Naked Ambition

“Does that bother you, oh, Susannah?”

“Your sex drive is the only thing I like about you, J.D.,” she’d assured, although secretly she’d hadn’t much minded his sense of humor, either.

She had been eighteen then, and since her parents had died the year before when their car crashed on the road between Bayou Blair and Bayou Banner during a flash flood, there had been nobody left to stop Susannah from marrying bad-boy J.D., except her big sister, June, who was ten years older. And of course, Susannah had never once listened to June.

“Well, J.D.,” she’d said reasonably. “All we have to do is drive into Bayou Blair and find ourselves a preacher and a place to get a blood test.”

And so, by the next morning, they were husband and wife.

Back then, J.D. had been playing music in clubs around the tristate, and he and his band could haul equipment in nothing larger than a cargo van. Now he came with an entourage, and she was lucky if his publicist, Maureen, would even share his most current cell phone number. Susannah had never been interested in gadgets, but her traditionally decorated house was full of them at the moment—everything from new phones to fancy laptop computers and an intricate home alarm system she couldn’t even operate.

“Susannah? You gonna have the usual?”

Delia’s voice cut through her reverie. Thankfully Delia was the polar opposite of J.D. Nothing had ever changed the diner owner—not two divorces, or losing her mama to cancer, or having her last boyfriend run off with the librarian from Bayou Blair. Come hell or high water, Delia remained as steady as a rock. She was a little plump, with a pretty face that never aged, and she’d always worn the same tan uniform and white apron. As always she was unsheathing a pencil from a mussed bun of tawny hair as if it were a tiny sword. She pointed it at an order pad, ready to do battle.

“What are you girls having?” she drawled.

Susannah shrugged undecidedly, thinking that Delia had even looked this way years ago when Susannah and June had come here with their folks every Saturday morning. Memories made Susannah’s heart squeeze. After her folks had passed, Ellie had begun meeting Susannah here every Saturday, keeping up the Banner family tradition. When nothing else in the world helped, smelling sausage frying on Delia’s grill could usually soothe Susannah.

“I’m not sure, Delia…” Susannah forced herself to stare at the menu, only to notice her wedding ring and feel a wave of depression. “I’m not very hungry. Maybe toast—”

Groaning, Delia dropped the order pad into her apron pocket and planted her hands on her hips. “I should have known something was wrong by the crazy way you pulled into my parking lot. What did your devil in blue jeans do now?”

“Not a thing,” Susannah lied, knowing if she opened her mouth—at least to anybody except Ellie—her dirty laundry would be hanging out for all of Bayou Banner to see. Of course, before J.D., Susannah’s own mama had caused a few eyebrows to rise around town, too.

Still, the Banners had been the town’s most prominent family, and Susannah had hoped to uphold tradition. However, instead of decorating the town square’s Christmas tree or spearheading the Easter egg drive, she’d spent most of her time apologizing for her rowdy husband and his big-city friends, all of whom made her mama look tame.

Suddenly, something inside Susannah’s chest wrenched, and she almost uttered a soft cry; she could swear her heart had done three somersaults and now, it was aching to beat the band. How could she get the old J.D. back? The sweet, gentle man she’d married?

If only her mama was alive! Barbara Banner would have known how to handle J.D. She’d been a delicate woman who read too much, painted in her spare time and was overly emotional and prone to indulge too many fantasies, the type to take to her bed in winters, and to get involved in dramas of her own making. Still, her advice about men was always on target. Realizing Delia and Ellie were staring at her, Susannah blinked.

“You sure you’re okay, honey?” asked Delia.

“Fine,” Susannah lied. Knowing only a hearty appetite would appease Delia, she added, “I changed my mind. I’ll have the usual. In fact, you’d better add extra grits.” As she said the words, her stomach rumbled. Like most Southern women, Susannah included, Delia had inherited enough mouthwatering recipes to open a restaurant. For years, Susannah had been begging Delia to share her recipe for strawberry-rhubarb pie, but Delia kept refusing, saying the ingredients were top secret. “I’ll have my favorite pie for dessert,” Susannah added.

For Delia, having dessert after breakfast showed proof of mental stability—it was as good as formal papers signed by the board of health—so she sighed in relief, then took Ellie’s order and headed for the counter, saying over her shoulder, “I’m puttin’ cornbread on top of them grits, too, honey-bun. That’ll keep that miserable excuse for a man from scrambling your noggin. Yes ma’am, the only thing I allow to be scrambled in Delia’s Diner is my own damn eggs.”

Lifting a hand so as to display her airbrushed nails, Delia held her thumb and forefinger an inch apart to indicate the minuscule length of J.D.’s penis. “Johnson’s johnson,” she called loudly, just in case Susannah hadn’t caught the allusion.

Susannah wished it were true, but unfortunately J.D. was hung like a racehorse, and he knew how to use every inch of his equipment. Otherwise Susannah would have divorced him by now, or at least that’s what she told herself.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Ellie drawled as Delia put in their order.

“I have. Of my own husband. Oh, he was always kind of wild. Everybody knows that, Ellie. I hate to admit it, but that’s why I fell in love with him. I think J.D.’s shenanigans remind me of Mama. Remember how dramatic she could be? So full of life? How she’d race around town in that little pink convertible Daddy bought her? But this…” She shook her head. “He threw another wild party.”

“That’s nothing new.”

“True.” But the house they shared, Banner Manor, meant the world to Susannah, and one of her dreams had been to restore its former glory. She and June had grown up there, and despite its sizable acreage and isolated location, nestled in a grove of mature oaks, Susannah had kept living there after her folks were gone. By then, June had moved into town with her husband, Clive, and they’d had two kids.

So naturally J.D. had moved in after he’d married Susannah. They hadn’t even discussed it, no more than they’d talked about having kids or sharing finances. At eighteen and twenty-two, respectively, passion had been their focus.

“What?” prompted Ellie, drawing Susannah from her reverie once more. “Did some cigarette-smoking guitar player burn another hole in the upholstery?”

Susannah visualized a nicotine stain left on her mama’s favorite love seat, wishing it were that simple. She swallowed around the lump in her throat. “Do you remember how I was going to that two-day seminar you turned me onto, in Bayou Blair? The one about how to start your own business?” Because she figured J.D.’s new friends would only destroy any improvements she made at Banner Manor, and she wasn’t going to have kids while J.D. was acting like a kid himself, Susannah was considering opening a shop, although she didn’t yet know what kind.

“You went, right?”

“Yeah. I got back this morning, so I figured I’d stop by the house before I met you, drop off my bags and say hi to J.D. I mean, I’ve been gone for two days.” It was her longest trip away from home since high school, and the sad truth was, she’d enjoyed it, except that the seminar had been in the town where she and J.D. had eloped.

“You found a house full of people?”

“You knew?”

“You just missed Sheriff Kemp. He told everybody in Delia’s that he got complaints last night about noise.”

“Sheriff Kemp? Was he in here flirting with Delia again?”

“Yeah, but he didn’t ask her out yet.”

Ever since Delia’s boyfriend left her, the sheriff had been sniffing around. “How could he get a complaint about our house? You know how isolated it is!”

“Gladys Walsh drove up to the door out of sheer nosiness.”

The woman was a known town biddy. “Next thing you know, Mama Ambrosia will see parties in her crystal ball and start communicating with busybodies telepathically.” Susannah sighed. “I’m at my wit’s end,” she added, her throat closing with unshed tears. “J.D.’s a grown man. He ought to be thinking about settling down.” At first, she’d enjoyed the parties, been excited to share J.D.’s new success, but things had spun out of control, and lately she missed the normal life they’d once shared. But now the stuff had really hit the fan…

“He’s under pressure,” Ellie ventured.

“I know,” Susannah said. In the past six years, he’d become Bayou Banner’s most celebrated native son, the only homengrown talent, and she and Ellie had discussed the issues related to his good fortune many times. Nevertheless, even Ellie’s lover, Robby Robriquet, wouldn’t hang around J.D. anymore, and those two had been as thick as thieves since birth.

“When I married him, we had sex every five minutes, and I was ready to start a family. Everybody said I was too young, but Mama and Daddy were gone, and June was married, and I wanted that life for J.D. and me. I figured he’d keep playing music on weekends and take over the bait-and-tackle shop when his folks retired to Florida, since he worked there all his life.”

Instead, two years into the six-year marriage, J.D. had hired someone else to handle the shop, and Susannah had been trying to get pregnant. She and J.D. had even seen a fertility specialist, but he’d just said their timing wasn’t right.

Susannah squeezed her eyes shut, recalling the day J.D. and his band had auditioned to be on a nationally televised talent show. They’d gotten on, then won, but only J.D. had been pursued by a record company; they’d insisted he work with a new band. Not that his buddies held a grudge about that. Everybody agreed that J.D.’s talent was special. Still, one thing had led to another, and there were rumors that J.D.’s third record might be nominated in the coming year for a prestigious music award.

“He’s so full of himself,” Susannah continued. “Like a stranger. And not a stranger I’d want to know.” Sometimes after dark, she would sit in her car, in the driveway of Banner Manor, dreading going inside her own home. It was as if the world’s worst forces were in there, fighting to claim J.D.’s soul and he was losing.

“When I got home this morning, the door to Mama and Daddy’s old room was open. And you remember how I asked J.D. to keep that room off limits to his buddies?” Musicians, groupies, a cameraman and publicist were staying in the house, and more than once, Susannah had run into people in her own kitchen whom she’d never met before. “It’s the one thing I made J.D. swear he’d do for me.”

“I witnessed that conversation.” Ellie frowned. “And that woman was there, too. You know, the tall, gorgeous one who looks like a model?” Pausing, Ellie added, “I think she’d be more attractive if she lost the military look. She’s always wearing those heavy boots and flak-inspired jackets?”

Boy did she. “That’s her. Sandy Smithers.” She was with a group who’d come, supposedly, to help J.D. arrange music for his new lyrics. “Until this morning, I thought she was with that lanky blond bass player,” Susannah said.

“Joel Murray?”

“Yeah. He’s a studio musician.” Susannah nodded, feeling sick. She’d never changed anything in her folks’ room, and since their passing, that had comforted her. But…“When I went in this morning, Laurie—”

“Laurie?”