Page 132 of Save the Date
“Why? Gordon’s not her daddy. He’s mine.”
“Take it up with her, not me,” Cara said. “Um, while I have you on the phone, did you and Harris kiss and make up yesterday? Your mom and Libba were pretty upset when you left the way you did.”
“Geez,” Brooke said. “I should have known blabbermouth Patricia would tell you we were fighting about the damned bachelor party. My girlfriends keep saying it’s no biggie—just a bunch of overaged frat guys getting hammered and cruising strip clubs. And Harris insists it’s harmless. They’ve rented a van and a driver to take them to Atlanta and back. ‘Good dirty fun’ he calls it.”
“But you don’t see it that way.”
“No. When I was a first-year associate I had a pro-bono client—a girl who’d worked in one of those clubs. She was barely twenty-one and had a five-year-old son and a string of prostitution and solicitation arrests. And a raging meth habit. She told me what it was like working in a strip club. They treat those girls like… trash. They post rules telling them they’re not allowed to fraternize with the customers, but the only way the girls make tips is by coming on to the guys, offering them, you know, hand jobs or whatever out in the parking lot. My client got busted for meth, and her little boy ended up in foster care. I’ve never forgotten her.”
“Did you tell all that to Harris?”
“I told him I hated the idea, and he said he couldn’t cancel, because all the guys would say he was pussy-whipped.”
Cara could see both points of view. They were both right, but there would be no winner over an issue like this.
“It’s just one night,” she pointed out.
“You sound like my mom. I know, I’m a bitch. I’ll get over it. I guess I’m just really, really tired. This sounds awful but I wish I didn’t have my own bachelorette party tomorrow night.”
“Aww, you don’t want to miss your bachelorette party,” Cara said. “What are you doing?”
“Holly won’t tell me. It’s supposed to be some big surprise. All I know is, there better not be any male strippers involved.”
“I’m sure they’ll have something fun planned for you. Look, Brooke. I know you have a lot on your plate right now with the trial and the wedding. And it probably doesn’t do much good for people to tell you to relax and stop stressing, but I’ve done tons and tons of weddings, and I’m telling you, relax. Your wedding is supposed to be fun, you know?”
“Fun,” Brooke said dully. “Got it.”
“Magical.”
“Right.”
“Never mind,” Cara said, finally. “Please, please, I beg you, call Meredith and get over there and have your wedding portrait taken. And while you’re at it, you might practice smiling.”
54
Because her real-estate agent knew how to make things happen—or maybe just because her new about-to-be landlord had a certain laissez-faire attitude about legal matters—Cara picked up the key to the Hall Street duplex Saturday afternoon.
Friday night must have been a happening scene on this block. Empty malt-liquor bottles, fast-food wrappers, cigarette butts, and even something she feared might be a condom littered the sidewalk out front of the building. Cara made a mental note to bring a hose, a bottle of Pine-Sol, and a scrub brush on her next trip back.
Poppy sat down on the sidewalk while Cara unlocked the front door. “Come on, girl,” Cara said, stepping inside and flipping the light switch. “Let’s see our new place.”
The dog wouldn’t budge. “Let’s go,” Cara urged, gesturing toward the doorway. “Check it out. I’ll bet there’s a whole bunch of squirrels out back.”
Cara couldn’t bear to tug at the dog’s neck, with its fresh abrasions from Thursday. In the end, she simply picked Poppy up and plopped her down inside the building.
The inside of the shop wasn’t much cheerier than the exterior. Alice Murphy said the last tenant had been a dry cleaner and alterationist. The faded linoleum floor was gritty underfoot; the wide plate-glass window was streaked with dust and what looked like remnants of masking tape.
She forced herself to overlook the negative and focus on the positive. The walls were the original exposed brick, and there was a handsome fireplace with a carved Victorian mantelpiece and stained marble hearth. The walls would be charming once she pressure-washed them, and the fireplace, which was intended to burn coal, could perhaps be fitted with gas logs, which might be nice on what passed for a cold winter day in Savannah. The front room was much wider and deeper than the shop on Jones Street. Eventually, maybe she’d have a large showroom here, with a counter and display shelves, with the workroom separated by a partition or finished wall.
For now, though, with the huge bump in rent, she’d have to leave things as they were.
Before being turned into commercial space, Cara knew this floor of the building, like most of the others on the block, had been residential. There were still a small kitchen and a tiny, squalid bathroom here, and a back door that led out to a large fenced area.
She opened the thick fire door and frowned at the sight that met her eyes. Impossible to find anything to like here. The space couldn’t even be called a yard, and it certainly wasn’t a garden. It was overgrown with weeds, and a tall, narrow, sickly-looking magnolia tree blocked whatever sunlight might otherwise have shone there. She could see a couple of bashed-up Dumpsters next to the stockade fence, and next to them was an abandoned supermarket shopping cart, probably stolen from the Kroger a few blocks away. Cara shuddered, sure the area was probably teeming with rats, snakes, spiders, and God knew what else. She would have to have the yard cleared out and mowed before she’d dare let Poppy out there.
One more thing to add to her to-do list. She closed the door, locked and bolted it.
“Let’s go upstairs,” she told Poppy. The dog yawned and dropped to the floor. Only a puppy, and she was already a prima donna.
