Until the Devil Weeps

by W E DeVore

  “No. I ate a cup of yogurt before y’all burst in on me."

  He folded his arms on the table and leaned forward. "And before that?"

  "Derek took me out for Italian after the session last night."

  "Since when are you hanging around with Derek?" he asked, disapproval dripping off his tongue.

  Q leaned forward and mimicked his posture. "Since he's the only fucking person who treats me normally. He doesn't talk about Ben. He doesn't ask me how I'm doing. He doesn't ask me if I'm eating or sleeping or drinking too much. He yells at me when I fuck up. He hits on me and makes inappropriate jokes just like he always has." She folded her arms and flopped back in her chair. “And he doesn’t show up on my doorstep with two useless cops, demanding that I fix my fucking security fence, and shove a bunch of mugshots in my face, shouting questions at me until I get a fucking panic attack.”

  Sanger held up his hand to stop her, his face adamant. “Look, Clementine. You have to trust me. This wasn’t a gang initiation. We’ve rattled all the cages and come up blank. There’s something more to it...”

  “Who the fuck would hire two kids to shoot us, Aaron? That doesn’t even make sense.” It wasn’t the first time she’d dismissed this theory out of hand. While she didn’t know who had shot her, she was certain that ‘professional killer’ was not on his resume.

  “Then why can’t they find them?” he reasoned.

  “Probably because they’ve already been arrested for something else,” she said. “You know how the state of Louisiana loves to lock up young black men. One of them probably looked sideways at a cop and got ten years for it, the other probably got caught with some weed and got twenty.”

  “You seriously think that?”

  “No,” she admitted, backing down. “But I do think Juban and Myers are shitty cops. I meant what I said earlier.” She exhaled out some of her anger and turned to the window. The sunlight sparkled on the blossoms of the sweet olive tree outside and she caught a hint of its fragrance, soothing her panic away. She finally said, “Ben would want me to forgive whoever did this. He’d want me to forgive them, so that’s what I’m doing.”

  Sanger screwed on a crooked grin and asked, “How’s that working out for you?”

  “It’s not,” she conceded. “But unless I’m allowed to burn this fucking city to the ground and shove a gun down the throat of whoever did this, then it’s what I’ve got to go with.”

  He drank his coffee and hesitated before asking, "What does the counselor say about all this?"

  "That bitch,” Q muttered. “I stopped going. All she wanted to do was give me drugs. Said I’m not dealing with my feelings. I only have one fucking feeling, and it's rage. And I like it."

  "You tell her that?"

  "No. I told her to take her antidepressants and shove them up her ass."

  Sanger sighed, his eyes following her gaze out into the branches on the other side of the window. “When are you going to start dealing with this? You’re angry all the time. You need to cry. You need to let it out in healthier ways. I thought writing the album would let you do that, but you’re not getting better. You need help, Clementine, and I don’t know how to give it to you.”

  The rage that lurked beneath her skin surged up her spine, white hot and ready to attack.

  “Don’t you tell me what I need, Aaron,” Q growled at him. “If your spouse ever gets killed in front of you, then you can advise me on how I should feel, otherwise keep your motherfucking mouth shut.”

  He held up his hands defensively. “Clementine…”

  “Don’t Clementine me, Sanger. Let’s talk about you, since you think you know what I need. I’ve got one or two theories about you. Why don’t you have your own wife? Huh? You’ve been in like three serious relationships since I’ve known you and none of them have gone anywhere." She stood up and started pacing the room.

  The beast she’d been keeping at bay took control of her body by force, ready to lash out at any nearby target. The anger felt good. Felt like power. Felt like control. The world became even and solid, it’s pliancy replaced with a focused point of will.

  "What are you talking about?" he asked, staring at her as if a stranger's face had replaced her own.

  She turned and yelled, "I’ll tell you what I’m talking about. Go get a life, Sanger. Stop interfering in mine. Goddamn it, Derek is right. You are just like a fucking puppy dog. Stop following me around and leave me the fuck alone, Spot.”

  She knew as soon as she’d used Derek’s belittling nickname for her friend that she’d gone too far, but she didn’t care. She bore down on Sanger and hissed, “I don’t want you here, you understand? I’m sick to death of you always being here. Go get your own fucking life and stop meddling in mine. Get the fuck out of my house and don’t you ever come back."

  He nodded slowly, exhaling out all the air in his lungs before standing up and leaving the room. The front door slammed, shaking the entire house, and snapping Q back to herself. Shame flooded her body and she felt like throwing up.

  “Shit,” she repeated over and over under her breath, kicking the door frame, and pounding her head against it in a deliberate, steady beat.

  Nice, Clementine, real fucking nice.

  She ran from the kitchen and flung open the front door, calling, “Aaron, wait. Please wait. Oh, god, Aaron, please don’t go.”

  He was halfway down the walkway to the street when he spun around to face her, his hands on his hips.

  “What now, Clementine? You told me to go. I’m fucking going.” His voice was tense. “You don’t want me around? You’re gonna get it. Good luck with whatever this is that you think you’re doing. I’m fucking over it.”

  He turned towards the driveway and Q hurried down the steps, rushing past him to block his way. She reached for his arm and he yanked it away.

  “Please, Aaron,” she begged. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have said those things. I didn’t mean it. Any of it. Oh, god, Aaron, please forgive me...”

  He glared at her and didn’t respond.

  What have I done?

  She expected him to yell at her, to fight with her, but his silence was worse than anything he could have said. Q started to tremble, biting her lip to keep the tears that were welling up at bay. Swallowing hard, she whimpered, “I can’t lose you, too, cowboy. Please forgive me. I’m so ashamed. You have to forgive me.” Sanger continued to watch her, the heaviness of his silence pressed down on her, forcing the sob trapped in her throat out through her lips. “You’re all I have left. Aaron, please say something. Yell at me. Tell me I’m a horrible person, but god, please don’t leave me.”

  When her tears finally fell, her knees simultaneously gave way and he caught her, pulling her to him.

  “That’s it,” he whispered. “I’ve got you. Let it out, now.”

  She shook her head against him and pushed him away, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.

  “No. I don’t want to.” She balled her hand into a fist and brought it to the center of her chest. “They’re right here. You understand? I can feel them all the time, as long as they’re right here. I don’t want them to leave. I’d rather hurt all the time then have them leave. Please, Aaron. Please say you’ll forgive me.”

  Sanger held out his hand. “Of course, I do. Come on.”

  She moved closer to him and wrapped her arms around his neck, resting her head on his chest. He held her to him.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. “You’ve been such a good friend. And I’m such a cunt all the time.”

  Q turned her face up to him and his mouth curved into a crooked grin. “Who says anything’s changed?”

  She laughed out loud and he smiled down at her. She was suddenly aware of his arms around her and how close his mouth was to hers. Her lips began to burn as she breathed in the warmth radiating off his skin and her heart pounded in her throat as he pulled her even closer, threading his legs through hers.

  Staring into his eyes, she knew t
hat she should stop it. She knew that this was the moment to stop it. But she let him bring his mouth nearer still. When his upper lip grazed hers, an electric spark jolted through her and a strange longing washed over her. She tightened her arms around his neck, tasting him with her tongue, her head swimming in desire. Sanger moaned as his tongue circled hers.

  His hands slipped below her waist, clutching her more firmly before abruptly lifting her off the ground. She wrapped her legs around him as he carried her into the house, their mouths hungry for each other. He carried her upstairs to her bedroom and pushed her down onto the bed. Rolling them over, she straddled him, moving her hips against him, feeling him harden through the fabric that separated them, sliding her tongue along his throat to take his earlobe into her mouth. His lips moved to her neck as he threaded his fingers through her hair. Q sighed as an orgasm built inside her, she moved faster and faster against his erection until her body trembled and she cried out, tears flooding her eyes at the sudden release. The shock of it made her push him away and she crawled off the bed, backing into the wall to regard Sanger. He sat up and covered his face with both hands.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said breathlessly. “I can’t believe I did that.”

  She pressed her fingertips to her lower lip. An odd burning feeling still lingered on it and she tried to catch her breath. The guilty spot on her lower lip scorched under her fingers.

  Sanger smoothed his hand over his mouth and rested his elbows on his knees, studying the floor between his feet. “It’s ok, Clementine. It’s not that big of a deal. Maybe you just need someone to touch you.”

  She shook her head. “I need Ben to touch me. I don’t want someone else.”

  “Could have fooled me,” he joked.

  “I don’t know what got into me. I’m so sorry.” She hung her head.

  He continued to stare at his feet. “I don’t know how to help you. Everything I do seems to make it worse. And I want to help you. Kissing you is about the only thing I haven’t tried.”

  She moved to sit next to him on the bed and rested her head on his shoulder. “It’s a bad idea, cowboy. There’s no way I can handle this right now.”

  He nudged her with his elbow. “It was your idea. I was just being accommodating.”

  “Is that what you were being? My mistake.” She looked up at him. “Please tell me you forgive me.”

  He squeezed her hand. “Of course, I do.” He stood up. “I should go. You’re going to be late for the studio. And I think I might need a cold shower.”

  She glanced down at the defined bulge in the front of his fitted slacks. “Sorry about that.”

  “You going to be ok?” he asked.

  Q covered her face. “No. I’m losing my mind.”

  “Let me take you to dinner. I promise you, I won’t mention Ben, and I won’t let you make out with me, even if you beg for it.”

  She laughed. “Tough words, cowboy.”

  “If you won’t talk to a counselor, will you talk to me?”

  “It won’t help. Nothing is helping.”

  “Maybe because you’re not letting it.” He put his hands in his back pockets. “Look, if you don’t want to do dinner, how about I come over and we split a bottle of tequila for old time’s sake. Might help you talk about it, maybe even cry about it.”

  She pointed to the visible erection clearly outlined on the front of his pants. “I don’t think you and me and a bottle of booze is a good idea right now.”

  “No, probably not. But I’m all out of good ideas. Maybe we should try some of the bad ones.”

  “You can’t fix this for me, Sanger. I know you want to, but you can’t. I’ve got to go. Derek’s waiting.” She stood up and they walked back downstairs in silence. Sanger picked up her satchel and her car keys from the table in the foyer and handed them to her, following her as she locked up the house. The smell of her husband overwhelmed her as soon she got into Ben’s car. Her hands shook and she struggled to plug in her phone and navigate to the album she wanted to listen to. Sanger tapped on the window and she rolled it down.

  “You need to deal with this, Clementine.”

  “I am dealing with this, Sanger. This is me: coping as best I can. I promise.”

  He nodded. “You sure I can’t take you to dinner tonight?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. I’ll call you when I’m done.”

  She pressed play on her phone and a torrent of rage filled the car screaming, “Everything’s gone!”

  She waved at Sanger and backed out of the driveway, counting out the beat in her head to focus on anything but the constant, aching desolation that filled her completely, the memory of Sanger’s hands on her body only making it worse, because the hands she wanted to touch her could never do so again.

  ◆◆◆

  When she pulled up in front of Derek’s condo in the Quarter, she found him leaning against the iron gate, flirting with a woman at least twenty years his junior. Q honked longer than was probably necessary, startling them both. Derek leaned down and kissed the woman’s cheek before flinging open the passenger door and flopping down into the seat.

  “Thank goodness, you’re early,” he said. “I hate running into groupies outside their natural habitat.”

  “Yeah, you looked real uncomfortable.”

  He studied her profile. “Something’s different,” he said. “What gives?”

  She glanced over to see him resting against the door staring at her. “What in the good fuck are you talking about, Cincinnati?”

  “I don’t know. You look more relaxed. Not quite so spun up as you were last night. Drake will be relieved. I’m going to have to give him hazard pay if your attitude keeps up. You know how hard it is to find a good engineer?” He reached over and moved her hair off her shoulder. She slapped it away. “Someone’s been biting your neck, angel.”

  “Drop it, Derek.”

  “If I’d have known the playground was back open for business, I’d have been friendlier these last few weeks.” He folded his arms and continued to consider her.

  “It was a stupid mistake. A bad decision. Can we please change the subject?”

  “Sure thing, angel.” He pointed to the intersection. “Do me a favor, though, and turn the car around.”

  “What?” she asked.

  “Turn the car around. Let’s go back to my place, open a bottle of wine, and you can make some more bad decisions.” He licked his lips. “Unlike your mistake, I don’t leave marks.”

  She pursed her lips and glared at him. “That’s a hard pass, Cincinnati.”

  “If you want my opinion…”

  “I do not.”

  He ignored her. “If you want my opinion, I think you need to make some more stupid mistakes. Make some bad decisions. Just stop being so angry all the time. You’re living on the verge of a fucking rage stroke and it’s getting old. Don’t get me wrong, I like living dangerously, so messing around with an archangel sitting on a stack of unstable dynamite is fun for me, but it’s not such a great time for everyone else.”

  “Knock it off, Derek. What would you know about it?”

  “Enough to know that you need to move on to a new stage of grief, already.”

  She pulled up in front of the studio and parked, staring through the windshield, her eyes unable to focus on anything. He took her hand in his, his cool fingers drawing out some of the heat of her wrath. “Listen to me, angel. I spent about fifteen years of my life being pissed off at the world…”

  She rolled her eyes. “Shocker, Cincinnati, I never would have guessed a man who wrote a song called ‘Destroyer of Worlds,’ had anger issues.”

  He held onto her hand more tightly. “Q, it isn’t healthy what you’re doing to yourself. I’m just speaking as someone with a selfish interest with you staying sane and not destroying that beautiful instrument of yours, but you need to stop punishing yourself.”

  A knifepoint plunged into her heart and she tried to swallow back her grief.

&nb
sp; “Please, Derek,” she whispered. “Please don’t be nice to me right now. I’m holding on by my fingernails. Fighting is all I have keeping me sane. If I let go of it, I’m going to disappear.”

  Derek let go of her hand. “Well, we can’t have that. Knock it the fuck off, then, angel. We have an album to finish. Cry on your own fucking time and stop yelling at my engineer. I’m the only one who gets a pass for being a diva. Understand?”

  They got out of the car and she impulsively gripped him to her. “Thank you.”

  He stepped back and slapped her ass. “I can think of all kinds of ways for you to thank me, angel.”