by Amy M. Reade
“Okay, thanks for bringing her home,” Lilly said. She opened the back door for him and he turned around before he left.
“Laurel, this is not the end of the world. But you need to stay on the straight and narrow. I wouldn’t spend any more time with those girls,” he said.
Laurel nodded and Bill left.
Chapter 17
The silence hung in the kitchen like a wet shroud. Suddenly Lilly was exhausted. Too tired to be angry, too tired to think up a punishment, she sat down hard at the kitchen table and looked up at Laurel, who was still standing in the same spot.
“Why did you do this?” Lilly asked.
Laurel shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“How could you not know? Was it your idea? What exactly did you do?”
Laurel remained standing. “I don’t know. Karley and Bella were doing it and I was with them.” She shrugged again. “They said it was fun and since it was dark, we wouldn’t get caught.”
“And you just agreed? Like an idiot?”
“I’m not an idiot.”
“I beg to differ.”
Laurel glowered at her mother. “This is all Nick’s fault.”
Lilly almost laughed out loud. “Nick’s fault? How do you figure?”
“If he hadn’t dumped me, I wouldn’t have wanted to spend any time with Karley and Bella.” The waterworks started, but Lilly had no patience for Laurel’s tears this time.
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard, Laurel. Besides, the vandalism started before you and Nick broke up.”
“So?”
“So you can’t blame your behavior on Nick. You had complete control over your own actions. This is all on you, Laurel, not Nick. You may wish you could blame this on him, but you can’t.”
Laurel didn’t say anything. She stood still, looking down at the floor, her tears making a puddle at her feet. She gulped and looked up at her mother.
“I want you to go upstairs and go to bed,” Lilly told her. “You have school tomorrow.”
Laurel gasped. “I can’t face people at school!”
“Too bad. Did you really think I would let you stay home from school, unsupervised, while I go to the shop? No way!”
Laurel spun around and went upstairs, still wearing her boots and coat.
Lilly let her chin fall to her chest while she sat there at the kitchen table for a few more minutes, trying to clear her head. How could she not have seen this coming? The previous summer, when the fires were being set in town, she had jumped to the conclusion that Tighe might have had something to do with them. How could she be so blind as to not see the evidence right in front of her?
Laurel had only been going out at night, she had been hanging out with a new group of friends, however small, and now that Lilly really thought about it, Laurel had been out every time an act of vandalism was committed.
I should have known, Lilly thought again. She sighed, pushed herself away from the table with an effort, and let Barney out one last time before bed.
How was she going to deal with this? Obviously Laurel would have to be grounded for more than just a day or two. She would also have her start doing the housework at Bev’s house. But that wasn’t enough. Laurel would have to continue life without her phone, at least for another week or so.
Just before finally falling into a fitful sleep, Lilly had an awful thought. She would have to tell Beau about the whole ugly incident. Beau would think she was a terrible mother, too.
And what might a judge do? Surely since this was Laurel’s first offense, a judge would go easy on her, right? What was the punishment for a teenager charged with vandalism? Would there be a trial? Would there be a media circus? She shook her head. Probably not. This was all so new and overwhelming. Lilly thought back to all the times she had worried about little things: whether Laurel would ever get out of diapers, whether she would learn to swim, whether she would ever be good at math. Those concerns had ended up being all for naught; what she should have been worrying about were the things she never saw coming.
She almost looked forward to visiting a strip club. At least it would get her away from the chaos at home.
The next day was Saturday, so the store closed early. Lilly drove home, wolfed down a sandwich, and dressed carefully in a sequined dress she had borrowed from Noley. In contrast to the nightlife in Juniper Junction, which was food- and family-oriented, the nightlife in Lupine was geared toward people who preferred to dress up and drink and dance—or drink and watch other people dancing.
Hassan would do the driving to Lupine. She wasn’t quite ready when he arrived to pick her up, so he waited for her in the kitchen while she put the finishing touches on her outfit. When she teetered into the room on her stiletto heels, he let out a long whistle.
“Wow! I’ve never seen you dressed like that.”
She turned in a circle in front of him. “Too much?”
“No way. You look great!”
“Thanks.” She kissed him and yelled up the stairs. “Laurel, Hassan and I are going out for a while. We’ll be a couple hours.”
“Okay,” came the response.
It was so cold outside. Lilly longed to be wearing thermal underwear and a pair of sweatpants, but it was important to look the part of a club hopper tonight, so she braved the cold that seeped into her toes and up her legs.
Once they had driven to within a few miles of Lupine, Lilly typed the address of Alice’s strip club into her phone.
“I expected the place to be right in the heart of town,” Lilly mused. “But this is sending us clear to the other side of town.”
Hassan listened to Lilly’s phone and frowned as the directions took them through Lupine and down a rural route leading out of town.
“Are you sure you typed in the right address?” he asked. “It feels like we’ve gone too far.”
Lilly squinted in the darkness to see what might lie up ahead. “There’s a faint glow up there,” she said, pointing out the windshield. She looked down at her phone. “It says we’re really close.”
Another minute later they pulled up to a bar located in the middle of nowhere. The name of the bar, Guy’s Place, blazed across a red neon sign on top of a very tall pole out front. The parking lot was full of pickup trucks and giant early model SUVs. The building looked like a bunker, with concrete block walls and a metal front door. In one of the two high windows, a neon sign blinked Girls Girls Girls. In the second window, another sign blinked the name of a beer with three blank spaces where letters should have been.
“Classy joint,” Lilly said.
“I don’t want to jump to any wild conclusions, but I think we might be overdressed,” Hassan said. Lilly eyed him, with his long wool overcoat unbuttoned over a pressed Oxford shirt and striped tie, and started to laugh.
“We might as well go inside,” she finally said. “We didn’t come all this way for nothing.”
Hassan came around to Lilly’s side of the car and opened the door for her. She gripped his hand, suddenly nervous.
“I’ve never been to a strip club,” she said.
Hassan didn’t answer.
“Have you?” she finally asked.
He nodded. “Once, in London. A friend of mine had a party at one.” She looked up at him.
“What was it like?”
“Superficial, fake, loud, sleazy. And that was an upscale place.”
“I wonder what possessed Alice to work in one. The Alice I know is sweet, quiet, and reserved. Those are all things that Harry loves about her.”
“She’s probably all those things. But she’s a stripper, too. I think they like to be called ‘exotic dancers.’”
“Stripper, exotic dancer. It doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t make sense.”
As they made their way through ruts of slush-turned-ice in the parking lot, they could hear the bass thudding through the walls. The noise got louder as they approached the door, and when they walked inside the music assaulted their sens
es.
Lilly gripped Hassan’s hand harder and glanced sideways at him to find that he was glancing sideways at her. They stood in the doorway for a moment, letting their eyes adjust to the dim darkness inside the bar. Then they inched forward into the crowd.
Chapter 18
One of the first things Lilly noticed was that she and Hassan were crazily overdressed. The uniform of choice among the men seemed to be jeans, flannel shirts, leather vests, and work boots. The women, and there was a surprising number of women, were almost all dressed in tight jeans, Henley shirts, and tall boots.
The huge room stank of sweat, alcohol, and bad breath. Hassan leaned close to Lilly’s ear.
“Do you want to leave?”
Lilly shook her head. “No, we came here for a reason. Let’s just get it over with so we can go home.”
As they made their way toward the bar, Lilly began to notice people staring at them. She didn’t need to wonder why: she and Hassan were strangers, and not dressed like anyone else. They must have looked like a pair of fancy Nancys coming through the door.
She shot Hassan a nervous glance and kept walking. A woman stepped in front of her, blocking her way.
“You sure you’re in the right place?” she asked.
“Yes,” Lilly said. She hoped her voice sounded stronger to the other woman than it did to her own ears.
“You wanna think about that?” asked a man who sidled up to the small group. He wore a frown under his thick mustache. His eyes glittered hard in the artificial light of the bar and his beard held in its nest several droplets of what Lilly hoped was beer.
“We’re just here to get a drink,” Hassan said, dropping Lilly’s hand and firmly grasping her elbow instead.
“There’s other bars in Lupine, ya know,” the woman said, lifting her chin slightly.
“All we want is something to drink,” Hassan said. “Why don’t you step aside so we can get to the bar.” It was not a question.
The burly man looked at the woman, who wore heavy, glittery blue makeup and fake eyelashes.
“A Brit, huh?” he asked, jabbing his female counterpart in the ribs. “Check this out,” he said. He lifted his pinky finger and pretended to sip tea, saying “time for tea” in a hideous attempt to mimic Hassan’s cultured British accent. The woman barked a harsh laugh.
“Y’all don’t belong in here.” she said, jabbing her pointer finger at Lilly and Hassan. Her nails were about two inches long, painted blue.
By now other people nearby were beginning to take notice of the disturbance. Lilly could feel their eyes on her and Hassan, watching and waiting to see what would happen next, like buzzards waiting to descend on a particularly scrumptious piece of roadkill.
“You a terrorist or somethin’? Where’s your turban?” asked Burly Man, looking straight at Hassan.
Lilly let an audible gasp escape her lips. Hassan’s grip tightened on her elbow. But something had tripped inside Lilly’s brain and she couldn’t let such an outrageous question go unanswered. The stupidity of Burly Man emboldened her to finally speak up.
“Of course he’s not a terrorist.” The scorn dripped from her voice. “Now get out of the way and let us get to the bar.”
Blue-Eyeshadow stood in front of them this time, arms akimbo, blocking their way. Lilly’s senses were heightened as the moment threatened to become more heated. Images from her peripheral vision flitted across her mind: a pole dancer by the back of the bar, gyrating to the obnoxious music, the bartender popping open a cheap can of domestic beer and pouring it slowly into a glass, a scraggly-looking woman trying to squeeze between two people, two beers held up high in her hands to avoid spilling them.
“We don’t allow no terrorists in here,” Burly Man said, his voice low. He jerked his head toward the front of the bar. “There’s the door.”
Lilly opened her mouth to retort, but Hassan spoke first. “All right. We’re not here to cause trouble.” He steered Lilly toward the door and she pulled her arm away from his grasp.
“What are you doing?” she asked through clenched teeth.
“Not now. We’ll talk in the car.”
The crowd parted before them as they made their way to the heavy metal front door of the bar. All eyes were on them. It seemed to Lilly as if conversation in the bar had stopped so people could pay attention to her and Hassan, and all she could hear was the pounding of the blood in her own ears. In truth, only a small number of people had seen the hateful exchange between Lilly and Hassan and their tormentors.
When they reached the door someone opened it for them and practically pushed them outside with an obscene hand gesture, slamming the door behind them. Lilly was shivering, but not from the cold.
Hassan let go of her elbow and strode toward the car. She followed as quickly as she could in her high heels.
When she reached the car Hassan was holding the passenger door open for her. She glanced at him, but his eyes were fixed on something far away, not on her.
He closed her door lightly then came around the front of the car and slid in behind the steering wheel. He sat with his head down and his palms flat on his thighs for several seconds before either of them said anything. Hassan was the first one to break the silence.
“I’m sorry you had to see that.”
“I’m sorry for all of it.” She touched the back of his hand. “We shouldn’t have come.”
“I don’t often hear the overt hatred like that, but it’s hard every time it happens.”
Lilly didn’t know what to say. She was embarrassed for Hassan, and angry, and somehow guilty because she felt sorry for him. She didn’t ask, but she had a feeling he wouldn’t want her to feel sorry for him. Her body had stopped shaking once she was safely in the car, but her heart still thumped wildly and she wanted to scream and cry simultaneously.
Instead, she sat staring straight ahead, waiting for Hassan to talk again. But he started the car without saying anything else and headed in the direction of Juniper Junction. She longed to say something that would make him feel better, but she had no idea what that might be.
It was a lonely ride home. Neither spoke and the radio was silent, too. When they pulled up in front of Lilly’s house, she asked Hassan if he wanted to come in.
“I really should get home,” he said. “I have a conference call early tomorrow morning.”
She gave him a sad look. “I’m sorry.”
He nodded. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
He made no move to get out and open her door for her. She stepped into the snow next to the car and her feet felt an icy sting that took her breath away. She hurried into the house without looking back.
She closed the kitchen door behind her and Barney came racing into the room, skidding to a stop at her feet.
Finally, something to make her smile.
She reached down and tousled Barney’s head as she listened for Laurel.
“Mom? Is that you?” Laurel yelled down the stairs.
“Yup. I’m home.”
Laurel came downstairs a few minutes later, while Lilly sat in a kitchen chair, still stroking Barney’s soft fur.
“What are you so dressed up for?” Laurel asked.
Lilly wasn’t about to tell her daughter that she had visited a strip club, and she hadn’t thought of a good lie.
“Um, Hassan and I went out in Lupine.” It was vague, but hopefully Laurel wouldn’t ask any more questions.
“Have you already had dinner?” Laurel asked.
Lilly nodded.
“Is there anything for me to eat?”
“I’m sure there’s food in the fridge,” Lilly answered. “Take a look.” The sandwich she had eaten before leaving for Lupine was still sitting in her stomach like a brick.
Lilly had kept a little of Harry’s macaroni and cheese, so Laurel had that for dinner while Lilly sipped a glass of ginger ale.
“Don’t you feel good?” Laurel asked, spearing a piece of macaroni with her fork.
L
illy swallowed. “My stomach is a bit upset, that’s all.”
“I can let Barney out tonight if you just want to go to bed,” Laurel said. Lilly recognized the offer as a tentative olive branch, indicating that perhaps Laurel was beginning to accept her punishment for the vandalism.
“That would be great. Thank you.” She had kicked off the uncomfortable shoes as soon as she was in the kitchen, and now she reached for them to take them upstairs.
She had some thinking to do.
Chapter 19
Lilly lay on her side under the covers, facing away from the bedroom door. When Laurel let Barney into the room, Lilly pretended to be asleep.
In fact, it took several hours for her to fall asleep and even then, it was fitful and full of bad dreams. Patent bigotry was something she had never experienced and in fact, hadn’t really thought about until now: people perceived Hassan, with his Middle Eastern features, differently from the way they viewed her as a white woman. Lilly wondered what others thought when they saw her and Hassan together.
Clearly, the people in the bar had been ignorant. But were they just giving voice to the things that other people thought when they met Hassan? Lilly recalled that her mother, upon meeting him, had asked an inappropriate question, not unlike the man at the bar. She couldn’t remember exactly what the question had been, but she remembered clearly that Hassan had taken it in stride and not seemed embarrassed or angered by it at all. Lilly had just taken it for granted that he had shrugged it off as the ramblings of a woman who was losing her filter.
But had he taken it to heart? Had it hurt him? Lilly hadn’t even noticed. Had she been so insensitive that his feelings escaped her completely?
The last thought she had before falling asleep was that she needed to go back to that strip club, but without Hassan. She would ask Noley to go with her.