In Sheep's Clothing

by Mary Monroe

  Freddie, one hand on her hip and her neck rotating, faced him with a scowl. “Brother, you ought to be ashamed of yourself, coming at us like that! Is that the best pickup line you can come up with? Because if it is, you ain’t getting no pussy tonight!”

  The man gasped, rotated his neck and placed both hands on his narrow hips, looking at Freddie like she was the Bride of Frankenstein. “What—Girl, I wasn’t even talkin’ to you with your mugly—and I do mean mugly self. If they was to blow one of them whistles only dogs can hear up in here, you’d be barkin’ from now on. Get your high-yella ass oughta my face!” He dismissed Freddie with a swift wave of his hand and a look that made me cringe.

  Freddie was so taken aback she could not speak. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a mean-looking, thick-necked man in a security outfit just a few feet away. When he blinked and kept right on talking to the man in front of him instead of coming to our aid, I leaped up from my seat and grabbed Freddie’s arm. “This is not the place for us,” I insisted, almost knocking down the man who had just insulted Freddie. As soon as we got back outside, we galloped down the street. We didn’t stop running until we reached Freddie’s car, three blocks away, parked between two Dumpsters in a gas station parking lot.

  “It’s a good thing you got me out of that fucking place when you did. I was just about to knock some of that fake gold out of that bastard’s mouth,” Freddie said, trying to catch her breath. She massaged her chest with her fist.

  I took my time crawling into the front passenger seat of Freddie’s car. A deep sadness came over me. The fact that Freddie’s car was on its last wheels and here we were sitting in it between two huge garbage cans, in a gas station parking lot, said it all. After all the money I had spent, this was as far as I’d made it. And if all this wasn’t traumatic enough, that telephone call from the fraud investigator had me thinking that there was a chance I might end up in jail!

  “Let’s get a bottle and go back to my place,” I said, looking at my watch as Freddie sped down the street.

  “Uh-uh. I have a better idea. Remember that club you told me Ann used to brag about?”

  I looked at the side of Freddie’s face. Freddie’s plain looks and big ears were things that I had not given much thought since our school days. To me, she was such a beautiful person, her looks were incidental. She had had so many boyfriends who had been attracted to her for other reasons. If that crude man who had insulted her at the club had hurt her feelings she didn’t show it. An insult like that would have reduced me to tears.

  Freddie was brave to consider going to another club where she would probably get a similar reaction from another man. I’d been present when other men who didn’t know Freddie had made insensitive remarks about her looks. Even though she never brought it up, I assumed that she was used to being dogged by men by now.

  As Freddie’s best friend I felt it was my responsibility to accommodate her whenever I could. However, going to a club that Ann used to go to didn’t quite appeal to me. My biggest fear was that we would run into somebody who knew her. “You mean the Baby Grand club? You know I don’t want to go anywhere where I might run into some of Ann’s friends.”

  “They don’t know you, or what you’ve been up to, so what difference would it make?”

  “Well, none really. I just wouldn’t feel comfortable going where I know she’s been.”

  “Okay. Then let’s go get a pizza, some beer, and go back to that apartment and get bloated and drunk.” I could tell that Freddie was upset with me. She cleared her throat and gave me a quick glance, almost running up on the curb. “Uh, I am really curious to see this place. That guy who rates clubs in the San Jose Mercury News gave it four out of five stars . . .”

  I blinked and let out a sigh. I knew when to give in. “All right. We could go and just stay long enough to have one drink. We don’t even have to talk to anybody,” I said, still feeling uneasy. “I can’t imagine the kind of men we like going to a place that a snooty witch like Ann would go to.” I sniffed and fished my compact out of my purse to touch up my makeup. Just in case.

  Just in case the man who could change my life showed up at the same club. I would remember that thought for the rest of my life. Because it was the night that I met the man who changed my life. The only thing was, I almost didn’t live long enough to tell about it.

  CHAPTER 68

  Unlike Freddie and some of the other women I knew, I had not spent a lot of time in nightclubs. Not even when I was younger when every other young person I knew was using a fake ID to run from one club to the next. Despite my limited experience and knowledge of the club scene, I knew a classy establishment when I saw one. The Baby Grand was at the top of the list.

  The parking lot on the side of the club was full of expensive cars, including a few shiny black stretch limos. Beautiful women, dressed to kill in long dresses, their jewelry sparkling like fireflies in the night, strutted into the club on the arms of dapper men grinning from ear to ear.

  “Are you sure you want to go into this place?” I asked Freddie. “So far it looks like it’s out of our league.” I cupped my hand to examine my breath then I checked to make sure my hands were not ashy or smudged with makeup.

  We sat across the street from the club in Freddie’s shabby old Escort, the loud motor idling and coughing like a sick old man. A smudged child’s handprint on the dashboard, empty fast food containers on the floor, a baby’s seat in the back, and a parking ticket still stuck on the windshield caught my attention and made me shudder. These things were grim reminders of what Freddie and I really were. We had a lot of nerve coming to a club on the scale of the Baby Grand. I imagined every woman inside was a clone of Ann Oliver.

  Glancing at the sorry state of her car and her chipped nails, then at me, Freddie said with a heavy sigh, “We don’t have to stay long. I just want to glimpse how the folks with money party. Just this one time.” There was a sad look on her face that was so profound it almost brought tears to my eyes.

  “One time might be one time too many,” I said, trying to add a spark to our lackluster moods. I squinted at a woman strolling past us in a full-length mink coat.

  “And, I doubt if any of these men will insult us.” Freddie’s voice cracked, but she tried to cover it with a laugh. I laughed along with her. Not because I was amused, but to keep the sad look on her face from showing up on mine.

  “Even the bouncers on the door are in suits and ties,” I said, adjusting the strap on my dress. I sniffed under my arms to make sure I was still fresh enough in case a man did get close to me. Even though my new silk blue dress and matching shawl had come from Neiman Marcus, I felt cheap. “Let’s park down the block and walk. The last thing we want is for somebody interesting to see us in this shit box of a car.”

  Freddie let out a grunt and slapped the side of the steering wheel like it was a ring of fire. “For somebody who rides the bus to and from work, you sure can be highfalutin at times!” Freddie snapped. Then she gently mauled the side of my face with her fist. “Don’t you forget what you really are.”

  Freddie’s car jerked and farted all the way down the street. I ducked down in my seat when I noticed a few people staring at us. I yelled when I hit my forehead on the dashboard but that didn’t stop Freddie from mauling the side of my head again. “Girl, we are renting a limo the next time we go to a club like this,” Freddie informed me with an anxious look.

  “There won’t be a next time. After tonight we will stick to the sleazy clubs we’ve been going to, in your car,” I declared, meaning every word. Once I got myself out of the hole I’d dug, pretending to be something I was not, I would return to my old ways. As dull as it was, it was a whole lot less stressful. My nerves had already begun to fray before tonight, but the unexpected telephone call from that fraud investigator had helped me make up my mind once and for all.

  I had resigned myself to the fact that once the masquerade was over, there would be no more men for me like the sexy pilot in Mexic
o. There would be no more extravagant shopping expeditions or exotic vacations—unless the cost was coming out of my pocket. It had been fun for a while, but now the whole situation seemed more like a chore than a thrill. My masquerade had pretty much run its course, and I had gone as far as I could go with it. Tonight seemed like a good time for me to bring things to a close.

  We parked two blocks away from the club in a Safeway grocery store parking lot. With us both in heels, it was a long slow, painful walk to the club. Our feet were still in pain from us running back to Freddie’s car after leaving the first club.

  As soon as we approached the door to the front of the club, several attractive men with women already on their arms looked us up and down, smiling and nodding their approval. I was pleased that just as many men were looking at Freddie as there were looking at me.

  “I guess men like these only come out at night,” Freddie whispered.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I don’t see these kinds of men during the day and I work in a bank.”

  “You don’t see them during the day because they don’t see you. These same men act a totally different way at night in a place like this,” I said, making things up as I went along, something I had become good at.

  “Whatever you say.” Freddie chuckled. I could tell from the grin on her face that she was as anxious to get inside as I was.

  There was no cover charge but as soon as we got inside the front entrance a scowling doorman with a wide short body held up a thick hairy brown hand and shook his head.

  “Oh, shit,” Freddie whispered, stepping on the side of my foot.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked the doorman, clutching my shawl and shifting my weight from one foot to the other. We were dressed as nicely as some of the other women, so I knew there was no problem with our attire. My heart started beating hard and fast. “Is this club for members only?” I asked, in the sweetest most sophisticated voice I could manage. Like I said, lately I had become good at making things up as I went along. Even though this question just popped into my head, it sounded reasonable.

  But the doorman’s response sent a shiver down my spine. “May I see some ID, please.”

  CHAPTER 69

  “ID?” I asked dumbly. I moved a few steps back from the door, ready to run if I had to. Even in my heels with my feet already feeling like they were on fire.

  The doorman looked straight at me with a wide smile on his round shiny face. With his stump-shaped body covered in a black suit and white shirt, he looked like a penguin with a man’s face. He was a black, younger version of Mr. Rydell. “You must be twenty-one or over to enter this club,” he told us.

  Any woman my age and older would be flattered to get carded. I was no different. It happened almost every time I bought liquor. I liked the way merchants complimented me on my youthful appearance when I had to show my ID. It was a different story when the ID I had in my possession was for another woman. Before I could steer Freddie away, she whipped out her wallet and flipped to her driver’s license. The doorman took his time inspecting it before he turned to me. “You too,” he snapped.

  “Oh. Of course,” I stammered. I slowly removed my wallet and flipped it open.

  “Thank you, Ann,” the doorman said in a flirtatious manner. It could have been my imagination, but right after the doorman waved us on, I saw him nod at a man lurking behind a large green plant in a nearby corner.

  “Did you see that?” I asked Freddie.

  “See what?” she whispered as we eased through the crowd toward one of the few vacant tables.

  “That doorman gave a guy back in a corner a signal.”

  “Girl, you are so paranoid it’s not even funny anymore. You know I don’t tell you this often, but you are a good-looking woman, Trudy. You should be used to men doing all kinds of shit when you come around.” With a chuckle Freddie added, “I should be so lucky.”

  For the first half hour it was just Freddie and me, and our drinks at our table. Not a single one of the men who had flirted with us asked us to dance. I laughed when Freddie lifted her arms and yawned. “This place is fancy and all and the drinks are good, but I don’t think this is my kind of place. I’ve never waited this long to get asked to dance.” Freddie let out a bored sigh and fanned her face with a napkin. She looked around, hoping to get somebody’s attention. “At least we don’t have to worry about falling asleep in any of the clubs we’ve been going to.” Freddie groaned and looked at her watch. “If we leave now we might make it home in time to catch Jay Leno or David Letterman or whoever the hell is on late-night TV these days.”

  “As soon as I finish my drink,” I said, my voice losing steam. My lips were still on the lip of my glass when he approached. He had dark, deep-set eyes that didn’t blink as he stared at my face. He moved toward our table in such a smooth manner it was like he was on roller skates. I heard Freddie gasp before she kicked my foot under the table.

  “He’s coming this way!” Freddie said in a low voice. There was a look on her face that I had never seen before. Her lips were curled up at the ends in an exaggerated smile and her eyes looked twice their normal size.

  He was the most breathtaking, dapper man I’d ever seen. He was tall with a lean body that sported a pair of broad shoulders like icing on a cake. He stopped in front of our table and actually bowed. “Excuse me, sisters,” he began, looking from Freddie to me. “There is something I must know immediately.” I didn’t recognize his accent, but he definitely was not from San Jose or anywhere else in the United States. He paused, shook his head, and then wiped his forehead with a large white handkerchief. Freddie whimpered when he lifted her hand and kissed it, not taking his eyes off hers. Then he looked at me and blinked before he lifted my hand, which was shaking like a sumac leaf, and kissed it. Freddie’s mouth dropped open and she gulped down the rest of her drink in record time. She was unable to hold back a mild burp—even with her hand across her mouth. He was the same man that the doorman had nodded to when I entered the club. He was not a fraud investigator so I wasn’t worried about that. Whoever he was, he was too intriguing to ignore.

  “What do you need to know?” I asked in a squeaky voice. My hand was warm from his kiss. I was suddenly warm all over. My butt felt so hot it seemed like I was sitting on a heating pad. There was a glow on Freddie’s face that made her skin look even lighter. She couldn’t take her eyes off the man in front of us. And neither could I.

  “Is there some way I can contact your parents?” he asked me with a pleading look in his shiny black eyes. “It is a matter of great urgency.”

  I looked at Freddie. She had a frozen grin on her face. She looked at me and shrugged.

  “Why do you need to talk to my parents?” I asked, trying to maintain a reasonable level of common sense. Especially considering how deep I’d slid into so many black holes lately. The last thing I wanted was to look and act like I wasn’t used to gorgeous men coming on to me. “Do I know you?”

  He made a weird clicking noise with his teeth and tongue that caused Freddie to let out a slight yelp. We both shrugged, then quickly turned our attention back to the stranger as he hovered over our table with his arms splayed like a large winged bat. “I grovel in gratitude in advance,” he said with a strained look on his face. He clapped his hands together then rubbed them, causing so much friction I was convinced that the sparks I saw were real. I tried to imagine what else he could do with those hands of his. Especially in a more romantic setting.

  “Oh,” I nervously scratched the back of my neck. “O . . . kay.”

  It had taken this man less than one minute to have me itching and sweating so hard around my crotch that I had to crisscross my legs and squeeze my thighs together to keep from doing something nasty. I’d been with James for more than five years before I’d felt half as frisky as I felt now.

  Before the darkly handsome stranger said another word he covered my hand with his and squeezed. His flesh was so hot against mine I trembled. He shook
his head and let out a sigh that would have blown me down if I hadn’t already been sitting. “I would like to thank and bless your parents for honoring the universe with a goddess such as yourself, m’lady.”

  CHAPTER 70

  I didn’t like to go out with anybody and not have a good time. I felt the same way about the people I went out with having a good time as well. That included James, even though he was currently somewhere in the back of my mind. I hoped that wherever he was, he was having a good time. I made a mental note to call him up tomorrow. Since I had decided tonight that I would soon return to my old life, I’d have more time for James. But tonight was mine.

  The thought that my life would once again be boring and predictable didn’t appeal to me at all. For one thing, I knew in my heart that I had to make some adjustments in my love life no matter what I did. Whether or not it included James, I didn’t know yet. The alcohol had me thinking strange thoughts. With such a man now sitting next to me, looking like something that should have been served up on a platter, James should not have been on my mind at all. Without warning, a weird feeling wrapped itself around me like a thick blanket: I didn’t really want to spend the rest of my life with James! However, ten years was a lot of time to have invested in a relationship. Besides, I was not exactly a teenager anymore. And despite my frequent trips to the makeup counter and beauty parlor, I was no Miss America. If potential husbands hadn’t been beating down my door before, I couldn’t imagine they were all sitting around waiting for me now. I decided to deal with the present situation. I came out of my trance when Freddie kicked my foot under the table.