“I’m sayin’ I don’t care. Get whatever you want. I don’t even see the curtains,” Dad replied.
“Guys –” I tried to run interference.
“I just do not believe this,” Mom groused. “I knew I should have gone with the curtains with the little horses and riders on them. The trumpet curtains are going to look silly. What are the neighbors going to think?”
“Mrs. Logan, for what it’s worth, I think the neighbors are going to like the trumpet ones. The little horse and riders…” Stevie offered, wincing a bit and shaking his head.
“You sure?” Mom asked.
“I’m sure,” Stevie assured her.
“Well then, thank you,” Mom smiled at Stevie and took a sip of her champagne.
I turned into Hank’s body, lifted on tiptoe and whispered in his ear. “You can come back into the room, crisis averted.”
He looked down at me, eyes smiling.
Then he asked, “How much do you care about curtains?”
“Well…” I drew it out, because I cared about curtains like, a lot. They set the tone for the whole room.
“Okay, let me rephrase that. How much do you care that I don’t care about curtains?”
I grinned at him.
“Not much.”
His smile hit his mouth. “We’re set then.”
“All my honey bunches of oats!” Daisy yelled behind my back.
I turned to see Daisy approaching, dragging Marcus with her. I blinked hard, so dazzling was her ensemble. She was head-to-toe rhinestones, sequins and beads. Her hair was held up in an enormous up-do, fashioned with tons of hair jewelry. She had sequins glued around her right eye, she was wearing a fortune in diamonds at her ears and throat, and her v-necked, ice blue, long-sleeved gown was entirely beaded, every inch of it. It had to weigh a ton.
More hugs, air-kisses and handshakes were exchanged as Daisy and Marcus joined our group. It was only slightly uncomfortable when Eddie and Marcus shook hands and only slightly freaky when Marcus looked intensely in my eyes, communicating something I didn’t really get, before he kissed my cheek.
After we all settled into our huge huddle, Daisy leaned forward, waving us in.
All the women, Tod and Stevie leaned in. All the men started talking with Marcus.
“Do something!” Daisy hissed.
“About what?” Jet asked.
“About this party. It’s a dud. Nothing’s happening. People are just standin’ around and talkin’. It’s the most borin’ party I’ve ever been to in my life. One of you has to do something,” Daisy turned to Ally, “You’re good at causing a stir. Start a fight. Do you have your stun gun?”
Again, I blinked at Daisy and this time, not because I was dazzled.
Mom gasped.
“You’re joking, right?” Ally asked.
“No, I’m not jokin’. What are they gonna say in the society pages? Daisy doesn’t do boring. Daisy is not a dud. Daisy is all about excitement, comprende?”
“Daisy, I think it’s a nice party,” I offered.
Daisy turned to me, her eyes sharp as knives, “Nice? Nice?”
Yowza.
I backed up a step.
“Jumpin’ Jehosafats. This is fuckin’ phat!” We, and all the other guests, heard shouted from across the room.
We all turned to see Jason, wearing a rented tux and Annette, wearing a pretty, sea green, scoop-necked dress with cap sleeves (obviously Stevie and/or Tod had intervened in the Scarlet O’Hara fiasco) standing across the room.
“Did you like, move this place stone-for-stone from England or something?” Annette asked Daisy when she arrived at our huddle.
More hugs, handshakes and air-kisses were exchanged and a waiter brought champagne.
“No, Marcus built it for me, Sugar. You look sweet,” Daisy replied.
Annette smiled at her and then turned to the girlie group at large. “Get this!” Annette announced. “Smithie hired me to dance. He said I could dance to Bob Marley. He doesn’t care, just as long as the customers get it.”
I looked at Jason. He caught my glance and shook his head.
“Lottie and me are gonna work on my routines. I’ll do Head during the day and be a stripper at night. How fuckin’ phat is that?”
“She’s kidding, right?” Hank murmured in my ear. I hadn’t noticed he’d turned from the boy conversation to the girl one.
I ignored him, focused on helping Jason.
“Annette, maybe you should think about that,” I suggested.
“Sweetie, Smithie loves you,” Annette told me, shocking me with the news. “He said, if I could get you to dance with me, he’d give me a bonus.”
“That’s not gonna happen,” Hank officially entered our conversation.
“Dude,” Annette said. “She’d be the shit up there. I bet she’d give Lottie a run for her money.”
“It’s not gonna happen,” Hank repeated, turning fully to Annette.
Annette ignored, or was oblivious to, Hank’s warning posture.
“Dude. Seriously. Do you know how much Lottie gets paid?” she asked Hank.
“Don’t see why she shouldn’t strip, she’s half naked right now,” Dad put in.
“Herb,” Mom said.
“I’m not half naked,” I snapped at Dad.
“Your ass is hangin’ out,” Dad returned.
“Is it?” Annette asked, twisting to look at my back. “Let me see.”
“My ass is not hanging out,” I told Annette.
“Oh,” Annette muttered, sounding disappointed.
We’d become the focus of attention of several partygoers who were standing close to our group.
“Maybe we should keep it down,” I suggested.
“Oowee, free champagne!” we heard belted from across the room.
We all turned to see Shirleen standing there, Afro huge with glitter sprayed in it. She looked gorgeous in a deep peach, square-necked gown: an orange, latticework, shimmering necklace adorning her throat from cleavage to chin.
She turned and nabbed a glass of champagne off the tray of a waiter gliding by her.
“Well, look at all of you,” Shirleen announced when she arrived at our group. “Shee-it. It’s like someone smacked you all with the beautiful stick. Ordinary people need not apply. God damn!”
“I want that necklace,” I blurted. “It’s gorgeous. But I want it in red. Where did you get it?”
Shirleen put her hand to her throat; her long fingernails were painted a pearlescent coral. “Leon bought it for me about two days before they shot his sorry ass. So, not only did I get freedom from that stupid motherfucker, I got me a nice necklace as a keepsake. You can borrow it if you want.”
I stared at her.
Mom stared at her.
Dad stared at her.
“Leon’s my dead husband,” Shirleen explained. “He’s better off dead. He was a mean sonovabitch. Two days after they put him in the ground I redecorated the entire house then went on a cruise. Do you know how much food they serve on those cruises? Food everywhere, all the time. I even got me a piece of my own personal Isaac, you know, from The Love Boat? He was a cruise ship bartender and Jamaican. Don’t remember his name but he was nice to Shirleen, real nice. I gave him a tip he’ll never forget,” then she laughed so hard, her entire body shook with it.
Mom, Dad and I just kept staring at her. Then, Mom shuffled up close to Hank and I. “Are you sure you want to move to Denver?” she whispered.
I looked at Hank.
He ran the tips of his fingers lightly along the edge of my dress at the small of my back.
A shiver went along my skin.
I nodded to Mom. “I’m sure.”
She sighed. I noticed hers wasn’t as happy as mine had been.
“Maybe we should mingle,” Jet suggested, noticing that we had become the center of attention for the entire room.
“That’s a good idea,” Indy agreed.
“Where’s this secret VIP buffet,
that’s what I wanna know. I’m starved,” Dad asked loudly, causing some of the other guests’ subtle stares to become a lot less subtle.
“Herb, keep your voice down,” Mom whispered, also loudly.
“I’ll show you, Mr. Logan,” Daisy offered, not in the least upset that her secret buffet was outed by my Dad. “Right this way.”
Daisy, Mom and Dad peeled off and Marcus moved close to Hank and I while everyone wandered away. “We need to talk,” Marcus said to Hank.
It was clear by the look on his face and the tensing of Hank’s body that Marcus wasn’t proposing idle, party chitchat.
Hank nodded once, then his hand drifted up my back to between my shoulder blades and he curled me to him, front-to-front. I tilted my head back and his face was as serious as Marcus’s.
“I’ll be a minute,” he said.
I nodded.
“Keep Lee, Eddie or Carl in sight. Got me?”
I nodded again.
His hand went away from my back and he ran a finger down my jaw, then he and Marcus were gone.
“I see you sorted some of your man troubles,” Shirleen noted. She was standing beside me but watching Marcus and Hank move through the big room.
I noticed Lee, Eddie and Carl watching Hank too. After Hank disappeared from sight, Lee’s eyes cut to me, he said something to Indy and they moved away from the couple they were talking to and closer to me.
Indy caught my eye and smiled reassuringly.
I smiled back.
Then I realized something.
And it hit me so hard it had a total body impact.
“I think I’m in love with him,” I said quietly to Shirleen.
“What, child? I couldn’t hear you,” Shirleen replied.
“I barely know him but I think I’m in love with Hank,” I repeated.
She turned fully to me and her eyes narrowed, mainly because I was beginning to freak out and I was certain it was showing.
“Calm down, girl. This is good. You should be happy. Hank Nightingale is a good man and he’ll treat you right. I think you and I both know ain’t a lot of men in the world like that. You got a shot at one, you hold on tight and you better fuckin’ well rejoice,” Shirleen advised, her voice serious to the point of being sharp.
“I think I’m in love with all of them,” I said, ignoring her words and beginning to panic.
“All of who?” Shirleen asked.
“Them,” I threw my arm out. “Indy, Lee, Ally, Daisy, Eddie, Jet, Tod, Stevie… all of them,” I answered.
Shirleen nodded.
“Far as I can tell, there’s a lot to love,” her eyes didn’t leave me. “Why you lookin’ like you been sentenced to life in prison?”
“Billy’s out there, he’s acting crazy. Or, I should say, crazier. There’s no telling what he’ll do. They might get hurt,” I replied.
I’d felt it days before, when Daisy got shot at when she was with me. But now, it had intensified. It was something different, something more immediate, visceral. Something not to be borne.
“They know ‘bout Billy?” Shirleen asked, cutting into my thoughts.
I nodded.
“All of ‘em?” she went on.
I nodded again.
“Then they know what they’re gettin’ into,” Shirleen declared decisively. “Trust Shirleen, child. Lotta folk would stand clear from a girl like you, leave you to go it alone, best as you could. And, I’m tellin’ it to you straight, if this Billy is as much of a crazy motherfucker as he sounds and even as strong as you are, I’m guessin’ the best you could do would fail. He’d end up hurtin’ you or turnin’ you and neither of those things are good.” I felt my blood turn to ice and I stared at Shirleen. She kept talking. “These folk don’t stand clear. Says a lot. Don’t let it mess with your head. From what I hear of your people, you’ll eventually have your chance to settle the score.”
I couldn’t say I liked the sound of that.
Shirleen’s eyes had been clear and focused, but something drifted across them and her gaze left me. “I’m not ashamed to tell you, Shirleen has always had a soft spot for that boy,” Shirleen murmured, almost as if I wasn’t there.
She was staring at the place we last saw Hank and I could tell immediately that she’d slipped into another place. I felt something strange coming from her, something immensely sad, almost to the point of longing.
I stood stock-still as she continued. “He was a good kid, through and through. Good son to his parents, good brother, good friend to my nephew Darius. Things changed, for me, for Darius. Hank never changed. He tried, harder ‘n’ hell, more even than Lee and Eddie, to pull Darius back, to save him…”
She stopped on a whoosh of air, as if she’d been sucker punched in the gut. I was confused, not knowing what she was talking about but I had no chance to ask and I had the feeling she wouldn’t have told me anyway.
She carried on. “I know where his head’s at, so does Darius. We know where he stands. Even so… even so…” her voice had dropped to a whisper, so low, it was almost like she was chanting. “Even so, I admire it. If I’d had me a boy of my own, I’d want him to be just like Hank.”
I felt her words hit me somewhere private, somewhere I didn’t even know existed. Somewhere that was a place that only women like me had. Women like me, which was I suspected, women like Daisy. I was also guessing (correctly, even though I didn’t know it at the time), women like Shirleen. Women who’d experienced bad things at the hands of men they’d opened their hearts to and women who hoped for something good to follow.
Daisy had found hers in Marcus, even though he was who he was to the world; he was something else to her.
I’d found my good in Hank.
Shirleen, well, I didn’t know about Shirleen but I suspected she was no longer looking. Instead her longing was the saving grace of a child, a child just like Hank.
Tears hit my eyes and my hand reached out, found hers and I held on tight. I could only guess that I was correct at what was causing her emotion. What I did know, it was there and she was letting me see it. I also knew instinctively, this emotional display didn’t happen often.
She squeezed my hand and then pulled hers away and downed her glass of champagne.
“I’m dry,” she announced, breaking the mood and not even looking at me. “Where’s that boy with the champagne?” she was looking around. “Hey! You!” she yelled then walked away from me to pounce on a waiter with a tray of champagne.
She didn’t look back.
I didn’t get a chance to process her words because I felt a touch on the skin at the small of my back. It was so light, there and then gone, it was almost like I imagined it. When I turned to see if it was real, I got an eye-full of a tanned throat coming out of a light gray shirt surrounded by a black suit.
I looked up.
Luke.
“Where’s Hank?” he asked, deciding against any unnecessary pleasantries like “Hello”. He was scanning the crowd and looking unhappy. I’d never seen Luke look unhappy. Mostly, he just looked hot or sometimes amused (which was just another form of hot). Now he looked plain, old unhappy (which was also somehow hot).
“He’s talking to Marcus.” I replied then went on. “You look nice,” and I moved a bit away from him mainly because he did look nice, really nice.
His arms were at his sides. When I moved away, his hand came out to curl around my waist and he pulled me back to him. I figured this was part of his not-outside-touching-distance bodyguard gig and decided to reassure him. “It’s okay, Luke. Hank’s here somewhere and Lee’s keeping an eye on me.”
I heard a cell phone ring somewhere but I ignored it because Luke looked down at me.
“You don’t move away from me. We’re findin’ Hank. Now,” he ordered.
Immediately at his words and his tone, I felt fear crawl along my skin.
“What’s happening?” I asked.
Luke wasn’t looking at me anymore; he was looking across the room. I f
ollowed his gaze and saw Lee, cell to his ear, his eyes on Luke. Lee’s face was tight and he jerked his head towards the door. At the same time, he was repositioning Indy, moving her around to face one of the several doors leading out of the room. She looked up at Lee questioningly but that’s all I saw as Luke’s fingers pressed into my waist insistently.
“Let’s go,” Luke said.
He started moving me toward the door. I noticed something happening; Eddie and Carl either both sensed imminent danger or had received non-verbal, badass-boys communiqués gliding through the air like radio waves. They were also on alert and on the move.
“What’s happening?” I asked, not fighting it but going with Luke, fear was no longer crawling along my skin but biting into me. Then, panic hitting me, I said, “We have to find Hank.”
I no sooner said it when Hank and Marcus entered the room. Hank was striding with a purpose, his eyes locked on me, his face like stone. Marcus didn’t look much different and was moving in the same way, his eyes scanning the room, likely looking for Daisy.
“Hank’s here,” I told Luke, beginning to pull away to go to Hank.
Luke yanked me to his side then stopped dead.
I took my eyes off Hank and turned to look at Luke. In mid-swing, my glance caught on something familiar. My head stopped and I stared.
Billy was standing in the doorway to the room.
His arm was raised.
In his hand was a gun and it was pointed at me.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
When My Life Began
I had to admit, Billy looked good.
The man-on-the-run thing was working for him. Faded jeans, his beat-up leather jacket hanging on him just right, his thick, blond hair was messy, his eyes were wild.
Other people had noticed Billy but I didn’t think they thought he looked good, mainly because they also noticed his gun.
I felt panic tear through the crowd. I heard small screams, felt people moving and caught Eddie and Carl’s voices calling commands to the edging people.
All of this happened as if it was far, far away. Mostly, in those first few moments, it felt like just Billy and me in the room.
“Hand her over,” Billy demanded, looking at me, still pointing the gun at me, but addressing Luke.