A Palette for Love

by Charlotte Greene

  Amelia sighed. “Fine, but let’s drive. The car is out front.”

  “Okay.” A fifteen-minute walk was certainly not something we needed to add to our lateness, and Amelia rarely drank enough to make driving a problem.

  As we walked into the living room, Aunt Kate and Jim arrived, carrying bags of food.

  “You girls off, then?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said, “and we’ll probably be very late. We’ll try to keep it down when we get back.” I blushed when I realized the sexual implications of this remark, though I hadn’t meant it that way.

  Aunt Kate’s face was a barely contained mask of derision. While she told me she didn’t mind me having Amelia over for the night, she clearly did mind. So far, despite the added weeks of relative peace between me and Amelia, Aunt Kate hadn’t warmed up to Amelia at all.

  “See you tomorrow then,” I told her, giving her a quick hug.

  Outside, a new black Mercedes coupe was sitting directly in front of the house, the dealer tags still on the bumper. This wasn’t Amelia’s car, but when she unlocked it, I assumed she’d simply traded hers in. The inside was a creamy white leather, and the ride over to Mimi’s, despite the atrocious condition of the roads, was smooth and quiet. We managed to find a parking space about a block from the bar and quickly walked over, inside, and upstairs where Meghan’s band was playing.

  Zach waved from a small table that had been reserved for us, but the server looked annoyed at our lateness. We ordered drinks and turned to watch the band.

  Meghan played with a lot of different kinds of bands and players, depending on the venue, but there was generally always a drummer, a guitar player, some horns, and a bass player, and Meghan sometimes played the banjo, fiddle, or accordion. In larger venues, more horns or strings were added, but Mimi’s, like Meghan’s band tonight, was pretty small. When I finally turned toward them, I was surprised to see Amelia’s brother Michael playing the drums and his girlfriend Jenna on the bass. Amelia was unfazed, obviously prepared to see them. The band finished their song, and after the applause, Meghan called for a quick break. The three of them put down their instruments and walked over to us.

  “Nice of you to finally join us,” Meghan said, eyes narrow.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “We were—”

  “I know what you two were doing, girly,” Meghan said, closing her eyes. She held up a hand. “I don’t need the gory details.”

  Michael and Jenna laughed. “Were you surprised to see us?” he asked me.

  “I was! But I’m so happy this worked out for you.”

  “They’re both fantastic,” Meghan said, most of her annoyance gone. “We’ve played together a couple of times now, and we’re getting more requests to play gigs than I’ve ever had with anyone else.”

  “I’m so glad you set this up,” Michael said, squeezing Amelia’s hand. “We both really needed the work, and Meghan’s awesome.”

  Meghan puffed up her chest. “You’re damn right I am.” She moved around the table, kissing Zach, and I watched the two of them with fondness. They looked great together, and Zach actually seemed like a pretty nice guy, even if he was very quiet. Meghan was loud enough for both of them, so they seemed to balance each other. For once, I thought Meghan had found a guy as nice as she thought he was. It was a pleasant change from the kind of losers she used to date.

  Meghan glanced at her watch. “Okay, I guess we better get back to it. Drinks are on the house, but don’t go too crazy or they won’t invite us back.” She paused. “Also, after this, you guys are coming to my new place for a nightcap. You haven’t been over once since I moved in, so no excuses.” She pointed at both of us to show us how serious she was, and I laughed.

  “We were planning on it,” I said.

  “Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Amelia said.

  “Good.” Meghan nodded firmly.

  About halfway through the band’s second set, I got up to go to the bathroom. The little, one-stall affair upstairs was occupied, so I went down to the larger restroom. When I came out of the stall, a thin, tall woman was standing by the sink, waiting. I tried to move to the side to give her room to go into the stall, but she kept standing there, staring at me.

  “I’m sorry, excuse me,” I said, indicating the sink behind her.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” she said, eyes narrowed.

  “What?”

  “You’re not going anywhere until I talk to you.” She took a step closer, and I suddenly saw that her face was a mask of rage.

  “Who are you?” I asked, taking a step back.

  “Enough talk.” She grabbed my arm and yanked me close to her. I struggled and she twisted my arm behind my back, making me call out in pain. “Shut up and listen to me,” she hissed, jerking my arm up. I stopped struggling, desperately hoping someone would come in to the bathroom to help.

  Seeing that I was momentarily cooperating, she let go of my arm, and I leapt toward the door. I almost had the handle, but she reached out and pulled me back again, slamming my stomach into the sink. I shouted, and she clapped her hand over my mouth.

  “Shut. The. Fuck. Up.” Her voice was a low growl from behind me. “If you don’t stop, I’m going to have to hurt you. All I want to do is talk, and then I’ll let you go. Nod if you understand me.”

  I nodded.

  She kept her hand tight over my mouth and, with her other hand, twisted my arm up behind my back. She continued to hold me against the sink. She’d leaned over my back to give me less leverage, so I was effectively pinned. Despite her leanness, she was incredibly strong. I tensed my body, getting ready to fight as hard as I could. Turning my head, I could see her face a few inches behind my head, and I contemplated rearing back and smashing into her.

  “I can feel you thinking about trying something, bitch, but don’t test me.” As if to stress her point, she twisted my arm back farther, hard, and I groaned. “I’m going to tell you something and then I’ll let you go. If I don’t get to tell you, I’ll just track you down again. Do you understand?”

  Reluctantly, I nodded again.

  She grunted in satisfaction. “Here it is. Stay the fuck away from Amelia Winters. Break up with her tonight and never go near her again. In fact, quit your job. You can’t have anything else to do with her after tonight.”

  She must have seen the confusion in my eyes, as she laughed, once. “Don’t worry. You’ll put it all together eventually, and even if you don’t, Amelia Winters is not your concern—she’s mine. I’m not giving you information here. I’m giving you an order. This is your only chance. If you don’t listen to me, I’m going to have to hurt you.” As if to make her point clearer, she yanked up on my arm and I screamed into her palm, my cries muffled by her sweaty palm.

  She paused, and I turned to see her looking around for a moment, her eyes calculating and cold. “Now, I’m going to let you go and you’re going to walk out of this room. I’ll give you a minute while I clear out of here. If you try to follow me, I’ll hurt you. If you call the police, I’ll hurt you. If you do anything besides what I just told you to do, I’ll hurt you. Press my buttons enough, and I’ll hurt everyone you know, including that old lady you live with. Am I making myself clear?”

  “Yes,” I whispered against her callused fingers.

  “Good,” she said. I felt her hands relax, and I slithered away from her and toward the door. I turned to look at her, waiting for her to rush me again, but she just stood there, watching me leave.

  Outside the bathroom, I rubbed at my sore mouth, the sweat from her hand tainting my lips. My shoulder and arm felt bruised and tender. I took a moment to review my options before doing anything. I could go straight to the bartender and get a bouncer to do something about her, or I could go back upstairs and tell Amelia. I looked back at the bathroom door, dreading the moment she would come out, and that made my decision for me. I raced back upstairs.

  Amelia was pleased to see me, but she looked puzzled as I approache
d. She slid off her chair and came over to me, meeting me by the bar. I looked around behind me, waiting to see if the woman had followed for a moment, and motioned for Amelia to sit down next to me at the bar.

  “What’s wrong?” Amelia asked. “Why’s your mouth so red?”

  “There was a woman. Downstairs. In the bathroom. She put her hand over my mouth and twisted my arm.”

  “What?” Amelia asked, jumping to her feet.

  Terrified, I pulled her back toward her seat, looking around wildly. “She might be watching us right now. She knows you. She told me to break up with you and never see you again.”

  Despite the dim light of the bar, I could see Amelia go pale, and she sat down on a barstool heavily. “It’s Sara,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “Sara. My ex. Was she tall? Slender? Dark-brown hair?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s her.” Her face was still white and shocked. “I can’t believe she’d do this.” She shook her head. “I never imagined she’d go this far…”

  “Well, she has.” I was angry now instead of frightened. “We need to call the police.”

  Amelia looked alarmed and was silent for a moment. “I think you’re right.” She sighed. “It’s gone on long enough. I think she’s actually lost her mind.”

  “What happened before? With your other girlfriends since Sara? I remember you said something about her being rude to them.”

  “She called them, left nasty messages. My last girlfriend swore that Sara was following her, but we never had any proof, and Sara seemed to stop after a while.” She paused. “One time, she left a bag of cat shit on my doorstep, but that’s as violent as she’s ever been.”

  “Well, she’s violent now.” I rubbed my arm and shoulder. “I was afraid she would dislocate my shoulder.”

  Amelia’s face fell and she embraced me, gently. “My God, Chloé. I’m so sorry about this.”

  I shrugged. “It’s not your fault she’s a lunatic. What happened between you? Was it a bad breakup?”

  Amelia hesitated and then shook her head. “Not exactly. A lot of things happened.” She paused, looking a little guilty, and then shook her head. “Anyway, we’d been growing apart, and when she got a job in New York, we just decided to end things rather than try a long-distance relationship. Things were quiet for a while on her end, and then she started sending weird messages to my new girlfriends and calling them at all hours of the night.”

  She didn’t seem to be lying, but it was clear she was holding something back. There was plainly more to the story that she wasn’t sharing. Deciding to talk about it later, I said, “I’ll call my cousin Derek. He’s a police officer. He’ll know what to do. He might even be able to arrest her if she’s still downstairs.”

  Amelia reluctantly agreed and we both got up, going into the upstairs bathroom to call him.

  *

  After what seemed liked several hours, and after I’d repeated my story and given a description of the suspect what seemed like a thousand times, Derek finally let us leave the bar, escorting us back to the car. Several police officers had also grilled Amelia about Sara, and we were both exhausted. We sat there in the car, not moving or doing anything but looking out through the windshield.

  When the police had shown up, Meghan and the others had looked stunned, but I didn’t have a chance to explain anything to her. “Let me call Meghan real quick,” I said in the car.

  Meghan picked up on the first ring. “What the hell happened?”

  Her usual bluntness made me smile. “It’s a long story.”

  “Were you mugged or something?”

  I glanced over at Amelia, whose face was a mask of weariness and exhaustion. “I had a run-in with a crazy woman in the bathroom. She threatened me and threatened everyone I know and then she let me leave.”

  “Are you hurt?”

  “Not badly.”

  “I’m going to kill her!” Meghan shouted, and I had to pull the phone away from my ear.

  “Anyway, I’m okay now. We’re going to head back to Aunt Kate’s. I’m sorry for interrupting your set.”

  “Jesus, Chloé, that’s the least of my concerns. Tell me more details tomorrow, okay?” Meghan and Zach had been invited to Thanksgiving too.

  “Okay,” I said, not relishing the idea of reliving the story again. I hung up.

  I rubbed my eyes, exhaustion crashing over me. “Let’s go back and go straight to bed.”

  Amelia glanced over at me. “I had something to tell you, but all this interrupted me. Now it just seems silly.”

  “What is it?”

  “This is your new car.”

  I blinked at her a couple of times, my brain foggy with fatigue. “My car?”

  “Yes. The paperwork is in the glove box.”

  I blinked a few more times to clear my head and opened the glove box. Inside, I saw the title with my name on it. I stared at it for a while.

  “Amelia, what the hell?”

  She shrugged. “You needed a car. I told you I was arranging to get you one two months ago. I’m sorry it took so long. I prefer the German-made engines, so it had to be imported.”

  “You told me you were arranging to get me a company car. This is completely different.”

  “Well, yes, but the function is the same. You need a car and now you have one.”

  I sighed, frustrated at her seeming obtuseness. “Yes—both of them are cars. But this one belongs to me. I thought I was getting a company car. One that belonged to the company. You know I can’t accept it.”

  “Why not?” She looked genuinely puzzled.

  I laughed. “Listen. I know you come from a place where giving someone a car is no big deal, but this is too much. It’s way too nice and too expensive just to give me.”

  She still looked confused. “Would a cheaper car be better? I can trade this one in.”

  I sighed again. “Look. I like to earn my things, not have them given to me. I know that sounds crazy, but that’s how I was raised.”

  She shook her head, still clearly baffled. “But you need a car.”

  “And I wouldn’t mind borrowing one from the company, but you can’t give me one.”

  She was still obviously struggling with the concept, and I shook my head wearily, sighing. “Let’s not do this right now, Amelia. We’re both too tired to have this conversation. I just want to go home and go to sleep.”

  Resigned, she started the car. We were home in a couple of minutes.

  After we’d peeled off our clothes, we squished into my tiny bed, spooning. Amelia drifted off almost as soon as we were down, but I continued to lie awake, staring into the darkness. Sara’s warnings were still ringing in my ears when I finally fell asleep.

  *

  Sara waited for them outside the bar, hoping to catch them together, but when the police showed up, she made herself scarce, crossing the street and spying on the action from Big Daddy’s bar. She sat just inside the doorway with her cocktail, watching a few police officers appear and leave until only one policeman remained. She waited for him to go away, but he was clearly buddy-buddy with Amelia’s new slag, as he actually escorted them back to their car a couple of blocks away. Sara followed all three of them, keeping to the shadows. She watched the cop leave and then the women sit there in the car for a while. The car had dealer’s plates. She understood in a moment that Amelia had bought the car for that bitch.

  Sara looked down and her clenched fists and made herself relax. She left tiny nail marks in her palms, drawing crescent moons of blood. How could Amelia love that woman? What did that little blonde nobody have that Sara didn’t? She was clearly poor and from a poor, unknown family. She certainly wasn’t prettier than Sara and was, in some regards, rather strange looking. She was much too skinny and gawky for Amelia’s tastes. There must be something else. Amelia wasn’t interested in being fucked, so Sara knew it couldn’t be that. Chloé had to have some powerful control over Amelia somehow, or Amelia wouldn’t
be interested or stay interested in her for this long. Since she’d broken up with Sara, Amelia had slept around the City of New Orleans, and none of the women she was with had held her attention for more than a few weeks. This little blonde was somehow different. Sara just didn’t know how. Yet.

  When they continued to sit in the new car, Sara, knowing where they were going next, walked back to her rental and drove over a few blocks to where Chloé and her aunt lived. Sara had been staking it out for a few weeks now, following the aunt and Chloé around town every time she could fly down from New York for a couple of days. She kept expecting Chloé to come home in tears, devastated after Amelia fired her like the other “assistants,” but she never did. Instead, Chloé spent half her nights at Amelia’s place and always looked so self-satisfied that it was sickening.

  Sara almost did something, said something, when they got out of the car in front of Chloé’s place. Only God knew the next time she’d catch them alone. In fact, Sara pulled out the knife in her purse and had her hand on the inside handle of her car door, ready to get out, but then she stopped. Considering what she’d just seen at the bar, she was half-afraid the policeman would show up again just to make sure that they got home okay.

  Instead, she was forced to watch them disappear inside the little house and do nothing. When she decided it was safe, she got out and stood on the sidewalk, staring at the window that had lighted up and gone dark after Amelia and that bitch went inside. As the sun started to brighten the street around her, Sara made her way back to her rental and drove toward the airport. Her flight back to New York didn’t leave for a couple of hours, but she didn’t want to be here anymore. If she stayed in New Orleans she might do something stupid, and she needed to be careful now that she’d shown her hand. Amelia was on to her now. Sara decided she had to let it go, at least for now. She’d wanted to resolve this before she left the country for a few weeks, but that apparently wasn’t going to happen. Still, she knew she would have more opportunities to do something to that little bitch in the future if Amelia decided to keep her around.