Page 1 of The Deadly Candies

1

“Black Coffee” –Peggy Lee

A low, sultry melody drifted up through the floorboards, so soft she wondered if it was just in her head. Peggy Lee’s voice wafted from below, crackling through the radio. Kathy rested upon their loving shared bed of pillows, she stirred beneath the wool blanket, half-dreaming, half-waking to the ache in her shoulders, and neck—not just from the cold, but from the wild, reckless thing they’d done. They had runaway.

The singer’s voice curled into the room like smoke:“I’m feelin’ mighty lonesome…”It was true. Shewaslonesome, even with Melo just downstairs. Lonesome for the Mama’s they’d left, the beds they wouldn’t sleep in again, the families who’d never forgive them just for being human and in love. She hadn’t slept right since they’d run. Nights were a slow march from fear to longing because Carmelo had transformed the bakery into a home.

“Haven’t slept a wink…”Peggy Lee crooned. Kathy turned her face into the pillow. Outside, the snow kept falling, locking them in, locking the world out. Maybe tomorrow, they’d be brave. Maybe tomorrow, they’d stop pretending this frigid paradise could last. For tonight, the blues played on.

“Carmelo?” she said.

He was downstairs in the closed bakery. Judging by the delicious scents rising through the cracks, Carmelo was cooking. The realization sent a jolt of joy through her, chasing away the emptiness.

She sat up on her elbows. The attic trapdoor stood open, and a warm rectangle of light shone up from below. Kathy smiled softly, imagining Carmelo humming as he prepared dinner—a simple skill she'd taught him with playful patience.

The ladder was down. She stretched. She yawned. Then she grabbed her mittens. She reached for his mother’s sweater—scratchy wool, smelling of rosemary and his boyhood—and pulled it over her nightgown. Her fingers fumbled with the buttons, but the mittens made it worse. She left them undone.

Peggy Lee’s voice greeted her as Kathy descended, slow and syrupy. The bakery was boarded up tight against the storm, but here, in their stolen kitchen, the radio hummed. Carmelo hated the blues. (Too sad, he’d say, tossing her that grin.Life’s sad enough.) But tonight, he’d tuned to Kathy’s favorite station.

Carmelo stood at the stove, his back to her, humming along with the radio. She paused a moment, smiling silently at the sight of him. He looked comfortably at home in the golden glow of the oven’s heat. The apron strings hung crookedly on his lean hips, and he was sock-footed, his shoes left by the door. Dark curls of hair fell over his forehead when he leaned to check a pan, she glimpsed the strong line of his profile—the beloved face that had filled her dreams for months now. Seeing him here, so domestic and determined, made her heart swell. This was their future. He husband, caring for her just as much as she cared for him. They were not their parents. Their love was different and all their own.

She paused. There he was—shirt sleeves rolled, hair flopping into his eyes—stirring a pot with one hand and conducting an invisible orchestra with the other.Haven’t slept a wink…Peggy purred, and Carmelo mouthed the words, disastrously off-key. He spun, Sinatra-style, toward the sizzling skillet—then froze.

“Ciao bella,” he said shyly.

“Having fun?” Kathy asked.

“I was making dinner. To surprise you,” he blushed and stepped over to the chopping board. He got serious with dicing his tomato.

“You’re getting pretty good at this,” she teased.

He looked down at the chopping board and knife. “It’s not as good as yours.”

She crossed the room, her toes curling in her socked feet over the flour-dusted tiles. His gaze followed her—that look, the one that made her private area tingle when he reached and touched her arm. When she reached for the knife, he made sure to run his calloused fingers across hers.It’s like her hormones went into crazy mode. All she wanted to do was hug on him and kiss.

“Your meat’s burning,”she whispered.

“Oy!”He lunged for the stove, knocking the heat down just as Peggy’s song faded into static. Then, prettily, piano keys trilled. Ella Fitzgerald’s laugh curled through the room:“I really can’t stay…”

Kathy chuckled and drifted on Ella’s swooning singing style. She swayed, hips moving and circling. Not for him. For the music. But then his arms slid around her waist, his chest solid against her back. The knife stilled in her hand. His breath warmed her neck as Louis Jordan crooned back:“Baby, it’s cold outside…”

The tomato bled onto the cutting board. Somewhere, Ella lied about her mother waiting up. Carmelo’s lips found the flutter beneath her ear. The stove hissed. The radio crackled. And for a breath, there was no attic, no snow, no families who’d never forgive them—just his hands tightening on her hips, turning her?—

Then his mouth was on hers, tasting of sweet promises. The world tilted. Her hands tangled in his shirt. Somewhere, Ella sighed. Somewhere, the storm rattled the boards on the windows.

“Baby, it’s cold outside…”Carmelo murmured against her lips.

* * *

Kathy openedher eyes to a shiver that started in her ribs and clawed up her gut and spread up her spine.The bus’s broken window frost blocked out the night. She hunched deeper intoher mother’s sweater—the wool scratchy, still smelling of mothballs and the cinnamon Mama would sprinkle too generously on her morning toast.

Like the attic.

But no. The attic’s cold had been softened by his body curled around hers, by the way he’d hum"O Sole Mio"off-key into her hair to make her laugh. Here, the chill was a blade. It carved through the sweater, through the mittens, cut through her skin, and the lie she’d told herself:I’ll be back home soon.

Harlem wasn’t just gone. It had been swallowed by the last of the season’s snow, by the miles, by the memory of Carmelo’s screaming, pleading face as his father’s men dragged him away.

Outside, the world blurred—a smear of black and white. No stoops piled with shoveled snow. No glow from the Savoy’s marquee. Just the Greyhound’s wheezing engine, and the road chewing itself into nothing.

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