Messy

by Katie Porter

  “What have you done with the real Alec?” calls a woman in a sleek red dress. The heckle sounds genial enough.

  “I’m becoming marvelously modest in my old age.” He flashes a sly grin. “It’s my greatest virtue.”

  The crowd laughs obediently, and I manage to give a little huff of air as if I’m laughing along. I keep looking back and forth between Alec and my dad. This... This is not going to be good.

  “I’m sure most of you know of the sterling reputation of the Juvenile Breath Cancer, one of the foremost charities in England.” Alec pauses for the hum of acknowledgement that moves around the room. “All of us in The Skies admire their work supporting teenagers who have Cystic Fibrosis.”

  Not me. I’ve never heard of them before. Sinjin looks appropriately impressed however, nodding along. I sneak another tiny sip of the dry champagne.

  “They’ve done us the great honor of inviting us to perform at Brixton Academy for one of their annual fundraising gigs. The Skies have agreed to reform for one night only.”

  The applause is spontaneous and instantaneous. Even in this polite company, one person whoops excitedly. Lee looks like he’s about to bounce off the ceiling, he’s so jubilant. Alec’s smile is small, where the corners of his mouth edge upward and deepen the hollows of his cheekbones, but it’s a true smile. It shines all the way through him.

  And Dad... Jesus Christ, Dad looks like he’s choking on a bone. His hands move in a vague approximation of clapping, even though he’s holding a flute of bubbling champagne. But he’s never been one to master a fake smile.

  “Thank you. We are...” Alec lifts a hand, palm out and patting the air as if he’d quiet us. He’s not trying that hard though. He glances at the rest of his band and finally breaks into a grin, as if he’s transported with joy to see them at his side again. “I can’t speak for the rest of The Skies, naturally, but I’m incredibly honored for this opportunity.”

  “What opportunity?” Dad is sneering. “You can’t undo what you’ve done.” His voice isn’t loud, but it’s the wrong tone for the moment, the wrong timbre. It hacks through the happy chatter like a blunt sword. Dangerous. Unwieldy. “But don’t worry, everyone. I won’t be wheeling my chair on stage. Nothing so awkward as that.”

  “Fuck,” I mutter under my breath like the classy lady I am.

  Sinjin hears me. “What should we do about him?”

  I laugh helplessly. I down the last of my champagne and wave for another waiter. “If I knew what to do about my dad, I wouldn’t be in England.”

  Chapter Ten

  Harlow

  THE PARTY IS OVER. All the guests have gone home. The bar has been abandoned. Half-empty glasses litter every flat surface. All the lights are off. I wander through the empty conservatory. Ghosts float here in the absences left by the earlier conversations. I’ve brought my DSLR camera with me, since I normally like the detritus of abandoned places. I use the photographs to paint from later. I haven’t been able to bring myself to chronicle Alec’s home, despite the interior design’s artistry.

  A crumpled napkin was left wrapped around half a fennel and crab canapé. I guess someone didn’t enjoy their snack. That was no reason, though, to leave it half-tucked behind a framed photograph. I suppose the photo of abandoned train tracks didn’t particularly inspire the guest, but knowing Alec, it’s likely capital-A Art and ought to be respected as such—not besmirched by hors d’oeuvres.

  “What are you doing down here?”

  I’m unsurprised that Alec is skulking through the still, otherworldly rooms too. He likes the halfway kind of places, those liminal spaces that are fraught with feeling. Part of me was expecting him.

  All of me, if I’m honest.

  I resist the urge to burrow into his arms. “Isn’t it obvious? I’m fretting at length about my father’s faux pas. I’m brooding. You don’t have the market cornered.”

  As if to prove my point, he crosses his arms and glowers. The way he lowers his chin makes his hair fall across an eye. “I don’t brood.”

  I lift the camera and look at him through the viewfinder. I frame him off-center, along with the cellist’s abandoned chair. The chair is round and squat compared to his sparse physique. “Haven’t you read your own press?”

  Alec has had a long, adversarial relationship with the press. It dates back to the years when The Skies were the flashiest, sexiest band on the UK charts and he wasn’t yet high off his head. That didn’t mean he was immune from saying a lot of stupid things. The press learned that antagonizing him made good headlines.

  They forgot to un-learn it when he grew up and got clean.

  “My press? Not in years.” He raises an expressive hand and dances it through the air. “Not since... I stopped with all the other things.”

  Sometime in the night, he lost his finely tailored coat. His white shirt glows in the dim half-light that comes through the conservatory’s glass ceiling. London is thinking about waking up. Here and there, lights are turning on. It’s just enough to turn the sky sickly yellow.

  “When did you start using?”

  “Don’t tell me you want the coke and gold discs story. It’s boring.”

  “No.” I circle to the side. I want to turn this man inside out or upside down. Whatever I’m capable of. “I want your story. Whatever it is. I don’t think it starts with cocaine and best-selling records. I think it starts long before that.”

  He stays still, letting me come to stand behind him. He seems unafraid of anything I could find. That sickly city light gleams on the back of his smooth hair. “I believe I told the last story. You owe me, Harlow.”

  “Quid pro quo? How crass.”

  He cranes his head to look back at me. His neck has hollows at the base—slender divots where I could store my secrets and whispers. “Isn’t that the way the world works?”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be the wiser, more mature one, oh elderly man? Why are you asking me?”

  His smile is sexy. He could melt me like an asteroid flying into the sun. “You were the one trying to convince me that I’m the immature one. So pay up. The first time you had a drink.”

  “Dad,” I say simply. “He owned a shot glass that looked like a tankard. It was the perfect size for me. He thought it was cute to feed me sips of beer. It was one of his best party tricks when he had some buddies over.”

  That is, before he got too bitter and paranoid. Before he alienated everyone he knew. But after mom left. I like to think she wouldn’t have put up with all that. I’m not sure though. She had remarried by then, although her future sons weren’t yet claiming every extra scrap of her attention.

  Shouldn’t she have taken me with her? Even if she did have a new husband?

  Alec smiles, charmed, like most people when I tell that story. I always tell it with a certain airy quality. Why wouldn’t the image of tiny, tow-headed Harlow sipping from a miniature stein be cute? I wish Alec, of all people, would see through it. He knows how toxic my dad can be. But I suppose Alec isn’t made of magic and moonbeams after all.

  I want to punish him for that.

  “What about the first time you got drunk?” he asks next.

  How perversely kind of him to give me an opportunity to punish him with the truth. “Also at one of Dad’s parties, but not thanks to him. Tony took me to the basement, sat me on his knee, and fed me something fruity and sweet and bitter. I was eight.”

  I catalogue every emotion on Alec’s face, squirreling it all away for later: his dawning realization that despite my breezy tone, this tale is not about some quirky Pacific hippie child traipsing happily through the sun. The shadows around his eyes pitch darker. His cheekbones turn to concrete as his jaw clenches. He is a Celtic king, ready to be bloodied.

  I finally press the shutter of my camera. That’s the man I want to draw.

  “Did your father kill him?”

  I laugh sharply. “His solution was to start locking me in my room when he had people over. For my own safety.
” One reason to be grateful for his increasing reclusiveness, at least. Though it took me a while to recognize I didn’t have to fear that silver key. “You probably knew Tony though. He’s a studio musician. A workhorse. Very reliable. People love him.”

  “Tell me his name.” Alec’s voice is a whisper and a curse. An oath on a black magic altar. “He’ll never work again.”

  “Can you do that?” I ask, but what I really mean is will you? Will anyone actually rise to my defense. I’ve been alone in a storm for such a long time.

  “I have favors I can call in. Demands I can make.” He runs his tongue over his bottom lip, as if considering his words carefully. Even in the middle of all this, I’m shocked by how deeply I’m hit with the need to meet his tongue with mine. “I’ve gone out of my way to be as... agreeable as I can manage.”

  “Because you didn’t used to be.”

  I’m suddenly exhausted. Even my bones are tired. When The Skies were a young, flash band, hailed as the newest thing, Alec was a diva. Always as late as he wanted. Told photographers to fuck off. Gave the interviewers unquotable responses. That was even before the drink and drugs. How much penance has he done since then? Now he’ll cash out those credits for me.

  I close my eyes and say Tony’s last name on a whisper. Alec is now the third person I’ve told: Dalia, a therapist, and now him. Even if nothing comes of this, I could love Alec for even trying. For even thinking it.

  “Your turn,” I say, desperate to feel less exposed. Less raw. “First drink.”

  “Stolen from my mate Graeme’s father. We took one Witbread stout each and snuck out to the wood behind his terrace house.” He leans back with his hands at hip level. His slim, sexy hips. “We kids had a hideout in the woods there, with a ratty loveseat that smelt of mildew.”

  “Did you enjoy the stout?”

  “Likely too much. All the worries in my head, all the concerns clawing my brain... They eased. I felt charming.”

  “You’re always charming,” I say, and as soon as the words are out, I know it was the wrong thing to say. “To me, anyway.”

  “Am I?” He raises his eyebrows, challenging me.

  “Okay, you’re not. You’re terrible.” But terrible in a way that I crave over and over again. I pull my bottom lip in between my teeth and pretend that biting it will give me the satisfaction I’d get when biting him.

  “We kept doing it. Stealing ale, sneaking away to drink, until Graeme’s dad started noticing how quickly he was running down.” Alec chuckled. “Graeme was in a heap of trouble, but then we bought what pot we could from the local dealer. Not that we found good draw in East Sussex.”

  “You’d have been so jealous of what I got from Humbolt County.” I laugh at him, thinking of teenaged Alec sadly rolling papers filled with shake.

  “Perhaps, but that would have been years later. Many, many years.”

  “True.”

  “How do you fill your time at home, Harlow? Now that cannabis is legal, surely it can’t all be road trips to the hinterlands.”

  “I take care of Dad.”

  “And what else?” He asks so simply, looking at the camera. So much trust he has in me, or maybe in his own taste—as if he wouldn’t spend time with a woman who lacked depth.

  As a result, I have the courage to tell him something that I tell very few people. Only my closest friends back home know, and I usually couch it in talk about how lucky I am or how I struggle. I lift the camera into sight, wave it. “I’m an artist.”

  “A photographer.” His eyes light with avarice. I hadn’t expected hunger.

  “No, actually. Watercolors. I only take photographs of things I want to paint later.” The camera feels heavy in my hands. I wait for the inevitable questions. Am I good, do I sell, will I make a career of it?

  “Does painting make you happy?”

  The air slides out of my lungs and my cells. My thighs are weak. “No,” I whisper. “I’m not good enough. I wish I was better. I see all the ways that I’m lacking.”

  “Not one bit of you is lacking.”

  “You’ve never seen any of my work. I paint because it’s my creative thing, but what I’m good at is art fraud detection. I’ll work in the field someday. Don’t pretend you know me.” For a beat, two seconds, three heart thumps, I expect him to push. To scale my boundaries. But he doesn’t. He stands right up against them and looks over the edges of my fences but goes no farther than I want him to.

  “That dress is cruel,” he says in the kind of voice he normally reserves for his time on stage. It’s deeply sexy and a little snarly.

  He pushes away from the wall and strolls across the room. I pivot to follow him. He’s performing now. The way his hips swing is something extra, a rhythm that normally has a baseline behind it. He’s showing off for my camera. Tempting me into taking a photograph.

  “Cruel is an interesting word to use,” I say.

  “It’s the buckles.” He sits on the only couch, but that’s such a soft expression. He takes his throne would be more accurate, spreading his arms wide across the black leather. He crosses his ankles. Only when the material is opened by the movement do I realize that the top three shirt buttons have been undone.

  It ought to look sleazy, like he’s some try-hard lothario, but this is Alec in the dark of the night after a long party in his half-lit townhome. He’s in his element.

  I swallow, as if that will help open my chest and help me breathe better. Spoiler: it doesn’t. “I liked the rhinestone sparkle. Some class and some trash.”

  “I couldn’t stop thinking about unbuckling them.”

  “Mission accomplished. They don’t actually open though.”

  “More’s the shame. I thought tormenting me might be your aim.” He stares at me, his expression just this side of sinister. I should fear him. Or fear what he does to me. He makes me surrender any good sense I have. “It’s hard not to resent you sometimes.”

  My pulse rate jumps so high my throat throbs. “For what?”

  “For what I want from you.”

  “I didn’t see any of that tonight.” Because why would he show me anything he didn’t show the rest of the guests? Why would he lose control? Not when everyone was watching him. Not when Dad said terrible things. Not when I walked in on Sinjin’s arm.

  It’s fucked up that I need him to stay in control, but I want to make him lose it too. I step closer. Then another step. “Show me. Show me how much you want me.”

  He looks at the lens of my camera, his mouth tipping ruefully. One second, then two, but then he shakes his head. “I can’t allow you to shoot that.”

  Carefully, oh so carefully, with deliberate slowness, I use my free hand to turn the camera so it’s loosely pointed at me. My breathing rasps. I spin the dial to video and press the button. The angle will be unflattering but it won’t matter. Only the act matters. The exposure. The filming.

  He knows what I’m doing. What I’m giving and what I want.

  I try to wet my lips but my mouth is dry. I have to swallow. “You first.”

  Oh, he’s a predator. An animal. He’s the jaguar I wanted to be. He lowers his arms from the back of the couch and I could cry with the perfection of him—just that movement. Jesus, the way he watches me.

  He opens his slacks first, then methodically unbuttons the rest of his shirt. He’s wearing briefs. His cock is already straining against them. That thick head peeks over the waistband and tucks against his flat stomach.

  A shiver starts deep in my body, clenching where I want him most.

  “Your turn,” he says, all challenge.

  Fuck, I love the arrogance in him. The tips of my breasts tighten with desire. “Not fair. I’m only wearing this dress and a pair of panties. If I take the dress off, you’ll still be far more dressed than me.”

  “Then take off your panties and give them to me.” He holds out his palm as if he can’t dream of me disobeying. Of course he can’t.

  And of course I don’t. I rea
ch under my incredibly short dress, hook a finger inside the elastic band, and tug. It’s a little awkward to keep hold of the camera, and I’m sure I’ve lost the selfie angle. A great shot of the ceiling though. But once I work my panties down my legs, I point the camera back at myself and dangle the scrap of net tulle toward Alec.

  “It’s a shame you didn’t see these on me, actually.” I come only close enough to drop them into his hand. “They’re striking. Wearing them jacks nakedness up another level.”

  He lifts them to his nose and watches me as he breathes deep. Filthy minded perv. I pulse between my legs. “Seeing you naked would be perfection already.”

  I want to tell him that if he says the word, he can have it. Have me. But the words stick in my throat and I don’t know why. Is this the right time? It’s not the pity I feared before. It’s not rage. Am I trying to hide the raw feelings that I drag through the days? Maybe. I can hardly find my center anymore. I have no center and I’m not sure if I ever did.

  I swallow. “Take your cock out.”

  “Say please.”

  “Please,” I whisper, and it’s easier than I would have expected. “Please take your cock out. Show me.”

  He lifts his lean hips and shoves down his trousers and underwear. His dick rises eagerly. He wraps his hand around it, stroking himself slowly. “Now what?”

  My gaze jumps between his hands and his face. He jerks himself in a rough way, as if he’s quietly raging. His other hand makes a fist around my panties. He makes me say please and then asks me what happens next. The ultimate mix of prince and pauper.

  Now... I break. I snap into a nebula of pieces. I am stardust, barely held together.

  Kissing him is easy. Easier than breathing. Far, far easier than thinking. I’m taking his mouth before I even hike my dress and swing my leg over his lap. The camera ends up somewhere on the ground. His hands are pinned beneath me and I think I like it that way. This way his mouth is mine, his body is mine. I can lean in and hold his head and pin him to the couch. He kisses me ardently. Hard. His mouth is fierce. I’m just as fierce.