Carnival

by Kory M. Shrum

  She found herself leaning her body against his.

  “You’re like a gatta.” He laughed softly. “Meow.”

  So domesticated, the cold voice whispered.

  It was gone the moment he put his hands on her stomach, walking her back into the water’s stream. His fingers moved clean water through her hair. His torso brushed hers. Their hips slid against one another, the tops of their thighs brushed.

  Lou relished every point of contact.

  “What do you do next?” His breath was on her ear, and it tightened muscles low in her stomach.

  “Conditioner?”

  He surveyed the bottles on the ledge.

  “You know,” she said, smiling up at him. He had only a few inches on her. “I do know how to bathe myself.”

  He didn’t hide his smirk. “Why would you when I am here? I’m always at your service.”

  She saw the gooseflesh rise on his arms and chest.

  “You’re cold,” she said.

  He rubbed conditioner between his palms before pushing his fingers through her hair. “It’s worth it to share the shower with you.”

  “Come here.”

  “Don’t you want to rinse?”

  She pulled him into the hot water. Her hand trailed down the front of his body, over his abdomen. Her finger rested on the small divot beneath his navel.

  “I let my conditioner set. What should I do in the meantime?” She rolled her eyes up to meet his, still tracing his Adonis belt.

  “You’re my guest,” he began, his voice notably dropping an octave. “I should entertain you.”

  She didn’t miss the tight set of his shoulders or the way he slid his gaze away.

  He’s already preparing for rejection, Lou thought. And why shouldn’t he? I’ve turned down every advance for over a year.

  It wasn’t that she hadn’t reciprocated attention. She’d ground her body against his. She’d given him blowjobs, hand jobs, and let him see her naked more times than she could count, but she hadn’t let him between her legs.

  Part of her was curious as to how long she could get away with it. Another part simply hadn’t cared. She’d always been able to gain pleasure from topping her partners, often more pleasure than from the sex itself.

  But this resignation in his hazel eyes now, this anticipation of defeat…

  No. That won’t do.

  Lou kicked the bottles off the wet ledge and propped her foot there.

  She leaned her weight back against the wall, giving Konstantine a look to match the blatant invitation.

  He gulped visibly. He looked down as if unable to control himself. Then he met her gaze again. “Are you sure?”

  She arched a brow.

  He didn’t make the mistake of asking her twice.

  When his fingers brushed her wet sex, she slid her arms around his neck, trapping him against her. Part of it was to help her balance, part of it was simply to ensure the compression she desired.

  Konstantine didn’t mind providing it.

  He began with the clitoris, letting the slow heat build until her mind lost track of its thoughts. It was if the steam around them filled her head, suppressing and obscuring everything except the feel of his chest against hers, his lips on her throat, his hand between her legs.

  She gave herself over to it.

  * * *

  Konstantine pulled back, searching her face. He wanted to look into her eyes the moment he slid inside her.

  They were closed in concentration. A delicious blush had spread across her cheeks.

  When her brown eyes finally opened, meeting his, he relinquished her clit and plunged into the hot center of her. Her eyelashes fluttered. Her mouth opened in a soft pant.

  The moan that slipped between her lips vibrated through him.

  It was as if a cord was cut inside him. His limbs felt heavy and weak, all the tension leaving the line. Yet he built a steady rhythm.

  He noticed every shift in her body, every response to his tender probing. When she moaned into his ear his desire exploded. His erection grew so hard it hurt.

  He wanted to lay her down somehow. He wanted to taste her. But the shower wasn’t big enough.

  He knelt instead, his back and heels pressed against the shower door. He was too large to be in the bottom of the shower, but that didn’t stop him from nosing his way between her legs and finding her clitoris with his tongue. She trapped his hand in place, making her request for dual stimulation clear. Once he returned his hand to its original task, she released him and cupped either side of his head encouragingly.

  He continued like this, with his mouth and his hand in synchronicity, despite the fact that the water was turning cold against his back.

  She fisted his hair the second before her whole body tightened. The sounds coming from her throat were more of a whimper than a moan.

  Her legs shook when she released his head, and for a moment she stood there trembling against the wall.

  “Are you—”

  “Shut up,” she said.

  Konstantine obeyed, and after a minute or two, she took his hand and slipped it between her legs again.

  11

  Mel moved the brown grocery sack from one arm to another, trying to alleviate the weight in her arms. Her mind was trying to puzzle out dinner. Takeout or a nice and easy chicken salad?

  It was hard to focus. It wasn’t the chilly air, which she usually attributed to clearer thinking. It was that gnawing feeling that hadn’t left her since the day Terrence walked into her shop.

  She’d hoped King had scared him away, or even Lady—as Terrence had always hated dogs.

  But she knew that she hadn’t seen the end of him, and that was what weighed on her.

  She felt eyes on her back and turned.

  A man stepped out of the adjacent corner market with a pack of cigarettes in one hand and a lighter with the price tag still on its plastic casing in the other.

  Speak of the devil.

  She stopped dead on the corner, facing him.

  Better than having him at my back.

  “Melly,” he said in mock affection. His thin smile appeared. “Fancy seeing you here.”

  “This is my shop,” she said, gesturing at the Madame Melandra’s Fortunes and Fixes sign. “As you damn well know.”

  “I think you mean our shop,” he said with a wicked smile. He tapped the soft pack of Marlboros against the heel of his hand.

  “Our shop,” she spat. She almost threw her groceries down on the sidewalk.

  “We’re married. According to God and the State of Louisiana, what’s yours—”

  “I’m about to give you what’s yours,” she said, and here she did stoop and lean the grocery bag against the storefront.

  Don’t let no man undo you. Grandmamie’s voice rose like a tidal wave. You’re better than this.

  That sharp rebuke defused her anger.

  “You can’t loiter here,” she said. “Pick any other convenience store in the Quarter, or in all of New Orleans for all I care. But you can’t hang around here.”

  He cupped his hands around the end of the cigarette, letting his gaze hold her own. They stood like that, on opposite sides of the street, staring for almost a full minute as Terrence drew on his cigarette. He broke the gaze first, tipping his chin up and blowing thin gray smoke into the sky.

  “You wouldn’t believe the things people would do for a cigarette in prison. But not me, because I had a good little wife who sent me money when she was asked. Do you know why she sent me money? Because she didn’t want to be in prison either. And why might I protect her? Because not only was she my wife, but she was more use to me on the outside.”

  A sly grin spread across his face. He slid his hands into the front pockets of his jeans and crossed the street to her.

  “But if she’s no use to me, maybe I shouldn’t keep her secrets no more. What do you think?”

  Mel tried to steady her breath. “I swear, if you—”

  He
shoved her into the front of her shop, his hand at the base of her throat.

  And there he was, the Terry she knew and remembered.

  “You’ll what?” he growled. “What could you possibly do to me? You can’t tell me where I can and can’t go. I’m free now. No thanks to you.”

  Smoke from his cigarette stung her eyes.

  As if realizing how this must look, he released her. He stood back, tugging at the bottom of his white t-shirt. He touched his bone choker self-consciously, as if he had just been the one with a hand on his throat.

  He bent, lifted her grocery sack off the ground and thrust it into her chest. She wrapped her arms around it reflexively.

  “I asked around about your friend, Mr. King. I know you’re not together, and I know he’s a cop. Why you makin’ friends with the po-po, Melly? Does your po-po friend know what you did?”

  Mel’s heart knocked in her throat.

  Terrence smiled. “I didn’t think so. Or you’d be in jail yaself right now.” He flicked the ash off his cigarette. “I’m glad the two of you aren’t together. I wouldn’t take too kindly to another man touching my wife.”

  “I’m not your wife,” she said. She wanted to throw the sack in his face.

  Pull yourself together. Come on. Pull yourself together. He knows how to get a rise out of you. That’s all he wants, to get a rise out of you. Push back or he’ll just take more ground.

  “I don’t remember signing no divorce papers,” Terry said, sucking his teeth. “I wonder why that was?”

  Because I was hoping you’d rot in that place. That if I just forgot about you, you’d disappear like the damn nightmare you are.

  “Get the fuck out of New Orleans, Terry. This is the last time I’m telling you.”

  He laughed, opening his mouth to pinch the tip of his tongue. He removed a piece of tobacco stuck there. “I ain’t leaving unless you give me my due. You don’t want me around, fine. But a new life costs money, and you’re already several years behind in your checks.”

  She unclenched her jaw, trying not to grind the enamel to a pulp.

  “Don’t you remember your promise?” he said, feigning a pout. “Or do promises not mean anything to you now you’re a big-time bitch?”

  Mel saw the courtroom the way it had looked decades ago, how Terry himself had looked in his orange county jumpsuit, his hair inside its black do-rag. The look he’d given her when the officers pulled him from his seat and dragged him through the doors out of her life.

  Why had she even gone to the damn trial? More importantly, why had she gone to see him on that first visitation? If she’d stayed away, if she’d never seen him at all, maybe she’d be free now—truly free.

  But she’d gone because of the photographs.

  Across from him, where he sat with his shackled wrists on the table, she’d told him about the search warrant. How the day after Terry was slammed onto the floor of their trailer so hard the dishes rattled in the cupboards, the police had returned with a warrant. They’d torn the house apart, taking no care to replace the cushions removed or fix the rugs lifted.

  Mel could do nothing but stand in the middle of the living room, one hand clasping her opposite elbow, and wait until they were done.

  Her heart had quickened when she’d seen the uniformed officer marching toward her.

  “Do you know what these are?” he’d asked, thrusting the photographs at her.

  She’d hoped he hadn’t noticed the tremble in her hands as she’d taken them.

  The first photograph was of the red Firebird. A dent—a very human-shaped dent—curved the grill of the car. Across the paint was something drying—blood? Brain? She couldn’t be sure. The other photographs were the same. Every conceivable angle documented the damage to the car. Why had Terry taken them? It couldn’t be for an insurance claim because they didn’t have car insurance. They couldn’t afford it. That’s when she’d known it was evidence.

  “Well?” the officer asked impatiently. He ran a hand through his buzzed blond hair.

  She licked her lips. “I don’t know what they are.”

  “You don’t know what they are?” He snorted derisively.

  “Photographs,” she said.

  “Is that all they are?” he pressed.

  It took everything Mel had to look up from the photographs, tearing her eyes away from the blood-crusted dent, and meet the officer’s eyes.

  “I don’t know,” she forced out.

  He snatched the photographs from her hand and marched away with them. On her front porch, he slipped the photographs into a clear plastic bag.

  “So they have the evidence now,” Mel had told Terry during that first visitation.

  He’d grinned at that. “They won’t know what happened unless I tell them.”

  Horror had rocketed through her then.

  “You don’t want me to tell nobody, do you?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Good.” He’d leaned back in his seat and sucked his teeth. “You’re a good girl, and here’s what my good girl is going to do for me.”

  She was going to stay married to him, and she was going to send him money. In exchange, he was going to keep her secret.

  What had happened when she’d protested? When she’d insisted that she didn’t have that kind of money to send him every week?

  You’d better find it, he’d said. Find it or I’m going to tell them what you did. I’m going to tell them you killed somebody, and they’ll put you in here right next to me.

  It wasn’t until four or five years into her payments that Mel realized her mistake. If only she’d never visited, or if only she’d walked away and had never sent her first payout—then it would’ve just been her word against his.

  But she’d paid, and she’d kept paying—and only a guilty person would do that.

  I’ll tell them I paid because he’s my husband, she thought.

  And wasn’t that why she’d let the marriage stand? It was all she could do to keep that fail-safe in place should he turn on her and bite the hand that feeds.

  But she was tired of it. She was tired of the lying, tired of the stress, of handing over the money she worked so hard to make to this asshole who didn’t deserve a dime of it.

  Most of all, she was tired of the guilt eating her from the inside out.

  “You remember,” he said. Sly confidence filled his face again. “You remember what really happened that night on the old town road outside Baton Rouge. And you remember your promise to me and to God.”

  Mel heard the sudden squeal of brakes and smelled the burning rubber. She recalled the splatter of rain on the car’s windshield and hood. And the unmistakable sound of crying.

  “Don’t you want to make up for what you did? For all this freedom you’ve got out here?” Terrence considered the burning cherry of his cigarette carefully. “I’m thinking a hundred grand will set me up just fine. Get me out of your hair…for a while.”

  “There’s no way in hell,” she said with a bitter laugh. “Even if I had that kind of money I wouldn’t give it to you.”

  He sucked his teeth, drawing himself up to his full height. “Sell the shop if you have to, call in favors, I don’t care how you get it. Give me the money or get used to seeing my pretty face right here, day and night, for the rest of your life—if you’re lucky. If you’re not lucky, maybe I’ll stroll on down to the po-leece station and make a report. I’m a good, reformed citizen now. Maybe I’ve got something to say.”

  He flicked his cigarette onto the sidewalk and ground it out with the heel of his boots.

  “Since I’m a nice guy, I’ll give you a day to think about it.” With a wink and a tap of his hat, he started off down the sidewalk toward Royal Street.

  For a moment, Mel could only stand there with her sack of groceries in her hand.

  A hundred grand, she thought. No way in heaven—or hell.

  But even as she thought it, she heard the rain falling on a windshield and a woman crying
softly.

  12

  Piper knew it would be a busy night the moment she unfolded the card table and twin metal chairs in Jackson Square. There was no shortage of fellow palmists and tarot card readers, so she hoped bathroom breaks weren’t out of the question.

  Just a couple hundred bucks, she told herself as she opened the backpack between her feet and dug out her cards and donation box. Then I’ll pack up and get some sleep.

  A desperate shiver ran through her body at the idea of falling into her warm bed for a good night’s rest. She’d only managed five or six hours the last few nights, and it was catching up to her.

  But she also knew better. Piper had never been able to walk away from the chance to make money. It was true that King was letting her rent the apartment above the agency for a pittance and that her wages between her two official jobs with King and Mel had allowed her to put back more money than she’d ever had.

  It also helped that she wasn’t trying to pay her mother’s bills anymore.

  A pang of regret shot through her at this thought. That happened whenever she imagined her in that dark and dingy house off the canal with her druggie boyfriend and a coffee table covered in dope, needles, and who knew what else.

  That’s not your problem, she thought. It never was your problem.

  Yet sometimes she shot up in her bed in the dark, heart pounding with an all-consuming belief that it had happened. That her mother was finally dead. But she wasn’t, and Piper was finding a way to live with that—in the limbo of loving someone she couldn’t help.

  It wasn’t like she didn’t have plenty to be getting on with.

  She had herself to feed, tuition to cover, her own rent and utilities. Now that she was back in school, she also had her grades to worry about.

  It’s going to be okay, she told herself. If only you’d get more sleep.

  Piper unwrapped the cards, feeling the cold cardstock slide out of the black silk into her dry palm. She returned the scarf to her backpack and moved the donation box to one side, propping it open with a little sign.