Secret Shared: A S.E.C.R.E.T. Novel

by L. Marie Adeline

  “Holy shit. That was … mind-fucking-blowing, Dauphine.” His hands were on his knees, his jeans bunched around his ankles. “I’ve never … it was so … what the fuck.”

  “Best ever?”

  “Uh … yeah.”

  “Well, that was my fantasy,” I said. “Complete.”

  “Oh, but it’s not over yet. Let’s get the hell out of here. The Domino Suite awaits!”

  “What’s that?” I said, reaching down for my bra.

  “I don’t have a clue, but we’re going to find out.”

  “So there’s more?

  “So much more,” he said, plucking up our clothes and pulling me up to my feet. “More than you know.”

  We dressed stealing soft glances at each other. And then we slipped out the back door of the club, where the same long black car that had dropped me off now took on an extra passenger. He held my hand in the back seat, and somehow this gesture was more intimate than what we’d just done to each other with our mouths at Tipitina’s.

  “That Margaret Lewis song … so good,” I said.

  “You know her?”

  “Know her? I have all her records. Vinyl.”

  “Who would have thought this is how I’d meet my dream girl,” he said, raising my hand to kiss the back of it.

  His dream girl?

  He noticed my bracelet for the first time. “You earned them all, right?”

  I nodded.

  “I think you get some do-overs tonight,” he said, kissing my fingers.

  Matilda was right: this fantasy was unrolling in a way that I could not have imagined myself. We kissed the rest of the way there, coming up for air only when the limo glided through those ivy-covered gates. The Mansion was dark, one window lit on the second floor.

  “This place is so freaky, don’t you think?” he said, exiting the limo in front of a small fountain with little angel statues.

  “You’ve been here before?”

  Mark looked at me.

  “Right,” I said.

  “I’m going to assume you’ve been here before too.”

  “Once, and only back there,” I said, pointing over the crest of a hill to the garage at the end of the driveway.

  “What were you doing back there?”

  The look on my face told him it was best not to ask.

  “Right. This is so insane,” he said, grinning widely. “I fucking love it.”

  The side door was open, and instead of taking me to the right, where I assumed the front foyer would lead us upstairs, he tugged me to the left, down a long, black-and white-tiled corridor with swinging oak doors at the end. We were quiet as mice, creeping hand in hand into the massive kitchen. A single light over a stove cast shadows on appliances the size of cattle. The pots and pans hanging from the ceiling were big enough to prepare meals for Vikings.

  Mark pulled open an industrial-sized fridge stocked with enough food to feed an army. Snatching a large serving tray from an upper cabinet, and a box of crackers, he bent into the fridge to scoop up handfuls of chocolate truffles, grapes and cheese rounds.

  “All they have is romance food,” he said as he handed me the tray so he could continue to load it up. “They need to start buying cold cuts and bread.”

  “Ahem. Hello.” The voice came from the kitchen door.

  In my fright I screamed rather loudly, and Mark tossed the box of crackers in the air as a diminutive woman in a starched maid’s uniform turned the lights on full force.

  “I’m so sorry to have frightened you. I’m Claudette. We waited for you earlier, but the driver told us there was a slight delay. Are you finding everything you need?”

  “Yes. Thank you,” I said, trying to calm my heart.

  “I’ll show you to your suite,” she said, taking the tray of food from my hands. “I’ll carry this, my dear. We’ll send up some drinks as well.”

  We were like a couple of school kids caught breaking into the cafeteria, but instead of getting punished, we were being offered keys to the whole school.

  The Domino Suite was up the side stairs and down a wide hall in the west wing. It was, as its name implied, entirely decorated in black and white, its key feature a marble claw-foot tub at the end of an all-white platform bed dotted with round black pillows.

  Claudette placed the tray on a glass-topped banquette that faced a floor-to-ceiling window framed with black velvet curtains. A second later, another woman, also dressed in uniform, dropped off a bucket of chilled champagne and several bottles of sparkling water.

  “Just call down if you need anything,” Claudette said as they left, closing the double doors behind them.

  We waited a beat to make sure we were really alone. Then, with grins smeared across our faces, we leapt onto the platform bed, landing in a pile. I was happier than I’d been in a long, long time.

  “This is so cool,” he said. “You are so cool.”

  I noticed the iPod and speaker on the mantel of the fireplace.

  “Any requests?” I asked, getting up and skipping across the room.

  “Surprise me,” Mark said, echoing my instructions to S.E.C.R.E.T.

  It occurred to me then just how well the organization had done that. They’d surprised me over and over again. But this was by far the biggest surprise—my favorite musician singling me out in a crowded room, pleasuring me in the back of a club, then bringing me to this beautiful place, making me feel wanted, special, treasured, if only for a night. I wheeled through the iPod menu, stocked with some of the best Louisiana blues and jazz, and chose Professor Longhair, which made Mark convulse with joy on the bed.

  “Yes! He’s the king!”

  “My favorite’s ‘Willie Mae,’” I said, joining him again, working my hand under his T-shirt. “Don’t you wish you could have seen him play at Tipitina’s?”

  “Tipitina’s. Yeah. From now on, I can only think of it as the place where we met,” he said, pulling me on top of him.

  We launched into a luscious make-out session, the kind I hadn’t enjoyed since high school. Then he flipped me onto my back, his kisses rich and deep, his arm beneath me as I arched into his tight body.

  “I’ve never met anyone like you,” he whispered. “I could talk with you all night long.”

  “Me too,” I said, meaning it. “But there are lots of other things I could do with you all night long too.”

  My fingers aimlessly circled a strand of his hair as we lay together, just like that, for a few songs, taking quiet bites of grapes and chocolate and cheese, nodding to the songs that he would play for me and I for him. Rapturous with the music and with each other.

  CASSIE

  I HAD TO admit it was a little weird to see Angela Rejean frosting a cake in her kitchen while wearing an apron and a sundress, her now-straightened hair pulled into a low ponytail at her nape. Last time I saw her she was on the other side of one-way glass, making a meal out of Mark Drury.

  Dauphine would have had her fantasy with him last night and I assumed because I hadn’t heard from her that it had gone well. At least, I hoped it had. I hated the idea of her fleeing S.E.C.R.E.T. in anger and resentment. And I liked to think I had picked well with Mark.

  Angela told me to take a tour of the place, while she put last-minute touches on Tracina’s fancy baby-shower cake and Kit tied bows on little gift bags for invitees. The narrow living room in her mint-colored Creole cottage on North Roman was decorated with pink and blue paper flowers around the windows, since the sex of the baby was unknown. But the goofy decorations didn’t take away from the grown-up style of her place. Red Oriental rugs were strewn about the living room’s original pine floors, where two surprisingly comfortable antique loveseats, reupholstered in bright purple paisley, faced each other. The walls were painted a dark coral, not pink, more like the color of the lipstick she always wore. Framed photographs of Nina Simone and Billie Holiday dotted the narrow hallway to her bedroom, where an imposing four-poster bed sat draped with billowing white netting, her even more
imposing tuxedo cat, Boots, sitting moored in the middle like a fat boat. On her antique dresser was a collection of Haitian dolls, and above it, a framed black-and-white aerial photo of Port-au-Prince from the ’60s, next to that a wall-mounted flat-screen TV. The whole place was feminine, not girly, cozy without feeling cramped.

  “Hand me that tea towel, Cassie,” Angela said when I returned. She was wiping the extra frosting off the platter with her finger. “Would you mind putting out the little plates? They only had blue ones, but that doesn’t mean she’s having a boy. I hope people don’t think that she’s having a boy. I mean, we don’t know what it is. I should say something. Do you think? Or just leave it. I’ll just leave it.”

  It was sweet seeing her flustered. She was usually so in control. She was a good friend to Tracina and clearly wanted to make her baby shower perfect. In that moment, I was truly happy that Tracina had a friend like this, since I certainly had been no friend to her. Between my unwillingness to cover for her absences and my stupid dalliances with Will, which still remained secret, thank goodness, my presence in Tracina’s life had only added complications. While placing a big yellow bow on a box of newborn diapers, I vowed to be a better friend to her and the baby, regardless of my feelings for Will, a vow made a lot easier by the presence of Jesse Turnbull in my life. That was his last name, I’d learned—Turnbull—a small fact that went a long way towards making him seem more real to me.

  Since our first date, which had ended in my bedroom, we’d seen each other twice more—once for a matinee, where in the back row he had astonished me by putting his tongue in my ear and his hand down my jeans, making me quietly, oh so quietly, come. Afterwards, he kissed my forehead on the sidewalk outside and left to pick up his son. The other time we took a trip to Metarie to look at a motorcycle he was thinking of buying. He’d pulled me down a nearby alley and ravaged me against the cinder-block wall of a garage. All of our encounters were hot, brief and sweet, and each time I felt that if I never saw him again, I wouldn’t be surprised. He was like a friendly tomcat, one that’s genuinely happy to see you, to be fed and caressed by you, but that can easily survive on its own.

  While I tossed a salad, Kit carted several TV trays into the living room and set them up in the corners for the finger food and candy. It was just the three of us for a spell, so we naturally launched into S.E.C.R.E.T. chatter.

  “It’s a lot of money to just give away,” Kit said to me. “But the Committee voted this morning. It was unanimous.”

  “Fifteen million down the drain,” Angela said, with a whistle.

  Kit smacked her arm. “You voted yes.”

  “How could I not, after Matilda’s impassioned stance against ‘accepting money from an inveterate misogynist.’”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe it’s time we did more for women than just improve their sex lives.”

  “Are you complaining?” asked Angela, holding the carrot she was peeling directly in my face.

  I bit down on it and smiled. “Nope.”

  “Speaking of sex,” Kit said. “Matilda said I could invite whoever I want for Dominic’s threesome.” She was going to be one of the soccer player’s trainers. “What about you, Cassie? You game?”

  She knew the answer before I even opened my mouth.

  “Kidding. By the way, how’s Jesse? Is it love?”

  I knew they knew I had pulled Jesse out. But we hadn’t discussed it yet.

  “We’re just testing the waters,” I said, shrugging like it was no big thing. “I have no expectations.”

  Kit and Angela exchanged yeah right glances.

  “Will you stay in S.E.C.R.E.T. while said waters are being tested?” Kit asked.

  “We’re not there yet,” I said.

  “I always regret not doing that ‘drive fantasy’ with Jesse after we recruited him,” Angela said, popping an icing-covered finger in her mouth. “He’s a speed freak, you know. Not speed the drug, speed as in going fast. Weren’t we lining him up to take Dauphine in a convertible somewhere through the desert? Was it Sedona? Little weekend trip? She did so well with that pilot, we thought that would be fun, but, alas … Cassie wants him all to herself.”

  “Who trained Jesse?” I asked as casually as possible.

  “Pauline freshened up his oral skills. I remember because I got to watch. That was hot,” said Angela, shaking her hand like it just got singed. “And then I think … Didn’t Matilda practice bondage on that boy?”

  A hot wave flashed through me. Ouch. What was that? Jealousy? No, something different, deeper. Whatever that was, it stung, and I quickly camouflaged the effects the news had on me.

  “Jesse’s a favorite of Matilda’s. She was even looking to change the rules to keep him longer than three turns. Until you pulled him. Sigh.”

  Matilda and Jesse. Why didn’t she ever mention that to me? Maybe that’s why she was always so hesitant to discuss pulling Jesse out of S.E.C.R.E.T., even way back, when he was my Step Three fantasy and I had thoughts of stopping and getting off the ride. She convinced me not to. She convinced me to stay. As for bondage, again, why was I so surprised? Of course she’d still train male recruits. Why wouldn’t she? Why shouldn’t she? She’s still gorgeous, still sexy. God, when would that magnanimity kick in, the confidence, the kind that Angela and Kit had? I felt like such a fucking schoolgirl, with so much still to learn.

  “Matilda’s got some plans to train Dominic now. Apparently, he likes to rock climb. Likes getting all trussed up.”

  “Ooh, I like the sound of that,” Angela said.

  “Bernice put her name in for Dominic,” said Kit. “He also likes black and curvy.”

  “That’s not fair. I’m black!”

  “You ain’t curvy.”

  “But I wasn’t even offered—”

  “Hey, girls!”

  Tracina snuck in through the side door, accompanied by her fifteen-year-old brother, Trey. He was a nice kid, but because of his autism it was difficult for him to play with his peers. Still, Tracina had begun to make more of an effort to involve him in adult social activities, and sometimes Will let him help upstairs to keep him busy, when coloring books stopped working.

  “Who likes curvy black girls?” she asked. “’Cause that’s all I am, just a big ol’ curve!”

  “New bartender at Maison I got my eye on,” Angela said. “Did you two walk here?”

  “Yup, Trey was my big helper. Baby, go play with Boots. Girls gotta talk.”

  Angela patted around on top of the fridge. “Here’s the remote for the TV,” she said, tossing it to Trey. “You remember how to use it, right?”

  He nodded and headed to the bedroom, then Angela launched into big-sister mode.

  “You’re gonna have a baby in less than three weeks and you walked here? Will’s gonna get a kick right in the middle of his skinny white ass.”

  “I told him I wanted to walk. And Trey needs more exercise too. Will knows to pick us up—and all the presents,” she said, shaking her behind in joy.

  I watched the three of them, Kit, Angela and Tracina, gauging their level of intimacy. Did Tracina know about S.E.C.R.E.T., or had they kept it from her? It was impossible to tell.

  Tracina offered a wan “Hey, Cassie” over her shoulder, followed by “Will’s niece Claire’s working out, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah, Will lucked out with her,” I said, arranging baby carrots on a veggie tray.

  “No, we lucked out. Me and you,” she added. “She’s gonna babysit for me, and work your night shifts. Let the young’uns take over is what I say. Dell should just pull up a stool at the cash register and call it a day. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to lift a finger in the new place. I don’t want to wait tables ever again. All I want to do is make the schedule, sample the menu and taste the wine.”

  Had Will told Tracina that he’d offered me the manager job? Did it matter? She’d find out sooner or later, and hopefully when she’d be too blissed-out over her baby to care.r />
  The rest of the guests began to arrive, including Dell, who wore her pale yellow church hat and matching gloves. Tracina carefully navigated the small room, passing out punch, frequently coming perilously close to toppling Angela’s vases and framed photos with her belly. Angela abided by Tracina’s only request—“no stupid shower games”—but she was forced to wear the bows from every gift on a paper plate hat. Maybe because the room erupted into laughter over the last of the gifts—a set of Luna beads from Kit for “post- pregnancy fitness”— no one heard the knock at the door. Even I, sitting right next to it, didn’t hear it until it became so insistent I finally got up to answer.

  Standing there was a stony-faced Will, and he was not alone. Next to him was Carruthers Johnstone himself, who’d just won re-election as the D.A. of Orleans Parish. Something told me he wasn’t here to thank his constituents. I took a step back as though whatever ire now possessing the two men was catchy.

  Tracina’s face was grim—grey even. She was sitting in her silly “chair of honor,” wearing a now terribly ridiculous hat covered in festive bows, holding a set of ebony Luna beads in her hand.

  “Tracina, everyone, I’m sorry to barge in on you all like this,” Carruthers said, not sounding like a politician at all, but like a broken man. “I saw you walking down the street and I’ve been circling the block for half an hour …”

  “Who’s this guy?” Will muttered to Tracina, fully entering the hot crowded room.

  Tracina looked from one man to the other, her mouth slack. It took her a moment to speak, and when she did, she went from zero to sixty on the emotion meter.

  “Why are you here?” she wailed at Carruthers, trying to stand without assistance, nearly toppling forward. “I told you I do not need anything from you!”