The store’s oversized front window displayed mannequins wearing brightly colored Carnival costumes, boasting beaded brassieres, huge feathered plumage headpieces, sparkly corsets, and over-the-top ornate accessories. Val’s eyes lit up like twin matches when she saw the revealing garments staring back at her.

  “Oh my goodness,” she purred. “I want everything!”

  I chuckled as I followed her inside the little boutique. “I think one Carnival outfit is plenty. When would you ever wear it again?”

  She winked at me and held up a particularly revealing two-piece beaded outfit that looked more like uncomfortable lingerie than a costume. “Oh, I theenk you can know when I might want to wear thees one again.”

  I grimaced. I wasn’t exactly in the mood to picture Val wearing that outfit in the bedroom for Artie. I threw my hands up. “Whatever. I’m sure Artie can afford it.”

  She clapped her hands together and let out the little high-pitched squeal again. I winced as the shrill sound pierced my eardrums. I glanced up at the woman working the front desk, wondering if they sold ear plugs.

  She was an attractive woman about my age with black cornrows that pouffed out at the crown of her head into an afro. She had gold eyeshadow and matching big round hoop earrings, and she wore a long black-and-gold dress. We exchanged appreciative glances before Val linked arms with me.

  I let out a little laugh and then felt the need to explain. “My boss’s girlfriend.” I patted Val’s hand now clinging to my elbow.

  She nodded as if she didn’t believe me, but it wasn’t her place to pass judgment.

  “Well, let’s get started, then. I don’t have all day,” I said with a sigh. “How about we start over here?” I pointed to the more modest Carnival outfits. The one-piece dresses with the big skirts and the pouffy sleeves. I pulled out a blue dress with yellow fringes around the sleeves and a sharp V cut out of the neckline. It reminded me of something the Chiquita banana lady might wear. “How about this one? We can get you a big hat with fruit on it.”

  Val looked appalled. “Are you keeding? I no wear that clothes. It look like something you grandmother would wear.”

  I stared at the outfit with one eyebrow cocked. “I can promise you Gam-Gam would’ve never been caught dead in that. She used to say that breasts were the playthings of the devil. Of course ‘Devil’ was the nickname she used for my grandfather, but still.”

  Val ran over to another rack and picked up a sparkly number that barely looked like a set of Band-Aids suspended by strings. “I like thees one!”

  I sighed. I was pretty sure there was no beating the need for slutty outfits out of Val. “Whatever you like. Go try it on.” After all, Artie had said to get the woman whatever she wanted. Who was I to censor Artie’s girlfriend’s clothing?

  “I try on thees one too. Oh! And thees one.”

  I looked back at the woman behind the counter. “Do you have somewhere to sit down? I have a feeling we’re gonna be here awhile.”

  18

  “What do you theenk?” asked Val, sashaying around in a little circle just outside of the dressing room. She wore a bejeweled top that was basically just two swirly things formed to cup each breast, a matching thong, a bejeweled choker that looked like a torture device of some sort, some kind of crazy peacock-looking crown with matching feathered wings, and her yellow high heels.

  By now I was well versed in every square inch of Valentina Carrizo’s body. It had been on display in one form or another over the course of the last two hours. It was no secret that she had a smoking hot body (as well a little heart-shaped mole on the underside of her left butt cheek), but each costume seemed to be getting more outlandish, and skimpier, than the last.

  I shrugged. “It’s okay.”

  Val sucked in her breath and put her hands on her hips. “Just okay? I no look beautiful?!”

  “I mean, you look great, Val. You know that you look great. I’m just not very good at picking out clothes. Especially costume-y things like that.” I pointed at her.

  She turned around in a circle again, this time stopping so she had her back to me. She moved her arms to spread her wings and looked back at me. “What do you theenk of my butt? It look okay?”

  I rubbed my fingers against my temples. I was sure there wasn’t a single other job in the world that would actually pay me to critique my boss’s girlfriend’s ass. As uncomfortable as being put in that position made me, the truth was, she had a fantastic ass, and I wanted to make her happy. So I stared hard at her butt—you know, to give it a fair assessment. “Wiggle a little bit,” I instructed, holding my chin up with my hand and tapping my nose with my forefinger.

  She shook her bottom, making her cheeks shake like Jell-O.

  “Now can you give it a little twerk?”

  Val bumped her butt up in the air like a pro.

  “Side to side?”

  She gyrated her hips in a fluid Latina sort of way.

  “Well, Shakira was right. The hips don’t lie.” I shrugged. “Yeah. Your ass looks great. But now we have to see if you can move around in it.” I stood up and walked towards her moving my finger in a little circle. “Spin around.”

  Giggling, she did as I instructed. “Like thees?”

  “Yeah, just like that. Okay, now stop. Go that way a little ways, and then I wanna see you walk towards me, like you’re a runway model.”

  “Oooh! Like Victoria Angel!”

  “Exactly.”

  “I practice thees at home,” she said before turning around and then strutting towards me. Her face in a serious pout, she thrust her chest out, arching her back, her long legs extending gracefully.

  “Work it, Val,” I said, giving her a wink.

  That made her strut even harder.

  And then, unbeknownst to either one of us, one of her wings came loose. It floated down behind her, sliding gracefully between her legs and onto the floor right in front of her, but before either one of us noticed it, one of her heels landed on it and her foot slid out from underneath her, like she’d stepped on a banana peel.

  “Ahhh!” she screamed, her arms flailing out wide to keep herself from falling.

  “Val!” I hollered, darting forward to grab her before she hit the floor.

  She fell backwards into my arms. I reached around her and managed to keep her from smashing onto the floor, but when the dust settled and Val was able to get her feet under her again, I realized I’d somehow managed to wind up with two handfuls of Val’s breasts in my hands.

  Looking down at her breasts in my hands, she giggled. “Oooh, you naughty boy.”

  “Val?!” said a voice from the counter.

  Both my eyes and Val’s snapped up to see a tall Asian man in a grey suit, dropping a white lacy piece of lingerie onto the counter.

  Val’s voice came out breathless, almost in a whisper. “Remy?”

  With my hands still clamped to her boobs, I felt her body go rigid against me. She reached up and pulled my hands off of her chest and stumbled forward. “I—I was falling,” she said. “He caught me.”

  I stared at the man curiously. By simply saying her name, he’d somehow managed to turn Val into a completely different person right in front of me—someone who seemed afraid and tense and quite the opposite of the bubbly Val we all knew at the Seacoast Majestic.

  He walked over to us. His dark eyes went from Val to me. He pointed at me. “This is him?”

  “Remy, please—”

  “This is him?!” His voice was louder, and even a little hostile.

  Very curious now, I extended my hand to him. “Hey, how’s it going? I’m Drunk.”

  He didn’t even so much as look down at my hand. He tipped his head slightly to the side. “Yeah? Well, I’m not.” The next thing I knew, Remy’s fist decided to make friends with my nose. I knew right away they could never be friends. Mostly because my nose exploded, sending blood splurting all over me and Val and the fancy Carnival costume she wore.

  The woman at the counter screamed.

  Val screamed. “Remy! No!”

  I doubled over, holding my nose, my hand filling with blood. The pain came almost instantly, hit a crescendo and then seemed to make my face painfully numb with prickly bits radiating out into my cheeks, but I was more concerned with the fact that I was bleeding like a stuck pig all over an eight-hundred-dollar costume. I stumbled backwards.

  Remy tried to come after me, but Val stepped between us, trying to shove him backwards.

  “No, Remy! No!” she bawled.

  “You! Get outta here!” the clerk screamed at Remy. “I’m calling the cops!”

  “Remy! Don’t hurt him!”

  “I’m not gonna hurt him. I’m gonna kill him!”

  I managed to stand up straight, but immediately staggered straight into a rack of clothes. Dizzy, I could see Val struggling to keep Remy at bay.

  I reached under my shirt and pulled out Gertie, pointing it at him. “Get your fucking hands off of her!” I hollered, hoping I sounded scarier than I looked, because I felt like any second I might tip over.

  “Remy!” screamed Val. “Go! Just go!”

  “The cops are on their way,” shouted the clerk, hanging up the phone.

  With a gun now aimed at him, Remy wasn’t quite so tough. Eyeing me angrily, he took a step backwards. “This isn’t over, Val.”

  “Just go, Remy! Leave us alone!”

  He took several more steps backwards and then sirens sounded in the distance. He looked back over his shoulder and then back at us. “I swear to you, Val, this isn’t over!” And then he turned tail and ran out of the store.

  “Oh my God! Drunk, are you okay?” asked Val, rushing to my side.

  I fell sideways into a rack of clothes, toppling it over along with myself. “Yeah, I’m fine.” I grimaced, landing hard on the protruding metal arms of the rack, which now dug sharply into my ribs. With tightened breath, I grunted, “No worries. This rack here broke my fall.”

  * * *

  The rest of the time spent at Miss Donna’s boutique was a blur. The clerk was not happy at all with the destruction that Remy had caused, and somehow she’d attributed it to Val and me, like it was our fault that this guy had come in and punched me in the face! Or that it was my fault that my nose had gotten smashed in and had bled all over the place. Could I help it that I was a bleeder?

  Once I’d gotten my legs back underneath me and I’d stopped seeing stars, Val and I’d helped the clerk right the racks I’d knocked over and I’d given her Artie’s credit card. Not only did Artie pay for the costume that I’d bled all over, he also bought Val two more unbloodied ones, and me a whole new outfit. That squelched any complaints the clerk had about having to wipe blood up off her tile floor.

  A cop had shown up. The clerk recounted to him what had happened, and Val and I both gave statements. Val claimed that she didn’t know Remy’s last name. He was just an acquaintance she’d met once, but couldn’t remember where. It was obviously a lie, but I wasn’t about to push her to say anything in front of the cops. She and I had the rest of the day together. I figured I would find out more about Remy and whatever was going on with her later when we were alone.

  I left the boutique with a trio of garment bags slung over my shoulder—I planned to drop one of them off at a dry cleaners and see if they had anything that might get blood out of feathers. I also left the boutique sporting a brand-new outfit, a swollen red nose, and a throbbing headache. Val clung to my crooked elbow, still fawning over me, and apologizing like crazy.

  “It’s fine Val, I swear. I’m not gonna die or anything.”

  “But you look terrible,” she said mournfully.

  “Thanks,” I grunted, unlocking my truck from a few yards down the street.

  “You know what I mean,” she said with a puffed-out bottom lip as she swatted at my arm playfully.

  I opened the back door of my Raptor and tossed the three garment bags inside, then helped Val up into the truck before walking around to get in myself.

  I hitched a thumb over my shoulder as I started the engine. “After we drop this stuff off at the cleaners, what do you say we go get some lunch? If we’re gonna keep shopping, I need to eat something, and I should probably stop off and buy something for this headache that’s eating at me.”

  Val nodded enthusiastically. “Oh, yes. I am so hungry too! That ees a good idea. Where do you want to go?”

  I looked over at her as I pulled away from the curb. “How ’bout this? You can pick the place if you can think of somewhere to go that Remy won’t make a surprise appearance. And then maybe you can explain what the hell that was all about.”

  Val kind of shrank a little in her seat but looked up at me, doe-eyed, and batted her press-on lashes. “Oh. Yes. Okay.”

  19

  Val picked Mimi’s Seaside Café, a fancy little chophouse down along the boardwalk. She said Artie had taken her there once and she’d fallen in love with the view of the water from the outdoor seating deck. Because we hadn’t called ahead for reservations, there was a bit of a wait, so I sat contentedly on a bench in the entrance, holding an ice pack to my nose. I’d found it in a convenience store when we’d gone for ibuprofen, and I was already starting to feel a little better.

  Val, on the other hand, not one for sitting still, was up, walking around the place, looking everything over thoroughly. Even though my plan had been to interrogate her the second I got her alone at lunch, I appreciated the blissful moment of downtime and the lack of her constant chatter. She was a pleasant enough woman, but she was a handful. She’d been gone about five or six minutes when she came rushing back over to me holding a handful of brochures.

  “Look what I find,” she said excitedly, waving the colorful pamphlets in my face.

  I moved the corner of the ice pack out of my line of vision and tried to focus on it. “What is it?”

  “Ees island tour. Look at thees one. Thees one is a night tour. I always want to go on a night tour, but ees too expensive. Maybe I take Artie on thees one now.”

  “You mean maybe Artie can take you on it now?” I asked her.

  She swatted at me, frowning. “Ay! No! I have money.”

  “Artie’s money?”

  “I had job before I meet Artie, you know.”

  “You just said it was too expensive before, but now for some reason it’s not too expensive? Gee, what changed in the last few weeks?” I pretended to think hard.

  She frowned at me. I could tell I’d pissed her off. She held out her long manicured fingers and began to tick them off. “I no pay rent, I no pay food, I no pay clothes, I no pay electric, I no pay phone, I no pay…”

  I held up a hand to stop her now grating voice. “I got it. I got it. You can stop. You have extra money now because Artie is covering the bills.”

  She shook her head at me. “And that is wrong? He ask me leeve with him. I take care of him! I cook for him. I do he laundry. I clean he house. I just like he wife. Husbands pay the bills and wife take care of house, no?”

  I sighed. When she said it like that, I guessed she had a point. “Whatever.”

  “Whatever,” she muttered, swatting at me in annoyance. “You theenk I take advantage of Artie? You just like everyone else at the Seacoast Majestic.” She crossed her arms over her chest and pouted.

  I sighed. I hadn’t meant to make her feel bad. I was just kind of grumpy because I’d just gotten my face smashed in by some ex-john of hers and maybe I was taking my frustration out on her. “I’m sorry, Val. I didn’t mean it like it came out. I’m sure you do a good job taking care of Artie.”

  “I do!” she said emphatically. “I love Artie. And Artie love me.”

  “But be real, Val. And I don’t mean this, like, negatively, but do you love Artie for Artie, or do you love him for the life he can give you?”

  She leaned back against the seat back next to me and sighed. “Look. I know maybe people theenk we make odd couple. I young, Artie not so young. I look like thees, Artie a leetle beet chubby. But Artie has beeg heart and I have beeg heart. I make Artie happy and he make me happy.”

  I ran a hand through my messy hair, wishing I’d known in advance that we were going to be eating at a restaurant that didn’t allow hats on men. Then I might have fixed my hair. I looked up at her. A million questions swirled through my head, but I had to temper them a little. I didn’t want to come off as a complete asshole.

  “What about your old life?”

  Val looked at me curiously. “What about it?”

  I shrugged. “I mean, it can’t be easy to just cut everyone from your old life out cold turkey, can it?”

  “Turkey? I no understand.”

  “Like you cut everyone from your old life out suddenly. Like this,” I said and snapped my fingers.

  She nodded. “I am no going to say eet has been easy. But I do my best.”

  “You gonna tell me about that Remy guy?”

  Val sighed and looked away. “I no want to talk about Remy.”

  “But, Val, he smashed in my nose. I think I should at least have the right to know who he is and why in the hell he hit me.”

  But Val only pressed her lips together.

  “Were you dating him or something?”

  She shook her head.

  “Was he, like—a work colleague?” I suggested as gently as possible.

  Val shrugged. “I no want to talk about Remy.”

  I sighed. “Has Remy ever come to see you before?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “At the Seacoast Majestic. Has he ever come to the resort to see you.”

  Her eyes widened as she sucked in her breath. “Oh no. No, no, no.” Her finger ticked the air.

  “Why do you say it like that?”

 

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