Bend

by K. Bromberg

  I whispered, “I’ve got you, under my skin.” Then I groaned the rest of the lyrics like I was in heat. No. But yes. It was a good song. It was missing how I really felt: frustrated and angry. So I belted out the last line of the chorus without Sinatra’s little snappy croon, but a longing, accusatory howl.

  “Hang on,” Gabby said. She took a second to find the melody, and I sang the chorus the way I wanted it played.

  “Wow, that’s not how Sinatra did it,” she said.

  “Play it loungey, like we’re seducing someone.” I tapped her a slower rhythm, and she caught onto it. “Right, Gabs. That’s it.”

  I stood up and took the rest of the song, owning it, singing as if the intrusion was unacceptable, as if insects crawled inside me, because I didn’t want anyone under my skin. I wanted to be left alone to do my work.

  Having the guys here to record it so I could hear it would have been nice, but I could tell I was onto something. The back room at Frontage was small, so I needed less rage and more discomfort. More sadness. More disappointment in myself for letting it happen, and begging the pain away. If I could nail that, I might actually enjoy singing a few standards at a restaurant. Or I might get fired for changing them. No way to know.

  I did it again, from the top. The first time I sang the word, “skin,” I felt Jonathan’s hands on me and didn’t resist the pleasure and warmth. I sang right through it, and when Gabby accompanied, she put her own sadness into it. I felt it. It was my song now.

  My phone rang: Darren.

  “Where the hell are you?”

  “Harry just called me. His mother is sick in Arizona. He’s out. For good.”

  I would have said something like, so no bassist, no band, but Gabby would have heard, and she wasn’t ready for any kind of upset.

  “And you’re not here because?”

  He sighed. “I got held up at work. I’ll be there in twenty. Tomorrow night, I have a favor to ask.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I have a date. Can you get her home after your gig and make sure she takes her meds?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Thanks, Mon.”

  “Go get laid.”

  I clicked the phone off and used the rest of the time to work on our performance.

  fifteen

  Thursday afternoon shift at the Stock was slow by Saturday night standards. I earned less money, but the atmosphere was more relaxed. There was always a minute to chill with Debbie at the service bar. I liked her more and more all the time. I tried to keep it light and hold my energy up. Just because this gig tonight wasn’t my own songwriting, I still wanted to do a good job. But after Darren’s call and the sputtering dissolution of the band, I lost the mojo, and I just sounded like Sinatra on barbiturates. I had no idea how to get that heat back.

  Debbie got off her phone as I slid table ten’s ticket across the bar. Robert snapped it up and poured my rounds.

  “I think he likes you,” Debbie said, indicating Robert. He was hot in his black T-shirt and Celtic tattoos.

  “Not my type.”

  “What is your type?”

  I shrugged. “Nonexistent.”

  “Okay, well, finish with this table and go on your break. Could you go down to Sam’s office and make a copy of next week’s schedule?” She handed me a slip of paper with the calendar. The waitstaff hung around waiting for it every week as our station placement and hours determined not only how much money we’d make over the next seven days, but our social and family plans as well. And here she was giving it to me two hours early. She smiled and patted my arm before walking off to greet three men in suits.

  I went to the bathroom and freshened up, then headed for Sam’s office.

  It wasn’t a warm, fabulously decorated place like Jonathan’s at K. It was totally utilitarian, with a linoleum floor and metal filing cabinets. The copy machine was in there, and I put the schedule on the glass without turning the lights on. The windows gave enough afternoon light.

  The energy saver was on, meaning the copier was ice cold. I tapped start and waited. Lord knew how long it would take. I stretched my neck and hummed, then whispered, the lyrics to Under My Skin.

  I gasped when I smelled his dry scent. When I turned, Jonathan stood in the doorway with his arms crossed. That was the first time I’d seen him in daylight, and the sunlight made him look more human, more substantial, more present, and more gorgeous, if that was even possible.

  “Jonathan.”

  “Hi.”

  I realized the deal with the schedule copying just then. “Debbie sent me up here.”

  “You didn’t know she was a yenta?”

  “You’re very persistent.”

  “I just kept telling myself I didn’t want you, but we said no lies, and I think that includes lying to myself. How about you?”

  I didn’t know what to say. I had shut out thoughts of him for almost a week. I thought about baseball, chord progressions, and getting a new manager whenever he came into my mind. So having him in front of me was like opening a closet door and having all the stuff come tumbling out.

  I took a step forward, and he did, too. We were in each other’s arms in a second, mouths attached, tongues twisting. He reached back and closed the door.

  Okay, I was going to get this over with now. Me and him. Right there. Just get it done so I could move on. He thrust me onto the desk and I opened my legs, wrapping them around his waist. He was pushing against me again, like on the hood of the Mercedes, a million years ago.

  He put his hands up my shirt, across my stomach and to my breasts.

  “Yes?” he gasped.

  “Yes,” I whispered. “Yes to everything.”

  “Yes,” he whispered in my ear, then pushed my bra up and cupped my tits, finding my nipples and rubbing them with his thumbs. My hips levitated from the desk, and I made some noise deep in my throat. Damn, he was good. Lots of practice. He knew exactly what to do.

  He looked down at my chest, nipples hardening from his touch and the cool air. “My God, Monica, you are magnificent.”

  I laughed, because being admired like that made me nervous, but he shut me up when he put his mouth on one nipple and his fingers on the other, pressing and twisting. My legs tightened around him, hitching my skirt up to my waist. With only my panties between me and his jeans, he felt harder and more forceful. He pushed against me, and I flowed with him, my hips to his rhythm as I gripped his hair. I’d almost come like that, eons ago, with some guy in freshman year I couldn’t even remember now, and it felt like it might happen again.

  As if reading my mind, he pulled away. His own breathing was heavy as he looked at me, not as if he was undressing me with his eyes, but as if he was making plans for the body in front of him. He moved his hands down my sides and pulled my skirt up, bunching it at the waist. My underwear bottoms, which I hadn’t given a thought to when I’d dressed in the morning, were the only thing between me and the world.

  “Listen,” I started, “I don’t know if Sam would think this is ok.”

  He put his fingertips to my mouth, and I shushed. Let him explain to Sam. Let me get fired. I parted my lips and took two of his fingers in my mouth, sucking them down to the back.

  “Ah, Monica,” was all he said as he pulled them out, slowly, and pushed them back in at the same pace. I cupped my tongue around them and sucked. Not too hard, just enough. I knew I was doing it right when his eyelids closed just a little, and he opened his mouth for something between a gasp and an aah. He rubbed them over my bottom lip, curling it back, then put them back in my mouth. I took them eagerly, tasting his skin, feeling his warm breath on my face.

  He slid his fingers out and stepped back, taking his crotch away from mine. I suddenly felt exposed and started to close my legs, but he pressed them apart. I reached for his buckle, but he pulled away.

  “I want to touch you,” I said.

  “Not yet.”

  “I’m going crazy.”

  “No, you’re no
t. Not enough.”

  With that, he moved the crotch of my panties to the side and put the finger he’d just removed from my mouth onto my wet folds. We both gasped. Then he slid two fingers into me. Slowly.

  “Oh, God,” I whispered.

  He slipped them out without a word and put his thumb on the thin strip of cotton covering my clit. Lightly. Barely touching it. Just enough so I knew it was there, and he leaned over to kiss me, flicking his tongue in time with his thumbnail as it gently scratched the fabric of my underwear.

  I thrust my hips forward. His fingers went deep into me, but the thumb wouldn’t press down any harder. It just grazed the cotton as he glided his two fingers in and out.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  “I want you to fuck me.”

  “What’s the magic word?”

  “Now?”

  His fingers worked my body while he bent down to whisper into my ear. “You have three minutes of break left.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “I’m going to spend hours fucking you.”

  My hips pushed against his hand, but he kept control: a light touch of the thumb and a slow grind with the fingers. I was on fire. I thought I had known what that meant, but I didn’t.

  “After your shift.”

  “I have a gig right after. We have to do it now.” He might have considered it for the next three thrusts, but he didn’t give my clit more than a stroke through fabric. I couldn’t decide if that was pleasure or torture.

  “After your gig,” he said. “I have a dinner meeting anyway. Meet me at the hotel tonight. Room 3423.”

  “I have to take care of my roommate.”

  “Figure it out.”

  He pulled his fingers out of me. I felt the loss of them and his tormenting thumb so deeply I moaned. Sitting there, splayed and nearly naked on Sam’s desk, I felt foolish and exposed, not to mention ravenously aroused.

  “Don’t.” I didn’t have anything more to say, except don’t stop there; don’t leave me like this. My eyes must have pleaded with him for some release, because his face, with its parted lips and heavy lids, shone with a lustful satisfaction. He knew I wanted him to fuck me for hours, starting on that desk. “You are despicable,” I said.

  He pulled my skirt down, and when he leaned down to kiss me, I returned it with no little anger on my lips. “Too true. And tonight, you’re mine.”

  “What if I don’t show?”

  “You’ll show.”

  After opening the door as little as possible, as if to protect my destroyed modesty, he was gone.

  sixteen

  I had another three hours to work, and I couldn’t keep my mind on the task at hand: pouring drinks. A moron could do it. First example: Robert. A hunk by any measure, but dumb as a post.

  He slid the tray over the service bar. Each had the requisite alcohol as listed on the order ticket, clockwise from twelve o’clock, where he’d put the ticket. My job was to fill each glass with mixers from the soda gun and juice bin.

  Like I said, a moron could do it. But I stood there, with Debbie next to me checking stuff off the inventory list, and I put soda in a whiskey. I stared at the glass and watched it over flow and why? Because the pain between my legs was uncomfortable and exquisite, and I was counting down the hours before I could get home and release it.

  “Whoa!” Robert shouted, waking me up. “You got soda all over the tray!”

  “I’m sorry!”

  “Monica,” Debbie said, slipping her pen onto the top of the clipboard, “come sit with me.”

  She pulled me over to an empty table by the kitchen door. We tried to keep it clear until the bar got too packed. I pressed my legs together when I sat even though my skirt was long enough. I felt like she could see my arousal.

  Debbie placed her clipboard in front of her and leaned forward. “What’s happening? You took the wrong order to Frazier Upton; you stepped on Jennifer Roberg’s foot. That’s not how we do service here.”

  “Why did you do that, Debbie? Why did you set me up to meet Jonathan upstairs?”

  “I saw you looking at him the other night. I thought it would be a nice surprise.”

  “If you could avoid doing that again, that would be great.”

  “Of course. I’m sorry, I thought I was doing you a favor.”

  “You were. It’s just…” I looked at my hands in my lap. “He’s… I don’t know.” I felt suddenly embarrassed talking about a man’s hold over me with my manager. I should have been mad at her, but in the world I lived in, she had done me a kindness, and it wasn’t like he’d raped me. I’d loved it. I hated it ending when it did. “I just don’t need to be with anyone right now. Or ever. I had this boyfriend, Kevin, a year and a little ago. He wouldn’t let me sing. It was awful, but what I’m trying to say is, I don’t want to be that person again.”

  “Okay.” Debbie sat up straight. She pushed her long, straight hair out of her face with a single, French-manicured finger and got down to business. “I am going to tell you things you need to hear, but don’t want to. Are you okay with that?”

  “Sure.”

  “Jonathan Drazen is not going to stay with you long enough to care what you do with your spare time. He is very attracted to you, that much I can see. But he is in love with one woman, and one woman only.”

  “His ex-wife.”

  Debbie nodded. “When Jessica left, he begged her to stay. She wouldn’t. He broke down at a shareholder meeting. It was ugly. He was humiliated. He’s still humiliated. He won’t put himself in that position again, I promise you. So if you like him, I suggest you enjoy yourself with him. He will treat you very well, and then you’ll go your separate ways. He can be a valuable friend.”

  I nodded. I got it. I felt comforted, in a way, that I could meet him later, have mattress-bending sex, then go home without worrying. I knew I wasn’t getting involved, and if he had the same idea, I was safe.

  Debbie gathered her things and started to stand, but I wasn’t done.

  “Why did she leave?” I asked.

  “Another man,” she said, “and everyone knew it.”

  “Ouch.”

  Debbie nodded. “Ouch is right. It should never happen to any of us.”

  seventeen

  I hated gigs like Frontage. I had to sing songs someone else wrote to people who weren’t there to see me. I had to sing through waiters taking orders and customers being seated. I couldn’t sing too loud or I’d disturb everyone, and I couldn’t improvise at all. Ever. I was background.

  But it was money, if not a lot, and it was practice. It wasn’t as if Vinny had shown up and booked anything fabulous. It wasn’t as if he’d shown up at all in the past two weeks. I simply had nothing else going on.

  We had a dressing room with a smudged mirror and filth on everything. Sometime in the eighties, a tube of lipstick had been jammed into the seam between the two pieces of plywood that made up the counter, and the red goo that was out of reach of a folded paper towel had turned brown and crusty. The carpet stank of beer vomit, and the bathroom had been casually wiped down a few days previous. I felt like a superstar.

  Gabby was already out there, tinkling the piano. She had a jazzy way of rolling her fingers across the keys, creating a melody from nothing, building on it, and landing into something else without a hitch. Her bag was open on the counter, and I did what Darren and I always did. I took out her meds and made sure she had one less Marplan than she had last night. Ten milligrams, twice a day. Eleven pills in the bottle. Darren had texted me this morning with the number twelve. Good.

  I called him. He was headed out for another date with this girl whose name he wouldn’t reveal.

  “Hey, Mon,” he said.

  “Eleven,” I said.

  “Thanks.”

  “What are you doing tonight?” I asked.

  “Date.”

  “Are you going to tell me her name?” I sat on the torn pleather chair, letting my short skirt ride up since
I was alone. My hair was up, and red lipstick coated my lips like lacquer. I looked like a 1950s pinup.

  “Not yet,” he said.

  “Is it an early date or a late date?” I swallowed hard. I was about to ask a lot.

  “Maybe both. Why?”

  “I wanted to…” I drifted off, because I wanted to meet Jonathan and relieve the ache he created, but I didn’t want to get into too much detail with Darren.

  “Ask. I’m shaving and it’s messing up the phone.”

  “I wanted to see Jonathan Drazen tonight. After the gig. Right after. I can be home to watch Gabby by eleven.”

  “Can’t. My date’s boss got us tickets to Madame Bovary.”

  Great. A date including a musical would go from dinner at seven p.m. to curtains at eleven thirty. He must like this girl.

  “Sorry,” he said. I heard the water running.

  “No problem.” I hung up.

  Eight months before I ever worked at K, I found Gabby sitting at the kitchen sink, on the high stool I’d used to get cereal as a kid. Her head was on the counter and one wrist had flopped over, spilling blood onto the floor.

  I’m so sorry I messed up the floor, Monica, she’d said the next day, in her hospital bed. That was what she was worried about: That I would be mad I had to clean up the floor. I’d just ripped up the whole thing and put in new press-on vinyl tiles. I couldn’t find another way to think about something besides how dead and cold she looked when I pulled her off the stool, or the blood trapped in the drain catch, or the way I’d screamed at her the day before for eating graham crackers in the living room, or the way she’d wept when Darren and I broke up, eons ago. I cried over cracking linoleum flooring because the ambulance had arrived a full nine and a half minutes after I called, and I spent them slapping her because it made her groan and I didn’t know what else to do to prove she was alive.

  So though I wanted Jonathan to treat me like his own personal toy for a few hours, I had to get Gabby home and stay there until the next morning, when Darren would show up.

  The lights kept me from seeing any of the diners. I smiled at a bunch of silhouettes because even though I couldn’t see them, they could see me.