She’d tried to take care of Cora. When Noah was gone the first time, it wasn’t so hard. They were all still friends, still unattached, still equally connected. Noah came home when his mother died but left soon after for Kuwait. Mercedes had asked him if he was running away. He told her he was just trying to figure out where he was going, but he’d left her and Cora behind. He’d left the Three Amigos behind.
Mercedes had just finished hair school, Cora was in college, and with Noah gone and high school over, the three of them became separate islands in their own seas. Or so she thought. In actuality, she’d been the only one adrift. Cora and Noah grew closer during the time they spent apart, and Cora didn’t need Mer to take care of her.
When Noah was deployed to Afghanistan in 2002, he’d made the same request of his oldest friend. “Take care of Cora, Mer.”
It was harder the second time.
Cora had been distant and dissatisfied. She was excited about her pregnancy one day, despondent and disinterested the next. Cora started avoiding Mercedes only to show up at the salon out of the blue, crying and asking her why she’d abandoned her when she needed her most. Cora was either high as a kite, full of energy and glowing with life, or completely bottomed out, struggling to brush her hair and teeth. Mercedes went over several times during Noah’s nine-month deployment just to make sure Cora made it to work. When she was going to work, sticking to a routine, she did better. Toward the end of her pregnancy, she leveled out only to plummet again after Gia was born. When Noah came home he stepped right back into his old role of caretaker. It was like his mother died, and he replaced her with someone who needed him in exactly the same way.
The thought made Mercedes wince.
“I’m sorry, Cora,” she whispered to herself. “That isn’t fair. But I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me. If it is what I think it is, then I don’t want to know.”
If something happens to me, you’ll take care of them, won’t you?
Mercedes pulled into a gas station and filled up the Corolla’s tank, standing in the cold, her hands shoved into her pockets. She felt the drawing she’d hastily folded and tucked away at Montlake. She pulled it out and opened it, smoothing the lines that marred the faces staring up at her from the page. Keegan Tate. She’d recognized him immediately. Why had Moses drawn a picture of Keegan Tate with Cora and Gia? It could only mean one thing.
If something happens to me, you’ll take care of them, won’t you?
“I’m trying Cora,” Mercedes murmured. “But I can’t take care of them if I’m covering for you.”
***
Eight
1989
She’d noticed him. He smoked on his balcony—like everyone else did—but he liked to watch the kids. He watched Mercedes sometimes. She stared back once, jutting out her chin and putting her hands on her hips. She even swore in Spanish, a whole string of filthy words that she was certain he didn’t understand. He understood. She heard him chuckle and blow out a long ribbon of smoke that curled back around him like a pet snake.
“He thinks you’re pretty Sadie.” Cora said one day, watching the man as he watched them. From his balcony he had a straight view of the basketball court, and Mercedes didn’t think he could hear them, but she wished he would go inside. She couldn’t concentrate on the game, and he made her skin crawl.
“Gross, Cora,” Mercedes growled.
“He watches you.”
“He watches you too,” Mercedes huffed. She didn’t want to be the only one.
“He looks a little like my dad.”
“No he doesn’t, Cora.”
“He’s probably lonely. I think I’m going to go talk to him.”
“Don’t you dare. Cora, he’s probably a child molester.”
“We’re not children anymore, Sadie.”
“We sure as hell are!”
“You don’t have to come with me.”
Mercedes wasn’t letting Cora go alone, and Cora seemed determined to talk to the man. She marched across the grass and stood beneath his balcony, shading her eyes as she smiled up at him.
“Hi,” Cora called. The man smiled.
“Hi there, Red.” He snuffed out his cigarette and smoothed his hair.
“What’s your name?” Cora asked.
“Payton,” he said, smirking around his cigarette.
“Well . . . Mr. Payton. How long have you lived here?” Cora asked.
“Just Payton. You know how long. You been watching me, girl.”
“You have?” Mercedes hissed, staring at her friend.
“You look like my dad, Mr. Payton. He died,” Cora explained.
“You don’t look anything like her dad,” Mercedes scoffed.
“That’s too bad about your dad, Red.” Payton ignored Mercedes. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Cora.”
“And my friends call me Nunya Damn Business,” Mercedes interjected. She pulled on Cora’s arm as the man laughed.
“Come up, Cora,” the man said. “We’ll talk about your dad. I’ll get you a soda. You been playing ball so you’re probably thirsty.”
“We don’t want a soda.” Mercedes shook her head and folded her arms.
“Okay,” Cora said, eager. The man’s balcony was two levels up, and Cora trotted toward the stairs that would lead her up to the second-floor apartments.
“Cora!” Mercedes yelled, incensed.
“I want to talk to him, Sadie. I told you, you don’t have to come.”
“The hell I don’t.”
Payton was waiting for them, his door open wide, sodas in hand. He stepped aside and bid them enter, and Cora pranced inside like she’d known him all her life. Mercedes stood in the doorway and kept one hand on the frame, one hand on the door. Cora took the grape Fantas from Payton’s hand and handed one to Mercedes. Mercedes took it, ready to chuck it at Payton’s face if he made a wrong move. It was cold and slick, and Cora immediately popped the tab on her can and took a long pull.
“You look kinda like my little girl too, you know that? She had the same red curls.” Payton reached out and touched the lock of hair laying against Cora’s left breast. She stepped back, and Mercedes stepped forward. Payton stepped between them.
“You have a little girl?” Cora whispered, and Mercedes groaned.
Payton made a sorrowful face. “She died. I miss her.”
“Bullshit,” Mercedes hissed. She was truly afraid. Cora was acting as though she were in a play, as though someone was about to yell “cut!” and she had to sell the scene.
“Now that’s not nice, Nunya,” Payton said, sly. It took Mercedes a minute to realize he was talking to her. “Cora and I are gonna talk for a minute. You go on home.” He tried to push Mercedes out the door.
“Cora!” Mercedes clung to the frame, refusing to leave without her friend. Payton picked her up, but not before his hands cupped her bottom and slid up her sides. He plopped her down in the hallway beyond.
“Go home, Nunya,” he said.
Suddenly Cora was shoving past Payton, wrapping her arms around Mercedes and wrenching her from Payton’s grasp. Mercedes’s grape soda smashed against the pavement and burst, spraying their feet and legs with sudsy purple, and Payton swore and made a grab for Cora’s arm. Her cheeks were pink and her eyes wide, like she’d suddenly woken up to the danger she’d placed them in, and she wriggled free, pulling Mercedes with her. Then they were running, streaking down the stairs and across the stretch of grass that led past the concrete slab and basketball hoop to the apartments on the other side.
“I’m sorry, Sadie,” Cora panted as they reached the hallway that spanned their front doors.
“What in the hell were you thinking?” Mercedes cried. She wanted to shake her friend, to slap her, to open up her head and look inside. Her stomach hurt, and she thought she might throw up.
“I don’t know,” Cora stammered. “I really don’t know.”
* * *
For three weeks, Mercedes stewe
d and worried. The picture Moses had drawn was burned into her mind—three paper dolls with familiar faces, mocking her when she closed her eyes. She didn’t know what to do. Keegan had never said anything to her about Cora, and Mercedes had never noticed anything between them. When Cora died, Keegan came to the funeral; everyone from Maven had come to the funeral. Keegan had hugged her tightly, expressing his condolences, but that was all. They’d never talked about Cora’s passing, and Keegan had never seemed personally affected. Mercedes kept talking herself out of confronting him, but the proverbial can of worms had been opened, and try as she might, Mercedes could not bring herself to touch them. Now they were crawling, dirt clinging to their writhing flesh, in and out of her thoughts, making her miserable, robbing her sleep, and stealing her peace.
She and Keegan were alone, shutting down the shop, when the opportunity arose. They usually staggered their shifts, one opening, one closing, but that Saturday night, they found themselves together as the last customer left and the door was locked.
“Do you want to grab a bite, Mercedes?” Keegan asked, not looking up from the till. “It’s been a while. We could catch up.”
She studied him, trying to see him the way Cora must have seen him, the way others saw him, and couldn’t because she saw right through him. He had no substance. No weight. And she had no interest in being one of many as he flitted through life. He wasn’t as tall as Noah, maybe six feet in his heeled boots, but he was pretty, with perfect hair and a great jawline. He had bright blue eyes that he liked to narrow and pouting lips that he liked to purse, as if he were deep in thought over his next move. Women loved it. He would stare at them in the mirror for several minutes, as if pondering how he could best turn them into their most beautiful selves. He would touch their hair and run his fingers through it, tipping his head this way and that. He would make comments like, “God, you’ve got great eyes. Let’s give your hair a little color to make them pop. You’re going to look amazing,” or “Look at this bone structure. Fabulous. No matter what I do, you’ll be beautiful. You make my job so easy.”
His clients would giggle and let him do whatever he wanted. And he did whatever the hell he wanted. The women who saw him were almost always on a high when they left the salon. His attention was an aphrodisiac, and he had a waiting list three months long. Gloria Maven loved him because he was a huge draw.
But when the aphrodisiac wore off, some women came back crying. Second thoughts and extreme haircuts weren’t always the best combination. Luckily, Keegan was quite skilled at his craft, and even when a woman was regretful, he managed to woo her to his way of thinking.
But Mercedes had fixed a few of his more unpopular styles, and in the process, gained customers that were fiercely loyal to her and wary of him. For that reason, she and Keegan kept their stations at opposite ends of the salon.
Regardless, he evoked strong feeling, and he was good for business. Mercedes was fairly certain that she was the only person at Maven—besides Gloria Maven herself—who hadn’t slept with Keegan. Keegan had even asked her once, playful, pouting, why they hadn’t slept together.
“Because if I slept with you, Keegan, I would eventually hate you, and you wouldn’t respect me,” she’d responded.
“I would worship you!” he had protested.
“For about ten minutes. And then it would ruin this antagonism we’ve got going.”
Keegan would laugh, and the flirtation would continue. Mercedes had thought it was harmless. She’d thought they were friends. She was even fond of him.
“I need to ask you something, Keegan,” Mercedes said. “And I need you to tell me the truth.”
There must have been something in her voice, because he looked up in surprise.
“Did you and Cora Andelin have an affair?” she blurted.
He laughed, sputtering, and closed the register. “Holy shit, Mercedes. Where did that come from?”
“I just need to know, Keegan,” she pressed quietly.
“Why? Why in the world do you need to know now . . . after all this time?”
“You did.” Dios mío. He did. They did.
“I wouldn’t call it an affair. It was more like a handful of one-night stands,” he said, shrugging. He seemed uncomfortable but not overly distressed. “I think she knew I liked you, Mercedes.” He cocked a hip against the counter and smirked at her, pursing his pretty lips.
“Cut the crap, Keegan. I’m not into you. Especially now.”
He laughed as though he didn’t believe her.
“Well, Cora was exactly the opposite,” he teased. “Once she knew I was into you, she was into me. And Cora was beautiful. It wasn’t hard to change my focus from you to her.”
“Yeah. She was beautiful. And she was also married.”
“Oh, come on, Sadie. Who do you think you’re kidding? We all know how it is with you and Noah Andelin.”
“What are you talking about?” Mercedes snapped. She had no tolerance for nasty gossip that made everyone feel better about themselves for the five seconds it took to shred someone else.
“You two have so much chemistry, it’s like watching porn through the blinds of someone else’s house.”
“Do you do that a lot, Keegan? Watch porn through people’s blinds?” she growled.
“You two aren’t fooling anyone,” he shot back. It was all Mercedes could do not to slap his face.
“Well, apparently we are. Noah and I are friends. We have never been more than that.”
“Cora thought you were.”
“No, she didn’t,” Mercedes gasped. “She did not, Keegan Tate. That’s a lie.”
Keegan shrugged. “It bothered her, the way he called you Mer. The way you laughed together. The fact that he always came here to have you cut his hair. You two were tight.”
“We’ve been tight since we were eight years old. But never the way you mean. Never. And Cora knew it.”
“It didn’t last very long, Sadie,” he whined. He didn’t seem to like that she was mad at him. “I cut her hair that once, remember? She was cool. And so pretty. Being with her was like . . . being with a mythical princess. That sounds stupid. But she was . . .”
“Ethereal,” Mercedes filled in the blank. “I get it.”
“Yeah. Ethereal.” He seemed to be stewing over the word like he was just learning what it meant. “I cut her hair and she left her number just sitting there on my work station. No name. But I knew it was hers. I shouldn’t have called her, but I did.”
Mercedes nodded, trying not to judge, wanting to kill him, wanting to kill Cora.
“She grew tired of me pretty quick.” He shrugged again.
“Did you grow tired of her?”
“She was married. Sneaking around was kind of fun—kinda hot—for about ten seconds. We’d meet up, have sex, and she would bolt. Then she told me we were done, and that was that. I didn’t miss her.”
“And what did you think when you found out she was pregnant?” Mercedes whispered, her nerves so tight they were humming a desperate tune.
Keegan swallowed, an indication that he had, indeed, thought about it.
“I always used protection, and I wasn’t the only one she was having sex with. She was married, remember? The timing was right, but Noah was deployed right around the time when we were still seeing each other. I thought his deployment might mean we hooked back up, but we never did. Maybe she felt guilty. I don’t know. But when she didn’t say anything to me, I assumed it was Noah’s, and I kept my mouth shut.”
“Thank God for that.”
“Does he know? The good doctor?” Keegan asked. “Is that what this is about? Did he tell you? He’s always been jealous of me.”
“I don’t know if he knows, Keegan. He wouldn’t tell me something like that. And why do you call him that?”
“He’s just a little too good to be true,” Keegan muttered.
“And you don’t measure up.”
“Cora thought I did.”
“No.
She didn’t. Otherwise she would have left him for you,” Mercedes snapped.
“You sure you’re not sleeping with him?”
“You’re a pig, Keegan.”
He shrugged. “You’ve always liked me well enough.”
“I don’t anymore.”
“Oh, come on, Mercedes. Don’t say that. You’re acting like I cheated on you. Maybe you like me more than you want to admit,” he cajoled, trying to tease her into smiling at him. She couldn’t even look at him. And she didn’t know how she was going to face Noah, knowing for certain what Cora had done.
“Who else knows?” she whispered.
Keegan shook his head. “Nobody.”
She nodded. “Good. Because I don’t ever want to talk about this again.”
* * *
“Mercedes, Cuddy is at the back door again, wanting his freebie,” Keegan greeted when Mercedes walked into Maven Friday morning. He didn’t look at her as he spoke. Things had been awkward between them for the last week. Even Gloria had noticed.
Mercedes sighed. Cuddy didn’t come by very often, and he was harmless and sweet. But he scared off the regular customers, so she’d told him if he needed a cut, he had to be there first thing on Fridays—nine a.m. sharp—and she would take care of him before the salon opened at ten. He was always so grateful, closing his eyes when she washed his hair, fat tears squeezing out the sides. It broke her heart a little every time.
A few years back, about six months before Noah was deployed to Afghanistan, Hill Air Force Base sponsored a community service day, focusing on the homeless problem in Salt Lake City. A good number of the homeless and the mentally ill were veterans, and Hill was partnering with the Governor’s office to bring awareness and make basic services available to those who were so often forgotten and ignored. Noah and Cora were passionate about the project, Cora because of her father’s military background, Noah because his own mother had been a homeless teenager when he was born, and they recruited Mercedes to take part.
For two days, under a huge tent that covered an entire city block, the community lured the homeless in with free food, beds, and services—medical services, dental services, counseling, educational opportunities, even haircuts and clothing. Noah got people plugged into AA meetings and provided mental health evaluations, Cora made people aware of educational opportunities and coordinated with a staffing company to get people back to work, and Mercedes did her best to make people feel beautiful again.