BIG BLUE, WHOSE REAL name was Sharma Whiteman, watched from the carousel as they embraced, feeling every positive thought leave her as the two capered and laughed in the glow of the kiss’s aftermath. Something about what had just happened had hit her like a slap in the face; nor could she have explained it to herself or to anyone else if she’d tried. It wasn’t just the suddenness and the forcefulness of it—she would have expected nothing less from any man, from her stepfather on up to the present, much less a man such as Red, who had supposedly shunned women but whom Blue knew for a fact only used that as a ploy.
No, she didn’t really care about him one way of the other. It was her, Charlotte, the dancer, the stripper—the w***e. For no one believed her story about being a legitimate dance
