Read Online After by Marita Golden - Free Book Online

stopping speeders headed to the club. Parked in a strip mall, Carson saw a blue Corolla roar past, going almost seventy-five in a fifty-five-mile zone. He turned on his lights and followed the car as it crossed the intersection on a yellow light and then pulled over to the side of the road. When Carson scanned the interior of the car he saw five women, all in their early twenties. The car vibrated with nervous giggling and reeked of perfume, cigarettes, chewing gum, and marijuana. The sight of so many young women jolted and excited him. Bunny was behind the wheel. His flashlight illuminated her face, and he liked what he saw. She was wearing more makeup than he preferred on a woman, the mascara thick and hard on her lashes, but she was nervously, coyly licking her lips, and that turned Carson on. She was twenty-one, no more than twenty-two, he guessed, with a mature face that did not hide her youth. Bunny was staring dead at him. Carson liked that as much as the way she looked, as much as wondering how it would feel to kiss her. The other girls were looking away from him, out the window, sitting up straight; the one in the front with Bunny turned down the sound of Michael Jackson. But Bunny was looking straight at Carson.
    He told her how fast she was going and that there were a lot of drunks out behind the wheel on a Saturday night.
    “I’ve got no excuse, officer. We’re on our way to Ecstasy to meet some friends. It’s Saturday night. I know I was wrong.”
    “The club’ll be there,” Carson scolded her gently. To scare her he asked for her license and walked slowly back to his cruiser, where he called in to headquarters over the mike and asked for a check on her. He had no intention of writing a ticket or checking the car for drugs. He just wanted to delay her, send her a message. And so he dragged the stop out so he could look at her a little longer. Carson copied her address on a piece of paper and put it in his shirt pocket. Then he walked slowly back to the car.
    Leaning through the driver-side window he said, “I’m just gonna warn you this time. But I’ll probably be out here when you’re on your way home. I don’t want to stop you again.”
    Bunny smiled at Carson broadly, and he said, “Have a good night, ladies.”
    On his day off a week later, Carson knocked on Bunny’s door.
    “Hello, my name is Carson Blake,” he began, figuring that the woman who opened the door must be Bunny’s mother. Her suspicious, uncharitable gaze was so penetrating, Carson feared she knew about the sex dreams her daughter had inspired. He was a cop, and this squat, brown-skinned little woman who opened the door had him squirming. “I’m a friend of Belinda’s.” The lie relaxed him.
    “Bunny,” she called, stepping back, and to Carson’s surprise and relief, moving from the entrance and ushering him into the hallway of the small, tight house. She didn’t invite Carson to sit down on the plastic-covered furniture in the living room. The house smelled of cigarette smoke and fried chicken. Carson knew even then that he was standing in the home of the woman he would marry, and he wondered who smoked, the woman staring at him (he could not bring himself to think mother-in-law) or “Bunny.” Carson liked the nickname. Carson heard someone coming down the stairs, and then there she was, in tight cutoff jeans and a halter top. Her hair was in rollers. But to Carson she looked beautiful. There was a moment, a brief flicker of surprise that bloomed in her eyes and that she quickly blinked away because her mother was looking from Carson to Bunny, back and forth, trying to figure out what was going on and who he was.
    “Hi,” Carson said softly.
    “Hi.”
    “I know this is unexpected, but…”
    “Come on, let’s go outside.”
    “Outside?” her mother asked.
    “Yeah, outside,” Bunny cooed, sweeping past her mother and opening the front door.
    The front porch was small, but there were two wrought-iron chairs on