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“Tell me about it,” Dean muttered.
“Karen Ann went after Margo Gilbert a couple of weeks ago,” Syl pointed out, “and she doesn’t look nearly as much like Lyla as Blue does.”
Just before Blue and Dean left, the Chris Rock lookalike bartender, whose real name was Jason, agreed not to serve either Ronnie or Karen Ann more than one drink a night, not even during Wednesday’s All You Can Eat Italian Buffet, which was Ronnie’s favorite.
The smell of scotch tickled April’s nostrils as she took a seat at the bar. She needed a drink and a cigarette in exactly that order.
Just for today.
“Club soda with a twist,” she told the hunky young bartender as
she sucked in the secondhand smoke. “Thrill me and serve it in a martini glass.”
He smiled and let his boy-child’s eyes roam. “You got it.”
Not so much anymore, she thought. She gazed down at her salmon Marc Jacobs flats. She was getting a bunion. My Life in Shoes, she thought. Five-inch platforms; boots of every size and shape; stilettos, stilettos, more stilettos. And now, flats.
She’d needed to get away from the farm tonight, away from Dean’s disdain, but mostly, she needed to get away from Jack. She’d driven to the next county to find solitude at this upscale steak house. Although she hadn’t planned on stopping in the half-empty bar before she ate, old habits had drawn her in.
All day, she’d felt like a homemade sweater unraveling inch by inch. She hadn’t imagined anything could be more difficult than Dean’s appearance, but spending hours painting that kitchen with Jack today had sent too many ugly emotions struggling to break through the surface of her hard-earned serenity. Fortunately, Jack hadn’t been any more anxious to talk than she, and they’d kept the music loud enough to make conversation impossible.
Every man in the bar had noticed her arrival. As bad elevator music played, two Japanese businessmen studied her. Sorry, guys. I don’t work in pairs anymore. A man in his late forties with more money than taste preened for her. Not your lucky day.
What if, after all her hard work, all the healing she’d done, Jack Patriot once again managed to cast his spell over her? He’d been her folly, her madness, the beginning of her ruin. What if that happened again? But it couldn’t. She controlled men these days. They didn’t control her.
“You sure you don’t want a double?” hunky bartender said.
“Can’t. I’m driving.”
He grinned and added a fresh shot of club soda. “You need anything else, you let me know.”
“I’ll do that.”
The bars and clubs were where she’d lost her life, and sometimes she needed to go back so she could remind herself that the druggedout party girl eager to debase herself with any man who caught her eye no longer existed. Still, it was a dangerous practice. The dim lights, the clink of ice cubes, the enticing smell of liquor. Fortunately, this wasn’t much of a bar, and the cheesy instrumental version of “Start Me Up” grated so badly that she wasn’t tempted to linger. Whoever recorded shit like that should be thrown in jail.
Her cell vibrated in her pocket. She checked the caller ID and quickly answered. “Mark!”
“God, April, I need you so much….”
April returned to the cottage a little before midnight. In the old days, the party would have just been starting. Now all she wanted to do was sleep. But as she stepped out of the car, she heard music coming from the backyard. A lone guitar and that familiar raspy baritone.
“When you are alone at night,
Do you ever think about me, darling,
Like I think about you?”
The rasp had more gravel now, and he held the words further back in his throat, as if he couldn’t bear letting them go. She went inside the cottage and set down her purse. For a moment, she stood where she was, eyes closed, listening, trying to hold herself back. Then, she did as she always had and followed the music.
He sat facing the dark pond. Instead of a lawn chair with its metal arms, he’d dragged out an armless straight-back kitchen chair. A chunky candle sat on a saucer in the grass not far from his feet so he could see to jot down a lyric on the pad of paper lying next to it.
“Baby, if you ever knew
The heartache that you’ve put me through,
You’ d cry,
Cry like I do.”
