‘Why should I?’ Layla retorts.
But BJ grins at her. It has an odd effect on his face. It does not soften it, but makes it even more dangerous. ‘Layla,’ he says softly. ‘Look at you, all grown up and still not a shred of manners in sight.’
‘See?’ Layla turns to her mother. ‘He’s not being exactly friendly to me, is he?’
They stare at each other for a few seconds. The aggressive sexual tension between them is impossible to miss and makes me wonder which of them is actually resisting it.
‘Maybe you’ll save a dance for me later?’ he says, a dimple forming in his chin. Shit. The guy is actually attractive.
‘Hell will freeze over first,’ she declares dramatically and flounces off.
BJ laughs, his eyes chasing her into the crowd.
‘Sorry about that,’ Jake says.
‘No, don’t apologize for her. She’s got spirit. I like that in women and horses.’
Jake laughs. ‘Let’s call for a drink.’
A waitress materializes and while we are placing our orders another comes around with a tray of little round bruschetta with glistening swordfish carpaccio. The drinks arrive. BJ raises his pint glass of Guinness in a toast.
‘Here’s to cheating, stealing, fighting, and drinking.’
‘May you be in heaven half an hour before the devil knows you’re dead,’ Jake replies.
We clink glasses. We drink. As ice-cold champagne slides down my throat I see Melanie waving at me. I haven’t seen her since Jake came and took me and all my stuff from the flat I shared with her. I know she can’t come over to our section so I excuse myself. ‘I’m just going to say hello to a friend.’ I glance at Jake and mouth, ‘Be back soon.’
I weave my way over to her and she grins at me and we exchange kisses that are almost sisterly. She is dressed in a white gown of ravishing simplicity. It flows down her body like liquid. Her lips are ruby and her lashes are as long as an ostrich’s.
‘Girl, you sure showed us how to do it,’ she shouts above the music and the din of the party.
I look back at Jake—he is watching me. I wave and laugh out loud. I know that for most of the dancers the holy grail is finding a fat purse and marrying it as quickly as possible. They know they can’t dance after a certain age so the race is on as soon as they start out. Each one will say the same thing: They are here for a short spell.
Melanie is different, though. She is saving up to take the money to Barbados where she plans to buy a beach bar. The last time we talked she figured she would only have to work for another six months.
‘Is that adoring admiration I just saw?’ she teases.
I flush. ‘Maybe.’
‘Has he got a big dick?’ she asks cheekily.
‘Yes,’ I admit and we giggle wickedly. I miss her blunt and honest ways.
‘Wow, I love these,’ she says, touching the blue stones.
‘Me too,’ I agree happily.
‘Listen, I have to go because I’m performing now, but let’s catch up soon.’
‘All right. How about Friday?’
‘Nails and then lunch?’
‘OK, I’ll call you.’
As I watch her walk away I notice the man who had come to collect BJ after the fight, the man who had shown for a split second that he recognized me.
I start walking toward him.
Our eyes meet, but he lets his slide away, pretending not to see me making my way toward him, tries to disappear through the crowd in the direction of the men’s toilet. I let him escape. A few minutes later he comes out of the toilet and looks around him. He does not see me behind the pillar and is startled when I touch his sleeve.
He whirls around.
‘Hi, remember me?’ I say brightly.
He frowns as if trying to place me. ‘Oh yeah, from the fight, right?’
‘No, you know me from before, don’t you?’
His frown deepens. He is a very good actor.
‘No, I had never seen you before that day. You must have me mixed up with someone else.’ He smiles, but his eyes are shifty, oh so fucking shifty.
‘My mistake,’ I say softly, but now I know for certain. He is lying. My eyes glance away from him and fall on BJ across the room. One of the South American dancers has wound herself around him, but he is staring at us. Even from a distance I can see how hard and dangerous his eyes are.
BJ’s man opens his mouth to say something else, but is interrupted by Jake’s voice. He has come up behind me and curved his hand around my waist. ‘Everything OK?’ he asks icily. There is tension and warning in the words.
I look up at him. His eyes are dark and watchful.
‘Everything’s just fine.’
‘Hello, Mr. Eden,’ the liar says uncomfortably.
‘Have a good evening, Tommy,’ Jake says curtly, and turning me away leads me back to our table.
‘The entertainment is about to start,’ he says. Without BJ, Layla looks quiet and subdued. The nightclub becomes dark. Searching spotlights begin to race around the room.
From the darkened ceiling come cages with flaxen-haired nymphs who look like trapped birds inside. The music, a jarring discordant piece of hammering pianos and choppy chords, starts, and the nymphs hang out of their cages, and slowly spiral down on colored lengths of cloth. They land on the stage and form a provocative tableau of glittering costumes and long, stockinged legs. The music changes abruptly.
Something inventive and experimental. My ears start to ring with it.
It is a good evening and I have had more alcohol than I should have. When we step over the threshold of our home, Jake lets go of me and I sway slightly.
‘Is it today or tomorrow?’ I ask, pretending to consider the matter seriously.
He glances at his watch. ‘It’s today and tomorrow,’ he says very, very gravely. He could be laughing at me, but I don’t care. He won’t be laughing for very long.
‘In that case…’ I tug the knot. Just before we left the club I visited the Ladies and took off the little brooch that held the knot. Now it gives way and the entire dress falls around my ankles.
He touches my breasts with the tips of his fingers. As soon as he touches them I feel his excitement like a spark of electricity and rear back.
‘What’s that?’ I ask startled.
‘That’s amazement,’ he tells me solemnly.
‘That makes two of us.’ I say flirtatiously.
‘Guess what?’ His eyes are cheeky.
‘What?’ I’m all wide-eyed and ready.
‘I stole some stuff from our room in Vegas.’
‘Oh yeah? What?’
‘Come with me, Mrs. Eden, and I’ll show you.’
Handcuffs. Oh! Handcuffs. They most certainly did not teach me everything there is to know about them at the police academy.
‘What do I love more than my wife?
Nothing.’
—Jake Eden
ELEVEN
Lily
I wake in the early hours of the morning with a dream still vividly imprinted on my mind. It is an odd dream. In it I am a child and I have woken up and found Luke gone from his bed. Unafraid, I get out of bed and go down the stairs. The house is quiet so I begin to call out for him. There is no sense of foreboding. As I move to
the living room I see there is a plate of cookies and a glass of milk on the floor. And then I wake up.
I lay in the dark thinking about my weird dream; it ushers in a memory of when I was six years old and Luke five. It was Christmas morning and the moment I’d opened my excited eyes the first thought in my head was the presents that Santa brought us during the night. He always left two presents at the bottom of our beds to open first thing in the morning. I turned my head to see if Luke was awake yet, and found that he was not even in bed. Surprised, because we always woke each other up and opened our presents together, I sat up and listened. The house was very quiet.
I knew he couldn’t have gone to the bathroom anyway, because he’d rather pee in bed than wait to open his presents. I scrambled out of bed and ran to the bedroom window that faced a field overlooking the woods at the rear of our house.
I opened the curtains and there were almost blizzard conditions outside. Through driving snow I could make out Luke’s bright yellow jacket. He was squatting in the middle of the white field building something from the snow, oblivious to the freezing cold. He’d slipped out of our bedroom, down the stairs and gone outside through the back door, without even Mum or Dad hearing him.
Shrugging into my pink jacket I hurried downstairs as quietly as I could. I knew my parents would be mad with Luke and I was so excited about Christmas Day I didn’t want anything to spoil it. I opened the back door and felt the sudden bite of cold. I didn’t dare shout so I went quite close before I called out to him.
‘What are you doing, Luke?’
He stopped building what looked like three steps of a snow staircase and squinted at me through the flurries of white flakes. His little cheeks were tinged with red and blue.
‘If Mum and Dad see you they’re going to go mad on Christmas,’ I warned.
He reached for a toy tractor half covered with snow.
‘I don’t want Santa’s present.’
‘Why?’ I asked perplexed. He had specifically asked for this toy. Stood in Toys“R”Us and pointed it out to Dad as the thing that Santa should bring him.