on and on. About how he knew we’d had that man killed, and how he was going to tell the police about it, and how Drew was going to die from lethal injection and that’s what ought to happen to somebody who’s such a big supporter of the death penalty. Except he didn’t say supporter. He said, I remember, cheerleader. Such a big cheerleader for the death penalty.”

“And when all this happened you put the cell phone in the garbage disposal?”

“That’s right,” Ellen said. “And then I called for the car, because I wanted to get out of the apartment. I thought he might have the number for the regular phone, too. I mean, those calls get screened, but things get through. You wouldn’t believe it. People leave messages on the answering machine. I didn’t want to be in the apartment anymore, just in case, and it was so quiet. I had to get out. I thought I’d go shopping.”

“Instead you came here.”

“Yes, well. I didn’t want to start talking about all this in a department store somewhere where everybody could hear me. You have to be careful with things like that. You say things and you don’t think there’s anybody around to listen, and then everything you’ve said shows up on the front page of the National Enquirer the very next Monday. Drew’s been on the front page of the Enquirer enough. And to think I used to actually like that newspaper.”

Hermoine sighed. “It would have been easier if you’d called ahead,” she said, “but we’ll manage something. How about a manicure and some new color for your nails? That will give you time to rest and think about things. All I ask is that you consider calling the police when you leave us this morning.”

“Calling the police? Why? The police are the ones who are persecuting Drew.”

“Maybe. But that phone call sounds like a threat, or something close to it. You have no idea who made it. Somebody may be looking to do you harm.”

“Just because I’m married to Drew?”

“There are a lot of crazy people in the world.”

“I know there are a lot of crazy people in the world,” Ellen said, “but they’re all liberals. Aren’t they? Wasn’t this man a liberal?”

“I think it should be enough that he was threatening your husband with death, even if it was death by execution,” Hermoine said. “You shouldn’t take threats lightly. And you shouldn’t ignore them. And I think your husband would say the same if he were here.”

“I wish he was here,” Ellen said. “I hate rehab. You have no idea how I hate rehab.”

Hermoine didn’t say anything to that. She just stood up, and Ellen automatically stood with her. It was true, though. She really did hate rehab, and she hated even more all the things that were connected to rehab. She was sure, though, that Drew would never order anybody killed.

“It just doesn’t make any sense,” she said, as Hermoine led her from the room in the direction of the manicurist. “Why would Drew want to murder some stupid old man who wasn’t worth anything to anybody? If he was going to murder somebody, he’d murder somebody who mattered.”





3


Ray Dean Ballard understood that the term “out” had come to cover a lot of other things besides being gay. There were people who said they were “out” as shopaholics, for instance, and people who said they were “out” as liberal Democrats, especially if they lived in the South. There was an entire movement to convince atheists to “come out,” and Ray Dean could never hear the term without thinking of young women in white dresses making deep curtseys in the middle of a ballroom floor. There was no movement anywhere to help people like Ray Dean Ballard to come out, and he didn’t expect there to be one soon. He kept wondering how long he was going to get away with it. For now, people wrote off what they thought of as his “eccentricities” by saying he came from the South, and you could never tell what people from the South would do. There was nobody in this office who had gone to Vanderbilt with him, or even to Emory or SMU, where they might have known someone in his family. There was nobody here who could expose him for who and what he was, except Kate, and he didn’t count her. She wouldn’t expose him for the same reason he wouldn’t expose her. He had no idea why he was thinking about this now, on this particular morning, when what he was supposed to be worrying about was what had happened to Sherman Markey. He wondered why it was that so many people who did the kind of work he did found it necessary to hate all things graceful, and elegant, and true.