Almost Wrong

by Aubrey Parker

  “Fuck me! Oh, fuck me harder!” she pants.

  I want to tell her to shut her fucking mouth. I want to bend forward and put my hand over her maw. But Samantha likes it rough, and that would probably crank up her volume. She’d start telling me to pull her hair, slap her ass, pull her straps off and grab her tits. I don’t feel like those complications right now. I just want to get off, and Samantha usually wants the same thing. Getting loud, here in the bathroom, will only make Manuel more uncomfortable than he seemed to be when we entered with Sam’s hand down my pants.

  “I want you to come in my mouth!”

  Fuck that. She blew me almost to completion earlier, before I turned her around. If I’d wanted that, we’d be done and back in circulation, my stress level sufficiently lowered.

  Still, I’m tempted, if for no other reason than to shut her up.

  I thrust a few final times, my balls clenching, thighs tightening, rising on my toes as I unload inside her. My strokes are suddenly wetter, slicker. It’s been a long day, and we didn’t have sex yesterday. Relief is intense as I twitch, coming down.

  She’ll be dispensing that one for a while.

  I pull out. My come runs down her leg, almost making it to her shoe before she catches it with a wad of toilet paper.

  Samantha wipes herself, tosses the tissue in the toilet, then smiles at me as she turns around. She pulls her skirt back into place, wiggling her ass to do it. Then she sucks on one finger, and I wonder if it’s part of the cleanup. She definitely likes it in the mouth. If she starts trying here and now to finish herself off — a matching climax to accompany mine — I might start getting hard again. But I’m thirty now, and unsure if I’m up for round two so quickly.

  I back up, buttoning myself, and look her over from beautifully coifed mane to high-heeled foot. Most normal red-blooded men wouldn’t be able to look at her without wanting to fuck her. That’s good in one way, but a total failure in another. She’s supposed to make me a proper poster boy for Dreadnought Records, with the requisite high-society girlfriend. But does her pure sexuality make her position as my “respectable girlfriend” questionable?

  Probably.

  Out of courtesy, I decide to wait until the party is over to break up with her.

  I leave Sam in the stall to do whatever she might need to do, and on the way out I drop another twenty into Manuel’s box.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ANGELA

  When I enter the house, ready to wind down after a long day at work keeping this broken family afloat, my stepfather says, “Today is your brother’s birthday.”

  I look at him for a long moment. We’ve never precisely not got along during his marriage to my mother, but we’ve never been friends. We’re roommates. It’s as if Mom is my mother and hence my burden to bear … and then my burden has a burden: a loser she invites around and I manage to tolerate.

  It’s funny that my name is on the lease and has been for over a decade. It’s funny that I had to take that contractual obligation over when Mom and Bill, working together, managed to default for three months straight. And it was really side-splittingly hilarious when I had to leave my tidy studio to move back in here — not because I needed the help, but because help was needed.

  It’s awesome that I’m the only name on the lease, and super great that despite Bill’s son being a billionaire, I have to support his sorry, drunken ass.

  “I don’t have a brother,” I say.

  “You know what I mean, Angie.”

  I hate it when he calls me Angie. But it’s either him being an asshole or a legitimate inability to change old ways, not a correctable mistake. So I keep my mouth shut about it like always.

  “I didn’t realize,” I say.

  “Sure you did. It’s a week after your birthday, and you’re good with dates.”

  “Oh. Well then, I guess I did.”

  Bill chews his cheek — a curious habit that once upon a time, during a brief spell of sobriety, he asked me to help him break. The first time I reminded him not to chew his cheek, he yelled at me. That was his last reminder.

  “Did you send him a card,” he asks, “or call him, or anything?”

  “No.”

  “You should call him.”

  “He didn’t call me.”

  “Did he send you a card?”

  I sigh. Bill can see the card. It’s my mother who must be protected from its accidental Semitism. I hand it to him, along with the ripped red envelope.

  Bill opens it.

  “Was anything in it?”

  He hasn’t even read it. There was no time. It was a one-two beat, nothing longer. One: Open the flap. Two: Ask his question. Nothing had fallen to the floor; that was strike one. But there was still a chance his wealthy son could redeem himself.

  “His usual gift. We can go to Olive Garden.”

  Bill extends his hand, as if the card had been addressed to him, not me.

  I pull the gift card out of my pocket and hand it to him anyway. Bill looks at it, shakes his head, and hands it back. The twenty-four-hour carryout where he buys his beer doesn’t accept gift cards.

  “Well, that was nice of him.”

  I laugh.

  “Don’t tell your mother.”

  “Why?”

  “She hates him, for one.”

  That was true. Mom was half the reason Hunter left in the first place. The other half, predictably, was his dad. The intellectual part of my mind knows that half plus half equals a full boat, but sometimes I’m sure there’s room for a third in there anyway. A third reason he left.

  A reason I know something about, little as I like to consider it.

  “And for two,” Bill says, “we start going out, and she’s going to want to keep doing it. You know how she is. How much is on that card, anyway?”

  I wait a beat before answering, mainly to see if he’s measuring his son’s worth in dollars, which I’m pretty sure he is. “A hundred bucks.”

  Bill vents air, half-laughing. He should be used to it. My birthday gift card, surely purchased and sent without Hunter’s notice, is the closest Bill ever gets to receiving money from Hunter. Funny thing is, as much as I hate him most of the time, I’m with Hunter on this. Bill not getting a dime from Dreadnought means it never trickles down to me or Mom, but Bill sober was an even bigger asshole to Hunter than he’s ever been to me drunk.

  Some dads are disappointed that their sons don’t live up to their standards. Bill’s son dwarfed Bill’s standards, more or less to prove a point. His way of saying I told you so has been to say nothing at all. To never come home. And to never give his fucker of an old man a single red cent.

  “So what’s that, like two-three meals if we all go? That’s just enough to give her ideas. Suddenly, your cooking won’t be good enough. She’ll want to go out all the time. You know how she is.”

  It’s the second time in the past three minutes that Bill has informed me that I know how my mother is. Good thing he’s around to keep me aware of such things.

  Instead of answering, I walk into the living room. Mom’s in her chair. For someone who doesn’t move all day, you’d think she’d be larger. But she’s practically a leather-covered stick. That’s what a lifetime of smoking and drinking will get you. She stopped her vices before marrying Bill, thankfully, or we’d be drowning in a sea of barley and rye.

  Only Bill drinks now. Only Bill breaks things we need when he’s angry, so we have to buy more. Only Bill refuses to entertain the idea of Mom getting a job, seeing as how doing so might ruin her stipend.

  But the worst thing is that Mom’s bought into it. When I was younger, before Bill and Hunter entered our lives, Mom used to be quite the spitfire. But that cab didn’t just graze her, it knocked her spirit into the gutter along with her body and twisted knee.

  She used to play tennis. She used to dance around the house while cleaning. Now look at her.

  “Hey, sweetheart,” she says, looking up.

  “Hey, Mom.”


  “How was your day?”

  Shitty. I broke a tray full of glasses, and a guy kept looking aggressively down my shirt whenever I bent over, even after I called him out, holding it closed with my free hand. But I don’t want to say that my day was shitty, because as sad as Mom is to look at, as much as I often resent her, and as twisted as her religious fervor’s become, I don’t hate her.

  She’s my mom. I love her. I’m cursed to love her forever.

  “Fine.”

  “You make good tips?”

  I give her a look.

  “I’m just asking, Angela. You don’t have to take offense at everything I say about money.”

  Yes, I do. But I try not to. Mom’s life — and Bill’s too, really — is like a never-ending game of searching the couch cushions for change. They get excited by quarters on the ground. They clip coupons for things we don’t need then justify their purchases, not understanding that you aren’t saving when you spend over budget, no matter the discount.

  “I did okay.” Truth is, lunch shift is shit on tips and always has been. But what can I do? I can’t be out all hours to work dinner every night. Not with two fifty-year-old children at home.

  “Well, good. And did you work with Carol?”

  This time, I eye her properly. “Let it go, Mom.”

  “Abortion is a sin, you know.”

  “Okay, Mom.”

  “Don’t roll your eyes at me, Angela Ricci. If you’re really Carol’s friend, it’s your job to help her see the truth.”

  I want to tell Mom that it’s Carol’s decision what to do with her unplanned pregnancy. But to Mom, that’s like saying it’s Carol’s choice whether or not to knife our boss in the throat. Which Carol and I both sometimes want to do, actually.

  “We’ll talk about it,” I lie.

  “It’s also a sin to engage in relations outside marriage.”

  What a laugh. I know she and Bill were doing plenty before saying I do. Bill and Hunter moved in before they were married, and we lived together as some sort of broken commune before they finally tied the knot and made things official. I lived in the next room, between them and Hunter. Before we were steps, the world had been different.

  “I’ll tell her.”

  Mom misses my sarcasm. Instead, she says, “That’s what she gets for shacking up with a Jew.”

  My head spins. This is just a bit too bigoted, even for Mom.

  “What does that mean?” I say.

  “They don’t have the same moral fiber as we do, is all.”

  We? I don’t want to be included in this. I have Jewish friends, gay friends, friends of all colors. Each of them is Hell-bound, according to Mom.

  “Are you referring to the rampant ‘deadbeat Jew’ phenomenon? The huge social stereotype we have about Jews and the way they knock up women before running off, laughing through their bagels before heading to their jobs in the world’s law firms, banks, and jewelry stores?”

  “Don’t be absurd, Angela,” Mom says.

  I stuff down a powerful urge to comment on her lack of understanding of the word “absurd.” Instead, I sigh, sit on the couch, and shuffle through the mail.

  “That reminds me,” Mom says, looking at the stack of envelopes, “did I hear you say something to Bill about the birthday card?”

  I swallow, not wanting to have this discussion again — especially with my mother.

  “Yes, Mom.”

  “Well, don’t be mad,” she says. “We didn’t mean anything by it.”

  That catches my attention. I turn to look at her, but she’s facing forward again, our conversation apparently concluded in favor of talk shows. We didn’t mean anything by it? That doesn’t make sense, regarding Hunter’s inconsiderately polite, spooled-off birthday greeting.

  “What are you talking about?” I hold up the card just enough for her to know who it’s from, but without revealing the incriminating Star of David on the front. “You’re talking about this, right?”

  Mom looks caught, as if she’s been tricked into an admission.

  Something is percolating in my mind, and there’s no way I’m letting her back down now.

  “I meant the other birthday card,” she says. “The one we all sent him.”

  “The one we all sent him?” I repeat, incredulous.

  Mom doesn’t even like Hunter. She thinks he’s Satan incarnate. He acted out the whole time he lived with us, and as far as Mom is concerned his exodus from LA might as well have been a vacation to Sodom and Gomorrah — whichever had the greater number of high-ticket Asian fusion tapas bars per capita.

  Why would she send him a birthday card?

  “Well, I know you have your issues with him, Angela,” she stammers, caught, dodging the fact that she, traditionally, has always had far more “issues” with Hunter than I have. “But he’s thirty this year, and it just seemed time to renew acquaintances.”

  Meaning they want to get to know him again. To reenter his life like a tapeworm.

  There’s a prickle at the back of my neck. Something more to this story.

  “You said ‘we,’ Mom.”

  “Oh, yes,” she tells me. “You were working at the time —”

  Shit. I don’t like this. Not today. Not now.

  “— so I signed your name.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  HUNTER

  Samantha’s still with me when we enter the lobby. I couldn’t break up with her at the party because it would have caused a scene, and I couldn’t break up with her in the car because I see my driver every day and didn’t want him to hear the things she’ll inevitably say when I break it off.

  Our relationship is more of a business arrangement than anything. Samantha looks like a doll and does all the things that the best, most expensive adult dolls do. She likes it for sure — is kind of insatiable in her moral depravity, really, which I’ll admit gets me hard every time — but we keep only the flimsiest of pretenses between us. It’s her job to get me off. It’s also her job to accompany me to the right kind of events, and look stunning beside me. She’s also a key in certain locks, seeing as her family is connected in all the ways my family never was.

  That last one is both a blessing and curse. Because while I have much, much more money and power today than Samantha, she knows exactly where I came from. Early in our relationship, when she was still pretending to like me above the waist, I made the mistake of driving her through my old neighborhood. She’ll forever hold that against me, wielding my lowbrow past like a highbrow weapon. When I end this, she’ll bring it up. She’ll call me a gutter rat, a poseur, a pretender to the Dreadnought throne and a rider of Duncan’s coattails rather than his partner.

  But as long as I don’t rock the boat, Sam will do her job. She’ll dress well, act cultured and civilized, make me look far more respectable than I’ve ever felt. She’ll elevate me to the realm where I truly belong, like Duncan keeps berating me about. And whenever I want — and plenty when I don’t, but am willing once prompted — she’ll give herself to me. Any orifice I want, whenever and wherever.

  She once gave me a hand job under the table of a five-star restaurant. I came all over her hand as the sommelier was describing the house white. It was so ironic.

  My job is easier. I make the money. I make the deals. But as it turns out, that job is far harder and less replaceable than Samantha’s. The fact that I don’t like her company much will make this easy, because I can swap her out for another disposable bit of arm candy if I so desire — something Duncan will demand in the name of networking and image. But dodging Samantha’s insults, anger, and jilted remonstrations? That will be harder.

  I look over at her as she crosses the lobby’s expensive imported tile. I like the doorman, Telly, quite a lot, but for some reason the way she’s always such an entitled cunt to him turns me on. I’m told women like bad boys. Well, I like bad girls, at least for the kind of relationship Sam and I have. Maybe we all desire self-destruction.

  It�
�s such a head trip that I’m horny again watching her ignore Telly’s hello, handing him a gum wrapper as if he were a trash can. “You owned that party, Hunter,” she’s saying, now crossing to the elevator so she can ignore the attendant, Carl, like she ignored Telly. “Duncan wants you to be more visible, but that brooding thing you do is sexy as hell. Not just to women, but men, too.”

  I don’t comment on her implication that I turn straight men on by my mere presence. I also don’t comment on the way she just said I turn women on rather than saying I turn her on.

  “You’re just thirty. You’ll make the hit lists thanks to my birthday toast.”

  I’ve already diverted away from the elevator toward the alcove to its right. I don’t bother to call her over. Sam comes of her own accord, her fine ass moving smoothly under her tight dress.

  “Hit lists,” I repeat.

  “You know, when they do the top thirty under thirty, that kind of thing?”

  “But I’m not under thirty anymore.”

  She gives me her catlike smile. “Honey, you’re the talk of the industry. Any excuse to write about you, they’ll gobble it right up. You don’t give them much. Almost a recluse. That’s what Duncan keeps telling me, that I need to get you out more. You’re this generation’s Howard Hughes.”

  I don’t think that comparison is remotely apt, but I say nothing.

  “But it’s a double-edged sword, Hunter. If you hide too much, you won’t come off as brooding; you’ll become invisible.” She stresses the words as if I might not have heard them before. “It’s good that you came out. And now that the press is reminded that you’ve hit a landmark birthday, they can do one of those semi-retrospective pieces where they talk about how far you’ve come, what you’ve built, how you changed the whole fucking game! Why do you think I made that toast? It was just a Dreadnought party without it, but now it’s your birthday party, too.”