Shades Of Obsession

by JR King

  Back in the suite, I rid myself of the encumbering clothing. My boxer briefs were slightly damp, soiled with the evidence of pre-come, and there were traces abound of Elena’s red lipstick on my shirt collar. A bitter pill to swallow was that I could feel the lingering wetness of her mouth on my neck. My fingers still bore the fine floral scent of her perfume, my lips had fading depressions of where she’d nipped them, my tongue swollen from her suckling. My body was so alive with sensation, like the after effect of an electric shock, a low thrum running through every part of me.

  I’m only a man, and neurons firing specific patterns are part of this equation. Just as well. I started by taking a long shower, followed by a long jerk-off session while watching porn, and for the first time in nearly ten weeks, I fell asleep instantly.

  Alexander Turner

  The Contingent Truth

  I so wanted to fuck her. I so needed to hurt her. Would I be able to stay away?

  There was nothing on the horizon I was looking forward to as much as I looked forward to being with Elena. By now the wait had whittled down considerably. Four months is nothing, I imputed. Business as usual, my dick didn’t control me; I controlled it.

  “We need to talk.” This wasn’t Jerry’s usual greeting. Backlit by the foyer, it was hard to see all of his face, but I could tell he was unhappy. Not a visit to tell me off, or show me up, or prove me wrong.

  “Let’s talk in my office.”

  I had no sooner closed the door to my office, than I heard Jerry saying, “How was it, Alex?”

  Blunt is always better than disingenuous, I figured, so in lieu of acting aloof I went for the truth. “I enjoyed the time spent with her.”

  “You broke your word.”

  I sighed and looked up at him.

  “Why’d you risk it all—,”

  “Cut it out,” I glared at him in midsentence.

  “You don’t understand, Alex,” he stated thickly.

  I shrugged, spoke stone-faced. “Make me understand.”

  “I liked you the moment I entered that private jet. The amenities, regrettably, didn’t contribute to this factor. With Conrad as your guardian, you’re fucking untouchable. All I wanted was your word, and you gave it. We have big plans for you—or had, I don’t know. You want the truth? It doesn’t matter if Elena is eighteen or twenty-three, her age won’t harm a hair on your head, not under my management!”

  “Reward and punishment? A taste of my own medicine? I practice what I preach. Amuse me.”

  “Forget it.”

  To tell you the truth, I was the one feeling dumb. I wasn’t sure what to say, so I went with the usual—an arrogant response. “Blowing a gasket because some politician’s wife played me?”

  “No,” he sniped, edging toward the door. “I’m trying to stave off the inevitable. Buy Elena some time. It’s all so fucked up.”

  I was silent as I thought—as I processed the fact that he was trying to coax me into a trap. I was the little hamster on an unbalanced exercise wheel in need of repair. The squeaking noise got louder and louder as its speed increased. “Wait. No.”

  “No?”

  I looked up from my desk and shrugged. “I met her because I got tired of the bevy of insipid beauties and bumping up your bank account. I needed a taste of her.”

  He shoved one of the chairs in front of my desk backward and sat down.

  I pretended to read on my iPad while shaping a stack of printed PPT presentations into a maniacally neat pile.

  “Why are you doing this?” Jerry crossed his arms, a fatherly disapproving look on his face. “Why?”

  “You are family, Jerry. I don’t like letting my family down,” I offered, amused by his thoughtfulness.

  “Not that. Why hurt her?”

  “I haven’t. Yet.”

  “I won’t turn the other cheek, promise me you won’t break her. Nothing skeezy.”

  A claustrophobic silence shrouded the space.

  “Has it occurred to you that she’s suffered as well? Watch.” He held out his iPhone. “Take it to heart, Alex. She didn’t make the call herself.”

  Throttled, I gaped at the screen. “He dialed the phone and told me to say these…and then mommy’s neck…her neck…her neck…her…oh god,” Elena cried despairingly.

  See how easily it all got shot to shit? I willed myself to form the words and said them in a stage whisper, “What the hell is this, Jerry?”

  “High School counselor. The day I met your father, he showed me the three sessions Elena attended to deal with the funk. Why do you think he’s protecting Elena from Sophia?”

  I cradled his phone in my hands. “Why hasn’t he—,”

  His eyes burned into mine. “Shared this with you? From the snippets of information he gave me, I understand that if Sophia hadn’t been there when you were dealing with the hate-laden shit…you were a crackhead, Alex. Darren gave you incentive, and right after seeing a ten-year-told girl you started constructing an elaborate chain of inevitability, each link in the chain making you stronger. There’s not even the tiniest sliver of doubt in my mind: you have a sexual mania for that girl. Plentiful of other chicks out there, you know?”

  Just like that, the switch was flipped. The damn tide turned and crashed all over me. Talk about dealing with my demons.

  I had pretty dark ones.

  Elena Anderson

  The Memento Theft

  Something woke me in the dead of night. To begin with, I struggled to remember where I was. The curtains were fully drawn, only a sliver of light entered the room. My questing eyes had trouble adjusting to the darkness. The layout of the room, the decorations, the assortment of furniture was antique and alien to me. Taking in the disjointed fragments, panic welled inside me. The moon’s light crept through a slit in the curtains and caught on the wall. Shadows were haunting me. It’s silly that I was still afraid of inanimate slivers of moonlight.

  Then I remembered, all the while listening to the lightning subsiding and the rain tapering off. Tossing and turning, sleep seemed to elude me. I wasn’t champing at the bit to date men, but still. If someone had told me yesterday that I was going to meet Alexander Turner tonight, I would have debunked the myth. If someone had told me yesterday that I would end up making out with him, I would have rolled my eyes like an insane person. If someone had told me yesterday that he’d want to see me again, I would have told the person to seek serious mental help. I buried my head deeper in the pillow to blot out his memory. Rolled a little around in the sheets. Fanned my hair out on the pillow. I felt needy. I had a humongous craving for attention, just like a fully loaded attention-whore.

  I got up and went to the bathroom to douse my face with water. Cupped the ice-cold liquid to splash it onto my face and chest. Held my hair back with one hand while I patted my soaked skin with a fluffy towel.

  Having had dinner with Alexander last night, I felt saturated with life.

  Here’s a little story. Before the infamous incident with Peter, I used to collect mementos. Like any moony-eyed fool, I had girlish folders and diaries full of love letters and poems, heart-shaped boxes of souvenirs, and curios full of juvenile keepsakes. I missed my mother, and yes, I even missed my father. Maybe he was still alive, who knows. Mementos were a form of aid to help me cope with the gaping emptiness.

  Weeks after I’d fainted in the street, I realized that mementos from Peter served only to agitate mental and emotional detritus that’d settled some time ago. It wasn’t about denying Peter’s existence, or erasing the meets and events we’d attended together. In reflection, I just preferred to keep these memories dormant because disturbing them would be a nuisance to myself. Drama. Angst. Bonus insecurities.

  To forgive Peter, I first had to get rid of the clutter in my mind, and by that time I didn’t want any clutter in my physical environment either. For that reason, my surroundings became plain and easy to deal with, and my brain no longer struggled to simplify and focus. I learned to write down my thoughts,
to prioritize, to not spend any energy or give any mental space to the junk from my past. Instead of being snarled up in woe, I decided to go fetch me one of the best diplomas.

  Since then mementos of boyfriends or lovers never stood a chance. I did own a few keepsakes that evoked thoughts and feelings worth revisiting unconditionally. Toys my mother had bought me, stoles she wore, jewels she’d received from her parents. I also kept my father’s Montblanc fountain pen; after all, he was an inspiring lawyer and writer. Though these were objects, they were important to me for the memories they stimulated, and the person they called to mind. They were all well kept and used whenever possible not out of sentimentality, but out of respect for what they were, whom they represented, and the weight they’d contributed to making me function the way I did.

  You must be asking yourself why I’m telling you all this sentimental stuff. I’ll let you in on a secret. I collected a memento tonight.

  The metal capsule of the very special Ace of Spades cork.

  I hadn’t informed Alexander, so perhaps stolen is more suitable than collected. A theft that’d been meant kindly.

  Who was Alexander Turner? He was a powerful man, that bit was as sure as Darwin’s evolution. Before I met him in person, I’d seen him on TV and on the web. Absentminded scowl perpetually painted on his face, black-browed and bushy of the eyebrow, generally belligerent of aspect. Sharp dresser, always dressed in some ten-thousand-dollar suit, movie-star tan, pitch-black hair that was gelled and combed sideways, teeth perfectly even and pearl-white. He was logic personified, and if on TV he looked intimidating, up close he was it even more. He wasn’t easy to deal with, a bit like the smartness and complexity of a Jenga tower. You had to study him before carefully approaching with skill and patience. He’d traveled the hell out of the world and effortlessly collected magazine covers with his mug on them.

  But also, he wasn’t a temperate man. He had anger issues. Took to it the way hickory takes to a wildfire. Rumor had it that he was a crotchety and vindictive person. Physique, voice, mannerisms, everything about him was dangerous. He had the Jack Welch thing down pat. When he became a CEO, he began streamlining his father’s company by eradicating inefficiency, trimming inventories, and dismantling the bureaucracy he himself had been subjected to as a simple employee. Where once a father adopted the effectiveness of a layered hierarchy, the son destroyed it and brought about total informality, cutting spending budgets and reducing payrolls and bonuses alongside many other changes. A popular rumor was that employees who didn’t meet clients and didn’t present to him always went to work in casual Friday clothing. And, for a $1 automatic discount of the salary each month, a breakfast-lunch-dinner package was made available to each employee, five days a week, syndication-style.

  There were many stories, among Boston’s elite there was much praise, but word on the street was that he was nothing but a spiteful SOB. He was famous for his explosive rages and tantrums whenever he acquired smaller businesses and eliminated everything but the buildings. Any employee who had a modicum of common sense kept their head down and tried not to attract his attention. In return for relentlessness, he not only increased his company’s market capital tremendously, but he also quadrupled job opportunities across the country. In addition, he evinced the patriotic gesture of keeping it in the family by making sure Turner Holdings remained one of the few American companies that didn’t outsource departments like IT services and Finance & Payroll to developing countries. Politicians made a point of not crossing him, foreign ones included. The world was his oyster, Boston his personal playground.

  Then there was the bedroom mystery that surrounded him. Was he a closeted gay celebrity? He never dated women seriously—forget cohabitation and the like. In fact, the enigmatic quality he possessed made the Mona Lisa look like an open book.

  Another popular rumor was that people were literally afraid to make PPT presentations to him. It’s said that as soon as you lost his interest, whether by design of error or lack of creativity, he simply walked out of the conference room. Each year, Turner Holdings fired its bottom performers, stating politely they’d been let go to expand their horizons. CEO-wise, Alexander had a reputation for brutal candor, rewarded top performers with stock options, destroyed opponents without remorse. He seemed fairly fanatical about winning. He wasn’t done until he showed up his competitors, broke them down, and dissimilated their companies, piece by piece, only to reassemble the goods for his empire. From the hotel industry to the arms industry, and airplane and train manufacturers, he owned controlling shares everywhere. On top of it all, his company’s construction branch scored highest-paid projects worldwide. Sucking it up to world leaders had its advantages.

  Have I mentioned he was hot?

  My, imagine all the succulent possibilities of future encounters. Drunk with the prospect of seeing him again, I was sure from the careful words he’d told me that we would kiss again.

  Or was last night the end?

  At 2:22 AM in the morning, I prayed not.

  At 2:22 AM in the morning, I also failed to see the significance of the often-said expression: be careful what you wish for.

  I let out a muffled yowl, remembering the unfettered, protective warmth of his arms. I remembered his smirk, and Christ, no smirk should be so attractive. My eyelids suddenly felt like they weighed a ton, and in seconds I fell asleep.

  Elena Anderson

  The Jonathan Archer Excitation

  Beyond the window, I could hear the blaring of a horn, blustery winds, and all the other noises that formed the city. The sensory input of Boston differed greatly with Palo Alto. The smell of vehicle exhaust was the first difference I’d noted. Followed the food smells from vendor carts, the shouts of hawkers blending with amateurish music from street entertainers, the awe-inspiring but also depressing range of faces and styles and accents. Patrol cars, ambulances, and fire engines always tried to part the flood of cars with the electronic wail of earsplitting sirens, not to forget the lumbering food delivery trucks that navigated narrow one-way streets and the scores of deliverymen who braved the bumper-to-bumper traffic, making you realize that this city had far too many vehicles. Hazardous, the frenetic flow of tightly packed cars.

  A few things made up for these failings. One offering I appreciated was retrieving the gorgeous architectural wonders. Others were attending spring cocktail happenings in upscale bar lounges; lounging poolside and baking in the summer heat while drinking fruity concoctions; feeling my ears go numb at autumn rock concerts; and listening mesmerized at winter opera concerts.

  Maria was unpregnant, and I’d ordered my car. Anytime within three weeks it could be delivered. My first car, and to be honest, the first valuable thing I’d ever bought. Driving my grandparents’ BMWs was out of the question. Taking on debt by leasing a car in the interim was a definite no-no, too, grandpa would start another World War. The Andersons did things Euro style, and therefore I had no credit card debts to pay.

  Late in the day, Sara and I hadn’t thought about taking an umbrella when we went for a walk around the block. Early November rain trickled down, stabbing our faces with each drop. We huddled into our coats just as a Mercedes SUV sped past, splashing filthy, ice-cold water onto our booted legs. My long hair kept falling in my eyes and I flicked at it with one hand while awkwardly holding the other in front of me. We managed to find refuge underneath a modern glass entrance overhang, but another SUV rolled past, splashing us with a gratuitous black wave of slush pellets.

  “Asshole!” we screamed uproariously—and creepily—in sync.

  “Girls’ night in, El?” Sara’s kitten heel nearly slipped on the sidewalk.

  “Wanna try something cutting edge-and versatile?” I teased. “Takeout and Enterprise?”

  She held my gaze. “Bakula as Jonathan Archer? Oh, by all means, you’re making my mouth water.”

  I gave in to the petrichor of the rain as drops pattered rhythmically. My eyes were far from laughing like the happy pe
rson I was, but on the inside I was happy.

  Happy as a bug in a rug and feeling frisky, I flopped onto the sofa and wetted my lips, puckering them to let air seep through a small, wet hole. A lone tear rolled down my cheek as I contorted my lips over and over again, failing. With steely resolve, I pursed my lips and positioned my tongue back one last time to hail Rod Stewart’s Faith Of The Heart.

  “Not gonna hold me down no more, not gonna hold me down! I’ve got faith!” we scream-sang.

  Eyes transfixed on the TV screen, I began to pick at a tiny scab on my right elbow. I was deciding whether or not to go get the champagne when the gate rang.

  I jumped up. “I’ll get it.”

  Said Sara, “No, I’ll buzz him in.”

  I solemnly cried out in protest when she picked up the remote and turned the screen off. “I was watching that!”

  “No, you weren’t. I caught the tail end of it, which was five minutes ago. You, Elena, are daydreaming.”

  You get one guess as to which person didn’t move from the couch.

  “I have my hands full. A little help?” Sara set a tray full of savory goodies down on the low coffee table. “Don’t be such a couch potato. Move.” Combing her hand through her hair, she cocked a well-trimmed eyebrow.

  I rubbed at the nape of my neck.

  “Dunce that I am.” She made a sassy face and blew me kisses, her long hair flopping over the side of her face. Knee-knockingly beautiful. “I ordered green, red, and yellow.”

  The words in my mind, the ones teetering against the inside of my mouth, perched as if on the edge of a flat surface were a definite, “I met this guy,” but I rephrased with, “that’s why we have a Sub-Zero.”

  “Ack, stop playing games, El! Details, duh.”

  I hazarded a pigsnort-laugh to ease the moment. “Tall, dark, handsome, rich. Farsighted businessman.” And yet, that’s the understatement of the year, I thought. He was the richest, most elusive, most enigmatic bachelor in Boston. I thought of the saying how it was impossible for something like this to happen to a girl like me. It’s impossible is something people say so easily, which makes it a trivial thing, but it becomes a totally different thing to discover it has happened to you.