by W E DeVore
He replied, “Well, two of the musketeers aren’t talking to each other. It’s throwing off the balance of things and I don’t like it.”
Q reached over and plucked the envelope out of his hands. “He could call me. He read me the riot act, too, you know,” she said, opening it.
“That’s what he said and he feels awful. Just call him, will you? It wouldn’t hurt you to fall on your sword every now and again.”
“Says you,” she replied. “Falling on a sword seems pretty painful to me.”
She pulled out a photograph of her and Ben kissing, recognizing it as one of the pictures on the Cove’s website. She turned it over and cast it aside like it was toxic as she read the words written on the back:
For jealousy arouses a husband’s fury, and he will show no mercy when he takes revenge. The lips of the adulterous woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil; but in the end, she is bitter as gall, sharp as a double-edged sword. Her feet go down to death; her steps lead straight to the grave; The evil deeds of the wicked ensnare them; the cords of their sins hold them fast. The adulterous whore will be burned pure in the flames of righteousness. Her screams of agony erasing the screams of impure pleasure.
Burn Bitch Burn
Ben picked it up and read it. “Holy fuck.”
Q started to tremble and half-crawled the four feet to her husband’s lap. She curled herself into his body and he threw the picture aside, wrapping his arms around her.
Yvie picked up the discarded picture and read it. “I don’t get it.”
“It’s a death threat,” Ben explained. “Q’s the adulterous woman. The archangel is supposed to be with Derek, not me. It’s not the first one. Derek got one a few days ago.”
Q’s phone vibrated in her pocket and she pulled it out.
“Derek,” she said.
When she answered it, Derek’s sunny voice said, “I found another love note in my alleyway when I got back from Stanley’s. Have you received anything pleasant today?”
Her voice betrayed her and she eked out a strangled whisper, “Yes.”
Derek laughed. “Oh, angel. Don’t be scared. This shit goes with the territory.”
“It says they’re going to burn me alive.” As soon as the words left her mouth, her body erupted in a fresh round of tremors.
“Listen to me. You are the motherfucking archangel. No little Dark Harm fan is going to touch you, much less hurt you.”
When she didn’t reply, he said, “Q. Say it. Say, ‘I’m the motherfucking archangel.’”
“I don’t want to,” she whispered.
“Say it,” he coaxed.
“I’m the motherfucking archangel,” she said, with very little enthusiasm.
Ben and Yvie looked at each other in surprise.
“That was terrible, angel,” Derek’s voice said into her ear. “Say it again. This time, like you mean it.”
Despite herself, Q laughed. “I’m the motherfucking archangel, asshole.”
“That a girl,” he said. “Now, get your sweet little ass and your sweet little love note down to Son of Perdition and let my team take it from here. This isn’t the first over-enthusiastic fan I’ve encountered.”
“Your ability to inspire unhealthy obsessions is breathtaking,” she said sarcastically.
He dropped his carefree inflection and said, “You ok, now, angel?”
“Yeah, Cincinnati. I’m ok.”
◆◆◆
The sun was setting in a blaze of glory by the time Q made it to Sanger’s house from the Son of Perdition offices. Derek’s manager had been less than helpful, insisting that the letter was nothing to worry about and that the police were already looking into the ones Derek had received. When she’d asked if Derek had been called a whore and told he was going to be burned alive in his letters, Derek’s manager had told her she was overreacting. Q had politely instructed him to go fuck himself and headed to Sanger’s for a reality check on how scared she should actually be. The blasé attitude of every person on Derek’s staff had only compounded her fears.
She knocked on his door and tapped her foot, impatiently waiting for him to answer, hoping he was home.
Sanger looked surprised when he saw her on his porch and asked, “What are you doing here, Clementine?”
“I need to talk to you. One of Derek’s fucking nut job, weirdo fans left me a death threat on my porch and I need to know how worried I should be. His manager says they’ll handle it, but what should I do?”
He opened the door wider. “Come on in.”
She followed him into the house and sat on the sagging couch. Sanger sat down across from her in an old leather chair, his knees bouncing with more nervous energy than Q was used to seeing. All his inner quiet seemed to have abandoned him.
“Aaron, what’s wrong?” she asked, immediately more concerned for his emotional well-being than her physical one.
He shook his head. “Death threats trump this, trust me.”
“No, Aaron, I don’t think that they do. You look like you’re about to jump out of your skin. What’s going on with you? Did you pull a bad case?”
“Let me see it.” He held out his hand.
“I can’t. I gave it to Derek’s manager. Derek got one, too, a few days ago and another today. They threw them over the gate at his place in the Quarter. Both were stills from one of the Dark Harm pages. Me and Derek working together in the studio. Said some weird shit about love and purity on the back. My continued health being dependent upon the purity of my love for Derek.”
Sanger’s mouth twisted in disgust. “Seriously?”
Q mimicked his expression. “Yep. They left one for me on our porch this morning. It was a picture of me and Ben, from the Cove’s website, with some paraphrased Biblical verses on the back. It said something like ‘The adulterous whore will be burned pure in the flames of righteousness.’ And some other weird shit along those lines. All of them were signed ‘Burn Bitch Burn.’”
“Jesus,” Sanger said. “I knew you getting involved with that man was a bad idea.”
“I’m not involved with Derek, Sanger. It’s just one fucking record and a couple of shows. Unfortunately for me, getting involved with Derek is exactly what this crazy person wants. They seem to be very upset about me not wanting to live happily ever after in some gloomy Transylvanian suburb with him. Honestly, I’m not entirely convinced it’s not Derek trying to scare me into sleeping with him.” When her joke didn’t land, she folded her arms and sat back, considering her friend. His eyes were more piercing than normal, and his full mouth was unnaturally pinched. “Tell me what’s wrong, Sanger? You look like crap.”
“Are you still getting your mail at your house?” he asked, ignoring her.
“Yes.”
“Change that. First thing tomorrow. Get a P.O. box. Unlist your number and take down any personal social media pages. The stuff for the band and the Burlesque is fine. But nothing personal. Your number can’t be the contact for The Beasts anymore,” he said.
“You want me to let Charlie and Tom run my business?” she asked, in horror.
“You want this creep to start calling you and telling you in person what he’d like to do to you?” he asked pointedly. She shrunk back into the couch. “Get rid of any personal pictures on the Cove’s pages, too. All of it needs to come down.”
“But I have all that locked down,” she argued.
“I bet I could get online and figure out that you’re sitting right there on my couch in about thirty minutes of targeted searches. Delete your accounts, Clementine,” he ordered. “Change your email passwords, too.”
“But all my pictures…” she started to argue.
“Pictures or being burned alive. You pick,” he said.
Q pulled out her phone. She deleted her personal accounts and all associated data, then went to her email app and dutifully changed her password to ‘Sanger-is-a-Lunatic7’.
“Give me your phone,” he said. She did, and he fli
pped through her settings. “For fuck’s sake, Clementine, all your pictures are tagged with your location. Do you want someone to kill you?”
“Stop being dramatic, Sanger. Just fix it.”
He closed her phone and set it on the coffee table. “If you get another letter, you bring it to me, not Derek’s management. Me. Understand?”
“Yes, sir. So, I should be worried?” she asked.
He shook his head. “You’re probably ok. If Derek’s people knew about it already and he’s being threatened, too, it’s probably being handled, but you can’t live like you used to. Between this album and all the social media attention, you’re about to be famous. You and Ben should probably install a security fence around your house. Put up some cameras, too.”
“You’re overreacting. These weirdos will forget all about me as soon as Derek starts sleeping with the next actress-slash-model willing to risk contracting herpes. Your turn. Why do you look like your head’s about to explode?”
His knees continued to bounce nervously, something Q had never seen him do. The normal calm that Sanger exuded was completely absent.
“Tori,” he said. “I can’t kick this, Clementine. I’m trying to, but how can I get past it if I can’t even stop…”
He abruptly stopped speaking and muttered to himself, “Fucking stop it, Aaron.”
“What is it, cowboy?”
“It’s nothing,” he said. “Look, Clementine. You can’t help me with this. I have to figure it out on my own. Trust me, if you or Ben could help me, I’d let you. Just go on home to Ben. I’ll deal with this. I’m fine, really.”
“No, you’re not. Come on, I told you mine, tell me what’s wrong. Let me help,” she said. “Look, about that day at the hospital. I shouldn’t have said all those things. I know you’re still mad at me…”
He stood up and started to pace. “I’m not mad at you, Clementine. You were right. I’m so fucked up. I’m a horrible fucking person.”
“Jesus, Aaron. Is it really as bad as all that? Tell me what’s wrong.”
Sanger looked haggard. His habitually tamed curls were falling every which way. “I can’t. You’re not going to like it. You’ll probably hate me for it and I don’t think I can handle that right now.”
Q exhaled and sat back, watching him pace. “On a scale from one to ten, how bad are we talking, cowboy? One being, I ate the last yogurt. Ten being, I fucked your husband at the gym this morning.”
Her joke had the intended effect and he laughed, relaxing somewhat until his face fell in disconsolation. “Twelve, Clementine. It’s a solid twelve.”
Having started her day with a death threat from a crazed Dark Harm fan, she wasn’t sure if she could take any more bad news. “Then I’m going to need a drink to hear this, Aaron. It’s already been a hell of a day. And frankly, you look like you could use one, too. Let’s go to Manny’s and talk this through.”
“I’ve got a bottle in the kitchen. Come on.”
He turned away and she followed him into the kitchen, watching him pull down two shot glasses and retrieve a bottle of frozen tequila from the freezer. He poured them each a shot and they drank them simultaneously.
Q reached for the bottle and refilled her glass, draining it before saying, “You’re still sleeping with Tori, aren’t you?”
Sanger didn’t say anything for several long seconds, he poured another drink and pulled himself up onto the counter to sip it. “That night, after my first date with Yvie and she texted, offering to come over. I got to thinking that you were right. That maybe I should lighten up. That it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if Yvonne Bordelon showed up on my doorstep at midnight. So, I lit some candles, put on some music and cleaned up a little, just in case she decided to come over. I was even kind of hoping she would. I poured myself a drink and sat down to read a book. I thought I’d wait an hour or so.”
“But Yvonne didn’t come over,” she said, reaching for the bottle to pour herself another shot. She hopped up on the counter of the island to sit across from him.
“No. Tori did.” He paused. “She brought a bottle of wine. Wanted to talk, just like I said. I went to the kitchen to open it. When I came back to the living room with a glass for her, she wasn’t there.”
“Where was she?”
“In my bed. Naked. Touching herself. Telling me all the things she wanted me to do to her body.” He sipped his drink. “I should have stopped it…”
She kicked him with her foot. “Stop beating yourself up, cowboy. I don’t think there are very many single men on this planet who would be able to resist that. Probably quite a few married ones who couldn’t either.”
“You’re not mad?” he asked.
“No, I’m mad as hell. Not that you did it, but that you lied to my face about it. You could have told me. I can’t blame you for it,” she said.
“I don’t know why I lied to you,” he said.
She grinned at him. “That’s a lie, too. You know why you did it, you just don’t want to tell me.”
“I didn’t want to disappoint you. I didn’t want to tell you that I broke my promise to you.” He quietly sipped his drink and looked out the window at the setting sun.
“Well, lucky for you, I already blew my top at Derek’s dickhead manager about an hour ago, so you’re forgiven. I’m all out of fight right now. Was it just that night?”
“No. I saw her the night before I took Yvie to the Cove. That’s why she was so mad. It’s just… I didn’t think I’d like Yvie so much, but…”
He looked down in shame. Q wondered how hard of a time she should give him and decided that after the day she’d had, she just wanted to hang out with her friend and be a help, not a hindrance.
“You’re still forgiven, cowboy. But for the record, this is barely a six, not even close to a twelve,” she said. “Unless Yvie doesn’t know. Because that might make this a solid fifteen. Ben will kill you… well, he’ll try. Nita and Danny will probably do most of the real damage.”
While Ben talked a good game when it came to defending his sisters, his two older sisters had been the real muscle while the five Bordelon children were growing up.
He laughed, relaxing into the tequila and sympathy. “She knows. I wouldn’t lie to her like that. When we left the Cove the other night, I told her that Tori and I spent one last night together, but it was over now. I told her that I’d ended it at the show and I left it up to her if she wanted to keep seeing me or not …” He ran his hand through his hair. “Things with Yvie went pretty far after your show, Clementine.”
She held up her hand. “Let’s keep the details to a minimum, Sanger. Did you have sex with Ben’s sister the day after you fucked Tori or not?”
“Define sex,” he said, wincing and closing his left eye.
“Nudity. Penetration. Procreation.”
“Yes. Sort of. And no.”
“I walked right into that, didn’t I?” She eyed him with suspicion. “What did Yvie say when you told her?”
He drained his glass. “She said she was tired of making the same mistakes. Told me to figure it the fuck out. She was cool, either way, as long as I was honest with her. Said she’d keep her options open until she was sure that I’d closed out mine.”
“Go on, Yvonne.” She grinned, proud of her sister-in-law for finally making a healthy relationship choice.
“When we went to breakfast that Sunday, I told her I was closing out my options. We’ve been hanging out ever since. It’s been nice. It feels good to be with a woman who wants to be there, someone I can have.”
“Of course, it does. So, stop freaking out. Look, I’ll go. Call Yvie over.”
“I can’t.” He folded his arms. “There’s more, Clementine.”
She was surprised. “There’s more, what?”
“Tori came to see me yesterday. I was supposed to go on a date with Yvie…” He cursed under his breath.
“Why did Tori come to see you, Aaron?”
“She’s pr
egnant.” He looked her in the eyes, waiting for her to speak, guilt radiating off him like a shroud.
Q picked up the bottle and upended into her mouth, taking a large swig before exclaiming, “Good god, Sanger, you didn’t use protection?”
“Things with Tori tend to happen kind of fast.”
“TMI, Sanger,” she scolded.
“No, not that. Jesus, woman, do you think I’d mention it if it was.” He reached for the bottle and she handed it to him. “There isn’t much of an introduction to the main event, if you know what I mean. She never gave me much time to think about it. One minute we’re kissing and the next…”
“Yeah, I have a pretty clear picture of what happened next.” She squinted at him. “So, what? You got away with it and just threw caution to the wind?”
“I thought she was handling it. I mean, if you went to be with a man and didn’t make him wear a condom, wouldn’t you be prepared?”
“Fair point,” she conceded. “Are you sure it’s yours, Aaron?”
“She said it’s most likely mine. She and Stanley rarely have sex. It’s a possibility, but it times out to one of the days we spent together. She said her marriage is over and she wants to be with me. But she can’t leave him for a few more months, especially now that Savion’s dead, and she’ll have to make him think it’s his until then.”
“Fucking cunt,” Q muttered.
“That’s not fair, Clementine. I know Stanley’s your friend, but his marriage could be ending for lots of reasons. This didn’t start with me…”
“No, Aaron. Her marriage is ending because Stanley is ending. He has Stage 4 pancreatic cancer. He won’t make it to Christmas. At the rate he’s going since Savion’s funeral, he’ll be lucky to make it a month. All Tori had to do, was the right thing. Stay with her very charming, very kind, very handsome husband for six more months, max. Keep him comfortable. Keep him happy. Then she could do whatever she wanted. She couldn’t even wait six months.”
He handed her the bottle without her asking and she took a large swig, dispensing with the pretense of a glass.
“Fuck.” Sanger sat back against the cupboard, deflated. “How long has Stanley been sick?”
