Bend

by K. Bromberg

  “I’m sorry I was talking to Mister Drazen in the hall,” I said. “I used to work for him.”

  “I know.”

  “How often does he come around here?”

  “He and Sam have been close since they went to Stanford together, so… once a week? Should I arrange for him to be here more often?”

  My cheeks got hot. To Debbie, who read people like neon street signs, the blushing was visible even in the dim lights. I glanced at him across the bar. He was looking at Debbie and me. He lifted his rocks glass, a bunch of melting ice in the bottom. Sam had gone to take care of some late-night hotel business, and Jonathan was alone.

  “Perfect,” Debbie said to me. “You will bring him his refill.” She hailed the bartender, a buffed out model who worked his body more than his mind. “Robert, give Mister Drazen’s drink to Monica.”

  “Debbie, really,” I said.

  “Why?” asked Robert, pouring a glass of single malt from a shelf so high I would have needed a cherry picker to reach it. “I’m not pretty enough?”

  “You’re plenty pretty,” Debbie said. “Now do it.” She put her hand on my forearm and spoke quietly. “You need more practice dealing with his social class. For you, as a person. Getting used to it will only benefit you. Now go.”

  Being mothered was nice, I guess. My mother had been more or less absent since I went to high school, which was about when she and Dad moved to Castaic. I never felt abandoned, but I could have used a hand with the day to day bullshit.

  Drazen watched me come around the bar with his scotch. I wondered if he knew that made me uncomfortable or if he even gave it a thought. I wondered if the difference in our relative positions bothered him or turned him on. He was a bazillionaire and a customer. I was a waitress with two nickels making heat. This had to be a turn on.

  “Thanks,” he said when I placed the napkin and drink on the bar, a job Robert could have done in half the time.

  “You’re welcome.”

  We looked at each other for a second or ten. I had nothing to add to the conversation, but his magnetic pull made words irrelevant. I was stepping away to leave when he said, “I meant it, about seeing a game.”

  “I meant it about the bleachers.”

  “I like to get to know someone before they drag me out past centerfield.” He clinked his ice against the sides of his glass. “The company has to be pretty engaging that far from the plate.”

  I wanted to mention the stunning color of his eyes. I wanted to touch his hand as it rested on the edges of the bar. Instead I said, “Your fellow fans keep you on your toes, especially if you wear red.”

  “Can I see you after work?”

  The clattering noise in my chest must have been audible. It wasn’t that I hadn’t been asked out or the object of a proposition in the last year and a half; all of the men who wanted me were simply too easy to politely reject. If I had a brain in my head, I would reject Jonathan Drazen right out of hand. Politely.

  “Maybe,” I said. “Company’s got to be pretty engaging at two thirty in the morning.”

  Sam showed up, and since I didn’t want to be seen talking up my ex-boss, I walked away without confirming that he’d feel engaging at that ungodly hour.

  seven

  I spent the next hour and a half talking myself out of meeting with Jonathan after work, if he even showed. He was going to be a distraction, I could tell. I couldn’t be in the same room with him without feeling like I needed to touch him.

  I thought about Kevin. A fine specimen of a man, he’d had much the same effect on me as Jonathan Drazen, complete with fluttery stomach and tingling cheeks.

  I’d been with Darren over six years when he admitted to kissing Dana Fasano. We were in the process of either breaking up or getting married. I went to a party downtown with a friend whose name eluded me right then, and there he was. Kevin was talking to some girl in the corner, and when he glanced over her head, his eyes found mine like he was looking for them. I froze in place. He had brown eyes and thick black lashes, and when we saw each other, the distance between us became a plucked cello string, vibrating, making a beautiful sound.

  I didn’t see him again for another half an hour, yet I had felt him circling me, tethered, even when we talked to different people. Finally, in the crowded kitchen, he was behind me, and I knew it because I could feel him before I even saw him reach over me to slide a beer from the sink.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Hi.”

  He held the beer bottle toward me, his hands slick on the glass, cold water pooling in the crevice between his skin and the bottle. “Is the opener over there?”

  I took the bottle from him, overreaching, as I’d done with Drazen, so I could touch his cool, wet hand. Then I put the bottle cap on the metal edge of the counter and pulled down swiftly. The cap bent and popped off, clinking to the floor. I held up the bottle for him. “Here you go.”

  “Thanks.” He considered the bottle, then me. “See that girl over there?” He pointed at a girl about my age with short, dark hair and striped leggings.

  “Yeah.”

  “In twenty seconds, she’s going to come over here and ask what I’m working on for my show. I don’t want to tell her.”

  “So don’t.”

  As if on cue, the girl saw Kevin and walked over. It was the first time I experienced him as a charmed person, and it would not be the last.

  “It would be better if she didn’t ask. My paintings are secret before a show. If I tell her, she’ll own them. Her soul will own them. I can’t explain it.” The kitchen was crowded, slowing the striped leggings’ progress and pushing us together, forcing us to whisper.

  “I get it,” I said. I would have gotten anything he said at that point. I would have claimed to understand quantum mechanics if he explained it to me. “They aren’t born yet,” I continued. “If she sees them while they’re being made, she knows them as children. Their insides.”

  “My God, you get me.”

  I had no snappy reply. I wanted to get him. I wanted to get everything he said from now on. He touched my chin. “If I kiss you, she’ll turn around and go away.”

  In retrospect, that was the lamest come-on imaginable from him. He’d done much better in the year following. But at the party, the word “kiss” breathed from his beautiful lips, was all I needed. I put my hand on his shoulder, and he slipped one around my waist. Our lips met, and I held back a groan of pleasure. I’d only ever been with Darren, and I loved him. I would always love him, but kissing that man, like that, with his taste of malt and chocolate, uncovered physical sensations I didn’t know could come from a kiss. I felt every pore of his tongue, every turn of his lips. The world shut off and my identity became a glow of sexual desire.

  I went home barely able to walk from wanting him and completed my breakup with Darren the next day. If desire was supposed to feel like that, I needed more of it. I felt awake, alive, not just sexy, but sexual. Thoughts of him infected me until I saw him again and we tumbled into bed, screwing like wild animals.

  When I finally walked away from him, weeping, I realized I’d let my sexuality control and manipulate me through him. He took my music and crushed it under the weight of his own talent. He ignored what I created, dismissing it, degenerating it, so that within three months, I couldn’t sing a word and any instrument I picked up became a bludgeon. I’d never felt so creatively dead and so sexually alive.

  When I got the strength to walk away from him, I vowed never again.

  eight

  I snapped my locker closed, thinking about those Dodger seats on the first base line. A corporation gets a skybox. A real fan gets tickets at field level, luxuries be damned. I’d never seen a game from that angle.

  Debbie came into the locker room, buzzing with talk and flirting and locker doors banging, and handed out our tip envelopes. “A good night for everyone,” she said, then got close to me. “Someone is waiting for you at the front exit. If you want to avoid him
, go through the parking lot, but be nice. He’s a friend of the hotel.”

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Quickly, I have to count out.”

  “How many drinks did he have?” I asked as quietly as I could.

  Debbie smiled as if I’d asked the exact right question. “Two. He nurses like a baby.”

  “I know you don’t know me that well yet, but… would going out the front be a mistake?”

  “Only if you take it too seriously.”

  “Thanks.”

  Debbie walked off to hand out the rest of the envelopes. What she said had been a relief, actually. It made the boundaries that much clearer. I could hang out, be close to him and feel the buzz of sex between us, but I had to be careful about climbing into bed with him. Fair warning.

  nine

  Jonathan stood in the lobby, talking to Sam, laughing like an old buddy. I wasn’t going to approach him with my boss right there. Sam seemed like a fine guy for the fifteen minutes we’d talked. With his white hair and slim build, he looked like a newscaster and had an all-business attitude. I just pushed through the revolving doors, figuring fate had lent a hand in deciding whether or not I’d see Drazen outside a rooftop bar.

  I was three steps into the hot night when I heard him call my name.

  “You stalking me?” I asked, slowing my steps to the parking lot.

  “Just wanted company to walk to my car.”

  We strolled down Flower Street, the long way to the underground parking lot. Any normal person would have gone through the hotel.

  “How do you know Sam?” I asked.

  “He introduced me to my ex-wife, which I’m trying not to hold against him.”

  “You’re a good sport,” I said. “Have you always been blue?”

  He tilted his head a few degrees.

  “Dodger fan,” I said. “I would’ve taken you for more of an Angels guy.”

  “Ah. Because I have money?”

  “Kind of.”

  “I like a little grit,” he said, that smile lighting up the night.

  “Is that why you met me after work?” I asked, turning toward the parking lot entrance.

  “Kind of.”

  He let me go first into the underground passage, and I felt his eyes on me as I walked. It was not an uncomfortable feeling. When we got to the bottom of the ramp, we stopped. I parked in the employee level and his car was in the valet section. I held up my hand to wave good-bye.

  “It was nice to talk to you,” I said.

  “You too.”

  We faced each other, walking backward in opposite directions.

  “See you around,” I said.

  “Okay.” He waved, tall and beautiful in the flat light and grey parking lot.

  “Take care.”

  “What do I have to say?”

  “You have to say please,” I said.

  “Please.”

  “Where do you think you’re taking me?”

  “Come on. Text a friend and tell them who you’re with in case I’m a psycho killer.”

  ten

  The early hour guaranteed a traffic-free trip to the west side. I’d gotten into his Mercedes convertible thinking most killers don’t drive with the top down where everyone could see, so I just let the wind whip my hair into a bird’s nest. Jonathan drove with one hand, and as I watched his fingers move and slide on the bottom of the wheel, the hair on the back of it, the strong wrist, I imagined it on me. I grabbed the leather seat, trying to keep my mind on something, anything else, but the leather itself seemed to rub the backs of my thighs the wrong way. “So, you pick up waitresses a lot?”

  He smirked and glanced over to me. The wind was doing crazy shit to his hair as well, but it made him look sexy, and I was sure I looked like Medusa. “Only the very attractive ones.”

  “I guess I should take that as a compliment.”

  “You definitely should.”

  “I’m not sleeping with you.”

  “You mentioned that.”

  So maybe the rumors were true, and he was a total womanizer. Well, I’d already told him sex was off the table, so he could womanize all he wanted. Didn’t matter to me at all. I was driven by curiosity. Who was this guy? What was it like to be him? Not that it mattered, I told myself, because again, I had no time for a heartbreak.

  “What’s your instrument, Monica? You said you were a musician.”

  “My voice, mostly,” I said. “But I play everything. I play piano, guitar, viola. I learned to play the Theremin last year.”

  “What is that?”

  “Oh, it’s beautiful. You actually don’t touch it to play it. There’s an electrical signal between two antennae, and you move your hands between them to create a sound. It’s just the most haunting thing you ever heard.”

  “You play it without touching it?”

  “Yeah, you just move your hands inside it. Like a dance.”

  “This, I have to see.”

  When he tipped his head toward me, I thought, oh no. He wants me to play it for him. Never gonna happen. For some reason, the idea of this guy seeing me sing or play made me feel vulnerable, and I wasn’t in for that at all. “You can watch people play it on YouTube.”

  “True. But I want to watch you do it.”

  I didn’t know where we were going, so I didn’t know how much of a drive we were in for. I wanted to get off the subject of me before I told him something that gave him a hold over me. I had to remember he was my new boss’s friend, and I really liked working at the Stock.

  “What do you do besides own hotels and pick up very attractive waitresses?”

  “I own lots of things, and they all need attention.”

  He pulled the car to the side of the road. We were on the twistiest part of Mulholland, the part that looked like a desolate park instead of the most expensive real estate in Los Angeles County. A short guardrail stood between the car and a nearly sheer drop down to the valley and its twinkling Saturday night lights.

  “Let’s go take a look,” he said, pulling the emergency brake.

  I got out, thankful for the opportunity to uncross my legs, and slammed the door behind me. I walked toward the edge overlooking the city. My heels kept hitting little rocky ditches, but I played it off. They were comfortable, but they weren’t hiking boots. I stood close to the guardrail, leaning against it with my knees. I felt him behind me, closing his door and jingling his keys. I’d been to places like that before. There were thousands of them all over the city, which was surrounded by hills and mountains. Way back when, before I’d even kissed Darren, I’d been up to a similar place to squirm around the back of Peter Dunbar’s Nissan. And after the prom, I’d come up to drink too much and make love to Darren behind a tree.

  “Do you live up here?” I asked.

  “I live in Griffith Park.” He stepped behind me. “Those bright lights are Universal City. To the right, that black part is the Hollywood reservoir.” I could feel his breath on the back of my neck. “Toluca Lake is to the left.” He put his hands on my neck, where every nerve ending in my body was now located, following his touch as he stroked me, like the little magnet shavings under plastic I’d played with as a kid. When the pen moved, the shavings moved, and I arched my neck to feel more of him. “The rest,” he said, “is hell on Earth. Not recommended.”

  He kissed me at the base of my neck. His lips were full and soft. His tongue traced a line across my shoulder. I gasped. I had not a single word to say, even when I felt his erection against my back and his hands moved across my stomach, feeling me through my clothes. God, I hadn’t been touched like that in so long. When did I decide men were too much trouble? A year and a half since I shed Kevin like a too-warm coat? I couldn’t even say. Drazen’s lips were more than lips; they were the physical memory of myself before I shut out sex to pursue music.

  I twisted, my lips searching for his, my mouth open for him as his was for me. We met there, tongues twisting together, his chest to my bac
k, his hands moving up my shirt, teasing my nipples.

  I moaned and turned to face him. He pushed me against the car. The hardness between his legs felt enormous on my thigh. He moved his hand down and pushed my legs open, gripping tight enough to press my jeans against my skin. He looked down at me, and the intensity of the lust in his eyes was nearly intimidating, but I was way past sense. Miles. The thought of saying, “No, stop, I need sleep so I’m fresh for rehearsals tomorrow,” didn’t even occur to me. He pushed his hips between my legs and kissed me again. I was hungry for him. A white hot ball of heat grew beneath my hips. We kept kissing and grinding, hands everywhere. I pinched his nipple through his shirt and he gasped, biting my neck. I hated my clothes. I hated every layer of fabric between myself and his cock. I wanted to feel skin sweating above mine, his dick rigid and hot, his hands at my breasts. I wanted those hard, dry thrusts to be real, slick, sliding inside me.

  The siren blast split my ears. I almost choked on my own spit. Jonathan looked over at the police car and the tension in his neck was the last thing I saw before the light got too bright to see anything. I lowered my legs, and when he got off me, he held his hand out to help me off the hood.

  “Good morning,” came a male voice from behind the driver’s side light. The passenger door opened, and a female cop got out.

  “Good morning,” Jonathan and I answered like two kids greeting their third grade teacher. He wove his fingers in mine. The female cop shone her flashlight in my face. I flinched.

  “You okay, miss?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Can you step away from the gentleman, please? Come toward me.”

  I did, hands out so she knew I wasn’t reaching for anything. The cop pulled me out of earshot.

  “Do you know this guy?” she asked, shining a little light into my pupils to see if I was on anything stronger than pheromones.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you here of your own free will?”

  “Yes.”

  “That was pretty hot.” She snapped her little light down. “Next time, get a room, okay?”