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PART II
ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS

63

TREY WAS MORE pissed at closing time than he’d been when he came to work and found out one of his customers had been using marked cards. Then, then Marina and Dot had had to show up. He had never known fear like that, having them in the speak, no one knowing who they were except easy pickings. On the other hand, it was kinda cute, and watching Dot get the shit scared out of her had been extremely satisfying. What was not satisfying was that look on Dot’s face the second she saw Gio.

Trey didn’t know how much she really understood about what went on at 1520, but he doubted Marina would tell her. Seeing Gio rise from a midst of women he was obviously entertaining was damaging enough without telling her what his job duties used to be.

Gio had returned in a foul mood and told Trey he was taking the rest of the night off, which really set Trey off because that meant Trey had to serve customers and help clean up, which meant he would get home later than usual, which was already too late as it was.

It was probably better this way. Albright had deliberately kept all this from Dot, making himself the bad guy so as to protect his “defiantly straight-laced” daughter from the horrifying reality. And if Albright found out Dot had been here, he’d come after Trey, even though it wasn’t his fault at all. On the other hand, Albright knew his own kid, so he may not blame Trey for Dot’s willfulness.

When Trey got home, he noted the sobbing coming from the dark parlor and went upstairs to find Marina sitting up reading. She had her practically transparent little nightgown on. Her short hair was mussed, fuzzy and soft, looking like he’d had his hands in it while he took her to heaven and back.

“Marina,” Trey purred.

She looked at him warily. No telling what she’d seen or what had scared her the most because she’d been fucking terrified.

“What’s my first rule?” he asked sweetly, but it was the sweet tone she should know was the harbinger of a rant.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly.

“Yanno,” he continued matter-of-factly, strangely satisfied by her sincere apology and acquiescence, and went about taking his clothes off, “it’s not that I don’t want you to see what goes on because I don’t give a fat rat’s ass what you think of it ’cuz you’re stuck with me, which means you’re stuck with 1520 as long as I have it. It’s that it’s dangerous and I don’t wanna have to kill every cat and chick who looks at you wrong, you hear me? It’s bad for business, killin’ people.”

She blinked at him.

“No, I ain’t kiddin’,” he said flatly as he unbuttoned his trousers. “Dead people vote, but they do not spend money, you get me?”

She gulped and nodded hesitantly. “You … you’d … do that?”

He was surprised. “You’re fucking right I’d kill somebody.”

“For … me?” she asked in an even smaller voice.

“To protect you? And even that brat friend of yours? Yeah, although I’mma give her a good talking-to in the morning.”

He was pulling his shirt over his head without even unbuttoning it, then was surprised when he heard the sheets rustle.

“Don’t,” she said softly, pulling his shirt back down.

“I wanna get undressed, Sugga,” he said testily but let her do whatever she was going to do.

“I know, but … Trey, you can’t keep tearing your shirts.” Interesting. She was more worried about his shirt than the fact that she was touching him. “I can’t repair them anymore so they’ll look nice. It’s bad enough trying to get the lipstick and blood out of them.”

He scowled at her as she carefully unbuttoned his shirt. “Repair them?”

“Yes. I don’t buy you new shirts,” she said hesitantly as if she were confessing to some horrible sin. “I mend them.”

He stood there completely stumped while she undressed him. Clearly the buttons were important to her. “I … ” Honest to God, he didn’t know what to say. Or do. Except stand there like a sap.

“It’s wasteful,” she said in a rush as she went behind him and took the shirt off him properly. “I couldn’t stand just … setting a good shirt aside and buying new when it just needed a little care. And it wouldn’t need any care if you’d—”

He took advantage of her hesitation to confront him with his carelessness. “Uh, well, a’ight then. I’ll let you undress me from now on. How’s that?”

“Uh … ”

He grinned and looked over his shoulder. “That’s the deal. You either undress me or you keep mendin’ my shirts.” She blushed furiously and turned away, gently folding the shirt over her arm and petting it as if it were a thing to be cherished. Then it went in the basket for the dirty clothes just before she scurried back to bed and under the sheets.

“Are you mad at me?” she asked softly, as if from far away.

“Naw,” he said agreeably, because he wasn’t. “Now,” he added. “But I wa’n’t gonna yell at you in public.”

“You … um … ” She gulped and still wouldn’t look at him. She was flushed up to her hair. “You hurt that woman.”

Trey had to think back a second or two. “Eh, she won’t remember it in the morning,” he grunted matter-of-factly as he shucked his socks and stood in the middle of the room buck naked. “She was too drunk.” He was going to stand there naked until Marina looked at him. He knew she didn’t know what to make of his body. Women found his body to be attractive, which he supposed was because he didn’t have a paunch. Yet. But girls who’d been taught that looking was bad weren’t going to be able to look at something forbidden and find the beauty in it. If they’d been taught looking at a peony was a sin, they’d never know it was beautiful, either.

“Thing is,” he continued, waiting for her to look, “she was mad at her husband and came up to me to make a point to him. Well, what’s a cat gonna do when his woman’s comin’ on to another cat? Blame the other cat, and then before you know it I got broken tables and chairs and glasses. I’m not gonna put up with folks making trouble in my speak an’ I get ’em out when they first start up. Tables and chairs are expensive, not to mention glassware. They can go somewhere else to fight.”

“But he—he hit her, not you. First, I mean. And you just left her with him?”

“It ain’t my business how they are between themselves. She stays with ’im and that’s her choice. I’ve made the mistake of tryin’a get between a woman an’ her man who’s hittin’ her regular.” He paused. “What would you do if I hit you?” he asked, his brow wrinkled. “I ain’t gonna,” he said hurriedly, panicking at the panic in her face. “I’m just askin’ what you’d do if you were in her place, with a man who beat you.”

“Uh … ” she said in a small voice, “I ran away from Mother, but I had somewhere to go, so I suppose … I suppose it would depend on whether I had somewhere to go or not.”

“Okay, now. Would you climb on my back to keep me from beatin’ your man down to get me to stop hurtin’ the cat who’s hurtin’ you? Hittin’ me and screamin’ at me?”

She looked a little shocked. “Goodness, no. I would hope that would teach him a lesson. I might even think I could come to you if I needed protection.”

“There you go. But I’ve done that a coupl’a times and both times, the woman came at me, teeth bared, to defend the cat who’s beatin’ her up on the regular.”

“That makes no sense,” she stated, outraged, as if she wanted to defend Trey from women way back in his past. He kept his smile to himself.

“Well, I know to you it don’t make no sense ’cuz you didn’t ask me not to beat your mama down. You wanted your justice. I gave it to you. You feel guilty for it?”

She sighed heavily and looked away. “No,” she muttered and began picking at her sore.

“Eh, eh, eh, stop that now before I wrap it in a bandage with a knot so tight you’ll never be able to get it off. Might, anyway, since it hasn’t healed a bit since we got married. Don’t know what it looked like at the beginning.”

“I have scissors,” she mumbled.

He chuckled. “Say, why do you care if I have new shirts or not?” he asked suddenly. “I have the speak and all the money I saved to buy it, so I can afford it.”

She shrugged diffidently. “I don’t like to see things go to waste.”

“Is this another thing good wives do, like lying there whether she wants to have sex or not?”

“Yes!” she said suddenly, her body stiffening while she glared at him. “You say that like, like, like that’s not what you want, a good wife. Or, or, or maybe you think I couldn’t really ever be one. Or you think you’re a chore for me all the way around instead of just … ” She waved at his side of the bed. “Or I, I, I’m just a mistake you made that you’re stuck with and— And— And, well, Grandmother Susanna told me to, and she knows a lot more than me and you put together and— A good wife pinches pennies just because it’s the right thing to do whether her husband appreciates it or not!”

When he didn’t say anything, she whispered, “I’m sorry, I … Again. Good wives aren’t supposed to yell at their husbands and I just keep— I don’t know what’s gotten into me. I— It seems like I’m always angry now and I don’t know what to do about it.”

“You have sixteen years’ worth of stuff to be mad about, Sugar, and I don’t mind it if you take it out on me. Fact is, I like it when my people yell at me.”

She blinked.

“It means they feel safe with me, that I’m not going to slap them down for saying what they think. Although right now my girls are still on strike, when they come back, they’ll be as insolent as ever, and I don’t mind. They know their business and they do good work for me. I like it that people depend on me to protect them, and I like it you feel safe enough with me to sass back. That’s what friends do, too. You and Dot bicker, don’t you?”

“Yes,” she murmured.

“You saw what I did to your Mama and you saw me toss a drunk who happened to be female, but then you didn’t think anything of sassing back, which means you know I’m not going to hurt you, especially after what your mama did. You never sassed her back because you knew she’d do something like that.”

Marina nodded.

“And you didn’t sass your daddy because he didn’t give you any reason to.”

She nodded again, her body relaxing now.

“We’re going to argue like that. Gio and I do it all the time. My girls—well, my cook, Ida, she’s a timid little thing, so she’s never going to—but she knows she can tell me a problem and I’ll solve it for her if I can.”

Her brow wrinkled. “You really care about your people.”

He shrugged. “If you’d said it before I made the bet, I’d have said no, but when I found out they were scared, that’s when I realized I couldn’t throw them to the wolves. A cat who didn’t care would’ve gotten out with his money and his girl. But loyalty comes with a price and if it weren’t for Albright, you and I would both be paying it. And I’ll tell you something else. There’s going to come a day Albright’s going to call that marker, and God help me when he does.”

63

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