by S. N. Graves
Arles was unfazed, even when a small army of likewise odd individuals joined the stranger. One in particular pressed against him and forced him to slide over so that he could share Arles’s bench. The new man wore a wide-brimmed fedora and a heavy leather coat, like the man beside her, only darker. It had accents of deep purples, reds and golds tossed in along his hat and silken shirt, dyed strands woven into his long black hair.
She wasn’t sure whether she should laugh or flee, but since Arles didn’t appear inclined toward either, jumping over that barrier and running out the back was starting to look like the smart option. It was as if a circus had walked in—a twisted, scary, albeit colorful circus. Maybe they were a band? Sam scrunched away from the man next to her who invaded her personal space as much as he could, reaching across her to ensnare a menu and draw it back to rest before him.
The blond man looked to her expectantly, like he was waiting for her answer to his oh-so-studious question. She’d forgotten what it was. Something about meat? When she remained silent, he waved his gloved finger as if he’d just made his point.
“Well, see…there you go.” Then he reached out and yanked down the paper Arles was quietly hiding behind, rudely crumpling it. “We were in the neighborhood.”
Arles inhaled deeply. He looked thoroughly put-upon. It was about damn time. “You’re supposed to call first.” He made an attempt to fold the paper, but the man’s hand prevented it, short of wrinkling it beyond repair.
“Not very civil, zanmimwen.” The man seated next to Arles had seemed odd before, an amalgam of smooth caramel features and almost theatrical dress with all those voodoo symbols and trinkets hanging from his neck and coat, but his voice was even odder—a peculiar mix of Deep South and something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Was that a bird’s skull on his hat? “Family need no calls to pass by.”
He was hard to decipher, but that one word—family—had her wondering if she was hearing things. “Family?”
Arles gave her a disgruntled look, like a kid knowing any moment his grandparents were going to do something disgustingly humiliating…like pinch his cheeks or tell his girlfriend about that one time when. He raised his hand a little, and pointed to the man at his side. “You know that uncle who bailed me out all those years ago? This is Uncle Vincent.”
The man certainly didn’t look like he had the kind of funds it had taken to keep Arles out of jail, especially now, as he claimed Arles’s spoon to begin tapping out a service call for the waitress.
“Cher? Heeey, cher?” Vincent’s voice bordered on a hog call, loud enough to have Arles shrinking a bit in his seat. “I don get cawfee quick, dere’s gonna be noise f’true.”
The blond next to her took up Sam’s hand during the commotion—and commotion there was when one counted the other two tables that had grown quite overloaded with weirdos. He peered at her skin as she tugged in vain to get free from his grasp. Examining it with a slow caress of his thumb, he trapped her hand in both of his as he spoke. “My goodness, you are pale. Anemic. You are a very sick young woman.”
Sam jerked her hand again and this time he let it go. “Does everyone have to diagnose me like some walking cancer?”
“Didn’t mean it that way. Just never smelled anyone quite so ill who wasn’t two inches from a grave is all.” He snorted, and gave Arles a long disapproving look. “I would have thought you’d take better care of your woman than that, Arles.”
Arles met the man’s unhappy gaze. Then rolled his hand in a grand gesture toward his woman. “She’s an herbivore. What can I do?”
“A what?” That got unanimous concern from both the extra men sharing her table, and even a few backward glances from the other freaks around them.
“She doesn’t eat meat, Zakai…or wear fur or leather. She’d sooner fall over dead.” Arles’s lips spread into a grin when he turned his attention to her as if knowing he’d just set off a lovely can of worms for her to sort through. The gasps and snickers that came from the lot of them were enough to have her wishing she could slink beneath the table and vanish.
Zakai’s dark brows furrowed. “She just may.”
Sam glanced between them, all now staring at her. “What? So I don’t eat meat. Why is that a crime?”
“It’s unhealthy,” Zakai—at least that was what she thought she’d heard Arles call him—replied, turning toward her as if ready to deliver a severe lecture.
“Look, I’ve been through this already, so save it, all right?” She held up her hand to halt any further reprimand. “You people can murder and torture others if you want to, but that’s not what I’m about. I have a conscience. I have ethics and morals. I understand that my skin is good enough for me, and I don’t need to cover myself in someone else’s.” Zakai’s eyes widened as she flicked his trench’s lapel with her fingertips like it disgusted her, which it did, despite how attractive she had to admit it looked on him.
“Someone else’s?” He glanced to Arles, probably to confirm she was serious, then back to her. “It’s meat, you silly girl. It’s supposed to be eaten. What else are we supposed to do with all the cows in the world if not barbecue?”
“Let the ones that remain roam free. As it should be. They deserve a life as much as you do.”
“I beg pardon. My life is much more significant than a cow’s.” He nearly sputtered, ignoring the rampant snickers from the rest of the brood.
A lone voice hidden by a sea of disheveled heads spoke up—a thickly accented Southern drawl full of amusement. “That really depends on the cow, Z. Gotta be fair, you know?”
A bit of exaggerated offense showed on Zakai’s sculpted features, which he directed at her regardless of where the insult had come from. “Me and mine, meat eaters all, will be here long after you are gone.”
“Zakai!” Arles slapped his hand on the table, but once he had the man’s attention, he reined in his annoyance with a sigh. “You want something, right? What is it?”
“Your kind?” Sam couldn’t help it; somewhere inside her an inner bitch strove to break free, and the bit she allowed to come to the surface made her grin. “You mean the fashion-impaired?”
A stiff smile twisted Zakai’s lips, the toothy amusement of a righteous carnivore. His focus shifted entirely to Sam. “And where, dear hopelessly plain girl, do you get off criticizing me?”
“For starters, you’re wearing dead animal. It’s pretty much a roadkill coat.” Sam showed a little more tooth to counter the man’s own and made a limp gesture to his head. “And that trailer-trash nightmare of a dye job…” She tsked and shook her head. “Did you spend all your makeover money on new wheels for your house and just can’t afford to get it retouched, or… I know. You’re financing your hair bleach by the inch, right?”
Zakai lifted his hand on what looked like a defensive reflex to push his fingers through the smooth tendrils of his hair and turned a confused scowl to Arles. “I’m going to kill her. You don’t mind, do you?”
“Calm down. I think this is her way of working on being more assertive.” Arles smiled and shrugged. “I’m kind of proud of her, actually. And…your hair is ridiculous.”
Zakai reached into his jacket, the way Sam had seen men in old movies do a hundred times before when drawing out a gun to massacre them all.
A rapid apology was on the tip of her tongue when Vincent reached across the table to stay Zakai’s hand. “Don matta, boo. Let’a go.”
Zakai growled. “Where she get all these stupid ideas anyway?”
“Her father.” Arles smirked and murmured a quiet thank-you to the waitress who placed his food in front of him.
“Dat Marx, bin havin’ ’is way wid ’er mind.” Vincent turned to the waitress, but she took off to tend the cacophony of orders being hurled at her from the other tables. “Woman, where y’at? I need cawfee ova here!”
“You all just leave my daddy out of this. You don’t know him…don’t know anything about him.” Sam stood as much as the bench and table allowe
d, her gaze settling on Zakai, who wasn’t taking the hint to get up and out of her way. “Excuse me.” Her voice was a bit harsher than she intended, but she figured if she didn’t get some air quick, it would only grow harsher. “Please, I need out.”
“Where you going?” Arles narrowed his eyes as if she were an escapee.
“The bathroom. Do you mind?” she snapped.
Zakai rose with a grand gesture of granting her passage, but Arles’s gaze held her. It was a penetrating stare, almost a reprimand in itself, but the slow smile that followed tempered it well. “Don’t be long, lover.”
Sam rolled her eyes. Any opportunity he saw to humiliate her, he took it, but she wasn’t letting it intimidate her now. Instead, she pressed past Zakai and made her way to the bathroom.
Once within, she locked the door behind her and leaned heavily on the sink. At least it was clean. Right now Sam felt very, very soiled. She wasn’t wholly certain if it was because of the place they were in, or the people who had converged on them, or Arles parading her around in front of his people. Or maybe the events of the night before. She hadn’t had a chance to shower after. He could have given her that much before dragging her out and seeing her seated right next to a man she didn’t even know. One who claimed he could smell her sickness.
It was silly, but she couldn’t help but feel they could all smell it on her. She felt as though every one of those men had known he’d been inside her the night before. The livid bruise the mirror now showed on her throat wasn’t exactly discreet. They probably thought she was a whore. A nasty little meat-loathing whore.
“Bunch of circus freaks… Don’t even give a damn what they think.”
Several foul words and a face rinse later, she felt almost ready to return. Almost. She spent a few moments sitting on the closed toilet seat until someone knocked at the door and a woman’s voice asked if it was occupied. She had to go back out. She was a big girl, by all definitions of the word—she could handle a bunch of ignorant thugs.
She unlocked the door and slipped through it, allowing the other woman to enter, before making her way slowly back to the tables. It was hard not to wonder if the morning news tickers would read—Woman’s Body Found Sacrificed by Meat-eating Voodoo Cult Outside Local Waffle House. Would serve her right for not just running from the place like her hair was on fire and never looking back.
“The girl is six? Does she look six?” Arles asked Zakai.
She slowed her steps. Then went still. His words struck her as something she probably shouldn’t be hearing.
“Yes. Six. Thereabouts.” Zakai pulled a folder out of his coat and handed it to an intently listening Arles. “The kid is with an aunt, one working on her third marriage. We’ve been by to see her, couple times, and the husband ran us off the property up until yesterday when Vincent dropped in as a potential buyer.”
“Can you blame him?” Arles sniffed and shot a pointed look to Zakai’s attire.
“We were in business dress, of course.” Zakai leveled a scowl on Arles, clearly annoyed with all the assaults on their fashion sense. “The thing is, kid comes with a hefty trust fund. They aren’t going to let go of that. Not without a payday coming from somewhere else.”
“Mmhmm.” Arles was quiet as he flipped through the paperwork, not so much as giving Sam a glance as she eased up behind his table. “What’s the movement situation?”
“We’ve a woman in one of the Southern families with a son perfectly suited. He’s just a few years older than the girl. Should give them a long time to get acquainted.” Zakai lifted his gaze to her, even smiled at her in that wolfish way she was beginning to realize was the norm for him. Apparently he didn’t care that she’d overheard everything.
She stepped up beside the table where Arles could see her and waited a moment to be noticed. When it was obvious that wasn’t going to happen, she simply interrupted. “Acquainted? Arles, why do I get the feeling you’re brokering some six-year-old’s life?”
Arles glanced up when his name was spoken. “Just working out a custody issue.”
Zakai rose to allow her to take her seat, but Sam didn’t budge. “What would a custody issue have to do with you? You don’t have any kids…do you?”
“Sam, sit. Eat.” Arles tapped his finger on the table before her place setting, where sat a bowl of fruit, a salad, and a Danish. None of it was Waffle House fare. “I sent Alex across the highway to get you something not smothered in animal just so I wouldn’t have to listen to you bitch, so please. Sit.”
The Alex in question waved at her from his place at a table behind Arles—a bookish-looking little thing who seemed more girl than boy, but his smile was sweet.
Sam sat, her scrutinizing gaze not falling far from Arles. He just continued to look over those papers as the man at her side went on about how many people lived in the house, the conditions of the house, which were by his words “adequate living and adequate security,” and even detailed the hours of the day when there were the fewest people home.
If this was on the level, she’d eat her plate.
Arles continued to nod, occasionally speaking around a mouthful of toast or between sips of his coffee.
It all came to a halt, though, as Vincent sipped his own coffee, only to set it back down, grimacing as if he’d just sucked down turpentine. “Damitall…” He wiped at his mouth with a paper napkin, seeming to just barely withhold the urge to spit. “Regulah cawfee. I said regulah!”
The waitress came back, scooped up the cup, and glared at him and it both. “It damn well is. It’s exactly what you asked for.”
“It ain’t neither.” He was about to go into a tirade, and a good fierce one too if his reddening features were any indication, but Arles put up a quieting hand and turned to the woman.
“Regular isn’t black. It’s boiled down to a thick tar paste, then handed to him with a bucket of cream, a vat of sugar, and a spoon with which to do the ‘standing upright test’ to be sure it’s just as thick as shit.”
“How the hell am I supposed to know that?” She huffed, and moved to take the cup and correct the error.
Vincent pulled it from her tentative grasp, near sloshing it on the table before waving her off with an irritated grumble. “Bring me cream ’n’ suga. Can ya do dat? Cream ’n’ suga?”
“Are you even listening to me?” Zakai had been going on for several moments despite Vincent’s outburst, only just now apparently noticing that Arles wasn’t looking at him anymore. “Can you get the kid or are we going to have to go in and take her?”
Zakai was disgruntled; Vincent was disgruntled. Arles was nearly choking on his breakfast trying to both eat and keep up with Zakai’s demanding questions, and the rest of the horde sounded like a pack of wolves at feeding time—all barks and growls with the occasional person getting knocked from his place and into the floor.
It was madness.
“I can! All right?” Arles closed the folder, gradually seeming to regain his morning calm. “It may take a bit of work…but I can manage it. If nothing else, we’ll offer to pay them the full sum of the trust fund up front.”
“That’s a lot of money. These people are shits. I’d rather just take her,” Zakai said.
“There is a process. Would you let me do what I do before you do what you do? Please?” And then Arles noticed Sam staring at him, listening to every word, the wheels in her head no doubt ticking visibly for anyone who cared to look. He shrugged at her. “What?”
“This doesn’t sound entirely legal, Arles.” Finally there was a way to even the playing field. Arles couldn’t very well blackmail her father from prison. “In fact, sounds downright dirty. Felonious. I know you’re the lawyer, but it sounds like the sort of thing that could put a man away for a long time.” His frown made her pause, that oh-so-innocent stare almost believable. “It seems a little like conspiracy, extortion, harassment, possible brokerage of a child, maybe even kidnapping?”
The three men, who had been trying to have a
conversation as if she weren’t there, now gave her their full attention. Zakai started to speak, but Arles quickly shushed him. “I handle a lot of their legal disputes. I have legal advocates in my employ; we represent CC, Inc. That’s it. If they do something illegal, I am bound as their representation, to which I have been retained, to keep that to myself. However, this is just a discussion over breakfast, which you are not eating…and it’s nothing you need to worry about.”
“Oh, I agree. I don’t have anything to worry about. I’m a hostage.” A glance around the tables at their unresponsive faces proved they cared nothing for her situation. Not that she’d expected anything more. “But I’m starting to think I am a hostage with a little bit of leverage.”
“Sammy—”
“My name…is Samantha.”
“Samantha. I’m just looking over a folder of documents to see if there’s any legal recourse for bringing up a custody claim. That’s it.”
“To get some young girl and boy who have never met…acquainted. Going to purchase her, take her by force if need be. Do I have the gist?”
“This is why one shouldn’t eavesdrop. You have no idea what the full story is.”
“Eavesdropping? I’m practically trapped in the center of this circus—I can’t avoid hearing! What am I supposed to do, cover up my ears and sing?”
“You’re supposed…to eat your damn breakfast.”
“Why are you trying to buy children, Arles?”
Everyone was looking at him now, including their waitress, waiting for some answer that might make enough sense that he wouldn’t come off looking like a villain. He visibly considered it with care, modified his tone to a sweet, innocent, loving level that so many knew he couldn’t truly reach, and replied.