When the doorbell rang, I jumped, my nerves still a bit rattled. As expected, it was Matilda, her apology written all over her kind face.
“Dauphine, honey. Can I come in?”
Seeing her face, I realized that my anger about the security breach with Pierre had faded. Still, I didn’t greet Matilda with a hug.
“Of course. Please come in. I’ll make tea.”
Typical Southerners, we exchanged pleasantries and travel highlights. I included discreet mention of my visit to the cockpit and my night on the tango stage, both of which left me blushing and grateful.
“I’m so glad you enjoyed those Steps. But I don’t blame you, Dauphine, for wanting to quit us. I just came to tell you how relieved I was to hear how you thwarted the worst part of Pierre’s plans.”
“Cassie always stressed to me that I could opt out of any situation that didn’t feel a hundred percent right … He didn’t.”
“You have sharp instincts. You know yourself. That’s enviable. For that, I want to give you something,” she said, reaching into her purse, removing a small purple box and carefully placing it in front of me.
“Is it my Step Six charm? Really?”
“Open it,” she said.
Truthfully, one of the things I’d thought about was that if I quit S.E.C.R.E.T., I’d miss out on all the rest of the charms. What can I say? I love my bling. Which was why it was hard to contain my glee after I opened the box. It contained not just my Step Six charm for Confidence, but all the others as well.
“Oh my goodness,” I said, reaching into my purse for my bracelet, which I kept in a velvet roll.
“You earned Confidence when you trusted your instincts about Pierre. I’m so glad he didn’t shake that from you. Seven’s for Curiosity,” Matilda reminded me, laying each charm out on the Formica. “That’s for asking Pierre all the right questions. Eight’s for Bravery, of course, and how you stood your ground with him. And Nine, that one’s Exuberance—and I do hope you still feel a measure of that, Dauphine, after all you’ve experienced with us.”
I secured them one by one to my bracelet, shaking it in front of my eyes. It was dazzling.
“This is so thoughtful, so generous,” I said. “I’ll treasure it, and my time in S.E.C.R.E.T. Always.”
“I have one more offer,” she said, leaning forward in her chair. “Of course you can say no, but I urge you to consider it. We’d like you to experience a final fantasy, one we’re quite confident will be worth the leap of faith. We are all very upset about what happened to you in Buenos Aires. So we’d relish the opportunity to make amends. I can assure you we’d do this not only to restore your feelings of safety, but to solidify everything S.E.C.R.E.T. stands for. And I have it on good authority that this fantasy will exceed every one of the fantasies you’ve experienced before. In fact, we suspect this last one will blow your mind.”
Maybe it was her face, beseeching and earnest. And maybe I suddenly saw the folly in punishing myself and S.E.C.R.E.T. because of the deed of one bad man. I looked at my bracelet, eight charms dancing around my wrist. What do you say to an offer like that? You throw your arms around the person proposing it and you say, “Yes, fine. One more.”
I was surprisingly calm the day my final fantasy card arrived. It was Elizabeth who had a hard time containing herself after I asked her to dress me for a “casual but sexy” date at Tipitina’s.
“Seriously? A date? You’re going out? With a real live man? To a concert? All this change is too much for my little heart to bear.”
She was still absorbing my new mandate, the one I had carried home with me from Argentina along with all my beautiful finds.
When she asked me, as always, what was for sale and what was for keeps, I replied, “Sell everything, all of it. All the excess stock that I’m keeping for no good reason. Everything in the back. All the gold hoops and the silk pajamas and the leather gloves and the pillbox hats,” I said, adding, “and whatever we can’t sell, we’ll give away. I need more room to grow.”
Elizabeth looked overcome, teary, as she held a set of blue-tinted pince-nez between her fingers.
“Dauphine, do you know how long I’ve been waiting for you to say this?” she asked.
And today I was asking her to help me again, this time to see me through her eyes, so I could gain a new perspective on myself.
She was breathless. “Okay. There are a few looks I’ve had in mind for you for a long while. Will you let me give them a try?”
Elizabeth whirled around the store, plucking scarves and blouses, bracelets and T-shirts, dresses and jeans. This culminated in a stop in the office treasure trove, where she pulled bangles, cuffs, stilettos and a brand-new lavender camisole. Nothing Elizabeth chose for me was vintage; the pieces were all tight, edgy, the colors mostly blues and purples, which I rarely wore. But when she pulled out her hair straightener, I knew we were looking at a game-changer kind of evening. If I didn’t wear my unruly red hair piled on my head or tied back, I didn’t know what to do with it.
After an hour and a half of being dressed and undressed, while we ate takeout fries and smoothies, and waited on customers between modeling “looks,” I settled on black leather pants, a camisole under a white sheer blouse and a charcoal blazer, topped with a hail of thin gold chains, a gold cuff and black suede ankle boots with wedges. I looked bold. And, I had to admit, sexy.
“But see how that hint of lavender camisole gives the whole look a soft feminine appeal too,” Elizabeth said, thoughtfully examining me in the mirror like I was her creation.
“Why have I never let you do this before?”
“No clue. You look like a rock goddess,” she said.
I looked like me, just a more current, modern version. I felt potent, punchy and free.
“How does this look instead of the cuff,” I said, fetching my charm bracelet.
“Oh yeah. God that thing’s gorgeous. You have such a good eye, Dauphine. Such a good eye.”
“And you are getting a raise,” I said, grabbing Elizabeth by the cheeks and kissing her square on her Clara Bow lips.
The limo fetched me at home, at ten sharp, the cool night air hitting my face, signaling that fall was just around the corner. The last time I was at Tipitina’s, I had been with a very reluctant Luke during Jazz Fest, on one of our last outings as a couple. Music never was his “thing.” So far the ladies had me pegged. If this fantasy was just me listening to great music with a great guy who was into it too, that would be good enough for me.
“We’re here, Miss Mason,” said the driver, noting the line snaking around the building and up the block.
My heart skipped at the sight of THE CARELESS ONES, lit up on the marquee. Yes! Their music could not be a more perfect soundtrack for whatever this fantasy was going to be. So far, so right! Just breathe, I told myself.
The kind driver, sensing my nervousness, ushered me through the throng of fans, acting like we owned the place, like I was a VIP. Nearing the front of the stage, where the opening act was performing, I spotted two familiar-looking women holding out a chair for me.
“Dauphine! You’re here! You remember us? I’m Kit and this is Pauline,” Kit yelled over music. “We’re your dates until your date gets here. Have I mentioned just how much I love my job?”
“You look amazing!” Pauline enthused, sexy in her clear-skinned, short-haired way. She had on a black mini-dress downplayed with a denim jacket and banged-up black ankle boots. Kit was in cutoffs and a baggy white dress shirt, a dramatic grey streak highlighting her now-ebony hair.
“Thanks for being here,” I said. “It means a lot to me.” And it did. I wasn’t used to going out like this on my own, or going out at all, for that matter. “So … is he here?” I asked, sneaking a glance around the crowded room.
“He’s on his way,” Pauline said, exchanging looks with Kit.
“You’ll tell me when he gets here?” I asked, nervously patting down my straight hair. It felt like silk.
“You’ll know when he gets here,” Kit said. “Don’t worry.”
A glass of chilled Chablis appeared in front of me, my favorite, and after the opening band left the stage, the packed room went completely dark. Minutes later, when the Careless Ones fired up their instruments with a familiar riff, the hair stood up on my arms. It was him, Mark Drury, lit from behind at center stage. As Mark reached for the microphone and pulled it to his mouth, the floodlights hit his amazing face full force. For a few seconds the only sound in the cavernous room was his breath on the mesh of the mike. He had the body of a musician, all lank and sinew, bones seemingly hollowed out for music to move through them. Clothes hung on him perfectly, but they were incidental to his voice. Everything was. Why he didn’t do it for Cassie, I’ll never know, but a glance around the room at all the glassy-eyed women swaying in their seats confirmed he wouldn’t lack for attention for long.
For a few seconds he said nothing; he just stood there with his eyes closed. Then flash—lights exploded as he broke into the band’s best single, “Days from Here,” adding a honky-tonk edge, bringing the house to its feet. For the next forty-five minutes of their set, I forgot the fantasy, stopped searching for the man I’d soon be with, and simply marveled at Mark’s talent to pull emotions from his body and pour them over the crowd. That’s what the best live music does: it makes a whole room of people feel the same thing. There I was, up front, on my feet, clapping and grinning with two other women from S.E.C.R.E.T., my body filling to capacity with joy. Whoever my fantasy man was, he’d be getting the best of me tonight.
“We’re going to change up the temp a little bit. Get you cozy,” Mark said, pulling up a stool, perching his acoustic guitar on his knee. “This last song’s for my girl. She’s right over there,” he said, nodding to indicate a table near ours.
See? Of course he has a “girl.”
Instead of feeling bitter about his “girl,” I suddenly felt … magnanimous, like there was enough love, enough affection, enough of this joy to go around. Mark made his hand into a visor, peering into the dark crowd over my shoulder. I turned around to get a look at this lucky girl. I couldn’t tell which one he meant, so I turned back.
“There she is,” he said, looking right at our table, “the gorgeous redhead in the front. That’s my baby. You good?”
The hot white spotlight then centered over me and pulled in on my terror-stricken face. Me? I felt Pauline’s firm hand grab my forearm as though she were preventing me from fleeing, or floating to the ceiling.
“Her name’s Dauphine,” Mark announced to the crowd. “And I’m hoping y’all will help me get her to do something for me,” he said, plinking his guitar strings and smiling right at me. “I’m hoping she’ll … accept the Step.”
He started strumming the intro to a song, and I saw stars! Is this really happening? To me? His band members looked slightly confused, but when they recognized the riff, they joined the intro.
“I know y’all don’t know what the hell that means,” he said to the crowd, smiling, “but she knows. Don’t you, baby.”
That smile. The crowd began to urge me on. I heard, Accept the Step! Accept the Step! Even Kit and Pauline were chanting now, both of them laughing and clapping.
“So what do you say? After this song, maybe we can go somewhere,” he said, and now I laughed, my hands covering my mouth. Then I drew my hands away and yelled out, “Yes!” and when I did, the crowd erupted, and Mark launched into the most aching rendition of Margaret Lewis’s “Reconsider Me.” For the next three minutes, I forced my heart back down my throat and into its proper place behind my ribs. I felt flushed, and thrilled that he’d boldly shared our connection with the whole room—yet no one knew a thing about us except Kit and Pauline.
After the song, during a standing ovation, he placed his guitar on its stand and made his way directly towards me, the whole room in paroxysms as time stopped and he pulled me to my feet and into a lush kiss.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” he whispered into my ear.
“Okay,” I said, unsure my jelly legs would hold me upright. I waved a goodbye to Kit and Pauline as Mark tugged me through the still-clapping crowd and backstage into the bustling green room. We swept past his sweaty, chatty band members, one changing his shirt, another standing with a wife or girlfriend, another hovering nearby, blowing smoke out the back door. We pinballed through the room, exiting through a narrow, dark hallway where we made a right, then a left, until we hit upon a small office with a metal desk and a bleak bulb swinging overhead.
“Wow, you take me to the nicest places,” I said, a little tipsy from the attention and from the wine.
He shut the door behind us, sending a yellowed calendar crashing to the floor. And then Mark Drury came at me slowly, hungrily. I moved back until I could feel the concrete wall behind me. Reaching me, he placed one arm, then the other on either side of me.
“So it is you,” he said, peering into my face.
“What do you mean?”
“They gave me a name and a picture. I thought I recognized you. But I didn’t believe it until I looked out into the crowd and saw you there. I’ve seen you at my shows,” he said, his perfect lips inches from mine.
“You have?”
“Yeah. And I always go to find you after and you’re always gone. Then I saw you on the patio of Ignatius’s a few months ago, but I got pulled into a conversation with someone else.”
“You mean with Cassie?” I said. “She’s … she’s a friend of mine.”
“Mine too,” he said. “Life’s funny, how things sort themselves out, don’t ya think?”
He was right. He was totally right. And I nodded. We could hear the next band cueing up on the other side of the wall, their opening beats pulsing through my body and his hands.
“I’m supposed to take you to the Mansion,” he said, nuzzling my ear, smelling my hair. Oh god. “We have a car waiting for us out back. But I’ve been wanting you all night. Knowing you were in the crowd … knowing it was you. I don’t think I can wait.”
He smelled so good, a hint of apples, his breath warm, minty.
“May I?” He inched my jacket off my shoulders. “This too?”
I nodded as he began unbuttoning my blouse. As I stood there in my lavender camisole, he dragged a palm across my clavicle, circling a breast, the pad of his thumb waking up a nipple through the silk. He sweetly lifted the camisole up and over my head, then released my breasts from my bra.
“Fuck me,” he said, taking them both in his hands, kissing them and leaving a wet path from one tense nipple to the other. He slipped a hand down the front of my leather pants, looking astonished to discover how wet I was.
Sweet Jesus.
I couldn’t do anything but cover his mouth with a firm kiss that quickly turned ferocious. I melted into him, his whole body pressing me against the wall.
“I’m going to make you scream,” he said, as I sighed at the feel of his mouth making its way down the front of my body. On his knees before me, he peeled off my pants, and started with tender, tentative licks, along my hip bones and over my belly button, coaxing my legs apart with his beautiful face, his talented tongue. Lifting one of my thighs, he buried his face in my cleft, nearly toppling me over before I found footing on a nearby chair. I was pinned against the cool cement wall of Tipitina’s, by Mark Drury! I looked down as his tireless teasing found my clit and he swirled it inside his warm mouth like found treasure. My hips cocked forward as his tongue circled and flicked, his fingers darting in and out and taking me right to the edge of my senses, parting me more, and more, until his whole mouth owned the very center of me.
Then I felt it, the hot rush that pulled me under as I came—quickly, loudly, fully—heavy waves crashing over me, my fingers raking his hair. “Oh god, oh god, oh god, Mark” was all I could say, until I finally, completely, wilted over his body. He rose slowly and kissed his way back up to my face, cradled it with both his hands. But my legs were shot as
I sank into the nearby busted office chair, my knees flung apart, my pants around one ankle like a black leather cuff.
“Holy shit,” I breathed.
“All day I’ve fantasized about doing that,” he said, wiping his sexy mouth victoriously.
“What else do you fantasize about?” I asked, already wanting more of him.
“This is your fantasy, Dauphine. It’s supposed to be about you. Don’t get me wrong. This works for me too.”
I leaned forward and pulled him by a belt loop to stand in front of my face. I flashed my eyes up at him, my mouth slackened, looking for silent permission.
“And that works too,” he said, as he stroked himself through his jeans.
My hands, shaking slightly, unbuttoned him, freeing his perfect erection, my god, taking his smooth tip in my mouth, never hungrier for anything. I looked up at him again as my tongue began circling his tip, and he died a little, his face collapsing at the site of my growing enthusiasm. Then I took him fully into my wet mouth, moaning at the same time, my firm hand pumping ever so rhythmically along his shaft, my other one under him, cupping him, feeling him rise with his aching arousal. He closed his eyes as I took him deep into my mouth. I sucked in my cheeks, my lips a firm ring, my throat relaxed, my low moan moving through his groin. He whimpered. I was good at this, had always been good at this, but I had never wanted to be the best like I did now.
My mouth and hands were working their magic, but it was the eye contact that did him in, just as I slid a wet finger back and around, pressing in on him at the exact moment he came, hard and loud, deep into the back of my throat, one of his hands stroking my hair, the other one outstretched on the wall, as he said god and my name over and over again until spent. After a few tender strokes, I let go of him, flinging myself back in the chair, deeply pleased. My eye caught the calendar splayed on the floor; it was dated five years ago. Just who was I back then?
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