House of Blues

housekeeper, who acted more like she owned
the place than like a servant, but that was the only bad thing.
    That and the fact that Mo traveled a lot. Sometimes
she wouldn't see him for a couple of weeks at a time, or even longer,
though in the meantime he'd phone from whatever far-flung place he'd
landed in. He could always make her laugh when he called, but then
when she hung up, she got this empty feeling.
    This sort of lonely, desperate,
bouncing-off-the-walls kind of feeling. And what she'd do then was
drink a lot to ease the melancholy.
    Drink and fantasize about how her life ought to be.
She ought to be with Mo in this house, for instance. With the man she
loved, and who loved her.
    And she ought to be with Sally. For some reason,
Sally had loomed large in her thoughts lately.
    Not the real Sally, whom she didn't know at all, but
a kind of perfect, blond, laughing baby with the tiniest toenails
anyone could imagine.
    She loved babies' toenails.
    She wanted her own baby.
    If they were going to be together, she and Mo, she
could have Sally. They'd have enough money, and Sally would have a
father, and there would be no reason why not. Surely Dennis and Reed
understood that Sally was just sort of on loan to them until she
could get her life together.
    Well, actually, she hadn't really thought that would
ever happen, but it was about to, that was obvious. She was more or
less Mo's hostess, and that was only one step from being a wife. When
he had parties at the mansion, she was his date, and she did the
hostess thing damn well.
    Mo told her so all the time.
    She ought to be good at it. As a little girl, she'd
walk around Hebert's with her dad, watching him welcome the guests,
shaking hands with everyone, making small talk. Then later, she'd
done all that preteen crap, dancing lessons at Miggy's and
everything. She ought to be able to handle herself at a party.
    She looked classy too, when she was dressed up. That
was Mo's word.
    She looked like her mother, when Sugar was thin.
    But Mo didn't know that, he thought she was from
Mississippi, and he talked like he was from the Ninth Ward or
something. But his friends were pretty impressive. A lot of them were
politicians whose names she knew; plenty were businessmen and
lawyers, from the looks of them.
    Who knew who they all were? They seemed to have
money. For once, she'd fallen in love with a man who had it together.
She kept looking for flaws in him but she couldn't find any. The guy
was perfect.
    Yeah, and I was drunk most of the time.
    He was perfect and he loved her, he told her so all
the time. It would only be a matter of time till they were married,
that was obvious.
    She couldn't wait. It would be the perfect life, the
three of them living here together. Of course she'd fire Mrs.
Garibaldi; that was going to be the first thing she'd do.
    Then she'd redecorate, get Sally in a good school,
and then . . .then she thought she'd travel. She and Mo. Maybe she'd
go with him on some of his business trips. And maybe she'd get him to
go with her to some of the places she wanted to see.
    China.
    The Amazon.
    Lots of places.
    Or maybe she'd just go alone. Whatever she wanted
would be fine with Mo. That was the way he treated her. He bought her
clothes, he bought her shoes, he bought her underwear, and flowers.
He took her to nice places. He always noticed if there was a draft
blowing on her, or if she was tired, or if she wanted another drink.
He knew things like that before she did, he was that carefully
attuned to her.
    He was far and away the most generous lover she'd
ever had. That was the kind of man he was, and that was the way he
felt about her.
    What she wanted, he wanted for her.
    Still, she didn't want to spring Sally on him.
    He already knew she had a daughter who didn't live
with her, and she'd told him how much she missed her.
    "Maybe you should think about getting her back,"
he'd said. As if he'd read her thoughts. As if his thoughts were her
thoughts.
    The plain fact was, three nights ago, she'd gotten
drunk and gone to get her daughter.
    Oh, man. Drunk doesn't begin to cover it. What the
hell did I think I was doing?
    It made her cringe to think of it. She'd thought
she'd just go get Sally and bring her home and that would be that.
And then, when things got out of control, she'd acted perfectly
rationally, even in her polluted state. She'd gone right to Mo, her
dependable helper and protector who always knew what to do.
    The part that made her cringe