The Sassy Belles. Beth Albright

this mornin’. I was out at the Big House.” (That’s what Vivi called her family’s plantation.) “I had been tendin’ the rose gardens with Arthur, my gardener. I love it when I can get my hands in the soil and feel the earth damp and squishy in my palms. Know what I mean, Mr. Sonny?”

      “Yes, ma’am,” Sonny answered. “But, please, can we jump on over to when you met up with Lewis?”

      “I’m gettin’ there, Mr. Sonny. Another JD straight up, please,” Vivi said to the bartender. “Make it a double. Anyway, when the phone rang, I told Arthur I’d be right back. I ran in the house and grabbed the receiver. It was Lewis.

      “He said, ‘Hey, Red.’ Only Lewis calls me Red.

      “‘Hey, baby,’ I said. ‘Whatcha need?’

      “‘You, baby. Lots of you,’ he said. Lewis sounded, uhh…needy.

      “‘Okay, sweetie. You name the place and I’ll be there,’ I told him.

      “‘Fountain Mist,’ he said. ‘Our room.’ I knew that meant 106—it’s where we always met.”

      “Miss Vivi, you said you always met Mr. Heart there,” Sonny said. “How many times would you say and over what period of time? Were these encounters going on for a while?”

      Vivi stopped him. “What do you mean by a while?” Vivi was being difficult and by this time I had ordered a strong drink. I’m usually a margarita kinda girl but I drink those when I’m celebrating something, not when I’m trying to spring my best friend in a missing persons case. When the bartender served me my Bloody Mary, I looked over my left shoulder at Harry who had ordered his usual dirty martini by now. It was our anniversary, after all. He cocked his eyebrow and toasted me silently. We took a simultaneous “Yeah and happy anniversary” swig, then turned our attention back to Sonny and Vivi. Sonny was explaining what he meant by “a while.”

      “Miss Vivi, how long have your ‘meetings’ with Mr. Heart been going on?”

      “A couple of years,” Vivi answered.

      Harry rolled his eyes and shook his head and I choked on my celery stalk.

      “And when you had these, um, meetings…was it always at the Fountain Mist?” Sonny kept a straight face and dove head-on into the questioning.

      “No,” answered Vivi. “Sometimes we ‘conferenced’ in his car. And sometimes we had meetings at the Big House since we moved Mama to that fancy retirement center last year.”

      “Would you say that the Fountain Mist was the main place for your conferences?” Sonny asked.

      “Oh, without a doubt. Room 106 every time.”

      Sonny kept writing. “Okay, back to the events that led up to the disappearance of Mr. Heart.”

      “Well, I said goodbye to Lewis and hung up the phone. Then I went upstairs and sprayed my entire body with rose water and told Arthur Mama needed me at the center and I’d be back in a jiffy. He said, ‘Okay, Miss Vivi, you tell her I say hello.’ I put the top down on my car and flew to my meetin’ with Lewis. When I got there, Lewis’s red ’72 Corvette was parked outside in the back. He had already gone inside. I pulled in next to him. We always parked in the back ’cause both our cars are a dead giveaway. Anyway, I walked to our room about halfway down the sidewalk. When I got there I stopped for a second to catch my breath and straighten my dress. When I reached for the door handle, I realized it was already open.”

      “What time of day was this?” Sonny asked, swigging his Dr Pepper slowly.

      “It was at eleven o’clock this mornin’.” Vivi had obviously returned body and spirit to room 106. Her demeanor had changed. The alcohol had subdued her normally frenetic pace.

      “Go on. What happened next?” Sonny kept up the questioning.

      “Well, my God!” Vivi yelped. “You know what the hell happened next. Dammit, Sonny, just use your imagination!”

      “Miss Vivi,” Sonny said, slow and steady, “we have no choice. The details here are important. It could lead us to Lewis.”

      “Vivi, remember,” I said, “the details are what will clear all of this up and maybe lead us to what happened to Lewis. That has to be your focus.”

      “Okay,” she said. “Lewis was already waitin’ for me in bed. I kicked the door closed and he revealed himself to me. He was deep into a fantasy.”

      “What do you mean?” Sonny said.

      “He had a gun holster on,” Vivi answered directly.

      “He had a gun?” Sonny shot back.

      “No, no!” she said. “He had on a holster. He had no gun. But he did have a little surprise for me where the gun goes.”

      “What was that?” said Sonny.

      “A toy,” Vivi answered, swigging her drink a little faster.

      “What kind of toy?” Sonny was dead serious as he continued taking notes.

      “A sex toy, you idiot! A ginormous blue penis! We named it Deputy Dick.”

      I threw back the rest of my Bloody Mary in one gulp.

      “I’ll have a double scotch on the rocks,” Harry announced once he’d flagged down the cute bartender.

      “It had fiber optic rainbow lighting,” Vivi explained. “Lewis told me to grab it, so I slipped out of my shoes and pulled up my dress. I had no panties on and my thighs were still moist from workin’ in the rose garden. I began to perspire on my neck and the water rolled around and down under my breasts. I unbuttoned my dress just enough so he could see I had no bra on either.”

      Sonny had a bewildered look on his face. He’d asked for the details, but by no means was he expecting a play-by-play account of their sexual escapade. He looked at me helplessly, and I tried to think of a way to get Vivi to shut up without embarrassing her. But before I’d come up with anything, Vivi continued to reveal her dirty little story.

      “Lewis looked hungrier than ever. He said, ‘Hey, Red, save a horse, ride a cowboy.’ You know like that song says? So I thought, What the hell. I slung my leg over and sat straddling him with Deputy Dick in my hand. ‘Ride it first,’ he said, so I did. Did you know that with each little movement that damn thing turned a different color?”

      “Vivi!” I said with my eyebrows up. There was no time to be polite—I needed to stop her before it got any worse. “Stop! That’s enough. I think that will do. You’ve said plenty.” I was talking with my eyes bugging out, trying desperately to make her stop, but Vivi being Vivi and after a few drinks, she just kept right on talkin’.

      “Lewis threw me over on my back and crawled under the covers to the end of the bed and started suckin’ my toes and lickin’ my calves. His body was to die for—he had bulked up a little lately, trimmed down some. He was in amazing shape, and those great big shoulders and that thick black hair… God, I was so into him.”

      “Can’t you stop her?” Harry mumbled to me as he took a big swig of his scotch. “I don’t think she’ll ever get to the finish line. And this is making me queasy.”

      “Miss Vivi, please. That’ll be all for this part. Can we try to skip to the place where he stopped breathin’. Please?” Sonny tried to redirect her, but Vivi didn’t hear anything, she was lost in the story, unfortunately reliving it for all of us like it was a sick skin flick. With all that had happened to her today, none of us felt ready to be harsh with her. There was nothing to do but keep right on listening.

      “Lewis kept licking—all the way up to my thighs, then I felt his mouth on my abdomen, sliding his tongue below my navel. Just as he was on arrival, he slipped the toy out of my hand and flipped me back over on top of him, and said, ‘How ’bout a ride on the real horse, Red? Let’s go for a trot.’ He was full of the devil! And I loved