by Liz Talley
He cleaned up Kenzie, combed her hair into two puffy ponytails and put her in a clean dress Big Mama had sewed. The dress was too small, but Kenzie liked the funny green frogs on it. He tied green ribbons in her hair with looping lopsided bows. After brushing her teeth and finding her shoes, he dragged Shorty D’s clear plastic backpack from under the coffee table. With sorrowful brown eyes, Kenzie watched her mother as she slept on the couch, its stuffing peeking out the arm.
Cici’s snores made him want to punch his aunt.
Lazy-assed bitch needed to go back to jail. He didn’t need nobody else to take care of.
“Maaa?” Kenzie asked, touching her mother’s face, making Tre’s heart hurt. He pulled the small girl back but not before Cici’s hand slapped the child’s hand away. Tears trembled on Kenzie’s lashes, and she stayed away as if she understood there was no hope left in the woman.
Tre jerked his thoughts away from the pain and sadness—two feelings he had no use for. A man can’t change the world around him…only himself. He had to keep moving, sheltering Kenzie and Shorty D because they were innocent. They shouldn’t have to pay for everyone else’s selfish choices. Yeah, life wasn’t fair, but he’d do his best to even it up for them.
Shorty D appeared in the doorway of the living room, wearing khaki pants that sagged too low to meet dress code and a wrinkled school-uniform shirt. Normally, Tre would make his brother change, but today he had to choose his battles.
“Let’s go,” Tre said, picking up Kenzie, settling her on his hip before pushing out the wooden door of the old house in Central City. He stepped off the porch, wishing he’d grabbed his shades because the sun wanted to battle him, too, but he didn’t turn around. The bus would stop at the end of their street in five minutes.
“Shorty D, today, son.”
“I ain’t your son.” Shorty D slammed the door as laughter bounced across the street. Tre turned his head to see Grady Jefferson and Kelvin “Crazy Eight” Parker leaning against Grady’s Charger, a new 2013 model with twenty-inch rims and a custom paint job.
“Damn, son. You runnin’ day care or what?” Crazy Eight called out, his laugh high and clownish. Tre didn’t like Crazy Eight much, but Grady was cool.
“Yo,” Tre said, giving them a nod as Kenzie turned her little head toward the two gangsters. “What up?”
Crazy Eight giggled again but Grady nodded. “A’ight. Later, bro.”
Tre nodded, ignoring the knot in his gut. Grady ran with the 3-N-G boys and he’d mentioned a couple times about some easy ways Tre could earn money. Tre had always resisted the thug life, but lately he wondered why he bothered. He told himself it was because he’d made his mama a promise to take care of Shorty D, but couldn’t he do that a lot better with a roll in his pocket?
He kept his chin high as he marched down the street, pretending like he wasn’t carrying a little girl who should have been potty-trained by now, followed by a ten-year-old who had remembered to grab his shades and who kept darting glances back at Grady like he was the man.
Tre couldn’t blame Shorty D.
Grady looked cool as shit.
Tre would want to be him, too…if that kind of life didn’t lead to prison or getting his ass shot by a rival gang.
“Hurry up, Shorty D. You already late.”
“Man, this is bullshit. I’m tired of school and livin’ like this.”
Tre didn’t say anything, because he couldn’t make things better for Shorty D at present. The kid had to go to school. Cici needed to beg for her job so they could pay the electric bill. And Tre had to figure out some way to get Big Mama strong again so she could take care of Kenzie. The woman who’d been minding his little cousin while Cici worked had just taken her own job. She’d told Tre he’d have to find someone else by next week.
No one to help him and he needed to make more money than what he did lugging furniture around town for little more than minimum wage.
He pulled out his bus pass and said a small prayer.
God, help me through another day. Help me be strong and be the man You want me to be. And, please, God, help me say no to Grady when he asks me to ride with him.
As he reached the bus stop at the corner of Carrollton, he caught the exhaust as the bus pulled away, heading toward the city and away from them.
Shorty D looked up at him with a smirk. “Now, that’s some bullshit.”
“Watch your language around this baby girl.”
Shorty’s eyes were an old man’s as he slid off his sunglasses. “Like she ain’t goin’ find out soon enough.”
Maybe God was tired of listening to Tre.
Maybe, despite his best intentions, life was some bullshit.
*
ELEANOR LOVED THURSDAYS because it was delivery day, and today she was getting a new carton from the Cotswolds.
However, the carton arrived late. There were only twenty minutes left before closing time, and the afternoon was dead. Maybe just a peek? She shoved the keyboard back and pulled her screwdriver and hammer from the bottom drawer.
“Hey, Pans,” she called out her open office door. “Want to open the crate and see what’s inside?”
She accidentally dropped the screwdriver and rooted under the desk for it. Grabbing it, she emerged to find Pansy staring at her thoughtfully.
“Creepy Gary said he saw you and the jazz pianist climbing into your car together the other day. Is there something you want to tell me?” Pansy asked, bending over Eleanor’s desk, dropping her pointed jaw on her folded hands and batting her eyes like a deranged debutante.
“No.”
Pansy narrowed her eyes. “No?”
“Why does everyone make a big deal about going for a drink?”
“Uh, because your girl parts haven’t been oiled in a decade, and you went for a drink with sex in a pair of tight jeans….”
Eleanor leaned back in her chair. “Oh, Jesus, Pans. It’s liquid and they pour it in a glass.”
“Is he circumcised?”
Eleanor stiffened, causing her office chair to shoot upright. “What?”
Pansy giggled, doing a little finger-pointing thing that accompanied a jaunty wiggle. “Come on. Spill the beans. What’s he got down there?”
“You’re seriously cracked.”
Pansy dropped into a wing chair with carved cherubs etched into the wood. The dressing chair had been damaged in Hurricane Katrina, but Eleanor couldn’t bear to part with it even if it were no longer worth kindling. “That’s why you keep me around.”
“Who told you that? Your dusting skills and witty repartee with the customers are the only things that keep you gainfully employed.”
“You call this gainful?”
“As gainful as it gets, chickadee.” Eleanor rose from her chair and tugged one of Pansy’s farm-girl braids. “Let’s go see what Charlie sent us this month.”
Pansy sighed, but struggled to her feet. “Right-o,” she said in a bad British accent. Charlie Weber was a buyer from England who scoured auction houses and estate sales for the perfect antiques for Eleanor’s store. The man had a notoriously good eye for spotting masterpieces beneath grime and paint, even if his stuffiness and fondness for responding with right-o drove Pansy bonkers whenever she talked to him on the phone.
“Just one crate today, but there should be an eighteenth-century cupboard inside along with some rare French books. Charlie said he wasn’t certain about the quality, but several were first editions. And there’s a painting he found in a widow’s attic that could be a—”
“You’re a pro at avoiding things, you know that?”
Eleanor moved some empty cardboard boxes aside and ignored her friend.
“So you’re not even going to tell me about Dez? About the drink? It shocked the hell out of me when Gary sidled over and spilled those delicious beans. Didn’t know you had it in you.”
Eleanor spun. “Why? Like I can’t do something…atypical? Besides, it was a drink.”
“With sizzling-ho
t Dez Batiste. So is he still the enemy?”
“Having a drink with him doesn’t change the opposition I have for the club he’s opening. I needed vodka and Dez wanted to convince me his club could be an asset to the community. That’s it. Practically a business meeting,” Eleanor said, not daring to meet Pansy’s gaze. The woman could have been Sherlock Holmes had she been male, British…and a fictional character. She didn’t want her friend to see how much her odd afternoon escape with Dez had affected her. Even now she couldn’t sort out what it had meant.
“So did he?”
Eleanor studied the nails in the crate. “Did he what?”
“Change your mind?”
“No.” But he’d made some good points.
“Oh,” Pansy said, holding out her hand.
“What?”
“The hammer and screwdriver. I’ll break the fingernail this time.”
Eleanor handed Pansy the tools. Pansy had better leverage with her height.
While her friend struggled with the crate, Eleanor allowed her mind to drift back to her strange afternoon at the Bulldog pub. Back to the way Dez looked gulping down the bitter German beer, his neck strong, masculine, nicked by the razor. The way his hands had cupped the mug, the flash of his teeth, the hum of electricity between them, unacknowledged but allowed to hang in the air. She’d wanted to touch him again, but didn’t.
It had all felt too dangerous.
Had there been three or four years between their ages, she might not have worried. She might have asked him to come to her house for supper. Or a drink. Or a roll in the bed she’d slept in alone for too long.
But she was eight years and nine months older than him.
Too much to bridge.
Even for mere sex.
Maybe it didn’t matter—just like Dez said—but she saw the difference in the way they approached life.
He ate a double cheeseburger with hickory bacon along with a side of fries and a hearty beer to wash it down. Dez wasn’t far removed from the buff frat boys her daughter chased, who didn’t know what statins were and had never thought about cholesterol intake.
And then the phraseology he used. Some of the words she wasn’t familiar with. He knew the music played in the bar. He caught the eye of college girls. He dressed like a twentysomething…even if he was nearly thirty-one.
As she sat there, discussing the weather, the Saints and the music scene with Dez, she felt more and more he wasn’t the man to take her first steps back into the dating jungle with.
But she’d enjoyed their conversation.
He didn’t probe into her background, asking about Skeeter, wanting to know about the bipolar secretary who had shot him dead in the Windsor Court hotel room. Dez didn’t even ask why she needed a drink so badly. No talk of the past. Just football, food and music. She tried his Cajun fries and a sip of his beer. He made fun of her vodka martini with six olives, and inquired about purchasing a rice bed like the one he’d seen in the store window of the Queen’s Box when he’d first visited the building he’d purchased.
Light, inane talk.
Heavy, meaningful glances.
They wanted each other…that never faded away. But, still, Eleanor couldn’t think it was a good idea.
“Hello?” Pansy said, huffing and puffing and not successful at opening the crate. “Little help.”
Eleanor spotted the crowbar they’d been looking for over a month ago on the ledge of a high window. “There it is.”
“What is?”
“The crowbar. Tre must have left it up there…I’ve been meaning to ask him about it. Let me get a step stool.” Eleanor turned, but stopped. “Hey, Pans.”
“Yeah?”
“Why do you think I should sleep with Dez?”
Pansy lifted her thin eyebrows. “Left field, darling.”
“I know.”
Her friend let go of the wooden crate, her eyes settling into seriousness. “Because you need someone fun to take a running leap into the land of living with.”
“I have been living.”
“Well, yeah, technically. But it’s been five years since Skeeter was killed, five years since you thought about anything else other than the store or Blakely. I wanted you to get out there long ago, but I understood you wanted to feel stronger, to be at the right place in your life before adding any more drama. But—”
“I’m not getting any younger?”
Her friend snorted. “Eleanor, you’re a beautiful woman. Everyone can see that, but you hold yourself back, allowing only those close to you to hear your laughter, to see your bold side, to feel the fullness of who you are. You guard yourself so well no one wants to step close to you.”
Eleanor knew this about herself, but hearing the truth out loud made her wince.
Yeah, she’d been hurt.
When Hurricane Katrina had struck the coast, she, Blakely and Skeeter had been in Hilton Head on vacation. Skeeter had gone to play golf and meet with a potential campaign manager about his forthcoming bid for the U.S. House of Representatives. Eleanor had gone to scour the antiques shops of Savannah. Blakely had taken her best friend, Mary Helen, with them, intending on playing on the beach, making friendship bracelets and shopping for school clothes. A whole week away from the steaminess of New Orleans…and then disaster struck.
At first they’d been dismissive and relieved they weren’t in town. But then when the levees broke, they’d watched in horror as their city came apart. For three whole days they didn’t leave the TV set, glued to the death and pain rampaging in the streets they’d trodden. Images of looting on Magazine Street had torn Eleanor’s heart into two tragic pieces, and she’d known, standing right there on the jute rug of the overpriced beach house, her dream had been smashed like the windows of Butterfield’s…for she’d seen the ruin of her neighbor’s bakery on CNN.
And knew the Queen’s Box had received the same callous treatment.
But what really broke her heart was realizing the moniker for the store—the beautiful lacquered box from Marie Antoinette’s private collection of boxes—had likely been stolen.
Skeeter had bought it for her in place of an engagement ring. They’d married quickly after finding out Eleanor was pregnant with Blakely. A simple, friend-filled wedding had been followed by a honeymoon in Europe where Skeeter had surprised her with the gift, purchased from a reputable dealer. She’d never missed the sparkle of a diamond, not when she had such a beautiful box to place in the window of the hardware store she’d inherited from a great-uncle. The engagement gift became the symbol of the new venture store—the Queen’s Box—her dream come true.
It had sat in a display case in the window, beckoning passersby, greeting old friends, representing the authenticity of her marriage with Richard Ellis Theriot, third son of Porter Theriot, former mayor of New Orleans. But as she’d suspected, it was gone, a horrible omen of what lay ahead.
Depression, desolation and distance…which led to betrayal.
“Eleanor?”
She jerked her gaze to Pansy, blinking against the memories blinding her future. “I don’t want to be that victim anymore, Pansy. But I also don’t want to be foolish. Dez Batiste feels like foolishness.”
“And what’s wrong with a little crazy if it amounts to naught? It’s Mardi Gras…have fun with him until Fat Tuesday and then swear him off for Lent. What’s it going to hurt?”
“He’s like king cake. Delicious, but I know I’ll regret it,” Eleanor said, running a finger over the chimes of a grandfather clock awaiting repair. Turned out four-year-olds were hell on the inner workings of a clock.
“Everyone has regrets. I have them, but I embrace them because I’d rather have memories than nothing at all. That’s part of living. Why do you care so much about what other people think? You’re no longer a politician’s wife. You no longer have reporters stepping on the backs of your shoes. No one cares if you have hot sex with the fine-ass man across the street and drop him a week later.”
&n
bsp; For a moment, silence hung between them as Eleanor mulled over her friend’s words. “So just sex?”
“If it’s just sex, then you’re not doing it right.” Pansy smiled and yanked Eleanor into an embrace. “Stop thinking so much. Be naughty. Have fun. Stop looking for reasons to hold yourself back.”
Eleanor squeezed her friend and stepped back. “He’s not my type.”
“Exactly. Besides, smooth, sophisticated and unfaithful didn’t exactly work out for your last go-around.”
“You’re a laugh a minute.”
“Seriously. You fell in love with Skeeter because he charmed your panties off with his very safe, desirable lifestyle. He had money, position, and you were looking for a daddy.”
“No, I wasn’t.”
“Sure you were. Trust me. I took a psychology class in college.”
“You went to college?”
“Two semesters before I abandoned my career goals and my clothes in Eddie’s ’69 VW Wagon.”
They both laughed.
“But in all seriousness, your parents were too busy running their school to be—”
“They were good parents, and they’re still good parents.”
“But clueless. You were looking for guidance and there was the older, not-so-wise-but-you-didn’t-know-that-yet Skeeter Theriot with his old money and new BMW. You didn’t stand a chance.”
“But choosing to date a guy opposite of my mistake isn’t a good enough reason. I’m not sold on sleeping with Dez…if he’s even receptive.” But Eleanor knew he was. It might have been a while since she’d been “out there” but she hadn’t missed those signals.
At the sound of the front door, they both lifted their heads.
“I’ll get it,” Eleanor said, dusting off her hands. “This can wait.”
“Can it?” Pansy asked, obviously speaking about more than the shipment. “Don’t try to make everything so perfect, Eleanor. Get dirty.”
