Sugar Daddy (13 page)

During my next conversation with Reardon, I told him I had a new friend, even though I hadn’t once had the desire to mention Jane to Palmer. Thinking I meant friend in the same way he was my boss, he threatened to catch the next plane back.

I played him along for a while because flustered Reardon was still tons of fun. Relenting right before my Neolithic, pay-as-you-go Nokia ran out of minutes, I set him straight to his deep sigh of relief.

I got paid, and I hadn’t even officially put out per our new terms. Pussy pouted, but my conscience proudly gave me a gold star.

Sunday arrived. The day before. Time was redefined: Before Reardon, After Reardon. The last time I’d seen him, and the next time I would.

Sunday saw Momma and me headed to Sandpiper Villa’s Retirement Homes, visiting Mimi Flossie. On the ride, Momma kept looking at me. At one point she grabbed my hand, smiling. That was the look that said I seemed better. The one I’d been getting from everyone.

From her, it was more poignant. In one night she’d lost her grandbaby and her daughter, because I’d gone AWOL for more months than I cared to count.

“You been talkin’ to someone about Delilah?”

“No one in particular.”

Liar, liar, pants on fire.

I brought my knees to my chest in the cramped car. “I’m tryin’ not to hurt so much about her.”

As we walked into Mimi’s room, she considered us with blurry blue eyes before remembering who we were. “Uh-huh. Right on time. Mah baby girls.”

Granddaddy had died in the mid-eighties and she’d deteriorated rapidly afterward. She couldn’t understand life without him at her side, no one to escort her or hold her handbag at the shops. Without a husband’s vitamins and heart pills to keep track of, without his newspaper to lay open at the breakfast table. Without someone to steer, she’d become a ghost ship herself. She started wandering off for hours, in her own mind or all around town. After the third call from some kind soul or other from Walgreens or the Piggly Wiggly, Momma confiscated her car and several months later placed her at Sandpiper.

We should’ve moved into her old house on McCants Drive in the Old Village, but the cost of living and keeping her in the Villas was too dear. Not to mention the taxes, and Momma and Daddy had their own home to worry about.

’Course it wasn’t an easy road. Renters came and went with no sale in sight. After Daddy died, the place turned ramshackle. At times the rental income was the only thing keeping us afloat.

The eighties up-market sailed right past us. Buyers not interested in the old cottage, demolition permits denied. As soon as the rezoning ordinance had been nailed to the majestic live oak outside Mimi’s, a Historic Committee meeting consisting of high and mighty residents was called.

Over two decades ago, I’d listened in on my parents, my ear pressed against my bedroom door.

Momma fumed to my placid daddy, “If my grandpappy, rest his blessed soul, could have heard them tonight, why he’d to turn over in his grave. He built that house back in 1920 with his bare hands, and it cost nine hundred dollars to make...honey, you know that was a lot of money back then.”

The crinkle of his newspaper preceded the whine of his recliner, the tread of his feet, and the sound of ice cracking under the gurgle of bourbon.

I edged the door open.

Momma took a sip and carried on, “Why, that young gal got nothin’ better to do than walk the village with her baby. Oooh, I’m so damn mad, Zanny! She had the gall, the gall I tell you, to testify I don’t have the right to do what I want with Momma’s house because, and I quote, ‘I just love to push my carriage past that quaint old house, it’d be a shame to see it torn down.’

“
A shame? I’ll tell her what a shame is. A shame would be I couldn’t pay my bills. A cryin’ shame would be I couldn’t make sure Momma was safely cared for. A damn shame would be I’d have to hold onto that old house because–wait, oh you wait for it, honey–because, ‘It’s harmonious with the neighborhood.’

“I’ll give ’em a shame, yes siree. Histrionic Committee’s what them damn fools should call themselves.” Her footfalls pattered close to my door. “You’d best be asleep now, Shay, you hear?”

I’d squeaked, “Yes, Momma.”

“Them with connections can restore whatever the crap they like.”

I’d bet good money Momma clapped her hand over her mouth, she hardly ever swore.

“But not us Jusselys, not us Mottes.”

Daddy murmured.

Their feet moved together.

“Don’t get rascally on me, mister. I ain’t done.”

Oh! I sidled away from the door, close enough to hear but not enough to
hear
.

“You know what them work boys do down at Sharon’s since she won’t let common folk into her house?” Momma had quieted to a whisper, “They piss on her siding. Serves her right.”

Mimi, Momma, and me were exactly alike. Red heads. Firebrands
.

“How’s mah house, girl?”

Momma grumbled at Mimi’s usual question. “Still standin’.”

“Y’all cain’t ever get rid of it. Miss Cassandra told me so. That be Adelaide’s momma, and you know they got the foresight.”

Mimi’s face was pressed parchment, wrinkles so deep they joined to her luminous bones. She’d been the looker of our family, back in the day.

“Who’s this now?” She squinted at me. “This my Shay-girl?”

I hugged her close as I dared, my hands crossing her bony back beneath the dowager’s hump. My hand tucked inside her elbow, she doddled to an afghan-covered recliner.

Settled down, she drawled, “Dawlin’s, y’all can take a seat now.”

Having welcomed us, she concentrated on her beading. A magnifying glass sat on a stand before her and her knuckles bent like birds’ spines over the fiddly work. Mimi motioned a gem over the thread three times until the eye captured, and she beamed victoriously, only to turn her glare in Momma’s direction.

“I said, sit down, Letha-girl.” A hanky pressed to her lips to catch the spittle collecting at the corners. “Never did pay me no mind.”

Momma whipped her ass to the hard plastic chair beside me, handing over the Ziploc baggy of beads she’d stolen from Mimi last time we were there. For each three necklaces Mimi made, she purloined one, collected the beads and brought them back. She was a grifting re-gifter.

Huffing at her penny-pinching ways, I laid a paper bag on the swivel-table. Mimi hungrily emptied the loot. Cat’s eyes and crystals and turquoise and lettered beads rolled around in her hands.

We spent the morning recounting nothing at all, and many a pleasant memory, Momma and me reaching through our own minds to keep time with Mimi’s crisscrossing remembrances.

Nap time approached. Mimi unsteadily shook the beads into plastic pill compartments. “Shay,” she confessed, conspiratorial as a young girl, “one of these days Imma gonna make these nurses think I been swallowin’ these beads all this long time, instead of the medicines they’re always pushin’ on me. Those pills make me so tired, dawlin’.”

I held her body to mine, careful not to agitate the osteoporosis that made her wilt like a sapling. “Love you, Mimi.” I kissed her and inhaled against her flyaway white hair. Her rose scent was redolent of the polished Avon jars arranged in the same formation on her institutional dresser as they’d been in her bedroom on McCants Drive.

“Girl.” Veils lifted between us, and she was right there, spry and knowing. “Y’all lookin’ good. Doin’ better, aren’t ya?”

Hiding my cheek against her, I couldn’t let go. My tears leaked to the downy folds of her neck. “Hush now, been a long time comin’.”

She patted me and hummed, and I remembered every time we’d gone mucking about at Cove Inlet during low tide–her in pedal pushers up to her knees and a kerchief tied over hair that used to be as red as mine.

She whispered for me only, “It’s all gonna set right for you.”

It wasn’t until Momma dropped me home I finally topped up my phone with airtime. The messages beeped in faster than I could read. I hadn’t had this much action in forever.

The thing went off in my hand.

“Where’ve you been?” Reardon barked.

“Um–”

“Do you have any idea how close I came to cutting my trip short?”

“Not really?”

“You want to know what you’ve done to me for two days?”

“Okay?”

“I’ve sat through meetings and made pleasantries, I’ve made sure my cell was turned on, every half hour.” He was running his hand over his face and smothering his top lip with his finger, rolling back his cuffs and pacing, I pictured it all. “You told me everything about Delilah
.
”

I sucked in a breath.

“Then I left you.”

“Yeah.” My voice got stuck in my throat.

“You think everyone disappears.”

“They do.”

“Shay, I wanted to make sure you were okay. I wanted to tell you I’m not going anywhere, even if I’m out of town.” I pictured his clenched jaw, his shoulders rolling under his shirt. “We agreed you’d take my calls.”

“But–”

“I don’t like this. I don’t...this wasn’t in the plan.”

“But–”

“Dammit, woman! I was worried about you.”

“I didn’t mean for you to worry,” I whispered.

His silence was loud enough to say he was scared by this.

I held the tiny cell, waiting. I was scared too.

He took a deep breath. “But what?”

“What?”

“I assume you have a good reason for your unavailability.”

Superior Reardon was back.

“You used all my minutes whackin’ it.”

“Pardon me?”

“Jerkin’ off, masturbatin’, spankin’ the monk–”

His slight cough slowed me down. A smile was in his voice. Bet Rat Bastard raised his eyebrow for good measure too. “I was referring to your minutes comment.” Used minutes were obviously a foreign concept, whereas sexual self-help was not.

“You know, pay as you go.”
Huh, just like me.
“That reminds me, we gotta talk.”

“Do we now?” He let it hang, to the left, no doubt. “Getting bossy with me?”

“Someone needs to take you in hand.”

“Not gonna argue with that.”

“I’m serious.”

“I look forward to it,” he answered.

“Tomorrow?”

Sensuality deepened the pitch of his voice, “I wish it was tonight.”

“Me too.” I stopped myself from making kissy noises into the phone, just
.

* * * *

Monday began with Palmer commenting, “All dressed up?”

Dressed up was an improvement on tarted up.
“Headed to work.”

I was all dressed up, underneath, but no way could he have known. The last time I’d put on my seductress’s garments, he’d pulled a lumpy pillow over his face with a, “Not tonight, Shay.”

At The Tides, Temperance motioned me inside. “He’s waiting for you.” She sped me along. “Down the hall. Third door on the left.”

Before I could ask for a map, she disappeared.

Hoping I had the right hallway and the correct door, I rapped gently.

The door swung wide, framing a completely buck-fucking-naked Reardon.

’Course my pal Temp hadn’t warned me he was free-swinging, fresh from a shower.
Sneaky woman.

Half his face lathered, the other half showed the largest shit-eating grin I’d ever seen. My eyes darted lower, the dirty little bitches.

“Whoa! Do you always shave naked?” I shouted. My volume control had gone out the window, with his towel, apparently.

I did an about-face.

He reached around me, locking us in. “It is my house.” He spun me around. My eyes slammed shut. He laughed. “I’d give you a hug, but…”