Holding Smoke

by Steph Post

  Before Judah could look any closer, Katerina began brusquely rolling the drawing up in front of him. Judah supposed his novelty had worn off.

  “Now, I have other business to attend to. I take it Dinah can fill you in on the rest of the plan.”

  She tapped the end of the paper tube on the table and snapped it into Judah’s outstretched hand. Apparently, she’d begun to lose patience with Judah, which suited him just fine considering the feeling was mutual. He smacked the paper against his open palm. Dinah was looking away, as if embarrassed by the whole exchange, but Judah didn’t care. He was out to steal a horse, not make friends. Especially ones who regarded him as nothing more than a curiosity, an animal in a zoo. He turned abruptly to Katerina.

  “Anything else before we go?”

  Katerina pulled the lapels of her jacket tighter and crossed her arms over her chest.

  “Yeah. Don’t screw this up. I put a lot of thought into this plan, as you can see, and I’ve got a lot riding on it.”

  Judah just shook his head.

  “You me and both, lady. Hell, you me and both.”

  10

  She was so goddamn beautiful. It was hard to look away, though Judah needed to have his eyes everywhere else. On Trent, leaning over the back of one of the oxblood chesterfields clustered in the center of the sunken lounge, right hand twirling the stem of an empty martini glass, the left massaging the neck of a brunette as he bent down, whispering in her ear. On Robert and Sophia, neither of whom had yet noticed they had uninvited guests in their midst. Robert was holding court under the crystal chandelier in the middle of the ballroom, surrounded by cronies in identical black tie, distinguishable only by their double and triple chins and the octaves of their braying laughs. Sophia was harder to track, flitting in an endless loop from the pockets of guests scattered around linen-draped drink tables, to the lounge to chide Trent, back across the ballroom’s vast marble floor with a stop to admonish Robert, down the softly lit hall off the foyer to check on the kitchen, and out the open glass doors to the terrace, canopied by twinkling party lights. Judah’s eyes should have been on Shelia, frumpy and uncomfortable in the caterer’s uniform Dinah had procured for her, the black skirt too long and the starched white shirt too big, pouching out in the back. And on Dinah, also in uniform, prowling through the guests with a tray of canapes on her arm, keeping tabs on everyone and everything as she waited for the right moment to give the signal and set the plan into motion.

  Judah should have been watching them all—noting how many drinks Trent had already guzzled, when Sophia paused in her circuit to fiddle with her intricately pinned hair, which rent-a-cops were sneaking shots and which were taking their job seriously—but his gaze kept going back to Ramey. She was standing next to him in the haven of an alcove they’d staked out in the ballroom, close to the terrace, but with lines of sight to the front entryway, the kitchen hallway, and the sweeping imperial staircase. With a glass of red wine balanced in one hand, her fingers twitching for a cigarette, Ramey was focused, combing through the sea of guests for potential problems and threats. Following her lead, Judah forced himself to look away and find Shelia, on the other side of the ballroom, waiting patiently for a man with his bow tie already loose to ostentatiously finish the last of his beer before gallantly placing the empty bottle on her outstretched tray. Shelia did not look impressed. Judah found Dinah, trudging in from the terrace carrying a plastic tub of dirty plates, and then cut his eyes again to Ramey.

  As she shifted slightly, Judah caught the hint of her left hipbone, traced out against the sleek midnight blue dress pulled taut across her lower back and belly. He wanted nothing more in the world than to reach out and touch her hip, just there, right above the threadwork of scars curving around the dip in her side, the scars that were meant for the cup of his hand. When Ramey tilted her head, her hair, long and tamed into glossy waves, caught the chandelier’s light and shimmered against her bare neck and shoulders. So much of her was visible to this room full of strangers. Her long legs, the winged arc of her shoulder blades when her hair swung to one side, the ridge of her spine when she leaned forward to set down her glass, the peek of a faded tattoo. Judah could not remember ever seeing Ramey in such a dress. Or in spiked heels, with smoky eyes and blood-red lips. Yet it wasn’t what the look revealed that staggered him; it was what it kept hidden. Of all the men in the room, only he knew the truth of every inch of her skin. Only he knew the truth of her.

  “You’re staring.”

  Judah raised his bitter imported beer to his lips and took a long swallow, still watching her over the rim of the glass.

  “I’m sorry.”

  The corner of her mouth twitched with the hint of a smile and she looked away, her eyes following Shelia as she again crossed the room.

  “Judah.”

  With the word, her mouth fell and he quickly turned to see what she was looking at. Nothing. Shelia was picking at the collar of her shirt, Dinah was hovering by the stairs, Trent was still in the lounge, a fresh drink in hand. Judah set his beer on the table in front of them and braced himself.

  “What is it?”

  She started to bite her bottom lip, but then remembered the lipstick. She ran her tongue over her teeth and dropped her gaze to the swirling galaxy of the marble floor. Judah felt first a stab at the base of his throat, then a slow, hermetic squeeze. A strangling. He knew what she was about to say. He could feel it, a swell of vertigo rippling toward him as the rest of the world pulled back. Ramey flicked her eyes up and glanced over his shoulder, still watching the crowd.

  “Never mind. This isn’t the time. We need to be watching for Dinah’s signal. We need to be—”

  Judah gripped the empty pint glass in front of him just to have something safe to do with his hands.

  “Say it. Whatever it is, just say it.”

  When she dropped her eyes to his, he thought the glass might shatter between his fingers.

  “Please.”

  Ramey’s lips moved, but no sound came out. Finally, she exhaled, long and low, shuddering. A terrible release.

  “I can’t do it.”

  “Yes, you can.”

  “No, I mean this.”

  Her shoulders rose and fell in a tidal wave, ripping him under.

  “All of this. I can’t do it anymore. I’m not a Cannon.”

  A woman with a champagne glass in hand squealed as she lurched past the alcove, tripping over the hem of her slinky gold gown, but Judah’s eyes never left Ramey. Her voice was splintering.

  “I never was.”

  A round of cheers and clinked glasses exploded from the far corner of the ballroom and Judah leaned in close to hear over the din, though he didn’t really need to hear the words. It was all on Ramey’s face, in the downward cast of her eyes, her quivering lip.

  “I look at the things I’ve done. I tell myself, over and over, this must be who I am. A criminal, like you said. This is who I’ve become. This is who I was meant to become all along.”

  Ramey’s voice dropped even lower and she clasped her hands, twisting and kneading her fingers.

  “But, Judah, I can’t. I just can’t. There has to be more than this. There has to be more to me.”

  He wanted to reach out, to still those fingers, but he couldn’t move. It was all too surreal. The party, the crowd, the words she was saying, the crime they were about to commit. The light, the laughter, the illimitable chasm cleaving his chest in two. Judah was choking, but a part of him was also floating, just hovering above it all. Untouched.

  Ramey lifted her head, almost proudly, though her eyes kept darting away.

  “I told you I’d do this tonight, and I still aim to. But once this is over, I want out. I’m done. I don’t know what that will mean for us. I just know what it will mean for me.”

  Judah stared, nodded dumbly. Untouched. Untouchable. He tried to speak, but his voice was not own. His words tumbled forth from someone else. />
  “I understand. You made a choice. You had to.”

  Someone else, someone very far away, who could not possibly belong to this woman in the way that he did. In the way that he always would.

  *

  Shelia held a Capri cigarette up between two fingers, cleared her throat, and cocked an eyebrow at the head caterer who begrudgingly nodded his assent while continuing to place tiny sprouts of something green onto equally tiny bits of cracker with a pair of tweezers. Shelia turned and rolled her eyes so hard she almost gave herself a headache before slipping out the kitchen’s back service entrance and quietly crossing the cobblestone delivery yard. All she wanted was to light her damn cigarette, but instead she shoved it back inside the pocket of her apron and pulled out a tube of fuchsia lipstick. Just as Ramey had altered her appearance by playing things up, Shelia, also not wanting to be remembered by anyone at the party, had been forced to tone things down. She dabbed and smacked her lips while looking over her shoulder and ducking underneath an arbor canopied with trailing jasmine. She untucked her scratchy cotton shirt and popped two buttons at the neck; she’d thought Dinah would never give her the green light. Shelia didn’t know which was worse—the frumpiness of her borrowed clothes or the pretension of the guests she’d been waiting on. Truth be told, they both made her want to gag.

  Shelia followed the paved golf cart track Dinah had described to her and checked behind her one more time before darting down a lane crunching with pea gravel and lined with azaleas and blooming gardenias. The path was lit intermittently by lampposts flickering artificial flames and Shelia paused in the lee of a storage shed to shake out her lopsided French braid and rake her hair down over her shoulders. She undid one more button, plucked at the underwire in her bra, and hiked her cleavage up before stepping back out into the pools of light. She crept behind the show arena until she came out onto a narrow brick walkway. Shelia pulled the Capri back out of her apron just as she stepped into view of the south stable. Her timing couldn’t have been better; the stable manager was grinding his own cigarette out on the trunk of a potted palm as she approached. Shelia gave the man her best bimbo smile and waved her cigarette in the air.

  “Hey, I’m so sorry, but you don’t got a light, do you?”

  The man peered across the courtyard, but his scowl flipped into a bemused smile when he saw Shelia mincing across the uneven bricks. She was glad to see that he was attractive—slightly younger than her, clean-shaven with tousled brown hair—because it made her job that much easier. The good-looking ones were always less suspicious of a woman’s overt attention. He laughed guilelessly and reached into his pocket for a book of matches.

  “You get lost or something?”

  Shelia tittered and leaned in close as he lit her Capri. His dark brown eyes were lined with oddly feminine lashes, but they had already honed in on the glimpse of black lace she’d flashed him. Shelia stood up straight, arching her back as if stretching, and took a long drag of her cigarette while the man lit another of his own. She was watching his eyes. They went from her cleavage to her lips and back again. Like candy from a baby. But then, she was running on a clock, so easy was good. Shelia held out her hand.

  “I’m Stacy, by the way.”

  The man took her hand.

  “Cal. You working the party up there?”

  Shelia nodded as she took her time releasing his fingers.

  “Yeah and it sucks. I had to get some air. And then, stupid me, I realized I’d forgotten my lighter. My boss is such a prick, though, I didn’t want to go back inside to get it. He’d probably just shove another tray in my hand and send me back out to the penguin brigade.”

  Cal laughed again and leaned back against the red-and-white sliding barn doors.

  “Lucky I was out here, huh?”

  Shelia winked at him.

  “You can say that again. But why ain’t you up at the party?”

  She playfully drew the tip of one finger down the front of his T-shirt.

  “I bet you could make one of those bow ties look good.”

  Cal gestured flippantly over his shoulder toward the aisle of stalls behind the closed doors, but didn’t say anything. He was looking away from her, toward the house, and for a second Shelia thought she’d miscalculated and moved too soon. She was trying to think of how to backpedal when Cal screwed up his face and spat into the hibiscus beside him.

  “Yeah, well, my boss can be a prick, too. Trent wanted somebody to stay out here with Calypso. Just in case, he says. Like somebody’s going to mess with his damn horse. I swear, you’d think that stallion had a gold pair swinging between his legs.”

  Shelia immediately dropped her eyes, pretending to be embarrassed. Cal pushed himself away from the doors and touched her elbow.

  “Shit, I’m sorry. That came out wrong. I spend way too much time here around the barn hands.”

  Shelia lifted her head and tossed her hair back without looking at him. Hook, line, and sinker. She held out her half-smoked cigarette and studied it, before glancing back toward the house.

  “Well, I should probably get back to work. Unless…”

  And here she went in for the kill. It was sloppy, but Shelia was thinking of Judah and Ramey and the move they needed to make next. She was never going to see this Cal guy again, so there was no point in laying any groundwork to use later. Shelia coaxed a sly smile to her lips.

  “You’d like to make it up to me. You wouldn’t happen to have a bottle somewhere, would you?”

  Shelia brushed his arm.

  “Share a quick drink with me before I go back?”

  Cal smiled sheepishly.

  “If you want to come upstairs.”

  Shelia feigned surprise.

  “Upstairs?”

  “Sure. There’s an apartment above the stalls and tack room. This stable used to be a kind of suite over a garage before Trent bought Calypso and needed a place to keep him away from the mares. It’s actually pretty sweet, though it means I never get away from the job.”

  Shelia handed Cal her cigarette butt for him to toss alongside his own into the potted palm.

  “Well, ain’t that convenient?”

  Cal waved for Shelia to follow him around the corner and up the covered stairs to the second-story balcony. Shelia traipsed after him—giggling as he held the door for her and then oohing and ahhing at the size of the apartment—before heading straight for the galley kitchen and its single window facing the main house. She flicked the light switch. Cal was right behind her, standing in the doorway with that bemused look on his face again.

  “You weren’t kidding about wanting a drink, huh?”

  Shelia pretended to look around the kitchen with interest.

  “What’ve you got? Any liquor? I’m going to need some to face that party again.”

  Cal pointed to a half-empty bottle of Captain next to the single-cup coffee maker.

  “And there’s a two-liter in the fridge. Here, I’ll…”

  But Shelia was already slamming cabinets and pulling out glasses. She swung open the refrigerator and grinned mischievously at Cal over the door.

  “Let me do it. I like to pour ’em strong. You got any music up here?”

  Cal returned her grin and retreated to the living room. Shelia quickly poured out two rum and diets, took a swig from the bottle itself for luck, and reached into her apron pocket for the capsule Dinah had given her. She glanced through the kitchen doorway—Cal had his back to her as he flipped through records, he would be the type to have an organized vinyl collection—and then broke open the capsule over one of the drinks. She stirred it in with her finger, wiped her hand on her apron and reached for the switch on the wall. She flickered the kitchen light a few times, hoping Dinah was looking in the right direction from the terrace and saw the signal. Cal had just put the needle on a record and turned back to her when she came out of the kitchen, hips swinging, and handed him a drink. As he took it from her, she
clinked her glass against his and winked.

  “Now, how about we have a little fun?”

  *

  A glass shattered on the terrace, followed by gasps and curses, and Ramey whipped her head around.

  “That’s us.”

  Judah craned his neck to follow her line of sight through the open doors and nodded. His eyes were shining now with adrenaline, no longer with the uncanny sheen of the vanquished, and for that, Ramey was thankful. It had been agony, standing together awkwardly as the party swirled around them, wondering what was going on inside Judah’s head. He had looked lost at sea, swallowed by a maelstrom, his face bloodless above his black bow tie as he fiddled with the cuffs of his borrowed tuxedo jacket, not knowing what to do with his hands. She never should have spoken.

  But it was time. Ramey casually set her empty wine glass down on the table and slid out from behind it. With Judah at her elbow, she strolled out to the terrace and glanced at the commotion taking place beside one of the brightly lit tiered fountains. A man with glazed eyes and a poof of white cloth napkins held to a bleeding cut on his hand was standing over a shattered rocks glass, mumbling apologies and swaying. A crowd of women had swarmed around him, arguing with one another, one trying to raise his hand above his head, the other trying to push it to his chest. An older man with a cigar clamped between his teeth was bracing the bleeding man by the shoulder, while Dinah, on her knees with a brush and dustpan, swept up shards of glass and gin-soaked ice. A group of guests in the corner craned their necks, whispering, and others, lounging around one of the sandstone fire pits, were pointing and snickering, but everyone’s attention was focused on the man, his hand, and the broken glass at his feet. Ramey caught Dinah’s eye and the barely perceptible nod she gave as they edged around the tall back windows of the house and disappeared down the side stairs onto the sloping lawn. Judah had been a few paces behind, watching their backs, but as her high heels sank into the deep, perfectly manicured Bermuda grass, he caught up with her and grabbed her wrist. Still looking around, he bent his head and whispered in her ear.