by W E DeVore
Q skipped ahead of him and turned to face him, walking backward. “My naughty lady bits?”
He rolled his eyes and grabbed her arms to spin her back around when they got to the corner and it was time to cross the street. “Tell me what happened after you got sick.”
“Uterus,” she said, turning back around to face him.
He glared at her.
“Ovaries,” she said, eyes wide, still walking backward.
“Fuck you and your fallopian tubes, tell me what’s wrong with Ben, already.”
They turned onto Magazine and sat down at a table outside Manny’s Mexican, avoiding the hustle and noise of the late-night crowd inside. The tattooed waiter took their order and Q folded her arms on the tabletop, resting her chin on her hands.
“Ben’s in trouble, Aaron. He’s going to have to close the Cove at the end of the month. This Saturday is the last show. And it’s not just that. All these rumors, they’re really getting to him. He’s suddenly acting all jealous and weird.”
“Jealous and weird about what?” Sanger asked, clearly surprised.
“Derek of all people. You, too,” she said. “You’ll be flattered to know that my husband thinks you’d make an excellent underwear model for Calvin Klein.”
Sanger’s cheeks reddened.
“You’re blushing, Aaron,” she said, eying him with feigned suspicion. “Do you and Ben have something happening on the down low that I don’t know about? Maybe that’s why he’s so jealous, throw me off the scent. You two do spend a lot of time in the gym together.”
He folded his arms and gave her an annoyed look. “Get on with it, Clementine.”
She ignored him. “Because, not for nothing, you have your work cut out for you, if that’s what floats your boat. That man would live inside a vagina if someone would let him.”
Sanger started to laugh out loud and for the first time since he’d open the door for her, he relaxed. The waiter returned with two margaritas and a basket of chips.
“Finally. What is going on with you?” she asked, grabbing a handful of chips and settling back into her chair.
“In a minute. Why haven’t you mentioned my date with Yvie?” he asked. “I thought that’d be the first question out of your mouth.”
“You’re changing the subject, Aaron.”
“I know,” he said. “But answer the question anyway.”
“Why do you think? Yvie came over last night and told us all about it already. She was so freaked out about freaking out on you at the end of your date that she let herself into the house and almost caught Ben and I… being married.”
Sanger choked on his margarita. “I’m curious, Clementine. Just how many people have caught the two of you having sex? Can you even count that high?”
“Hey,” she said, kicking him under the table. “Ben gave her a key, not me. And this time, it wasn’t our fault. We were in our own home, in our own bed, with the doors locked. She let herself in and charged upstairs all upset about you, while I was mid-orgasm…”
He held up his hand. “TMI, Clementine.”
“…And then had the balls to give me shit about being too loud while she waited on the porch for us to finish,” she said, ignoring him. “By the way, I blame you for that interruption.”
“How do you figure that?” he asked defensively.
She looked at him pointedly. “She wouldn’t have come over at all if you’d handle your business a little better. It took us almost an hour to get rid of her.”
He closed one eye and studied her for a minute. “You sent that text. Didn’t you.”
“What text?” she asked innocently.
“The one I got about forty minutes after Yvie told me to go to hell,” he said. “If she was at your house for an hour, then she must have sent it while she was with you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, looking away. “She probably sent it while we were upstairs.”
“Don’t be such a bad liar,” he replied. “Yvie doesn’t start her texts with ‘hey, Aaron,’ Clementine.”
“No?” she asked, sipping her drink and gazing at the traffic on the street beside them.
Sanger leaned sideways until he made eye contact with her. “She says ‘hi there.’”
“So?” Q shrugged. “What’s your point?”
He put his elbow on the table and leaned his chin on his hand. “You start your texts with ‘hey, cowboy.’”
“Not always,” she said. “Sometimes I say ‘‘sup Sanger.’”
“Did you write those texts or did Yvie?”
“You’re being ridiculous.”
“So you’ve said. And you’re being evasive. Answer me,” he insisted. “Look, I was really impressed with her honesty, especially after Tori’s been lying to me all these years. If that was you and not her, then…”
“Then nothing, Aaron,” Q interrupted. “Listen to me. Yvie has been hurt. A lot. And she’s really into you, for some bizarre reason. And it terrifies her. Leave it be. All I did was force her to get out of her own way.”
“So, that was all you?” he asked, clearly disappointed.
“No, it was part me, part Ben, and I’m assuming part Yvie. We kicked her out after you started talking about tasting her sweet mouth until sunup. I don’t do sexting by proxy.”
He gave her a roguish grin. “You weren’t supposed to see that.”
“No shit,” she said. “It was a good line, cowboy. I’m not helping you get laid no more. I think you have all the tools you need.”
“Well, I could have told you that.” He winked and smirked at her until Q blushed.
“Just give her another chance. I promise she’s not nuts, not really. I’ve never seen her like this, Tori either. Is this normal? Do you always inspire such possessiveness in women?”
“I don’t know, Clementine. Are you feeling possessive?” He leaned back, still grinning at her.
“I’m absolutely mad with jealousy. Can’t you tell, cowboy?” She raised her eyebrows and he laughed. “Besides, Aaron, smart and beautiful rarely come with sane, so you may as well get used to it.”
He leaned back, crossing his legs at his ankles. “Yes, I know. I’m friends with you, remember?”
Q flipped him off. “I’m not insane. I’m eccentric.”
“Yeah, also known as insane.”
“Fuck you.” She reached for another handful of chips and said, “Now tell me why you were cleaning all night.”
“Tori. She showed up at my house at about two in the morning.”
It was the answer she’d anticipated, but not the one she wanted to hear. She scowled at him. “Sanger, did you break your promise to me?”
He looked down. The waiter came with their food and he took a disinterested bite of his taco.
“I want this to be over, Clementine. I just want something real.”
“You didn’t answer my question, Sanger,” she said, taking a deep breath. “I need you to know something. It’s not just Stanley. Not now. If you hurt Yvie like that, we’ll be done, you and me. If you’re still seeing Tori, you can’t date Yvie. I won’t let you do that to her. She’s been cheated on enough.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t sleep with her, Clementine. I wanted to. She wanted to. We stopped it.”
“Do you love her?” she asked.
“No… I don’t know. It’s just that when I’m with Tori, I don’t think about…” He bit back his words and flinched. “…things I shouldn’t be thinking about.”
“What kinds of things, cowboy?” she asked quietly.
“It’s nothing. I’m just being a masochist is all,” he said.
“So, that’s what you’re into,” she teased. “I’m sure Derek knows some girls who’d oblige.”
He didn’t laugh, staring out into the street at the traffic instead.
“Why did Tori come over?” she finally asked, reading the pain on his face.
“She apologized for ruining my date. Told me that she loves her husband
, but she misses me and seeing me with Yvie was just too much... it doesn’t matter.” He looked back her and flashed an effortless smile to put her at ease. “Finish telling me about you and Ben.”
She exhaled slowly and ate a chip. “He wants me to have a baby.”
“I think people say ‘us’ now, Clementine.”
“Not if the person doing all the work is also recording two records with two major acts and has not a single desire to do it. Then, it’s completely one-sided.” She took a large bite of her taco.
Sanger studied her face. “You tell him that?”
“Yes, rabbi,” she replied, around her very full mouth. “I told him flat out.”
“And…”
She finished her bite and said, “He was pissed. He thinks something’s going on with me and Derek. Tell me what to do. He’s always trusted me before. Why doesn’t he trust me now? Has he said anything to you?”
“You can’t keep the nightmares from him anymore. You have to tell him. He’s got to know on some level that you’re hiding something from him. Between losing his business and that, he’s probably pretty freaked.”
“Is that what he told you?” she asked. He gave her a non-committal smile and she said, “You’re right. Of course, you’re right.” She ate another chip. “One of these days I’ll stop dragging him down into my PTSD insanity. But not today.”
“Do you know if Savion had a girlfriend?” he asked suddenly.
“What? I don’t know. What made you think about that?”
“I keep thinking about what you said. That he’d never do drugs like that. What if he was seeing someone who did? Someone who was dragging him down…”
She threw her napkin at him. “Thanks, fuckface.”
“That’s not what I meant, Clementine. But what if she was there and convinced him to try it. Got scared. Did you see Savion at the party?”
“No. I was with Stanley and Ben all night. I didn’t even know he was there.”
Sanger looked disappointed. “One of his colleagues said he was seeing someone pretty seriously last fall, but it stopped around the holidays. Savion was pretty broken up about it.”
“Who was she?” she asked.
“They didn’t know. They thought it might have been a grad student. He kept the relationship under wraps.”
“Maybe he was screwing around with a colleague’s wife.” She winked at him.
He threw her napkin back at her. “Thanks, fuckface.”
She laughed. “Stanley told me this afternoon that Savion inherited his dad’s pretty girl ADD. Could have been more than one woman.”
“So, your virgin mathlete turned into a lady’s man after you dumped him?” Sanger asked, skeptical.
“Yeah, it shocked me, too. Stanley said he put up that shy boy front when I was around, but otherwise he made it sound like Savion had become a little bit of an arrogant prick,” she explained. “You look at his house yet?”
“Yep. Went through his social media accounts, too. As much as I could without a warrant.”
“Seems like an awful lot of trouble for an accident, Sanger,” she said.
“I trust your instincts. If you still think it wasn’t an accident, I’ll dig deeper.”
She reached for his hand. “Thank you, Aaron. Really.”
She pulled out her phone and found Savion’s Facebook profile, before handing it to Sanger. “This might help. I should have thought about it before.”
He pulled his chair around the side of the table to sit next to her and they scrolled through Savion’s pictures and posts. Sanger pointed to a picture of Savion kissing a pretty woman with long, brown hair.
“You know her?”
She looked at the image and nodded. “That’s Lorene. Charlie’s girl du jour. They hooked up at Stanley’s party, I think. She wants to be his girlfriend. He wants her to go away, but he can’t say anything.”
“Why?” Sanger asked.
“She’s Stanley’s engineer. She’s mixing the record. Charlie has to play nice and he’s an even bigger asshole than normal lately because of it.” She took another bite of food and said, “She’s gorgeous, though. I’m surprised Stanley never made a play for her.”
“Maybe he did,” he said. “Maybe Tori was getting revenge.”
“Maybe so,” she agreed.
Q looked over his shoulder as he continued to scroll through Savion’s profile. She cursed when she saw a series of pictures from January.
“How in the hell does Savion know Urian Galanos?” she asked.
Sanger stared at the image on the screen and said, “Urian have a sex change?”
She shot him an annoyed sideways glance. “That’s Mrs. Galanos. Karen. Urian’s new wife. Standing on that beach with Savion. I’m assuming they weren’t alone.”
“You sure it’s her?”
“Sure, I’m sure. I played their wedding. Look.” She navigated to the Bourdello Burlesque’s website and found the pictures from the Galanos reception.
“Jesus Christ, Clementine, this looks like the yearbook for the Greek mob. What in the hell were you thinking?”
“It paid well, cowboy. Working musicians with mortgages don’t get to be picky,” she said.
“Urian the jealous type?” Sanger asked.
“How should I know?” she said. “But I doubt it. The first time I met the future Mrs. Galanos, they were working on taking a woman home with them. One of the girls in the Burlesque says they’re fixtures at the sex-positive parties she goes to.”
“Sex-positive?”
“Orgies. Basically. Clothing optional, public fucking allowed,” she explained, reaching for another handful of chips.
He let out a low whistle. “This is why you get yourself into trouble, you know that?”
“I work with strippers, Sanger. You understand that, right? Strippers and musicians. Sex and drugs go with the territory. Stop being such a prude.”
He ignored her and asked, “You think Savion went to these same parties?”
“If he’s as bad as his father used to be, hell yes, I do.”
“Great.” He reached for his plate, picking up an errant grilled shrimp, and popping it into his mouth. “Looks like your shy mathematician might not have been so shy.”
“On the positive side, you’d probably do really well at one of those parties, you know, just in case you want to investigate further.” She nudged him with her elbow.
“You think so, huh?” he asked.
“Oh, come off it. You know how handsome you are, you don’t need me telling you. And you and I both know full well you could get any woman you wanted.”
“Not any woman, Clementine,” he said, frowning.
Q studied his face for several moments before saying, “You have to help me understand something. Of the all the women in the world, why are you so hung up on the one woman you can’t have?”
He stared at the table, his eyebrows stitching together. “Because she makes feel special. Like I’m important. Like I matter. I make her laugh. I can be myself with her. I’ve always been so shy… serious. But not around her.”
She bent down to peer up at him, when she finally made eye contact, she said, “You are special. You are important. You do matter. And you make me laugh all the time. Why are you doing this to yourself?”
He covered his eyes with his hand and massaged his temples. “If I’d just been braver. If I’d just taken one chance. Just one. She’d be mine. She’d love me and not him. I know he’s a good man. I know he makes her happy and she loves him. But I’m jealous because I want her to be mine, not his. What kind of person does that make me?”
“Human.”
He looked up at her and she continued, “And I know that this will come as a horrible shock to you, Aaron, but you, my friend, are human. And humans are not perfect. And sometimes they do things with their hearts and not their heads. And that’s ok.”
He nodded slowly and picked at his food.
“Call Yvie over. Get naked. It
fixes everything.”
“Some things can’t be fixed with sex, Clementine.” His voice was desolate.
“Says you. I’ve told you before, very little can’t be solved with a well-placed orgasm,” she said. “Go on. Call her. I’ll wait.”
“It’s almost one in the morning,” he said. “I told her I’d call her today and I didn’t because of what happened with Tori. I didn’t want to hurt her like that. I doubt she wants to talk to me right now. Especially a booty call at one a.m.”
Q pulled out her phone and called Yvie. When she answered, Q said, “I have one very sad detective sitting next to me, Yvonne.”
“Oh really, and why is that?” Yvie was noticeably annoyed at being woken up and even more annoyed that Sanger hadn’t called her during regular socializing hours.
“I don’t know, he won’t tell me, but I think it might have something to do with him being too scared to call you,” she said. She looked at Sanger, “Care to field this one, cowboy?”
He grinned and took the phone from her, walking to the doorway of the nearby boutique for some privacy. As she watched a timid smile spread over his face, she sighed with relief. She reached into her satchel to look over the charts for the new arrangements and found the gift that Derek had given to her the previous evening, having completely forgotten about it. She opened it and pulled out a linen card with Derek’s neat block print written on it:
For your collection, Angel.
She set it aside and lifted out a faded black t-shirt, blushing at the lyrics from one of the most famous Dark Harm songs emblazoned on the front, overshadowing the band’s logo: Freak that. Fuck that. Get Harder.
She was about to shove the box back into her satchel when she noticed something wrapped in the tissue at the bottom of it. She pulled out a simple silver frame with a black and white photo of Q and Derek in the vocal booth at Son of Perdition. They were yelling at each other and Q’s middle finger was raised up and only inches from Derek’s face. She turned it over and read the inscription on the back:
Dearest Angel. Goddamn, I like you. -DS
Q shook her head and laughed as Sanger returned to the table. He handed her the phone and she asked, “Well?”