The Promise of Paradise

Chapter Eight


“Ash!” Marty stuck his head into the kitchen of Blues and Booze.

She pulled her tips from her pocket and started to count. “What's up?” It had been a long week, and she couldn’t wait for the night to be over. Thank God the clock read ten minutes to twelve.

“Some guy out here says he knows you.” The manager wheezed. One arm snaked up to scratch an itch between his shoulder blades. He peered into the coffee pot, pulled some brown strands of lettuce from the salad bin, and straightened the cocktail napkins.

Ash’s shoulders hunched up, and she didn’t answer for a minute. The media? No. Not at almost midnight. But she knew better than anyone that the paparazzi didn't watch the clock.

“You hear me?”

“I heard you. Who is he?”

“Dunno. He’s got a couple of tattoos. Says his name’s Eddie something.”

Coins slipped through her fingers like water. “Oh. Yeah, he knows me. Tell him I’ll be right out.” She bent to retrieve quarters from the sticky floor and waited for Marty to leave.She’d only seen Eddie twice in passing, the last couple of days. Both times he’d paused, placed a hand on her shoulder, and smiled down at her like there was nowhere else he wanted to be. The gesture made her uncomfortable as hell. It made her look forward to walking down the stairs each morning. It made her wonder who had taken over her body and replaced her with a woman who grew warm and slippery every time she saw this guy. A guy she barely knew.

Watch it, Ash, she warned herself for the tenth time since moving to Paradise. Falling for this guy is trouble. Wrapping her apron into a ball, she admitted that as much as she wanted to avoid complications, she was still glad Eddie had come to see her tonight. She wanted to ask him how the kitten was making out. She wanted to tell him about the idiot who’d grabbed at her earlier and laugh with him about the woman who’d sent her meal back three times before ordering something else altogether. Mostly, Ash wanted Eddie to drop an arm across her shoulders or rub a hand across the top of her head and tell her she was doing okay.

He sat alone in the bar, on the stool closest to the door. An empty beer mug stood in front of him, with a few crumpled dollar bills beside it. Ash paused for a minute in the dining room and peered through the chair legs, now perched upside down on their tables.

J.T., one of the night bartenders, leaned on his elbows and told a joke out of one side of his mouth. Ash watched Eddie listen, watched the scars in his cheek dip and crease when he laughed, and she wondered again where the scars had come from, and why he hadn’t erased them. The one along his jawline, especially, cut so deep that surely plastic surgery could have softened it. Had he tried it? Had the surgery failed? She wiped her palms on her shorts. She knew nothing about Eddie and his scars, not really. Maybe he’d been born with them. Maybe they reminded him of something he didn’t want to forget. Maybe he didn’t want softening.

She crossed the floor and snuck up beside him. “Hi there.”

Eddie smiled and gave her a soft punch on the arm. “Hi, yourself. Done for the night?”

“Yeah. Finally.”

“You getting used to it?”

“I guess. Honestly, it’s harder than I thought.” That, at least, was true. Ash had no idea her feet could ache so, or that her legs could turn wobbly after a night of running trays back and forth. In just a couple of weeks, she’d discovered a newfound appreciation for the people who did it day in and out, year after year. She knew she could never be one of them, dependent upon tips to pay a mortgage, cover car insurance, or put food on the table.

J.T. flipped on the television as he wiped down the bar. Ash tensed. Not the news, please. She eyed the clock. Just about midnight. Good. Maybe the highlights would be through. She didn’t need any news from Boston discussing the senator’s latest statement or the opposing attorney’s trial preparations. She fidgeted on the stool beside Eddie and sipped a glass of water.

“I should get going,” she said. She watched the screen and prayed no political report would appear. “I’m beat.”

“You drive tonight?” Eddie didn’t look at her, just asked the question sideways as he watched a preview for some new reality show.

“Um, yeah.” She always drove when she worked the night shift. Didn’t matter that everyone she’d met told her she could walk down Main Street at two in the morning and not see a soul. City habits didn’t die that quickly. She’d keep on driving herself, for a while anyway. Until Paradise seeped into her veins a little more.

“Okay if I catch a ride back with you?” he asked. “I walked.”

This time he did turn toward her, and his gaze landed on her with such intensity that she felt as though he’d burned right through the fabric of her shirt.

“Ah, sure.” Stop doing that to me. Stop setting me on fire every time I get too close to you. “How’s the cat?” she asked, to change the subject.

“Better. Vet gave it some antibiotics.”

“You keeping it?”

He shrugged. “Haven't decided yet.”

J.T. adjusted the volume, turning it up as the final highlights from the eleven o’clock news flashed across the screen.

“Tomorrow at six,” the chipper blonde anchor announced, “tune in for the latest chapter in the Senator Kirk arrest.”

Ash’s throat closed.

“We’ll hear from the woman who used to work as the Kirks’ personal housekeeper, as well as tell you what’s in store for this sullied senator from Boston…”

Ash set her glass down on the bar, too hard. A crack splintered all the way up one side.

J.T. frowned. “Geez, take it easy. You okay?”

“Sorry. Wasn’t paying attention, I guess.”

He swept it into the trash. “No biggie. It happens.”

Ash buried her hands between her legs so Eddie wouldn’t see them tremble.

“Can you believe that guy?” he said, still staring at the TV. “You’d think we could find one honest politician somewhere in the whole damn country. But no. Even the ones who come across as Mr. Family Man, who tell us they’re gonna change things for the better—”

“Yep,” J.T. agreed, cutting him off. “Even they wind up bein’ like all the rest. Making decisions from between their legs. Kirk’s no better. Another John f*ckin’ Kennedy.” He pulled on the tap and poured Eddie another beer.

Ash cleared her throat. “You know, some people say maybe he’s innocent. That he was set up by someone who didn’t want him to get the vice-presidential nomination.”

Eddie chuckled. “Yeah, sure. They’re all innocent. Like JFK. And Jefferson, sleeping with his slaves.”

“Don’t forget Bill Clinton,” J.T. added.

Eddie laughed out loud. “Oh, yeah. Especially Clinton. He was the most innocent of all. He and Kirk are probably buddies. Probably sit around over stogies and talk about the best blow jobs they ever got.”

Ash stiffened. “It could be true,” she said. “The setup, I mean.”

Eddie turned. “Kirk was busted DUI. Caught with coke and a hooker. How the hell does someone set that up?”

She didn’t know. She’d been asking herself the same question every night since the arrest. But if her father said he was framed, then part of her, the little-girl part that still remembered the way he’d sung her to sleep every night as a child, had to hold out hope.

“Maybe the Republicans held him down and poured whiskey down his throat,” J.T. offered and snorted as he laughed at his own joke.

“Yeah, and maybe they forced him into the car at gunpoint with that hot little piece of tail,” Eddie continued. He tipped his head back and took a long drink.

“Did they ever say whether his zipper was up or down when the cops pulled him over?”

Ash slid off her stool. “You ready to go?”

“Hang on. Let me finish my beer.”

“I’m ready now.”

Eddie’s jaw twitched. “Can’t you give me five minutes? What’s wrong with you?”

She crossed her arms and shifted from foot to foot. “I’m tired, okay? That’s what’s wrong with me. My feet feel like they’re going to fall off, I smell like ketchup, and I’m about sick to death of listening to the two of you rip apart some guy you don’t even know. Half of what the media reports isn’t even true. More than half.”

She stopped to draw a breath, and silence echoed through the bar. J.T. whistled, long and low. Eddie frowned, and something dark slid across his face.

“You know, I think I’ll walk after all,” he said after a long minute of staring at her. “Could use some fresh air.” He shoved some bills across the bar, scraped his stool out of the way, and headed for the door. “Thanks, J.T.,” he said. The door slammed shut behind him.

Ash watched Eddie’s shadow disappear down the block. Well, fine. She hadn’t wanted to drive home with him, anyway. She tried to believe her own lie as she walked to her car in silence a few minutes later. One flickering motion light clicked on as she crossed the back parking lot. Her VW started up with a hesitation, a little cough before catching, and she crossed her fingers that it would turn over.

Probably should get it looked at. She dropped her forehead onto the steering wheel. But where? By who? The only repair shop she knew of in Paradise was the place Eddie worked, and now she couldn’t take it there. Suddenly, she felt lonelier than the day Colin had left her.

Ash sighed. She hadn’t meant to say those things, hadn’t meant to lose her temper. She just couldn’t help it sometimes. Not for the first time, she thought she’d probably make a lousy courtroom lawyer. Holding her tongue wasn’t her strong suit. She bumped her way out of the parking lot and turned onto Spruce Street, taking the long way home.

She was better off anyway, keeping her distance from Eddie. Keeping her distance from all of them. She didn’t need to listen to him or anyone else say things like that about her father. Randolph Kirk had screwed up, but he was still Ash’s blood. Her fingers tightened around the steering wheel as she passed the silent town square and eased through the intersection in the center of town. A lonely yellow eye blinked down at her.

But why did you do it, Dad? Even if someone had set him up, even if someone planted the drugs and spiked his drink, what was he doing in a car with a girl younger than his own daughters? Tears started up, and as Ash made her way back to Lycian Street, she braked hard and edged to the curb. She didn’t know. She couldn’t find the answers. And she didn’t trust herself to ask her father.

She looked up and saw a dark house. If Eddie was home, he’d turned off all the lights, even the porch one they always kept burning. Now it looked like all the other buildings on the block: lifeless and cold. She raised both hands to her face and wept.