Forever Promised (5 page)

“Yeah?” Martin said, looking at the girl and nodding like he knew what was coming.

“Would you like a sandwich? You look faint and frail to me.”

Martin snickered. “Yeah, Mikhail, my blood sugar, it’s gettin’ real low.”

Mikhail scowled at him. “Someday,” he said with gravity, “you will get fat, and I will enjoy that moment more than you can possibly fathom. Pastrami, with pickles, sauce, and cream cheese, am I right?”

“Seriously? You remember all of that?”

“Pfft!” Mikhail waved him off as he trotted across the small parking lot that was used for Collin’s Car Repair toward the even
smaller
lot, which housed Collin’s mother’s diner. “You virgins—once you get that out of your system, you have some room in your brains for thinking.”

“Geez!” Martin whined behind him. “Dammit, Mikhail, do you have to say that so loud!” Martin’s voice dropped as Mikhail got closer to the diner, which meant he was smarter than Mikhail had first thought, because the pretty, feral creature crouched behind the diner eating someone else’s french fries may
not
have heard him.

Mikhail ignored her on the way in, but he did smile at Collin’s sister, Joanna, who actually
had
a job working somewhere Mikhail did not know but who came in to help her mother when she could. Her daughter, Kelsey, was sitting at a table, coloring in an activity book, and Mikhail smiled at her too.

“Mom!” Kelsey said, her voice a little awestruck. “It’s Teacher Mikhail!”

Joanna smiled at her. “Yeah, Kelse—you remember? We saw him at the wedding?”

Kelsey had a round little face and blonde flyaway hair, and her chubby cheeks bunched up in her smile. “I remember! You wore a
suit
and it was
hot
!”

Mikhail nodded. “Yes, indeed it was. Made
my
wedding in February look downright sensible.” He looked up at Joanna behind the counter, and she smiled back. Her dark hair—very unlike
her brother’s—was pulled back in a practical ponytail, and she looked hot and disheveled here in the little diner.

“I do hate to put you out,” Mikhail started sincerely, “but if you please, might I have three”—wait, Shane might want one—“no, four sandwiches?”

She smiled gaily as though this were not a job for her but rather a break from her regular job, and took his order, talking the entire time.

“So, I saw you at the wedding—you and Shane are looking well! And it was so nice of the kids from Promise House to come out and help. They seem like a well-behaved bunch, don’t they?” He would have told her they were only well behaved because they’d all been wearing swimsuits underneath their nice clothes and they’d been promised a chance to go swimming once the chairs and tables had been put up, but she was on a roll. “Anyway, it was lovely to see you all. Collin texted me this morning to say they’d seen
Wicked
last night and, well, he was bored silly, but they were going out on the Circle Line to see the Statue of Liberty and then to a comedy club tonight. Have you heard from them?”

She actually paused there, and Mikhail jerked, surprised to find a response was needed. “Yes. Jeff said he enjoyed
Wicked
very much, and if Collin falls asleep during another show, he will wake up with no eyebrows.”

Joanna stopped then, in the middle of slicing open a roll, and looked at him carefully to see if he was joking or not.

Mikhail shrugged. “I have no idea if he’s serious or not. You would have to ask Jeff.”

Joanna giggled. “You know, I’ve been watching them for two years, and I knew they were perfect for each other, but until right now, I had no idea how much. So, I know your order, Shane’s order, and Martin’s order—who’s this last sandwich for?”

Mikhail shrugged again. “I have no idea, but she’s been living off of your discarded french fries, so I’m thinking she will not care if those little green pepper things are on it or not.”

Joanna dropped the roll in her hand. “She’s been
what
?”

Mikhail pulled up his lip. “Living off your garbage,” he said distinctly. “And hopefully she will still be there when you’re done, so if you could possibly hurry….”

Joanna’s hands flew, and she put on the basics—mayonnaise, mustard, meat, and cheese—then wrapped it quickly and shoved it into Mikhail’s hands. He nodded thanks, grabbed a milk from the cooler, and said, “Excellent. I’ll be back to pay you and to get the rest in a few moments.”

He figured walking out the back door would just cause the girl to bolt, so he went out the front door and then, delicately, on dancer’s feet, walked quietly back to the trash cans.

The girl had her back to him and was scavenging through the second can, but it was full—apparently from the day before—if the stench was anything to judge by.

“I would not eat that if I were you,” Mikhail said, wrinkling his nose. “It will make you sick.”

The girl jerked and the lid of the big plastic can that she’d been holding over her head fell down on it instead. She pulled herself out from under it, whirled around, and groaned.

“Aw, fuck! Now you made me go and get more of that shit on….” She shut up when Mikhail thrust the sandwich in front of her face, and she took it by instinct.

“Eat,” he said, but the command was unnecessary. She was digging into the wrapping and ripping off hunks of sandwich, then shoving them into her mouth with unnecessary force. He watched it catch up to her, and when it looked like she was going to have trouble swallowing, he took off the cap and handed her the small plastic container of milk. She took the milk like she’d taken the sandwich: instinctively, with no question that she’d drink it.

When she was around three-quarters done with the sandwich, she took a deep, shuddering breath and wrapped the remains up and shoved them in her pocket.

“Thanks,” she said, her voiced muffled since she was using her tongue to clean her teeth at the same time. She took a final swig of the milk, and her voice was much clearer. “Do I need to give you a blow job for that?”

Mikhail shuddered. “The horror! No. Not necessary. I do have one request, though.”

She eyed him up and down, the whites of her eyes dramatic against her dark skin. “I’m not bending over for a sandwich,” she said dubiously, and he rolled his eyes.

“Americans! Even the whores are spoiled! No, nothing like that. Here.” He dug in his pocket and produced one of the business cards he and Shane had gotten used to carrying around. “You see that road?” he asked, and she looked to where the small road on which the diner and the garage sat, and then beyond, to the larger road that intersected it.

“It’s hard to miss,” she said. “It’s the main road through, like, three towns.”

Mikhail nodded. It was true. Levee Oaks turned into farmland and then turned into airport land and then turned into some other small rural suburb he frequently forgot. “Exactly. You follow that road for a mile, and you will come to a place by the levee, with a wrought iron sign that says ‘Promise House’. Go in. We have a spare room with a clean bed, a shower, and three meals a day. And snacks.” Shane insisted the children needed snacks. Mikhail thought he was spoiling them, but then, Mikhail stayed out of most management decisions altogether.

The girl curled her lip in suspicion. “You’re not going to try to sell me on Jesus, are you? ’Cause I’m thinkin’ if God was such hot shit, I wouldn’t be about to hurl old fries.”

“I buy you a sandwich and you repay me with insults!” Mikhail snapped. “The only god at Promise House is the man who runs it, but he’s my god, and you are not allowed to worship him!”

The girl held up her hands placatingly. “Okay, okay, okay! I won’t move in on your man, I hear you!” Her attitude slipped for a moment. “Clean sheets?” she said wistfully. “A shower? No God’n’Jesus bullshit?”

“None,” Mikhail told her, still sulking. “All we ask of you is that you learn a trade—that
doesn’t
,” he added hastily, “involve offering sex to strangers!”

The girl nodded thoughtfully. “About how far down that road?” she asked, and Mikhail repressed a smile. (Of course, Mikhail rarely smiled unless he was talking to Shane, so that wasn’t hard.)

“About a mile. You may start walking now, if you like, or you may wait for my husband to get here. I’m going that direction anyway.”

The girl narrowed her eyes. “Naw. I’m gonna check it out first. I wanna make sure I don’t end up on a mat in front of some sort of machine, making cheap T-shirts for pennies an hour.”

“You know,” he said, after digesting that for a moment, “I need to pick up the rest of my sandwiches. You do what you feel you must. If you would like a ride, Shane will be by in a big black GTO that sounds very loud. You’ll see him parked there by my van, you see?”

He pointed across the parking lot and her eyebrows rose. “The Purple Brick,”
she read, surprised, and then looked down at him. Yes, yes, like all of the impertinent children, she was taller than he was. “If that wasn’t so loud, I’d say it was a serial killer van.”

Mikhail shrugged. “It runs. Mostly. I shall see you later, if you have any sense at all.” And with that, he turned into the deli to go pay Collin’s sister.

Later, as he rode next to Shane, munching on his chicken and avocado on dry wheat toast, he tried to explain the situation.

“It is like one of the cats,” he said after swallowing. Mayonnaise, he thought wistfully. Shane’s sandwich had mayonnaise on it. Perhaps, when his dancing days were done, Mikhail too could have such an indulgence.

“Like Katy Perry or Justin Bieber?”

Mikhail scowled. Letting the children in on naming feral cats had been a mistake. “No, like Sweetie.”

Shane nodded thoughtfully. He’d lost a little weight in this last year, mostly because he worked so hard on Promise House he forgot to eat. Mikhail made him—in fact, Shane’s sandwich was laden with cream cheese and pastrami and sauce, just so Mikhail could feel that solidity underneath his palms again when they were lying side by side in their bed.

“Sweetie. Okay, I hear you.”

Sweetie was a plain, fluffy tortoiseshell cat with a light bone structure and sniffing whiskers that seemed to vibrate about forty-five times a second. She’d been a flea-ridden, worm-infested, lice-bitten three-pound disaster when they’d first captured her, and although she was much healthier now, she had topped out at a slender five pounds. She ran away from most people, but sometimes, if you held your fingers out and made the appropriate sounds, she would allow the occasional person (mostly Mikhail) to smooth her whiskers back and rub her between the eyes.

Sometimes.

“You can’t put Sweetie in a car and tell her where to go,” Shane said after another moment, and Mikhail smiled.

“No.”

“First she’d scratch you until you bled to death. Then she’d jump out the window.”

Mikhail nodded. “Is true.”

“So did you get a name out of her?”

Mikhail grimaced. Details! “No.”

“Well then, we’ll probably call her Sweetie.” Shane risked a quick look at Mikhail to grin, his brown eyes crinkling in the corners while he did so. He turned his attention immediately to the road, but Mikhail had that smile to warm him. Why did a man need mayonnaise on his sandwich when he had that smile? It was a smile to fill the soul.

When they pulled into the driveway at Promise House, the GTO filled with groceries and flats of soda and gallons of milk, Mikhail saw Kimmy out on the porch, talking to his feral kitten.

Her name turned out to be LeLauna Saunders, but it didn’t matter. Shane, Mikhail, and eventually Kimmy and all of the runaways at Promise House referred to the girl as Sweetie.

Collin
:
Someone Else
’
s Kid

C
OLLIN
stood next to Deacon in the hundred-degree heat of the late-August afternoon, looked at the group of little kids running across the raggedly green field of the schoolyard, and scowled.

“Really?” he asked rhetorically, and Deacon snapped his mouth shut.

“Yup.”

“You’re going to let him get away with that?”

“Give me a sec, I’m trying not to beat his face in.”

That, coming from the ever-calm Deacon Winters, was enough to make Collin shut up and give him some space. What came out of Deacon’s mouth next was not what Collin expected, and it was an obvious attempt on Deacon’s part to still his rising rage.

“Did you really let him drag you to see
Wicked
?”

Collin winced. Had everybody heard this story? “It was my idea.”

“You were trying to please him?”

“Well, yeah. It was our honeymoon.”

“Honeymoons mean you go into a quiet room and fuck like lemmings. The play is overkill.”

Oh, thank God. Everyone had been treating him like he, Collin Waters and Collin Waters alone, had been trying to kill romance by stepping on it while wearing giant steel-toed, waffle-stomping work boots.

“I’m sayin’!” Collin whined, because that’s
exactly
what he and Jeff had been doing the night before he’d fallen asleep during the play!