Page 57 of Empowered
“I don’t think you are.”
“Then let mego.”
Lucas’s hand dropped to his side. Sarah attempted to get up again.
Yes, the attempt was made. But by the time she spun around again, she was so tired that she forgot how to stand on her own two feet.
“What are you doing, Sarah?” Lucas asked again. “What do you hope to achieve in a place like this? It’s not…”
“Don’t say it.” She knew what he wanted to say. Healthy. It wasn’thealthy.Yeah, well, who was he to tell her what or what not to do with her body and sexuality?Maybe it’s the only thing that makes me feel like I have control.“I don’t need your moralizing. I get enough from my doctor.” The same bitch who made a grand show of exhibiting howconcernedshe was about Sarah’s supposedly dangerous behavior.
“I’m sorry about everything that’s happened to you, Sarah. Nobody should have to deal with what you have. But…” Great. Here he went. “This isn’t how you handle it. There’s nothing for you here but more hurt.”
“What the fuck do you know?” She spun around again, so quickly that some of the pins came undone in her hair. Not that she needed the wig anymore. Angel might as well go back to sleep for all the action she was going to get that night. “So this place is good enough for you? Good enough for the rest of these people? Do they look like they’re hurting to you?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. I’m not saying the place is the problem, or what two consenting strangers decide to do with each other… only that if someone has gone through what you have, this is probably the last place she should come to try to work through it.”
“I’m so glad to hear about the shrink degree you earned at Princeton.” Sarah slapped her hand against her face. Why? Why did her body think now was a good time to start crying? No, no,no!This was not supposed to happen when she dressed up as Angel. Angel had fun. She didn’t care what people thought. She only wanted to have a good time and go back to sleep in the morning, when Sarah woke up and reclaimed the body they both inhabited. Angel was supposed to help Sarah get through life. To let her sit back and forget those horrifying memories that sometimes crept up on her as air stilled and rooms became silent.
“Sarah. I care about you. I don’t say that flippantly.”
Fuck it. She wasn’t going to sit there and take his hypocrisy any longer.
“If you care about me so much, why didn’t you tell me about your kid?”
Lucas sat back with a start, but did not say anything. He took Sarah’s untouched martini and swirled the olive around the rim of the glass. “You found out about that, huh?”
“You’re not going to deny it?”
“The last thing I want is for my son to find out one day that I denied his existence.”
“Fuck you, Luke.” She laughed in resignation. “You harp about my secrets, my terrible history, the way I choose to handle things… and you’re hiding a kid from me? Who’s the woman I saw you with, huh? Your wife you’re not actually divorced from? The main squeeze you keep in the spotlight when you’re not fucking me on the side? I knew that this,” she gestured to the narrow space between them, “was shallow, but Sarah is not some man’s affair.”
“It’s good enough for Angel?”
“You’re not going to deny that either…”
“You know,” he said, leaning against the counter, “I thought that was Alice’s car I saw yesterday. You were in it, weren’t you?”
Like he wouldn’t deny anything, neither would she.
“So you saw me and Victor. That’s my son, by the way. Victor. Bouncing baby five-year-old. Hmph. Guess that means he’s not really a baby anymore. My, where does one’s life go?”
“And the women?”
Lucas pondered the rows of bottles displayed before them. Spirits from all over the world. The Caribbean. Europe. Japan. Argentina. Morocco. “The woman you saw leaving in my car is my ex-wife. I never lied about being divorced, or when it happened. That was our son together, from our marriage.” He drank Sarah’s martini. “The older woman was her mother. She and Victor live with her parents since the divorce.”
Sarah didn’t respond. Not audibly, anyway. Yet in her head she screamed at herself as loudly as she could.You expect me to believe that? To coddle you because you have a son you never told me about? And a hot ex-wife who gets to take your car everywhere? How ex are you two, exactly? Why did you divorce?
Lucas turned on his stool, motioning to the bodyguard a few steps away. “There’s a lounge down the street from here. It’s quieter. Less… charged, if you catch my drift.” He glanced Sarah up and down. “We’re dressed well enough for it. Shall we go? I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”
“How many of it will be lies?”
“I haven’t told you a single lie yet, and I’m not about to start.”
For all she knew, that was a lie.
***
