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I don’t get him. He’s a fool but too much so. It’s not real and I know enough to keep my guard up.
Julia meanwhile watches me with hawk-like eyes. When I turn my gaze to her, she gives me a wide smile and I get the feeling she’s used to men looking at her. Tripping over themselves to please her. I glance at Carlton and wonder if he’s one of those men. Kissing cousins. Wouldn’t be the first time.
“I hear coffee’s good here,” I say taking an empty chair from the next table and setting it at theirs. Not bothering to wait for an invitation, I sit down, and Bishop watches me with incredulity, then resumes his seat. He raises a hand and snaps his fingers, actually snaps his fingers, all the while his flat eyes are locked on me.
“Coffee,” he says when a waiter approaches.
“Congratulations on your nuptials,” Julia says, picking up her fork to spear a strawberry and pop it into her over-rouged mouth.
“Thank you,” I tell her and turn to Bishop. “I’d like a word.”
“Why ask permission now? Just make yourself comfortable.” He pushes his half-eaten breakfast plate away. “Your presence has ruined my appetite.”
“Well, I’m sure skipping a link of sausage won’t do you any harm.” He looks a little like a sausage, I think. A raw one. Pink and soft. “I’d like a word alone.”
He narrows his gaze as if trying to glean what I’m thinking then turns to gesture to Julia with a dismissive nod of his head.
“I haven’t finished,” she says.
“You have. Go,” he tells her, and I watch this dynamic between them. I can’t say they like each other exactly but there is something there.
Julia sulks but stands, tucking her designer bag under her arm and shaking her ass as she walks away in her sky-high heels.
“You seem to take in all the Bishop strays,” I say.
“I’m generous like that.”
“M-hm. What about your wife?”
“My wife is none of your business.”
The coffee comes and the waiter leaves. I pick it up and take a sip.
“What do you want, St. James?” he asks.
“I want to know why you said what you said about my father and sister.”
He picks his napkin off his lap and wipes the corners of his mouth which have curved upward. I don’t like this. I don’t like having to ask. Don’t like being at a disadvantage.
“Why not ask Ezekiel? Which by the way,” he starts, setting his elbow on the table and leaning toward me. “Who the hell named you three?”
“Why did you say it, Bishop?”
He sits back again, makes a point of studying me, head cocked to the side. “You know, I’d thought you two were in cahoots. Just assumed it.”
My jaw tenses but I keep myself perfectly still.
“To defend your sister’s honor and all that shit,” he adds.
I pounce, picking the knife off his dish and stabbing it into the polished wood of the table a millimeter from his little finger. “Be. Careful.”
He looks down and I can see he’s visibly shaken. For all the hurt he’s caused he’s just a coward. Aren’t most men like him, though? Giving the orders but unwilling to carry out the violence. Or maybe they think that excuses them somehow. Makes them less culpable.
Carlton picks the knife out of the table with a strange little giggle and holds it in his hand. He turns it over, examining the edge which is too sharp for sausage and eggs.
“You and I may have more in common than either of us cares to admit,” he says.
“I doubt that.”
