Blackwood Farm - Anne Rice [124]
“ ‘I’m the one that’s sick,’ Patsy said, ‘and he’s the one that up and dies because he was mad at me, mad that I got it. You ask me, he died of grief. Grief for Sweetheart.’ She broke off and looked from one to the other of all of us.
“ ‘Grief’s what killed him,’ she went on. She shrugged. ‘I didn’t kill him. You should have seen what he was doing out there. He’d rolled over one row of pansies with his truck, and there he was laying another bed of them, like he didn’t even know what he’d done with his truck. I said, “Look at what you’ve done, you sniveling crazy old man.” He started in on all that, “You sold her wedding dress!” like that wasn’t so over, sniveling crazy old fool, and he said he wasn’t giving me a red cent, and then I told him. I told him I had medical bills to pay.’
“I was too stunned to think, but I heard myself ask her, ‘How did you get it?’
“ ‘How should I know?’ she replied, looking at me with those brittle glossy eyes. ‘From some bastard who had it, probably a user, I don’t know, I’ve got an idea and then I don’t. It wasn’t Seymour, don’t you go blaming him. And don’t you go telling him either. Don’t you none of you tell anybody what I’m telling you. Don’t you go telling Aunt Queen. Seymour and I have a gig tonight. But the thing is, I can’t pay the rest of the pickers unless I have some money.’
“By pickers, she meant the guitar players who’d be backing her up.
“ ‘You expect one of us to go in there and ask Aunt Queen for money?’ asked Big Ramona. ‘Cancel your goddamned gig. You got no business playing music tonight when your father is stone dead at the mortuary in Ruby River City.’
“Patsy shook her head. ‘I’m flat broke,’ she said. ‘Quinn, go in there and get some money for me.’
“I swallowed, I remember that, but I don’t remember how long it was before I could answer her. Then I remembered that I had Pops’ money clip in my jeans. They’d given it to me, along with his keys and his handkerchief, at the hospital.
“I took it out and I looked at it. It was a wad of twenty-dollar bills, but there were also more than several hundreds. He always saved those hundred-dollar bills just in case something came up. I counted it all out—one thousand dollars—and I gave it to her.
“ ‘You telling the truth about being HIV?’ Jasmine asked.
“ ‘Yeah, and I see you’re all crying buckets,’ said Patsy. ‘He blew his stack when he heard. You’re just one big sympathetic family.’
“ ‘Anybody know outside of us?’ Jasmine asked.
“ ‘No,’ Patsy said. ‘I just told you not to tell anybody, didn’t I? And why are you asking me, you worried about your precious bed-and-breakfast? There’s nobody left to run it, case you haven’t noticed. Unless you all are taking over.’ She shot a mean glance at each of us in turn. ‘I guess Little Lord Tarquin here could become the youngest bed-and-breakfast owner in the South, now, couldn’t he?’
“ ‘I’m very sorry, Patsy,’ I said. ‘But it’s not a death sentence anymore, being HIV. There are drugs, lots of drugs.’
“ ‘Oh, save it, Little Lord Tarquin!’ she shot at me.
“ ‘Is that going to be my name from now on? I don’t like it,’ I fired at her. ‘I was trying to tell you about medicine, advances, hopes. They have a special clinic for research at Mayfair Medical, that’s all I’m trying to say.’
“ ‘Oh, yeah, research, fine with your wonderful education, you know all about those things,’ she hammered. ‘Lynelle’s little genius. You haven’t seen her ghost lately, have you?’
“ ‘Patsy, you’re not working any gig tonight,’ declared Big Ramona.
“ ‘Are you getting decent treatment?’ Jasmine asked. ‘Just tell us that much.’
“ ‘Oh, yeah yeah, I know all about decent treatment,’ Patsy said. ‘I’m a musician, remember. You don’t think I never shot up? That’s probably how I got it, needles, not being tacked to the mattress. And all it takes is one time and all that, and I never shoot up except when I’m drunk, and so there we are, Miss Patsy Blackwood’s not long for this world, ‘cause she got drunk and shot up with somebody else’s needle, but so