“Yes?” she said, trying to keep her voice chirpy.
“Samantha?”
She knew the voice; her hand fell away from the buzzer.
“Samantha? Are you there? It’s me. It’s Jack.”
*****
She tried to convince herself that she wasn’t dreaming, that Jack Plainview was really outside her apartment on an average Sunday morning, but it was hard. She hadn’t spoken to him in over half a decade. But what was she going to do, leave him standing down there? Maybe if she walked down there and saw the ghostly apparition she would wake up and things would go back to normal. She knew he was coming back today, but she hadn’t expected him to come to her apartment personally. They had drifted too far apart for that.
She ran into her bedroom and threw on some sweat pants and a t-shirt. Then she pressed the buzzer and took a deep breath, lest she mumbled something incoherent and absurd. “Jack?” she said, hating the note of desperation in her voice.
“Sammy,” Jack said, laughing.
“I’m coming down now,” Samantha said.
Her legs were like jelly as she descended the stairs. She gripped the railing and walked down with steady steps. She was slightly embarrassed by her reaction, but mostly she was shocked and thrilled and scared that Jack had come to her door, pushing himself into her normal, boring life. She opened the door with a smile.
It was snowing outside, and the sky was clouded over in a shield of white. The weather seemed poignant to her, as though it was more important than the very real ghost standing in the weather. Come on, Samantha, just turn from the clouds and look at the ghost. How hard can it be? She forced herself to look down. She knew she probably seemed drunk and weird, but that was okay; Jack had known her long enough to know she was drunk and strange a lot of the time.
She looked down. She gasped.
Jack had been a tall, muscular, brown-haired teenager. Now he was an even taller, even more muscular brown-haired man. His face was square and strong, and his eyes were sky-blue, almost white. They were eyes that looked through you and into you at once. He wore a green shirt and khaki pants with cream-colored boots. He stood with a soldier’s stiff back, and a light beard grew on his face, silver and brown.
And the man beside him—
He was thinner, but taller, with thick black hair and a savage handsomeness. He wore a thick checkered shirt and faded blue jeans with dark boots. He regarded her coolly with forest-green eyes.
Jack smiled at her. “Sammy,” he said. “Aren’t you happy to see me? This is Eli Smith, a fellow SEAL.”
Samantha found herself nodding like a bobble-head. Words seemed things for experts in those moments. She couldn’t grasp them, let alone use them. She looked at the two men mutely for a couple more moments and then she saw herself: a silly, skinny, blonde girl standing there with her mouth open.
She shook her head. “Of course I am,” she said, and smiled. “I’m just shocked, is all. It’s nice to see you, Jack. It’s nice to meet you, Eli.”
*
Sitting in her living room with Jack and this Eli, Samantha felt a distinct feeling of unreality, as though she were watching all this through 3-D glasses. She tried to keep her face clear of her shock. She had regained herself after her initial silliness and had made them all some coffee. She sat on the chair and the two of them sat side by side on the couch. Samantha watched Jack with a sort of animalistic curiosity as he sipped his coffee and looked around the apartment. This man was once the boy who had waded into the river and… it was strange.
Eli picked up one of her books, a John Steinbeck, regarded it for a few moments and then set it down on the table. Samantha wasn’t a huge reader, but her father had loved John Steinbeck and recently Samantha had decided to read through all his novels as a sort of tribute.
“We’ve shocked you,” Jack said.
“Perhaps a little,” Samantha admitted. “I knew you were back to today.”
“The Hag?” Jack said.
“Yeah, how did you know?”
“She charged at us as soon as we were in town. She was the one who gave me your address. She was adamant that I come and see you. I was going to anyway and I was thankful for the address. She looks ancient. Do you remember when she was just a gray-haired old woman, when we used to sneak into her garden? Now she looks like an actual fairytale witch or something.”
Eli laughed, and Samantha laughed with him. They met eyes for a moment, this strange man sitting next to her childhood friend. “I can’t imagine that woman being young,” Eli said. It was the first thing he had said. Samantha was surprise by how deep his voice was; and it was tinged with the Deep South.
“Oh, she was never young,” Samantha said. “Just less old.”
They both laughed at that and Samantha found herself grinning like a gargoyle. They finished their coffee and sat in a companionable silence for a time. Samantha didn’t feel the need to fill the silence. That was a nice change from work, where every silence was filled with all the imaginable mundanities in mundane existence. Jack insisted on taking the mugs to the kitchen and then the three of them sat there.
Finally, Jack leaned forward. “Sammy, I’m actually here with an ulterior motive.”
“Really?” she said. Thinking: He needs a place to stay. But there isn’t room.
But it wasn’t that. Instead, he leaned across the coffee table and touched her hand. His hand was firm and warm. “I want you to come on a date with me and Eli,” Jack said, staring into her eyes.
“Both of you?” Samantha exclaimed.
“Yes,” he said, staring hard into her eyes. “Both of us. What do you say?”
*****
She had no idea what to say. She didn’t know Eli, and she barely knew Jack anymore. All she and Jack shared was a childhood; all she and Eli shared was Jack. There was no foundation upon which to build an opinion of Eli, and a flimsy one upon which to build a reevaluation of Jack. She returned his gaze and tried to look within him and see if he was joking with her. Jack had never been the most prankish or boys, but maybe war had changed him. But as she looked into his eyes she saw that he was dead-serious. They both wanted her.
“Why?” Samantha said.
Jack shrugged. “Why not? I showed Eli a picture of you whilst we were over there, and I thought about you a lot. I’m not saying we do anything, Sammy. Let’s just go on a date, the three of us, and see how it goes.”
Eli was staring at her frankly with his deep green eyes; eyes like a wild man of the forest. Jack leaned forward on powerful forearms and looked deeper again into her eyes, penetrating her consciousness, making her feel like a fifteen-year-old girl again. She remembered the time when they had had too much to drink, and her parents had been out, and it had happened and it had been horrible and beautiful at the same time. Afterwards he had held her and they had done it again a day later, and many times after that.
“Sammy,” Jack said.
“Jack,” Samantha replied.
“Just one date,” Eli said peremptorily, with the tone of voice of a man who hates waiting. “Just one date, Samantha.”
Samantha looked down at her hands, and then back up at the two men. There was a danger to them, but it was not directed at her. They were different to the bums that hung around The Spatula, the dirty men with beer-stained vests and big pot bellies dangling over cheap jeans. These were men who didn’t need to intimidate women; their selves had already been affirmed in years of struggle and bloodshed. She felt as though she were part of something bigger than her town as she sat in the presence of these two men.
“One date,” she said firmly. “I will go on one date, and it has to be in the city. I’m not having the whole town talking. And my car’s broken, so you have to drive.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Eli said, smiling.
Jack nodded. “Sounds good to me.”
She was a fool. You heard about cases like this all the time, didn’t you? Woman tricked into abduction by Navy SEALs. She would be thir
d-page, one-paragraph news. So why then did she feel a thrill of excitement run through her at the thought? Even after Jack and Eli had left, rather unceremoniously, Samantha felt as though her life had just been promoted to something alien.
Yesterday, she had been a waitress. Today, she was a point of desire for two muscular, dangerous, captivating Navy SEALs.
Life is strange, sometimes, she thought, as she washed the coffee mugs.
*
They had scheduled the date for the following Friday, so Samantha had to endure an entire week of work before it came. She only saw Jack around twice, on his way to the store. He smiled at her and they exchanged a few words, but nobody would have guessed that they were anything more than old friends or casual acquaintances. Nobody would have guessed that they were going on a strange date in a few days. People would have thought: There goes that nice boy who fought in the war and that waitress who is always smiling. And that’s it. Upon reflection, that was how Samantha preferred it. Small towns are a hotbed of gossip. She had no desire to be the talk of the town anytime soon.
When you have worked at a place for a long time, days cease to drag or go quickly. There is a comfortable routine to them and one day is so similar to the other that they become indistinguishable. Usually Samantha floated through her work week in a kind of funk, moving here and there as though propelled by a force she neither saw nor comprehended. This week, however, she was too excited and nervous about her date to not notice the time. Each pour of coffee seemed to drag out to a full minute, and even her lunch break became a sort of chore.
But then, finally, Friday arrived.
She wished she was more excited on the day. She feared she had spent her excitement in the week. The nervous energy had been used up and now she felt nonchalant and relaxed, like none of this was any big deal, really. And she had been quite silly for thinking otherwise. Perhaps she would feel different when she saw the SEALs. Perhaps their dormant danger would awake something in her. Or perhaps this would fail and they would all slide back into their own lives.
Either way, she had to choose what to wear!
*
She stood, naked, before her mirror. She had never been the hot girl at school. Her breasts were too small. She had been called boyish many times. She thought it was a fair description. She had smallish B-cup breasts and a small waist and a petite bottom. Her skin was cloud-white and reddened rather than tanned in the sun. Her cheeks were lightly freckled and her hair was a deep wood-brown. Her eyes were blue like Jack’s. (For a short period as children they had been the “Blue-Eyed Gang”.) She wore a dress that covered her breasts but showed her sleek, well-formed legs. It was blue and sparkly. The dress in combination with the dark eye-liner brought out her eyes. At least, that was the intention. She had been told that she had eyes that were at once ferocious and vulnerable.
She left her long nails unpainted and then poured herself a glass of wine. She drank two glasses as she waited for the men. They were to wait outside her apartment in the car and call her (Jack had taken her number). She wondered if this was all some sick prank but if it was a prank, what was the joke? She didn’t need them. She was intrigued by them, yes, and curious about them, but need them? No, not now, not ever, she told herself.
She was quite happy in her humdrum life.
Jack rang halfway through her second glass of wine.
“I’m coming,” she said, and headed for the door.
She hung up, locked her door, and descended the stairs in her heels.
What am I doing? You can’t live forever. Is this right? Am I a slut now? No, slut is a foolish word created by sex-fearing men. Don’t use that pathetic word. Maybe I’m a whore, then? Now you’re just being mischievous. Are you excited? Yes. So why does it matter?
Moonlight mixed with the light from the streetlamps in orange-blue pools on the sidewalk as she walked across the street toward the car. It was a nice red car but Samantha didn’t know cars very well. It looked big and sturdy and it glinted in the light.
Eli jumped from the door and held it open for her. He was wearing a suit, giving him the look of a barbarian clad in genteel clothes. Jack, too, was wearing a suit. He smiled at her from the wheel of the car, and Eli beckoned her in. With a deep breath, she fell into the car and the door closed behind her.
No going back now.
*****
The snow had stopped in the week, replaced instead by bitter-cold air that showed your breath with each exhalation. Samantha was glad Jack had blasted the heating. They drove in silence through the dark toward the city. Barkton lay in the shadow of the city, apart and yet near enough to travel to whenever needed. It was one of those small towns that had somehow escaped the clutches of urbanization again and again. Eli sat beside her, and every so often he would smile up at her, and she would smile back. She should have felt uncomfortable, but she didn’t. She was oddly at ease with these two men.
What consumed her thoughts was their destination. Where were they going that required the men to wear suits? She was glad she had decided to dress up for this date. Date… It was a date, wasn’t it? She had never heard of a woman going on a date with two men, but here she was, a brave explorer, going boldly where no woman (that she knew of) had gone before.
*
They parked outside a tall, diamond-tipped building that thrust upwards into the night like a glittering finger. A valet climbed into the car as they got out, and drove it into the night, leaving them on a plush, purple carpet. “One of the benefits of going to war,” Eli said, with only a minor hint of irony, “is that you never spend any money.”
“So we’ve decided to make a splash of it tonight,” Jack said.
The two of them were speaking as though they were one man: as though finishing each other’s sentences and addressing her as though they were one person was the most normal thing in the world. And then they stood by her sides, Eli at her left and Jack at her right, and each of them took one of her arms. She barely had a chance to register what they were doing before the firm, reassuring strength of their arms on hers propelled her into the building.
The interior was just as glamorous as the exterior. A giant chandelier hung from the ceiling and the walls were lit with medieval-style torches (though upon closer inspection they were really clever electrical lights). The whole place had a 1920s feel, with a tinge of the medieval about it. The chairs were almost thrones, high-backed and padded, but everyone drank from champagne glasses and the women’s jewelry glittered. The men at the tables looked soft and overfed, like pet pigs. Samantha was suddenly glad she had two real men with her.
Both men looked pleased. Eli in particular was looking around with the avid eyes of a man whom war has starved. His body was turned fully to the lights and when he passed a table of men and women passing around an expensive bottle of champagne. He regarded them openly, even turning his head as they were led through the restaurant. The men at the table looked back at him for a moment, meeting his eyes, but then looked down at their table when they saw the size and beastliness of him. Eli truly was half-animal, Samantha thought.
Jack pulled her seat out for her and Samantha sat down, grateful to be off her feet and at the safety of their table. She had never been to a restaurant this fancy in her life. It was certainly a big change from The Spatula. Jack sat to her left and Eli sat to her right. They both turned inward to her, regarding her at the same time. She found herself keep her chin up, so they could better see the curve of her neck, and she was thrilled when she saw Eli’s eyes flit there, and his teeth momentarily bite his lip.
Then he blinked quickly as though awakened from a dream and grabbed at the menu. “Steak,” he grunted. “Remember, Jack, when the enemy were firing on us day and night?” He named the town; Jack nodded.
“And here we are,” Eli went on. He turned to Samantha. “It was just the two of us, Samantha. The rest were gone. And Jack turns to me and says: when we get out of here all I’ll need to be happy is a steak dinner with a pr
etty woman. Well, here we are.”
Samantha smiled at Jack and Eli at the same time. She felt warm, despite the coldness outside, and safe, despite the dangerous men who surrounded her. She felt something else, deep within her: a lust that pervaded her entire body. Suddenly, she was imagining what these men looked like naked.
Dirty, dirty girl, she thought.
*
Jack and Eli both ordered steaks. Samantha didn’t know what to order in a fancy place like this and the evil waiter suggested a salad for the lady. She was about to accept because she didn’t know what else to say when Eli interjected: “Get her a steak as well. How do you like it?”
“Medium,” she mumbled.
“Medium steak, please-thank-you.”
The waiter nodded briskly and went off to process their orders. As they ate, Samantha responded to their questions. What did she do for fun? Where did she work? How was she finding life, in general? Apart from the question about work, which was easy, she found the others surprisingly difficult to answer. What did she do for fun? When she got home, he would often read, or she would watch television, or occasionally she would visit Fiona, the one friend yet to fly from Barkton. She listed all these things, and her answers seemed to satisfy her questioners, but she couldn’t escape the feeling that she’d been somehow dishonest. For, did she really have fun doing any of these things? Or were they just things to fill the endless evenings?
This, however, was most definitely fun. There was no doubt in her mind about that. They drank a bottle of champagne. Samantha didn’t ask how they were paying for all this, partly because she knew (like Eli had said, war costs the solider nothing apart from limb and life), and partly because she didn’t want to ruin the magic of the evening. And the evening truly was magical.
As they drank the restaurant beyond their table began to blur and eventually it ceased to exist all together. All there was, was the three of them and the waiter who occasional brought another dish or a bottle of champagne. And when Eli leaned forward and kissed her on the neck, and tilted her head so he could more easily get to her. And she looked into Jack’s eyes the whole time. The Blue-Eye Gang reforming with another member. Eli kissed her neck again and again, his beard tickling her, his lips warming her.
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