by Jessica Love
I could have parked a truck in the middle of that reasonable doubt.
As I walked past Agent Deborah Riddle in the courthouse, looking especially vampish because of my confidence in the outcome and wanting to poke my finger in the eye of Mrs. Max Moore, I looked at Agent Riddle and said, “She got exactly what she deserved.”
But that wasn’t the end of that conversation. A month or so later I was at one of my favorite “get out of the office for a half-hour” lunch spots. I may have been reading a brief or the Source of the Sound, I don’t remember.
“That was out of bounds,” said a voice at my shoulder. It was Agent Deborah Riddle.
“What was out of bounds?” I asked.
“Planting evidence, or non-evidence. Breaking the law in only God knows how many ways to get that bag planted in our custody. Damaging my career. Effectively ending the career of the other agent on the case,” said Agent Riddle.
“I have no idea what you are talking about. I had nothing to do with anything like that,” I said. “Your team had the bag, and apparently more than one bag. Reasonable doubt.”
“What you did was out of bounds,” Riddle just repeated. “And it painted a target on your back for every cop and prosecutor in this city.”
“Is that a threat, Agent Riddle?” I asked.
“Consider it a warning,” she said. “You’ll get what you deserve.” And with that, she walked away.
Her warning bothered me on a couple of levels. First was the obvious threat. Nobody wants to be a target for anything.
But even more importantly, I hadn’t really considered that there was a lot that smelled pretty bad in the Ashley Moore “win.” I didn’t question the screw-up in the feds’ handling of the evidence because I had not created it. I just used it. I just did my job.
And I was pleased with the victory, not only because I liked to win but because that win would be noticed by others. Important others. It was a validation, of sorts, a flip-off to Mark, Claudia Moore, Max Moore, and even Tony, who forced me to take the case.
So, even though at some level I knew there was a stink in there someplace, I pushed it out of my mind. Maybe I should have given it some more consideration.
• • • •
The next time I went to SASSA, I showed up around 10 p.m. on a Friday night. The music downstairs was too loud, so I went right upstairs and sat at the end of the bar.
As often happened in the past, a man sat down next to me. When I looked at him, I recognized the owner of SASSA.
But he didn’t recognize me. It had been a long time since we’d seen each other at that deposition when Mark and I found ourselves on opposite sides of the table, and that encounter didn’t last long and had enough other drama going on. I doubt I made any impression at all.
And I looked quite different then.
“Hi,” he said. “You’re here alone.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yes.”
“Looking for anything in particular?”
“Nope. Just enjoying the atmosphere,” I said, nodding at a couple starting to make love on a couch ten feet away.
“Would you like to be part of that atmosphere?”
“How’s that?” I asked.
“Just a second.” He came back with a bright white, freshly laundered sheet from one of the many stacks of them scattered everywhere in the club. He unfolded the sheet and lay it out on the bar. “Sit up here,” he said. I didn’t know what he expected of me, but I was a little aroused, so I kicked off my shoes and sat up on the bar.
“Remember,” he said, “No means no. You’re in charge.” And then he walked off.
I sat there until I was just about ready to feel silly and slide off. That’s when a guy wearing a dark sport coat, his necktie from work stuffed in the pocket, walked up. “May I buy you another glass of wine?” he asked, nodding at my nearly empty glass.
“No, thank you,” I said. “Not yet.”
“May I help you off with your dress?” he asked.
A quick rope of electricity ran from between my legs to my fingertips, barely pausing to throw a loop around each nipple on the way. I exhaled. Inhaled. Exhaled. Inhaled.
“Why yes, thank you,” I said. I turned to my right and put my feet on the bar so he could get to the zipper at the back of my dress. He slowly, ever so slowly, unzipped the sheath to my waist. His fingertips brushed my skin all the way down in a way that was completely unnecessary but my, did I like it.
He started to slip the straps forward over my shoulders but I asked him to wait.
“I’d like to savor it,” I said to his questioning eyes. As I turned to look around the room, every move I made loosened the dress a little more. Finally, when I reached down for my nearly empty wine glass, I shrugged the straps off my shoulders and the loose top fell in a bunch in my lap.
I left it there. I’d not worn a bra, and my nipples hardened as they were caressed by the gaze of at least a dozen men and a half-dozen women.
“You know, I think I’d like that glass of wine now,” I told the man who had just freed me. “Pleasure,” he said with a smile. He hadn’t gotten over to the stairs to the first-floor bar before a couple of men in tight jeans and matching haircuts came over. One placed his hand on my calf and smiled, the other placed a hand on my thigh, leaned close, and asked, “Would you like to go into one of the rooms?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. He smiled and asked if he and his friend could sit at the bar. “Yes, but please leave that chair for the man who went to get me a drink,” I pointed at the one on the end. They flashed their similar smiles and sat down to my right.
They made small talk while the one closest to my left leg ran his thumb from my knee to where the hem of my dress ended at mid-thigh. I did nothing to discourage him. What he was doing, along with sitting there half-exposed on top of the bar with everyone looking at me, was causing a serious pounding in my heart.
“Here you go,” said the bearer of my glass of wine.
“That’s your seat,” I said to him, indicating the stool at the end of the bar.
“Why thank you,” he said and sat down.
“Well thank you… ?” I asked.
“Rick,” he said.
“Rick. And this is… ” I looked at the man stroking my thigh. “Paul,” he said, leaning back so he could shake hands with Rick without removing his left hand from my leg. “William,” said the other with a small salute.
“Now we’re all friends,” I said, feeling more relaxed than I had any right to feel. We listened to the music for a bit and I sipped my wine.
“William, do you think you could stand and help me off with the rest of my dress?” I asked at last.
William was on his feet in an instant and very gently slid the dress down and over my butt when I lifted my hips. Of course his hands touched my skin, but he wasn’t obvious. When the fabric passed my knees, I put my butt down on the bar and lifted my legs. The dress slipped easily over my feet.
I had on a thong. I must have known it was going to be on display when I left home.
“My God you’re beautiful,” said Paul. “You are a very lucky man,” he said to Rick.
“Not me,” said Rick. “She’s not mine.”
“Paul, I feel a little naked. Would you help me with my shoes?” I asked, without answering the question he wanted to ask. He took each ankle in turn and carefully slipped a shoe on each foot. He did that more gently than I do, more gently than any shoe salesperson I’d ever known.
“Paul, that was very sweet,” I said to him.
“Your feet deserve it,” he said, drinking in the entire length of my leg with his eyes.
I stayed that way on the bar, sitting sideways like that, leaning up against a post, sipping my wine. Then I leaned back on one arm and then the other, my breasts exposed to the room, the dampening V be
tween my thighs certainly visible to the three men sitting at my side.
The four of us laughed about silly things, commented on a voluptuous woman who had volunteered to do a dance with the pole on the other side of the room.
“She’s a really good dancer,” said Paul as she wrapped her leg around the pole after a quick shimmy up and hung upside down.
“She’s not paying enough attention to the music,” said William.
“William, this music is impossible to dance to!” I said, and we all laughed.
“Music? Dance? What are you guys talking about?” said Rick, who was joking, but really had not taken his eyes from my face and body since he came back with the wine.
Appearing from nowhere, the club owner stepped from the darkness and put down a sheet rolled into a pillow. “In case you need to relax,” was all he said, and again disappeared.
“That might a good idea,” I said, and scooted my hips down so I could put my head on the roll at the end of the bar. When I turned my head sideways, Rick’s face was about six inches from mine.
“May I kiss you?” he asked, his voice husky with lust.
“Please?” I asked back.
So very gently, he brushed his lips against mine, held them there. I could smell the gin and tonic he’d been drinking, clean and fresh. I reached over and put my right hand on the back of his head so he wouldn’t pull away. I put my left hand on the side of his face. The kiss lingered.
It was so strange. I’d been with a number of men since the implosion of my marriage. Not once had I kissed or been kissed as tenderly as I was at that moment, nearly naked on top of a bar in a room full of men and women, mostly men.
“Oh my,” he said when we broke to look at each other.
“Oh my,” I agreed.
“William?” I asked, I didn’t need to elaborate and when I lifted my hips, William slid his hands under my butt to take the top of my thong down, smoothly over my knees. I straightened my legs so the wisp of fabric could be pulled over my shoes. I kept my thighs together, but extended my left foot so my body was completely visible to the room, which had become quite silent except for the last notes of another song spun by the DJ who was catering to the dancers on the floor below.
Paul put his lips on my hip bone, then closer to the V between my legs.
“Paul.” I said it gently, but with a hint of command. He stopped instantly and looked at me. “I’d like your fingertips from here,” I pointed at my left breast, “to here,” and pointed at my pelvis. He smiled into my eyes and nodded.
“William, I’d like you to work up from the other direction. As gently as you can.”
The two of them touched me like they were enjoying the touch of velvet, back and forth, up and down. I kept my thighs together and neither tried to enter me. Paul stroked the outside of my breasts, the under curve, my nipples ached when he brushed them and then down to my belly.
I reached over to Rick and said, “I need you right here,” and drew his mouth to mine. Once again the gentleness of his lips astounded me. But now I wanted something a little more. I opened my mouth, which caused him to open his. I timed my exhale to his inhale, and he knew exactly what I wanted and pulled my breath into his mouth.
When I was empty, his/my warm breath returned to me and filled my lungs. We were able to keep that rhythm for five full breaths before what we were sharing was depleted of oxygen.
“Oh my,” I said with my first full breath of fresh air.
“Oh my,” he exhaled.
“Touch me,” I said with something between a request and command.
His fingertip went to my right breast and he circled my nipple. William’s hand was at my hips. I couldn’t stop the moan from my throat or my hips from rising from the bar. But my thighs stayed together. Ricks fingertip went from my breast to my collarbone, then my neck, my throat. When it came to my cheek I turned my head and took it into my mouth with more hunger than I had felt in years.
Eventually, Rick’s fingers found more of me welcoming him. Paul and William changed chairs a couple of times. The experience lasted for a long, long while; the DJ spun many songs; many people came close to watch, left, were replaced by others. I gave as good as I got, and what I got was very, very good.
Eventually there was nothing left to give. I lay there for a minute, and Rick asked if I wanted a drink. “A glass of champagne would be wonderful,” I told him. He went downstairs to the bar.
“Would you like to get together sometime?” asked Paul. I laughed while putting my hand along the side of his face. “That’s very sweet, but not something I’m going to think about at this moment.”
Rick came back with the champagne. I didn’t expect Perrier-Jouët of course, but the flavor of what I was given was so far off that I knocked it back quickly, hoping it wouldn’t take skin from the roof of my mouth.
“Rick, would you mind getting me a bottle of water?”
“Of course,” he said, and, while I started to get dressed, headed back downstairs to the large tub where the club kept bottled water on ice. When Rick got back, he unscrewed the cap and handed me the bottle. I emptied it in two long pulls but still had the awful taste of the champagne in my mouth. I went for some mints in my purse.
It was late, and between the sex and the hour, I was suddenly very tired. I sat down in one of the chairs at the table next to the bar and bent over to put on my shoes, which had apparently come off at some point. When I raised back up, I was very, very dizzy, like I was almost looking at myself from the outside. I looked up at Rick, and said, “I feel very strange.”
“Would you like me to take you home?” he asked.
“No, but maybe you could walk me to my car? I’ll be fine as soon as I get away from the music and into some fresh air.”
Rick took my arm and we wove through the crowd. I heard more than one couple thank Rick and me for our “sharing.” He was gracious. I just gave a weak smile. I heard Mike the doorman say goodnight.
And that was the last thing I remember, before I woke up, two days later.
• • • •
My mother and my grandmother were there in the room. My mother was crying over in the corner; my grandmother was saying something to me as she wiped a cool, damp cloth on my cheeks, across my lips. Sounds came into focus first, and they were layered with the scent of eucalyptus.
It was a smell I remembered so well from her house, her kitchen. Along with lavender, eucalyptus was part of her cure for everything. When I was little and got a strep throat, my grandmother would sit there just like that and dip a cloth in a small bowl and wring it out, and the eucalyptus scent would return fresh and strong.
“We are waiting for you, Jessica,” my grandmother murmured.
“Grandmama, why are you here?” I asked, thinking I was in my bed at home. I started to sit up but she put a hand on my chest. “Not yet,” she said.
Which coincided with a stunning flash of pain from my forehead and right leg.
“What… ”
“Shshshsshh,” said Grandmama. “You are fine, Jessica. Relax for a moment. You have been sleeping.”
Just then a man I did not recognize came into the room, along with a nurse dressed in white.
“Is she awake?” the man asked my grandmother.
“Not yet,” she said fiercely. “Leave her be.”
“Renée,” said my mother to my grandmother. “The officer is just trying to do his job.”
“Not yet!” said my grandmother.
“Check her out please,” the man said to the nurse in white, who came over and took my blood pressure, shined a light into my eyes. She turned to the man and nodded her head.
He walked over to the side of my bed that my grandmother was not sitting on.
“Jessica Renée Love?” he asked.
“Yes?” I replied.
“M
y name is Officer Larry Brown with the Seattle Police Department. You are under arrest on four counts of possession of a controlled substance, reckless endangerment, driving under the influence, speeding…”
The list of charges went on for some time. Claire, Lily, and Tony came into the room as soon as the officer had left. Sarah was at the police station waiting for the charges to be filed so she could write a check for bail from Tony’s account.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“You had an accident,” said Claire.
“Okay, but what was all that?” I waved to where the officer had stood.
“You had some drugs in your car,” said Tony.
“Drugs? I don’t do drugs. You know that.”
“You also had some drugs in your system,” Claire said. She was looking not just at me, but into me.
“But I don’t do drugs!” I said.
“You had large amounts of heroin in your system, along with cocaine, and a blood alcohol content that was far beyond the legal limit. Nearly fatal by itself. You had quantities of illegal drugs in your purse that seemed to be packaged for sale, along with packaging materials in the trunk of your Porsche,” said Tony.
“That’s insane!” I said. “I’ve never taken heroin and haven’t touched cocaine since college! Let alone package or sell it. Where’s my car? I want to see this!”
As I tried to sit up, the pain returned. I reached up to my head, but instead of skin, felt a bandage. My right leg was in a cast.
“What the hell?” I asked.
“Jessica, you almost died,” said Lily.
Apparently I hit several things, including one parked car, an abutment of the Alaskan Viaduct, and a bus shelter before leaving the road, breaking through a railing and landing on a barge. Ten feet in either direction and the car would have been in fifteen feet of saltwater and I would have drowned.
There were no witnesses, though a call came from a jogger who ran past probably not too long after but didn’t “want to be involved.” The exact time of the wreck was unknown.
“None of that is true,” I said. “I didn’t do those things. I don’t do those things.”
