Sovereign Ground (Breaking Bonds) (9 page)

Coribella Reese, with a Reno address. She must
have misplaced this message from … Lehi Brower, Utah. I turn it over several
times. She will be glad I found it.

Now, about this pearl.

When I wake, the room has darkened. The open book
is a shield on my chest, I don’t remember laying it down. I look out the French
doors and try to orient myself. The sun has begun to dip behind the Sierra
Nevadas; the earth slipping into her nightgown.

The kitchen lights burst on.

“Oh, hey.” Cori wears snug black pants that flare
out over gold high-heeled sandals. Her emerald and gold halter-top shimmers
against equally iridescent skin. The green in her top highlights the green hues
in her dragon tattoo. But the most catching part of her is still her eyes. The
heavy black eyeliner is doubly dramatic with her hair slicked. “Go get ready.”

I smooth my hair down and pull half in front of
each shoulder, gripping the ends. I look down at my jeans then at my backpack,
trying to remember what I packed.

Cori bites her lip. “Want to borrow something?”

“Oh, no. Well, if you…”

She grabs my hand and pulls me to her bedroom. Her
laughter is our music. In just a few minutes, I’m wearing a mini-dress made of
something like crushed velvet and knee-high black boots.

Cori has three beers before I finish mine, and it
takes me nearly to the end before I remember the letter.

“I love your bookshelf.”

“Oh?” She gives her bookshelf the kind of glance
you give a stranger who looks benign, but seems to be following you.

“I fell asleep reading one of your John Steinbecks.”
This is when I remember. “I found an envelope inside.”

She makes no move to touch the letter. “I forgot
that was in there.” Cori lifts her bottle and drains the liquid.

I feel silly with my arm extended, balancing a faded
white rectangle between two fingers. It slips and falls to the floor. Cori doesn’t
move toward it. I bend, awkwardly in my mini-dress, and retrieve it. Picking it
up takes two tries since my fingernails are so short. I set it on the counter.

“Do you like John Steinbeck?”

“No. Not really. Too depressing. I don’t really
get him,” she answers. I turn the book over and smooth the cover. “You should
keep that one.”

I look up at her quickly.

“No, really, you can have it,” she insists.

I try to judge why she would give me a book from
her collection so flippantly. There will be a hole in the row now. I look back
to the shelf. When I start making enough, books will be at the top of my
necessities list.

“Naw, I’ll just borrow it.”

“Whatever.” Cori starts to talk about the clubs
we’ll visit tonight, but I don’t really listen. She casually approaches the
letter, opens a drawer and uses her empty beer bottle to slide the letter
inside. She closes the drawer with her hip and looks at me as though nothing
unusual happened—and she didn’t just avoid touching an envelope.

Cori tosses her fourth empty bottle and opens a
cupboard. It looks like the shelves behind the TorchLight’s bar where rows of
assorted glass sparkle.

“When are your friends coming?” I’m content, but
she seems agitated. The waiting bugs her.

“One hour ago.” She walks to the wall clock and
moves the hands from the current time, 8:57, back to eight o’clock. She turns
and looks at me. “Any minute.”

Do I tell her she’s had enough? Cori waltzes the catwalk
back to the kitchen and sits on the barstool next to me. “You didn’t drink your
last shot.” She holds the vodka bottle poised above the rim of my glass.

“I didn’t like it.”

She bursts with a congested sound in the back of
her throat: stifled but insincere laughter. “Fine, I’ll make you a Manhattan.”
She reopens the cupboard of glass and crystal.

While she mixes another drink for me, she finishes
my vodka. I peruse the kitchen, opening cupboards. Apparently, all she does
here is drink. No water glasses, no plates, no Cheez-Its.

“Cori, do you really live here?”

Her smile is bitter. “The high life.”

Fine. I don’t care what she does here. I walk to
the front window and push aside the floor-length, brocade curtain. Beyond the
pool, beyond Cori’s Miata, I see the rounded back end of Hayden’s truck. I drop
the curtain back in place.

He’s not following me.

It might not even be his truck. Hayden’s wasn’t shiny
and purple when he came to my house. And really, I couldn’t tell what shape or
color the truck was when my dress got stolen. He could have painted it any
color by now. From beyond the range of the street lamp, Hayden emerges. He
wears black fatigues, boots and a black T-shirt. He moves like a cop. His eyes
scan, his back is straight, alert.

“What?”

I turn to Cori, but take time to push the curtain
back in place. “I didn’t say anything.”

“You gasped pretty loud.” She flips on the inside
light and pushes the curtain to the side. There she stands, illuminated to the
parking lot. “What were you looking at?”

“No!” I duck from view of the window and fumble
for the right switch. It isn’t like the light switches at my house, it’s a
slide and there’re three in a row. I turn them all on before I can get the room
dark again.

Her laughter isn’t so beautiful right now. She
heads back to the light switch, intending to play.

“Don’t. There’s a guy.”

“Oooh,” she says.

Where do I start? “I used to work at the Wild
Lily.”

She stops moving. I can see her from the ambient
kitchen light, but I can’t quite work out her expression.

“The guy out there is a cop.”

Cori runs to the kitchen and turns off the light.
She flies through the house checking every curtain, the French doors. We move
together to the front window and, using the drape to hide us, peer out. Hayden
is gone.

“Do you see that purple truck?”

“The fifties-style?”

“Yeah.” I answer. “1947, actually. First post-war
vehicle.”

She bursts with a comical guffaw. “The stalker?”

“Huh?”

“From the TorchLight, last night?” Cori walks back
into the kitchen and turns the light on again. “Come drink your Manhattan.”

I don’t move right away.

“Hellooo? Come in here.”

I walk back to the bar and take the offered drink.

“He was at the pawn shop, too.” I try.

“Maybe we should invite him up.”

I hold the wide rimmed, triangle glass up and
slowly but continuously drink to hide my face. I don’t have to answer. Hayden
and this life don’t need to meet.

“Since no one else came,” she continues, dejected.
I never thought someone as fascinating or beautiful as her would be without a
party following. I don’t look up. Poor Cori.

She walks over to the drawer where the letter
waits. She opens it, looks inside, then closes it.

“Why do you dance?” She still faces the closed
drawer.

I don’t answer immediately. How much should I
share? “I need the money.”

“Of course.”

“You?”

“I love it.” She begins to mix two more
Manhattans.

“Is it a sin?” I keep expecting Hayden to knock on
the door. “Does it steal souls from children?”

“What?” She looks like a skeptical clown the way
her right eyebrow shoots up and her lips flare out.

“If there is a such thing as a sin.” She shakes
her head. “No. It’s kosher if it’s consensual.”

“Yeah.” I’m starting to feel really good: loose,
tingly.

“You asked about my place, Sparrow.” She enounces
my name like she is trying to give it as many syllables as possible.

“I entertain.” She pauses. Reconsidering?

“Friends?”

“Clients.”

She looks impatient, like I’m the little sister
she always has to wait for. “Cosmetology clients?”

“Discrete, gentleman clients.” She sets down her
drink. “That’s why it isn’t me here.” She walks toward the bookshelf and twirls
slowly, still holding her drink, “It’s Bella.”

“Oh.” I can’t bring myself to call her a
prostitute.

“I have something they want, they have something I
want.” She takes a drink. “Consensual, baby.” I can’t tell if she called me
Baby or just said baby. “But my parents would call it a sin.”

The letter. “In Utah?” I hope my voice sounds
casual.

“Yep.” She walks back to the kitchen. I accept
another drink because I want to maintain this feeling. I have never had this
much. Thom. No, don’t think about him. I’m in control.

“Just call me Jack.” She smirks. “The Jack
family.”

“I thought your last name was Reese.”

“No, we were definitely the Jack family. Non-practicing
Mormons.”

I remember Lorna arguing with either a Mormon or a
Jehovah’s Witness once. I’m not sure of the difference between the two.

“It would be better to be raised without religion
than a false one.” She holds up her glass in toast.

“Is there a real one?” Does she know? If she says
yes, I’ll believe her.

“Of course not.” She picks up her cell phone.
“Let’s call a cab. We’re going to scope out the other clubs and get you an
act.”

“Go watch other strippers?” Women never really
came into the Wild Lilly.

“Yes, dummy. See the competition.”

“First, tell me who the letter’s from,” I say.

She ignores me. I stand and cross my arms. I’m not
budging.

Cori rolls her lacquered eyes and picks up her
cell phone. “He was my fiancé.”

After Cori delivered her fiancé comment, her ocean
eyes looked wide and watery. I haven’t had courage to ask again during the past
forty-eight hour blur of sleeping, drinking and going to clubs. It’s hilarious
how much easier it is for me to dance at a club than get into one. Cori
promised next time she would get me a fake ID.

Cori flirts with Rob, the bouncer who let me sneak
into the Kittie Kat Lounge. To me, all bouncers look the same. A neck I can’t
fit my fingers around and short, thick arms that barely cross over a swollen
chest. Their eyes…well, I mostly avoid looking at their faces.

The majority of the girls here look underfed and
overdosed. Some clubs just have a better feel than others. This one’s crowded
though, mostly because of a bachelor party. The groom-to-be has an upside down
mustache. A little Hitler patch underneath his bottom lip. His friends will
carry him out of here if he keeps up his current pace. Ah, the bride would be
so proud…

The dancer is upside down, attached to the pole by
one leg. Pole dancing is no small feat. It should be an Olympic sport, all the
girls say so. That just makes me giggle, but I stifle it in front of Cori.

“Have you seen your stalker today?” Cori plops
down beside me.

“No, but I keep looking in the shadows for him.” I
think I see Hayden or his truck every now and then, but I’m never sure.

“Don’t say that.” Cori’s lips form a wrinkly “O”
and her eyebrows hide half her forehead.

“What? That I keep expecting him?”

She leans forward in that sly way she does to the
men, but her face is pinched panic. “No. That you look in the shadows.” I
barely hear her voice. She shakes her head as she leans away. “Don’t look.” I read
her lips.

I match her tone and volume. “Why?”

“Don’t look…” She pauses and closes her eyes. “…at
the shadow people.”

My first thought is that she teases. I judge her
seriousness, and my thoughts turn to her sanity.

“Rob-by.” She leans over to Rob, and her laughter adds
shrill notes to the already discordant tones keeping the dancers’ beat.

An air clamp presses against my chest. Someone is
here, or something. Here. Is it the curse? The spirit near me?

My eyes scour the corners. Can Cori see my curse?
The cluster of chairs and people make me feel trapped. I need out.

I fumble through the crowd. A few questions are
called to me from the bachelors. I don’t understand the words, only their gist.

It occurs to me after I exit the building, that—while
I’m finally alone—I am locked outside. Just as the door-click signals it’s too
late, I realize I can neither reenter the locked emergency exit, nor get past
the front entrance without Cori’s lapdog, Robby.

The brick exterior is cold against my back. A stream
of florescent light swirl with entranced insects. I’m in the circle of this
light. But I’m not absorbed, not even warmed. I am, however, surrounded by
shadows.

And in the shadow stands a figure: a man.

The metal door creaks. “What are you doing out
here?” Cori pulls me in. Her wrinkled bottom lip clenched between her teeth
makes her look concerned. Everyone needs a sister.

When we return to the lounge, I begin to doubt I
really saw anyone outside. I don’t think haunting spirits have shapes. And why
would some guy just be standing outside a building? I need to make a plan someday,
to fulfill my vow and laugh at my grandfather’s curse.

Inside, one of the bachelors shares a
confrontation with Rob. Another man from the bachelor party puts on a jacket and
leans forward to the groom. There is some cussing and strutting before the group
leaves. Cock-a-doodle-do.

“I’m getting another drink,” says Cori. “Stay
inside.”

“It stinks in here.”

“I don’t care.”

I turn to the chairs where we were sitting before
I ran outside. The guy from the TorchLight, Brody’s friend, sits with his arm
around the chair that was mine earlier. He leans back and has an ankle resting
on the knee of his other leg. Part of his body overflows his seat and crowds into
mine. He may as well wear a “property under new management” sign on his chest.

“You never brought me that Jack Daniels.”

I don’t plan to sit there in the nook of his arm.
He lowers his crossed leg and his heel steps on the corner of my backpack. How
did I leave my flute again? The fact that I ran from the room, without taking
my bag, creates a cool wetness on my hands and the back of my neck.

“Why are you rubbing your hands? Do I make you
nervous?” He sits forward, grins and rests his large hands on his knees. He’s
handsome, despite being bald. Maybe it’s his crooked nose. The only faces that
interest me are those with a distinguishing characteristic. Like a cleft lip…

I want to tell him, “No, you don’t make me nervous.”
But I just shake my head.

“You’re Brody’s new bird.” He pushes the chair
next to him closer to me. I lower into it, but I don’t really want to; I’m just
trying to get closer to my backpack. “I keep picturing you in that shiny blue
dress, running away.” The emphasis is on the last two words, not the dress. His
smile creeps up sideways, into his left cheek. “I’m Clint.”

“Yes.” My affirmative squeaks out, but at least I
have progressed beyond nods and shakes. Slowly, I reach down until I feel the
canvas of my navy Jansport bag. Clint stretches a leg, and the heel of his Doc
Martin slides my bag away from my grasp.

“Your purse doesn’t match your outfit.” He looks
down at the gauzy fabric of my cherry-red sheath dress. I don’t know if it’s the
alcohol, but this makes me laugh.

“Cori didn’t want me to bring it for that reason.”

“Really?” He lifts the bag to his lap.

I try to tuck my hair behind my ear to keep my
hands still. If I reach for the bag and he pulls back, he will have the
advantage. My hair catches in the chandelier earrings and tangles. I know my
ear pulls out with my hair because of the “ouch” face Clint makes. He leans
forward, places the bag between us and begins to untangle my hair. I let him
touch me because I can feel the bag resting under my hand.

“These are huge.” His breath is warm against my
neck. The smell is not unpleasant, sort of earthy. “Look at this, girl, they
reach your shoulder.” Coarse fingers pull entwined hair from the costume
jewelry. He traces his finger over my dress strap and pushes a handful of hair
away from my shoulder. His hand stays on my back, under my hair.

“Brody has a lot to say about you.”

He sits back in his chair, and there I am—in the
nook of his arm.

He turns his head and watches a dancer. I scan the
room, looking for Cori. She waves from the bar where she stands with Rob. If
she has noticed Clint, she doesn’t indicate it.

“And the way you looked the other night in that
blue dress...” Clint looks back at me and pulls me a little closer. “Wow.” One
eyebrow punches upward with the word.

“It wasn’t my dress.”

“Well, you owned it that night.”

“Oh. Well, it belongs to TorchLight’s costumes…” And
now Hayden has stolen it.

“Just say thanks.”

I don’t.

He draws his hand up to my neck.

It gives me brutal chills. My stomach churns like I’m
falling, and I have the sensation I’ll throw up. Something is really wrong
right now.