Man of the House

by Abigail Graham

  “Good. The things worth doing are always hard.”

  “Why is it good that they’re hard?”

  “I don’t know, hon. Look, it can’t be that hard. Mrs. Robinson says you’re getting top marks in math.” Carrie looks at the carpet and toys with her pencil in hand. “What is it?”

  She clears her throat. “Cassidy made fun of me.”

  “What?”

  I step in and crouch next to her. “Why?”

  “I’m good at math and stuff. She said--” Carrie starts, but stops.

  “She said what?”

  “She said girls aren’t good at--”

  “Stop right there,” I tell her. “I don’t want to hear that. It’s bad enough you have to hear that crap from boys. You shouldn’t have to hear it from girls, too.” Carrie looks up and meets my eyes. “All your life, people are going to tell you that you can’t do this or that because you’re a girl, and you’re going to have to prove them wrong.”

  “You mean like you?”

  “Yeah.” I sigh. “Like me.”

  “Cassidy said something else.”

  “What?”

  Carrie looks at her feet as she swings them under her desk chair. She’s still wearing her school shoes, sneakers that light up when her heel hits the ground.

  “She said you’re a bull dyke. Her daddy says so.”

  I nod, and through some miracle keep my calm, happy mom-face on and smile at her. “I’ve heard that before, honey. It just rolls off my back. Don’t let them get to you, or they won’t stop.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “It’s just a mean thing men say about women who are too strong for them, that’s all.”

  “Why?”

  I let out a long, angry sigh. “I wish I knew. Finish up, huh? How much do you have?” She holds up her homework papers. “Not much at all. Let me get cleaned up and we’ll eat and watch something, all right?”

  Carrie nods and turns back to her work with a huff.

  I walk into my bedroom. I remove my sidearm from my duty belt, clear it, and lock it in a fingerprint-coded safe bolted down in my closet. I remove my duty belt, regular belt, and then strip off my uniform. I hang my cumbersome anti-stab vest on the rack I’ve screwed into the back wall of the closet, then pull on a loose tank top and shorts.

  I walk down to my garage, step inside, and lock Carrie out.

  I then proceed to beat the shit out of my punching bags. I throw myself at the heavy bag with punches and kicks until I’m covered in sweat from head to toe, then work on the speed bag, pummeling it until I’m exhausted, my arms drooping.

  Then I jog upstairs and lock myself in the bathroom.

  Carrie is so intent on her homework, she didn’t notice me. I start the shower and then change my mind, filling the tub with water so hot that it steams. When it’s half-full, I slip inside and let it rise around me, the heat soaking into my aching muscles.

  I spent most of the day sitting on the side of the road outside town, running the speed trap. We don’t talk about this openly, but I’m expected to get five or six good tickets. Most of the time, it’s mind numbing.

  No one listens to me, but I’m honestly sick of sitting there handing out chicken shit fines to people going ten over because the driving handbook says a two lane road with hard shoulders is a 50 mph zone, but it drops to thirty-five in town. The mayor refuses to have the bushes that hide the speed limit sign trimmed back.

  The reason why is pretty obvious. It’s my job to give out the tickets.

  I just want to forget about that, but apparently the tickets are following me home now.

  Alexander Wright. Football god. It only makes it worse that my daughter adores him. Why can’t she adore a scientist or a politician or a poet laureate or something? Why him? I’d gladly buy her all the Marie Curie action figures she could stack on her desk.

  I can’t get the image out him out of my head. He’s so… big.

  I mean, tall. Huge. Very thick. I mean muscular. He’s a large man. I swear his arms are as big around as my whole body, and I have to walk around in stacked heel boots to reach his chest with the very top of my head. Tall men have always bothered me. My father was tall.

  At least, the poster Carrie has is age appropriate. It’s just him in his football pads with a sappy grin on his face, like a trading card scaled up. I was nervous about her having a picture of a man on her wall, but she still seems innocent of that. I wonder what he’d think if he knew that his picture was next to Princess Sparkle Twilight or whatever that My Little Pony thing is.

  That puts a smile on my face. There are, ah, other pictures of him, though.

  He must have a good trainer. When I picture a linebacker, I picture a guy with a gut hanging over the top of whatever you call those football pants, but Alexander Wright is a different sort of animal. He’s solid muscle from head to toe, and damn me, even when I was very angrily writing his citation, I was picturing him with his shirt off.

  After I had the honor of writing him up for a gross traffic violation, Howard, the other cop on my shift, bought a giant beefcake poster of Alexander and hung it in the locker room.

  The Sylvester Police Department’s locker room is basically unisex. I lock the boys out when I need to use it. I’m the only woman on the force, and let’s face it, the force is the three guys and the chief, Bill Ames… and me.

  God, I need a hot bath. I let it drain a bit and turn the water on to get more heat soaking into my body. Carrie is probably totally engrossed in her homework. So this is my mommy time. I take it where I can find it.

  When I close my eyes, I can see that beefcake poster, but now I’ve seen the real thing, so I can picture him breathing, moving, turning his head to look at me.

  I’m not a robot. He’s hot.

  He doesn’t have that squashed face a lot of footballers have, either. Less Incredible Hulk and more suave seducer with full lips, a strong chin, and large piercing eyes, a slate gray color.

  Deep down, I admit I felt a little something when he propositioned me, a little flutter in my stomach. He’s so big, and it’s been a long time since anyone has looked at me in that way. I can’t tell if he was just saying it to get a rise out of me or actually hitting on me. Even the ambiguity is more than I get around here. Everyone in town just treats me like the Butch Lady Cop.

  It must be the vest I have to wear. I’m not generously endowed, but it leaves me completely flat. I’m not that bad looking, am I?

  In the mirror, I see a woman pushing thirty with dark circles around her eyes from lack of sleep, a sour resting bitchface, stringy unkempt ginger hair, and outrageous freckles.

  It would be nice to be looked at by a man the way women look at Alexander Wright. Half the women in the courtroom were eye fucking him, and he didn’t even seem to notice. Then again, half of that half were meth heads there on some summons. Probably beneath his notice.

  He did keep looking at me, though.

  The fantasy creeps up on me almost before I realize it.

  The locker room is all mine, the boys are locked out so I can change. I turn around, and it’s not a beefcake poster that someone bought at Spencer’s Gifts anymore. It’s the real deal standing in all his throbbing, manly glory. Acres of muscle flexing and bunching as he moves, shining with a coating of sweat clinging to his skin in big droplets, begging to be licked off.

  I press against the lockers, feeling the cold metal against my bare back. Only then do I realize I’m topless, stripped to the waist. As he towers over me, his gaze meets mine, and I can feel him thinking about looking lower, raking my half naked body with his eyes. It sends a shiver down my legs and a hot flush rising between my thighs, and I move to fold my arms and cover myself.

  He stops me and looks down, drinking in the sight of my body as he presses my hands to the lockers. His breath is hot on my cheeks.

  “I was wondering what you were hiding under that uniform.”

  “Nothing much,” I choke out. My throat ha
s gone dry.

  He leans toward me, his body arched hungrily, heavy muscles still slick with sweat. “I don’t think so. I like what I see.”

  “W-what’s that?”

  “Mmmm. You’ve got nice lips. I’d like to see them wrapped around my cock.”

  Back in the real world, I slip my hand between my legs and a finger inside my body. I shiver at the sensation. My mommy time has been sparse lately.

  “Like I would,” I tell him in my fantasy.

  “I bet you would. One look and you’ll be begging to suck my cock. ‘Oh please, sir, let me swallow your load.’”

  I shudder as my finger works inside me. I have to keep quiet, can’t let myself be overheard. I press my lips tightly shut…

  …And imagine Alexander Wright pushing his skintight pants down. I knew he was packing a monster down there from the outline, but when his cock bursts free, I gasp at the size and jerk to grab hold, but his hands keep mine pinned to the lockers.

  “You like it when the man takes charge, don’t you? Must be hard on you, having the weight of the world on your shoulders all the time, isn’t it?”

  I look down and keep staring at his enormous member. It’s as big as the rest of him, and the sight digs a hollowness in my body, a void that needs filling. I can feel my uniform sticking to my body.

  In my fantasy, I skip panties under my uniform.

  One of his huge hands holds both my wrists, freeing the other.

  Alexander’s finger taps my chin, then trails down my throat, between my breasts. My nipples start to ache, and I twist, trying to brush my breasts against his finger, but he teases me, moving it so it’s always in the very middle. Then he runs it along my ribs, and I burst out in giggles.

  “Oh, the badass cop lady is ticklish,” he chides me.

  “A little.”

  “I wonder what happens if I tickle this.”

  In real life, my duty belt is too tight for it to work, but he shoves his hand down my pants and his palm rubs my clit. My whole body jerks and my mouth falls open. His finger slowly pushes inside me.

  In the tub, my second finger enters my body, and I rub my clit faster, pretending my two fingers are one of his.

  I jerk against the lockers and ride his hand. “You want more than a finger, don’t you?”

  I nod, my jaw too stiff to speak. I have to stop from moaning, I have to stop from moaning…

  He leans in, his finger still buried deeply in my body, his palm grinding against my throbbing, needy clit. “You want my cock. Say it.”

  “I want your cock,” I repeat in a harsh whisper.

  “Louder.”

  “I can’t, someone will hear.”

  “Louder.”

  “Please, I can’t, just fuck me.”

  “I’ll fuck you ‘til you scream on one condition. You swallow it.”

  “Yes, anything--”

  He grabs me and spins me around hard, pushes me against the lockers, and rips my uniform trousers right down the seam on the seat. I thrust my body out and I feel his great big throbbing cock--

  “MOM! I’M HUNGRY!”

  Oh, damn it to hell. I drag my aching, shuddering, totally unsatisfied body out of the now tepid tub and sit on the edge. “Can you throw something in the microwave?”

  “I don’t wanna. I want food!”

  Shivering, I wrap myself in a towel and pull on my robe. Ugh, my legs are shaking and I feel worse now than I did when I got in the tub.

  You know what? I’ll take that. I can do better than fantasizing about some meathead douchebag with a god complex. I could fantasize about…

  I’m bad at this.

  “Mom!”

  “Okay, honey,” I shout in my mom voice. “I’ll be right there.”

  Carrie is placated when she sees me put on a skillet of hamburger. Tonight’s magnificent board of fare will be a Cheesy Beef, her favorite. As I stand over the browning beef in my bathrobe, I can’t help but smile at her. My daughter, so smart and beautiful and perfect. The light of my life.

  My ring feels heavy on my hand where it digs into my left finger. Every time I look at it, I remember she’ll never know him. To Carrie, her father isn’t even a memory.

  I see some of him in her every day. His ears, his eyes, his jawline. She looks more like him than me, as much as my mother insists otherwise. I walk over and pat her head.

  “What’s the matter, Mom?”

  “Nothing, honey. Call me if the Cheesy Beef bursts into flame. I need to put on my jammy jams.”

  “Mom,” she moans. Apparently, she’s too old for words like jammy jams to be uttered in her presence. I smile and ruffle her soft blond hair and trudge upstairs. I know I’ve arrived in this world when the height of my pleasure is putting on a long, oversized T-shirt and a pair of cotton shorts.

  The beef is ready by the time I get downstairs. I drain it, mix up the rest of the boxed ingredients, and put a lid on it. Carrie likes to stir it, and I’m more than happy to let her. I sink into our couch next to where she sits and let my head drift back into it. I’m too sleepy to be hungry.

  Carrie turns off the cartoon she was watching and starts flipping channels. She stops on Alexander Wright.

  “Remote,” I demand, holding out my hand.

  “Mom,” she protests.

  “Remote,” I growl, but amiably.

  The announcer starts to say something. I don’t get the context but they’re talking about this legal troubles here. The voiceover is accompanied by Alexander at some function with a long legged, strutting model in an evening gown that’s more of a nightgown, if you ask me. I flip the channel quickly, surfing until I land on CNN.

  Carrie watches excitedly, even if most of the politics stuff flies over her head. I spoon up the food and we clean out the skillet a plate at a time, Carrie sitting cross-legged next to me on the couch.

  When she’s full, and too full for ice cream, she yawns and her head ends up leaning against me. I gently nudge her to wake her and start asking her questions about what we’re watching. If I let her zonk out at eight at night, she’ll be awake at three in the morning.

  When it’s almost ten, I have to push her upstairs to her bedroom. She crawls into bed, and I fight the urge to let her stay up a little longer like she wants, forcing myself to surrender a bit more of a day with my child that will never come again.

  Once she’s tucked in and the light is out, I pull her door half shut and flop onto my bed. I’m fortunate enough to pull day shift at work. Bill loves to remind me that if they fire me they don’t meet the quota, so I get what he calls preferential treatment. I can get up with Carrie unless I’m called to cover a shift.

  Okay, I need to clock out of reality. I grab my e-reader and open a book. I’m halfway through a Vanessa Waltz novel, Dirty Prince. The premise is a little odd, but it’s a really fun book and it gets my motor revved up.

  As soon as I try to take care of things, the prince in the book morphs into Alexander, and I set it aside for a moment, then keep reading it for the plot.

  I end up waking to my alarm with the e-reader lying on my chest and drool on my cheek. At least I remembered to set it. I guess I should be happy I didn’t dream about my jackass neighbor.

  I’m dressed and geared up before Carrie is awake. After I rouse her from sleep, she plods down the stairs, yawning and droopy until she gets some Pop Tart and milk in her. By the time she climbs into the Tahoe to ride to school, she’s wide awake and chattering excitedly about the school day.

  I give her a pat on the head and send her off, then drive to work. When I arrive, Bill is the only one in the station. “Once more into the breach,” he says, looking up from his newspaper.

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “Good job on the tickets yesterday. Keep it up.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “You’re a superstar now.”

  “What?”

  “Look.” He holds out the newspaper. I walk over and my jaw drops.

  What am I doi
ng on the front page?

  He’s not reading the Sylvester Register, our weekly small-town mostly-a-joke newspaper. It’s freaking USA Today. My picture is on the front page next to Alexander’s.

  “What’s this?” I ask.

  “Story about you busting Broadside.” I shudder at that stupid nickname. Broadside. Because Corsairs are pirate ships and pirate ships have cannons.

  It’s not funny if you have to explain it.

  “Yeah, what about it?”

  “Nothing negative,” he says, in a sarcastic tone. “It really shows off your investigative prowess. The FBI will be knocking down your door in no time at all, I’m sure. When do you finish your degree again?”

  “I’m working on it.”

  Taking a class here and there has not exactly sped me toward my criminal justice degree. I frown when I think about it. I need to schedule the upcoming semester and it’s going to be hard. They want me to take a morning class on Saturday. That means day care for Carrie. I can’t send her off to my sister like I do for emergencies, not every week for eight weeks. I can afford it but…

  I only get so much time. As I tie my hair back tightly, Bill looks up.

  “On a serious note, doll face. No interviews, got it?”

  “Yeah. No comment, yada yada. Our counsel will respond to any inquiries.”

  He snorts. “Our counsel. Like we can afford a counsel. We can’t afford a new coffee pot. I hope you did everything by the book. We’re up shit creek if Broadside decides to sue us.”

  “Can we stop using his affectionate nickname? It’s getting irritating.”

  Bill snorts. “Whatever.”

  At least he didn’t call me doll face again. I have to tolerate all these people treating me like a joke if I want to keep my job. I really need to get that degree. Once I have that plus four years’ experience at the department here, I can apply for a better one.

  I shake all that out of my head and get set up.

  Setting up consists of the same daily routine. I drive to the spot half a mile past the speed limit sign, back into a well-worn patch of grass, set up the radar gun, open up the computer, and sit there.

  And sit there.

  And sit there.