Revenge is sweet. That’s what Jenny thought. She was intent upon making Peter pay for coming on to her cousin Pam, who happened to be Bill’s girlfriend. Not only did Peter make a pass at Pam, but he did it on the same night of the day Jenny had a coat-hanger abortion and lay bleeding in Pam’s bed. That was the night Pam and Bill were throwing a party which they didn’t cancel because they didn’t know Jenny was having an abortion.
It’s a dish best served cold, is how the saying goes, and Jenny got it that way using Bill to achieve her end some two months later when she was all healed and Peter was just coasting along thinking he wasn’t getting called out for what he’d done. Jenny was near dying and he was busy feeding his male ego. No, Jenny was not letting that slide by.
In her own way, Marie was doing like Jenny had done, except she was having a full-blown affair-like thing with Henry Lee. It wasn’t exclusively with Henry Lee since she had fooled around with Bill too. That, of course, was not quite what Bill had wanted, but surely what Henry Lee had wanted. Any way you sliced it, it was messed up.
Paybacks. Always paybacks. Bill had thought about finding the undercover cop who was in his Paddy wagon, catching him sometime in a dark alley and doing him in. While the thought in itself was serious, the notion that he could actually do it was laughable. Except for one time, he had never hurt anyone and he wasn’t sure he could hurt anyone now. That one time, so long ago, way back when he was all of sixteen, he had lost his head and nearly killed the boy who had started with him. That incident had scared Bill such that he could never, he thought, hurt anyone again.
So Bill didn’t stay too long inside the party room. He said hello to Robert and all the other cooks and to Mr. Jim and his family. He stopped by Mary and told her he would go upstairs to make sure that whatever needed replenishing was done. He said he was gonna take a minute to wash and tray up the potatoes for baking for the dinner and see whatever else he could do ahead to make sure that she wasn’t stuck there late.
Mary had slipped out of her kitchen uniform and was wearing a dress. She had also slipped out of her work shoes and was wearing heels. She had done her makeup and taken a moment to paint her nails. Bill took a moment to enjoy a long look at her. She was gorgeous, he thought, and he could’ve jumped her bones right there if no one else were around. Jesus Christ, he thought.
Alfreda followed him upstairs. Having checked out the buffet and made a mental note of what was needed, Bill thought he had slipped out quietly. Unfortunately, Alfreda had been watching and took the opportunity to follow behind. She told her husband that she had seen Bill heading up the stairs and that she was going up to see what she could do to help him. Henry Lee, drink in one hand, cigarette in the other, didn’t seem to care. He loved Alfreda. He told Bill this all the time and when Bill asked him why he fooled around he said one simple word: pussy. But then turnaround was fair play and Henry Lee had asked him how he, about to be married, could do the things he was doing. Bill had answered with the same word.
“So,” Alfreda said when they were alone in the kitchen, “really, man, when you gonna give me some?”
“When hell freezes over.” Bill said.
