Page 133 of Save the Date
The staircase was narrow and steep, with worn risers and a handrail and balustrades thick with gummy layers of old paint.
At the top of the stairs she stood and took it all in. Her new home. The wallpaper was a dusty blue pattern of baby ducks and tulips, circa 1982, Cara thought. She knew there were probably wooden floors under the cheap commercial carpet, but she also knew she wouldn’t be pulling that carpet up to find out anytime soon.
“It’s a nice, big space,” Alice Murphy had pointed out. Big, yes; nice, not so much.
Whoever had installed that fugly wallpaper back in the eighties had also seen fit to install a dropped ceiling of stained and yellowed acoustical tile. She was standing in the living room, which had a fireplace that roughly matched the one on the first floor. It was also much bigger than her apartment on Jones Street, but with not a scintilla of appeal. An arched doorway led from the living room to the dining room, which led to the kitchen.
The kitchen was about what you’d expect. Yellow vinyl floor, cheap orangish-stained pine cabinets, laminate countertops littered with cockroach corpses, rusting stove and fridge, no dishwasher, tiny sink. Depressing. A window over the sink overlooked the Dumpster graveyard.
Cara meant to head up to the third floor, where her bedroom would be, but suddenly found she lacked the energy.
Poppy was where she’d left her in the living room. “Come on, girl,” she said, opening the door. “Let’s go back home. While we still can.”
***
She stripped down to shorts and a tank top in the Jones Street apartment, and halfheartedly began packing boxes of books. After an hour or so, she gave up, and plopped down on the sofa. She’d brought her laptop upstairs, and out of boredom, logged on to Facebook.
Cara had a business page for Bloom, and in the past, she’d made a regular practice of posting pictures of happy brides and beautiful bouquets. It was good marketing, and most of the “likers” on her page were former clients or other vendors in the wedding business.
She was scrolling down the page when a bubble popped up on her screen—a private message from Layne Pelletier.
OMG—have you seen this?There was a link, and Cara clicked it, the link taking her to Harris Strayhorn’s Facebook page.
The OMG-inspired item Layne referred to was a timeline photo at the top of Harris’s page. It was definitely a cell-phone picture, with bad lighting and fuzzy focus, but there was no mistaking the subject matter: Harris Strayhorn, leaning back in a chair, his eyes heavy-lidded, his mouth slack, with a very naked, voluptuous redhead straddling his lap. And just to make it clear who the subject of the photo was, the caption readHARRIS STRAYHORN TAKES IT LIKE A MAN.
There was a whole album of photos, and each one was worse than the one before—fifteen in all, fifteen photos of a bunch of overaged frat guys in a cheesy strip club, including five or six starring the bridegroom and man of the hour, Harris Strayhorn, receiving lap dances from two different naked women.
Cara felt a little sick. It was nearly four in the afternoon. The photos had been posted hours ago. Why hadn’t Harris taken them down? Brooke had to have seen them by now. She glanced at the post again. There were forty-two comments and sixty-eight likes.
She closed the laptop, went to the refrigerator, and got a bottle of cold water. She felt like she also needed a cold shower, to rinse away the ugly images she’d just viewed.
***
Dinner was a slice of pizza at nine o’clock. She wasn’t really hungry, but she needed to get out of the house, so she and Poppy strolled over to Mellow Mushroom on West Liberty Street.
Cara ordered a slice of the Philosopher’s Pie and a glass of wine, and sat at a table outside, with Poppy crouched at her feet. This was a college hangout, and SCAD kids swarmed the sidewalk around her, laughing, talking, swearing, smoking. They rolled by on bikes and skateboards, and the atmosphere was noisy and electric. There were old-timers in Savannah who hated SCAD, with its artsy, avant-garde faculty and wacky, and some said entitled, student body, but Cara loved the energy they contributed to her neighborhood.
She took her time finishing her wine, enjoying eavesdropping on the swirl of conversations going on around her. Finally, when she could stand the hot sticky air no longer, she walked home, being vigilant about staying under streetlights and away from dark doorways.
They were only a few steps from her own door at Bloom when a tall, slender figure suddenly emerged from the shadows, stepping directly in front of her. Poppy gave a startled bark, and she had to choke back a half-formed scream.
“Cara? Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”
It took a moment for her heart to stop racing and to gather her wits.
“Startle me? Jesus, Bert, you scared the living beejesus out of me.” She held up the can of Mace she’d been clutching in her right hand. “Another second and you’d have gotten a faceful of this.”
He laughed nervously. “Yeah. Rookie move. Can I talk to you for a minute?”
***
She fetched them both bottles of water, and they sat in her living room, with Poppy’s head placed contentedly on Bert’s lap.
He was dressed oddly, and acting strange, even for Bert. He wore his usual weekend attire of baggy shorts, flip-flops, and white “wife-beater” undershirt, but tonight, despite the stifling heat, he’d seen fit to throw a calf-length raincoat over the ensemble. His hair was cut shorter than she’d ever seen it, and he was obviously on edge.
Cara had no time for subterfuge. “Why are you here, Bert? Did Cullen send you?”
“Cullen? God, no.” He kept running his fingers along Poppy’s ears.
