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“Nah. He’s a big boy. It’s only two miles.”

A lot can happen in two miles. For instance, I could be so desperate to get her out of my truck, that I accidentally step on the gas and draw the unwanted attention of a cop. Or I could be so damn preoccupied at the thought of seeing an old friend that I blow right through a red light and get T-boned at the intersection.

“Are you sure? I don’t mind if you want to grab it.” Of course, now that I think about it, I don’t remember seeing one in her vehicle, either.

“Look, it’s literally two minutes away, and I promise, we’ll be out of your hair.”

Two minutes. I can deal with two minutes. Drive slow. Don’t blow through a red light.

Simple.

Okay. Once everyone’s mostly strapped in, I pull out of the store lot and head down Twenty-Third, as she instructs. Though I feel the boy’s eyes on me the whole time, I don’t dare take my eyes off the road. Not with a minute and ten seconds left on the clock.

The main strip is flanked by old-fashioned brick buildings that remind me of the French Quarter, with their cast-iron balconies adorned with sprawling flowered vines. Black and white striped awnings stretch over bustling cobblestone sidewalks, where corner bookstores, coffee shops, restaurants, and small boutiques give it a mystical Diagon Alley sort of charm. On the south side of the street, behind the shops, runs a canal, whose boardwalk is lined with soft white lights that add a festive glow at night.

A quaint and beautiful little town, like something straight out of a book.

In spite of its bewitching allure, though, there’s an emptiness that looms like an invisible cloud overhead. A shadow of something absent here. Forlorn and spectral, like ghosts staring down from the sky.

At the light, she tells me to hang a left, and it isn’t until I’m pulling into the parking lot of the place that I notice the neon sign out front. Sinners and Saints.

The place looks like it might’ve been a church at one time, with its neo-gothic architecture, but the sign out front, flashing a woman with half her tits hanging out, tells me this is no holy establishment.

“Your sister … she’s a …. She’s ...” Brie is a stripper?

Nothing against them. Hell, I’ve been tempted by the cash myself in recent months. About a year ago, I tried to do the webcam thing, just to see if I had the nerve, but chickened out the moment I saw a dick pop up on the screen. For the hour that followed, I paced back and forth, paranoid that Russ would swipe up my phone, and some random cock would pop up out of nowhere from a screen I failed to shut out and slap his eyeballs out of his skull. The years have hardened me enough that I don’t tend to get too squirrely about strippers and prostitutes, but Brie? I guess my memories aren’t as reliable as I thought.

“She manages the floor.”

That makes more sense.

“I’m the one who dances.”

Keeping my attention forward, I do my best to school the dumbfounded look on my face, because the Marcelle I used to know, or I think I remember, anyway, was like Brie on steroids.

Unless she wasn’t. In which case, my memories have become so unreliable, I might not even have the right person.

The entire lot is packed, not a single place to park, as I idle through rows of cars, fancier cars, still trying to sort my head on this one.

“Just pull up to the side. That door there.” She points to a door along the side of the building, which I’m guessing is the entrance for the dancers.

When we roll to a stop, she opens the door without unbuckling her son, and just before she closes it on him--and me--I lean forward.

“Wait. Aren’t you taking him with you?”

“I’ll just be a second.”

“Wait, wait, wait. You’re …” Leaving your son with a complete stranger at the back door of a strip club? “What if he cries?”

“He won’t. He likes you. He’s got a … sense about people.”

I do, too, and I’m not liking what it’s telling me right now. Scratching the back of my neck, I glance down to the boy, who doesn’t seem troubled, at all, by this arrangement, then back to her. “Just for a minute?”

“I promise. I’ll go in, get the key, and I’ll be right out.”

Sinking back into the seat, I sigh, as she slams the door shut and heads inside. In the quiet that follows, I clear my throat, doing my best not to notice the awkward discomfort hovering between me and the three- or four- or five-year old beside me.

“You dwive weally dood,” he says, adjusting the glasses on his nose.