Page 15 of Cognac Secrets
I had to laugh. True just didn’t get those kinds of urges, they never really had. There were times they confessed to me they just didn’t understand certain emotions as a whole. They were a really good person. Like, she explained it to me once as knowing she had to act sad at a funeral, but that it wasn’t something that she necessarily felt herself. Still, it wasn’t that she acted sad because it wasexpected, although that was part of it. She really did it so she wouldn’t make anybodysadderorangry. She wasn’t about that. She genuinely held empathy and cared about other people – just not as much as she cared about animals. Of course, animals were generallybetterthan people anyway, so there was that.
I think True may have honestly had a touch of the ‘tism – but went undiagnosed. Partially because she’d been raised in poor country like me, but more so because her mom and dad were religious zealots in their own right, and whatever fantastical bullshit that they believed in was extremely regimented much like my upbringing had been.
I wasn’t sure what else True had gone through as a kid, but I knew it wasn’t good like me. It just wasn’tthe sameas mine had been.
We treaded carefully on the subject even though we’d bonded over it. Neither one of us wanted to be a mess, you know? Triggers were a real thing, and while we considered each other sisters in trauma, we didn’t want to poke that particular gator and get a limb snapped off.
“Look, girl, I get it – I do. Maybe if I had been there and seen what you seen, I might be more on board with what you’re saying, but theVoodoo Bastards?Honey, that’s just bad news. Bad, bad, news.”
“They’re people just like you and me, True,” I tried to argue.
“Not like you and me, baby. Not by a long shot. They have their hand in just about every criminal enterprise in this city – and if they don’t, they have a hand in protecting it and keeping it operational. People with them and around them disappear all the time and you just know they got to be gator food.”
“Yeah, maybe you’re right,” I hedged. I’d never heard her so adamant about anything before, and she really sounded like I done lost my fucking mind! Who knows, maybe I had, but I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about howrealBennie had been. How raw and emotional and deep feeling and… and, well, I knew a thing or two about that.
“Oh, don’t tell me!” she said, and she sounded sodramatic.“Lord help us all, don’t tell me you’re doing that thing you do.”
“What thing?” I demanded, rolling onto my back across the mattress of my bed which rested on the floor up here. The ceilings werelowand to keep things feeling open, I’d foregone having the bed up on a bedframe.
“You know the thing – where you meet a guy, start to low key obsess, build him up all in your mind and catch feels for the imaginary version of him instead of therealhim, only to get your heart brokenyet againwhen they treat you like yesterday’s trash.”
I was laughing by now. I mean, she wasn’t one hundred percent wrong, but shewasexaggerating.
“Bitch!” I cried. “Oh my God! I barely know him! I mean, he gave me his number or whatever, but he doesn’t have mine.”
“You better fucking sleep on it and come to your damn senses before you do anything with that damn number!”
“Okay,Mom.” I rolled my eyes.
“Yo mamma ain’t have no damn sense, girl. Ido. I love you and I would die if anything happened to you. Youbetterremember that.”
“I know,” I said softly and sniffed. “I love you, too!”
“Get some sleep. You must be exhausted.”
I laughed a little then and said, “You have no idea.”
“Snuggle Judy and Liza.”
“Oh, absolutely,” I said. “Judy is up here already. I don’t know where Liza is, yet.”
“Okay, goodnight.”
“’Night.”
I ended the call and reached down by my hip to stroke down Judy Garland’s back. She was a purebred Siamese, and Liza Minelli was her daughter from the one time Gerard had allowed her to be bred. As part of the agreement with the breeder, he got to keep one kitten from the litter and Liza had been it.
Judy loved scritches under her chin and raised her little nose, scrunching it adorably as I provided the scratching her royal highness had deserved.
Judy and Liza were both fun andveryvocal cats. I guess that was a Siamese trait. They loved to talk – except Gerard always called it “singing.” Anytime he came home from tour and the girls were meowing, he would raise hands to the heavens and would cry, “Lawd, yes! Sing, ladies,sing!”
It wasquitethe production.
These cats were all up in my business when it was just us at home, but the minute Gerard opened the door and came in from outside? These two heifers pitched me over in a heartbeat. No fucks given.
They looooved their queen daddy.
The first time I had called him that, Gerard had died laughing and it’d stuck. He’d come in and tell them to come to “queen daddy.” It was something I loved about living here.
