by Lena Black
A zillion thoughts and questions dance in my head like sugarplum fairies on speed.
Has she been sleeping with him?
Why show up on Greier’s doorstep now?
Did she recognize me?
If she did, will she snitch to Greier? Or, even worse, Shaw?
Am I too deep?
“What little Ms. Dumbass sees in him, I’ll neva know. He’s a lyin’, cheatin’, swindlin’ sonofabitch. Not that I want her with Grey. But he’s a hundred times the man Shaw wishes he was. He’s as dark and twisted and unholy as black licorice.”
Her face contorts as if she’s tasted something nasty.
I want to tell her she’s preaching to the choir, but that would blow my cover. So, I continue to casually ask questions instead. “How are they related? Greier and his cousin.”
“Their mothers were sisters.”
“Is he close with his family?”
“God. No. When Greier’s mother died, they acted like they didn’t even know him or his poor daddy. They neva approved of her marryin’ him in the first place. They’re horrid people.”
That explains why Greier wasn’t at the wedding.
“Poor Greier,” I sigh.
“I really think ya should send him a message,” she suggests when my guard is down and I’m feeling bad for Greier, “tell him ya staying with me tonight. At least that way he won’t tear down the Quarter lookin’ for ya.”
“And what do I say? Thought you and your girl would like to make use of the bed tonight?” My body jerks with a soundless (sarcastic) laugh. “If he really does like me as you say he does, then he should worry after the mess I walked into.”
“Fine. Well, we ain’t sittin’ ‘round mopin’ about it the whole damn night.” She lifts her last shot in the air. “Let’s pull down the night’s pants and make it our bitch.”
“Do you have any beads for me, baby?”
My traitorous whore ex stands in the middle of the front room, wearing heels, thigh-highs, a garter belt…and nothing else.
Well, not nothing.
Her absinthe eyes smile at me from the obscurity of a Mardi Gras mask. Her hands rest on her rounded hips. Her shapely legs spread shoulder width. She looks like an X-rated superhero.
“Wondering when you’d make an appearance.” I groan, shoving my cell into the back pocket of my jeans. “Why the fuck are you in my apartment, Lotte?”
She says in her lax accent, “Our apartment, baby.”
Fuck. Words sound good from her mouth.
Reagan. If she comes home to this, she’ll never forgive me, never let me back inside her or my bed. And I’m not down with that.
“You forfeited this place when you gave up on us.” I brush past her and grab a blanket from the couch, chucking it at her. She catches it with an hmph. “Cover yourself.”
Without skipping a beat, she lets it fall to the floor and kicks it aside, sauntering over to me with a hungry look in her eyes. “You missed me. Admit it.” She runs a pointed red nail down my chest and stomach. “Come on, baby. Don’t you want me? Don’t you want my mouth wrapped around your thick…?”
“My cock doesn’t jump for you anymore, Charlotte. It came to its goddamn senses when you left me for him—the last fucking time.”
“You know how it is with him,” she says casually, as if fucking two men at the same time is something to be accepted. “I’ve loved him since we were knee-high. He has a power over me. If he wants me, I come running. You’ve always known.”
She’s right. I guess I was a glutton for punishment because I always forgave her, knowing she’d do it again. Not anymore. Things changed when I met Rae. I’m done being a masochist.
“But he didn’t want you this time, and you still came running, didn’t you?”
“He loves me. He loves me.” Her cool veneer cracks, revealing her true nature. Selfish. Cold. Insecure.
“He only loves you in the dark. I loved you in the light.” Finished with this conversation, I plant a hand on her upper back and firmly escort her toward the stairs. Let the drunks have her. “Goodbye, Lotte.”
“Those clothes hanging in the closet, do they belong to that girl?”
“None of your—” I halt her at the top step with a hand on her bicep. “What girl?”
“From earlier,” she vaguely clarifies as if I’m supposed know what the fuck she’s talking about, putting on her Southern belle act with me.
Rae.
“Did she see you?”
“Maybe.” She shifts her gaze and bites down on her bottom lip, as if mulling it over. “I really can’t remember.”
“Goddamn it, Lotte,” I shout, roughly throwing my hands into my hair in frustration.
She always does this shit to me, driving me mad with lust or plain fucking mad. Sometimes both. But I’ve had enough. I’m done with her. I’m not going to let her fuck with Rae or our relationship.
I yank my hands out of my hair and look her dead in the eye, with a forbidding fire in mine. “Cut the bullshit magnolia act. You don’t have a demure bone in your fucking body.”
“Fine,” she admits defeat, “yes.”
Like an eager proctologist with long fingers, I probe deeper, “Are you the reason she isn’t here right now?”
“I really didn’t see the point in prolonging her suffering. I put the poor thing out of her misery.” She steps toward me, slithering her slimy tentacle down my chest. “She isn’t enough woman for you, baby.” Inching her lips closer to mine, her bare breasts flattening against my chest plate, she sensually whispers, “I’ll let you put it anywhere. No one makes you feel the way I do.”
“Disgusted with myself?” I take a distancing step back from her. “I wouldn’t be too proud of that.”
She steps away, too, crossing her arms over her chest, revolt on her face. “She really has your sack in a vise.”
“My sack isn’t your concern.” I turn my back on her, a clear-cut sign this conversation is over.
“What if I want it to be?” she asks, her voice earnest.
For a split second, I believe her sincerity is sincere. And my shield comes down.
We clear a path out of the bar, shoving our way into the congested streets, zigzagging through the drunks while women share what their mommas gave ‘em on the balconies overhead. Several strands of the colorful plastic, metal, and glass beads already draped around their necks in various shapes and sizes, souvenirs they wear proudly. Boozed-up college boys proposition Izzie and me to follow suit. We not-so-kindly laugh them off. People are everywhere, hanging from ledges, cramming the bars, partying in the streets. Random anatomy rubs against me, the smell of cheap liquor wafting from hot breath, and loud noises come at me from every direction. It’s chaos.
It’s fantastic.
Izzie stops at a Dixieland jazz street band, taking a short break from the anarchy, and we dance and laugh and clap. The music is so infectious. It permeates through our skin and into our souls—like the city it was born in.
Suddenly, in the moving madness, I catch sight of familiar sable eyes examining me with unwavering intensity.
Shaw.
My blood congeals into cottage cheese in my veins. My breath catches in my chest. Fear paralyzes every muscle.
As abruptly as he appears, I lose him in the current of people bobbing and weaving around me.
Linking her arm with mine, Iz points out, “Ya look like ya’ve seen a ghost, suga’,” pulling me away.
“I think I did,” I murmur under the roar of the lively crowd.
I continually check over my shoulder, making sure he isn’t tailing us. Glad when I find nothing but strange faces. Thirty paranoid minutes later, I’m sure the mirage was fueled by a cocktail of alcohol and our conversation earlier. I am a shade tipsy. It could’ve been a trick of the mind or eye or light. Or maybe the lies have finally caught up with me, resulting in psychotic delusions.
Seeking salvation from the party monster attempting to swallow us, we duck into an
other bar to no avail. It’s as packed as every other restaurant, bar, club, and street in the Quarter.
“I’ve got an idea,” Iz states, her eyes trained on somewhere ahead of us. She seizes my hand and drags me behind her, bumping people out of her way. When we stop at this colorful, narrow house, I gawk at her with a hesitant expression.
Madame LeRoux’s Readings, the sign out front reads.
“A psychic? Really?”
“Ya don’t believe?” she asks, looking vaguely disappointed.
“I respect it enough not to fuck with it,” I admit, eyeing the house with apprehension.
“First,” she holds a finger up at me, “I can’t believe I heard ya say fuck. Second,” the middle finger joins its pointer friend, “Madame LeRoux ain’t some quack. She’s the real deal, sug. A voodoo priestess. And my grandmamma.”
I study the pale pink house with the powder blue door, shutters, and porch ceiling. Blue spirit bottles dangle like glass guards across the tiny porch.
I groan.
“Come on, ya big wuss.” She tows me up the porch and inside. The bell over the door rings out as we step inside, over a thick line of red dust across the threshold floor. It smells of incense and spices. More of those colorful glass bottles hang in the windows.
A bitty old woman shuffles out from the back.
“Bonsoir, cher,” she addresses Izzie, her frail arms outstretched widely to welcome her in.
“Grandmamma!”
They warmly hug and kiss. I’ve never seen Iz behave in this manner before. Almost child-like. Even in the thin-skinned arms of her grandmother, this five-foot eight woman seems so small, so young. And I realize, by bringing me here, she’s allowing me to see her this way. Maybe we really are friends.
They part, but Iz leaves an arm around the little old woman.
“I’d like to introduce ya to my friend Rae,” she says.
When Madame LeRoux’s eyes freeze on me, the color drains from her ashen face.
“We’d like a readin’, Grandmamma,” Izzie informs her, oblivious to her grandmother’s grave expression. “Are ya—?”
“Yes,” her grandmother answers before the question can leave her lips. “Yes, come.”
She scuttles toward the back of the house, through a dark doorway obstructed by a curtain of beads. I peer nervously at Izzie, having a silent conversation with our eyes. Gently shoving me toward the room, we walk through the beads with a clatter, down an unlit hallway to a room at the end, barely visible in the glow of the candles she’s lighting. It feels ominous. I assume this is for added effect, to both mystify the customer and put them in a certain mindset. We enter the room, filled with little more than a round table and chairs with velvet cushions, one on one side and two on the other. Drapes hang on the walls, blocking out the windows and the night. Everyone sits, and we wait for her to speak, her eyes focused on me. Mine find Izzie’s.
“Besides bein’ a renowned voodoo priestess, she’s clairvoyant,” she states proudly. “What do ya see, Grandmamma?”
She raises her fragile hand and points a boney finger at me.
“Ya hidin’,” she accuses. “Ya’ve run from someone, from many. Now, ya hidin’ behind a man, a lover. He means more than ya want. Ya can’t fight it.” She shakes her head. “Ya can’t stop what’s meant to be. It’s already begun.”
“That could be anyone.” I brush it off. Even though she is so right, the hairs on my arms stand at attention.
“Ya were right to run,” she whisper-hisses, her voice thick with the bayou. “He was no good. But ya ain’t seen the last of him…ya husband. He’s searchin’. And he ain’t stoppin’ ‘til ya found.”
She shuts her eyes, listening to the spirits or the voices in her head. Not to be disrespectful. I’m not sure how this works. But I’m mesmerized and frightened by her eerie accuracy.
“The dream,” she mutters. “The magnolia.”
“What about it?” I inquire, creeping to the edge of my seat. “What about the dream?”
“Heed its warnin’.”
“What warning?”
“Blood,” she hisses, grabbing hold of my wrists and holding my hands up. “Blood on ya hands.”
I glimpse at Izzie with terror in my eyes. Her expression mirrors mine.
“This isn’t funny,” I state, standing and plucking my wrists from her grip. The little elderly lady snatches my right hand in hers again. She clutches it with a strength I didn’t think she’d be capable of and says, “Heed the warnin’, chil’. Or all will be lost.”
I re-yank my hand from her grasp, rubbing out the ache left from her nails digging into the skin, and exit the house as quickly as my legs will move. I break free from the weighty energy into the chaos of the street, Izzie close behind.
“Ya husband?” Her arms cross over her chest and her hip cocks. “Is there somethin’ ya want to tell me?”
“It’s not what you think.” I glance down at the street under my feet. I can’t look her in the eyes.
“Oh, I’m thinkin’ a million different thoughts right now. Firstly, how could ya do this to Greier? Playin’ house with him while ya married to another man? Are ya fuckin’ with me? I assumed ya were engaged. Who shows up in a weddin’ dress otherwise? But this is a whole different beast, Rae.”
She turns her back on me and starts down the street at an unusually swift pace for someone in six-inch heels. I catch up and stop her by the bicep.
Tailed by a parade of people, a brass band playing ‘When the Saints Go Marching in’ dances by in the street.
“Izzie,” I scream over the music, “please let me explain.”
I can’t bear the thought of her upset with me. I’ve never had many friends. Real ones, anyway. She’s become my closest friend and the only other person I’ve connected with here besides Greier. I owe them the truth.
“I am married. It’s true.” I stick my hands up at her, as if I have the power to make her stay if she doesn’t want to. This is where some Jedi mind tricks would come in very handy. “I’m not in love with him though. I never loved him.”
I spill my guts out to her. She quietly listens, her eyes focused on mine. Never letting on what she’s thinking or feeling, which is strange. Iz wears her heart and mind on her like the sleeve tattoo down her right arm. Not that there’s a need for her to say anything. Only one concern burdens her. Greier. I’ve learned enough about Izzie to guess that much.
I take my best friend’s perfectly manicured hand in mine, inwardly praying for her forgiveness. If I can convince Izzie I’m not as horrendous as I seem, maybe I’ll have the slightest chance when I finally confess my sins to Greier.
“Believe me,” I plead, “it was never my intention to lie to Grey. I care about him. Deeply. He’s the first man I ever cared about. And I’m terrified to lose it.”
Even though I probably already did. I should’ve grabbed it while I had the chance. Carpe-d his diem.
I see the invisible wall between us reluctantly crack and crumble when her stiff body language eases.
“Are ya goin’ back to him? Ya husband?”
I gaze into the crowd of people flowing up and down the street like a wall-to-wall river of heads. I picture my capture, being drug back to that cold mansion in the Garden District in metaphorical chains. “Not if I have anything to do with it.”
“Who is the poor bastard, anyway?” I stare at my blue-haired pal, telepathically beaming his name into her head. “Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit, Rae. Greier’s cousin? While ya screwin’ Greier?”
“I didn’t know they were cousins when I wound up in the Magnolia that night. Not until earlier when you told me.”
“Bon à rien,” she spits as if her words were poison. I assume that doesn’t translate to what a great guy. “Ya hafta tell Greier. Hafta.”
“Does it matter anymore?” I throw my hands up in defeat, and they come back down on my thighs with a hard slap. “He wants Charlotte, remember? Maybe I can spare him from the truth.”
“Listen to me.” She takes me by my upper arms, forcing me to look her in the eyes, so she knows I’m really hearing her. “I have a master’s in Greiernomics. I’m tellin’ ya with absolute certainty, he did not fuck Charlotte. He wouldn’t risk screwin’ things with ya. If he means even a fraction what ya mean to him, tell him about Shaw and the marriage.”
I shut my eyes tight and nod my head.
She’s absolutely right. Maybe not about Charlotte. It’s hard to disbelieve my own eyes. But he has the right to the truth after everything he’s done for me.
“Are you furious with me?” I ask, staring up into her intensely blue-green eyes.
“I’m not exactly throwin’ a parade.” She deflates on a long sigh, releasing her hold on my arms. “But, oddly—no. Ya did the right thing by running from that man. I get it. I’m hurt ya weren’t honest from the start. But I like ya, Reagan. Ya make Greier happy. That’s worth its weight in gold to me. I just don’t want either of ya to get hurt.”
My face falls in shame.
“Do you think he’ll understand?”
“It’s a big load to take,” she nudges my shoulder, “but if ya explain everything, he’ll stand by ya. And ya need it.”
“Why?” I ask, my brow puckering with bewilderment.
“Grandmamma is seldom wrong.” I see the seriousness in her eyes, hear the heaviness in her words, and feel the authenticity in her concern. “What she said is true, Shaw ain’t someone ya want to take on alone. He plays dirty. He’ll do whateva he has to to win…Whateva he has to. Watch ya back.”
Her warning chills me to the marrow, even in the balmy Louisiana evening air. And makes me wonder if seeing Shaw earlier wasn’t my eyes playing tricks on me. What if it was him? In the flesh. That means he knows where I am. That means Greier is at risk.
I have to confess my sins. No matter the penance.
Even losing him.
I’m perched on a stool at the bar, The Black Keys and Wild Turkey my company for the evening. I swirl the golden contents around in the glass as I mentally review the night. I parked myself here after searching the streets for Reagan. With the madness of Mardi Gras and countless locations, it wasn’t a fruitful endeavor. I tried Izzie’s place, but neither of them was there. After that, I searched each bar and every face in the hoard of partiers.