Margot erased the last few paragraphs. She considered what it might be like to be a woman named Atlanta Jane and then she began again.
Atlanta Jane slid gracefully across the room. Trevor couldn’t keep his eyes off her beautiful, full breasts. As she got closer, his hands followed his eyes. He touched everywhere, running his hands down her back and over the muscled humps of her buttocks.
Muscled humps? Yeah, why not, she thought as the gray world slid away, replaced by whatever color she chose to add to her story.
With his hands on her butt, ass,rump, butt, Trevor pulled Atlanta Jane into the warmth of his body. He rolled her onto the bed and slipped the strap of her thin, silky camisole over her shoulder, then down and off her body. He started kissing those upturned nipples while she stroked his shoulders and urged him lower.
The phone rang. Margot was lost in her creation but her hand, after so many years on the job, automatically flipped the phone up to her face.
“Margot Hillsboro,” Margot said instead of hello.
“Margot? Aimee. You are not going to believe who I just saw licking Trevor’s face in a bar downtown!”
9. The Last Good Meeting
“LIKE RELIEF FROM PAIN, sensation was sweeping across his body and into mine.”
At the first sentence, Brooke looked up from her magazine. Lux’s hands shook a little as she read.
“The gym doors, you could hear them opening but it was too late to care. With Carlos moaning and hitting the wall with his fist I just went crazy with him, under him, until it was over. He hugged me and kissed my neck, which was a soft thing to do and not like him at all. And as I started to pull down my skirt, Mr. Andrews, who taught social studies, was standing over me and Carlos, and he said to me something like he wouldn’t tell on us if he could take a ride too. Which was such a stupid thing to say, you just couldn’t believe how stupid it was. Mr. Andrews was an idiot because we weren’t children. As soon as he said something like that to us he sure as fuck couldn’t report us to no one. He’d say he’d seen us and we’d say what he said to us. I mean, what we were doing was against the rules but what he said was worse. I told him I wouldn’t fuck his ugly ass if it came with a full guarantee of graduation for me and all my friends. Couple of weeks later Carlos and his friends, they jumped him and beat the shit out of him. Off campus, of course. And then he quit teaching. The end.”
Lux slammed her notebook shut and hugged it to her chest.
“It’s stupid, right?” she asked.
“It’s not,” Margot said quickly.
“It’s not stupid at all. I liked the part where Carlos beat him up,” said Brooke. “It’s like chivalry is not dead.”
“How do you mean?” asked Lux.
“Carlos defended your honor.”
“Ah, no,” Lux said with an undertone of you’re an idiot. “Carlos likes to beat up people who won’t report him to the police.”
Lux was surprised to hear the laughter that greeted the simply stated truth about her crazy ex-beau, Carlos. Being with Carlos had been a real drag, and they were a bunch of rich, well-protected, psycho-bitches if they thought something like beating people up was funny. Still, Lux had a need for these women so she tried to be cool.
“Right. So, what’s so funny?” she asked.
“It wasn’t funny. Not at all. It’s horrible. But what you said was surprising, so we laughed,” Brooke said.
Margot said nothing as she returned her carefully typed index cards to the zippered portion of her handbag. The western erotica of Atlanta Jane seemed stupid and small compared to the life that Lux had lived. And, even though she had instructed the computer to change the name of Atlanta’s sexy, gray haired playmate from “Trevor” to “Peter,” dressed him in buckskins, gave him a monstrously large phallus and a tattoo of a wolf, it was still another fantasy about Trevor. No one would know, but Margot could not read her erotic story about Trevor out loud to the woman who sucked on the real thing.
“How can you be sure it was Trevor?” she’d cross examined Aimee last night on the telephone.
“It looked like Trevor.”
“It may have looked like him, but are you one hundred percent sure it was him?”
“Geez, you’re tough,” Aimee laughed.
“And the girl?”
“The one licking his face?”
“Allegedly licking his face. You say it was Lux, but all you really recognized was her skirt and stockings.”
“And shoes.”
“Ok, and shoes.”
“Blue shoes and purple stockings.”
“It could be a trend. You were in the Village, after all.”
“It was Lux and Trevor. I just know it.”
“But there’s no proof.”
“Gee, Margot, that old man-young bimbo thing really rubs you the wrong way.”
“Why do they go for young women?” Margot had asked Aimee the question but before Aimee could answer, Margot went on about the suppleness of her own fifty year old ass and the firmness of her never-suckled breasts. There was a little hitch of plastic surgery here and there, Margot admitted, but that made the whole package even better.
“And on top of it, I am a great lay!” Margot had roared to Aimee. “And after the sex I make a mean conversation! And I can pay half the cost of any place you’d like to go!”
All this time, Margot thought she was inches from Trevor’s bed, when in fact that slot was already filled.
“I don’t know what you’re so mad about,” Aimee had laughed. “Didn’t he have a wife or something?”
“No, no they’re divorced, two kids, five years ago. Not pretty, but done,” Margot informed Aimee.
“What should we do about it?”
“What do you mean?”
“About Lux and Trevor.”
“Well…nothing. I mean, well, what can we do about it?”
The best revenge scenario Margot could conjure from her own imagination was pulling Trevor aside and having a heartfelt conversation about the dangers of sexual harassment, real or perceived, that might follow a failed office romance. Don’t shit where you eat, dance with the girls who carry the coffee, and so forth. She composed a quick email to Trevor while on the phone with Aimee.
“Should I send it?” she asked Aimee.
“You owe it to him as his friend.”
Aimee sounded so sure that invasive intervention was a good idea, but as soon as Margot hung up the phone the email, which read have lunch with me to discuss ramifications of social interactions with subordinates, suddenly sounded like sour grapes from a neglected vine. Margot wished she could get it back. Still, such an email was sure to get a rise out of him. And Margot wanted to have lunch with Trevor again, even if the meal started out with an apology.
“Look, Trev, I have no proof it was Lux. I have no proof that it was even you,” she planned to begin the conversation, “but a man in your position has to protect himself from these crazy girls. And what better protection could you possible have than a skilled, mature, strong, naked attorney such as myself?”
He would laugh. She would laugh too and the ice that had formed over the top of their relationship would break. Trevor would never choose a girl like Lux over her. Although this Lux, the Lux standing in front of Margot right now, trembling a little as she read a handwritten story, looked kind of beautiful if you could see past the overlay of her poor choices. She was certainly interesting, and aggressive, and maybe even smart.
“So, um, what’d you think of my, like, story,” Lux asked.
“It wasn’t like a story,” Brooke said. “It was a story. A real story.”
“Really?”
“It was a really good start,” Margot told Lux.
“Really?” Lux beamed with pleasure. Her face positively glowed with the warm blood that was rushing to her cheeks.
“Yeah,” Margot said looking at the manuscript in Lux’s hands. It was torn, scribbled over and punctuation was an optional condiment sprinkled in
here and there. Still, an interesting story.
“Who’s this Carlos?” Brooke asked.
“Old boyfriend.”
“Trevor know about him?” Aimee asked casually.
Lux giggled, then turned worried. Margot’s heart sank at Lux’s reaction. It wasn’t Aimee’s crazy imagination or bad eyesight or any of the other reasonable excuses she had told herself. The girl in Lux’s stockings and shoes was Lux. Trevor had found someone else.
“How do you know about Trevor? We’re really, you know, discreet and shit.”
“Saw you at Bar Six on Grove Street Thursday night.”
“Oh.”
“You didn’t look particularly discreet with your lips wrapped around his face,” Aimee pointed out.
“Well, I mean, discreet in like the office. I mean, he’s got all these friggin’ rules of how to behave to each other. No eye contact in the hall. No personal email messages, except in code. I’m a like, sex spy. It’s kind of fun, though, you know.”
“Lux, he’s gotta be thirty years older than you,” Aimee interrupted.
“No way. Just twenty. I’m twenty-three, he’s like, forty-three. He said, I think forty-five or something.”
“He’s got an adult son who’s getting married next month. Trevor’s youngest kid is at least twenty-five.”
“Oh. So? Ok, duh, so he’s older than me. So what?”
“A lot older,” Aimee insisted. “Margot, how old is Trevor.”
“Fifty-four in August,” Margot said quietly.
“Wow. He looks good,” said Brooke, wishing it would stop being the Tuesday Gossipy Stupid Club so she could read the next installment of her latest creative obsession entitled Enrique Rings the Back Door.
“So listen, is it my turn to read?” Brooke asked.
“Go ahead,” Margot said. “I don’t have anything.”
Brooke pulled her manuscript out from under her art kit and started to get all tingly at the thought of Enrique and the carnal delights his medium-sized penis was about to deliver to his favorite postal customer.
“If he’s fifty-four when you’re twenty-three,” Aimee couldn’t help showing off her math skills, “that means when you’re forty-three, he’ll be seventy-four. And wrinkled and old, old, old.”
“Yeah. So?” Lux said.
“I’m just saying, he’s too old for you,” Aimee said. She had helpful, concerned woman painted all over her face and “nice” dripped off her words.
What the hell does she care who I bop, Lux wondered. In the eleventh grade, Lux got in a fistfight with her best friend, Jonella, over the attentions of that same Carlos who one year later would become Jonella’s baby’s daddy. She’d broken Jonella’s nose without denting their friendship, and since then Lux moved bravely through the world without worrying about some hurt feelings between girlfriends. Busted feelings and noses could heal. It’s best to say what you think.
“Whassup Aimee? You want to fuck Trevor?” Lux demanded.
This is much better than Enrique, thought Brooke as she choked on a laugh. Brooke loved that Aimee positively recoiled from Lux’s attack, looking both amazed and insulted.
“NO! I’m just saying that there’s a bigger price you pay for hooking up with an old man. I mean, the money and the lifestyle may seem great to a girl like you; may seem worth closing your eyes to the wrinkles and the softness, but in the end you gotta be careful not to get tied down to an old man lover.”
A girl like me, thought Lux. Of all Aimee said, that was the one phrase that stuck hard and drew blood. The rest was bullshit.
“Trevor is a great lay,” Lux said.
“Why do I find that hard to believe,” Aimee replied.
“Umm, because you’re dried up and ugly maybe? I heard your stories, girl. Sexy stories about your feet? Why you ain’t got no man in your story? I see this all the time, you know. Girl get pregnant; girl get dumped. You’re not so far from my neighborhood,” Lux told her.
The words shot out, causing the muscles in Aimee’s neck to bunch into painful knots.
“The big difference between me and you, Lux, is I won’t do it for money.”
When Lux brought her hand back, Aimee’s pregnancy, in equal measure with the distance across the conference room table, stopped her from slapping Aimee hard across the face. Instead Lux lunged across the table, throwing her body down on top of it and traveling far enough across the table’s surface to reach up and grab a hunk of Aimee’s curly hair. Then she pulled.
“Ah! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” Aimee wailed.
In her twenty-three years of life, Lux often had motive, opportunity, and need to sell herself. It was a matter of deep personal pride that she had only taken money once and for something that, at the time, had seemed like a very good reason. (Prom dress.) To say the experience left her feeling empty could not describe the great void that had howled through her sixteen-year-old body. She’d never done it again.
Here was this Aimee girl in her clean, small world accusing Lux of sleeping with Trevor for money. Lux knew she was taking something from him but it wasn’t cash, never cash.
Aimee did not know what kind of line she had crossed, but clearly she had sent a barb too close to an ugly welt that had not healed on Lux. No one called Lux a whore because she had made a great effort and sacrifice not to allow herself to become such.
Aimee’s curls wrapped tight around Lux’s thin fingers. Lux had intended to give a yank and let go. It was to be a warning shot, not a full engagement, but she hadn’t counted on the texture of those corkscrew black curls. Even when she let go the angry fist, Aimee’s hair stayed locked around Lux’s fingers. Lux started to shake her hand trying to free herself from Aimee’s curls. The more she shook, the more Aimee screamed.
“Ok, ok,” Margot said and tried to sound soothing. She jumped up and grabbed Lux and tried to hold her still. She didn’t realize how small Lux really was across the back until she wrapped her arms around her upper body. Margot could feel Lux’s heart pounding underneath well-defined ribs more like a caged tiger than a trapped bird. Margot tried to keep her quiet while Brooke jumped in and did her best to quickly unravel Aimee’s heavy curls. The last bit of hair was still caught on the cheap silver ring Lux wore on her right hand.
“Ok, ok, almost there,” Brooke said as she unwound the hair from the ring. Lux was shaking with rage.
“You can let go of me now,” Lux told Margot. Even though she knew Margot had yet to do anything hateful to her, she could not stop herself from spitting the words. She wanted to say sorry when Margot jumped back, embarrassed to have held onto Lux’s body for a little longer than necessary. But while she was thinking of the words to form that apology, Brooke twisted the last bit of hair free. Lux bolted for the door.
“Bitch,” Lux said as she grabbed her notebook off the table and swung open the door. “Stupid, stupid bitch!”
With a bang, Lux was gone. Aimee was furious.
“Did you see what she did to me?” Aimee asked.
Margot grabbed for a tissue although Aimee was not crying.
“Psycho! Idiot! Fucking crazy girl! She pulled my hair! Do I have a bald spot, Brooke?”
“No, no,” Brooke said calmly. “I think the shock of it was the worst part.”
“And I don’t think she intended to pull that hard,” Margot said.
“Why? Why would she do that to me?”
“Well, honey, you shouldn’t have called her that,” Brooke said.
“Yes, I think you went too far,” Margot clucked an agreement.
“WHAT? Called her what? What did I call her?”
“A prostitute.”
“Never!”
“You accused her of selling it,” Margot agreed.
“I did not!”
“You did.”
“So what if I did? Clearly it hit a soft spot! Whore. Fucking-psycho-slut-tramp.”
Among her duties as supervisor of the Word Processing Department at the law firm of War
wick & Warwick, LLP, Brooke was responsible for making sure the correct spacing followed every period on every piece of paper produced by the firm during the hours of her shift. She did this for spending money and to ensure she did not drift too far away from the real world. Sometimes on the weekends she put on a very short rubber skirt with very high shiny heels and went out to play psycho-sluttramp in the city. She had never played prostitute.
“Well,” Brooke said, “I’m gonna guess that ‘whore’ is a kind of verbal line in the sand of Lux that one does not cross and still keep one’s hairdo intact.”
“She attacked me.”
“She pulled your hair,” Brooke said.
“I want her fired.”
“And when the managing partner asks ‘What were you ladies doing in the conference room,’ what are you going to answer?” Margot asked. “Oh gosh right, we were reading dirty stories in the conference room during our lunch hour. It gets a little messy.”
In the silence that followed, Aimee thought, it must be terrible to live in fear of the suggestion that one might become a whore.
“I used to be nicer,” Aimee said.
“You’re still nice,” Brooke tried to comfort her.
“I used to be kind and flexible and generous. What’s happened to me?” Aimee asked, hoping her friends would help her make up an excuse for her bad behavior. She would accept any reason except the truth. Her man had dumped her while she was pregnant. The pain had turned her brittle and cruel. Her friends offered no sweet lies to soften the moment. In fact, they all turned away from her, and each woman focused on her own thoughts.
“You know,” Brooke said, even though she knew it would make Aimee mad, “if Lux could turn that rage into words instead of gestures, she could transform into something amazing.”
Having said that, Brooke and Margot spent the little bit that was left of their lunch time consoling Aimee and agreeing with her that Lux was crazy and what she did was way out of bounds, totally wrong, and unacceptable.
“Thanks,” Aimee said. “I’m sorry. I never should have let her into the group.”
She assumed they were on her side, but the room was silent as Brooke and Margot failed to heartily agree with Aimee’s assessment of the situation.
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