“Spidey ain’t none of your business, so stop acting like you some kind of social worker or something, because you not. You a uptight fucking bitch, and you deserve everything you going to get!”
Lacey shook her head, trying to keep her own Jersey accent at bay. If she were still Tasha from West Trenton, she would have given Lacey back as good as she got. But instead she had to settle for a tepid, “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Candy grinned, putting Lacey in mind of a skeleton, she was so thin now. “You about to find out. Watch.”
Then she walked away, leaving Lacey very confused, not to mention worried about Spidey.
“Something’s bothering you,” Suro said that night at dinner.
“It’s work stuff,” she answered. “One of the dancer’s put in her notice today, but she’s got this kid I’m really worried about.”
“Spidey?”
“How did you know?”
“I see you with him often in nursery.” The look in his eyes let her know that he was aware of how much she liked the innocent little boy and not entirely unsympathetic.
She put her fork down, suddenly no longer hungry. “Yeah, I try to visit every day to check in on him because his mom has a drug problem. But now that she’s leaving, I’m not sure what to do. If I report her to child services, then Spidey gets put in the foster system, but if I don’t, she leaves here with him, and I don’t think the next club she works at is going to have a babysitting co-op. Who knows what could happen to him?”
Suro seemed to consider the problem carefully before saying. “There is another way.”
“What?”
“I have associates in the Chicago government as well. We could take care of Spidey until his mother got clean or a suitable family was found. It could be arranged.”
The way Suro said “arranged” made Lacey wonder what kind of back room dealings he’d have to do to get this done. But it didn’t really matter because, “There’d still be paperwork, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then, I can’t do it, as much as I’d like to.”
His shoulders tensed. “Why not?” he asked.
“You know why.”
Now Suro put his fork down. “Because you’re hiding from something you refuse to tell me about.”
She stood up and began clearing the table, feeling silly because she was buck naked and arguing with Suro. “You promised.”
His jaw set. “Right now I’m wishing I hadn’t.”
“Well, you did,” she said, throwing the dishes into the sink.
After that she slammed into her room, put on some pajamas, and crawled into bed.
Suro came in a couple of hours later and did the opposite. He pulled his thin black sweater and gray slacks off and climbed into bed naked a few minutes later.
“Come here,” he said, his smoky voice gruffer than usual.
Lacey did as he commanded, scooting over to him and laying her head on his chest. Even though she was mad at him, mad at herself, mad at the fates for putting her in this position, she still realized she’d rather be in his arms than just about anywhere else on Earth.
He held her cradled to him. “You still don’t trust me.”
“Maybe you need to trust me when I tell you it’s better you don’t know,” she whispered.
A few more minutes of quiet, then he said, “I have to go out of town tomorrow, but I’ll be back by dinner.”
“I’ll make some étouffée,” she said, “Your favorite.”
Then she kissed him, hoping her lips conveyed what her words could not: that despite trying to keep her heart locked away in a box, she cared about him, too.
This led to quick, passionate love, with Lacey determined to burn away the argument and everything else that was wrong with their relationship, by reveling in what was right.
After she came twice, she ended up between his legs, taking his hard length in her mouth. She loved the way he tasted, the feel of velvet over steel, as her head bobbed up and down, trying to take as much of his long length into her mouth as she could.
She looked up and found him staring back, and for minutes on end there was only those two things: them gazing into each other’s eyes and her sucking on him, until he threw his head back and came.
She swallowed him down, loving that she’d made him come with her mouth alone. “I will miss you, tomorrow,” he said when she was once again lying in his arms.
Simple words, but Lacey could hear the depth of feeling they conveyed.
“I’m going to miss you, too,” she told him.
And it was true. She woke up to find him gone the next morning, and it felt like she carried around an empty space in her heart all day.
Luckily the club was more packed than usual, with regulars and out-of-towners alike. They wouldn’t be opening until eight on Thanksgiving, which meant she wouldn’t have to work the next day. But it also meant she had to make sure everything was in place so the club could run smoothly without her until Friday. And because this kept her good and busy, she only thought about Suro every other minute of the day.
But right before she was set to get off of work, Miss Beatriz called her into the daycare. Apparently, Candy had brought Spidey in early that morning for what was only supposed to be a couple of hours.
“But she’s still not back,” Miss Beatriz said. “And I would stay later, but it’s the day before Thanksgiving, and I must cook for my family.”
“I understand,” Lacey said, taking Spidey from her. “I’ll take him upstairs until Candy gets back.”
She thought then about how she wouldn’t be spending Thanksgiving with Sparkle for the second year in a row. It was too hard to drive all the way to Montana and make the long return trip when Sparkle only had until the following Monday before she had to be back at school. Lacey would have to wait until the much longer Christmas break.
She struggled to keep the sadness out of her voice when she said to Miss Beatriz, “Go home to your family. Happy Thanksgiving!”
Upstairs she knocked on Candy’s door for a full five minutes. She was either truly not there or too far gone to answer the door. Though she’d gone out of her way to find apartments in decent school districts after Sparkle was diagnosed with autism, she still remembered the addicts she and her father would occasionally find passed out in front of the shop’s door, both men and women, some of who had been perfectly fine citizens before falling under the thrall of crack.