Ama and I have found each other once more in a city of half a million people, in a landscape made of concrete, and I realize in this moment that Fate still managed to show me Ama walking through trees as if she might be on a trail in Tarson Woods.
Tarson is calling me home. I can hear it, just like I can hear the music when people make notes of unchecked emotion. Music is just like Fate—you have to allow it to unravel to understand the ending. You must learn to play with soft fingers. A loose grip yields a stronger swing. My hands are still. My pulse roars. Ama is here, so I must go there. And when Fate is ready, Ama will come to me. I cannot leave anything to chance now. There is only Fate.
I finish my coffee, leave a five-dollar bill from Ama’s cash on the table, and walk out the door. Once in the car, I pull up to the road and pause. The interstate is to the left, but nothing will be open in Tarson by the time I get there, and I don’t know how to walk back into my old house, if it even still belongs to me.
I turn away from the interstate and drive until I find a motel that charges by the hour. There are only a few cars in the lot, and a single lamp is visible in the lobby. Someone is sitting on the wooden bench just outside the door. As I pass by, I see a tendril of red hair peeking out from under a gray hood. I pause, and the fingers on the ivory hands—slender and long, like my mother’s—squeeze tighter. Her knuckles are scraped, and a couple of nails are broken. On her ring finger is a silver crescent moon, a round, dark red stone nestled in the curve.
“Garnet?” I whisper.
She looks up, surprise stretching out the angles on her face. Recognition lights upon her eyes.
“Sticks? What are you doing here?” she asks.
“I’m going to stay the night, then I’m going to head out of town for a while.”
“Where are you going?” she asks.
“Home,” I say. “What happened to your hands?” I study the wounds, wondering if she cried out when her nails broke.
“Professional hazards,” she says.
“What are you doing out here?”
“I’m waiting until I’m tired.”
“You look tired.”
“Thanks. Asshole.” A downturned smile elongates her mouth. “I’m glad to see you made it, by the way. I wasn’t so sure you would. Now here you are, all grown up and polished. Professional. Heard you were the best hire at the studio. Never missed a day. Climbed on up that ladder, didn’t you? You’re doing all right for yourself. I barely recognize you. I’m glad our paths crossed again so I could see it. Gives me faith.”
“Three times.” I look her dead in the eyes, and the sensation of electricity courses through every fiber of my body. “Our paths have crossed three times, haven’t they?”
“In front of that hotel in the rain, in the alley behind the restaurant, and here,” she lists, and her expression becomes wistful. “Did you ever pick a name?” she asks.
“Jonathon Walks.” I show her the Oregon driver’s license I bought off a Georgia Tech student once my work responsibilities included runs to the liquor store to retrieve liquid courage for new artists.
“I guess he does kind of look like you.” She shakes her head. “But you’ll always be Sticks to me.” She bites her lip and looks me up and down. “Maybe our paths keep crossing for a reason. Do you believe in stuff like that? Meant to be?”
“Yes,” I say. The night, the hotel, the roar of the interstate, blurs to nothing, and all I see is Garnet. All I hear is Lady Fate whispering, whispering, whispering.
“Why don’t you save your money?” she says. “I already got a room. We can share.”
With my eyes, I trace the length of her slender throat, imagine the shape of her tongue resting in a bed of yellow teeth. My pulse is a bass drum in my ear—boom, boom, boom—and my fingers tingle with anticipation.
“Sure,” I say.
I follow Garnet to her room. The bed is unmade, the cover strewn over one corner, the sheets rumpled. I will wait until she falls asleep, I decide. Wait, and then slide a pillowcase off a pillow, spin it into something useful, twist it around her throat, and listen to her whispers of sounds as long as she can keep them up. I imagine she has decent stamina.
In front of me, Garnet shoulders out of her jacket and lets it fall to the floor, revealing a corset and a miniskirt and flesh. She slowly sits on the edge of the bed and spreads her pale legs, her skirt hitching over her hips. She slides her hands behind her on the comforter and curves her back in an arch. She isn’t wearing any underwear.
I stare at the dark place at her center. “How many men have been inside you?”
Her knees slam shut, and she sits up. “Do you think you’re too good for this? You’re the same as me, Sticks. We survive how we can. You climbed up a ladder I propped up for you, boy. You’d think that would mean something for me, but a man’s rise never benefits a woman. You’re in a room I paid for. I saved you, Sticks. You made it because of me. Without me, you’d still be street trash!”
Her last word strikes me center. Her red hair is autumn leaves blanketing the floor of Tarson Woods.
Her bottom lip trembles. “Jesus, Sticks. You?”
“No. I didn’t mean to upset you. I was only asking because I have never been with a woman.”
“Seriously?” She smiles, shuddering with emotion, and turns her face down, shaking her head. “Never?”
“No.”
“Some men like to go pro their first time.” She curves to her side, softening the angles of her body. “I can make you feel like you’re earning it.” Tears are still beaded in her eyelashes.
“Can we go somewhere… special?” I ask.
“This isn’t classy enough for you?” She glides her finger over the swell of her breasts. “Trust me. You won’t remember where you are.”
“What if I want to? I’ll… pay you.”
“What did you have in mind?”
“Have you ever seen moonlight on water?” I ask.
“Not in a long, long time,” she says, and then studies me for two seconds, three. “Okay. Just promise me you aren’t going to want to run off and get married or something afterward. That’s happened to me before, you know.”
“No, nothing like that.” I manage a little laugh and peer at her from the corners of my eyes. “But I would love to hear you sing.”
EDDIE Chapter 38 | 8:00 PM, December 2, 2006 | Tarson, Georgia
EDDIE STARED AT THE DOOR. It was locked, but he could come and go with a knock. He could use the facilities, make phone calls. He wasn’t detained. Not exactly. But he didn’t have a key to the world outside and had no idea what time it was, what day. So then again, maybe he was detained.
But they were listening to him. Things were moving. He left the room more often than he needed to so he could see if the board in the room across the hall, visible through a rectangular glass pane in the door, had changed again. Change was good—that much he knew. Something was ruled out or something was ruled in.
They had not mentioned moving him back to a holding cell. Eddie wondered if they’d moved him to the musty office just because they needed his cell, but he’d seen only two people walked down the hall leading to those beds, and one had walked back out not long after. Probably drug busts or DUIs. Maybe they were being taken to court, or for processing through to longer stay prisons.