by Cat Porter
I could’ve stood here for hours studying her. She was real, visible, tangible, but we were separated from her. A Christmas fantasy display in a department store window. We’d be glued to that pane of glass forever, our eyes and senses swallowing every detail with wonder, but unable to touch it, live it.
I moved toward her, not knowing what I’d say or do. Only that I had to do something. My hands were suddenly sweaty, my mouth dry. I was Frankenstein’s monster, lumbering, awkward, intrigued. She was the innocent young girl picking flowers at the side of the lake.
“Oh, hello.” Zoë’s smile lit up her face.
“Hey. Zoë, right?”
Her lips twisted, her gaze darting away and back again. She was clearly pleased, and a bit flustered. “Mr. F-Finger, right?”
My breath tightened in my chest. “That’s right.”
She was the most beautiful flower, but I knew better than to throw her in the lake. I’d raise her above the world if I could.
I shifted my weight, my back stiff. “Those are real nice dishes. Did you make those?”
“Yep. I love red. I made only red dishes yesterday. Everyone should have a red dessert plate. It would make dessert so much more fun.”
I ground my heels in the floor, bracing myself under the spray of her diamond sparkles, the sheen of her fairy dust.
“Do you make cereal bowls?” I asked her.
“Sometimes.”
“Could you make me two in that red?”
She giggled. “Sure! Hey, did you and Lenore put in the tiles?”
“Uhh. No. Not yet.”
She scrunched her nose and pushed her glasses up. “Oh.”
The bandana laying around my throat was a dead weight around my neck, and I tugged on it. “I want to help her with the tiles, but we forgot to buy glue for them, and I’m not sure what to get. Could you help me?”
“Not glue, silly.” She let out a hearty laugh. “G-grout. Like cement. It’s called grout.”
“Oh, I didn’t know. Could you show me which one I should buy for her?”
“Sure. This way.”
I followed her over two aisles. A slight imbalance in the way she carried her weight gave her a shuffling step to her walk. She pointed to a bag. “This one. That’s what I use.” She picked up a small sack and handed it to me.
The sack thudded against my chest, and as I grabbed at it, our hands brushed. “Thanks, Zoë. I appreciate it.”
“You’re welcome. You must like her a lot, right? She’s a very nice lady. She’s been shopping with us for a long, long time.”
My mouth dried. “I’ve known her for a long time too.”
“You like her?”
“Yes.”
“I mean, you like, like her, right?”
“How did you guess that?”
“I could tell. She was different around you. You both look nice together, especially with all the tattoos you both have. I want her to have a boyfriend.”
“You want Lenore to be happy. Like you are with Mark?”
Her cheeks turned pink, and she let out a belly laugh, her blue green eyes darting around in a circle. “Yes!”
Something jolted through my chest. Dazzling.
“I want her to be happy, too,” I said, clearing my throat. “Just like that. Like you and Mark.”
“Yay. If you treat her right, she’ll like you back.”
“You’re a smart girl, you know that?”
“You have that zingy thing.”
“Zingy thing?”
“You know, that feeling between a boy and a girl. I could tell right away with you and Lenore. Mommy and Daddy have it too.” She laughed, twisting her mouth again.
“Can I help you?” a young guy in his late teens came up behind Zoë. He wore a name tag—Tim—on his Pine Needle Garden Center Family Owned since 1936 T-shirt.
“I’m taking this.” I handed Tim the sack of powder.
Tim blinked at my scarred hands. “Anything else you need today, sir?”
“That’s it. For now.”
“I’ll ring it up for you at the front.” Tim trudged up the aisle.
“Well.” I shifted my weight. “Bye, Zoë. Thanks.”
“Bye-bye. Say hi to Lenore for me.”
“I will.”
I paid Tim for the grout and left the nursery, holding the sack under my arm tightly. I clutched it like a football, and I was crossing the goal line with one second left on the clock. I closed my eyes, and burned her smiling blue green eyes into my heart. The soft giggly chirp of her voice. A spirit full of innocent positivity.
She had never known rejection, or life and death fear, or hunger, never been touched by anything sordid or miserable or degrading. There was only radiant sun and brilliant rainbows in that girl.
“Protecting that child. At any cost,” Tania had said.
My and Serena’s flesh and blood walked the earth and dreamed and danced and sang and laughed, setting the sky on fire.
Sunshine, our daughter is so beautiful.
A wave of light-headedness passed through me, and I gulped in air. Unbuckling a saddlebag, I shoved the small grout bag inside.
Then I tucked my experience of my daughter deep in my quaking soul.
66
“Why didn’t you come to the party?” Tricky strode through my front door, his glazed eyes ricocheting around the dark entryway, shoulders tense.
I stood stock still. “I didn’t say I was coming to the party.”
“Uh, yeah you did.”
“No, I didn’t. I rarely go to club parties, you know that. I said I might come.”
“Oh, might. Right. She might come. She might like me today. She might spend the night tonight. She might go down on me tonight—”
“Get out of my house.”
His eyes blazed, his stiff jaw jutted out. “So who is it? There’s gotta be somebody else. Who is it?”
“Jesus. I’m busy working. Tania and Butler are getting married next week in California, and I’m making her a wedding dress as a surprise. You know this. I’ve been up late every night this week to finish it. Going to some club party is not high on my list of priorities.”
“I know I’m definitely not one of your priorities. You wouldn’t have just stopped us out of the blue, for no reason. I mean, shit, we’re good together. That’s a fact.”
“Tricky, I told you from the beginning that this was a loose thing for me. You agreed. You said you felt the same way. Then you started getting mad at me and suddenly had all these expectations that weren’t there before.”
“None of this makes sense, Lenore! You been lying to me? You been sleeping with other guys all along, because for a while now, there’s only been you for me. So, I want to know. I want to know who the fuck it is you’re sleeping with now.”
“Calm down, Tricky.”
“Answer the question.”
“We had fun. That’s what this was. Fun.”
“Was, was, was, huh?”
“That’s right. The past.”
“Well, now I want a real thing with you, not just fun,” he said.
“I didn’t know that. But I don’t want anything else.”
“Seriously?” his tone was snide.
“Tricky, you should leave. It’s late.”
He blinked, his head jerking back. “What the fuck—you’re dismissing me like I’m the misbehaving boy and you’re the teacher?”
“Tricky.”
“You done with me now?”
“That’s a shock to you?”
“Whoa.” His hands flew in the air and he let out a tight laugh, the whites of his eyes flashing.
My stomach hardened at the sight, my muscles tensed.
“It is a shock, yeah.” He moved toward me. “One day everything’s
good, the next, you’re saying no more. You can’t do this. You can’t.” He launched at me, taking me in his arms, squeezing me.
“Tricky, stop. Let me go!” My hands were stuck against his chest, and I pushed at him hard. “We’ll talk tomorrow. You’re drunk.”
He buried his face in my hair. “Let me fuck you one more time. Let me show you how much you mean to me, baby, come on.” His lips latched onto my neck and he sucked the skin there, a hand gripping my ass.
I squirmed against his hold, and his sucking turned into biting. “Stop it!” Adrenaline pumped through me.
“You love it when I do this shit. Just let me—”
Something reflected in the darkness, and I knew. I relaxed in Tricky’s hold.
“Don’t even breathe,” came a harsh, low voice. A gloved hand went to the side of Tricky’s neck and pressed deep. Tricky’s eyes bulged, he gasped.
“Let her go or it gets worse.”
Tricky’s grip released me, and I quickly stepped away from him. A scuffle, thudding to the floor. I darted to the light switch, hitting it. Finger held a massive stainless steel gun to Tricky’s head, his free hand pinning back his arms.
“You don’t fucking breathe her way ever again, you hear me? Not one fucking breath,” ordered Finger on a hiss.
Tricky buckled to the floor, his forehead planting onto the wood.
A heavy knock banged at the door, and my heart pounded up my throat.
“Open it,” Finger said.
I opened the door and Butler stood there, my front porch light casting its yellow glow over him. “Hey, Lenore.”
“Pick up your bro,” said Finger, tucking his gun away.
“Finger called me when he saw Tricky’s bike out front,” Butler said to me as he helped his friend to his feet. “Let’s go, Trick. You’re done here.”
Tricky glanced at me, but I offered no goodbye, no explanation. There was none to give.
“I’m sorry,” he mouthed.
“Me too,” I said as he brushed past me.
The door closed behind Butler and Tricky. Finger and I stared at each other in silence until a vehicle outside rumbled down the street and faded.
“You okay? He hurt you?” he asked.
“I’m fine.” I turned off the foyer light and wrapped my arms around myself.
He went into my living room and eased back on my sofa as if he did it every night, his shoulders relaxed as he spread his one arm around the back of the couch. His dark eyes glimmered at me in the faint light. I held my breath at the sight of him relaxed, emitting pheromones of beast-like satisfaction, gratification.
His lips twitched, he was grinning. “I’d like a drink. Please.”
“Would you?”
“I would. That Jameson would be perfect.”
He’d inspected my house.
I raised an eyebrow. “The Gold Reserve or the—”
“The Gold.” That grin got wider. Slightly sardonic, slightly devious, teasing.
A tickle rose in my throat, and I swallowed it back down. “Gold, it is. Straight?”
“Straight.”
I poured the Irish whiskey for him into a crystal tumbler and one for me. I gave him his drink and sat down next to him, sipping mine. The kick of the liquor’s sweet heat filled my mouth and subsided, soft vanilla blooming in its place.
He licked his bottom lip. “That is so good.”
“It is.”
He took my hand in his, warm and firm. His eyes remained on our hands which he’d brought to rest on his thigh. “I want to sit here with you if that’s all right. Share the quiet in here. The colors. That sage candle burning. You.” He raised his glass up, swirling the pale gold whiskey. “This beautiful delicate crystal glass with very fine whiskey that you poured for me. I want to sit here with you, like this, and drink it all in. That’s what I want to do.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
Had something else happened today? Probably. And all he needed right now was to sit with me and be close?
I wanted that too.
We sat without speaking for a long time. I couldn’t say if it was minutes or moments or hours. A meditation filled with the sounds of quick breaths, tentative touches, whiskey wet lips, and warm hands lingering.
“I brought you something.” He went to the front door, opening it, reaching down, then closing it. He propped a small paper sack on the floor.
“What’s that?”
“Grout for those tiles you got the other day.”
“You went to Steve and Gail’s?”
“Yep. I realized you didn’t get any grout when you bought the tiles, and I went and picked some up.”
“I didn’t buy any because I already have some.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“You haven’t been in my garage yet?”
“Not yet.”
I finished my drink. “I have soil and mulch in there and some old pots and rakes and a shovel.”
“You really like to garden, huh?”
“I like my surroundings to be inspiring and colorful, and if you put the time and effort into a garden, the results are pretty damned fantastic. Gail taught me that.” I held up the bottle of whiskey. “More?”
“Please.”
I filled his glass again. “Did you see Zoë?”
“I did. And she was real excited that I was going to help you tile up.”
“She wants me to have a boyfriend.”
“She told me. She couldn’t stop giggling when she saw me. Said we were perfect for each other with all the tattoos we both got.”
I let out a laugh. “Zoë doesn’t have a filter.”
“I realized. I like it.”
I settled back onto the sofa, curling my legs under me. “Me too.”
“She’d brought out some new mugs, red ones, and she told me how much she loved red.”
“It was yellow last month. She made a whole line of dessert plates and ashtrays in every tone of yellow.”
“Well, now it’s the red. I asked her to make me two red bowls and I’d come back for them next time. Bowls for your cereal.”
I let out a laugh, taking his hand in mine. “I like that there’s a next time.”
“I’ll bet your whole life has been built on next times with her,” he murmured.
I pressed my lips together, stifling the small moan that brewed there.
“Like me with you,” he said, his voice low. “I always counted on there being a next time.”
I put my glass down and straddled his lap, facing him. “Those nights we spent together, being with you like this. I like it. It makes me smile inside. Makes me feel lighter, positive in a deeper way than I’ve ever allowed myself for a long time. It makes me feel that there’s good ahead, not just good enough.”
His one hand rose up my back. “Good enough ain’t enough anymore.”
“There’s hope for us? We’re not only the rubble of what our explosions left behind?”
He rubbed my shoulder. “Ah baby, a little grout and elbow grease, and we can build us back up. As long as you don’t mind it being a little crooked here and there, maybe chipped in places.”
“No, I don’t mind.” I traced a line over his facial scars. “We could paint it red, paint it yellow.”
“Blue green, too,” his deep, scratchy voice caught as his hands moved up my middle, over my breasts to my neck, stroking me there. His index finger touched the tattoo of Zoë’s compass on my chest. “Tell me why this N is different from the others, why it’s on fire. A blue fire.”
“It’s not an N. It’s a Z on its side, it just looks like a fat N. It’s my secret little way to have Zoë’s name on me.”
“I don’t get it.”
“I didn’t feel worthy of having her name or eve
n her initial tatted on me. The Z on its side reminds me that I gave up having a place in her life, that I’m on the outside. I can’t claim that Z.”
“No, baby, no.” He touched his lips to mine.
“Her letter is in a blue fire,” I whispered. “A blue flame burns hotter than a red one, you know.”
“I know.” He kissed me slowly, the caramel flavor of the whiskey melding with the flavor of him across my tongue.
“Do you forgive me?” I whispered. “I need to know.”
“You kept her safe.” His thumb brushed at the side of my face. “Yeah, it’s hard when it hits me, not going to lie. And it keeps hitting me, but those hits are not so rough and turning into positives, one at a time.”
My fingers stroked the side of his face, his scars, his beard.
He pulled me in closer against him. “Baby, I don’t hate you. I want to love you more, better than before. Those feelings didn’t go away. Been burning deep. I stifled them, wrestled them down, chained them up, but I don’t want to anymore. I can’t. I just can’t. There’s no reason to.”
His eyes studied me. Those harsh eyes that had once impressed me with their steadfastness in all the screaming insanity that had cavorted around us now gleamed at me. Expectant. Warm shimmers of light, gentle rays of possibility.
He slowly tasted my lips, his tongue nudging my mouth open to receive its blessings.
I opened, I received, I gave.
He cradled my face in his hands. “We got a clean slate now, baby. We can have that life we always wanted together with nothing and no one hanging over us. We can do this.”
My fingertips dug into the back of his neck. “It’s been such a long time.”
“That doesn’t matter. It doesn’t,” he whispered against my lips. “You and me matter. Us together. If you still want it.”
“I still want it.” The breath squeezed from my chest, and I kissed him.
His hips rose against mine, offering more friction. “I’m cutting it loose now, baby. Tell me that’s a good thing. Tell me that’s what you want. Tell me, I need to hear you say it.”
