*Author's Note: Any and all persons engaging in any sexual activity are at least eighteen years of age.
*****
Chapter 21
Shirley St. Martin smiled as she; Theresa Weinstein and Briah Weinstein stood in the Bridal Boutique of Babbage's Department Store and waited for Caitlin Weinstein to come out. Theresa looked uncomfortable and haggard and Briah looked slightly bored.
Finally, the door opened and Caitlin came out, looking around nervously.
"Oh, my God, that is, oh wow," Shirley said as Caitlin looked at the bridal gown in the mirror.
"God, it is so beautiful," Theresa whispered.
"Aw yeah, girl," Briah enthused.
"But it's two thousand dollars!" Caitlin whined.
"How many times I got to tell you?" Shirley fussed, stamping her foot. "Don't worry about how much it costs! That's not important!"
"Ma'am?" Nicole Dumas asked Briah. "Have you had the final fitting of your brides' maid dress?"
"Yes ma'am," Briah smiled excitedly.
"You have the shoes...?" Shirley asked and Caitlin lifted the hem of the bridal gown to show her that she was indeed wearing the ivory pumps.
"Okay, get out of that; we still have to go to T. Dayton's," Shirley said.
"Miss St. Martin, I get married you buy my dress?" Briah asked.
"Briah!" Theresa snapped, highly embarrassed.
"Honey, if I approve of your young man, I see no reason why not," Shirley said, patting Theresa's arm to let the woman know she wasn't offended by Briah's comment.
Bye, Mrs. Dumas, tell Coach I said 'hi,'" Caitlin said as the four women trooped out of the department.
"And are they really going to the Dead End for their bachelor party?" Briah asked.
"Yes," Caitlin screwed up her face.
"Oh, don't worry about it," Shirley laughed, hugging Caitlin. "We're going to the Hammer in Elgee! Whee!"
"And will you have red wine?" Caitlin teased the sixty four year old woman.
"Oh Honey, you better believe it!" Shirley laughed.
The quartet got into Shirley's Rolls-Royce.
"Mrs. St..." Theresa started.
"Honey, how many times I got to tell you? It's 'Shirley,' all right?" Shirley chided the woman.
"Shirley, I really, I just can't thank you enough," Theresa said.
"Really? It's my pleasure," Shirley said.
At Superior Motors, Henry St. Martin came into the showroom, whistling a happy tune.
"Got them singles?" Jack asked, smiling.
"Singles? Singles! My boy, we're going to the Dead End. Those are the upper echelon of hos," Henry sneered at his friend.
"I didn't know hos had echelons," Bob commented.
"I got fives," Henry said, showing them the bank envelope.
"Marie said if it costs more than forty, I better keep it in my pocket," Bob admitted.
"Forty?" Jack sneered.
"Uh huh, and what'd Melanie say?" Bob smiled.
"Twenty," Jack admitted and the three men laughed.
"Damn it, I wish he'd go down to the light," Henry said as they watched Barry dash across Highway 52 with their lunches from Side By Side.
"Yeah, hate if anything happened to my steak, too," Jack admitted and laughed when Henry punched him.
Four blocks behind Superior Motors, Stacy Falgout was showing Anita Lopez and Toni Delacroix a condominium. In the Lambert Condominiums Association.
"This is a three bedroom two and a half bath unit," Stacy said. "Right across, the woman there did something real interesting. She took the two guest bedrooms, knocked down the wall and made it one long bedroom and expanded the guest bath."
"She also has a hanging bed, oh, and put hardwood floors throughout," Anita agreed.
"Oh?" Stacy asked.
"Yeah, that's like Paula's condo," Toni said.
"You've uh, you've been in her...?" Stacy asked, surprised.
She'd never been in Paula Lambert's condominium; another real estate agent had told her about the renovations.
"Couple of times," Anita agreed, wrinkling up her nose at the lack of counter space and cabinets in the small kitchen. "Kitchen sucks."
"Yeah, that two bedroom one had like a better kitchen," Toni agreed.
"And a better back deck," Anita agreed.
"Y'all want to go look at it again?" Stacy offered.
"What you think?" Toni asked Anita.
"Make an offer," Anita shrugged.
Stacy finally gave in to her curiosity and blurted out, "So why are y'all looking for a condo?"
She wanted to hear the salacious gossip; wanted to hear that Barry finally had enough of his slut daughter fucking around. Or got tired of his daughter and her lover flaunting their homosexual lifestyle in his face. Or even more delicious, that Barry had made inappropriate advances on the very attractive and very shapely Anita.
"Well, like Daddy's getting married and we kind of figured they'd like to have the place like you know, to themselves," Toni shrugged.
"Barry's getting..." Stacy stammered, stunned.
"Oh, I'm sorry!" Toni said, embarrassed. "I like thought you knew that."
"It was in the church bulletin," Anita said, also embarrassed.
"Who's he, don't tell me he's marrying that little red headed freak," Stacy snapped.
"Caitlin," Anita confirmed.
"But I like really don't appreciate you like calling her 'freak;' that's so totally uncalled for," Toni snapped.
"You know what? It really was uncalled for and I apologize," Stacy said quickly.
She wasn't sorry in the least, but she also didn't want to lose a ninety three thousand dollar sale.
"They want ninety... Offer then eighty five," Anita said.
"Twenty five percent down," Toni agreed.
"So, how much is Barry chipping in?" Stacy asked as she pulled up the form on her IPhone.
"Uh, none," Toni said, insulted that Ms. Falgout would thing that Barry was paying for her to buy a home.
"None?" Stacy looked up. "You can't tell me your little soap thing's..."
"We're shipping between a hundred to three hundred bars every day," Anita said. "Plus what we sell at T. Dayton's."
"Anita designed like the best web site ever; our very first day it was up we had two hundred and nine orders," Toni smiled proudly at her friend.
"And your mortgage will be through..." Stacy asked as she tapped out the information.
"First Union," Toni said.
"So, when do we find out..." Anita asked.
"Usually a couple of hours," Stacy shrugged.
"Okay, you do like commercial real estate too?" Toni asked.
"Barry says he's taking his garage back," Anita smiled.
In DeGarde's Chemical Dependency Unit, Susan Couvillion sat, bored out of her mind as one of the girls in their group prattled on and on about some insignificant occurrence. So what if her dad used her as a fuck toy? Who cares that her mother knew about it, but instead of stopping it, resented her daughter?
And Susan was very upset; Caitlin, her friend and neighbor was getting married in two days, but she had to be in the CDU for fourteen days before she could request a pass and it had only been eight days.
"Susan!" Dr. Amber Istrey snapped.
"What?" Susan snapped right back.
"What do you think about what Victoria just shared?" Amber asked.
"God, I don't know; it was so fucking boring," Susan said. "I mean, boo hoo, Daddy fucked me, boo hoo, like you weren't already giving up the booty anyway."
The nine girls just stared at Susan in disbelief. Susan looked out the window again, unconcerned, then sat up a little straighter.
"Hey, ain't it about time for lunch anyway?" Susan asked.
At Johnson's Furniture and Appliances, Ed Weinstein smiled as nine wheeled in another refrigerator. The large black man made it look easy, but Ed knew it would have taken him, Brett Johnson, and Graham Johnson working together to get that large unit onto the truck, and they still would have wound up damaging it somehow.
Abraham Darnell Mosely was called Nine because he had been number nine in the long line of children his mother and father had. His younger brother, however, was called Bird, not Ten, because he had always been climbing trees, like a bird when he was a kid.
"They give you any trouble?" Ed asked Nine as the man lowered the refrigerator to the ground and wiggled the hand truck out.
"Nah," Nine laughed. "Your boy come to the door, acting all big and bad, hollering he going fuck me up I coming repo his shit. Then he takes one look at me and tells me where the kitchen is."
Ed moved to open the refrigerator.
"Careful," Nine warned. "Girl told me they ain't had no power about five days."
"Oh, holy shit!" Ed coughed at the stench of rotted food.
"White boys never listen to old Nine," Nine laughed to Brett Johnson, the owner of Johnson's Furniture and Appliances.
"Before you leave, Michelle's got a wedding present for Catherine," Brett smiled as Ed breathed through his mouth as he scooped the food out of the refrigerator.
"Who? Oh, Caitlin," Ed said.
"Damn it, Caitlin; I knew that," Brett said.
At eight thirty that evening, BJ Delacroix gritted his teeth as he knocked on the apartment door of Patrick and Debbie.
"Who is it?" Debbie's harsh voice demanded.
"Land shark," BJ called out.
"Man, love that dumb ass thing," Patrick laughed, opening the door. "You know you can pull that up on Google?"
"Yeah, hi Debbie, great to see you Debbie, have a nice night Debbie," BJ called out as Patrick grabbed his brother's arm.
"Please tell me she fucks like a three dollar crack whore, can suck a bowling ball through a garden hose and thinks getting it up the ass is even yummier than ice cream in bed," BJ asked his brother as they got into BJ's Porsche.
"Okay, yes to all three and you know that's bull shit," Patrick said.
At Superior Motors, Barry waved the three men out of the showroom as he double checked the alarm. Outside, Henry smiled as Caitlin pulled up in her Small Saturn.
"Hey, he's in the back," Henry said, pointing.
"Shirley says she might have one or two glasses of red wine but don't you get any ideas," Caitlin smiled before rapping smartly on the glass door of the showroom.
"Hey," Barry smiled as he unlocked the door.
"You," Caitlin demanded, pushing him hard. "Don't you get no ideas looking at them girls, you hear?"
"What?" Barry smiled. "But you can go to The Hammer and look at them boys?"
