Secret Shared

you hear anything?”

“I think you’re gonna be okay,” I said, as he eased out and off me. I shifted to face him, coated in his sweat, and sleepily traced the outlines of the tattoos on his shoulders. I spotted a scar there. He grabbed my fingers.

“How’d you get that?”

“Dirt bike stunt. Fourteen years old,” he said, between kissing my fingertips.

He sat up so I could see his full body paint and turned around to give me a better look at his back.

“Is that an oak tree?”

Almost like adolescents at show and tell, we slid from hot sex to sweet stories as he began to tell me what was behind the more prominent tattoos—the tree whose branches twisted into a skull cradling his shoulder, the other shoulder covered by a cluster of birds.

“Yeah. It’s the oak from my grandma’s property in Kenner. I grew up there after my parents died. This one hurt,” he said, pointing out a beautifully rendered face of a handsome young man on the left side of his rib cage. “My older brother. He taught me how to read when I was ten. Late bloomer. He died in the first Gulf War.” So much tragedy on his body— dead family, old memories. “And that’s my ‘tramp stamp,’” he said, bending to show me his lower back, where indeed the word Tramp was stamped on his sacrum.

“Ha!”

“Were you expecting a butterfly?” he asked.

“I think with you expectations might be a bad idea,” I said. Was I fishing? Was this me seeking assurances that I could have expectations of this man? I wasn’t sure. He stretched out next to me to cuddle.

“That’s probably wise, Cassie,” he said, sounding sincere and serious, throwing his thigh over me. “I was thinking the same thing about you.”

Me? I almost did that female thing, that thing where I reassure him and tell him, Oh no, no, no, I’m here; you can expect things from me. I’m all in. But I knew better. Just because a man has his entire life story drawn out on his skin for all to see, that doesn’t make him an open book. And just because I had sex with him, that didn’t make me his. We were both still carrying shadows from our past into whatever our future held. But for the first time in my life, I was okay with that. I was beautifully, perfectly okay with it.

16 DAUPHINE

I HAD NEVER been a traveler, so I wasn’t expecting to feel such a rush of pure joy upon returning from Buenos Aires and seeing my porch, my potted marigolds and heavy mums wilting in the late summer heat. Upstairs, I dropped the last of my luggage, sighing in gratitude at my dusty, sunlit apartment. My trip, which had begun as transformative and restorative, had turned dark and frightening after my interlude with Pierre Castille. Being home felt grounding, safe. And I now discovered it was true what they said about homesick Southerners: there’s no sorrier lot.

After I hosed down my plants, I drew a bath and soaked off the stress of the return flight (the turbulence was a little meaner and no Captain Nathan to offer “comfort”), and the Customs officers were a little nosier, poking through my purchases with the help of a beagle I wasn’t allowed to pet. The officers were looking for sausage and ivory, probably the only two things I didn’t bring back with me from Argentina. I had bought two extra suitcases for the costume jewelry, linens, housedresses and four vintage tango dresses I bought to sell at the Funky Monkey. Such is the life of an “international buyer.” But while the beagle was nosing through my belongings, I was heartened to realize that I had intended to sell all this stuff. I didn’t want to insulate anymore, which was really the purpose of keeping that treasure trove to myself. All those imaginary futures where I’d have just the right thing to round it out, that future was happening now.

When the doorbell rang, I jumped, my nerves still a bit rattled. As expected, it was Matilda, her apology written all over her kind face.

“Dauphine, honey. Can I come in?”

Seeing her face, I realized that my anger about the security breach with Pierre had faded. Still, I didn’t greet Matilda with a hug.

“Of course. Please come in. I’ll make tea.”

Typical Southerners, we exchanged pleasantries and travel highlights. I included discreet mention of my visit to the cockpit and my night on the tango stage, both of which left me blushing and grateful.

“I’m so glad you enjoyed those Steps. But I don’t blame you, Dauphine, for wanting to quit us. I just came to tell you how relieved I was to hear how you thwarted the worst part of Pierre’s plans.”

“Cassie always stressed to me that I could opt out of any situation that didn’t feel a hundred percent right … He didn’t.”

“You have sharp instincts. You know yourself. That’s enviable. For that, I want to give you something,” she said, reaching into her purse, removing a small purple box and carefully placing it in front of me.

“Is it my Step Six charm? Really?”

“Open it,” she said.

Truthfully, one of the things I’d thought about was that if I quit S.E.C.R.E.T., I’d miss out on all the rest of the charms. What can I say? I love my bling. Which was why it was hard to contain my glee after I opened the box. It contained not just my Step Six charm for Confidence, but all the others as well.

“Oh my goodness,” I said, reaching into my purse for my bracelet, which I kept in a velvet roll.

“You earned Confidence when you trusted your instincts about Pierre. I’m so glad he didn’t shake that from you. Seven’s for Curiosity,” Matilda reminded me, laying each charm out on the Formica. “That’s for asking Pierre all the right questions. Eight’s for Bravery, of course, and how you stood your ground with him. And Nine, that one’s Exuberance—and I do hope you still feel a measure of that, Dauphine, after all you’ve experienced with us.”

I secured them one by one to my bracelet, shaking it in front of my eyes. It was dazzling.

“This is so thoughtful, so generous,” I said. “I’ll treasure it, and my time in S.E.C.R.E.T. Always.”

“I have one more offer,” she said, leaning forward in her chair. “Of course you can say no, but I urge you to consider it. We’d like you to experience a final fantasy, one we’re quite confident will be worth the leap of faith. We are all very upset about what happened to you in Buenos Aires. So we’d relish the opportunity to make amends. I can assure you we’d do this not only to restore your feelings of safety, but to solidify everything S.E.C.R.E.T. stands for. And I have it on good authority that this fantasy will exceed every one of the fantasies you’ve experienced before. In fact, we suspect this last one will blow your mind.”

Maybe it was her face, beseeching and earnest. And maybe I suddenly saw the folly in punishing myself and S.E.C.R.E.T. because of the deed of one bad man. I looked at my bracelet, eight charms dancing around my wrist. What do you say to an offer like that? You throw your arms around the person proposing it and you say, “Yes, fine. One more.”

I was surprisingly calm the day my final fantasy card arrived. It was Elizabeth who had a hard time containing herself after I asked her to dress me for a “casual but sexy” date at Tipitina’s.

“Seriously? A date? You’re going out? With a real live man? To a concert? All this change is too much for my little heart to bear.”

She was still absorbing my new mandate, the one I had carried home with me from Argentina along with all my beautiful finds.

When she asked me, as always, what was for sale and what was for keeps, I replied, “Sell everything, all of it. All the excess stock that I’m keeping for no good reason. Everything in the back. All the gold hoops and the silk pajamas and the leather gloves and the pillbox hats,” I said, adding, “and whatever we can’t sell, we’ll give away. I need more room to grow.”

Elizabeth looked overcome, teary, as she held a set of blue-tinted pince-nez