by Solace Ames
“Can I speak to your supervisor?” he asked now, as he’d done many times before. He sat at the table, shoulders hunched in a defensive posture, pencil tapping a notepad, eyes fixed on the laptop screen. Working all the angles.
She made him take a break in the early afternoon and cooked them an omelette. He picked at it, eyes continually straying to the papers.
“We’re basically fucked,” he said. “I’m filing appeals, but from what I’m hearing, it’s an extra thirty thousand.” She nodded when she heard the numbers, then kept on mechanically eating. “Did you hear me?” His voice was close to cracking.
“Yes.” Oh God, this wasn’t going to be easy. “It doesn’t really mean anything.”
His eyes hardened.
“I mean, it doesn’t mean we’re poor all of a sudden. People face these issues all the time. And I—I know the way you were raised. You can’t help—I mean, I don’t feel so insecure about this.”
“So you’re saying I’m freaking out because—because my mentality towards money was formed—because I grew up poor.” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Fuck, maybe you’re right. I don’t know. I feel like vomiting right now.”
His hand was scratching at the papers. She reached out and held it, keeping him still, massaging his palm with her thumb. “We’ll take a vacation to Mexico, and stay with your aunt, and put it on a credit card. It’s going to be fine.”
“If you say so.” He opened his eyes, making her dizzy with the force of his stare. Reality projection, like in that book. He was doing it now. And it was going to work. “You’re what’s important to me. Nothing else comes close.”
“Oh, baby.” She stood and leaned and wrapped her arms around him. She wouldn’t cry but the tears were heavy in her eyes. This surge of compassion was beautiful and salt-corrosive all at the same time, scouring away the things that didn’t matter, or shouldn’t matter.
“I’ll send Paul an email,” Jay said.
Like Paul.
“Yes,” she said.
“Maybe we’ll see him again. You know, out and about.”
“Yes.” She held Jay tightly. He was enough for her. She could make herself believe that. The thought of never seeing Paul again hurt, but all hurts eventually faded. “I’d like to—maybe we can stay on his mailing list. To see how’s he doing.”
“I don’t know. I’m sure he’ll be all right. He’s the kind of person who’s always going to come out on top.” He smiled, finally, even if it was just a little quirk at the corner of his mouth. “You know, I didn’t even mean that as a double entendre, but let’s pretend I did, okay?”
“Sure.” If a clean break was what Jay needed...well, he’d had so many things taken away from him since the accident. “Whatever you think is right.” His collarbone dug into her arm. He felt so hunched in on himself, so fragile, as if he was guarding himself from her, against his own wishes. She didn’t know exactly why, but she knew it wasn’t because of any lack of love.
She let go, picked up their plates and took them to the kitchen sink. When she glanced at him over the kitchen counter, he looked every bit as miserable as he’d felt in her arms.
“I’m going to take a long bath,” he said. “Then I’ll feel better. I promise.”
“That sounds like a great idea.” She started the tap, let the hot water run over her cold fingers for a while. Yes. A clean start to the day.
He got up and walked slowly away. “Your phone is beeping.”
“I’ll get it in a second. Have a nice bath and call me if you want me to bring you anything, okay?”
“Okay.”
A minute later she heard the rumble of water coming from the far side of the apartment. She dried off her hands and went to pick up the phone on the couch.
Can we talk in private? No emergency. Please call back. Paul.
Her finger had already pressed the talk button before her mind could process the text. She almost hit the End button as the conflicting emotions hammered into her all at once. Love. Loyalty. Desire. Shame. Guilt. She shouldn’t be doing this.
But she didn’t hang up.
“Hello, Adriana.”
She sat down and closed her eyes. Her heart struggled as if it could break through her ribs, and it bled a frightening heat into the rest of her body. I’m sick. No one good for her could make her feel this way.
“I’m sorry, is this a bad time to talk?”
I never panic.
“Well,” she said, drawing out the word as she gathered in her scattered thoughts, “it’s either a really good time or a really bad time. We’ve been having some financial issues.”
“Oh.” The deep baritone with its familiar faint hint of cruelty vanished, leaving a normal man’s voice. A man who had doubts and fears just like her, and suddenly, more than anything else, she was afraid of hurting Paul, too.
“Yes. Things aren’t working out that well. I mean, we’re fine. It’s only money.” She forced herself to lean back into the couch and relax. Her stomach muscles were already aching from the tension. “How’re you doing?”
“Fine.” The problem with relaxing and being more conscious of her body was that his voice was really turning her on. She thought of Jay, hot water running over his smooth brown skin, soothing his aches, and Paul stepping out of the shower like a fucking god. “Well, maybe it’s a really good time to talk then. I’d like to fire you as clients.”
“What?”
“I’ve been an escort for three years, and I swear I’ve never done this before. For anyone. But I’d like to see you, both of you, on a non-paying relationship basis.”
“What?”
“Dating. Or free sex. Whichever way you want to look at it. I’m easy. I’m very easy.”
Jay’s muffled voice—“Everything okay out there?”
“Yes!” she yelled. And then she whispered very quietly into the phone a word that she intended to convey all the seriousness of the situation but ended up being just “What?” again.
“I thought I’d talk to you about it first,” Paul said patiently. “I had reasons laid out as to why that was the fairest thing to do considering how our relationship started in the first place, but they’re not very good reasons. Ultimately, it’s self-serving. Jay seems a bit spikier—a bit more of a hard sell on the concept.”
“A hard sell?”
“Unfortunate choice of words, there. Can I come over and talk to you both?”
“All right,” she said, in something close to a normal voice. “That’s fair. I can’t—I don’t know how Jay...”
“The last thing I want to do is come between the two of you.”
“Is that a double entendre?”
“No,” he said, and laughed. He sounded a lot like Jay when he laughed, so...bright. That was the quality. Her body even felt lighter, like she’d been warmed by sunlight. “I’ll be over in about half an hour. Thanks.” The call ended, and she stared at the phone for a long time in silence, catching her breath.
“Could you bring me a glass of ice water, baby?” Jay called from the bathroom. “And who was that?”
She was absolutely terrified. Terrified and grinning like crazy.
Here we go.
* * *
Jay struggled into a plain white T-shirt while pacing back and forth from the kitchen to the couch. “I’m not comfortable with this. Did I already say that?”
Adriana nodded. She stayed on the couch, legs curled up under her knees, hair hiding her shoulders, making herself small.
“Shit. Well, I’m not comfortable. I’ve got this little voice in my head telling me to take three pain pills and hide under the bed right now. I’m being brutally honest with you. I don’t see any way this could work.” He froze in the middle of the living room and rubbed the side of his head, go
ing straight for the aching space behind his ears. The ache abruptly vanished. “Wow, I feel better saying that. That shut the fucker up. Don’t worry, I’m not going to freak out on you.”
“You’ll be fine,” Adriana said.
“The feds took my mom’s dolls, I can’t get a job, the bills, my orthopedist is Dr. Strangelove—look, the only sure thing in my life is my marriage. Is you.”
“And I’m fine. Look at me.”
He did exactly that. She looked like herself, her eyes set back and soulful even without makeup, shadowed but not sad. “You’re not...”
“I don’t know why I’m not worried, but I’m not. We’ll just listen to him, okay? We’ll listen, and then we’ll say goodbye, and we’ll talk about it and call him later.”
“That sounds not completely impossible.” He went back to pacing. He couldn’t help it. Any minute now Paul would be walking through the door, but a completely different Paul, one he’d never met before. He couldn’t reconcile all these different people. This wasn’t a ménage à trois, it was some kind of psychological pinball gangbang and he couldn’t be expected to flip all the fucking levers and—
—and the doorbell rang.
“Do you want me to get that?” Adriana asked.
“I’ll do it.” He set his shoulders and marched to the door. This is my house, he told himself. Although strictly speaking, it was an apartment, and Adriana’s job paid the rent. He swung the door open before the strictly speaking voice in his head started up again with the pain pills and the hiding under the bed.
There was a stranger at the door, a big handsome guy with dark blond hair who looked a lot like Paul. “Hi,” he said, his voice cutting through the air like Paul, hitting Jay like a shockwave.
Jay looked up into the stranger’s eyes. “Hi, Paul. Is that really your name?”
“Yes. It’s a fairly common name, so I didn’t bother to pick a new one.”
The stoic way Paul was looking at him—Paul, a unitary concept, complete, because all the lines in Jay’s head and heart were melting away—damn, it made him feel ashamed. “I’m sorry,” he said, and moved aside. “Come in.”
Paul nodded solemnly and walked slowly into the center of the room. So different from the first time he’d come through the door, but he took up space in the same way, and Jay’s fingers itched with a frisson that had to be the memory of taking Paul’s jacket. He rubbed his thumb and his forefinger together, trying to either dispel the sensation or recall it more fully.
This is fucking crazy.
“Hi, Adriana,” Paul said to Adriana. God, her name in his mouth...
“Hi, Paul,” Adriana said. Her gaze drifted in the middle distance between Paul and Jay. Her smile was remote, polite. If she could do this, so could he.
“Would you like to sit down?” he asked Paul.
“Thanks.” Paul sat down on the edge of the sectional, not very close to Adriana. He didn’t sprawl, but he didn’t guard his body either. His knees were slightly apart, hands resting loosely on his thighs. “I hope you’ve already had a chance to talk about this together. I know this seems complicated, but it could be very simple, too. You’re good together. We’re good together. I’d like to know you better, without the money between us. If it’s just an hour once every few weeks having dinner or catching a movie, I’d be happy.” He smiled then, showing a bit of teeth, and Jay didn’t care whether it was calculated or not, the look still hit deep and hard and right between his hips, making him shift his weight. “I wouldn’t be satisfied, maybe, but I’d be happy.”
“We’ve never done anything like this before,” Adriana said. “Baby, do you want to sit down?”
She usually didn’t call Jay that in front of other people. He wondered how Paul took it. Whether he wanted the name, too, or maybe it didn’t belong in his hyperfluid sexual pragmatism or whatever kind of worldview let him do all the amazing, horrifying things he did.
“Okay,” Jay said, because he was getting uncomfortable shifting from foot to foot like a brain-damaged surfer, so he sat down at the other end of the sectional. Across from Paul. Adriana to his right. Lots of space, all good.
“I’m sure you’ve got a lot of misgivings,” Paul said. “Like my job. It’s not all I am, but it’s a lot of what I am. I don’t see myself doing it for the rest of my life, but I’m not retiring anytime soon, either.”
“Hey, at least you’ve got a job,” Jay said. Was he being inappropriate? Adriana put her hand over her eyes as if it was all too much for her, but she dragged it back down a second later.
“True.” Paul leaned forward, put his elbows on his knees. The silvery gray T-shirt he wore strained against the muscles of his shoulders. He looked directly into Jay’s eyes. “I can promise you honesty. Discretion. Not to take more than I give.” He shifted to look at Adriana, and that didn’t help, seeing him in profile didn’t help, sitting down didn’t help. Jay was hopelessly lost. He wanted to make this man happy, and it would be so easy, like giving in to a force of nature.
“We’ll talk about it, and call you back,” Adriana said. Jay tried not to sigh too loudly in relief. They had a plan.
“That sounds great,” Paul said, and got up smoothly, shrugging his shoulders as if he’d just lifted something heavy. “I’ll be at the coffee shop around the corner for the next hour, if you’d like to have dinner tonight.” As he walked toward the door, Jay halfway expected an if you say no qualifier, but there was nothing. Nothing, because even though Paul had basically just gone down on bended knee for them, he was still one hell of an arrogant motherfucker. “Jay, Adriana? You’re beautiful. Talk to you later.”
The door closed.
There was a long silence.
“I think we should give it a try,” Adriana said.
Jay opened his mouth to tell her that he was terrified of being a burden, that he didn’t want her being hurt, and that one heart only held so much love and he had to safeguard all he had, or he might not have enough to give.
“If that’s what you want,” he said.
“I know you’re scared. I am too.”
He went to hold her. “Are you worried about us?” he murmured into her ear. She was shaking in his arms, like she did sometimes after the longest days. He smoothed her hair away from her face, kissed her forehead, and held her tighter.
“No. We’ll always be together.”
“All right, then. Let’s talk it out.”
He couldn’t imagine loving her any less, or any more.
Chapter Twelve
Paul tweaked a setting in his laptop’s CAD program to lengthen the east wall of the building, then duplicated a doorframe. This would have been an easy assignment if he hadn’t been so obsessed with checking the real-world coffee shop door every few minutes. On the other hand, maybe they’d call him first...
They were adventurous and open-minded. Did that mean they’d be seen in public with him, knowing what he did? A surge of panicked shame rose up inside him for the first time in years. I could stop.
No, he really couldn’t. The money came in, the money went out. The only way he could keep up the flow was going into more dangerous, more morally problematic lines of work. Although he might still be just young enough to find a rich older man, if he threw everything he had into the search.
Every other recourse took him further away from Jay and Adriana.
All he could do was wait and try not to think about the wreckage of the past or the labyrinth of the future. Jay and Adriana made him think that way, in ridiculously big symbols. But then, he’d always had that tendency. Bodies and buildings were ancient metaphors for each other. Creating space. Intimate exploration. He tightened his fist around the phone. Ring, damn it.
They didn’t call...
They walked in, and God, it was perfect.
Jay c
ame first and held the door for Adriana. They were both dressed up, Jay in a purple plaid flannel shirt and maroon sweater vest that made him look like he’d stepped out of the pages of some children’s book drawn by a mad genius artist, Adriana in a black tank dress with a blue scarf and dark red lipstick, her glossy hair loose and blown back. Paul thought of flower arrangements briefly, but looking at them, the way they moved together, toward him, pretty much made abstract aesthetics irrelevant.
“You’re here,” he said, not playing it cool. Not playing at all.
“Yeah.” Jay sat down at Paul’s table, along with Adriana. Three chairs taken, filled. “We’ll give it a try. If things don’t work out we can still be friends, maybe.” Jay was smiling and leaning toward him, but there was a hint of reserve in his voice.
Warning taken. “Sure,” Paul said. “I’m not the jealous stalker type.” He put his hand over his heart and smiled back at Jay. “I promise.”
Jay’s eyes widened, the arcs of his eyebrows subtly changing shape. This was a different place than the first time they’d met, but the sense of victory was exactly the same and exactly as stimulating. I’ve got you.
“I guess we’ll find out who you are,” Adriana said, and she was smiling too.
He wanted to touch her, and then look at Jay, and hold their hands, and a million other things most of which weren’t appropriate for the time or the place, but just sitting here next to them was good, too. “Well, first things first,” Paul said, “if we’re on for dinner, I’m a vegetarian—”
“Yes!” Jay shouted as he pumped his fists.
“Oh fuck,” Adriana said, and rolled her eyes.
Jay’s animation was delightful. “That’s the one thing we had a problem with when we started living together. She still makes fun of my fake butter and my fake chorizo—”
“It’s just soy paste and food dye.” Adriana’s voice was indignant; her expression was fond.
