Body Movers Books 1-3

“Doesn’t everyone?”

“You need help, you know that?”

Hannah smirked. “So have you heard from the grieving husband?”

Carlotta laid the napkin on her nightstand. “He’s called a few times.” Six, to be exact. “But I haven’t answered.”

“Did he leave messages?”

“Just that he called and would like to talk to me.” In the last couple of messages, though, she’d detected a bit of desperation in Peter’s voice.

“Are you going to call him?”

“Probably,” she admitted. “Eventually.”

Hannah held up a pack of menthol cigarettes. “Want a smoke?”

“Yes,” Carlotta said, then moaned. “No. I have such a headache after smoking that cigar last night…of course, the martinis probably didn’t help.”

“I can’t believe you didn’t take me with you.”

“You were working.”

“Still.”

Carlotta smirked as she reached for a cigarette. “I’ll take you back sometime—you’d love it. Everyone there looked married.”

Hannah clapped her hands. “This is great. I thought when you gave up the party-crashing, you were going mainstream on me. But then you kissed a married man, and now you’re smoking again!”

“I can’t afford to start smoking again. I’m already broke, and do you know how much cigarettes cost these days?”

“Yeah,” Hannah said holding up the box of cigarettes from which Carlotta had taken a smoke. “I kind of bought these. And for someone who’s always broke, you always seem to always have money to spend on clothes.”

Carlotta looked at her closet that was too full for the double doors to close. Designer bags and shoes, belts and coats, dresses and jeans bulged past the door frames. She thought of the money from her pawned engagement ring that was rapidly dwindling. “Too bad I can’t sell some of this stuff.”

“You can,” Hannah sang. “eBay.”

“Under the rules of Wesley’s probation, we can’t have a computer in the house.”

“Oh. Bummer.” Then Hannah brightened. “I know a place—Designer Consigner, in Little Five Points. They’ll take all this name-brand crap off your hands.”

Carlotta frowned. “For how much?”

“You set your price, and they add a percentage. You get paid when it sells, and you know this shit will sell, like, instantly.”

Carlotta picked up the purse she’d carried last night—last season’s Coach, but still in prime condition. And she had at least two dozen more like it, all different brands. Even if she could sell them for a third of what she’d paid for them, she could pay down her credit cards and maybe have her Miata fixed. The thought of being able to get rid of the dreadful Monte Carlo made her giddy.

“Why don’t you load up a few things and we’ll take them in,” Hannah suggested.

Carlotta narrowed her eyes. “You despise designer clothes. How do you know about this place?”

“It’s next door to a place I shop, and the same people own it. Stop stalling.” She grimaced at the overflowing closet. “Good grief, Amelia Earhart could be in there.”

Carlotta emptied the contents of the Coach bag on her bed, then went through her closet, choosing purses that she’d grown tired of but that were still in great shape, many of them protected by dust bags. Hannah began pulling out clothes in clumps. “How long has it been since you wore this?”

Carlotta studied the fitted orange tweed jacket. “I can’t remember.”

Hannah tossed it on the bed. “It goes.”

“Wait a minute!”

“Jesus, Carlotta, the closet rods are bowed. You couldn’t wear all this stuff in ten years!”

With a sigh, Carlotta relented and thirty minutes later, they were piling clothes and shopping bags of accessories into Hannah’s retro refrigerated catering van that was covered in graffiti.

“When are you going to get this thing painted?” Carlotta asked.

“It is painted,” Hannah said, clearly annoyed. “Some of the best graffiti artists in Atlanta live in my neighborhood and have left their mark on my ride.” She stepped back and gestured to the words Do yourself written in stylized white lettering, highlighted to look three-dimensional. “See the signature—Zemo. He’s huge. This van is going to be in the Smithsonian one day.”

“Right,” Carlotta said as she rearranged the bags stuffed full of clothes. She sniffed and wrinkled her nose. “It smells like garlic in here.”

“Last night’s gig,” Hannah said, closing the rear halfdoors. “I made so many garlic rolls I swear this morning I crapped a clove.”

“You really should write poetry.”

“I just might someday.”

Carlotta climbed up and swung into the cracked blue vinyl bench seat and slammed the door hard to get it to stick. When Hannah pulled away from the curb, Carlotta waved at a frowning Mrs. Winningham, then rolled down the window and lit the cigarette she’d been playing with for an hour.

It was a breezy, cloudless spring day and she couldn’t stave off the pang of sadness that Angela had been dead for mere days and the world had marched on, with hardly a pause. She wondered what Peter was doing—if he’d returned to work yet, sold Angela’s car, spread her ashes, ordered her grave marker. Would he order a double headstone, with thoughts of someday being buried next to his young wife, or was he already thinking ahead to inviting another woman into his life?

Like her.

“Why can’t you let it go?” Hannah asked, wrestling with the huge steering wheel with one hand, holding her cigarette in the other.

“What?”

“You know what—Angela Ashford’s death. Everyone but you thinks it was an accident. And if it was an accident,” she said lightly, “doesn’t that sort of clear the way for you to get back with the love of your life?”

Carlotta flicked ash out of the window. “I suppose so.”

“Well, I’m no shrink, but either you think Peter killed her or you’re conflicted about your feelings for him and are going to some pretty extreme lengths to avoid the situation altogether.”

Carlotta studied the cigarette she held, asking herself why people did things that they knew would hurt them eventually, and if she had a particular propensity for self-destruction. She took a long draw, then exhaled. “Well, like you said, you’re no shrink.”

Hannah frowned and replied by leaning forward and turning up the volume on the radio, blasting Marilyn Manson into the cab for the short ride south into Little Five Points.

Carlotta felt torn over shutting out her friend, but she was already so confused about Peter, she was afraid that talking about him, that putting words to half-baked feelings, might send her into an emotional abyss. What if she did give in to years of pent-up longing and allow Peter into her life…and into her heart? Would he tire of her after he felt he’d paid penance for abandoning her? After all, how much did they really have in common now?