The Art of Sin (24 page)

     She ran to Geoff’s side, while he moaned and rolled around on the floor, grabbing his face.

     “Get out of here!” Al shouted at him. “And don’t ever come back!”

     Grady stared at her in amazement.
Are you kidding me?

     How could she be upset with him? He had done what any red-blooded male would have done in the same situation. Infuriated that she would take the side of the idiotic Geoff, Grady marched to the door holding his throbbing right hand.

     “You son of a bitch,” Geoff cried out in a high-pitched voice. “I’m going to call the police.”

     “You do that, asshole,” Grady challenged and made his way to the open front door.

     Grady ran down the stairs to his apartment and slammed the door closed. Holding his right hand, he paced like a caged animal in front of the french windows that overlooked the second-floor balcony.

     He could not believe she had done that. It was as if everything they had shared together meant nothing. The same bitter taste he had known after Emma’s betrayal returned and burned the back of his throat. He had trusted another woman, changed his future plans for her, and she had stomped all over his heart. Grady wanted to laugh at his stupidity, but his anger overwhelmed him, making him kick the coffee table in front of him.

    
You’re a fucking idiot, Grady Paulson
, that confounding voice chastised.

     Pain from his injured pinkie made Grady bend over. He went to the kitchen, opened the freezer door, and retrieved a plastic bag of crushed ice he had kept since first injuring his finger. Gently wrapping the bag of ice around his finger, he returned to the sofa. 

     When he sat down, something tugged at his back pocket, distracting him. Grady removed the white envelope Matt had given him from his pocket. Looking over the envelope, he shook his head. Maybe staying in New Orleans was a mistake, and another city was just what he needed.

     After staring at the envelope for several minutes, he became curious about what the contract contained. He put the bag of ice aside and ripped open the envelope. Spreading the folded white pages out on his coffee table, he was thankful for the diversion as he perused the pages one by one.

     A knock on the door pulled him away from the contract. Thinking it was Al, he scrambled from the sofa and leapt for the doorknob. But when he opened the door, it was not Al waiting for him.

     Suzie was wearing another of her flimsy nightgowns covered by a sheer robe, which left nothing to the imagination. Tears, trailing black lines down her freshly powered cheeks, marred her mascara, while her sultry red lips were quivering.

     “I heard about Doug.” A blonde tendril fell from her upswept hairdo as she held up a bottle of Jim Beam. “I thought perhaps you might like some company.” She nodded to the bottle. “He mentioned somethin’ about you two getting wasted on Beam a few nights ago. I thought we could send him on his way with a bang.”

     Grady eyed the bottle and was overcome with images of Doug. “Thanks, Suzie, but I don’t think I’m in the mood for company.”

     “I heard you were with him. Is that true?”

     “We were heading back from Pat O’Brien’s when this kid came out of nowhere. He flashed a gun and before I knew what was happening, Doug and this kid were on the ground wrestling over the gun.” Grady’s mind replayed the incident as he stared into Suzie’s empty brown eyes. “It was … I don’t know where to begin.”

     She stepped inside the door and took his hand. “Baby, you need to get good and drunk, and tell Suzie all about it.”

     He put his arm about her waist, keeping her from coming any further into his apartment. “I really need to be alone.”

     She worriedly searched his face. “You’re sure?”

     “How did you hear about it so fast?”

     “Honey, it’s all over the news. When a bartender gets shot in the Quarter, it’s news down here. It’s a violent city, and when good people get hurt, the media jumps all over it.”

     Grady shook his head. “I would never have thought something like that would make the local news.”

     “Told you this was a weird place. They celebrate their victories as loudly as they rant about their mistakes.” She backed out of the doorway and then handed him the bottle of Jim Beam. “You take this. If you’re gonna be alone, at least you can get drunk and enjoy it.”

     He held the bottle, contemplating the benefits of drinking until he could forget about Al.

     “Thank you, Suzie.”

     “Any idea when the service for Doug will be? I know he didn’t have any family. He told me once his folks threw him out after high school, and he hadn’t spoken to them since.”

     Grady suddenly felt guilty that he knew so little about Doug’s life. He should have tried harder to know more.

     “Beverly Harrison is taking care of the arrangements,” he told her. “I guess there’ll be some kind of announcement in the paper about the funeral.”

     Suzie smiled, making her eyes appear unusually warm. “So she came through for him in the end. Doug loved the hell out of that woman.”

     “You knew, too?”

     She waved to the bottle in his hand. “You weren’t the first in this buildin’ to spend a night getting’ drunk with him and listenin’ to him talk about Beverly.”

     “But I was the last,” Grady professed.

     Suzie’s eyes immediately filled with tears. “Yeah, it’s kind of sad, ain’t it? I mean you start out in life so full of hope and with so many shiny dreams. Then, you grow up and people begin to rip apart your dreams until they ain’t shiny no more. Your hope dries up, and one day you’re stuck tendin’ bar because you fell in love with the wrong kind of woman. Just when you think it can’t get no worse it does, and poof … it’s all over.” Suzie ran her hands up and down her slender arms. “Makes you wanna get your shit together, you know? Give up dancin’, get a life, a husband, a family.” She arched a well-plucked brow at Grady. “You ever think about gettin’ out?”

     He bobbed his head. “I’ve been seriously considering it.”

     “Yeah? Well, good for you. You get out and get a good life. You deserve it.”

     He ran his right hand over his chin. “I don’t know about that?”

     Suzie pointed to his right hand. “What happened to your finger?”

     “I just hit it on something.”

     “Better get some ice on that.” She thumbed the hall behind her. “I’m gonna go. You take care, Grady.”

     “You, too, Suzie.” He held up the bottle in his left hand. “And thanks for this.”

     “You drink one to Doug for me.”

     “I’ll do that.”

     He waited while she walked down the hall to her apartment door. After she reached for the doorknob, she gave him one last flirty wave and disappeared inside.

     Grady took the bottle of Jim Beam back to the sofa and twisted off the cap. Taking a long sip, he sat back. Closing his eyes, he relished the burn when the alcohol hit his stomach. He quickly took another sip, and then another, trying to put as much bourbon as he could in his system, thinking that the more he drank the better he would feel. As he sat on the sofa with his finger throbbing and his heart in shreds, he remembered something Doug had said the night before.

    
I’ve been there, and all the alcohol in the world won’t erase her from your mind.

     Grady held up the bottle. “This is for you, my friend, wherever you are.” Grady put the bottle to his lips and drank back several long gulps.

     When he finally came up for air, his throat was on fire and his belly ached, but he felt better. He rested his head on the back of the sofa and focused on forgetting about Al. The only problem was the more he tried to forget her, the more he realized that sometime during the past few days he had fallen in love with her.

     Shaken by the reality of his situation, he wondered where he had gone wrong. Grady found it odd how love and death could change the course of a life in a matter of seconds.

    
One moment you’re alive, and the next you’re dead. One day you are content with the way things are, and then the next you are obsessed with the life of another.

     Love and death seemed inexplicably tied to the human condition, because we were all meant to suffer through one, and eventually be taken by another. Except, Grady reasoned, death was meant to put an end to one’s misery, whereas love was usually what brought that misery on in the first place. 

Chapter 20

     A loud banging woke Grady from fitful dreams about drowning in pools of blood. His eyes flew open and slivers of the early morning sunshine were dancing through the french windows of his living room. He wiped his face and then spied the nearly empty bottle of Jim Beam on the sofa next to him. At that moment, his pinkie began throbbing.

     “Shit.”

     Then, banging erupted again from his apartment door, compounding the pounding in his head.

     Stumbling from the sofa, he went to the door and angrily turned the key in the deadbolt before pulling it open, desperate to make the banging to stop.

     “Are you Grady Paulson?” a police officer inquired, standing next to another uniformed officer from the NOPD.

     Grady wiped his eyes, thinking this was still part of his dream. “Yeah, I’m Paulson.”

     “Grady, what’s going on?” Suzie inquired, coming down the hall. “I heard all the banging and ….” Suzie gawked at the two policemen. “How’d you guys get in the building?”

     “Ma’am, please,” the second officer said, holding up his hand to Suzie. 

     She was dressed in a more concealing white terrycloth robe than the sheer number she had sported the night before. Grady surmised the police had awakened her out of bed because her hair was slightly askew, and she was not wearing an ounce of makeup. She appeared much older than he had originally thought, and also much more vulnerable.

     The first officer held up a piece of paper to Grady. “Mr. Paulson, you’re under arrest for the assault and battery of a Dr. Geoffrey Handler.” The other officer grabbed Grady’s arm and spun him around. “You have the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be—”

     “Are you kidding me? That son of a bitch!” Grady shouted as handcuffs were slapped over his wrists. “Where are you taking me?”

     “Central lock up to be processed,” the first officer told him, taking Grady’s keys out of his door.

     “Should I get Al?” Suzie fretted from her apartment door.

     “No, don’t,” Grady insisted. “I’m sure she already knows.”

     “Do you want me to call someone?” she pressed.

     After shutting his door, the police officers led him to the stairs.

     “Call Matt Harrison at The Flesh Factory,” Grady shouted to her. “He’ll know what to do.”

      The officers walked on each side of him while they made their way down the stairs and out the front doors. He was loaded into the back of the police car, and after making himself comfortable, something made him raise his eyes to the third-floor balcony. There, leaning against the wrought iron railing and drinking from a mug, he saw Geoff taking in the show. Grady was furious when he realized who had let the cops into the house. As the police car pulled away from the curb, Grady kept his eyes on the balcony. It seemed Geoff had carried out his threat to press charges, after all. The only problem for Grady was how he was going to finagle his way out of this mess.

*     *     *

     After being fingerprinted, photographed, and thrown into an eight-by-eight holding cell, all Grady could do was nurse his hangover, hold his throbbing pinkie, and think. The gray cement floor and gray cinderblock walls surrounding him stunk of urine, cigarette smoke, and body order. There were no windows, and the only familiar noise interspersed amid the sound of slamming jail cell doors, coughing, cursing, and conversation, was the buzzing of the fluorescent lights overhead. To keep his mind off the pounding in his skull and the queasy feeling in his stomach, Grady mulled over his problems.

     He sat on the cold steel bench in the corner of the empty cell and debated whether or not Al was a party to his arrest. He found it hard to believe that after all they had shared she could be so deceptive. Then, Grady recalled how Emma had lied to him about her affair. Instead of making sense of it all, he was more confused than ever. Perhaps Grady had been wrong about Al. In the end, maybe all Geoff’s money and connections did matter to her. Despite all of that, something within him refused to accept the fact that she could be so cold-hearted. He remembered the smell of lavender in her hair, felt the way she had responded to his touch, and knew he was not ready to give up on her … at least, not yet.

     As time passed, Grady considered how long it would be before he could get out and be able to talk to her. He convinced himself that if he could only have a few minutes alone with her, he could convince her that Geoff was the wrong man to hold her trust. Rubbing his hand over his stubble-covered face, he thought about how she had looked at him the night before. The anger in her eyes and the way she had told him to leave and never come back.

     “Maybe I am a fucking idiot,” he whispered, sitting back on the uncomfortable bench.

     “Paulson, Grady Paulson,” an Orleans Parish Prison officer called from outside the gray bars to Grady’s holding cell.

     Grady stood from the bench. “I’m Paulson.”

     “You’re free to go,” the officer announced.

     Grady approached the cell door. “What?”

     “The charges were dropped right after you were brought in.” The officer opened the cell door. “You can go right down this hall and collect your things from the main desk.” He pointed down the gray corridor that led to a single metal door.

     Grady nodded and quickly headed down the hall, passing a number of similar holding cells containing up to ten men. Suddenly, he felt fortunate that he had not had to share his cell with anyone else. At the main desk, he was handed a large manila envelope with his keys, shoes, and watch, and was asked to sign his release form.

      Stepping outside into the sunshine, a wave of relief washed over him. Grady admired the flawless blue sky, sucked in the fresh air, and wanted to dance right in middle of the street. His celebration was short lived, however, when a yellow cab stopped in front of him and a grizzly driver stuck his head out the window.

     “You need a ride?”

     “Yes, I do.” Grady opened the back of the cab and climbed in. “Esplanade and Burgundy,” he told the driver.

     Less than ten minutes later, Grady was standing outside of Al’s mansion on Esplanade, looking up at the third-floor balcony and thinking of Geoff sipping his coffee as he was hauled off in a police cruiser.

     Pulling out his keys, he opened the black gate and headed to the front doors. He stepped inside and peered up the stairs, debating the stupidity of going to Al’s apartment door and beating on it until she answered.

     “To hell with it,” he muttered, and trotted up the stairs.

     He reached the second-floor landing and was about to head up to Al’s place when he glimpsed someone parked outside his apartment door.

     When he came around the landing, Al stood from the floor, wiping her hands on her blue jeans.

     “I wanted to make sure you were all right.”

     “Was that before or after I was carted off to jail for hitting Geoff?”

     “I didn’t know he had pressed charges until Suzie came and told me the cops had taken you away.”

     Grady stepped past her and opened his apartment door. “How could you not know? He was standing on your balcony this morning as I was led away in handcuffs, Allison. What did he do, sneak out of bed in the middle of the night and slip down to the police station while you were asleep?”

     He walked inside his apartment and Al followed him in the door.

     “He left last night after your fight, but he promised he would not do anything to hurt you. He came by this morning, but I thought it was to check on me, not let the cops in. After Suzie told me what happened, I confronted him and told him to drop the charges against you or it was over between us.”

     Grady tossed his keys on the coffee table. “Somehow, I don’t think Geoff dropped the charges because you asked him to. He doesn’t operate that way.” Grady went to the french windows at the end of his living room and gazed out at Esplanade Avenue. “What did you promise him in return for letting me off?”

     “Nothing,” she proclaimed.

     He turned to her, smirking. “Do I look stupid, Allison? He sent me to prison with a specific purpose in mind, and only dropped the charges when he got what he wanted. He wasn’t out to get me; he was out to get you.”

     She held her head high, keeping every hint of emotion from her eyes. “Geoff agreed to drop the charges because I asked him to.”

     His aggravation growing, Grady ran his left hand over his short blond hair. “You expect me to believe that?”

     She glared at him. “Yes! You would have been convicted and maybe sent to prison, and I—”

     “I could have handled it. I didn’t need you sacrificing your life for me.”

     “I didn’t sacrifice my life, Grady. I simply realized I was making a mistake by getting involved with you. Now you have your freedom, so you can head back out on the road where you belong.”

     He threw his hands in the air. “Where I belong? I thought I belonged with you?”

     “You read way too much into a few rolls in the sack.” She turned for the door. “I don’t want you, Grady.”

     He ran up behind her and held her arm. “Don’t do this. You cannot give yourself to a man who can never love you, or appreciate you, like me.”

     “Love? You don’t love me, Grady.” She removed his hand from her arm. “You’re just looking for someone to save you. I’m tired of saving people. I’ve spent so many years trying to make sure people like you didn’t make the same mistake Cassie did. It’s taken me this long to discover I can’t save anyone. We can influence, prod, cajole, and hope that we have changed a life, but in the end, change is something someone decides on, not something that is decided for them.”

     “I don’t believe that. Yesterday you were ready to pay for Doug’s funeral, and today you’re giving up?”

     She took a step away from him. “I’m not giving up, I’m just changing course. After your fight with Geoff, I realized he was right about my associating with dancers. So, I’m going to get out of the rental business and take back my home.”

     “How can you afford to do that? I thought you needed the income from the renters to keep your home.”

     “Geoff assured me that he can compensate me for losing the rental income, and promised I will never have to sell my home.”

     “So that’s it? He let me go, but in exchange you have to give in to his demands.” He tilted closer to her. “I know you, Allison. You’re not this cold, uncaring person you’re trying so desperately hard to be.”

     She went to the door. “You don’t know me, Grady … you never did, and don’t ever call me Allison again.” She stepped through the front door and banged it shut.

     Grady tried to think of a hundred reasons to run after her, but his feet never moved from his spot on the floor. He knew in his heart that she had sacrificed her happiness for him, but she would never admit it. Geoff had found a way to tighten his hold on her. Until Grady could break Geoff’s financial grip, he felt there was little he could do to win her back.

     Fed up with his situation, Grady gave into his body’s loud protests for rest. His pounding head had lessened to a slight throb, his finger still ached, and his body was numb with exhaustion. The events of the past two days, and his added hangover from the night before, made him seek refuge from his weariness on the brown sofa.

     Sinking into the soft cushions, his mind continued to fill with scenarios and possible solutions to his troubles. Another thought rose above the chatter in his head; maybe it was time to walk away from Al and move on. The shred of doubt that sliced through his being smacked him like a sock to the jaw.

    
You always knew you could never hold on to a woman like that. 

     He detested that voice of reason but began to wonder if it had been right all along. He had never believed himself a quitter, however time and circumstance had weakened his resolve. Before the break up of his marriage, and working years on the road as a stripper, he would have done everything to win Al back. Now, he wondered if she was not better off. He hated Geoff, that was certain, but a plastic surgeon could give her more security than a mediocre male stripper. He may not have liked how Geoff had kept her, but at least she was being kept, and would never want for anything. That, more than his feelings for her, was beginning to undermine his desire to remain in New Orleans.

     “It would be best if I left town,” he whispered as his heart began to ache. “Might make it easier for both of us.”