Wouldn't you know it? Just about the time I had a good start on Carmine Club Chronicles, my muse starts blathering about an interracial menage that's been circling in my belfry for a while.
Here's the start. Hopefully, this will shut her up enough to let me finish up the last chapter of Incidental Contact later today, then get back to finding out what Cam does at the auction about to take place at Carmine House.
Honeysuckle and Vellum
Chapter One
(unedited and subject to deletion)
Bailey
Seated in Gracie's
section, I frowned at the woman who wasn't Gracie when she heated my coffee. Gracie
Rogers was the only reason I came to this diner-slash-convenience store combo
right off the interstate. Lush figure.
Long brown hair. Eyes the color of
cinnamon, as soft-looking as the rest of her. My father wouldn't dirty his tongue by saying her name. I knew that was a large part of my attraction to her.
People say a man can't
outrun his father. I'd spent the last ten years trying, and hadn't yet given
up. My old man's a vulture. Oh, he dresses in fine suits and his shirts are
always starched, but his puffed-up chest is lined with dark feathers and the
heart beating inside is that of a carrion bird's. Not an eagle, as he might
have people believe. An eagle will attack live prey. A vulture waits till his
prey is disabled or dead. My father is a torts attorney. In layman's terms,
he's an ambulance chaser, and he excels at his job.
Me? I graduated law
school a few months back. Whenever people ask me when I plan to start
practicing law, I tell 'em I'm waiting to hear back from my application to med
school. They laugh, but it's the truth.
For the last two weeks,
the uppermost thing on my mind had been Gracie. I heard her childish voice in
my sleep. Dreamed about settling in between her round thighs for a long, slow
fuck. Imagined her full breasts in my hands while I sucked on her nipples. Saw
her generous ass turned up and waiting for my cock.
I had it bad for Gracie.
Tonight—or rather, in the morning when she got off shift— I planned to go home with
her and fuck her right off my mind. My plan wasn't elegant. I was gonna sit
here all night, just talking and flirting till she got off, just before sunrise.
I figured there was
only one obstacle to the success of my plan, and he was just comin' through the
door. The small restaurant section was full. Virgil Tate surveyed each booth. Better
to keep your enemies close, my father said. I stood, indicating the unoccupied
seat across the table. When he saw me, his white teeth flashed in a sardonic
smile and he strolled down the aisle, headed my way.
He moved like a
panther, all sinew and muscle. He'd had those muscles before he spent three
years in Cross Anchor Correctional. Momentarily
forgetting Gracie, I recalled cheering for Virgil when he caught touchdown passes
at the university that had recently handed me my law degree.
Gracie
As soon as I crossed the
railroad tracks, I saw that the only working phone booth between my house and
the diner was occupied. I couldn't go to work without making the phone call. I
knew I'd never be able to focus. When I didn't focus, my tips were bad. I
needed to make decent money tonight. My power bill was overdue. Downtown had
been closed for hours so I had no trouble parking along the street. The air
conditioning didn't work in my old Grand Am. Not much on the dash worked,
actually, including the clock. I picked up my cell phone, just to check the
time. Nine minutes after eight. Time to
spare.
To my right, on the
other side of the tracks, the elegant steeple of the First Baptist church
pierced the setting sun. Sweat dampened the band of my bra, making it bite into
my flesh. Reaching into the low neckline of my uniform, I eased my finger
beneath one strap, caressing the permanent and tender ditch on one shoulder. The
gesture only made the strap seem to dig in more. Sweat trickled between my
breasts. My pantyhose felt like medieval armor.
It wasn't a whole phone
booth with folding glass doors, but rather one of those half-booths that hung
from a post. The kid on the phone reminded me of one of my favorite customers
at the diner. It must've been the color of his skin, because when he glanced
over his shoulder, the boy looked nothing like Virgil Tate. For one thing,
Virgil had stunning light green eyes. They looked like jade, though I’d only seen
jade in magazines.
The brown-eyed kid flashed me the peace sign, then turned
his back. Lifting a glass Dr. Pepper bottle off the ledge beneath the drug
store window, he took a long swallow. The machine inside the drug store still
sold soft drinks in glass bottles. They were a real treat on a hot day and they
were only fifty cents.
Maybe sixteen, I
decided. He had the arrogant stance of a grown man, the smooth, hairless skin
of a child, and his pants threatened to fall down any minute. He turned around
again, moving his feet this time so I saw more of him. Heavy gold chains dangled
over his sleeveless white T-shirt. The charms proclaimed his interests. A Mercedes
symbol. A handgun. A bulldog. The car he wanted to drive, the life he pretended
to lead, and his high school mascot, I guessed. He didn't look like a thug. He
just looked like a kid wanting to fit in.
I wasn't afraid of him.
I'd learned it was the men I knew that I needed to fear. Not strangers. He wasn't
talking. Over the ticking motor of the Grand Am, I heard nothing. He kept
glancing around, as though I bothered him. Thumping bass made him turn in the
opposite direction. I looked up, too.
Coming over the hill
beside the railroad tracks, the front end of a small pickup truck caught the
setting sun, momentarily blinding me. A grinding sound worthy of my old junker
rent the peaceful dusk. I recognized the sound made by bad brakes. The driver was
slowing, I guessed, for the lower speed limit through downtown. This was prime time
for getting a speeding ticket. One of the town's two patrol cars was sure to be
close by. My vision cleared. The truck lurched. I saw an elbow sticking out of
the window. I wasn't the only one without air conditioning, looked like. The metallic
paint on the truck matched Virgil's eyes.
That notion made my
heart speed up.
Heads popped up above
the cab of the truck. Four, I thought I counted. Something arced through the
air. I physically flinched.
Virgil
The truck stop served
fresh vegetables that weren't cooked to mush. I never knew how much I liked my vegetables
fresh until I had to eat the shitty, overcooked ones they serve in prison. When
they bother to serve 'em at all.
Working late to finish and
deliver a couch so I could pick up the money, I'd managed to end up here at
what appeared to be prime time. Every booth was occupied. Faces looked up at me, all colors of faces. For
one painful moment, I recalled a sea of faces in the stands, first on Friday
nights back in high school, when I knew I'd have my choice of pussy after the
game, win or lose. Then on Saturdays in college, bigger crowds, but not as big
as the ones I lusted to see.
Since I'd played in my
first pee wee football game at the age of five, I'd dreamed of little else but
going pro.
I almost made it.
I took deep breaths and
refused to let my sore hands curl into fists, remembering. Agents and recruiters were always in the
stands my junior year at the University of South Carolina, watching me. Evaluating
me, just as the upturned faces in this place evaluated me. One by one, these
faces looked away, same as them recruiters turned away.
Now, instead of running
passing routes, I ran a sewing machine. I forced covered buttons through stiff
leather instead of forcing my way through linesmen. People didn’t stand in line
to see me play nowadays. Folks didn’t move over in their booths, waving for me
to come sit beside 'em, competing for the contact celebrity being seen with me brought.
No one used my name as a hashtag on Twitter any more, unless the post made
liberal use of the word 'loser'. The unkind ones used the word 'rapist', though
I'd never forced a woman in my life. Looking for their own kind of celebrity, I
reckon. Didn't make it any easier to take.
After the three
hard years I served at Cross Anchor for a rape I never committed, I came out
lookin' at men with the same interest as women. Hell, maybe I'd looked at men
all along. Considering how much time I'd spent in the gym and bathing in locker
rooms equipped with group showers, I'd seen more'n my share of cock. There was
one guy lookin' at me still, a white dude. He didn’t look either friendly or
unfriendly. He just looked. Maybe I'd
get laid tonight after all. No self-respecting white guy would cry rape. Not in
this state. Not that I planned to rape the guy. I just wanted a place to sit down
and eat. I could suppress my other hungers, same as I suppressed my rage. For now.
For now, I couldn’t afford
to think about the way that lyin' bitch posted her apology on my social profile
page, like the attention-whore she was. Couldn't think about the hole I'd
punched through the wall after I read it, since that damn apology was why I was
free now. Couldn't let myself feel the rage building up in me over the way
people kept posting about what a great guy I was to accept her fuckin' apology.
Those people didn’t know
about havin' no choice. I knew too damn much about it. That's why, most nights,
when I woke from fitful sleep 'round three every morning, I came back here to chat
with Gracie, because from listening to her talk and lookin' into her eyes, I knew
she knew all about havin' no choice.
The lanky white guy
stood up, gesturing to the empty seat on the opposite side of his booth. His
blue eyes looked friendly enough. Pasting on a smile I didn't feel, I strolled
down the aisle toward the booth.
I was hungry.
Gracie
The plastic bottle was
full. It skidded across my hood, spraying tan foam. The bottle rolled off and
struck the sidewalk, spewing onto the jeans and stark tennis shoes worn by the
kid on the phone.
"Motherfuckers!"
He raised a single, defiant finger at the flashing tail lights I saw in my rear
view. Through the laughing boys in the bed of the truck, I could see the rebel
flag covering the back glass of the cab. I saw the patrol car coming up behind
me, too. It passed the truck, cruising real slow. The officer behind the wheel
never turned his head when he drove past us.
Twisting to reach into
the basket of clean laundry in my back seat, I grabbed a folded bath towel. It
was still warm. My dryer was as broke as I was. Throwing my weight into the driver's
door that hadn't opened right since someone at the gas station had backed into
it and left without a note, I tried to force the door open, waving the towel out the
window. "How mean," I said, my outrage making me sweat more. "Here. Use
this."
He snatched the towel
from my grasp, using it to swipe at the brown splotches covering his white
shirt. "Did you see that motherfucker just drive right on by?" Assuming
he meant the cop, I nodded, managing to get the door to open. He sprang back
before it clipped him in the knees. "Thanks, lady," he muttered,
reinforcing my guess that he was no thug, just some mother's child, trying to
look like all the rest, because being different cost more than that gold he wore. He propped a shoe on the top of my front tire,
rubbing briskly at the stains. I fished into my uniform pocket for the quarter
and dime.
"Is it okay if I use
the phone now?"
He glanced at me, dark
brows rising over darker eyes. I winced. I had to learn to stop asking a man for permission
to do a damn thing. I hurried to the phone booth. My hand
trembled when I dropped the money into the slot. Punching the number I'd called
every night for one hundred and sixty-five days, I fought to control my body's
quaking.
The kid tossed the
towel into my front seat and turned to walk down the sidewalk, just as the call
was answered. "County Detention Center. Officer Jacobs speakin'."
My voice shook as much
as my hand. "Can you tell me, please, Officer, if Crowder Watson's still
an inmate?"
The sound of pages
flipping filled the line. "Yes, he's still here, ma'am. Do you need instructions
on how to post bail?"
I slammed down the
phone, listening to the sound of my money dropping into the box and the roaring
sound of my blood pounding in my head. I pictured the church steeple behind me,
and yet again,I prayed no one would see fit to cough up bail money for the bastard that had killed my child.
By the time my vision
cleared of Crowder's hated face, the kid was nowhere in sight and I was late
for work.
Yup. 2,238 words I can't count. Happy nano'ing. Opal, my darling muse, I hope you're satisfied now.
