CHERISH (41 page)

“I will do my best. That’s what people pay me for. But, there are never guarantees. You do what I tell you, we will put the best case forward we possibly can. My retainer is $5,000.” He pauses and raises his eyebrows, making sure I heard that number. “We need to have our motion filed within thirty days to even have a chance the court will hear your petition. You know why, right?”

He lays his hands in his lap and crosses his legs. His condescending look and the way he glances at his watch just make it that much harder to speak.

“I’ll be back.” I drop my eyes.

I want to tell his smug face to go fuck himself, but I won’t. I did my research. He’s the best, and that’s what I need. That’s what I
have
to have. “I don’t know how, but if you think there’s a possibility I can win, I’ll figure out how to get you the money.”

With that said, I scoop up my garbage-picked North Face backpack and slip my arms into my jacket. He won’t meet my eyes. As I turn toward my left, he’s no longer visible anyway thanks to one of my foster mothers dunking my face into a bucket of bleach and water after she judged my bathroom cleaning skills as inadequate.

I trump your inability to look at me with my inability to see you. So there.

“I have a trust fund.” I swallow and heave a heavy, internal sigh, listening to the lie trickle out as naturally as I breathe. “I just have to get my executor to release the money. It shouldn’t take long.”

His incredulous glare and my pathetic lie are the last things we exchange before he’s looking at my back, and I’m shaking my head, trying to figure out why I do that.

Even with two jobs, I’ve only managed to stuff $543 under my mattress. I have less than thirty days to come up with
ten times
that amount.

Yet, running to the bus stop, it’s not the seemingly insurmountable task of getting $5,000 together that’s on my mind. It’s this tension in my chest—picturing those Monet blue-green eyes that looked straight into mine an hour ago.

He didn’t only meet my eyes, he held them like they were his.

Who is he, and why is he affecting me? I thought I was immune to men. I’ve spent the last decade making sure of it.

“You have twenty
fucking
minutes to be on that
fucking
stage, we clear?” Tito, the manager of Club Paradise, grumbles as he blows smoke in my face from the doorway.

The closet-sized dressing room stinks from years of spilled drinks and just about anything that can be smoked, the walls covered with drama written in lipstick or eyeliner. Maybe even blood. “Randal Coburn has a three-inch cock!” and “Misty Sunrise better watch her whore ass!” just a sample of the history of drama at Club Paradise.

“Leave her alone. She’ll be there.” Sissy waves her hand in the air dismissing the narrow-eyed, younger version of Danny Devito.

“
You
shut up.” He points at Sissy, then his eyes trail from my head down. “And you need to lose ten pounds. Twenty would be better.” He hisses at me.

“Get out of here, asshole.” Sissy shoves him toward the door.

With his shoulders hunched and his head forward like a bulldog, he’s gone.

I wish I had her moxie. But, I just look away. I’m always looking away.

“Here, hon.” Sissy shoves a tall glass topped with a paper umbrella into my hand. “Don’t worry about him. Have a drink.” She knows I don't drink even though I turned twenty-one a couple months ago. She has the bartender make me a Shirley Temple with an umbrella every night we work together. It makes me feel a bit cheerier, even if it doesn’t create the desired numbing effect.

“Thanks.” She’s helping snap the three-foot tall, virgin-white, feathered wings onto the clear vinyl straps around my neck and shoulders. The stupid things weigh at least twenty pounds.

If I were a real angel, I’d never be able to fly with these. I’d fall right out of the sky and down into hell.

“All set. Beautiful as always.” Sissy takes a long drag on her glass pipe, and the sweet smell fills the makeshift closet-dressing room. “You want?” She squeaks out the words, attempting to hold the smoke in her lungs while taunting me with the ornate, pink pipe.

“No thanks.” I shake my head even though she should know better.

She lets out a long misty, white breath over my head.

“You are the straightest stripper I’ve ever met, you know that?”

“Am I?” I wince a little at the word “stripper.” I don’t think of myself as a stripper and debating my job title as well as my mind altering substance intake is not on my agenda either, and Sissy takes the hint from my unusually sharp tone.

“So, what did he say?” She asks in a hushed whisper and leans toward the mirror where our eyes meet in the reflection.

“
Shhhhh!
I told you we can’t talk about it. No one can know, okay?” I keep my voice as low as I can as my eyes dart to the door.

“Who’s listening to us in here?” Sissy shrugs, looking around.

“Just—I don’t want to talk about it here, okay?
Please
, don’t ask me again. You never know who’s listening.”

“Okay, okay.
Geez
.” She flaps her hand at me and puts the pipe to her lips, reaching onto the smallish table in front of me for the lighter.

A soft tap on the door stops her, and the face of the one person I did not want to overhear us pushes his head inside the doorway.

I raise my eyebrows at Sissy, giving her my best I-told-you-so look.

Jeremy’s plugged hairline gives me a shiver. I can remember ten years ago when he was practically bald. Now, he’s got a full head of hair again, his gift to himself on his fortieth birthday. “Hey,” he says.

When Mr. Fitzgerald’s son said that same single-word greeting to me a few hours ago, I felt it like a moth flying into a bug zapper. When Jeremy greets me—nothing.

Sissy rolls her eyes and turns to pretend she is checking herself in the mirror behind me.

“Hey.” My voice is flat, but I force a polite smile.

“You look beautiful.” The compliment feels dirty as he stares me up and down.

I look like a cross between a snow angel and a winged sex doll.

“Thanks.” My heart is racing.
I need to keep my mouth shut around here.

“You want to come over after you’re done here?” Jeremy Rendall has been in my life for going on twelve years. He took over after my third caseworker—Leonard something—couldn’t handle me anymore. Jeremy stuck with me then and long after the State of Ohio released me to take on the world without their guidance, and now I can’t seem to get him unstuck.

Only, the last year or so his interest in me has taken a turn.

“No, sorry. I have to be back on shift at Windfield by seven. I’ll be lucky if I get a few hours sleep as it is.”

I watch him turn from saccharine to cyanide.

“No time for me.” He bites his upper lip and his fingers trail down the feathers I’ve pinned throughout my twisted, glittered hair.

“It’s not that. I just—” My stomach turns in on itself. “I am so tired already.”

He’s been pushing me for weeks, and I’m running out of excuses.

“Fine.” He snaps and with a pout, he’s out the door.

I know things are far from
fine
and that he’ll be back.

“I
haaaaaaate
that guy,” Sissy hisses, her face looking like she’s just tasted something awful.

I let out a resigned giggle. “Yeah? Well, he’s the one person I need right now. He’s not
that
bad. He’s helped me a lot.”

“I don’t care. There is something
wrong
with him. Trust me,
I know.
I have a sixth sense, and that guy,” she points toward the now closed door, “is a few pints short of a gallon.”

I hear the music change out on the bar floor. The new heightened pace of rhythmic thumping coming through the walls is my stage call.

Another day in Paradise.

Literally
. Club Paradise. And me? I’m the “Promised Angel of Paradise.” Cute, huh?

Part freak show, part sex show.

Two times tonight.

I can do this.

I’ve done it for the last year, and every night, I still have to give myself the same pep talk.

You can do it.

Nope, I can’t. I’m going to throw up all over the front row.

Five thousand dollars is the only thing I think of as I round the turn in the stinking, back hallway, my clear acrylic six-inch heels
click-clacking
with each step. The spotlights blind me as I back myself onto the stage and plaster on a smile.

Showtime.

Beckett

I’m watching Dad sleep and wishing I could trade places with him.

Just for a few hours.

Bruce said Promise worked at 7 AM. I showed up at 6:15.

I rang the after hours bell and waited in the dark until one of the care staff had eyed me nervously through the front doors at Windfield before opening it a crack.

“You need to come back at seven.” The young woman said nervously. “I’m not supposed to let anyone in until seven.” She had clearly been covering her ass by stating the rule because as she said it, she’d opened the door wide enough for me to enter, locking her gaze on my three, large boxes of Looney Baker Donuts.

“Where can I put these so everyone will get one?” I’d asked, holding out the boxes. Clearly my chosen currency had been valuable enough to gain me early entry.

“I’ll put them in the break room.” Her hands quickly freed me from the sweet confections. With the exchange complete, she’d swished off, and I’d wandered down the hall to settle in next to Dad.

After I’d left Windfield yesterday evening, I stopped in to see Louis. The dude works all the time. In addition to his near conglomerate-sized security company, EYEsOn Inc., he runs Moby’s, a slick, smallish, trendy bar down on Height Street. It’s a far cry from his days of volunteering at CPS all those years ago, helping out young men with no decent role models in sight. Either way, he seems to love his work.

When I got to the packed bar, Louis had been busy, but he slipped me a key to his guesthouse, sliding it across the bar along with a shout that I should come back around dinner time to catch up.

The guest house offer had been perfect because I’d needed a place to crash and hadn’t been in the mood for a chat. We’ve always seemed to be on the same page.

I slept right through dinner last night, so I’ll go over to his office later. I’m looking forward to catching up. He and I have a lot to talk about. But right this second, as I watch my dad sleep, all I can think about is Promise.

Promise.

I’ve said her name so many times in my life, it doesn’t sound real anymore. The word has no meaning outside of her.

Walking into my dad’s room yesterday and seeing her felt like someone had torn open a fresh wound. Last night, laying in the guest house, she’d floated into my dreams and tugged at me, reminding me of how I could have changed her life. How I could have been the one to save her.

But, I didn’t.

I hate the way she always looks away, how it looks painful for her to meet my eyes. To meet anyone’s eyes.

I’d wanted to scoop her up and run. I have no idea where I would have taken her. I really don’t know anything about her, but I was in physical pain just being in the same room with her.

On my way to meet Louis last night, I stopped in at a used bookstore where a pink-haired girl twiddled the stud in her bottom lip as she sat on a stool behind a card table. She hadn't looked up when the bells rang on the door and hardly acknowledged me when she took my five dollars and forty-seven cents, but I left with three, hardback books in my hands.

Sitting here now, watching Dad sleep, I set the books on the bedside table. The loud, raspy breaths of my father are the only sounds besides the tick of the clock above his bed.

Before the fire, he was a fanatical reader. He’d read to me, he’d read by himself, he’d read to all of us,
to mom
. I don’t remember the TV being on when I was little. Not when he was around. It was always a book.

He loved mysteries. Sometimes an Asimov or other Sci-Fi for fun. He won’t admit it, but he’s almost blind now—his vision one of the spoils of the war he’s been losing for years.