Ride Your Heart ‘Til It Breaks, Chapter Fourteen

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

December 16 & 17, 2007

He did not sleep with Cat, but he sat in the bar with her until four a.m. Terri waited up, a ball of white-hot fury. He had met her in a strip club in Las Vegas two years ago. He’d played a gig for a software convention with Epic, the corporate band that had just done the Warrick, Thompson party. High on adrenalin from the performance, he had wandered down the Strip until he came to “Elegance, A Gentleman’s Club,” and Terri.

She’d been working the pole when he came in. She eyed him immediately and hit her bump and grind routine a little harder to get his attention. He put a couple of twenties in her G-string, bought her a drink, and took her back to his hotel.

That December night as she railed about Cat, shaking her layered, bleached blond mane, and shooting daggers of molten, blue-eyed jealousy, he’d reflected that her chief interest in him was working with Epic. The band was a well-known, cover, dance-party outfit, designed to appeal to the well-healed mid-forties-and-up convention crowd. Marilyn Gordon, the owner and lead singer, had jumped on the corporate band concept ten years ago, and she’d developed a very successful operation to showcase her own considerable singing talent.It was Stan’s best-paying gig. He’d drop anything and run when Marilyn called.

But his work was dependent upon her whim. He had no power to influence her to use Terri although sometimes she would throw her a gig or two because she knew it would make life easier at home for Stan. In truth, Terri was a mediocre singer. But her full curves and provocative dance style drove the old guys crazy. So Marilyn used her now and then.

Terri had stopped screaming and was reciting Dr. Phil platitudes about relationships built on trust. Stan had heard them all before from the uncountable number of women who had passed through the revolving door of his life. He wondered if it ever occurred to Terri that his liaisons numbered in the hundreds. When one left, it was never hard to replace her. That’s what bars, strip clubs, and chat lines were for. Even though he was starting to develop the characteristic middle spread of the forties, his profession attracted women. He would never have any trouble getting laid.

Terri’s wrath began to wind down. Stan had yet to utter a word. He had learned this technique over the years. If he argued back, the fight would go on and on. If he remained silent, the current woman would gradually let her outrage die because his silence would tell her he had no intention of changing. So if she didn’t like his behavior, her only option was to leave. Eventually, they all did. But he could see, somewhat to his disappointment, Terri hadn’t reached the exit point. In the face of his silence, she had convinced herself to forgive him. And now she wanted makeup sex.

He didn’t. He had seen Carrie that night; and her long, soft body was the only woman he wanted. She had always been like a drug that he tried to resist, but never could.

She looked sexier in a suit that Terri did in her G-string. When she walked, her hips swayed under her straight wool skirts, a move that drove Stan wild. Women didn’t understand that their allure lay in the anticipation they created. Night after night at Jazz by The Bay, Stan had studied Carrie in her demure, black cocktail dress, imagining just how he’d unzip it very slowly, then ease it off her shoulders and let it slide to the floor, leaving her standing before him in her lingerie.
True the club had always been full of women, spilling out of their evening dresses. But they left nothing to Stan’s imagination. All the females in Stan’s world exuded fuck-me-now invitations in bold faced type. But Carrie Moon was different.

So very different.

She smelled faintly of lavender soap, not heavy, nose-clogging perfume. She not only loved his music, she understood how much time and study had gone into it.

The other women around him were not trained musicians. They had no real ability to know if he was a good or a bad trumpet player. When they said they admired his tunes, they were asking him to sleep with them. But Carrie had studied at one of the best schools in the country. If she thought he was good, her opinion meant something.

He had wondered, sometimes, if he’d had the chance to get a music degree what opportunities would have opened up for him. He’d saved and taken lessons from some of the best teachers in the business, but he didn’t have a conservatory certificate to put on his resume. His life had always been a scramble from gig to gig.

The sun was coming up. Fortunately, Terri had dropped off before she could follow through on her demand for sex. Stan rolled over and closed his eyes. If he could sleep, maybe he’d begin to forget about seeing Carrie. Maybe the drug humming in his veins would flush itself out of his system, and he’d be back to his old, feelingless life. That was the only safe way. But he was tired of being safe. Of all the women who had passed through his world, he had loved only two of them: Deanna and Carrie Moon.

* * *

November 1994

After the fiasco with Lara, Carrie didn’t come back to the club. Night after night, Stan went on stage, hoping to see her at her usual table in the second row. And night after night, he was disappointed.

Harry watched him. “Miss her, don’t you?” He said after the second Friday without her. She’d been absent for ten days.

“Miss who?”

“You know.”

“A little.”

“Lara wasn’t a smart move.”

“Carrie was trying to get too close. I needed some space.”

“Well, you’ve got plenty now.”

Stan shrugged, picked up his horn case, and headed for his car. He threw the bag into the trunk, then turned down the path to the bay. He found the bench where he and Carrie had talked after the shows and sat down. He watched the ferry skim across the black water toward the lights of Coronado where the island glimmered against the night sky like a golden mirage.

“Get over it,” he told himself. Women came and went in his life all the time. He rarely felt anything but relief when the latest had had enough and walked away.

But Carrie haunted him. He could see her sometimes emerald, sometimes gray eyes looking up at him on stage, and her smile of delight when he hit a particularly high note as if he had done it just for her. And some nights, he had belted out the big ones to impress her.

And then there was the way she made love. It was different with a woman who loved you. Passion and fire. The way it had been with Deanna. At least, before the drugs took over her life.

He watched the ferry dock on the other side of the bay. One a.m. That should be the last run. He wondered what Carrie was doing. Probably at work in that black hole of a law firm. She had risked everything in the most important year of her career to save Harry and the club and Stan’s gig. And then he’d pranced in with Lara.

But he had feelings for her. After Deanna died, she had made her interest him in him very clear. He’d wanted it to work because he felt as if he could hang on to Deanna through her.

But Lara wasn’t Deanna. She had a cold, calculating edge that had not been part of his wife’s makeup. Stan always felt if a better deal came along, Lara would be quick to jump ship. Still, she was from his world, unlike Carrie.

No, that wasn’t completely true. Carrie knew music. She had to have been a really fine musician to have won a place at Julliard. Lara’s singing wasn’t in the same class at all.

Stan wished he could hear Carrie play. Harry had told him he’d invited her to sit in at the club. Fat chance she’d take him up on the offer now.
Across the bay, Stan could see that the ferry had made its last run. The lights were out; the boat was moored at the dock. The wind picked up and sent small waves slapping at the boats in their berths on his side of the water. Slap, slap. The boats bobbed in the black water.

He got up slowly and headed up the path to his car. The aching in his heart had deepened. Tomorrow was Sunday and his day off. He wondered what Carrie was doing tomorrow.

The entire ebook of Ride Your Heart ‘Til It Breaks is available for purchase at Amazon. com, http://www.amazon.com/Ride-Your-Heart-Til-Breaks-ebook/dp/B00RDJQB8Q. Deborah is also the author of the award winning novel, Dance For A Dead Princess, http://www.amazon.com/Dance-For-Dead-Princess-ebook/dp/B00C4HP9I0