The Art of Sin

by Alexandrea Weis

  “Don’t worry about that.” Geoff waved off Grady’s concern with his long hand. “I often take care of Allison’s tenants. I’ve even done some work on a few of them.” He pivoted to Al standing next to him. “Who was that blonde I did the breast augmentation on a few weeks back?”

  “Suzie,” Al reminded him.

  Geoff turned back to Grady. “Yeah, Suzie. She was a handful.” He motioned to the card. “Come by tomorrow morning … I can fit you in between cases. I’ll tell my girls in reception to watch out for you.”

  Grady held up the card in his hand. “Thanks, I’ll try and stop by.” He slipped the card in the front pocket of his jeans.

  Geoff tapped the stainless Rolex on his wrist. “Ah, I’m going to need to pick up those papers tonight.”

  She clasped her hands together. “They’re in my office.”

  Purposefully avoiding Grady’s determined stare, Al headed across the landing to the stairs leading to her third-floor apartment.

  Geoff gave Grady one last nod. “Make sure you come and see me about that finger,” he added, and then followed Al to the dark oak staircase.

  While Grady watched them slowly ascend the steps, a sickening feeling came over him. He fought against an overwhelming urge to rip her away from Geoff’s side, pull her into his apartment, and beg her to tell him what was in her heart. Did she really want to be with a man like Geoff Handler?

  Instead of acting on his impulse, he went to his door. He put his garment bag down and used his left hand to wrestle his keys from the pocket of his jeans. Just as he was about to open his apartment door, he heard a woman’s giggle come from the third floor.

  His heart sank at the sound of that flirtatious laugh. He knew it was Al, and he suddenly wondered if he had been wrong about her. Maybe she was the kind of woman who would only give herself to a wealthy and successful man. Such a woman would never waste her time with a male stripper, who only possessed a beat-up car and the clothes on his back.

  Angrily kicking his front door open, Grady fought back those self-deprecating feelings that often engulfed him. At first, he had attributed his sadness to his divorce, but with time he realized it had not been his wife that had brought on his forlorn moods, but his heart. No matter how much he tried to convince himself that Allison Wagner was just another gold digger, he knew he was steadily losing the battle against his desires. The woman was doing something he had never experienced during his four years on the road; she was leaving a lasting impression. Cities and women could all look the same to a man without a direction. However, when one, or both, began to eat away at your soul, you might either end up staying, or forever regret leaving them behind.

  Grady dumped his bags on the floor. After quietly shutting his door, he went to his brown sofa and placed his head in his hands. Just as his hand touched his head, his right pinkie shot a painful zing up his arm.

  “Goddamn it!” he roared, holding out his right hand.

  He remembered Geoff’s card and reached into the front pocket of his jeans. While holding the white card in his left hand, Grady wondered if perhaps he should pay a visit to the pretentious doctor. He could get his finger some relief and try to learn a little more about the man. After all, years of playing competitive sports had taught him that to win against an opponent one must first discover their weaknesses. Grady was suddenly keen to find a crack in the perfect picture Dr. Geoffrey Handler presented.

  Yeah, time to see if the cocky doctor has anything to hide.

  Chapter 9

  The next morning, Grady was up early and driving to the address on the business card Geoff had given him. While his gray Honda maneuvered through the traffic on St. Charles Avenue, he caught sight of a green trolley riding down the tracks beside him in the center of the street. The elegant homes that began cropping up, right past Jackson Avenue, reminded Grady of all the pictures he had seen of the old South. Shaded porches with white rockers, massive oak trees in the front gardens, inviting balconies, wide stained-glass inlaid front doors, and intricately detailed woodwork complemented many of the grand homes he passed along the way. Once he came to Louisiana Avenue, the GPS in his car began to beep, alerting him to the proximity of his final destination, 3700 St. Charles Avenue.

  When he pulled in front of the modern, light beige building, Grady thought the mammoth ten-story structure appeared out of place amid the grand homes surrounding it.

  After entering the adjoining garage, it took him ten minutes to find a parking spot, but when he was finally standing before the brightly polished oak door of Suite 310, he began to think coming to see Dr. Handler might have been a really bad idea. The hallway outside of the office reeked of that antiseptic smell he had always hated as a kid. Doctors and hospitals meant needles, and for a boy who had seemed to constantly need stitches, being back in that environment made him very uncomfortable.

  He put his hand on the doorknob and reprimanded his childish fears. If he wanted to find a way to be with Al, he needed to spend a little time with the asshole doctor.

  Once inside, Grady inspected the deep burgundy leather chairs, profusely paneled dark wood walls, dark moldings, and rustic paintings of the English countryside. At the far end of the room, seated behind a Queen Anne desk, was a pretty young woman with very short brown hair. When she saw Grady enter the room, her blue eyes explored his body with a keen interest.

  “You must be the man Dr. Handler told me to watch out for.” She pointed the pencil in her hand at Grady’s bandaged finger. “Broken finger, right?”

  Grady approached her desk and glimpsed the two other people flicking through magazines in the waiting area.

  “How did you know?” he asked, holding up his bandaged fingers.

  “Dr. Handler said you were a friend of Al’s.” She momentarily ogled his broad chest. “I’ll take you back to x-ray.”

  Grady waved at her desk. “Do you need me to fill out any forms?”

  She stood from her chair. “Nah, Dr. Handler told me to bring you in the back, as soon as you got here.” She smiled for him. “I’m Jessica, by the way.”

  “I’m Grady, Grady Paulson.”

  “Come with me, Mr. Paulson.” Jessica went to a dark door to her right and opened it for him. “You live at Al’s place?”

  Grady came up to the door, smiling. “Yeah. Do you know Al well?”

  Jessica shrugged and walked through the door. “Not really. She works back in the OR, and I work the front desk. We just see each other in the break room, from time to time, but she seems real nice.” She gestured down a white-tiled hall with doors on either side. “We’re going all the way down this hall and to the left.”

  Grady followed as Jessica moved ahead of him. “I met Dr. Handler at Al’s place last night. They seem to be good friends.”

  “Al has been putting up with Dr. Handler for over ten years in our OR. She has a way with him that the other OR staff don’t.”

  “I don’t understand.” He came to the end of the hall. “She has a way with him?”

  “She can talk to him when he is in a bad mood. Everyone else in the office steers clear of him, but Al can calm him down. He listens to her, more than anyone else here.” She waved to a pair of dark double doors on her right. “Through there,” she added.

  Grady ambled toward the doors and noticed that the antiseptic smell he had detected outside of the office was getting stronger. When he pushed the double doors open, the bright light of the large room beyond briefly startled him.

  It was a stark white area with four stalls filled with hospital beds, along with an array of IV poles, heart monitors mounted on the walls beside the beds, oxygen taps in the walls, and rolling plastic cabinets made up of red drawers located next to each of the beds.

  “Our recovery area,” Jessica informed him.

  “Is Al around?” Grady inquired.

  “She’s in the OR, working on a case with Dr. Handler.”

  “Will she be free any time soon?”

  “No. They’
ve got a full morning of surgeries.” She passed the four stalls until she came to a heavy metal door. “This is x-ray.”

  Jessica opened the door and stuck her head inside. “Ed, that broken finger Doc Handler told you about is here.”

  Jessica turned back to Grady while holding the heavy door open for him. “Ed is the x-ray tech who is going to take your films.”

  Grady stepped through the door. “Thanks, Jessica.”

  “No problem.” She let the door close behind him.

  Grady stood in the stark, gray room as an uncomfortable shiver passed through him. When his eyes landed on the metal table and the tall x-ray machine in the middle of the room, his childhood fears returned.

  “Hey, you’re the broken finger?” a man’s voice said behind Grady.

  Grady spun around to see a bald man, dressed in green scrubs and wearing square-framed glasses, stepping out from behind a thick metal partition in the corner of the room.

  Grady held up his bandaged fingers to the man. “That’s me.”

  * * *

  After getting his hand x-rayed, Grady was taken to an exam room, where a pretty nurse with green eyes gave him a metal splint and showed him how to place it on his finger. When she was done, Grady was promptly deposited on a chair in front of Dr. Handler’s monstrous desk.

  The man’s office reminded Grady of the overbearing surgeon he had met the night before. His desk was a heavy, cherry-stained Napoleon era piece with gold-tipped corners, exquisite carvings of intertwined grape vines bursting with grapes, and a gold-plated desk set. On the walls hung numerous framed degrees, accommodations from the city of New Orleans, recognitions from a variety of medical associations, plus an assortment of magazine articles touting the good doctor’s talents. However, it was the framed family portraits on a bookcase behind Geoff’s desk that interested Grady more than the accolades on the wall.

  In one photograph were two brown-haired girls with round brown eyes, holding on to stuffed bunnies. In another, the same two girls appeared older, perhaps their early teens, and were holding on to golden puppies. Situated between the portraits was a single picture of a beautiful woman with long brown hair, round, brown eyes, and wrapped in the arms of Dr. Geoffrey Handler.

  “I got your x-rays,” Geoff Handler’s very deep voice called as he entered the office.

  Grady lowered his gaze from the photographs and waited as Geoff closed his office door and went behind his desk. He was wearing a starched long white coat with his name and credentials stitched on to the right breast. Beneath his white coat, wrinkled dark green scrubs peeked out. A hint of citrusy sandalwood cologne followed him across the room, and Grady thought it prideful to reek of something so potent at ten in the morning. As Geoff had a seat in the black leather chair, he held up an x-ray image of a hand to the fluorescent lights, pretending to exam the puzzle of bones pictured on it.

  “Well, you definitely broke your finger.” Geoff then tossed the film to his desk.

  “Was there any doubt about that, Dr. Handler?”

  Geoff sat back in his chair and folded his hands in front of him. His cautious brown eyes seemed to study Grady for a moment before he spoke. “I wanted to talk to you about last night. After we left you on the stairs, Allison told me that you knew about our relationship.”

  Grady nodded and then directed his eyes to the portraits behind his desk. “How long have you been married?”

  “Eighteen years.”

  “How long have you been sleeping with Allison?”

  Blowing out a long breath, Geoff put his hands on the desktop. “Allison may have a lot of faith in you, but I don’t. My wife already knows about Allison, and is happy with the arrangement. I take care of her financially, and we stay together for our daughters.” He glowered at Grady. “So don’t think you can blackmail me or Allison with any of this.”

  “Blackmail?” Grady challenged, raising his voice. “Is that what you think I’m here for?”

  “I’ve been dealing with Allison’s vagabond tenants for years, and you wouldn’t be the first to try to blackmail either one of us. I don’t like the element she keeps at that house. I have tried, in vain, to get her to stop letting rooms to people like you. I will not have you hurt Allison, me, or my family.”

  Grady tilted forward in his chair. “I didn’t come here to blackmail you, and I would certainly never want to harm Allison.” He held up his injured hand. “I came to take you up on your offer to help me with my finger.”

  Geoff gave him an audacious grin. “We both know that’s not true.”

  Grady analyzed the man’s cool, pretentious looks. “The truth? I came here to find out what kind of man you are.”

  “What do you think you’ve learned?”

  “That you’re not worthy of her.”

  “Worthy?” Geoff snickered. “I don’t know what your game is, Grady, but a woman like Allison is way out of your league. You’re a stripper. You parade around naked in front of women for money. If anybody is not worthy of her, it’s you.”

  “Do you love her?”

  “That is none of your business,” Geoff snarled.

  “I think that pretty much answers my question.” Grady stood from his chair.

  Geoff slapped his hand on his desk. “She doesn’t want anything more than what we have. If you knew her like I do, you would see that this is her choice. She wants it this way.”

  “If you loved her, you would never have allowed her to make that choice.” Grady turned for the door and then paused. “Thank you for the medical help,” he added, holding up his right hand.

  “You know, she asked me not to see you last night. She said explaining how things are between us would not change anything, because in four months you would be gone,” Geoff asserted from his chair.

  Grady went to the door and placed his hand on the knob. “She’s right. It doesn’t change anything, but I needed to hear it from you.” He opened the door and stepped into the hall.

  Keeping his eyes to the ground, Grady walked directly out of the office, and did not look up until he reached his car. When he finally viewed St. Charles Avenue from his fourth floor parking spot, he let go of his anger.

  “Fuck!”

  How could she be with such an empty shell of a man … and a married one at that? Grady could not accept the fact that Al had turned out to be like all the other women he had known. He had believed her to be kindred spirit. Like Grady, her life had fallen short of her dreams. Perhaps thinking herself unworthy, she had settled for a married man, but Grady knew in his heart she wanted more. He had tasted it in her kiss.

  Turning over the engine of his car, Grady concluded he was not ready to give up on her. Despite his disappointment in her choice of men, he still ached to be with her. If anything, his confrontation with the pompous doctor had made him more attracted to her than ever.

  “I just need to show her that she is worth so much more than being another man’s mistress.” He angrily shifted the car into reverse. “Then, she’ll be mine.”

  * * *

  It was early afternoon when Grady returned to the house on Esplanade Avenue, but he was too restless to sit around and wait to go to the club. After everything he had discovered about Geoff, his whirlwind of emotions needed to be stilled. Grady knew of only one way to dull his senses. Maybe it was prophetic that he was suffering through such upheaval in a city renowned for its alcoholic delights. The only question was where, among the thousands of drinking establishments, could he go and get comfortably drunk? He chuckled at his predicament. Usually it was the other way around. Only in New Orleans could one be confounded by too many bars instead of too few.

  Once he had packed up his costumes, Grady headed out the door of his apartment, determined to find a nice quiet barstool and drink until it was time for him to dance. He wasn’t concerned about dancing drunk—he had done it many times before—and knew the audience would never be able to tell the difference. Whether he gave a hundred percent or fifty, the hoots, screa
ms, catcalls, and applause were always the same, reinforcing his belief in the emptiness of what he did.

  Darting down the stairs, he was relieved when he finally stepped outside of the old home. Being within the confines of the mansion was suffocating, especially after all that he had learned. Heading across the wide neutral ground that divided Esplanade Avenue, Grady sucked in the dingy city air and was comforted by the warm spring sun on his face. He tugged at the garment bag he had purposefully put in his right hand, and winced as a pain shot up his arm.

  This was good. He wanted the pain. He remembered the splint Geoff’s nurse had given him and knew he would never wear it. The pain would help him to forget about how much he wanted Al. He had to stop thinking about their kiss, the way she had felt in his arms, and the smell of lavender in her hair. The pain would also help him to stay angry. When he was angry, he could think clearly, and try to figure out some way to win her away from that asshole, Geoff.

  As he walked along the battered sidewalks of the French Quarter, Grady distracted his weary mind with the tourists surrounding him. Young and old wandered the streets, carrying drinks or maps of the city in their hands. Their faces were filled with enthusiasm for the eclectic Creole cottages, and Grady found some reassurance in their presence. Thankfully, the entire world was not as shady as the one in which he existed. It was good to know that decency still thrived, even if it was tainted with a touch of sin.

  Not really heading in any particular direction, Grady soon found his trek taking him right past the front of his club. Looking up at the faded posters of men in come-hither poses, Grady figured this was as good a place as any to drink. At least he would not have to stumble too far to get ready for his show.

  Inside, the club was empty. The tables were still stacked with chairs and bright lights shone down on the usually darkened pit area. Grady carried his bags to the bar and had a seat on a worn wooden stool.

  Nick Davies was stocking glasses on a rack behind the bar when he saw Grady enter the club. His tall, agile figure strolled up to him.