The Flame: A Desire Exchange Novella (1001 Dark Nights)

by Christopher Rice

  “Sure, well, when you get home, maybe?” he asks. “You’ll be home around six, right?”

  “Around then. But wait—” Grateful to be off the hook if only for a few short hours, Cassidy reaches for her iPhone and opens her calendar. “Eight o’clock,” she says, when she sees the appointment. “The Preservation Council’s letting me set up a table at their luncheon but I have to get in there tonight so I’m not in the caterer’s way tomorrow.”

  “Sounds good. Where are you setting up?”

  The Roquelaure House. She bites back a quiet curse. Well, if that isn’t just the most—

  “I’m not sure yet. Clara has the info. Anyway, it should only take an hour or two.”

  “Sounds good,” Andrew says suddenly. “I’ll probably swim a few laps or something.”

  If she’s not careful, the thought of her husband’s muscular back slicing through their pool, powered by tan, sculpted arms, will have her as dizzy with desire as her visit to Bastian Drake’s shop.

  “Good. Glad someone’s using the pool,” she says. Huh? What is she—his mother?

  “Yeah. Bye, babe. Tonight…”

  “Yes. Tonight.”

  Unsure of what these final words even mean, she hangs up.

  The tissue paper blossoms she’s been forming with her hands look more like triffids than flowers. She feels like she just lied to her husband in a dozen different ways, none of them individually terrible. But in combination, they are enough to convince her she has to do something. They have to talk about what happened or they have to—

  “Clara!”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you bring me that candle?”

  A few seconds later, Clara appears, the candle in both hands. She’s grimacing. Cassidy has snapped at her twice now for no good reason—both times in front of a customer—and she’s preparing to apologize when Clara sets the candle down with a loud thunk.

  “Smells like pond water,” Clara groans, then she picks up the customer’s gift bag without being asked.

  So it’s the smell of the candle she hates.

  Cassidy takes a whiff.

  It’s all here, just as it was that afternoon: vetiver, baking bread, musk—and men, there’s just no other way to say it. Her men. And to Clara this all smells like pond water? One more suggestion that whatever happened inside of Bastian Drake’s shop was as fundamentally strange as it felt.

  Clara hovers. Cassidy feels the woman’s stare as she lifts the label on the side of the glass container.

  Light this flame at the scene of your greatest passion and your heart’s desire will be yours.

  “Remind me to take this with us when we go set up tonight,” Cassidy says.

  “Suit yourself, boss,” Clara says.

  Then the older woman is gone in a rustle of tissue paper and Cassidy is alone, staring down into the dark and inviting swirl of the candle’s wax.

  * * * *

  “Are you sure?” Clara asks for the second time.

  They’re alone inside The Roquelaure House. The tables and chairs for tomorrow’s luncheon were set up prior to their arrival. They fill the house’s vast double parlor, but they’re missing tablecloths and slipcovers, their exposed plastic and wood frames a stark contrast to the sparkling chandeliers and heavy, puddling drapes.

  “I’ll be fine,” Cassidy answers. “You can go, seriously. I just need a few more minutes and then I’ll lock up.”

  The display table for Cassidy’s Corner is tucked into one corner of the room, next to a giant étagère filled with the Roquelaure family’s pink and white china collection. The tablecloth she and Clara picked matches the china’s color pattern almost exactly. She hopes this will make up for how small the table is.

  Margot Burnham, the Preservation Council’s iron-fisted chairwoman, insisted Cassidy employ the most unobtrusive presentation possible. Hence the small table, the limited collection of sale items, and a tent-sign so tiny and modest it looks like it should be reminding people not to smoke. Should Clara wander from her post tomorrow, it’s likely the ladies of the council will stroll right past the spray of silver-plated mirrors, antique picture frames, and candles far smaller and less powerfully scented than the one from Bastian Drake, which is sitting on the floor next to one leg of the table, still inside the gold bag in which it arrived.

  Over the years, Cassidy has attended countless fundraisers and parties inside this perfectly restored landmark home. The two-story Greek revival on St. Charles Avenue has also been used by dozens of television shows and movies, most of them stuffed with unbearable clichés about the city; constantly circulating trays of mint juleps, Cajun accents thicker than any you’re likely to hear outside of the swamp, contemporary housekeepers dressed in the outfits of plantation slaves.

  “Is everything all right, Cassidy?”

  “It’s fine. I just wish she’d let us bring a bigger table. But I guess it blends into the room in the end. Right? I mean, I can see Margot’s point. She doesn’t want it to look like we’ve crammed the entire store into her luncheon.”

  “Sure. It looks great. I’m just not that crazy about leaving you here by yourself.”

  “Oh, that’s sweet, Clara. But really, I’m fine.”

  A streetcar passes, its low rumble echoing through the house’s large, empty rooms, most of them vast warrens of shadow beyond the halos cast by the chandeliers overhead.

  “Listen,” Clara begins. “I just need to say there’s a reason David and I spend Mardi Gras in Florida now. After a while, it gets so crazy.”

  “Clara, I’m not sure I understand…”

  “I’m sorry, it’s none of my business. But you’ve just been so in your head since we got back. And then all the flowers—I mean, I know you two went to all the parades and a bunch of parties. I thought maybe in all the wildness something might have, you know—happened.”

  “Oh, no! That’s sweet of you. But we’re fine. I promise.”

  Wow. Not winning any Oscars for that performance.

  It’s awkward at times, being the boss to a woman twice her age, a woman who worked as a substitute teacher at Cassidy’s high school. But never more awkward than it is right now, the two of them staring at each other expectantly, Clara gently chewing her bottom lip and absently rubbing the knuckles on her right hand back and forth across her neck.

  “So he’s meeting you here?” Clara whispers.

  “Andrew’s at home.”

  “No. Not Andrew…”

  “Then who? Wait—you think I’m meeting another man here?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Cassidy,” she cries. “You’ve just been so strange!”

  “Clara, I’m not cheating on my husband!”

  “Well, it’s such a beautiful house, Cassidy, and there are so many events here. I would hate for you to associate it with something you’d regret later.”

  She approaches Clara with her arms out. And in an instant, she’s turned her half-hug into a single, steering arm clamped around Clara’s upper back. She guides the woman toward the kitchen. “Clara, it is so sweet that you’re this concerned for me—and for Andrew, and our marriage. But we’re fine. Really. Everything’s fine. And the event tomorrow will be fine, too, if you just go home and get some rest.”

  And maybe some wine and half a Xanax too, if it’ll help you mind your own business.

  “Are you sure?”

  No. I’m not sure of anything right now except I have no plans to cheat on my husband. Unless we’re counting, you know, candles.

  “Yes. Of course.”

  At the back door, Clara gives her one last pleading look. “Text me when you get home. Just so I know you’re safe.”

  “Of course, sweetheart. Of course.”

  She shuts the door as gently as she can, but it still feels as if she’s slammed it hard enough to rattle every window in the house and seal herself inside for eternity.

  3

  ANDREW

  We’ll get through this, Andrew Burke thinks.
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  He soaps his hair frantically. The spray sends punishingly hot water sluicing down the hard ridges of his muscular back.

  A little pain is good, he thinks. A little pain will help him forget the frosty phone call with his wife. And it’s not like the water’s scalding him. It’s just hot enough to distract him from the terrifying prospect he might have destroyed his marriage.

  If we got through that mess with Joe Lambert’s secretary, we can get through this, I’m sure of it.

  After all, what could be worse for your marriage than a beautiful woman in your office who won’t take no for an answer? A woman who stops you in the parking lot and won’t let you get by without forcing her to move—which, oh, by the way, means forcing you to touch her; a woman who makes things at work uncomfortable to the point of excruciating, leaving you no choice but to tell your wife about the situation because you don’t want her finding out from someone else, and because you’re a good husband and a good husband doesn’t let a zone of secrecy grow around a beautiful young woman who can’t take no for an answer.

  All told, it was a six-month ordeal demanding constant uncomfortable conversations with Cassidy, his boss, and even a few lawyers when the woman threatened to make a false accusation against him. But at the end of the day, Andrew got through it without doing anything he might regret someday, all without having some chest-thumping meltdown over the fact that sexual harassment also happens to men and he was one of them.

  He also didn’t give in to temptation in the first place. It was easy to lose sight of that fact given how long the ordeal dragged on. It was also more than he could say for his old frat brothers, most of whom were in the process of breaking their own marriages.

  Andrew, on the other hand, was a good guy. Better yet, he was a good husband. Why should those titles be revoked just because of a few minutes of crazy at some party?

  Well, for starters, douchebag, you actually did give in to temptation this time. So what if the temptation involved your wife? It was still—

  —still what? He tries to answer himself. Forbidden? Hot? Inevitable?

  Thirty seconds.

  That’s how long he planned to spend in the shower. Just a quick rinse to get the product out of his hair, then a nice brisk swim to get the blood pumping. But he’s been soaping his head now like a parent trying to delouse their child. Which is stupid because he barely styled his hair at all that morning.

  When he’d first started working at Chaisson & Landry, he’d been an every-day-is-casual-Friday guy. Then Cassidy suggested to him that slacks, Oxfords, and a side part would probably earn him a little more respect from his colleagues, most of who are at least five years older than him. But every time she hands him a new tube of her favorite molding paste, she reminds him not to leave the stuff in when he goes to bed. Something about breakouts, she says. Letting the stuff smear across his face during a cross stroke probably isn’t the best for his skin either, he figures, so he makes it a habit to wash his hair whenever he’s about to hit the pool.

  Truth be told, Andrew couldn't care less about his skin, which wasn’t prone to acne even when he was a teenager.

  No, what matters most to him is that his wife took the time to find the brand that smells the best, that she makes it a point to leave her book club early so she can pick up a replacement for him when he’s running low. He doesn’t want her to stop doing either of these things because he knows the smallest indicators of love can be the most important, the most lasting, and he figures the way to guarantee this is by following her grooming instructions to a tee so she can see how much her little ritual means to him.

  Like now. For fifteen minutes. When she’s not even home.

  This is nothing, he thinks. The whole thing. Just a little Mardi Gras… He’s still trying to complete this thought when he catches his own reflection in the steam-splotched mirror beyond the shower door. He’s hard as a rock within seconds, a tendril of soapsuds dripping from the bobbing, glistening head of his cock.

  Dude! Getting wood over your own reflection? Seriously?

  But he stops laughing when he realizes what’s really got him boned. Lately, it’s become a trend, this whole not seeing himself when he looks in the mirror thing. Instead he sees the unconcealed lust that lights up Cassidy’s eyes, and then Shane’s, when they both catch an unexpected glimpse of his nearly nude body.

  His instinct is to flick the suds away with one hand. But he knows if he so much as grazes his dick with his pinky he’ll be instantly stroking himself to that hot but haunting memory from their trip to Bay St. Louis over Memorial Day weekend. A memory he’s done his best to suppress for a year now, until a few too many Kir Royales at The Roquelaure House brought it bubbling to the surface.

  A peaceful day at the Mississippi Coast, with the clapboard house bathed in the deep orange light of late afternoon and his family down at the beach (or so he thought). Just him, a nice long shower, and Ol’ Blue Eyes crooning out of the surround speakers in the front room. Andrew was so sure he’d had the run of the place he decided to dance through every room as he toweled himself off, badly singing along with That’s Life, before he barged in on Cassidy and Shane sipping coffee at the kitchen table while he polished his butt with the towel, his cock and balls swinging in the air in front of him.

  The whole thing was a regular crack-up, for sure. They teased him about it for weeks, even nicknamed him Mississippi Tarzan, a nod to his terrible, off-key Sinatra impression.

  But before the giggling and the friendly name-calling, there’d been a moment he didn’t quite have a name for. A moment when his wife and her best friend had looked up from their coffee cups and surveyed his heat-flushed, naked body in the exact same instant. The combination of desire in their stares caused a stirring in his groin so powerful and immediate that by the time he spun from the room, the towel he was holding over himself like an embarrassed little boy hid an erection as throbbing and relentless as the one he was sporting now.

  It wasn’t the first time they’d done it to him either.

  Freshman year at Tulane, the day he’d met them both. Officially met them both, after quietly stalking Cassidy for about a week. He just had to know more about the small blonde girl with the big, beautiful eyes, the one who listened quietly during their Intro to Philosophy discussion group before asking a single, precise question that would usually send the T.A. for a sputtering loop. One afternoon, he found Cassidy and some blond guy sitting together on the green, play wrestling and joking around with such casual intimacy he thought they might be boyfriend and girlfriend and he’d just come within inches of making an ass of himself.

  But he wasn’t sure, so he took a seat a few yards away and pretended to read Slaughterhouse Five while he studied them.

  After a while, he thought they might be brother and sister. Twins, even, given their tendency to move in synch with one another. Suddenly, the guy sprawled out, hands raised skyward so Cassidy could grab on to them both while she tried to kick her legs up into the air behind her. Their giggling attempt at flight ended when her delicate body thumped down onto his lanky one. Entwined like rag dolls, Cassidy and Shane laughed so hard they briefly drowned out the repetitive strumming of the amateur guitarist a few yards away.

  Then, as they righted themselves and brushed the grass off their clothes, Shane flicked both wrists before running his hands slowly through his soft, blond hair with the luxuriant tenderness of a woman showering in a shampoo commercial. That dude’s gay, even if she doesn’t know it yet. Even if he doesn’t know it, Andrew thought. I’m in!

  And then they both looked at him for the first time, the same look that would laser through him years later over Memorial Day weekend.

  Their half-smiles fading as desire consumed their amusement, their eyes widening with lust as they examined him shamelessly from head to toe. And in that moment, they radiated a kind of oneness that suspended everything he knew to be true about labels or gender.

  He had trouble putting a name to it,
which was a shame, because he knew if he could name it, he’d be able to dismiss it, and if he could dismiss it, everything would be simpler. But there was no forgetting the way it made him feel; rock hard in his briefs, so hard he wanted to reach down and adjust himself—he couldn’t; the back of his neck so hot suddenly he thought he might have moved into direct sunlight without realizing it—he hadn’t. And then there was that delicious, anticipatory pressure in his temples, like a head massage from a guardian angel, the same anticipatory pressure he feels whenever Cassidy whispers something naughty in his ear during a stolen moment at dinner with his colleagues.

  Sometimes he compares it to that scene in Ghostbusters when they all crossed the streams of their ray guns to defeat the evil spirit living atop that old New York apartment building. Only he was no monster, and the raw hunger their combined gaze filled him with was nothing like defeat. It made him feel powerless, for sure, and helpless before a desire he couldn’t name. But not defeated.

  Defeated is how he feels now, as he drip-dries in the cooling air outside the shower stall, willing his cock to go down.

  He’s not gay. There's no doubt about that. Sure, there’d been those late nights of sleepover experimentation with Danny Sullivan back in high school. But that was different. They’d been best friends since they were kids. And yes, parts of it had been fun, even hot. Mostly the parts where Danny’s racing heart and shivering body made it clear he’d always wanted to explore Andrew’s body more than he’d let on. In those moments, making Danny happy had made him happy, happy enough to get him hard. And keep him hard. And really, how hard was it to get a man hard anyway?

  He’d shared all of this with Cassidy during the full-disclosure period of their engagement. When she wasn’t shocked, he was shocked. He was even more shocked when she told him every guy she’d been serious with had eventually admitted to fooling around with another guy at some point in his life. But none of that mattered now. What mattered was that nothing about his late nights with Danny Sullivan had left Andrew with a burning desire for other men. In fact, he couldn’t remember a single moment when he’d laid eyes on a strange man and thought, Damn, I’d hit that. But just to be sure, he’s checked out some gay porn sites, studied a few hardcore photos to see if any of them trigger a part of him that’s blossomed over the past few years. Everything he sees there leaves him cold. For starters, there are no women at all, and that’s a big problem, and secondly, none of the guys are Shane. None of the rutting, passionless couples he studied have the combined charge of his wife and her best friend.