Sarah nodded, still pretty sure she had the better deal.
“Tell me about you, Brook. What’s your passion?”
“Music.”
“Music?”
Brook nodded, thrumming her slender fingers up Sarah’s arm.
“Piano, guitar, a little harmonica. I work at Voodoo Queen.”
“The instrument place?”
“That’s the one. I play in a band, teach lessons, still cling to dreams of one day making a record and hitting it big.”
“Really?”
Brook shrugged.
“Maybe si, maybe non. Childhood dreams die hard, but I get to make a living doing what I love and sharing it with others. I have friends that live the real musician’s life. It’s a lot of travel, a lot of cheap motels and diner food. I’m rather fond of my studio apartment, my bird, Baba Yaga, and my little balcony covered in flowers. Though the flowers have been moved to my living room, where they’ll live until spring.”
“You’re in a band?” Sarah asked, embarrassed that she found it as sexy as she did. “Is it totally cliché if I’m automatically turned on by that?”
Brook laughed.
“How can an emotion be cliché? It either exists, or it doesn’t. My band is called North State of Mind.”
“I like it. What kind of music do you play?”
“I call it folk meets the blues.”
“Intriguing.”
“You should come hear us play sometime.”
“I’d like that,” Sarah said. “Though I fear we’re already doomed for failure.”
“Why is that?” Brook asked.
“I’m a dog person.”
Brook leaned forward, admiring Sarah’s backside.
“I don’t see a tail.”
Sarah grinned.
“I seriously dig you, Brook with the bird named Baba Yaga.”
CORRIE
I LOOKED AT THE CHAOTIC, drunken scene. Costumed bodies writhing to the haunting music blasting from the speakers. A trash can near the door overflowing with plastic cups and paper plates. My head swam, and when I looked at the grandfather clock standing astutely in the hallway, I saw it was after midnight. People had been leaving for an hour, the group slowly thinning, cars disappearing from the crowded courtyard.
I slipped up the stairs and rested on the edge of the bathtub, staring at my dress and willing the floor to stop tilting.
SAMMY NEVER CHEATED ON ME, never. I know that. But that night, something happened. Maybe it triggered all that followed.
Her name was Chloe. I've never much cared for the name. It sounds like a fake name for a fake person. Chloe would be the name in giant starburst letters on the cardboard box of a blow-up doll with puckered lips and a rubber 'flesh-like' hole, meant to bring pleasure to some sad man whose wife had left him a decade before. Chloe might be a nickname or a puppy's name, but a grown woman?
She showed up to our Halloween party in silver tights and a tiny red velvet dress that tucked around her body like cellophane. Red pointed horns stuck from her thick black hair. She was beautiful in that terrifyingly exotic way that so many women fear. Slanted cat eyes thick with mascara, and enormous red pornographic lips that made every spoken word look like an invitation for oral sex. Worse, she worked with Sammy. She was the secretary for a comic book artist he was doing a collaboration with.
Most of the guests had gone home. I stopped in the kitchen and filled a tall glass with water, gulping it down in two long drinks.
When I saw her kissing him beneath the oak tree, I felt the weirdest sensation - as if I was tumbling down a mountain caught in avalanche, getting buried. And as the light began to disappear, I watched my life with Sammy vanish as well. I watched his sweet smile turn grotesque and angry as we fought over the custody of our love child and the stupid bullshit we'd accumulated during our marriage. I watched a real estate agent hammering a for-sale sign in front of our little bungalow, and the tire swing in the backyard getting ripped down to improve the resale value. I saw Chloe putting lipstick on the innocent face of my beautiful daughter and insisting that Sammy enroll her in jazz classes and pierce her ears.
I went crazy. I didn't know it at the time, but I did. I took a knife out of a kitchen drawer and went upstairs to lie down.
I placed the knife beneath my pillow, closed my eyes, and fell asleep.
CHAPTER 31
Now
Sarah
“C rash at my place, if you want,” Sarah told Will.
He glared at her.
“I have my own places to crash. I don’t need charity.”
“It’s not charity. I need your help tomorrow, and I don’t feel like hunting through all your little hovels in the morning.”
Will looked away, and then returned a hard glare at her.
“I’m not exactly ‘Leave it to Beaver’ material, Sarah. What will your friends think?”
“Seriously? I’m a lesbian. I dropped the judgey friends ages ago. We marginalized folks have to stick together.”
“You’re gay?” He lifted an eyebrow.
“Yes, and not the merry kind. I date women.”
He picked his duffel bag off the ground and slung it over his shoulder.
“All right.” He plopped back into the passenger seat.
She smiled but directed her expression toward the window, lest he flee from her obvious joy at his staying the night. It wasn’t the company she wanted, but an end to the niggling unease that woke her at least once every night since meeting him. Fear for his safety, for Corrie, Isis, her mother. Fear drove her out of bed to her home office, where she sketched house plans until her hands ached and her eyes grew bleary. It was ridiculous.
Will was a seventeen-year-old man, able to take care of himself, and yet… She thought of Isis, small and innocent and caught in the same cycle of loss. She wanted to believe that if Isis ever met a similar fate, there would be kind strangers who would guide her.
SARAH’S DOG turned from his spot on the sofa, where she imagined seconds before he’d been springing in the air like a dog on a trampoline. He bounded across the room and greeted Sarah with a cheerful bark.
“How’s my little Archie?” Sarah knelt and scratched behind Archie’s fluffy white ears.
“Hey, Archie,” Will said when the dog shifted his attention to the stranger in his house. He nudged his head into Will’s knee. “Did you name him after the comic strip?” Will patted the dog on the back and held out his palm while Archie licked it and barked a seeming approval at Sarah.
“After Andy Warhol, actually. Well, not him, but his dog.” Sarah gestured at a half-wall painting of a vivid Marilyn Monroe set against a pale blue background.
“Is that an original?” he asked.
Sarah shook her head. “I’m doing pretty well, but not that well. Do you know his work?”
“Nah. I mean, we brushed over it one of my online classes. Apparently, he’s the father of pop-culture or pop art or Pop Tarts. I can’t say his stuff moved me.”
Sarah surveyed the picture. “I find Andy fascinating because he rebelled against the status quo. He chose an authentic life - not easy to do, as you yourself know.”
Will nodded looking at the image for another moment before taking in the rest of the house’s spacious interior.
“Damn, this place is swikkety-swank. Did you design this?”