S.E.C.R.E.T.: An Erotic Novel (3 page)

Scott didn’t give in to Dixie and her constant whining for food. Me, however, she
worked over until I caved, again and again. I had no resolve, which is probably why
I put up with Scott for so long. It took me a while to realize that I didn’t cause
his drinking, nor could I stop it, but there was this lingering sense that I might
have saved him if I had tried hard enough.

Maybe if we had had a baby like he wanted. I never told him how secretly relieved
I was to learn that I couldn’t have kids. Surrogacy was an option, but it was too
expensive to be a viable one for us, and thankfully Scott wasn’t keen on adoption.
That I never wanted to be a mother was never in dispute. But I still hoped for a sense
of purpose in life, for something to take up that space that a yearning for children
had never occupied.

A few months after I started working at the Café, and way before Tracina stole his
heart, Will hinted that he could get
tickets for a coveted show at the jazz festival. At first, I thought he was going
to tell me about a girlfriend he was getting the tickets for, but as it turned out,
it was me he wanted to go with. I felt a flash of panic at the invitation.

“So … you’re asking if I’ll go out with you?”

“Uh … yes.” There was that look again, and for a second I thought I even saw hurt
flicker through his eyes. “Front row, Cassie. Come on. It’s a good excuse to put on
a dress. I’ve never seen you in a dress, come to think of it.”

I knew then that I had to shut it down. I couldn’t date. I couldn’t date
him
. My
boss
. There was no way I wanted to lose a job I actually liked for a man who would, when
he spent a bit of time with me, see just how dull I really was. Also, the man was
way out of my league. I was paralyzed with fear and the prospect of being alone with
him, outside the context of our working relationship.

“You haven’t seen me in a dress because I don’t own one,” I said.

Not true. I just couldn’t imagine putting one on. Will was quiet for a few seconds,
wiping his hands on his apron.

“No big deal,” he said. “Lots of people want to see this band.”

“Will, look. I think being married to such a wreck for so many years might have rendered
me kind of … undatable,” I said, sounding like a late-night radio psychologist.

“That’s a nice way of saying, ‘It’s not you, it’s me.’ ”

“But it
is
me. It is.”

I rested my hand on his forearm.

“I guess I’ll just ask the next attractive girl I hire,” he joked.

And he did. He asked the stunning Tracina from Texarkana, with the Southern accent
and the endless legs. She had a younger brother with autism who she fiercely cared
for, and she owned more cowboy boots than any one person needs. She was hired for
the early evening shift, and though she was always a little cool towards me, we got
along well enough and she seemed to make Will happy. Saying good-night to him became
doubly lonely because I knew he’d probably be spending the night at Tracina’s instead
of upstairs at the Café. Not that I was jealous. How could I be jealous? Tracina was
exactly the kind of girl Will should be with—funny, smart and sexy. She had perfect
cocoa-colored skin. Sometimes she’d let her afro go wild like a mound of cotton candy,
and sometimes she’d expertly tame it into cool braids. Tracina was sought after. Tracina
was vivacious. Tracina fit in and belonged. I simply did not.

That night, the notebook still warming my front pocket, I watched Tracina set up for
the dinner crowd. It was the first time I admitted I actually was a little jealous
of her. Not because she had Will. I was jealous of how she made her way around the
room with such ease and appeal. Some women had that thing, that ability to insert
themselves directly into life—and look so good doing it. They weren’t observers; they
were in the middle of the action. They
were … alive. Will asked her out and she said, “I’d love to.” No dithering, no equivocating,
just a big fat yes.

I thought about the notebook, the words I had scanned, that man at the table, the
way he caressed his partner’s wrist and kissed her fingers. How he fingered her bracelet,
his urgency. I wished some man could feel that for me. I thought of a fistful of thick
hair in my hands, my back pressed against a wall in the kitchen of the restaurant,
a hand lifting my skirt. Wait a second, the man with Pauline had a shaved head. I
was imagining Will’s hair, Will’s mouth …

“A penny for your thoughts,” Will said, interrupting my absurd daydream.

“These ones are worth a lot more than a penny,” I said, knowing my face was shot red.
Where had that come from? My shift was over. It was time to go.

“Good tips today?”

“Yeah, not bad. I gotta run, and, Will, I don’t care if you
are
sleeping with her. Tell Tracina to restock sugar on the table before she goes home
tonight. They should be full for my breakfast shift.”

“Yes, boss,” he said, saluting me. Then, as I was heading out the door, he added,
“Plans tonight?”

Catching up on TV. Recycling is piling up. What else?

“Yeah, big plans,” I said.

“You should have a date with a man, not with a cat, Cassie. You’re a lovely woman,
you know.”

“
Lovely
? You didn’t just call me ‘lovely.’ Will, that’s what guys say to women over thirty-five
who haven’t gone
completely to pot but who are well on their way to romantic retirement.
‘You’re a lovely woman, but …’
 ”

“But nothing. Cassie, you should get out there,” he said, jerking his chin towards
the front door and beyond.

“That’s precisely where I’m headed,” I said, backing into the street and nearly getting
sideswiped by a speeding cyclist.

“Cassie! Jeez!” Will lurched towards me.

“See? That’s what happens when I put myself out there. I get flattened,” I said, calming
my heart and trying to laugh it off.

Will shook his head as I turned and made my way down Frenchmen. I thought I felt him
standing there watching me walk away, but I was too shy to turn around and check.

I
s it possible to feel really young and really old at the same time? I was bone weary
as I trudged the four blocks home. I loved looking at the tired, tiny houses in my
neighborhood, some leaning on each other, some coated with so many layers of paint,
and ringed by so much wrought iron and festooned with so many ornate shutters that
they looked like aging showgirls in costumes and stage makeup. My apartment was atop
a three-story stucco block of a house on the corner of Chartres and Mandeville. It
was painted pale green, with rounded arches and dark green shutters. I had the top
floor, but at thirty-five I still lived like a student. My one-bedroom rental had
a futon-couch, milk carton bookshelves that doubled as end tables, and a growing collection
of salt-and-pepper shakers. The bedroom was in an alcove, with a wide stucco archway
and three dormers that faced south. To be fair, the staircase was so narrow it prohibited
big, fat furniture; everything had to be portable and bendable and foldable. As I
approached my
building and looked up, I realized I’d one day be too old to live on the top floor,
especially if I continued to work on my feet. Some nights I was so tired, it was all
I could do to heave myself up those stairs.

I had begun to note that as my neighbors got older, they didn’t leave; they just moved
to a lower floor. The Delmonte sisters had made the move a few months ago after Sally
and Janette, two other sisters, finally moved to an assisted living facility. When
the cozy two-bedroom was freed up, I helped them haul their books and clothes from
the second to the first floor. There was a ten-year age difference between Anna and
Bettina, and though Anna, at sixty, certainly could have taken the stairs for a few
more years, Bettina forced her hand when she turned seventy. Anna was the one who
told me that when the single-family dwelling was converted into five apartments in
the ’60s, it became known as the Spinster Hotel.

“It’s always been all women,” she said. “Not that
you’re
a spinster, my dear. I know single women of a certain age are very sensitive to that
word these days. Not that there’s anything wrong with
being
a spinster, even if you
were
a spinster. Which you most certainly are
not
.”

“I am a widow, though.”

“Yes, but you’re a
young
widow. Lots of time to remarry and have children. Well, to remarry at least,” Anna
said, one eyebrow up.

She slid me a dollar bill for my troubles, a gesture I had stopped resisting long
ago as that bill would inevitably end
up folded over eight times and shoved under my door a few hours later.

“You’re a treasure, Cassie.”

Was I a spinster? I had gone on one date last year, with Will’s younger brother’s
best friend, Vince, a lanky hipster who gasped when I told him I was thirty-four.
Then, to cover his shock, he leaned across the table and told me that he had a “thing”
for older women—this from someone the ripe old age of thirty. I should have slapped
his stupid face. Instead, an hour into our date I began glancing at my watch. He was
talking too much about the crappy band that was playing and how bad the wine list
was and how many run-down houses he was going to buy in New Orleans because the market
was surely going to correct itself anytime now. When he dropped me off in front of
the Spinster Hotel, I thought about asking him up. I thought about Five Years hunched
in the back seat.
Just have sex with this guy, Cassie. What’s stopping you? What’s always stopped you?
But when I caught him spitting his gum out the window, I decided I just couldn’t
take off my clothes in front of this overgrown boy.

So much for my last date, I thought, as I prepped a bath and stripped off my waitress
clothes. I wanted to wash the restaurant smell off me. I glanced down the hallway
at the little notebook on the table by the front door. What was I supposed to do with
it? Part of me knew I shouldn’t read it, and the other was powerless to resist. So
all through my shift I kept putting it off, thinking,
When you
get home. After dinner. After a bath. When you get into bed. In the morning. Never?

Dixie circled my ankles for food while water and bubbles filled the tub. The moon
hovered over Chartres, and the sound of cicadas blotted out the traffic sounds. I
looked in the mirror and tried to see myself as someone else would for the first time.
It’s not that my body was awful. It was a good body, not too tall, not too thin. I
had dishpan hands, but overall I was in good shape, probably from waitressing all
day. I liked the shape of my butt, it was nicely rounded—but it’s true what they say
about your late thirties: everything starts to soften. I held my C-cups in my hands
and lifted them slightly. There. I imagined Scott, no, not Scott. Will, no, not him
either. He was Tracina’s, not mine. I imagined that guy, the one from the restaurant,
coming up behind me and putting his hands on me like this, and bending me forward
and then … 
Stop it, Cassie
.