Page 22 of Race With The Devil

CHAPTER EIGHT

Unity

“I have a proposal for you.”

Tanner and I were walking down Substitute Street toward Bargain Boulevard. One of Lavinia’s friends had told us there was a Barbara Stanford on Substitute who could be the Sideshow Barbara we were looking for. We’d knocked, but nothing, so we were going to try later.

“I’m glad you didn’t say ‘proposition.’”

Tanner grinned warmly. He’d been doing that more lately, and I liked it. He was what some would call a “handsome devil.” “I’d never dare, not around you. You might die of capture myopathy. No, listen. I’ve been thinking about self-harm.”

I rolled my eyes. He sure was into my cutting.

“These two opposites—pleasure and pain, grooming and cutting—create similar results in the body, so identical that some folks seem to get them mixed up. Tearing, cutting, and chewing are still in our gene pool because they’re on the same level as grooming, like two apes picking nits off each other. This keeps our anxiety under check. Do you feel relief when you cut?”

“Yes, I do,” I said, stopping in front of Lytton’s A Joint System dispensary. People were still sweeping up from yesterday’s blowout, and I waved to a few employees, August the ganjier, and June, Lytton’s wife. Tracy, an irrigation expert up at the plantation, was even down there, choosing to work downtown instead of dealing with those two eggheaded maniacs she was having a ménage with. “It’s a psychic sense of relief, feeling I’ve done something about the problem, if that makes any sense.”

“It does.” We walked on past the dispensary. “That’s why I propose to groom you.”

I put a hand to my chest, to my anchor. “Groom . . . me?” Like pick nits off me?

“Just like it sounds, darlin’.”

He’d never called me darlin’ before, but I supposed it was some West Memphis type of thing. I’d found out that’s where he’d grown up, where he’d committed—or not committed—whatever crime had led to ten years in the Tucker Unit. “A friend of Maddy’s owns this beauty parlor that doesn’t open ‘til eleven.”

“Yeah, I know Elsa. This is where I go, because it’s close to my apartment. But how are you going to groom me?”

“I used to do someone else’s hair all the time.”

“Your sister?”

“No, I don’t have a sister.”

“So let me get this straight. You propose to wash my hair?”

“Yes. Like one animal would groom the other.”

“Strictly between animals.”

He held up his palms to me. “Strictly.”

I couldn’t believe my mouth was saying those words. “Okay, you’re on.”

Tanner surprised me, how much his face lit up. “Seriously? Okay, let’s carry out this experiment.” He yanked some keys from his jeans pocket and shuffled among them.

“So I’m an experiment now?” I pretended to protest, but honestly, the idea of this sensual brute of a man rubbing my scalp with his fingertips . . . well, my pussy lips were already blooming, filling with blood, actually throbbing as though a little heart beat there.

He got us inside the salon but didn’t turn on the lights, instead going to a rolling caddy full of plastic smocks, shaking one out.

“Sit, darlin’.”

He had me sit in a shampoo chair—that he already knew what one was made me suspicious, although he didn’t ping a single gaydar cell in my entire reality—and he even tucked a towel under my neck. I felt miles better already. My hair stunk like smoke from the to-do the day before, especially when he took off the headband that held all the braids in place. First, he had to remove the waxy rubber bands at the tip of each braid. He did it slowly, with barely a tug. I’d had men do my hair before, but I’d never tingled with excitement thinking about it. The men were either flamingly gay, or just didn’t do it for me.

Tanner did it for me.

“You’ve got a beautiful ashy stripe,” he said. “Why would anyone want to obscure that?”

I shrugged. “I try different things. I try not to look the same for too long. Photographers want a different look all the time.” He was hosing my scalp with warm water, and I was settling into it just fine. I was shocked and offended when his phone went off, and he stopped what he was doing to read the text.