Into the Flames

by Multi-Author

  “No, I mean leave D.C. Go and find your next project.” She’d pulled out of his embrace, gotten dressed, and stood by the door, her eyes stony but resolved. “You’re miserable here, Trey. It’s time for you to move on.”

  “But…where?” He’d flopped into a chair, head in his hands, berating himself for the millionth time for not being the man she deserved. She’d taken his hand, put a quarter in it, kissed his forehead, and walked out. He’d stared at that coin for almost an hour, contemplating everything about what it meant, how he shouldn’t trust his future to random chance, how he should go after Laura, marry her, have children, normalize himself.

  Instead, he’d said out loud: “Heads, Detroit. Tails, Dallas.” The profile of George Washington had shone up at him from the hardwood floors, giving him his answer. After about an hour spent online seeking the expert advice he required, he contacted Jane Terrance about the Corktown fire station, packed a bag, put on a suit and caught a plane to Detroit. During the flight he’d pulled in some favors, doing a bit of digging about Ms. Terrance, intrigued by the look of her on her website.

  A small form covered in mud and cow shit flung itself at his leg, half hugging, half pulling him to the top of a hill. “Daddy! She’s down there! See? See her?” The boy was leaping up and down, his face all but camouflaged by the muck. George picked him up and tossed him onto his shoulders, following the expert down the hill to where a cow lay in the middle of giving birth.

  “Señor, I’m afraid this is not good,” Miguel said, dropping down to the cow’s side. “Give me the rope.”

  George pulled the length of rope from his belt loop and handed it over. He put the boy down. The kid scurried over to where Miguel squatted, tying the rope around the spindly legs stuck out from the obviously distressed and fading-fast cow’s rear area. “You want to help, Niño?” Miguel glanced up to confirm this was all right. George nodded, grinning when his son grabbed hold of the rope with both hands, planted his boots in the puddle of god-knows-what, and kept his eyes fixed on Miguel, waiting for the command to pull.

  His heart swelled and pounded in the way it always did when watching his son do just about anything, up to and including all the trouble he managed to find. George managed him with a firm hand of course but the boy had latched onto him early, probably thanks to all the hours George spent holding him in the hospital the week he had to stay, due to his slightly early entry into the world.

  He had stared into the tiny face, cried some, smiled a lot, and watched Harriet for hours as she held their son to her breast. His birth—an emergency C-section in the tiny, rural hospital near the farm in central Kentucky—had just about done George in. His freak-out had been legit, but he let Harriet think she’d had to remain calm to keep him steady. It had been a good compromise. Pretty much like everything in their relationship so far.

  As they loaded the tiny calf and its reviving mother into the truck one of the other farm hands had driven down earlier, George pondered just how the boy’s mother would react to his current horrible state. Since resuming her medication regimen, at his insistence, a few years prior, Harriet had become a bit of a neat freak. She was borderline compulsive about it, but it worked for them. When his son clambered into the truck bed alongside the animals and Miguel, George shrugged and got into the cab, keeping his gaze on the rearview mirror, his penchant for imaging the absolute worst never far from his surface.

  They bounced their way across the acres between the forests and the main barns behind the huge, renovated farmhouse he’d very nearly lost Harriet over. George smiled and let his arm dangle out the window, noting the early fall crispness in the air with a sudden pang of sadness. Once they’d both recovered from the fire—although her palm would always be scarred from the burns she’d sustained—he’d rounded up Lucy and Dante, and marched Harriet Jane Terrance straight to the courthouse, marrying her quick before she changed her mind.

  They’d stuck around long enough for her to appear in court—rushed along thanks to a few favors he’d called in with city officials—and to assure themselves that all three of her attackers got jail terms and plenty of shitty PR for that damn brokerage. Their arguments as newlyweds had been about the topic of her cashing in, of becoming a poster child for ‘no means no,’ of having to tell the story again and again. He’d been vehemently opposed to it. Justice had been served. There was no need to say anything more.

  Her lawyer, a woman George came to respect and despise all at once, had insisted that she owed it to girls and women to be the face of female empowerment. Women were allowed to be sexually active, to have more than one partner and not risk being called a slut or taken advantage of, much less brutally attacked, gang raped, and beaten up. Didn’t George agree with that?

  The therapist, already famous and with a terrible rape story of her own, had finally come down on his side. But only after a particularly epic fight that had left him breathless with rage, holding the ring Harriet had flung at him on her way off his boat and, according to her, straight to divorce court. He’d chased after her this time, not willing to let it drop or let her go. He’d fought too hard to get to this place with a woman he knew he had to have in his life. And once he made a decision, George never gave up on it.

  He’d picked her up, flung her over his shoulder, dumped her in the front seat of the SUV, and had driven her straight to Jackie’s office. Once there, they’d suffered an hour in utter silence, sitting on opposite sides of the classy waiting room. When Jackie had managed to shuffle her schedule to fit them in, he’d been subjected to some of the most intensive talk therapy he’d ever had—which was saying a lot for a guy with his psychiatric history.

  In the end, a week after the trial and a week before they were to move to Kentucky to procure and open the newest FireBrew location, she’d agreed on one condition—that she get to meet the First Lady and tell her the story. He’d relented, realizing that a life with Harriet Jane Terrance Lattimer would be one of near-constant compromise. And he wanted it—all of it. He required it—required her—if he were going to survive. She was as crucial to his functioning as he was to hers. Admitting that fact had come at the tag end of the fifth session with Jackie in as many days.

  The second compromise had been more drastic and fended off yet another near miss with a divorce attorney. He smiled into the rearview mirror when his boy squealed in delight at something. The memory of that moment when she’d told him she wanted a baby, made him shudder even now. As the truck pulled up to one of the smaller barns, he jumped out, snagged his son out of the way, and set him on the ground. A giant, brown lab came bounding around the corner, having obviously just spent quality time in the fishpond, and tackled the little boy, licking his face with such urgency it made everyone laugh.

  George shaded his eyes and looked toward the house. Rows of sheets flapped on the clothesline. The place was awash with early fall foliage. The huge wraparound porch with its cushy furniture and multiple ceiling fans was empty. She must still be in bed. He grinned at the thought of her—his Harriet—all cuddled up and snoozing, safe, sound, and he assumed, happy.

  “Hey, kid, let’s go wake mommy up, whaddaya say?”

  “Mommy! Mommy! I have to tell her I made the baby cow come out!” The boy took off like a shot toward the house, his tongue-lolling dog loping after him. George chuckled and followed them.

  Later, after a thoroughly dirty wake-up, he sat sipping coffee and watching Harriet put breakfast on the table. He grabbed her arm as she passed by him, pretending to be all put out over the kid and dog mess on her pristine, white-sheeted bed. “C’mere,” he muttered into her side, pulling her down to his lap and covering her delicious lips with his. He slid a hand up her bare leg. She smacked him away and turned to straddle and glare at him. “Mmm, that works too,” he whispered, sensing his body lurch into its usual aroused overdrive whenever she got too near him.

  “You’re a pig,” she whispered, kissing his neck. “I hate you.” She sighed as
he gripped her ass and ground his denim-covered erection against her sweet warmth.

  “Really? You weren’t hatin’ on me last night, Missus Lattimer.”

  She grinned into his lips. Just as he was about slip a hand up her loose T-shirt, they were interrupted by a loud “Mommy! We’re hungry!” She sighed. He gave her boob a squeeze before she got up and swung the boy into her arms, making him squeal in delight.

  “Now sit, mister,” she told the now somewhat cleaner almost five-year-old.

  “Prayers,” George said. They bowed their heads and thanked the universe for their bounty, then tucked into the food.

  “Daddy,” the boy said, his mouth half-full of bacon.

  “Chew and swallow, please,” Harriet said mildly. He did and then looked at his beloved, revered, worshiped, male parental unit again.

  “Daddy, can I sleep in the barn tonight? With Tessie and her baby cow?”

  “Um…”

  Harriet glared at him and mouthed the word ‘no’ across the table.

  “No, son. But you can hang out with them after you eat and before you start your chores.”

  When he’d finished, the boy jumped into his mother’s lap and put his small hands on her cheeks. “Mama, that baby cow came right out Tessie’s bottom! It was gross, but I helped pull it out.”

  She kissed his forehead and nose. “I know, honey. But it’s not really her bottom.”

  He glanced down the table at George, who sipped his coffee, his dark eyes full of amusement. “Oh, Daddy told me,” he said, scooting back a little and touching the distinct bump under her FireBrew labeled T-shirt. “So my baby brother won’t…do that, right?”

  “No, sweetie,” she said, trying not to laugh. “But you won’t have to watch no matter where the baby comes out.”

  “Phew,” the boy said, clambering down and heading for his father. “That’s a relief.”

  She shooed them out of the house. He used the riding lawn mower, his son in his lap talking a mile a minute. They spent about an hour checking on the cows, watching the newborn calf take milk from his mother, then lie down, its huge, brown eyes watery. Once Miguel, the retired veterinarian George had hired to handle the livestock, reassured him the baby cow wasn’t crying, the kid started fading. He wasn’t normally an early riser, but George had roused him for the cattle rescue mission after having promised he’d do so.

  He watched while Miguel saddled up his son’s pony and put the boy on it, walking him around the paddock for a few turns, talking softly in half English, half Spanish. As George sat on a hay bale, he swore he’d never in his entire life felt more complete.

  The great baby compromise had clinched it, he figured. He had always wanted to have a farm with cows, horses, a few chickens, a garden for fresh vegetables, a pond for fishing, dogs, cats—the whole ten yards. Ever since he was little, after a single visit to a working farm on a trip with his Bronx elementary school, it had been his dream. He’d hoped to someday convince Eve to retire somewhere upstate, maybe near Ithaca. But he doubted that would ever have flown with a dyed-in-the-wool city girl like her.

  After they’d purchased and renovated the Louisville FireBrew, he’d put Harriet in charge of the foundation and she’d been amazing. Reorganizing it and its parameters for recipients of assistance to include more families, she’d set up one of the coolest viral fund-raising sensations in years. Celebrities, pro athletes, carefully selected lawmakers all got in on the Pie Face Challenge, taking videos of themselves smacking their loved ones in the face with pie pans filled with whipped cream. Once a few celebrity chefs got in on it, thanks to Harriet’s connections in Vegas, real pies were used and the one-up became how elaborate the pie to the face was along with the caliber of the celebrity.

  Every video posted with their official ‘FireBrew: Pie Face Challenge’ logo superimposed across the bottom meant a minimum thousand dollar donation to the foundation. When the entire U.S. Women’s Soccer team smacked their male counterparts with a combination of strawberry, blueberry and whipped cream pies right before the world cup began, the red-white-and-blue messiness netted the foundation almost half a million bucks.

  She’d done it all, from instigation to implementation. And when the president got it in the puss with a pie from George himself at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner while Harriet and the First Lady laughed, it was deemed the most visible and successful, virally generated fund raising campaign ever. That night at the hotel in D.C., he’d dropped down to her side, exhausted and more sexually sated than he’d been in, oh, twenty-four hours, she’d cradled him to her, run her fingers through his sweaty hair and said she wanted a baby.

  He’d drifted to sleep; muttering something he didn’t realize was agreement until the next morning. When she’d sat across from him, her bare feet tucked up, her wild brown hair she’d stopped lightening in a tangle around her flushed face and told him she’d not had her birth control shot the month before, he’d lost his shit.

  “No kids,” he’d said, slamming his clothes into the suitcase and heading for the door without her. “I will not allow myself to be hurt by that again, Harriet, I can’t. You know that better than anyone.” His chest had been so constricted it made him have to stop in the lobby men’s room and throw up. There would be no more kids for him, he declared to himself in the mirror. No way. No how. That was non-negotiable. It was the law of his land.

  He’d flown back to Louisville, gone to their temporary rental condo, and waited for her to arrive so they could talk like mature adults and she could come to her damn senses. When a day had passed with no Harriet and no word from Harriet, he’d not allowed himself to panic. She was in a snit. She’d get over it. She had to.

  After two days, he’d placed a call to Lucy only to be told she’d not heard from Harriet in over a week. After three, he was pacing the floor, contemplating reporting her as a missing person versus never speaking to her again.

  That night, he got a text from Lucy. “She’s in the Motel 6 about five blocks from you. DO NOT TELL HER I TOLD YOU, LATTIMER.”

  He threw the phone to the floor, jumped in his SUV, and was in front of the ragged out hotel door within minutes, banging on it, hollering until he was hoarse and some creep next door emerged scratching his balls and telling him to shut the fuck up. He’d ignored the guy, then turned to see Harriet standing in the door, her face stony, her eyes red, clutching a glass of wine.

  “Go away,” she’d said, trying to shut the door in his face.

  He’d pushed it open, taken the wine, tossed it down the drain, and turned to face her. “This is not how grown-ups behave. You don’t just…just…get to disappear and expect me to be okay with that.”

  “You don’t get to walk out on me after one of the most amazing nights of my professional and personal life just because you can’t handle the thought of being a father again.”

  He’d glared at her, at a total loss, taking her in from head to toe. When he moved toward her, she took a step back. “It will be okay,” she insisted, her arms wrapped tight around herself. “I promise.”

  “What if it’s not?” he’d whispered as he pulled her close, undressing her and kissing her and making love to her until they both cried out in pleasure without another word between them.

  Joseph Theodore Lattimer had been born seven months and one week after that encounter, in a perverse sort of karmic Harriet-always-gets-her-way sort of thing. He’d been utterly manic with anxiety during her pregnancy, which she’d experienced in the farmhouse he’d bought as part of the baby compromise. She got her baby. He got his farm. Of course, the split second he’d laid eyes on little Joey, squalling, red, flailing as they pulled him from Harriet’s body, he knew he was the one who’d gotten it all—finally.

  After tucking a quilt up to Joey’s chin as the boy drifted off on the couch in the family room, George sat studying him a while. He’d been a handful and a half from birth, but George had been there doing more than his fair share
Harriet claimed. But he’d been unable to keep his hands off the kid, would walk with him into the night during screaming jags, could sit and listen to him jabber on for hours. He could hardly imagine turning him over to the school system in another year.

  He got up, stretched, and went upstairs to find Harriet in her big leather chair, staring at her computer screen. The windows were open. A soft breeze lifted the hair from her face. He dropped to the floor in front of her, pushed her knees apart, kissed the baby bump, then moved up to her lips. She fumbled with his belt and zipper, an urgency in her movements he met more than halfway.

  Their sex life had not started well, and they’d experienced their fair share of rocky encounters even after the crazy, rushed marriage. But once his sex drive had returned with a vengeance, he’d admit they were well matched in that area. She would take him into her body, look into his eyes and say, “It’s me, George. It’s Harriet and I love you and how you make me feel.” And he would make her feel and then some.

  She slid forward, legs spread, giving him one of his favorite views of her beautiful, rich, full self. He gripped her thighs and slid inside her with a groan and a sigh, caressing her newly full breasts, lapping her slightly roughened nipples and feeling her climax with every molecule of his being. He joined her, thrusting hard and fast, hands propped on the back of the chair, groaning into her neck and sensing the relaxation he could only achieve after a massive orgasm.

  He withdrew and helped her up, handed her some tissues and flopped into her chair with a loud sigh of extreme satisfaction. She smiled that smile at him, the one he’d been completely lost in from the first time he saw it the first moment they met in that empty firehouse in Detroit. “I love you, Georgie-boy. But you have some work to do.” She pointed to the screen, yelping when he pulled her down onto his lap and shut her up with a long kiss.

  “Stop trying to bribe me out of this,” she gasped when he released her. “There are some serious issues in NOLA and we should get back to Detroit in the next few months.”