Dalila

By Fleur S. Lewis

In a small bar in Studio City, Joe meets the woman of his dreams. Allison is beautiful and sweet, charming. He knows without a doubt, from the moment their eyes meet, that she’s it. The one.
When his friends take him to Las Vegas for his bachelor party, however, Joe meets Dalila, and he forgets the meaning of commitment, loyalty, honesty. Dalila is an exotic dancer with a broken past. Lonely and isolated, she shies away from everything—drugs, booze, men. But then she sees Joe in her audience, and something strange happens.
One night. Hot and passionate, unexpected. Unspeakable. Joe leaves behind a single lasting memory of love felt, a coat, and a gift.
Eleven years later, Dalila is facing death at the hands of stage 4 ovarian cancer, and in the chaos of dealing with her fate, her son discovers a card in the front pocket of a man’s coat she’d kept hidden. In a letter he writes to Joe, the truth of his existence is revealed, and with it, the unraveling of a secret that could destroy Joe’s family.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Oct 25, 2019
• ISBN: 9781794702929

Book preview

Dalila

DALILA

Fleur S. Lewis

Copyright © 2019 by Fleur S. Lewis

Cover Design © Adam Donshik

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

First Printing: 2019

ISBN: 978-1-79470-292-9

Fleur S. Lewis

The Woodlands, TX  77381

www.fleurslewis.com

~Joe~

The return address: Las Vegas, Nevada. Scribbled in nearly illegible handwriting. No street or number. No name. Just, Las Vegas, Nevada. But there was no question to whom the envelope was sent: Joseph Clayton.

He flipped through the remaining mail, tossing in the recycling bin the collection of summer catalogs and flyers, credit card offers and coupon books. There were a few bills, a postcard to Allison from her parents on vacation in Brazil, a letter from Ashley’s elementary school (To the parents of Ashley Clayton) regarding try-outs for the end-of-year musical.

Joe took the bills, leaving the postcard and school notice on the center island for Allison. She’d be home soon from picking up Ashley at her hip hop class. Joe still had a tough time accepting his 8-year-old daughter was taking hip hop. There used to be just ballet and gymnastics, cheerleading. Now, hip hop. Little girls wearing crop tops and booty shorts. But she’d begged, and he’d caved, and later that night as Allison’s silk nighty slipped off her shoulders and over her erect pink nipples, he realized both of his girls had him wrapped around their fingers.

He walked into his study, closing the French doors behind him, and placed his briefcase on the desk. The envelope was white, business-size. The ink, black. He flipped it over, taking notice of the lickable seal before holding it up to the light. Inside was lined paper, clearly a handwritten letter. Joe’s cell phone rang, startling him, and he dropped the envelope onto the desk.

Allison appeared on the screen.

Hi honey, he said as he answered the call.

Hi babe, she replied. Even after 11 years of marriage, her naturally raspy voice still turned him on. He didn’t need to see her naked skin. All she had to do was whisper his name.

You on your way home? he asked.

Yep. Ashley said she wants pizza for dinner.

Joe laughed. Of course, she does.

Can you call it in?

Done, he replied.

They said goodbye, and as Joe pushed the speed dial for Papa John’s—the envelope now resting on his desk, his name in black ink screaming at him—he thought about the last time he’d been to Las Vegas. Five years ago. Mike Ratkin’s bachelor party. Joe had flown in for just one of the two nights, and even that had made him uncomfortable, but he and Mike had been friends since high school, had enrolled at UCLA together, had even pledged the same fraternity until Mike transferred to Oregon State, following the girl who’d eventually become his wife.

Joe took a cab that night from the airport to The Bellagio where he met the guys for dinner. There were eight of them, four of whom were Joe’s fraternity brothers (five including Mike). They were also the groomsmen at his own wedding six years before, and who he still saw on occasion in Los Angeles. Since Mike’s bachelor party, though, Joe had lost touch, by his own choice following his decision to retreat to a single room at The Bellagio after dinner.

Wait, Tom Decker had said. You can’t bail on us now. Don’t you wanna see if she’s still there? He was slurring his words by then. You two got some catchin’ up to do. He took a long, slow pull from the can of beer in his hand.

Rex and Allen chimed in, making gestures of grabbing tits and smacking ass, whistling and yelling.

She was so fucking hot, Allen shouted.

Gary Mathers threw his arms over the shoulders of Rex and Allen, pulling them away from Joe, and when all their backs were turned, Joe stepped to the side, camouflaging himself in a dispersing crowd of drunks. He didn’t see any of them again, but he lay awake that night, wondering if she was, in fact, still there. He fought every aching nerve in his body, all of him wanting to see and touch and smell all of her. Just one more time, so he could feel that way again because he hadn’t yet, and after six years of marriage to Allison, knew he never would with her, no matter how much he loved and adored her, no matter how spectacular of a woman she was, how beautiful and sweet and caring, how remarkable of a wife and mother.

Dalila

Hello? Anyone there?

Joe was squeezing the phone. Oh, yes. Yes. Sorry. I need a large pepperoni pizza and garlic knots. Delivered, please.

He gave his name and number, his address, all the while his eyes fixed on the envelope, his stomach twisting just enough for a small cramp to bite at his left side. He pushed the disconnect button on his phone and sat at his desk, leaning back in the chair to keep himself at a distance that would require he stand up again to retrieve the envelope. The longer he left it alone, the easier he could pretend it wasn’t even there.

But why? He had no idea what it was or who it was from. He hadn’t seen or spoken to her since that night, 11 years ago. And the only other people who thought they knew, he hadn’t seen or spoken to since Mike’s bachelor party. All the boys were married now, with young children or babies. There’d never been any mention of it, other than Tom Decker’s drunken spat while leaving The Bellagio, of which Joe was certain the guy didn’t remember the next day. Tom had always been a big drinker, that dude at the party who woke up naked, wrapped in cellophane because the rest of the group knew they could get away with it, and he could never recall what the hell had happened.

Joe checked the time on his cell phone. 6:20 PM. Allison would be home in ten minutes or less. Ashley would come bounding in, her hair in braids, a sweatshirt covering her crop top, leggings pulled over those damn booty shorts. She’d wrap her thin arms around Joe’s neck and say, Hiiiii Daddy! It melted his heart, every time. The pizza would arrive shortly after, and the three of them would sit at the kitchen table, talking and laughing and sharing all they’d done that day. It was all so perfectly perfect.

Joe stood up and grabbed the envelope. His palms were sweating. He turned around and pulled from the bookshelf one of the four law citation manuals Allison would never consider reading. He cracked it open, straight down the middle, dropped the envelope between the pages, and placed it back on the shelf.

Maybe in a few days, he’d forget it was even there. Maybe.

* * *

Joe was in the middle of a dream, of heat and skin, silky smooth and damp with perspiration. It was dark, but he felt her. He ran his finger over her lips, down her neck, between her breasts. He placed the palm of his hand on her stomach where it stayed, rising and falling with her breathing, slow at first, but then picking up as he continued down, down. He stopped, inhaled deeply, and then opened his eyes, his erection hot.

Allison lay with her back to him, her long blonde hair appearing silver in the streak of moonlight that had found its way through the crack in the curtains. He thought about sliding over to her, kissing her neck and shoulder, waking her in hopes she might let him take care of the ache that had now swallowed the entire lower half of his body.

But he didn’t. Instead, he rose from the bed and padded softly to the bathroom where he took himself in his hands, knowing it wouldn’t have been fair to do that to his wife when it wasn’t her he’d been dreaming of. When he finished, he quickly rinsed himself in the shower, and then crawled back into bed.

There was a hint of jasmine in the air. Allison’s perfume. Subtle, but enough to bring him back to the night they met. He was 24 and in his final year of law school at UCLA. Rare was there time for him to enjoy a night out, but on that Friday, the other two interns he’d been working with at Ligati and Conwell—Roger Monroe and Alex Tackitt—wanted to blow off steam. The three of them had just completed a rigorous 12 weeks of late nights and constant ass-kissing. It would prove to pay off for Joe. Steve Ligati would offer him a full-time position ten months later, one week after he graduated from law school.

They decided to meet at a pub called Pogo’s in Studio City, far enough away from the office and in a neighborhood the partners at the firm would likely not venture to. It catered to a young, clueless crowd of Hollywood wanna-be’s, many of them determined to do whatever they could to become to the next big star. It had been a favorite of Joe’s at one time—close to his apartment and often filled with beautiful women. A few of them had gone home with him during his senior year of undergrad, but only because they’d been too drunk to realize he wasn’t associated with NBC or CBS or HBO. Over time, Joe became bored with the lack of educated conversations, and when he started law school, he stopped going to the pub altogether.

On that Friday night, though, he couldn’t think of a better place to celebrate the survival of a summer internship that had robbed all three of them of both sleep and dignity. They could use a hearty helping of booze and gorgeous, empty-headed women. And Pogo’s had an unlimited supply of both.

They arrived early enough to grab a booth and start drinking, and within an hour, two very chatty 20-somethings had joined them, the taller of the two wielding a cackle that made Joe’s teeth hurt. When the beer pitcher was empty, he grabbed it from the middle of the table and promised to return.

But he didn’t.

He was standing behind the crowd at the bar with the pitcher in his hand, waiting for a chance to squeeze to the counter for a refill, when he felt a hand on his back. A brief encounter, and then the scent of her perfume. It was the combination of her touch and the sweet fragrance that made him turn around, for no other reason than to excuse himself for being in the way, but when his eyes met hers, he found he couldn’t speak. They held each other’s gaze for a long time, neither saying a word, drunk patrons trying to get by and while doing so, pushing them toward one another until they were just centimeters apart.

Allison, a female voice shouted.

Allison, Joe said, still staring into her big brown eyes, but taking in every fine feature of her face—petite button nose, splash of pale freckles, full pink lips, wavy blonde hair cut to just above her shoulders.

The woman shouted again, and this time, Allison turned in the direction of the voice. She raised her hand and said, Hold on, loud enough for only Joe to hear, but by the rolling of her friend’s eyes, the throwing back of her head and the flailing of her arms, it was apparent Allison’s words had been deciphered.

I have to go, she said. She had a raspy edge to her voice. Sexy, but sweet.

I think you should stay, Joe replied.

She was from Southern California. He wasn’t sure how he knew, but he did, and she wasn’t at Pogo’s in search of someone who might help her break into showbiz. She wasn’t showing cleavage. She wasn’t wearing stilettos and a short skirt. Rather, she wore jeans and Converse sneakers and a fitted V-neck t-shirt in white just tight enough to accent her small breasts and toned stomach.

Allison looked back toward the door. Her friend was gone. Well. There goes my ride.

Joe smiled and offered his hand. I’m Joe.

As it turned out, Allison was from SoCal. San Diego. She was in Studio City for the weekend, visiting her cousin Jamie who’d moved to Los Angeles from Orlando the year before in pursuit of an acting career. Jamie had places to go that night, people to see, parties to crash in hopes of meeting that one person who might open a door for her. She’d had no time to wait for Allison. And Joe was grateful.

Allison didn’t see Jamie again that weekend. Rather, she left Pogo’s with Joe, and for two nights and two full days, they didn’t leave his tiny one-bedroom apartment. In fact, they didn’t leave his bed except to tumble naked to the bathroom or to the kitchen in search of whatever scraps of food they could find. By Sunday night when it was time for Allison to go back to San Diego, every muscle in Joe’s body ached, and when she’d finally gone, he lay with his head on her pillow, the sheets—soiled with their sweat and cum—wrapped around him, the scent of her jasmine-laced perfume filling his head with images of a long life together.

Three weeks later, Allison moved out of her parents’ house in San Diego and moved in with Joe. She had a nursing degree and four years of waitressing experience. While Joe tackled his final year of law school, Allison found a part-time nursing job at a nearby family clinic, and she worked nights at a steakhouse on Ventura Boulevard. In the spare hours they had together, they made love. Slow, passionate, deep. Joe’s sex life in college had consisted of a whole lot of one-night stands—mostly raunchy, dirty, drunk sex unfulfilling except for the orgasms. He’d never been with a woman like Allison. Sweet and caring, loving, innocent.

On Valentine’s Day, he proposed to her. He had no doubt in his mind she was the woman he wanted to spend his life with. He’d known it when their eyes met at Pogo’s, when she’d driven away that Sunday, leaving an empty space in his heart only she could fill. When Joe told his parents, they were skeptical.

You’re just so young, sweetheart, his mother had said.

He’d turned 25 the month before and was certain he was the last of his high school friends to be engaged. Several had married at 18 and were already on their second child.

Kind of fast, don’t you think? his father chimed in.

You’ll understand when you meet her, Joe replied.

And they did. The following weekend, Joe and Allison flew to Scottsdale to visit his parents. His mother’s blessing came within the first 15 minutes of meeting her. His father’s, 15 later. After a 30-year career as an attorney in Los Angeles, Stephen Clayton was pretty good at finding the bad in just about anybody. With Allison, there wasn’t anything to find. She was tender in her touch, honest and compassionate with her words, deeply genuine in every little action, from holding Joe’s hand to hugging his mother goodbye.

When Joe graduated from law school that spring, both families got together for a celebration at the Malibu beach club where his father had once been a member. Their parents had yet to meet, but neither Allison nor Joe was worried. Since meeting Allison at Pogo’s, Joe hadn’t really worried about anything. Even that last year of law school, as exhausting and stressful as it had been at times, seemed to float by with an ease Joe couldn’t have expected under the circumstances.

And so, like everything else since Allison came into his life, dinner at the beach club was perfect—their parents became immediate friends, and Joe and Jason, Allison’s older brother, shared a round of 100-year-old bourbon, solidifying their bond as though they’d sliced their hands and pressed their bloodied palms together.

They would wait until the following April to get married, at the same Malibu beach club, on a beautiful sunny day, a cool ocean breeze blowing, the view of the Pacific unobstructed from where they stood in front of family and friends. It was the best day of Joe’s life. And yet, his heart was being tugged. Not much, just slightly, but enough to make him wonder, to make him close his eyes as he kissed his lovely bride and see a set of green eyes, black hair, scarlet lips. When Allison placed her kind hands on his cheeks, her nails cut short and brushed with a pale pink gloss, they were not her fingers touching his skin.

Long nails, red polish, strong hands. Hot tongue.

Joe sat up in bed, beads of sweat clinging to his forehead. Allison shifted in her sleep, rolled over, her face briefly illuminated by the moonlight before it was cast again in shadow. He held his breath, waiting for her to settle, waiting for her breathing to become heavy before he’d once again leave her side for a moment.

But this time, there was no erection to tend to. Just an unopened envelope downstairs in his study, tucked between the pages of a law manual.

~Dalila~

Dalila had never liked her reflection. Not even when she was a little girl and didn’t yet know how the burdens of a cruel life could take its toll on a person’s eyes, skin, teeth. Maybe it was because she saw pieces of her mother in her face—same small nose, same green eyes, same thick eyebrows resembling fat black caterpillars. She was 10, maybe 11 when she first found the person staring back at her in the mirror to be repulsive. Not because Dalila was ugly. Quite the opposite, actually. But because her mother had become a hideous person, and that person was in Dalila’s blood.

She was older now. Twenty-two, and she’d been on her own since 17 when she ran away from the small, dusty trailer park outside of Reno, Nevada she called home. Dalila’s mother, Lori, had been a card dealer at one of the older, lesser known casinos in town, one that appealed to a mostly local crowd of heavy drinkers and smokers. They were lost souls who took their weekly paychecks and gambled them away, less for fun and more because it was an addiction, along with the booze and cigarettes, and eventually, the heroine that had seeped its way into the lives of too many Renoans, including Lori.

Before the heroine, Lori had been a mostly pleasant person. She’d been a drinker, long before getting pregnant with Dalila, but she’d managed to keep the liquor and beer at bay during those nine months. It wasn’t a week after Dalila’s birth, however, that she picked it back up. She was a quiet drunk. Lonely. Sad. And Dalila grew up taking care of herself, keeping to herself, acknowledging her mother in passing. The hideous creature Dalila now saw when she looked in the mirror didn’t emerge until after Lori started on the heroine.

At about that same time, the men showed up. Different ones, nightly, and the noises that crept from beneath the crack in Lori’s door were ghastly—groaning and screaming and panting, like wild animals trying to escape from dank, dark cages. Dalila would sit on her bed, her hands covering her ears, and wish for the sounds to stop. Sometimes, those men would come to her door and knock or tap their fingernails or try turning the handle, all the while whispering dirty things not meant for a child’s ears.

It wasn’t long before Lori turned into a monster. Dalila would come to think of her as the Tasmanian Devil from Saturday morning episodes of Looney Tunes. Yelling and punching, snarling and scratching, and throwing just about anything she could get her hands on, sometimes at Dalila, sometimes not. Dalila would come home from school to an unrecognizable mobile home, and even though it was Lori who’d done the damage, she’d blame Dalila. That blame came in the form of extreme physical abuse and a degree of name-calling that left wounds much deeper and more painful than the bruises on Dalila’s back, face and legs.

Cunt. Whore. Slut. Tramp. Bitch.

What made the scenario so much worse for Dalila was that she had no family, no one to talk to or confide in, and the friends she’d made in grade school had long left her side by the time she finished middle school. With the changes in Lori came changes in Dalila, most of which she hadn’t even been aware of, but those friends had. Dalila would later look back and think she’d likely pushed them away in hopes of protecting them from the Tasmanian Devil.

At 15, alone and desperate, she packed a bag with a few changes of clothes, a toothbrush, and the money she’d saved over the past year from babysitting in the trailer park. It wasn’t much—just over $200—but it was enough to buy water and chips for a few months. That was all the time she’d need to figure out what to do.

For two years after she packed that bag, Dalila tried leaving. She’d walk out the front door of the mobile home and down the road to the trailer park entrance, but once she stepped foot across that threshold and onto the highway—blackness to her left and the iridescent glow of the lights of Reno to her right—she’d stop, take a deep breath, and ponder the unknown that lay ahead of her. She didn’t see a new beginning, the kind that might beckon her to keep going. She saw darkness, a looming storm in the distance, and the mystery of it, like standing at the door of a haunted house on Halloween, terrified her in ways the hateful words and striking fists of her mother didn’t. It was easier to turn around than to continue forward.

And then one night, just a few weeks after Dalila’s 17th birthday, her mother knocked on her bedroom door. The fluorescent blue numbers on Dalila’s alarm clock flashed 1:47 AM. Lori knocked again, a little harder this time, and then said Dalila’s name, her voice breaking. It was a glaring shift in tone, unlike anything Dalila could recall hearing before. Weak and pathetic, maybe, like someone was holding a gun to her mother’s head. But the crack beneath Dalila’s door revealed only two shadows of two legs. Lori was alone.

Dalila walked softy across the room and unlocked the door. When she opened it, Lori held her gaze, her eyes black and cold. A man stepped from around the corner, just as Dalila tried slamming the door shut again, but it struck his boot and bounced back, forcing her to retreat into the bedroom. It’s where he wanted her, where they both wanted her. For an hour with Dalila, he’d given Lori twice the money he normally paid for an entire night with her.

The man shut the door behind him, leaving Lori in the hallway, but the shadows of her legs remained for only a moment before they were gone. And with them, any ounce of like Dalila had left for the woman, any smidgeon of pity, along with every memory she may have once cherished about her mother. Vanished.

There was no place for Dalila to go, no place to run and hide. That looming storm in the distance was now standing in her bedroom, unbuttoning his pants as he stepped toward her. With that motion—and the grotesque possibility of what it meant—Dalila brought her foot up, planting it between his legs at a force that could’ve dropped a horse to its knees.

The man tumbled forward, screaming, and Dalila rushed to the closet where her bag lay waiting. Same change of clothes, same toothbrush, same $210. She grabbed her sweatshirt off the floor, slipped her feet into her tennis shoes, and ran. Out the front door of the mobile home, and down the road to the trailer park entrance. When she crossed the threshold onto the highway, she turned left in the direction of the blackness, away from the glow of Reno and toward the unknown that lay ahead of her. She was no longer afraid of it. Under a star-filled sky, the light from a half-moon guiding her, Dalila set her sights on Las Vegas, 450 miles to the south.

At just after 4 AM, her plaid pajama bottoms alerted a semi-truck driver that something wasn’t quite right. Dalila was hesitant about getting in the passenger seat, but she was exhausted. The driver appeared to be in his late 60’s, long gray beard, soft brown eyes. There was a photograph of children tacked to his visor.

Everythin’ okay, darlin’? he said as she pulled herself into the cab.

She nodded. Can you take me to Vegas?

She kept her eyes on the picture—a little girl with curly blonde hair, her two front teeth missing, and an older boy wearing a baseball hat, his arm around the girl’s shoulder.

Those are my grandchildren, the driver said. And, yes, I can take you to Vegas. On my way there now to visit them. He offered his hand. Name’s Jeb.

Dalila, she whispered as she shook it.

She had no reason to go to Las Vegas. She’d never been there before, and she certainly didn’t know anyone who lived there. But it was a reference point, a city not too far away for her to reach on her own, and a place she’d heard could swallow people and make them disappear.

You have somewhere to go down there? Jeb asked.

No.

He waited a moment for a reply, but Dalila kept her focus on the distant horizon, a collage of cacti in silhouette. When she didn’t say anything, Jeb shifted the truck in gear and pulled back onto the highway. An hour passed before he asked again if she had somewhere to go in Vegas. This time, she said yes.

My dad lives there, she lied. My mom and I got in a fight, so I’m gonna stay with him for awhile.

It sounded legitimate, even to Dalila. It could explain the pajamas and the late-night wandering, and it seemed to work because Jeb didn’t ask any further questions, except whether she needed to use the restroom, which she did. They pulled into a truck stop with an attached McDonalds. She changed into a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, and he bought her breakfast, and as he talked about his daughter and his son-in-law and his two amazing grandchildren—Rebecca and Charlie—Dalila contemplated her next move. Where would he drop her off? And once he did, where would she go?

At just past noon, they arrived in Las Vegas—an oasis of flashing lights and dancing signs and buildings glittering gold beneath a hot desert sun. Dalila had furthered her lie by telling Jeb her father would expect she’d taken the bus to Las Vegas, and so the plan was he’d pick her up there.

He told me to call him when I get in, she’d said.

Jeb didn’t argue. He pulled into the Greyhound Bus Station on Main Street, and as Dalila thanked him, he slipped a $100 bill into the palm of her hand. His eyes filled with tears. He cleared his throat and said, You take care of yourself, young lady.

He figured me out.

And then he was gone, and Dalila was standing in the middle of a parking lot, in the middle of Las Vegas, alone. It was the choice she’d made, encouraged by her own mother and by the man she’d left wailing on her bedroom floor, his hands covering his wounded crotch. But as she stood there, the heat of the mid-afternoon sun beating down on her, Dalila realized both options were desolate.

And so here she was, nearly six years later, applying the last stroke of lipstick, making sure the fake eyelashes were glued on right, dabbing perfume, brushing on glitter. The woman in the mirror wasn’t Dalila, at least not to the people outside of the dressing room. To them, she was Destiny. They didn’t know where she came from. They didn’t know Lori. They were strangers, although occasionally she’d recognize a face from a week, a month, maybe even a year before. But none of them knew Dalila.

She checked the clock on the wall. Ten more minutes.

She’d found a job at a donut shop, just a few days after Jeb dropped her off at the bus station. Minimum wage, crappy hours, but she could afford to remain at the $120 per week room at the Gambler’s Inn just a few blocks away. The manager didn’t ask her age. He didn’t care. She stayed for six months. It was the noises coming from the rooms next to hers—every night, different voices, but the same animalistic sounds that had once seeped like sewage from Lori’s bedroom—that finally made her pack up and leave one day in search of something better.

Down on the Strip, a man was handing out flyers to a nearby nightclub called Doll’s Place. Hot dancers. Cheap drinks. Open ‘til 5 AM. Dalila reached for the paper in his outstretched hand, but he pulled it away. She assumed it was because he knew she was underage, but when she met his eyes, he smiled and said, You ever dance?

After that, she never looked back. The man introduced her to the club owner, Wesley Babins, who fudged her paperwork. He wanted the black hair, the green eyes, the long legs, the natural breasts. He wanted that tight teenage ass.

You’ll make money, he’d said. Lots of it.

Dalila thought she’d be scared, but she wasn’t. The first time she walked out on that stage, bright lights blinding, the faces in the club a blur of gray matter, she was nervous, yes, but not frightened. Within seconds, the jitters settled, and she felt empowered, emboldened, alive. At that moment, she realized she’d experienced a similar sense of euphoria just one other time in her life—six months before when she’d kicked Lori’s dealer in the nuts and ran away from home.

You’re up, Dee, Michelle said as she walked into the dressing room.

She sunk into the lounge chair across from Dalila, her bag of collected dollar bills overflowing. There were three other girls in the room—Jess, Liza, and Anne—each sitting at her own vanity, transforming herself into Tahiti, Miracle, and Zanna.

Knock-em dead, Michelle said.

Dalila blew her a kiss, then stepped out of the dressing room and toward the stage.

~Joe~

Ever since Gary called him with the bachelor party plan—two days in Las Vegas—Joe had been dreading it, for no other reason than he’d long ago left binge-drinking behind, back with the UCLA undergrads and his fraternity on college row. But the date had been set, the expectations high, and Joe had refused to let the boys down.

After settling into room 2704 at Mandalay Bay, he’d made his way downstairs to meet them at Stripsteak for a casual, low-key night of food, wine, and cigars.

We’re saving the crazy for tomorrow night, Tom had said as they each retreated to his separate room after a final round of port, and Joe silently prepared himself for the worst possible scenario.

He crawled into bed, called Allison.

I miss you, babe, she said. Please be careful.

Joe didn’t want to be in Las Vegas. He wanted to be at home, making love to his fiancé, inhaling the scent of her skin, tasting her sweet lips. One week from tomorrow, they’d be standing at the edge of a cliff overlooking the Pacific, reciting their vows. He’d finally be able to call Allison his wife. He was killing it at Ligati and Conwell, quickly climbing the ladder with rumors already of a promotion, and he and Allison had spent the last month looking at homes in the Calabasas area.

They wanted kids right away—two, preferably a boy and a girl. Allison had quit her waitressing job, but was still working part-time at the family clinic. Joe convinced her to leave at the end of the year. She wouldn’t need to work. He didn’t want her to work. He’d grown up an only child with a full-time, stay-at-home mom. He understood first-hand the benefits of having her there for him whenever he needed her, and he wanted his kids to reap the same rewards. He also knew his job would require long hours at times—it already was—as his own father’s job had. Those prolonged absences made the nurturing bond between Joe and his mother critical. They provided each other with comfort, support, even protection when Joe was in high school.

Don’t be worried, honey, he said. I’ll be home Sunday morning, safe and sound, and with no tattoos.

Allison laughed, but it was strained. Las Vegas had a well-earned reputation. There was good reason for the nickname, Sin City. All one had to do was take a stroll through Mandalay Bay or The Bellagio or the MGM Grand to understand. The clothing—or lack thereof—worn by both men and women left little to the imagination. Money, booze, call girls. And that was just inside the casinos. Outside? Strip clubs, more booze, and prostitutes who didn’t disguise themselves as call girls.

Joe had nothing to hide from Allison. When he’d first learned of the bachelor party, he told her as soon as he got off the phone with Gary. She wasn’t happy, but Joe had never given her a reason to doubt him. When she asked whether they’d planned on taking him to a strip club, Joe replied, Yes. I’m sure they’ll want to do that.

She’d slumped into the sofa, crossed her arms over her chest, and frowned. Well, I guess you can’t have a bachelor party in Las Vegas without going to a strip club.

He’d taken her hands in his, looked straight into her eyes, and said, I promise you, with my whole heart and soul, you have absolutely nothing to worry about. I love you. You’re my person. My one and only lover. And he meant it.

Joe loved women. He loved their legs, their thighs, their asses, their pussies, their stomachs and breasts and backs and necks. He was 100% man, and he would never try and pretend otherwise. But in high school, and then through college, he wasn’t interested in having a girlfriend. Sex was sex, and he did it when he could with women who didn’t want anything else. He figured he’d be long out of law school, well on his way to an oceanside mansion in Malibu, before the future Joseph Clayton strolled into his life. And that’s what he wanted. But he also wouldn’t just settle. If that woman never showed up, he’d be fine alone, fucking whomever he could whenever he felt like it.

Allison had been unexpected, and especially at Pogo’s. But when he’d turned around and met her eyes, he knew. He absolutely, undoubtedly, to the very core of himself, knew. She was it. The one. The Mrs. Joseph Clayton. He would spend the rest of his life making mad passionate love to her body, her mind, her soul, and he would never, ever do anything to jeopardize their relationship. He would not fail where his father had.

That single show of weakness, that one incredibly large bump in judgement, changed the perfect life Stephen Clayton had planned for himself. Joe was 12 years old at the time. Most of the memories stored in his head from that age had long slipped away. There were fragments—the soccer ball to the face that left him with a black eye, the girl at the beach being rushed away in an ambulance, his first official kiss on the lips—but his mother’s face that day remained burned in his brain, like a brand on the hide of a calf.

Joe had just come home from school, dropped his backpack at the bottom of the staircase to bring to his room later, kicked his tennis shoes off. He came around the corner, expecting his mother to be at the center island in the kitchen preparing an after-school snack—peanut butter and jelly with the crusts cut off or macaroni and cheese—but she was sitting at the table instead, her fingers laced together and resting on her lap, her head turned toward the bay window overlooking the backyard and pool. It caught him off-guard, less that she was sitting at the table, and more that she hadn’t made anything for him to eat. He didn’t always come home to find her making a snack, but he did always come home to food on the center island, whether she was still in the kitchen or not.

Joe remained still for a moment as he tried to understand the scene before him. He’d made enough noise between the foyer and the kitchen door for his mother to have heard him, and yet she kept her head turned away, as though something in the backyard had her hypnotized. Sometimes, deer would pass through for a drink of water on their way to a nearby neighbor who had lemon trees, but they’d never been so interesting to watch that Joe’s mother would disappear into a fog.

He finally cleared his throat and said, Mom?

She turned then, abruptly, and when his eyes settled on hers, a knot formed in his stomach. Her face was flushed. Thin black trails of mascara ran from the edges of her eyes, down her cheeks, to the tip of her chin. In one hand, she clutched a handful of dampened and dirty tissue. Her hair—normally combed and tied in a knock or pulled back into a low ponytail at the nape of her neck—hung to her shoulders in ratty clumps.

Their eyes were locked, and in those few seconds before his mother broke down crying, Joe tried reading her thoughts. He’d never seen her like this before. Maxine Clayton didn’t cry often, except during sappy movies, and two years ago, when Joe’s grandfather passed away, she sobbed for his loss, but she’d also been relieved. The pancreatic cancer that killed him had been brutal, and he’d suffered for months before he finally died.

This was different. Joe’s mother was devastated. There was no relief in her eyes. Only pain. Deep, disturbing. Something had been broken inside of her. Joe would later learn exactly what it was—her heart. She’d been cleaning out the closet that morning and stumbled upon an old briefcase belonging to Joe’s father—one he’d meant to throw away or send to Goodwill when he’d received a new one for Christmas the year before. Inside the briefcase, Maxine found a letter from a woman in New York who’d been having an affair with Stephen for nearly three years.

It wasn’t until Joe was 17 that his parents sat him down and told him the truth. His father had ended the affair in the days following the discovery of the letter. Joe remembered a string of months when he was gone from the house, and then his mother left for a few days, and then both were gone for two weeks, at which time his grandmother came to stay with him. There was confusion during all of it, and anger. And tears. Lots of tears, both from his mother and his father.

For five years, Joe had to guess what took place that day, and he’d been partially right, but as his parents reconciled, he let it go. Peace eventually returned to the Clayton house, albeit Maxine was never quite the same. Joe noticed it in the subtle way she was the first to let go of an embrace with his father, and the last to say hello or goodbye or I love you. And for a long time, she forgot to smile.

Following their sit-down, Joe hated his father. For weeks, he wouldn’t speak to him, wouldn’t even look at him. When he tried, his mother’s face—streaked with mascara, pale and hollow, eyes empty—would flash like lightening in his head, and he’d have to turn and walk the other way. The anger shifted at times to include both, because together, they’d made the decision not to tell Joe the truth. Over time, however, he realized it was done for his own protection, that by waiting until he was 17, by waiting until they’d had a chance to work on their marriage, they lessened the possible damage such a truth might cause.

By the end of his freshman year at UCLA, Joe had learned to forgive his father, just as his mother had. She’d considered the life they built together—founded on adoration and layered with trust, selflessness, and hope—and had fought against her own desire to walk away. They’d been married for 15 years when she discovered the affair. What could that other woman possibly have that was worth destroying the fabric of a long and lasting love for, a love that had never experienced a single scratch in all the years they’d shared?

And so, Joe’s mother chose to stand by her man, a man who’d shown her love and compassion, who’d given her everything, who’d never raised his voice and who treated her like a queen. But a man who’d fallen prey to his own internal weakness and who’d spend the remainder of his life regretting that terrible mistake, regardless of the fact he’d been forgiven.

Joe was different. He would never let Allison end up like his mother. Cracked and broken, put back together again, but never, ever the same.

* * *

Joe spent the following day in his room, catching up on the pile of paperwork he’d brought with him to Las Vegas. He’d be missing an entire week of work following the wedding, so it wasn’t just catching up he had to do. More like, jumping ahead. But he didn’t care. He and Allison had agreed on six days in Fiji for their honeymoon, and he’d promised he wouldn’t bring a single project along.

At 1:30, he received a text message from Gary—a photograph of the guys at the pool, beers in hand, surrounded by women in bikinis holding tall umbrella drinks.

Get your ass down