Free Cherry Money Baby by John M. Cusick Page B

away — she is vulgar and boring.
Snap.
    Just then the music cut out. Maxwell was standing by a grand piano in the corner, waving.
    “Ardelia! Come do the thing.”
    “Oh, yes!” someone shouted. “Come on, do it!”
    Ardelia waved them away, but the crowd wouldn’t let her go, urging her toward the piano. She resisted for all of ten seconds.
    “Fine! Fine.”
    The room applauded.
    “Ladies and gentlemen,” Maxwell announced, “as some of you may know, our little Olive”— Cherry guessed this was the name of Ardelia’s character —“recently had a scare.”
    The crowd went,
“Awww.”
    “We’re just so happy she’s all right,” Maxwell said. By now Ardelia had reached the piano. “So let us celebrate the fragility and sanctity of life,” Maxwell added with mock reverence, “with a private performance.”
    “Stop! Stop!” Ardelia waved at the cheering crowd, laughing. “What do you want to hear?”
    “Do ‘Night and Day’!” someone shouted.
    “Do ‘Love for Sale’!”
    General laughter. Ardelia’s eyes found Cherry.
    “Cherry! Any requests?”
    The room’s eyes were on her. What were they asking her, exactly?
    “Uh . . .” She cleared her throat. “How about ‘Superb Ass?’”
    She’d meant this as a joke, but the room went nuts. Ardelia shrugged.
    “Well, if it’s all right with Cynthia . . .” She gestured to somewhere in the room. The yellow feather, its owner obscured by the crowd, bobbled.
    Maxwell sat at the piano and began pounding out the bass line. Ardelia climbed onto the grand’s glossy top, Cherry’s sneakers squealing. When the vocals came in, Ardelia began to sing, and Cherry was surprised by the sweetness and emotion she was able to wring from a song about a nice ass. Ardelia hammed it up, turning the hip-hop anthem into a torch song, about love and loss, and when she sang,
“‘I’ll die if I don’t get it, I’ll cry if I don’t get it, I need you . . . !’”
Cherry believed her.
    She was the brightest spot in the room. Even among the rich and famous, Ardelia Deen was important.
    She finished to wall-shaking applause. Ardelia curtsied and let Maxwell help her down. Cherry clapped — difficult while holding a beer bottle — and let out a wolf whistle.
    “So, what is it you’re doing here, exactly?” said a pert voice in her ear. Spanner was at her side, smoking a slender brown cigar. It smelled awful.
    “Sorry, what?”
    She exhaled a jet of blue smoke. “I mean, it can’t be fun for you. Being a party favor.”
    Cherry waved the smoke from her eyes, her stomach turning queasy, her fingertips going tingly with the realization that she was being insulted. At school, digs were hurled down the hall, unmistakable. Spanner’s words
seeped,
like poison. The toxins detected, Cherry shifted into Fightin’ Mode. She didn’t take shit from jokers like Olyvya Dunrey, and she sure as hell wouldn’t from a copper-bottom bitch in a too-tight dress.
    “All right. You got a problem with me?”
    “Problem? I
have
no problems. I fix other people’s.”
    “Ooh, good one,” said Cherry. “How long you been sitting on that little gem?”
    “Right now I see
one
problem,” Spanner continued. Her coolness flustered Cherry a little. “And I plan to solve it,
pro bono.
Do you know what
pro bono
means?”
    Cherry didn’t, though she’d heard it on
CSI: Miami.
“N-no . . .”
    “Not surprising.
Pro bono,
from
pro bono publico
or ‘for the public good.’ Colloquially, ‘for free.’ I’d explain what
colloquial
means, but we’d be here all night.” Spanner sighed. “I’m guessing they don’t teach Latin at your school.”
    Cherry’s face was on fire. Was it uncool at Hollywood parties to savagely beat another guest, or would it be considered part of the general mayhem?
    “Ardelia
asked
me to come, okay?”
    “Oh, you’re not
her
problem,” said Spanner. “You are
utterly
inconsequential.
She
is
your
problem.”
    “How is she my