He meandered down the street, inexplicably hesitating to step foot back in his car. While the heat was far from incessant, he hadn’t walked more than a hundred yards before he felt exhaustion take hold of him. He ducked into a nearby Woolworth’s to cool off and try to clear his head. But even the muzak playing in the background played tricks on him, practically sending his heart into palpitations. He meandered up and down the aisles, dazed as a refugee, grabbing any item off the shelves that would fit into his arms. Boxes of candy, houseplants, stuffed animals, cutlery, all without rhyme or reason, but driven by an accord he couldn’t even afford to recognize anymore. His eyes were practically in tears as he made his way towards the counter register, where a bouffanted spinster in rhinestone glasses asked, “Sir, is everything alright, sir?”
“Yes, ma’am…. Hay fever. Hay fever, that’s all.”
“Would you like to stop at the pharmacy, sir?”
“No… I’ll be alright. I’ll be alright. What’s the total?”
“$8.33, sir.”
“Here’s ten. Keep the change.”
“Sir, I can’t accept—”
“Keep the change, goddammit!”
He snatched the plastic bag of his purchases from the woman’s shocked hands and stormed out of the store, marching silently back to the car, under the taunting missiles of “Faggot!” and “Freak!” directed at him from passing pickup trucks. He hopped in the driver’s seat, tossed his purchases onto the passenger side, and wept for the better part of twenty minutes.
It was almost one in the afternoon when Dez arrived back at the 66 Inn. His hands were shaking and his head felt like a balloon that had been filled not with helium, but with concrete. He didn’t even bother to look in the car mirror, knowing that the only reflection staring back at him would be a red-eyed, vagrant ghost, driven more by a tacit sense of fatalism than by anything remotely resembling common sense. Even the hearty guffawing of the good ol’ boy behind the counter, ricocheting across the parking lot and into his half-opened window, seemed to be part of a collective and finely tuned barb designed solely to rob him of whatever fortitude he had left to continue.
His brow furrowed as he hesitated in front of Room 23. He had no idea what or whom would be waiting for him. He had no idea why he even bothered to return in the first place. He tried to rehearse an apology in his head, in the off chance that Samantha might be waiting for him; but the words came too quick, too tangled to make any sense. Besides, he told himself, I’m just here to make certain I didn’t leave anything behind. She’s just a kid, anyways. A 21-year-old kid. He fumbled with his keys in the lock and opened the door. He didn’t even see the ashtray as it came sailing past his head, crashing against the door behind him in thick, dull shards.
“You fucker!” she screamed, her eyes possessed of a feral rage that snarled and bubbled within her. “You goddamned, no good piece of shit FUCKER. Who the fuck do you think you are??!? I hate you…. I fucking hate you…. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you…”
He seized her arms, her fists balled up and lunging at his shirt as he tried to calm her down. She raved and she ranted, her eyes blazing with tears and venom as they poured down the front of his shirt. Without warning, he seized her by the hair and pushed her back against the wall, forcing his mouth to hers, feeling the salt and rancor alive in his hungry mouth. She did not fight back; instead she evaporated, tracing her tongue just as eagerly as his, sharing a single breath between their lips that transformed all their bitterness, all their confusion, and all their rage into one torrid spring of desire.
Samantha wedged her body into his, and felt him seize up, his muscles growing tense and sensitive at her touch. They shared a secret lightning between them, one that was potent but awkward. Each touch sent shivers between them that seemed to merge perfectly, forming one ripple that devoured their aching bodies. With each kiss, they felt their resolve burn away, until both were helpless in the gaze of one another, as innocent and unjustifiable as any force of nature. He licked the sweat from her brow and ran his trembling fingertips across her smooth throat, her supple flesh quivering and alive from the sensation. Her body reacted in perfect rhythm with his as he thrust his hips forward, feeling her own motions grow fluid and corrosive. The tin-like jangle of her cheap silver bracelets seemed to react with each pounding thud of their racing hearts as they caressed every inch of one another, the tips of her fingers pensively tracing curves around his taut chest underneath his skirt as he lifted her on top of the dresser. She didn’t bother to put up a fight as he pried her legs apart and stripped her of her skin-tight jeans; she merely swooned and gasped, melting at his touch.
Dez caught sight of a large tear-shaped birthmark on the inside of her left thigh. He placed his finger to it, tracing its edges. It was one of Samantha’s most tender areas, and she thought she would die when he dropped to his knees and took it slightly between his teeth and gently nibbled on it. His fingers toyed inside her, his nostrils alive with the musk of her scent. He took her between his lips, savoring the taste curdling in his mouth as she gasped. He could take it no longer.
Samantha’s hands gripped the edges of the dresser as he entered her, feeling fully helpless with each jerk forward. She tilted her head back, but he held it up, needing to look deep in her eyes as he submerged all of himself inside her. The electricity that was coursing through their veins was volatile and corrosive, permeating every rhythm they made in tandem. He pressed his mouth against the track marks of her arm and kissed the reddened punctures until they seemed to fade… until both seemed to fade into the shadows cast by the cheap motel lamps.
“Fuck me,” Samantha panted as Dez jerked and writhed inside her, gently tugging on her hair until she gave him a playful slap on the cheek. She could feel the base of her spine bruising from his thrusts reverberating throughout the oak dresser, but she didn’t care; all that mattered was the fact that he was inside her, engulfing her, completing her. His hips crashed against hers with each urgent jolt forward. It had been over a year since he had so much as touched another woman, and the warmth and succor that enveloped him hit him like a punch to the back of the head. He felt it in the length of his limbs, a humming that seemed to emerge from another world altogether, transmitted like some obscure telepathy between them.
They shared one last strained kiss before finally erupting together. The pressure was too much for Samantha; she felt as if the sides of her head were about to cave in. She leaned her head back and stared, dazed and glass-eyed at the bedpost some thirty feet away. Dez knelt before her and kissed her smooth knees, resting his head against her still damp thighs. She smiled and asked for a cigarette.
CHAPTER TWELVE
St. Louis was home to a million ghosts, and they all seemed divided among themselves - old worlds and new; east and west; black and white; rich and poor. Conflict was as intrinsic to the very rhythm of the city as its physical landmarks. And if ghosts had any sway whatsoever, Charlie Higgins had spent the past three years trying to escape them.
To Charlie, it seemed like he had spent all of his life trying to escape them – Kansas, poverty, his parents the Army, drugs, cops, the courts, his ex-wife, his genes. And it was only in the streets of St. Louis, itself a sultry Jericho of jazz, juke joints, rib shacks and endless gateways, that Charlie was able to forget himself.
But ghosts have a curious way of extracting back payment and revenge. And there’s only so far negotiations can go until you’re forced to pay up. And when Charlie saw the bronze-colored Trans Am pull up in the early rays of dawn and saw the haggard face of Dez Cawley and an equally strange and haggard-looking young girl, he knew he was going to have to pay something. The question was when, and how much?
Charlie and Dez went back, even further than their sworn kinship forged in the flame and smoke of Khe Sanh village back in ‘68. They had known each other since high school, well over five years prior back in Lawrence, Kansas. Dez was the archetypal white hipster, high on dreams, drugs and the twin myt
hs of exuberance and ecstasy; while Charlie was a timid product of a bi-racial family, both obsessed and embarrassed of his mixed heritage and driven to escape, just as Dez was, far beyond the corn husks and banal sunrises of the Midwest. They would pass each other in the hallways of Lawrence High, studying one another curiously, their inner eyes registering one another as distant cousins of the same secret clan yet never once deigning to utter a single word between them. After graduation, Dez went off to the University of Kansas, where he managed to narrowly avoid expulsion until being drafted in the spring of ‘67 while Charlie served in his father’s auto body shop until he was called up to the frontlines only a few months after.
But if their relationship in Lawrence had been one of silent nonchalance, it was in the paddies and hills of Khe Sanh that a bloodstained and unbreakable bond was cast. It was there, amidst the horror of machine gun-fire, napalm and false illusion, that the men of 834th Division of the 7th Air Force—some as young as 18, some as old as 44—were sacrificed to the pillars of insecurity, remorse and hubris, only to be forged anew as ghosts themselves. Two of which included Dez Cawley and Charlie Higgins.
The two were soon inseparable comrades after that fateful vernal siege, which littered some 7,000 bodies of both sides in its wake. They learned to speak in a mutual language - the language of the Heartland infused with confusion. The two soon found themselves eating together. Taking leave together. Drinking together. Whoring together. And eventually, shooting up together.
When they were discharged in the spring of ‘69, they found themselves once again smack dab in the amber fields of Kansas. But it was a Kansas they no longer recognized. It was now marred by grief and mistrust. A reluctant Kansas, where games had to be played straight lest they realize that any sacrifices made were done solely for the sake of vanity and wounded pride. A stone-faced Kansas, whose charms soon turned transparent and mind-numbingly hostile.
In the face of poverty and the inattentive cloud of stagnation, the two were left with the only relief whose grace they could still find pure; the Janus-faced angel of heroin and speed. An angel whose face Charlie could still see hiding behind the tired eyes of Dez Cawley sheepishly trailing up his patio at 7 in the morning.
Jesus fuckin’ Christ, he thought to himself. If he thinks he’s gonna be staying here for any goddamn period of time, then he’s even dumber than I feel right about now.
“Dez? Is that really you? Well, come on in, man!” Charlie smiled, his face beaming into a broad grin. As he got up to the front step, the two embraced in the tender yet unabashedly vigorous way only two men who had grown up in the Midwest could.
“Thanks, man… you wouldn’t believe the difficulty we had trying to track you down. Would’ve called, but… it’s a long story. This is Samantha, by the way. Charlie, Samantha. Samantha, Charlie.”
“How ya doin’, dear?”
“Hi,” Samantha replied, almost bashfully.
Dez made his way to a tattered cloth sofa in a tiny living room and sat down blissfully. “We been on the road for a few days now, passing near by when I thought to myself, ‘Jesus, I haven’t seen Charlie in about three years now.’ Hate to barge in on you like this…”
“Come on, man… you know how tight we’ll always be. But I gotta be at work in a couple hours. I wish you might’ve considered barging on in during the afternoon. In the meantime, you two want some coffee? There’s a fresh pot on.”
“Like you wouldn’t believe.”
Charlie walked in the kitchen to fetch two cups. “Now, last I heard you was still out in Tulsa. So, what brings you two out here to St. Louis?”
“Some really fucked up shit,” Samantha blurted out inadvertently. The events of the past four days had finally caught up with her, culminating in a crawl from bar to bar, street corner to street corner, trying to find a lead for Dez’s “long lost friend.” She was delirious, and at times like this had no choice but release the heart of the matter in five concise and insightful words.
Dez punched her on the knee. “She’s just kidding, man. Truth is, I’ve been itching to get back on the road and—”
“Dez, brother,” Charlie interjected as he walked back into the living room with two cups in his hand. “Now, you just don’t show up to a man’s house at 7 in the morning looking like you haven’t slept in God knows how long… Especially without your wife… Unless there is something seriously fucked up going on.”
Dez let out a long sigh. He knew he couldn’t sugarcoat his way around this. “Alright, Charlie. There is some shit going on. But it’s gonna take a while to explain. Fact is, we had to leave Tulsa for a bit. Maybe for good, I don’t know.” Samantha frowned. For a second, she was about to say something until Dez squeezed her hand brusquely. “Point is, we both are in need of a friendly face right now.”
“You back on the needle?”
“What?!?”
“Roll up your sleeve. Lemme see if you’re back on the needle.” Dez did so defiantly, while Charlie examined him with all the impassiveness of a surgeon. “OK, I believe you. I wanna be all ears for you, man. I really do. But I gotta be at work in less than an hour,” Dez and Samantha got up to shake hands. “Why don’t you come by around five? We can all relax, have a few drinks… no need to be pressed for time.”
“OK, man. We’ll do that. I still love you, Charlie. Even though you were the one who was always telling me to get divorced,” Dez said as they stood at the front door.
“What’s that, now?”
“Divorced. You were always telling me to get divorced. And it finally happened. ‘Cept, it was the other way around.”
Charlie looked at Samantha and smiled. “Well, you know what they say. After every raging bitch, there’s always a rainbow,” he chuckled.
*****
It wasn’t until 7 that evening when Dez and Samantha returned to Charlie’s. True to form for both of them, they had spent the vast majority of the afternoon getting lost in the bustle and congestion of downtown St. Louis—never a hard task for two out-of-towners running out of both time and resources. Dez had a little less than $150 left; enough to hold them both out for a couple of weeks. Anything else was up to the hands of fate.
Dez hadn’t realized until he walked back into Charlie’s home on the north side how aged he seemed in just three short years. Charlie had always been a fairly—no, extremely—handsome man, whose multiracial background lent an exotic hue to his squat yet muscular frame. These days, his once healthy shock of hair had thinned considerably; and while his face still remained as fierce and defiant as ever, it seemed softened by weariness, bloodshot eyes and far too many hangovers. A fashionable moustache covered his broad mouth; but not enough to deflect from the bitter scowl of regret.
Dez greeted him with a bottle of Jim Beam; unaware that Charlie had purchased the same. They both chuckled warmly over the coincidence.
“Still, you look like you’re doing… well, maybe it isn’t the Ritz, but at least well enough for yourself,” Dez said as he poured three tumblers full of whiskey, making sure to clink glasses.
“Times are tough,” replied Charlie, gulping his drink in one fell swoop. “Times are tough all over, man. Would you believe I’m working in an elementary school cafeteria? How do you like that?” he chuckled to himself.
“Naw… Well, I mean you always did like to cook…”
“Two years of service and this is what I got to look forward to? Live and learn, I guess. So what about you? What’s going down on your end? What sort of trouble you runnin’ into?”
Dez gave him a slightly abridged version. As close as they were, he couldn’t bear to tell Charlie that the woman sitting across from him—girlfriend? he wondered—was actually his hostage. Or at least until two days ago she was his hostage. Maybe she still is, he thought to himself. But hostage or not, there’s still two dead bodies I’ve gotta answer for back in Oklahoma. Things were complicated and all he needed was a place to crash for a little bit of time. Charlie sucked in air.
> “Man, I love ya but I ain’t got no spare bed.”
“We can take the couch. Just long enough so I can find some work, move into a cheap room somewhere and save up. Hit the road somewhere…”
“Work? You ain’t gonna find no work in this town. I was on unemployment for damn near two years before I took this job slingin’ mashed potatoes for a bunch of snot-nosed punks.”
“Then I’ll take a job as a janitor. Hell, I’ll pick fruit or wheat or something…”
“Afraid it’s not that easy.”
“Didn’t expect it to be.”
“Don’t think about sellin’ no dope, neither. Out here, that shit’s already backed up by some serious muscle that don’t take kindly to strangers infringing on their territory.”
“Man, I’m outta that line. After what I just laid down, you think I’m gonna fuck around in a town I don’t even know for the life of me? Those days are over…”
“Sobriety has killed stronger men than you, Dez.”
“Look, all we need is a place to sleep for a few days. Maybe a week or two tops.”
“It ain’t the time I’m worried about, Dez. It’s the heat. You sure got a knack for bringing around trouble even when you don’t mean to.” Charlie turned to Samantha with an air of concern. “And I’m sure this charming young lady doesn’t even know the half of it…”
“I’d like to think I’m charming enough to look after myself,” pouted Samantha.
“Look, if it’s really that much hassle to put us up for a few days we can clear right out, Charlie. Fact is I want to see a sympathetic face. After all we been through… Told you about Leah before, didn’t I?”
“Your kid? Yeah, man… that’s some rough business…” Charlie knew it was a desperate ploy from a desperate man. Bringing up your terminally ill child. And Charlie knew even before Dez mentioned his daughter, that as the night wore on, softened by the edges of bourbon and memories, that he would find any spare modicum of reservation about putting the two up for an extended period of time buckle under. They were, after all, silent brothers. “Feel like talking about it?”
ROMANCE: THREESOME : Billionaire Brothers' Party (MFM Menage Romance) (New Adult Contemporary Threesome Short Stories) Page 103
