Chapter 11: The Fence

I was barely inside the door when Sylvia made two short knocks before letting herself in. It was about 10:00 P M and I really wasn't in the mood for company but when I saw the concern on her face I relaxed.

"You look awful," she exclaimed. "How is our girl?"

"She must be doing okay. She was bellyaching about having to spend the night alone when they kicked me out," I laughed.

"You've been there all day. You look tired, want something to eat?" Without waiting for an answer Sylvia opened the refrigerator and brought out three eggs.

I had to admit, an omelet or whatever she was going to do with the eggs sounded pretty good. I had not eaten since having a sandwich sometime around 3 P M when I brought the paychecks to Jimmy and Davey.

Sylvia was wearing library clothes, a dark dress that buttoned down the front. Her hair was braided. I suspected she had closed the library at nine and watched for me to come home. She broke the eggs into a skillet and started two pieces of toast before she turned to me. "Did it go as expected? Were there any complications or anything?"

"Yeah, she was weak and tired when I saw her the first time but when I went back she ate some pudding and we talked some. When she wasn't sleeping," I added, not wanting to say anything about the blood transfusion that had been necessary.

Sylvia sat a glass of milk in front of me along with the plate of scrambled eggs.

"This is fantastic," I smiled as I dug into the eggs. She took a seat at the table and watched me eat.

"Can I go with you tomorrow?" Sylvia asked.

"Sure," I answered. "Isn't the library open tomorrow?"

"You're right and I have the late shift again. What about Sunday?"

"She may be coming home that day but sure, Laura will be glad to see you."

Sylvia smiled as she rose. "Set the dishes in the sink. I don't have to go in until 12. I'll come over in the morning and get you underway. I know you have a lot to think about."

I don't know what came over me. Getting to my feet, I caught her before she got to the door and gave her a hug. She patted me on the back and said, "ohh, R.," before I let her go.

I went back to the table to finish the few bites of eggs and toast, thinking how considerate Sylvia had been to wait for me to come home, and then rush over to make something for me to eat.

Before going to bed I checked the answering machine. There was one call inquiring about painting a residence. Lacy had not called.

Laura's spirits were considerably higher when I got to her room on Saturday. Her hair had been combed and there was some color in her cheeks. A lunch tray had just arrived and she ate some of everything before placing her head on the pillow and waving her hand for me to take the tray away.

She introduced me to her roommate. A young woman named Nadine sat up in the bed near the windows with a lunch tray in front of her.

"Hi Randy, I heard all about you," Nadine grinned. Unlike Laura, she had makeup applied to her face and her eyebrows had been highlighted to match her dark hair.

"I'll bet you have," I laughed. Laura was facing the other wall and did not know I was looking her way, wondering what she had told Nadine.

Seeing that Nadine was not going to eat anymore I offered to move her tray.

"My brother is very considerate," Laura commented. "It's too bad he can't keep a girl friend."

"You must be feeling better," I quipped, taking my place in the chair next to her.

"Did you talk to Lacy?"

I shook my head; not wanting to say anything in front of Nadine about Lacy's reaction to the message I had left on the answering machine. But when I saw that Laura's eyes were closed, I told her that we had not spoken.

Beverly, Lacy's sister, had said she had seen the welts on Lacy's ass. I didn't believe this. I had not struck her hard enough to leave marks, although her ass may have been red the next day. Lacy had even joked about how her ass looked the next morning. But Beverly had found out about it somehow. Either she had been told or been shown or she had peeked at Lacy's ass and drawn her own conclusions.

Having your girl friend mad at you was one thing; having her sister mad was serious. Beverly had threatened to call the authorities.

I told Laura that Sylvia had been over the night before to make me some eggs and that she wanted to come to the hospital but she had the late shift at the library. Laura listened, remaining quiet, seemingly glad to have me there as company.

I told her that Jimmy and I had bid on four jobs that morning and gotten two signed contracts with down payments. This made four jobs to do after Jimmy and Davey finished the brothel. This would take us to the middle of November, longer if rain held us up. Things looked pretty good. We had money in the account from the advances we had accepted and plenty of work for the time being.

I was bothered that we had not finished the additions. How would I explain to Sylvia that it was going to take longer to complete the projects than we had planed?

Laura looked over at me with a wrinkled brow that told me she had something serious to say. "When you were overseas did you ever think how things would turn out? Did you ever think, by the end of September that you would be going to school and be in the painting business and be in a hospital room sitting in a chair across from an old prostitute?"

Alarm struck me. Why was she talking like this in front of a stranger? Laura saw my concern and smiled.

"Don't worry honey; we had a heart to heart last night."

Nadine was watching us, smiling and nodding her head.

"Just how deep did this heart to heart get?" I asked, getting a tight feeling in my chest.

"I told her everything and she told me everything," Laura admitted. "It's easy to talk about things at four in the morning when you can't sleep."

Nadine nodded, agreeing with Laura. She was watching me intently, assessing my true feelings. Apparently, Laura had disclosed her life's secrets to a stranger in the wee hours of the night.

"She told you everything?" I said, wondering what this woman could possibly have to say that would rival Laura's woeful stories.

"Test me if you want, ask me something that only you and Laura would know," the woman in the bed by the windows challenged me

"Okay," I said, trying to think of some obscure incident that had taken place during the time we had known each other. How much had Laura told her? Nadine watched me, a confident look on her face.

"What did Laura send me for Christmas when I was in Korea?" I asked, thinking that if she knew the answer I would be convinced that Laura had told her everything, including our true relationship.

Without hesitation Nadine told me about the subscription to Playboy and the wrapped package containing the panties Laura had worn when we did Mary Ann. "The paper was silver with little Santa Clauses," she added with a smug smile.

"Sounds like you covered everything," I said, convinced that Laura had held nothing back, including the relationship that we made a habit of never revealing to outsiders and certainly not to someone we had just met.

"Look at her. Does she look like someone who could hold anything back?" We heard Laura say.

I had to agree with her. Nadine seemed innocent and open to revealing her innermost secrets in a serious discussion in the dark.

"Describe her to me," Laura ordered. She had her back to Nadine but I didn't understand why she was asking me to describe her. Was this for her amusement or did she really not know?

"Don't you know what she looks like?"

"No, describe her please. They let me sleep on my stomach but it was dark and I couldn't see her, then they moved me back this way," she explained.

"Let me get this straight. At four in the morning you poured your heart out to a person you've never laid eyes on? You even told her about us? Is that what you're saying?"

Laura chuckled, "that's what whores do. When we can't sleep we sit around and talk about what led us to this place in our lives. We tell our stories; we all have them. We've heard them before, in other places, in the early hours of the day; we talk about mistakes we've made. We tell our dreams. Now, tell me about Nadine."

Why was she talking this way in front of a stranger? It was embarrassing to hear her use 'whore' in front of another female. Was Laura killing time or was this for her amusement? Was this a test? For whatever reason, I wanted to humor her so I looked at Nadine and began the description.

"First, close your eyes so you can picture what I say," I watched Laura as she obeyed. I looked over at Nadine and shrugged. She smiled.

"She has dark shoulder length hair with a part on the right side." I looked at Laura's eyes to make sure they were closed.

"She is about," putting one hand above the other I saw Nadine hold up both hands, "five feet four inches." Nadine nodded.

"She's married," I had noticed the ring when she held up her hands, "and has eleven, no wait, she has two children."

Laura's eyes popped open. Nadine had held up both hands with one finger raised on each hand which I had mistaken for eleven. Then she had quickly changed to one hand with two fingers raised.

"Does she have a V mark on her chin?" Laura asked. She had closed her eyes again.

"No," I said, wondering why she would ask such a thing.

"Look closer."

I walked across the room and Nadine stuck out her chin for inspection. Indeed, there were two marks, one straight down from the center of her lower lip and the second veering off toward the corner of the left side of her lip. An attempt to cover the scar with makeup made it difficult to see what resembled a V on her chin.

"I'll be damn, you two did get into some serious stuff," I said, while walking back to my seat next to Laura's bed.

"Mommy, mommy, a little girl yelled as she ran toward Nadine's bed. A man came into the room carrying a smaller child. He placed the child in Nadine's arms and leaned down to kiss her. The little girl was trying to climb up on the bed.

Nadine introduced us to her family, her husband Charles and daughters Ruth and Gracie. As Ruth was introduced to us she waved and held up two fingers before turning to crawl toward her mother, having made the climb to the top of the bed.

We gave the small family space. Laura motioned for me to come close and reached for my hand. "Ruth will be three in January. She was a difficult birth. Grace will be one next month. Charles is the fence. He's in construction. Did he take his hat off? He's very self conscious about his hair." Laura having whispered the descriptions fell silent, patiently watching me.

Charles had removed a ball cap, revealing a sparse crop of hair along the sides of his head. "Yes, he's bald. What did you say about him being the fence?"

"Oh, that's what we call it when a girl leaves the business. We say she's leaving for the house with a picket fence."

"You mean she's... Nadine was in the... are you saying what I think you're saying?"

Laura smiled and nodded, "She found the fence."

We brought her home on Monday morning, Sylvia and I. Doctor Torpid gave Laura a final check and gave me a list of dos and don'ts but it was Sylvia who spoke to the Doctor at length, saying that college boy would not be able to follow the list.

The doctor caught me by the arm as we were leaving, "no physical exercise for at least three weeks. Do you understand me, Mr. Tucker?"

The library was closed on Monday so Sylvia insisted on staying with Laura. She sent me off to class.

Over the next two weeks while Laura went through the various stages of recovery I was able to come and go, knowing that Sylvia would be there every moment she was free from her library responsibilities.

Jimmy had brought two rugs his wife had woven, saying, "This one is for Miss Laura's side of the bed and this one is for your side" Laura didn't notice hers until Tuesday. She wanted to know what Jimmy's wife's name was and how old his children were. She wanted to call the wife to thank her.

"I want to know when their birthdays are. We'll need to get them something nice for Christmas. We need to shop for just the right thing for Ruth and Gracie too."

When Laura was alone those first few days she amused herself with the television I had bought and placed on a moveable stand in her room. She also made use of the telephone, calling Nadine in the hospital daily and at home after she was discharged. But this was not enough to keep her busy. On Wednesday Laura asked Sylvia to bring her some books from the library.

Between taking care of Laura and spending extra time with Jimmy I got behind on my studies. When I saw Huley in the school parking lot on Wednesday afternoon I had to explain that I had been spending my lunch hour in the library, trying to catch up with my assignments.