by JA Huss
I place my shirt over her shoulders and she in turn slips her arms into it. I button her up and reach for Alexander’s pants, tugging on his belt buckle then slipping it through the loops as he continues to watch, and touch, and whisper things like, “Yeah… Yeah.”
I reach around Augustine’s waist, cinching the belt tight against my shirt she’s now wearing. Then I take Alexander’s coat off him, missing his touch when he has to pull away to let the silky lining of the sleeves slip past his arms.
But his fingertips resume their exploration of me. Softly sliding down the muscles of my back as I drape the coat over Augustine’s shoulders and then she slips her arms in, and they slide down the warm silky lining where his arms used to be, and I swear to God, she sighs.
I put my suit coat back on. And now we are a mismatch of clothes. I have no shirt and Alexander has no coat, and she has no dress.
“Let’s go,” I say again, turning away but grabbing her hand as I do that, so I can lead her.
We enter the elevator, leaving the basement behind.
Empty, but still loud with music and whispers.
Dark, but still lit up with black light.
Lonely, because when we leave, when we get to the lobby and exit through the frosted glass revolving door, there’s no one left to play the games this building used to play.
Alexander lingers behind, locking the Club back up with his key. And I lead Augustine to the car parked in what used to be the valet.
We hear a gasp come from off to the right.
Chella’s Tea Room.
Groups of women sitting in the outdoor tables stop sipping their drinks, their mugs and cups paused at their lips as they see something they haven’t seen in a very long time.
Three people exiting the place where they used to play.
“Shit,” Augustine says, acutely aware that she is a woman guilty of carnal pleasures. And we, her men, are missing a coat and a shirt. And the paint. Oh, I bet they miss the paint and all the pleasure it guaranteed them once upon a time. “They’re looking at us. They know.”
And then Alexander is there, opening her door. Eyes locked on mine as she gets into the passenger seat of his sporty black German car.
He says, “Let them look.”
And then he closes her up inside and grins at me.
I nod. Grinning back.
Let them look.
CHAPTER TWELVE
We fucked hard last night.
And softly too.
It was heated and passionate. But there must be some truth to Alexander’s dark side, because he did come very close to crossing a few lines.
The choking came first. Then the slapping. First her ass. Which made her moan for more. Then her face, which made her come.
But I stepped in. Unsure how much truth there was to that lie they told.
Late that night, or maybe it was early this morning, we took a shower. I finished first, exhausted and ready to climb between the sheets of their bed.
Our bed?
I heard them whispering in the master bathroom. I didn’t catch it all. I was too tired to care. But I heard her say something like, “This doesn’t change anything.”
I drifted off trying to understand her. What she meant by that.
Didn’t change anything between them? Maybe?
So they are having marriage issues after all.
Then sleep took me away and I no longer cared. The perfect night was over and I was happy.
I’m meeting Evangeline at the Mile High Cafe across the street from the Capitol building. She called me at work this morning and asked to have lunch. I wasn’t sure why she’d want to have lunch with me, but the only obvious reason is Ixion. And I’m always in for a conversation about Ixion.
She already has a table in the back when I walk in and push my way past the crowd of courthouse people waiting for their takeaway sandwiches or hoping for a place to sit and relax. I see her first, already heading to the back, when she lifts her hand to wave at me.
I don’t know her that well. Not really. I mean, I know more than I should. More than most. Because I was in charge of running her Total Exposure game a few months back. So I know her issues, and her fears, and that she overcame them. I know she loves Ixion the way I do. I know he loves her back, probably not the way he loves me.
She is thin, but shapely. Dark hair and bright eyes. And she’s a very talented violinist. Was once a child prodigy who toured the world playing for celebrities, and royalty, and CEO’s.
I know she’s sensitive, and artistic, and even though Ixion put all her shattered pieces back together, she has leftover chips and cracks.
He’s careful with her.
So I’m careful with her too.
I smile as I approach her table, unsure how to greet her properly—a handshake like we’re business partners, when we’re not. Or a kiss to the cheek like we’re old friends, when we’re not.
I opt for neither. Neutrality. And just take my seat. “How are you?” I ask.
“Well,” she says. “Very well, actually.”
“And Ixion?” I ask, my voice low and throaty when I say his name.
“Also well.” She smiles at me again, but this time it’s tight. “But that’s what I want to talk to you about.”
“Oh?” I ask, feeling a little sick that the thought of them having issues… excites me.
Things with Augustine and Alexander seem to be working out—at the very least, they’re starting to make sense—and the only thing missing now is the fourth piece of the quasi-quad we once had.
And that’s so inappropriate.
“Tell me what’s on your mind,” I say, shaking my head at the waitress who appears to ask if I want to order something. Evangeline isn’t eating, so I decide this won’t be an eating lunch. Just a talking lunch.
“I know you’re his best friend—”
Which makes me laugh. And makes her pause.
“What?”
“Well.” I chuckle. “We were. Once. But…”
“No,” she says, reaching across the table to take my hand in both of hers. “You are.” And then her tight smile becomes warm again as she lets go and leans back in her chair. “Trust me.”
I want to ask all the questions about that. Like… Does he talk about me? Does he tell you about our childhood? Or mention anything about what we were to each other back in LA? Or what I did to him to make him disappear? Make him hate me?
But that’s not why she’s here and anyway, she’s going to tell me something, even if it’s not any of that. And something is enough for now.
“It’s about the house,” she says. “The mansion next to the Botanic Gardens where we played our game.”
“Oh,” I say. “Yeah. He came by a few days ago wanting to know more about it.”
“You didn’t tell him, did you?”
“Tell him what?” I ask. “I don’t know anything. I mean… I live there now. It’s mine. But I bought it in foreclosure and the bank, you know. They’re not chatty. They give you a price and you pay it or don’t. That’s about all I know about that place.”
She sighs with relief. “Good. Good. Well, I did some digging on my own. Lucinda helped me…”
I lose my train of thought for a moment when she mentions Lucinda’s name. Fucking Lucinda. She’s been in my life a lot since I joined the Club a few years ago. She was the first one to accept me. The night of her birthday Bric threw a party and when the Club throws a party for a member’s wife, it’s… a pretty sexy affair.
I fucked her with her husband that night. And everyone watched.
God… last night I thought I was over it. But thinking about what I had, and what I don’t have now… it brings it all back to me. Makes it fresh again.
I’m kind of a sick fuck.
“… so what do you think?”
“I’m sorry?”
“About telling him?”
“OK, explain this to me again? Sorry, I wandered.”
She smiles and huffs out s
ome air. A little bit frustrated with me, but not much. “We figured out who the house belonged to.”
“OK.”
“That family in the pictures that were all over the house.”
“Makes sense,” I say.
“Well, the house was in foreclosure, but it’s the reason why it was in foreclosure that makes me hesitate.”
“Oh,” I say. “OK.”
“They died.”
“They died?”
“Yes. In a horrific car crash last summer on their way home from Grand Lake.”
“Oh…” And then I realize why she doesn’t want me to tell Ixion. “Shit.”
“Apparently there was a freak thunderstorm and they—”
“No,” I say, waving my hand. “I don’t need to know.” Because I don’t want to picture them slipping off the side of a mountain. A whole fucking family. “The baby,” I say. “The house had a nursery.”
“I know,” Evangeline says. “It’s horrible. Just… horrible. I was so obsessed with them when I was in the house last winter. And it felt like they were still living there, ya know? Like they were gonna come home any minute. I had pictured them all on vacation. Perhaps they didn’t like the cold, I remember thinking. And they spend their winters in the south of France. But I was wrong.”
I take a deep breath and let it out. “No, he doesn’t need to know this.”
“I’m glad you feel the same way. I mean, I love the house, Jordan. Love it. Ix mentioned that you’re living there, and I’m so glad it’s not empty. Because I was gonna ask him to try to talk you into selling it to us. But now… I just don’t like the idea of Ixion living in a home where an entire family died like…”
“Like his did,” I say, finishing for her when she doesn’t.
She nods and swallows. “Yeah. Like his did.”
I don’t know why this news upsets me so much. It’s not like I knew that family. But I can’t go home. I just can’t walk in there knowing. And even though I live in the office, I can’t stand to think about the empty nursery upstairs. Or the little girl’s room. Or the teenage boy.
Or the master bedroom.
The only thing worse than a whole family dying is one of them surviving.
So I drive. I just leave work and get in my car and drive. And the phone is ringing and buzzing texts at me, so I turn it off.
I don’t know why. I really don’t understand what’s happening to me. All I know is that I don’t want to talk to anyone.
I just drive north on I-25. Just keep going past Fort Collins, past the Wyoming border. Past Cheyenne. And when I get to Casper, I head west for some unknown reason. West towards… something. I dunno why. I just keep driving. Then I’m going north. The darkness is all around me as I head towards Thermopolis. And then all the little towns on Highway 20 start popping up on road signs.
Kirby.
Winchester.
Worland.
Washakie Ten.
Washakie Ten. I say it over and over in my head. Washakie Ten, where Ixion landed last year and hid out in a tiny cabin. Washakie Ten, a place I knew once. Washakie Ten…
I know where the dirt road is. How? I have no idea. But I find it. Against all odds in the dark. I find it. And I turn off the main road and head deeper into the woods. The pine trees tower over the road like giants, obscuring the stars and the moon.
The cabin is dark and looks so much smaller than I remember. I turn off the car and just sit there, the ticking of a hot engine the only sound.
And I remember…
We’re going hunting, he’d said. Turkeys or deer, I don’t really remember. It didn’t matter because we weren’t there to hunt. We were there to fix me.
I close my eyes and pinch the bridge of my nose. Not now. Why am I here? Why now? After all these years? Why now?
She was tall, and older. Not old, probably not eighteen because that would’ve been so much worse… but older than me. I was twelve. And she was very pretty. Very pretty. I remember thinking, Why is she wearing that dress in the woods? You can’t hunt in a dress.
And maybe she read minds or maybe I didn’t think it, I said it out loud. Because she gave me a sad, sad smile.
And she said, “I’m yours for the weekend, Jordan. Your father paid for me. Do you know what that means?”
And I did. I knew.
But he’d left by then. Some excuse that he needed to go to the store and pick up milk or whatever. So we were alone. And she took off her clothes, and then she took off mine too.
“We’re going to play a game,” she said. “A dirty little game.”
And I don’t know what my face looked like in that moment, but I remember how I felt. And I remember what she said next. “Would you like to play a dirty little game with me?”
I get out of the car and walk up to the front porch. My hand reaches for the door and finds it unlocked.
I don’t know what I expect. Leftover filth from squatters maybe. Because that year I turned twelve was the last time I came up to Washakie Ten.
But what I find is a perfectly neat and tidy hunting cabin. Even in the faint light of the moon coming through the front windows I can tell people have been here recently.
Does he rent it out? Do they—my parents—come here? I try to picture my father bringing my mother here for a long weekend and find I can’t.
The light switch is right where I expect it to be. My fingers flick it on and I see the old, worn, leather couch. A couch that lived in my father’s home office until I was… what? Seven? Eight, maybe?
We just stood there. And she took my hand and placed my fingertips on her breast. She smiled. I remember her smiling as she cupped my hand around the firm mound of flesh. She squeezed it for me because I didn’t know what to do.
“He knows your secret,” she said.
“What secret?” I asked.
“That you like boys, Jordan.”
I squinted my eyes. Trying to figure out what that meant.
“But girls are who you’re supposed to like.”
“I like girls,” I said. I remember my throat tightening up. Making it hard to swallow. Like there were rocks in there or something.
“Of course you do,” she said. “Of course you do,” she repeated. Her mouth angling in to mine until our lips touched.
I kissed her back.
The bedroom—my bedroom—looks the same too. A raw log bed with a small child-sized mattress is pushed up against the wall. I liked it against the wall because the wall was comforting to me. I liked to press my back up against it. The patchwork quilt my mother bought from a local Indian reservation when I was small still acts as a bedspread. The pillow cases are navy blue…
When it was all over I just looked at her. At her hair. Spilling out onto the pillow. It’s golden, and long, and soft. I touched it a lot that night. Played with it as we played our dirty little game. As she touched me, and caressed me, and fondled me.
“Where did you come from?” I remember asking when it was over and the morning sunlight was spilling through the window.
And she said… and she said… “He keeps me.”
And I didn’t know what that meant back then.
But I do now.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I think some fathers do things like this. They hire a prostitute for their teenage son and turn it into a big deal. A tradition.
Sick fucks. Rich fucks. Fucks like my father.
But this is so much worse now that I think back on the experience. What she said… To fix me. To make sure I like girls, in other words.
I think I blocked it out because one, I just didn’t understand it. Oh, I knew I was there to have sex with her. That wasn’t the part I misunderstood. But I did like girls. I still do like girls. I just… liked Ixion too. And two, because my father… I fucking worshipped him.
Still do. I love him.
But he did that to me. Said those things to her.
Fix me.
I fall into the couch cushions, e
xhausted from the long drive. Wondering if my mother knew.
Loving men is confusing because you have your best bros. Like me and Ix. And I love him. I’d do anything for him. Any. Thing. But it’s not supposed to go any farther than that. You’re not supposed to crave his body, or his attention, or his touch.
And to be clear, Ixion and I were never like that. He’s not into the bi stuff like I am. Sure, we shared Augustine a few times, but that’s all it was. A share.
I’m not looking for a man, I’m looking for a man and a woman. I’m looking for what we had back in LA. And now that what happened here is reemerging, I have to ask myself—did my father make me this way? Was this formative experience what made me who I am today?
A man who is unable to find satisfaction outside a plural relationship?
Her game was clever for the time. I mean, no one even blinks at a blindfold these days, but back then? It was super kinky.
Put this over my eyes and take me out to the woods, Jordan. Tie me up and smack me with this twig. I will pretend to cry and you can rip my dress off. Touch me anywhere you want. Touch yourself, too.
Did my father tell her to do that? Or did she make it up? What kind of teenage girl knows how to do that shit?
A very badly abused one, Jordan.
She scared me. I remember thinking that. I remember taking her out to the woods, blindfolded so I had to hold her hand and tell her to step carefully, and tying her to the tree like she told me to.
But after that… after that I just froze.
It didn’t make any sense. None of it made any fucking sense to me. What was I supposed to do with her?
And the things she said to me. I know now that it’s just playing, right? Games. Dirty talk. Things that make you hot.
But I had never had sex before. Barely even masturbated. I wasn’t thinking about sex with Ixion. I was thinking about football and Christmas. I was thinking we had fun last summer and this winter his family was taking me skiing with them in Aspen. I was thinking in one more year we’d be in middle school and then after that we’d get our driver’s permits, and then… I dunno. Whatever. We’d have fun, like we always did. And it would all feel pretty good because it always did. That’s why we were best friends in the first place.
