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PART II
ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS

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70B

She was lying in the swing bed almost asleep when Trey’s car puttered into its spot and died. “Sugga?” he called softly. “You awake?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll be right there. Don’t go to sleep on me, hear?”

Marina said nothing. It took forever for him to return, damp, pajama bottoms on at least, and push the mosquito netting aside so he could climb in beside her.

“You mad at me?”

“Yes.”

He sighed. “Whatever you make of it, she came in reading me the riot act for all that ‘loose women’ business.”

Marina’s mouth twisted. The crickets called, the leaves rustled, the breeze found its way through the netting. She really, really liked this bed.

“You want to … ?”

“No.” Yes.

“Allrightythen.”

“Not … unless you bring me something to drink.”

“I’m not going to drug you up when you’re in a snit like this. You let me know when you want to do it, I’ll spike your NuGrape for you. Don’t trust you not to overdose on accident.”

“How do I know when I want to do it?”

“That’s up to you. I reckon you’ll feel some feelings and I won’t be around and then you’ll be thinking about it and I’ll come home and you’ll ask me, real shy-like, if I have any sweet tea.”

Marina looked up at the stars through the leaves and thought about that. “But why will I want to? I still don’t understand.”

“Ah, Sugar. All you have to do is think about it. Remember the feelings. Your body’ll decide thinking about it’s not enough. God knows you damn near come every time you ride that fucking rollercoaster.”

She gasped. “You knew?”

“’Course I did. I can tell when a woman’s about to have an orgasm. Why do you think I take you there all the time? You asked me what I do to seduce you when you don’t know. That’s one of ’em. Tell you what. Next time, I’ll help you sneeze right after we get off that thing.”

Her between tingled. “Where?!”

“In the back seat of the car. Not gonna risk that wearing off before we get home.”

“Trey!” she squeaked. “Where anybody could see?”

“Not necessarily. There are ways to make it so nobody looks twice.”

“How?”

He paused. “I could show you now.”

Marina gulped, but her between was still tingling, thinking about last night and the rollercoaster, just over the crest, floating out of her seat a little …

“Be right back.”

He rolled off the bed, which set it swinging, which only made the tingling continue. He was back in a heartbeat with a bottle of NuGrape, a bottle opener, and a little packet he rattled. “Say the word, Marina.”

She couldn’t speak to save her life. “Mmm hm.”

The bottle top clicked, the pop fizzed, then fizzed some more when he poured the sweet tea into it and handed it to her.

She hesitated, but then reached for it and drank it down. It was noticeably sweeter than usual. She grimaced. “Well, I guess I know why it’s called sweet tea,” she quipped weakly, handing it back to him.

He chuckled. “I’ll take this back, let that work on you a little. Go get in the back seat of the Tin Lizzie.”

The tingling was almost unbearable by the time she climbed in, the night air caressing her bare legs and arms, sending her soft nightgown swirling against the skin it covered. It was so dark back there she started when Trey got in the front seat.

“This is gonna be a tight squeeze, though so you sit on back there, good, open your legs like last night, and I will … Oof.”

He grunted as he climbed over the front seat to crouch on the floor between her legs.

“What— Why are you still dressed?”

“Don’t need to be undressed for this,” he said warmly, before working his way to his knees in the space. “Damn,” he muttered. “May not be able to do this after all.”

Marina was oddly disappointed, but that was the sweet tea making her feel like that.

The car bounced around while Trey found a comfortable position, then he pulled the hem of her nightgown up a little. He grasped her hips and pulled her forward.

“Now,” he murmured silkily. “Pretend we just got off that rollercoaster for the fourteenth time and your between’s a little tingly and your body hasn’t sneezed yet. You know that feeling, don’t you?”

Just thinking about it made Marina whimper.

Then his big, rough hands were caressing between her thighs lightly, so lightly she shivered, and where his fingers weren’t, the breeze was. He pressed his mouth lightly to the inside of her knee, then touched his tongue to her skin.

“Just over the rise,” he whispered, his breath silky against her skin. “On the way down. Fast, floating in the air like you can fly … ”

Yes, she could picture it, feel it. She might have been embarrassed that he had known what she was feeling, but the sweet tea wouldn’t let her.

“Put your hands in my hair, Sugga.”

“I don’t … I don’t understand.”

“’Member I told you about what women do together.”

She didn’t want to remember, but she couldn’t get rid of the knowledge. At the next tingle that shot through her between and up the inside of her belly, she gasped and grasped his coarse blond hair in her fists.

“Like that,” he whispered, still kissing and stroking the inside of her thighs.

“Trey … ”

“Don’t think. Just let me do what I’m going do and think about how much you love riding that coaster.”

She did and heaven help her, she wasn’t even embarrassed when she finally realized what he was going to do. She spread her legs wider to accommodate his broad shoulders, whimpering because her between was clenching and she couldn’t keep it from doing that, and then …

Her entire body tightened up when his mouth went to the spot his fingertip had touched last night. Her head dropped back and she nearly cried when her lower body tried to buck, wanting him inside her, but she was at the crest of the rollercoaster and then she was going sixty miles an hour over bumps and she clenched Trey’s hair and pulled him into her because she wanted more than whatever he was doing, but her body sneezed anyway and she barely bit back a cry because they were outside and their neighbors were close …

She panted and practically collapsed against the seat as Trey pulled away a little, still kissing the inside of her thigh, then the other, going back and forth.

“You’re right,” he said as if from far away. “Can’t do this in the Fairyland parking lot. Gonna have to wait to get home.”

Marina said nothing as she tried to catch her breath, one hand flopped on her heaving chest, the other on the leather seat.

“You okay, Sugar?” he asked as he squirmed out of his position, rocking the car. He practically pushed her over and flopped down beside her, dropped his arm across her shoulders, and pulled her into his body, pressing a kiss to her temple.

“Fine,” she slurred, her eyes unable to stay open.

When she awoke she was in the swing bed, Trey beside her, his back to her. The neighborhood rang with children out running around and screaming, women hollering at them and laughing with each other. The sun was high, but barely made a dent through the thick leaves of the giant oak tree and the pink mosquito netting.

Surely that had been a dream, hadn’t it? The Tin Lizzie didn’t look any different. Marina wasn’t sore the way she had been the previous morning. She still had her nightgown on. Trey still had his pajamas on. She did not remember getting from the car to the bed, but that was the sweet tea.

It was earlier than she usually awoke, but she was used to sleeping in a darkened room that faced west. She always woke up early when she slept in the swing bed. She was also always more tired and ended up taking a nap after the sun had passed over the house.

Marina felt … not herself. She felt … wicked. Not bad, precisely, but … Sister Albright had told her many times that a husband should make her feel good and that it was no sin for a wife to be so free and open with her husband, then Alice had told her what a lucky wife Marina was to have a considerate husband. Nothing special. Her brow wrinkled.

She didn’t know how it couldn’t be special, when it was only to be between a husband and wife, and she had a husband who was actively competing to be her best pal.

Clearly it wasn’t special for Father and his many women, but that didn’t apply to Marina. It was special for Bishop and Sister Albright. But Sister Albright had also told her what it felt like to be with men who didn’t want it to be special. It was awful, she said. Horrible. It made her cry. She had tried to lie to herself that it wasn’t special for her, either, but she didn’t believe that. Not really. Then she’d met Bishop and it became special.

Her memory flashed to the day Trey’s men had marched Mother and Father into Trey’s lawyer’s office to make them sign the affidavits as to Marina’s identity. The notary had needed to see the note pinned to Marina’s baby blanket and she remembered how utterly unwanted she felt. Her parents hadn’t wanted her. Her grandparents hadn’t wanted her. Dot wanted her, but would be leaving to go a thousand miles away and she was excited about it.

That’ll be me in forty years, so you an’ me can be fat’n’happy together.

Trey was the only person in her life who seemed to want her.

Nothing special.

“How do your girls do this every night?”

“Mmmm?”

She didn’t realize she’d spoken, but she wanted to know the answer. “How can your girls be indecent every night with a bunch of men they don’t know and don’t care about?”

He groaned and moved, setting the bed to rocking a little. He flopped over on his back and the branch rustled its leaves in protest. He threw his arm over his face and croaked, “Don’t rightly know.” He smacked his lips. “I couldn’t do it.”

“Would you if that was the only way you could make money?”

“I’d starve first.”

“But Gio and … ”

“Gio was raised to be good for only one thing. Whoring was a step up for him, but it didn’t take long for him to hate it and he didn’t think he was good for anything but what he’d been trained to do, which he refused to do.”

“Oh.” Her brow wrinkled. “That’s really sad.”

“Yeh. Everybody’s got a sob story. You’ve got one. I’ve got one. Dot— Well, she’s getting hers now. But Gio met Dot and suddenly he figured out he was better than that, or at least that he wanted to try to be better than that. She made him want to be a better man.”

Marina sighed.

“Alice, now, she likes it. I don’t know if she likes the job because she’s lazy and she makes a lot of money not doing much, or if she really likes having sex that much and she’s not picky about who gets her off. Probably both.” He paused. “A few women can do that, have sex without needing to be special.”

“Can you?”

“Most men can.”

Marina closed her eyes and thought about what Alice had said. He said nothing for quite a while. Marina thought about getting up and going about her day, but she was tired and confused.

“Marina,” he said low, patting the mattress before finding her hand and threading his fingers through hers, “the first woman I was ever with … well. With her, it was special.”

Marina dreaded whatever he was going to tell her.

“But she broke my heart because for her it wasn’t special, but I didn’t know that till she threw me over. So I know how it feels when one person thinks it’s special and the other one doesn’t. I didn’t want to do that to you. One reason. And I didn’t want that to happen to me again, either.”

He said nothing else and let Marina contemplate that, looking up through the netting and the leaves as the sun inched across the sky. Here they were holding hands and he was telling her …

“Then why did you tell me it was nothing special?” Marina murmured.

“Because I thought that was what you needed to hear right then.”

“You didn’t mean it?”

“No.”

Marina simply didn’t know what to think about that.

“C’mere,” he muttered, pulling her to him as he had the first Sunday after they were married. She lay against him and looked across the yard to see her neighbor having a tea party with her little girl. She was casting furtive glances at them, but Marina was too tired to be embarrassed. She listened to his heart beat against her ear and felt his fingers caressing her arm. It was all still too new, too sudden, too overwhelming to settle properly into, well, anything about her life. She could enjoy it, but it didn’t feel real. At any moment, she’d wake up in the parsonage vaguely remembering the feeling of being disoriented and frightened, but dismiss it and go about a normal summer Monday. First Father’s study, which she cleaned every day, top to bottom. Then the upstairs …

“Trey,” she said softly.

“Mmm?”

“This isn’t just a bad dream?”

“Nope. And if it were a dream, what’s bad about it?”

“That it’s not bad.”

“Come again?”

“When I … Before I met you, I … nothing ever changed. I didn’t feel anything and I didn’t miss anything. And then I met you and I was happy and then … Then things started to hurt.”

She felt his throat bob. “Did you have any joy?”

“No. I know I was supposed to feel God’s joy and love, but I didn’t feel that, either. When I— When you— Augh! What am I trying to say. When you do things that make me happy, it scares me because I don’t know if I’m allowed to be.”

“That is the saddest thing I have ever heard.”

She sighed. “I don’t know what being allowed feels like, so I get confused and mad and it feels like I’m mad all the time except when I’m not but I don’t know when I’m not and so even if I can feel allowed, being happy feels like a bad dream because something will make me mad or hurt me that makes the happy part not even worth it. I’m always going to be punished for whatever happiness I feel because something will come along to make me hurt just as much. I don’t want to be unhappy, but I’d rather be … not-happy and not-mad and not-scared. Maybe that’s why my real mother … Maybe something happened that made her so happy she couldn’t bear it.”

“It’s been thirteen years since my mama and brothers died,” he said hoarsely, rubbing her arm. “Twelve years since my daddy died and I was turned out of my home. Sometimes, it still seems like a nightmare. One thing I’ve learned is, life never gets any easier. If you’re lucky, it doesn’t get harder. But since nobody is that lucky and it does get harder, the best you can hope for is to have a best pal with you every step of the way.”

70B

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