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  “Don’t.” Spice checked each breaker inside the circuit box to see if any were in the off position. Travis, ignoring her, massaged her breasts from behind.

  “Look,” she said, pulling from his embrace, “I made a mistake. It’s over. It can’t happen again.”

  She watched his sly smile as he released her.

  “You’ve got the most exquisite body that I’ve ever seen. Naked or clothed.”

  “I hope this isn’t why you called me away from Mink’s celebration.”

  “You don’t give a rat’s ass about that and you know it.”

  Travis’s words stung.

  “Travis, how I love my daughters is none of your damn business. Now if there is no legitimate reason for me to be here, I’m gone.”

  After four years of celibacy, Spice had longed for sexual satisfaction without the emotional entanglements. She’d assumed that a young man like Travis could enjoy occasionally bedding an older woman without strings. But after one week of intoxication, she’d found that it just wasn’t possible; he was too demanding of her time, and his lack of discretion as her employee hadn’t helped. Just like today, acting amorous while on the premises was typical of his immature behavior throughout their brief fling. So she had ended it.

  At twenty-six Travis was an asset to her business. He had the perfect ingredients of good chef management: culinary creativity, menu vision, manpower efficiency, and discipline. Combine these attributes with reason and common sense, and Travis was the epitome of a professional chef.

  Spice chastised herself silently. She’d allowed Travis to take one too many trips around her mulberry bush. It was time to show him how pussy and power prevailed and that a mere set of balls had to step back when it came to running her business.

  STERLING

  Whether it be for good or evil, the education of a child is principally derived from its own observation of the ac tions, words, voice and looks of those with whom it lives—the friends of the young, then, cannot be too cir cumspect in their presence to avoid every and the least appearance of evil.

  —JOHN JEBB

  S terling was livid. She poured another glass of champagne and quickly gulped it down before asking Mink, “Can you believe that bitch left us here?”

  “Spice is our mother, Sterling. She’s not a bitch. I think you’ve got the two confused.”

  “Fuck that. What kind of mother would walk out on her daughter’s party and go to work?”

  “I’m sure it was important. She’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  “Bullshit. She didn’t have to leave. Travis knows this business inside and out.”

  Mink was silent.

  “Tell me, Mink, is there anything more important to her than that fucking restaurant?” Sterling asked, fuming.

  “Maybe she’s upset about your news.”

  “I’ve told Spice all along that I didn’t think I could make it at Crown.” Sterling paused to light a Salem, then blew out a thin veil of smoke between them. “She wouldn’t lis—”

  “Hold on, little sister,” Mink said, coughing. “You can’t make it. Period.” She fanned the smoke out of her face and, taking a step back, crossed her arms beneath her breasts. “Quit making these pitiful excuses. You’re just plain lazy. You’ve never worked a day in your life. All that’s expected from you is to get a degree, and you can’t even do that.”

  Cocaine and sex were Sterling’s passions; they were good servants, but ungodly masters. And both had been key to her escape from responsibility and reality since age sixteen.

  Like all addicts, Sterling felt she was always in control of her drug use. But now she was not able to fool herself, or anyone else; she was hooked on red rum heroin. That was the right name for it: murder spelled backward.

  “I’m not an overachieving martyr like you, Mink. If someone would just let me explain—”

  Mink’s face was full of anguish as she stood up abruptly. “It’s cold in here,” she said, retrieving her purse and moving downstairs to the living room.

  Sterling followed a few feet behind her sister.

  “Go on, I’m listening,” Mink said as she moved toward the fireplace. Carefully she hoisted two logs into the fire, reviving the smell of burning hickory. Warmth quickly filled the large room.

  Sterling’s eyes rested on the fine details of the room. She remembered how Spice had meticulously chosen the flawless pieces for the black suede wall panels that were framed by cream gilded floor and ceiling moldings; the two nineteenth-century Chinese chairs; a pair of chic ebonized gilded stools, and several Chinese porcelain figures. Sterling had been quite young when she’d realized that the “junk” Spice fussed over was worth a lot of money. To Sterling, it was still junk.

  Nothing’s changed, Sterling thought. She’d been talking for the past five minutes with not one response from her sister. As usual, Mink hadn’t been listening. No one ever listened to her. Suddenly bored, she moved to the piano bench and began toying with the keys. In a piece of music, there were separate notes broken up by air. Sterling felt there was a lifetime of stale air between herself and her sister. As she started in on a childhood melody, Mink startled Sterling with a question.

  “You’re forever talking about how painful your relationship is with Spice. What you don’t realize is that the drugs are causing you the pain. Not Spice. Can’t you see that they’re destroying your life?” Mink stared intently at her sister. “Each and every time you’re run out of school, drugs are the bottom of the problem.”

  “I enjoy drugs the same way you enjoy professional status,” Sterling stated calmly. “Can’t you see what that game is doing to your family?” The corner of her lips curled up in a knowing smile.

  Mink scowled. “You ain’t doin’ nothin’ but burning up brain cells that you won’t ever be able to recover.” She shook her head. “Why do you put yourself through this? Why do you put Spice through this?” She tried to camouflage her frustration and sound compassionate. “Whatever problems you have, drugs aren’t the answer. You’re high right now, aren’t you? You don’t have to answer. I can see it in your eyes.”

  “Girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.”

  “Why don’t you try doing what you gotta do with your own money? Don’t you care how hard our mother worked for that money? Of course you don’t—you’ve never worked a day in your life. So obviously you can’t identify with the black struggle.”

  “That’s the problem between you and me; you try so hard to be black. Why? If you’re so down, so ethnic, why do you have to go around proving it to everyone?”

  Mink rolled her eyes. “Uh-huh, and you’re not trying to pass—”

  “I’m not black or white. I’m just me.”Sterling changed the song that she was playing. “I remember every song that David taught me.”

  “Give Spice the respect she deserves. David’s gone. And after all, he wasn’t really—”

  Sterling began playing the music louder, drowning out Mink’s words. “This is a classic tune that David taught me when I was five.” She swayed her body back and forth as her fingers moved swiftly over the keys. “Remember?” She slowed the tempo. “David was more of a parent than Spice could ever be.” Although the statement was spoken quietly, the words were filled with bitterness.

  “Can’t you be honest for once? I’m your sister, Sterling, for God’s sake. I’m trying to help—” Mink stopped in midsentence, looking resigned.

  “Why don’t you try being honest for a change? You hide behind that uniform, but underneath you’re a whore just like the rest of us.”

  “Where in the hell did you come up with some stupid shit like that?” Mink started.

  Sterling stopped playing and swung around to face Mink. She began to laugh. “And the funny part . . . what’s really funny is that you’re so jealous of me it’s pathetic.”

  “You must be outta your mind, girl,” Mink said, rising.

  “The fuck I am. You bring your ass over here and I’ll show you who’s
crazy.”

  “You don’t know who you’re fucking with, girl.”

  “Come on, big sista!” Sterling started to laugh again. “Come and get some of this,” she said, rotating her open hand into her chest and bobbing her head forward. Sterling started shadowboxing as she moved toward Mink. She stopped for a moment and said with a smirk on her face, “Oh, by the way, Mink. I have worked today. The only kind of work I plan on doing—on my back.” She paused, sneered, then sniffed the air. “I still got dick juice on me from this morning.”

  “You low-down slut—”

  “Slut?” She walked toward Mink. “Who the fuck you callin’ a slut? Ol’ bitch-ass trick!” she screamed as she grabbed Mink’s lapel, then swiveled her torso and right arm back in preparation to slap her. Sterling’s open palm was halfway to her sister’s face when Mink caught her wrist with her right hand, then grabbed Sterling’s chin in the crook of her left elbow. Sterling felt Mink’s arm slide down her neck and apply pressure on her throat and larynx, cutting off her air. Sterling struggled, trying to slip her petite body from Mink’s tight grasp, then managed to loop her foot around Mink’s calf and tug. Surprised by Sterling’s strength, Mink lost her balance and slipped on the thick pile, bringing Sterling down with her.

  “Lemmego, muthafucka!” Sterling yelled in Mink’s ear as she tried to break free.

  Neither would relinquish their tight grip. Struggling for leverage, they moved like serpents, their curved bodies sliding, rolling on top of each other along the black carpeting. The girls were clawing and scratching each other, returning blow for blow and tearing the room apart while they fought. Sterling grunted and let out a loud moan just as one of the Ming vases fell from the mantel and cracked. The papier-mâché chairs were knocked on their backs as they tumbled over them without noticing. Mink pushed in Sterling’s face with one hand and snatched a clump of her gold tresses with the other.

  “Ouch!” Sterling hollered, trying to shake her hair free from Mink’s grasp.

  Scrambling to her knees by the buffet table, Mink tried to pull herself and Sterling to their feet, but before she could, Sterling managed to grab one of the red china plates and break it over Mink’s head. Mink winced but didn’t shout as the plate connected with her skull.

  Mink’s suede heel caught on the edge of the tablecloth as she tried to stand, and an avalanche of gumbo, rice, eggs, and meat in warm chafing dishes came tumbling down onto the both of them.

  Pieces of rice stuck in Mink’s hair like maggots. Clumps of lobster slid down between her breasts. “I hate you!” Mink shouted as she grabbed a fistful of Sterling’s angora sweater.

  Together they rolled over and over, through the porcelain shards and food, struggling for position. Finally Mink managed to get her foot at Sterling’s crotch. She pushed hard, pumping her heel against Sterling’s pubic bone, until tears formed in Sterling’s eyes.

  “Now that was some shit!” Sterling shouted between clenched teeth. She managed to break away from Mink and scrambled to the other side of the room. She snatched a bottle from the top shelf of the bar and cracked the neck open on the side of the baby grand piano. Wagging the top half of the broken bottle toward Mink, she licked a drop of blood from the side of her mouth with her tongue. “Now you come and get some of this,” she hissed.

  “Spice is going to kill you,” Mink said, looking around the room.

  “Fuck her! Fuck you. Fuck all y’all mutherfuckas.” Sterling dropped the broken bottle, turned, and started throwing bottles of champagne at Mink.

  Mink dodged the battery of bottles aimed at her, but one bottle hit the toe of Otis’s shoe just as he entered the room.

  “Ouch! Dammit, Sterling!” Otis shouted. “What the fuck is going on in here?”

  Sterling froze.

  “Good God,” Mink said, surveying the destruction of the room.

  “Go home, Mink. The party’s over,” Otis said grimly as he grabbed Sterling’s arm and released the unbroken bottle from her grasp.

  Quietly, without a glance in Sterling’s direction, Mink gathered her things and left.

  Otis released the inside button of his elegant black-and-white-houndstooth Versace jacket and steered Sterling to the sofa. After turning over one of the chairs, he sat across from her as she busily brushed food fragments from her hair.

  The sharp smell of champagne grew stronger as it seeped through the room. “Damn, it stinks like hell in here.” Otis snatched a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped off his shoes.

  “Maybe it’s your cologne,” Sterling offered with a snide smile.

  “You breathe trouble,” Otis said, straightening his lapel. “You know that?”

  Sterling’s gray eyes were slippery with tears. She was exhausted, sore all over, and she just wished that someone would wrap his arms around her and say, “Everything’s going to be all right, baby.”

  Instead her uncle Otis smoothed his Ho Chi Minh mustache, leaned back in the chair, appraising her and the room, and said, “You’ve fucked up all around this time.”

  * * *

  Sterling pushed her red Viper to sixty in a thirty-five-mile-per-hour zone as she drove toward Pheasant Ridge, her condominium complex in Rochester Hills, just five miles from her mother. Until yesterday, the weather in Michigan had been quite warm, if snowy, for January, but today the temperature had plummeted to the teens, causing an explosion of new potholes on every major road surface. Slow spangles of thick snow, a symphony in white, began falling in a rhythmic bossa nova.

  She touched the cut on her mouth with her tongue. It burned. She took a couple of deep breaths, then dialed Bennie’s number on her cell phone. He picked up on the first ring.

  “Yeah.”

  “Bennie. It’s Sterling.” She paused. “Can you come over?”

  “I’m kinda busy. I was just on my way out.”

  Lighting a Salem, she slowed at the traffic light.

  “Sterling? You still there?”

  “Sure.” She blew out the smoke, thinking fast. Her head was sore. Every strand of hair felt as if it were pulsating. “I really need you to stop by today. Can you make it? Please.”

  “No can do, baby.” His voice was hurried and without sympathy when he asked, “You need some dope?”

  Sterling was hurt by his curt response. Why did he always offer drugs to soothe her needs rather than himself? Like millions of women, she knew she loved too much. She was a woman who refused to let go, who had used her sexuality to snare a man even though she knew she would be better off without him. She was a woman who allowed what the man in her life thought of her to become what she thought of herself. She was a woman who had gotten involved in a relationship that was a re-creation of painful memories from her childhood—yet, knowing this, she still couldn’t break free. No more than she could break free of her need for drugs.

  “Yeah, I’m almost out,” she lied, hoping it would prompt him to come see her. “Can you drop something by while you’re out?”

  “I’m headed the other way, baby. If you need it today, I’ll have my partner, Jamie, swing it by this evening. You remember Jamie, don’t you?”

  “Um-hm. Crater-faced fellow.” Sterling balanced the phone with her chin and pressed the buttons to open both front windows. As the smoke escaped from the open windows, she welcomed the rush of cold fresh air that flowed across her face. Straining to listen to the sounds in the background, she was certain that she heard a woman’s voice. “I don’t want Jamie. I want you,” she demanded.

  “Seriously, I’ve got business to take care of today.”

  “So you’ll be at my place tomorrow, then?”

  “Look, Sterling. Someone’s waiting. I’ve got to run.” He hung up without waiting for her to answer.

  She inhaled deeply and let the wind whip away the unwanted tears as she steered her Viper toward the back of the complex and parked in her usual spot.

  Once inside, she took a long shower and washed the food out of her hair. She glanced at the answering
machine while she dressed, disappointed that there weren’t any messages. She’d half expected Mink to call to at least apologize.

  Sterling poured a glass of Courvoisier from the small bar in her bedroom. She picked up her cigarettes, lighter, and deck of tarot cards on the table in the hallway and closed the blinds in the living room, shutting out the afternoon sun. The ultra-modern black-and-white condo was approximately two thousand square feet, and every item in it was shimmeringly new. Her huge collection of crystal animals glittered on glass tables throughout the living room. No one understood the attraction, but the figurines reminded Sterling that animals were free spirited, honest, and simple—all the things she could never be again.

  She shuffled the tarot cards, then turned on the television set to the Home Shopping Network and lit a Salem. The smoke curled in her eyes and stung as she placed the first card on the coffee table.

  It was the Death card. Her body tensed. In the five years that she’d worked with the cards, she’d never turned this one on the first draw. “Bullshit.” She shrugged it off, took a long draw from her cigarette, then continued turning the cards.

  Her mind drifted back.

  If you let her get through this, Lord, I will always love her. . . .

  Those were the words Spice had uttered by Sterling’s hospital bedside last year. Spice had thought Sterling was asleep. Sterling hadn’t known at the time that she was ten weeks to term with an ectopic pregnancy—Bennie’s baby. One of her fallopian tubes had burst, and she had nearly died because of the infection. A few hours after the surgery, the doctor and Spice stood by her bedside, discussing the prognosis. The doctor said she would probably never have a baby. Certainly not without complications.

  Sterling hadn’t wanted this baby, didn’t even like kids, but suddenly it seemed important.

  If you let her get through this, Lord, I will always love her. . . .

  Sterling remembered how much it had hurt to hold back the tears until Spice had left her room. In those words, Sterling had heard her mother’s confession—she had never loved Sterling before.