* * *
JIM
* * *
I stayed in the shadows at the top of the alley, holding my breath as Carter walked past, practically breathing smoke and fire. Whatever he and the film noir blonde had been talking about, it hadn’t made the golden boy happy.
And that made me smile, despite my own frustration. I’d been too far away to hear anything, but I would put money on the blonde woman being Vanessa O’Neill. Carter’s long-lost Mommy.
Conspiracy to sell stolen gems, that had to carry jail time. All I needed was to connect a few dots to make sure Carter O’Neill went down.
And I had the perfect way to make sure those dots got connected.
I pressed three on my speed dial.
“Yo, Jimmy!” boomed Louis, the photographer I used in situations like this O’Neill one. I cringed at the nickname, at the stupidity that dripped off this guy’s voice. Louis hadn’t even graduated community college, but what he did for a living didn’t require it. “What’s up?”
“Nothing, Louis, I just have a job for you.”
“Well, I liked the Deputy Deadbeat Daddy Denied job. Made a nice chunk of change off that sweet picture.”
“Good, because it’s more of the same.”
“Same what?”
Dear God, I thought, save me from the idiots.
“I need you to follow Zoe Madison, maybe get some friends to do the same.”
“Dude, the story is cold. No one gives a shit about the pregnant girl anymore.”
“That’s not true—”
Louis was silent, having picked a fine time to get wise. “I’ll pay you,” I said.
Louis sighed. “All right, Jimmy, it’s your dime. Not sure why you want to spend it on pictures of a dead story.”
I’d explain it to you, I thought, but you’d never understand. Leverage was too big a word for Louis.
7
ZOE
* * *
“Hands,” I yelled over the violins in the Mozart gavotte. “Watch your hands, Sophie.”
Frustrated, I circled the pirouetting girl in the room, walking in front of the cracked mirrors over to the stereo in the corner.
I pushed the off button and Sophie and the violins both stopped. These Saturday morning lessons weren’t going well.
“When is your audition?” I asked and Sophie blushed, flexing and unflexing her hands.
“January 10.”
“Great,” I said, walking up to the girl and taking her hands. “That gives us five weeks to get rid of these lobster claws.”
“They’re that bad?”
“Worse,” I said. “Juilliard does not accept lobsters into their dance program.”
“You know,” Sophie said, her tone going sour and making me want to roll my eyes. I wanted to tell Sophie that Juilliard didn’t accept spoiled little girls who used excuses to explain bad technique, either, but I couldn’t be too sure of it. “None of my other teachers have ever said anything about my hands.”
I stepped back, lifted my head and looked down my nose the way all of my former choreographers and teachers had stood, a posture that was guaranteed to put dancers in their places. The look was as old as toe shoes, and I found I liked it, liked using it. “Then every other teacher you’ve had has done you a disservice. You came to me because you want into Juilliard, right?”
Sophie nodded, her jaw tight but her mouth shut.
“Your feet are exquisite,” I said, and Sophie perked up. “Your legs are good, not great, but they show lots of promise. Which leaves…”
“My hands,” Sophie muttered.
“Five fingers,” I said, manipulating the girl’s hand into something more elegant than a claw. I extended the girl’s arm. “Finish the movement, all the way down your arm into your hand and finally your fingers. Without your fingers, you’re leaving the movement incomplete. You’re chopping it off at the elbow. Got it?”
Sophie nodded. “I’m trying,” she said truthfully, without whining, which was a serious improvement. “I really am.”
“I know you are,” I said with a slight smile, playing the benevolent teacher to the hilt. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Sophie walked away. Her back was straight and strong, but ballet was a cruel master and the strength it required to be a professional was not found only in the muscles.
“She got a chance?” Phillip asked from behind me, making me jump in surprise.
“Maybe,” I sighed, “hard to say just yet.” I turned, resigned to this moment. I’d been dodging his calls all week and I couldn’t avoid him forever. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
“I know,” he said and handed me a decaf latte and a grease-stained bag.
“Frayley’s Beignets?” I couldn’t stop my voice from squealing. Thirty-seven years old and I squealed for beignets.
“Salted,” Phillip said with a face. “Just how you like them.”
I popped a hot grease ball into my mouth and it exploded with salt and sweetness. Why wasn’t the whole world eating beignets this way?
“So, why don’t you tell me why you’re avoiding me?”
“I haven’t—”
“Cut the crap, Zoe. What’s going on?”
Phillip crossed his arms over a thin cashmere sweater that did fabulous things for both his eyes and his chest.
“Not much,” I hedged, and he snorted.
“Fine,” I said, “I went to the ballet with Carter O’Neill.”
“I saw the picture,” he said, his eyebrows raised. “You went to the ballet wearing a tablecloth from an Italian restaurant.”
“It was all I had,” I said, regretting my decision not to care what I looked like Wednesday night. Especially since the photograph was all over the paper.
“How was the ballet?” he asked.
“Gorgeous,” I answered truthfully. But the rest of the night, sitting beside Carter, awkwardly trying not to hit each other with elbows and knees, was terrible.
And after the photo and all that nonsense, there’d been a strange moment when, against all my better judgment, I’d been about to ask him to go for coffee. It had seemed as if he’d been about to do the same, and we’d laughed like teenagers.
But then, that cold mask had settled over his face, and Carter had said good-night and left.
And I’d watched him go, feeling foolish.
“So, you’re dating Carter O’Neill?” Phillip asked.
“We’re just friends.”
“Bullshit, Zoe. There’s a photographer outside,” he said, pointing toward the door. “I don’t think photographers are following O’Neill’s other friends.”
I put another beignet in my mouth. That photographer had been following me since Tuesday morning, and I didn’t understand why.
“And some reporter called me,” Phillip said. “Wanted to know all about you and the mayor pro tem.”
I twisted to look at him. Carter had been right. “What did you say?”
“That it was none of his business,” he said with a shrug. “If my best friend has found love with a suit that doesn’t mind her dressing in tablecloths, more power to her.”
I laughed, but it was greasy with guilt. I stepped away across the small dark studio toward the makeshift stage, next to the wall of cracked and broken mirrors. I sat my pregnant self down next to the stereo and put the brown bag in my lap where the beignets nestled together like eggs in a nest.
Unable to pretend to my best friend that all was right in my world, I let the whole story spill out.
“So you and Carter aren’t real?” he asked when I was done, and I shook my head. “It’s all a press stunt?”
“I’m calling it public service,” I said.
“Oh, honey,” Phillip said, putting his arm around me and hugging me tight. “I hated feeling left in the dark, and I’m pretty pissed you’ve kept it a secret, but I was beginning to be happy with the idea that you’d found someone.”
I pulled away from Phillip, looking up into his warm brown eyes. I re
membered when I used to love him, before I’d understood that he was gay. We’d taken dance classes together for years, and I often wondered if I’d have stuck with dance for as long as I had if it hadn’t been for him.
“I’m lonely,” I said, cupping his cheek. “But I’m not desperate to bring a man into my life.”
“What about sex?”
“Sex?” I asked. “Isn’t that a chair from IKEA?”
“That bad, huh?”
“You have no idea,” I groaned, slumping against him.
“It’s only been five months,” Phillip laughed, rubbing my belly.
Oops, I thought. I really needed to be more careful if I didn’t want to end up explaining the father of my baby. Phillip wasn’t dumb—he’d catch on sooner or later.
“Feels like forever,” I said.
“Six months is only the beginning of a dry spell,” he said. “A year is officially a drought. More than two years and you have a climate change situation.”
Phillip made a joke of it, but that’s what Phillip did. He laughed off the tough stuff—his father leaving, his family on welfare, having to give up dance. He was more handsome than anyone needed to be, so no one ever credited him with much depth.
“How long has it been?” I asked, the pain lacing his joke so obvious it filled the room.
“One year, one month, two weeks, three days.”
“He’s—”
“Getting better.” Phillip’s optimism was sincere. It had been just over a year since his partner, Ben, had been in a car accident that had totally crushed his hips, and it seemed as though corners were being turned every day. He’d gone back to work last month at his law firm as a consultant for the state government. “He’s out of the wheelchair most of the day now. He only uses it at night when he’s tired. And yesterday—” Phillip’s eyes got big “—Ben got a boner!”
“What?”
“We were in the shower,” Phillip said. “Soaping each other up and suddenly, there it was!”
“What did you do?”
Phillip’s laughter was so bright and beautiful it brought tears to my eyes. “What do you think I did?” Phillip asked. “I dropped to my knees and got reacquainted.”
I laughed so hard the baby did somersaults. “You’re amazing, you know that?”
Phillip took a sip of my latte. “It’s Ben that’s amazing,” he said. “I swear to God, every day…” He trailed off and shook his head. “Best man in a suit I’ve ever known.”
“Well, I think the suit part gets negated by the fact that he dresses up like Dolly Parton on the weekends.”
“He does look good in sequins,” Phillip said with a smile that spoke of such love I had to look away, choked up.
I wasn’t lonely, not really. But I wanted to feel what Phillip felt for Ben.
And there was the sex. Sex sometime in the future would be nice.
But not with Carter.
No matter how much my body might want it, my head and heart were voting no.
“Honey?” he said, jostling me. “A boner is nothing to cry about.”
“I know.” I smiled, waving my hands in an attempt to laugh off the spikes of emotion that were making me do crazy things. Want crazy things. “It’s the hormones.”
“Do you…like Carter?” Phillip asked, leaning to look into my eyes.
“Sure,” I said, pretending to be casual.
“What’s he like?”
Funny. Sad, a little. Warmer than he thinks. More passionate than anyone knows. Driven. Single-minded. Sometimes cold. Secretive. Confusing in about a hundred different ways.
“Surprising,” I finally said. “But not for me, so let’s stop talking about him.”
The two of us sat in a nice silence, like a warm puddle of sunshine. I ate some salty beignets and decided to put voice to the idea I’d had while tossing and turning in bed the other night.
“You used to take hip-hop classes, right?”
“Like a million years ago,” he said. But I knew Phillip was being modest. He’d been as passionate about dance as I had, but Phillip was one of five kids and his mom hadn’t been able to sacrifice everything the way my mom had. After Phillip’s dad had left, when it had come down to dance class or paying the electric bill—the electric bill got paid.
“You said you were taking classes again a few years ago.”
“I did. I do.”
I turned to him, eyes wide. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It’s only one class a week. You don’t tell me everything.”
“Touché,” I said, but secretly I was thrilled. This idea was actually doable.
“What about break dancing—”
“That I did in the eighties?” he asked with a laugh. “When I was ten?”
“But you were good.”
He pursed his lips. “I was good, wasn’t I?”
“I was thinking about offering a free class to teenagers after school. Hip-hop, maybe some jazz. Break dancing.”
He swiveled and stared at me. “Where did this come from?”
Carter, I thought, remembering the fire in his eyes.
But instead of telling my best friend the truth, I shrugged, glancing down at a grease stain that looked like a pair of lips. “Just an idea.”
“It’s a good one,” he said, and I knew he was remembering the days when a free dance class might have changed his life. It was why I’d asked him—he had more in common with these kids than I did, and without commonality, this idea was useless.
“I can’t pay you.”
“I don’t need to get paid. I’ll help, but I’m no expert.” He glanced over my head to the mirror. He popped and locked his arms, flipped up his collar, did a wave. “Still got it, though.”
I put my arms around the man in my life and gave him a big hug. “You definitely got it.”
Carter
* * *
I wasn’t sure what I was doing here.
I didn’t even like soul food.
Yet here I was, at seven o’clock on Sunday night, outside…I squinted into the shadows at the faded sign over the door. Mama’s. A soul food place called Mama’s.
No wonder Zoe loves this place, I thought. It was authentic, real and true, like her. Even the air outside the place smelled good enough to eat. The flame of warmth that sparked to life when I even thought her name made me nervous. I wasn’t supposed to care.
But now I was thinking about soul food. Because of her.
Ever since the ballet on Wednesday, I’d been thinking about her more and more. Four days and it felt so much longer.
“This is ridiculous,” I muttered.
I should have just called her, because that’s what I really wanted to do. Plan another fake date, so I could see her again.
But there was no need. After the ballet and the picture in the paper, my poll numbers had stopped dipping.
So if I called her, it would be for me alone. Strictly personal.
“In or out, buddy?” a guy asked, standing behind me. I didn’t move and the guy stepped around me, yanking open the door. Delicious smells and warmth and light spilled out the door then vanished, and I stood again in the darkness outside.
Always outside.
I scoffed at my own melodrama. In or out, Carter? I thought. I went in.
The menu was printed on a chalkboard over the counter and on sticky plastic menus. The air was thick and heavy without air conditioning. “Carter?”
The voice was hers and I jumped, spinning around as if I’d been caught doing something illegal.
Zoe’s smile was bright, luminous even, and then as I watched, she controlled it. Tamed it and put it back under wraps. But that first smile…oh, that first smile told me a lot.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, switching her bag from one shoulder to the other. She looked tired and I reached for the bag.
“Here, let me—”
She put up a little protest, but I took the bag from her, swinging the embroidered
sack over my shoulder.
“What’s in here?” I asked, astonished at its weight.
“Hard to say,” she said with a weary smile. “I need to clean it out.”
You need to take it easy, I thought but didn’t say. It wasn’t my place. Our relationship was business, and it looked as if it was coming to an end.
Besides, I was in enough trouble with Blackwell and my mother in the same city. I didn’t need to complicate things with Zoe.
And everything about Zoe was a complication.
But I still wanted her, I still wanted to brush back her hair and kiss her pink lips.
Wednesday night, I’d watched her more than the ballet. I’d watched her eyes gleam, her lips part with smiles and sighs. Her fingers dancing across her lap. I’d felt her muscles tense when the ballerina leaped.
I’d felt, it seemed, her spirit—buoyant and happy.
Her joy had been contagious, and my stark life, my strict existence, had soaked up that joy like a sponge.
“Are you here because of the photographers?” she asked.
“What photographers?” I asked, looking out the small front window onto the street.
“The ones still following me.”
My mouth dropped open for a second. “I had no idea. No one is following me.”
“Lucky you. It’s mostly one guy and his heart doesn’t seem to be into it.”
“How are you feeling?” I asked.
“Like a whale. On my good days. But you don’t want to hear about my swollen ankles.”
“Sure I do,” I said. And I meant it.
She watched me, her eyes measuring my sincerity, as if she were trying to find my angle. My motives for caring.
The moment got small and tight; it was the night of the ballet all over again. The air between us was cluttered with too many emotions: wariness, genuine respect and a heaping dose of lust. At least on my part. And I had the sinking suspicion that I was alone with that.
But then she cleared her throat, her eyes darting away, and the moment shattered.
Apparently my sincerity was unconvincing.
“I have a doctor’s appointment on Tuesday, and I’m sure the whale feelings are par for the course. The real question is, what are you doing here? I thought you didn’t like soul food.”
The Saint Page 8