Confessed

by Nicola Rendell

  “I feel like maybe we should rethink this,” Lucy whispers.

  Except we have. We’ve already tried the Super 7, Super 8, Super 9, Super 10 and the Motel 11. We’re running out of options. El Paso isn’t that big, and we’re not crossing the border today. Not on a Sunday with the border cops on high alert with literally all of creation going to and from each other’s relatives’ houses. No, gracias.

  “Didn’t you see the sign?” says the guy, pointing.

  It says “N ACA Y.”

  Awesome.

  “Is it a prerequisite that every motel in America has neon lighting issues?” Lucy asks.

  I can tell she’s getting hungry. She only gets snippy like that when she’s hungry. Well, no, that’s not true. But she’s probably hungry. It’s been three hours since she’s eaten.

  “We’re good,” I say, and lead her out the door. From the glove box I take a bag of almonds and put it in her hand.

  “You take such good care of me,” she says, smiling and crunching away.

  I turn on my burner and make use of the minuscule data prepayment to search something online. It’s risky, but it’ll be worth it. I swipe and click and remember an ancient password for an ancient identity. Then I put the truck in reverse. “I just hope you’re still saying that in an hour.”

  “Alright, so here’s the thing,” I say, heading for what Airbnb calls Cozy El Paso Casita. “I might have another identity that I occasionally use for fairly ordinary online purchases.”

  “Oh, surprise!” says Lucy, offering me an almond. “So do I.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No, really. Once I had this whole plan to set up a horse therapy business, but I was like…you know…eight years old or something.” She says this totally without flinching. “But my dad, ever the semi-upstanding businessman, said quote…” Here she drops her voice like she did when she pretended to be the maintenance man at the motel, “‘…Lucy. If you’re going to do it, do it right!’ and made an LLC. So I exist as Lucy Burchett, but also as Hearts and Horses, LLC Connecticut. I’ve written off a lot, and I mean a lot, of riding gear through the years.”

  See, that’s what I’m talking about. Perfect. “That’s my girl.”

  I watch the map on my burner and head towards the dot.

  “Where are we going?” she says. She’s darkening her eyeshadow using the Rockstar compact in her hand. I can’t imagine how it’s even possible the way the shocks are on this truck. But her talents are many and impressive.

  “You’ll just have to wait and see,” I say. “I’m being romantic. Give me a chance.”

  Crunch, crunch, crunch, she goes and then puts her hand on my thigh.

  Cozy El Paso Casita is, as it happens, actually a converted storm cellar underneath a little adobe house right downtown. The lady who owns the place is named Nancy, and she’s calling me Charlie because that’s how I booked it.

  “Real glad you could pick it up on such short notice, Charlie!” she says, unlocking the storm cellar doors like this is the most ordinary thing in the world.

  Lucy is squeezing my hand now in a particular way that says she’s just about to start laughing. I hear a sort of quiver in her chest. I squeeze back. Poor lady’s just trying to make $67 a night, I try to say with my squeeze. The snicker sort of dies in her nose, but I can tell it’s only temporary.

  “Yeah, we were in a bind. This town is packed.”

  “’Course it is!” says Nancy. “It’s rodeo weekend. I happen to love the rodeo.”

  She opens up the storm door. The stairs are upholstered with indoor-outdoor green carpet like they have at putt-putt places.

  But then, holy mother of fucks. She turns on the lights.

  It’s like the mecca of the rodeo. The Cozy Storm Shelter is fucking full to the ceiling with rodeo shit. Rodeo everywhere.

  “Whoa,” Lucy whispers, staring at the wallpaper, which is actually about a million old El Paso Rodeo posters. She drags one finger over a loose corner.

  “You betcha! Bought those at a flea market. Amazing what you can find. Now, what can I getcha? Two blueberry muffins come with the deal.”

  “We’re good.”

  “They’re free!”

  “Honestly,” I say, smiling, and pulling Lucy close. “We’re good.”

  She shrugs. “Mmmkay. Maybe I’ll leave you a present. You two have a real nice stay. Let me know if you need anything.”

  Nancy crunches off down her gravel driveway, and I lock the storm cellar door from inside.

  And then I turn to Lucy, walk her backwards through the apartment, and shove her on the bed. The only light coming in is from a window well in the bathroom. But I don’t need to see her. I just need to feel her.

  “What do you say I take you right here on this commemorative 2011 Lone Star Rodeo blanket?”

  She goes for my belt instantly. “Ride ’em, cowboy.”

  30

  This time, he’s sweet and careful. Slow. He undoes the buttons on my gently used tank top one by one. It happens to be pretty beautiful. Buffalo Exchange did right by us. He, of course, picked out things exactly like he already owned. But I went a little more vintage. Elena, she’s got a whole different style than old Lucy. Softer, darker, simpler. Easier.

  “I’ll get it,” I say, moving to slip it off over my head.

  “No, you won’t,” he says, unbuttoning another tiny mother-of-pearl rose-shaped button with his huge fingers. “I want to see you inch by inch.”

  When he’s done undressing me, he slides my body around on the bed and positions a pillow underneath my neck. So careful, so caring, it almost brings tears to my eyes. “Why do you know just what I need?” I gasp into his throat as he climbs on top of me,

  He presses my thighs open and apart and then enters me.

  “We might be from different worlds,” he says as I feel his weight press into my body, “But we’re alike. I get you. I know you.” He moves my hair aside and brings his tongue to my ear. I shift my head against the pillows that smell like someone else’s house. Not unpleasant and doubly naughty. I clasp my arms around his neck, and he cages me in with his massive biceps.

  He never takes his eyes off mine. He pushes into me with a smooth, steady rhythm that seems guided as much by my body as his.

  “Can you get there with me inside this time,” he says, soft and not at all impatient, just curious. “Or do you need a little help?”

  The truth is, I don’t know. I’m flattened by his bestial aggression for me. I can’t tell from one moment to the next what’s going to happen. Nothing is predictable anymore. Sex is explosive and ever-changing.

  “Whatever you want,” I say.

  His fingers slide slowly down my body.

  He’s in mid-thrust when he makes contact with my clit, and I bear down on him when he does, making him thrust harder and deeper, ruining that perfect rhythm.

  Holding my stare, he says, “I never fucking knew what love was until you. I never knew loving someone would be so much fun.” He kisses me. “I never knew love could be like this.”

  “I didn’t know if I’d ever hear you say that word.”

  He drags my lip down with his thumb. “I’ve felt it since the beginning.”

  And so there in that little basement, cool and quiet and dark, he tells me, “I love you. You know I fucking love you. I love you hard and rough. I love soft. I love everyfuckingway there is.”

  That’s when the world flickers a little. I feel a tightness in my stomach and along my spine. “I’m close.”

  “What do you see?” he asks.

  “Light. Everything is light,” I say. I’m tumbling down over the edge. “A cliff. Like a cliff,” I gasp.

  He keeps working me more and more. Not hard. But smooth and slow, pumping into me all the time.

  My eyes are shut. “Tell me everything,” he says.

  There’s just one thing, behind my closed eyes. “I see you.”

  “God damn,” he says. “I’m comin
g.”

  And that’s when it happens. We come together, in the middle of a kiss, me moaning out his name without being able to say it, and him telling me he loves me again and again without needing any words at all.

  I must have dozed off because the next thing I know, I’m draped in a blanket and he’s across from me on an armchair, in his boxers, with his sketchpad on his knee.

  I don’t move. I don’t know that he’s even seen me open my eyes, so I shut them again. I listen to the sound of his pencil on the paper. The rush-rush of sketching and shading, the whispers of lines and shadows. The sketching noise stops briefly, and I hear the noise of an eraser, and then his breath blowing off the rubbings. “I know you’re awake.”

  I open one eye. He’s smiling now. “How’d you know?”

  “Your breathing,” he says, not looking up from the page. “But don’t you move an inch.”

  I stay exactly as I am. I take mental note of my position. I’m lying on my side, facing him, slightly curled up. Face to the pillow, hair spilling down over my cheek. I don’t know what time it is, but I think it’s dark outside. He’s turned on a lamp somewhere, but in a different corner of the room, so the space is filled with gentle shadows.

  “Have you always loved art?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” he explains. “Drawing makes sense.”

  “Horses are just like that for me.”

  I can still hear the pencil moving over the paper. Short strokes, and long ones, then the duller noise of the eraser. “Horses and art. When we have kids, they’ll be something, I’ll tell you what.”

  My eyes pop open. His eyes shoot up from the page towards mine.

  He says, “Holy fuck, did I just say that?” He looks somewhere between terrified and horrified.

  It’s all I can do not to kick my legs under the sheets and squeal. “You did.”

  “Should I have said that?” Now he’s smiling. Terror and horror all gone.

  “Yes,” I say. “You most definitely should have said that.”

  He runs his palm down his mouth, still watching me. “I never thought this would happen to me.” He shuts his sketchbook and stands up, coming over to me in bed.

  As I open up the covers for him to get underneath, I say, “I wish we could go back to New Mexico together.”

  With two fingers, he traces the curves of my cheeks. “We’ll get back there. One day,” he says.

  “You think?”

  He nods. “I know.” He presses a kiss to my cheek. “But tonight, I want to do something special for you.”

  “I just want to stay in bed.”

  “Me too. But it’s early,” he says, nose to nose, “and there’s a stove here, and dishes.”

  “You’re going to cook?” I clutch the sheet with delight. “For me?”

  “Damn right,” he says, running his nose along my cheek. “I’m going to get downright domestic.”

  31

  I make sure she’s bolted herself into the storm cellar and go to the Mexican grocery across the street. Outside, there’s a bin of tomatillos in their husks, and a rack of Jarritos. Inside, I stock up on supplies for my specialty: steak fajitas. Fresh tortillas, poblano peppers, the perfect yellow onions. The produce section is bustling with old ladies gathering around a barrel of fresh apricots, their carts full of Ball jars and lids.

  I remember my grandma doing that, making apricot preserves in the middle of the summer. Standing by the pot, letting the pot boil and boil, and giving me tastes off a spoon, telling me “It’s hot, mijito. Careful now, careful.”

  What’s weird is nobody gives me a second glance, the big Hispanic guy all tatted up. I’m just part of the furniture here. I don’t remember the last time I was part of the furniture. Weirdly, I really like being part of the furniture. It seems civilized that here, I can be what I am.

  Also totally fucking civilized is that you can buy booze in the grocery stores down here, and I do. I get a halfway decent bottle of tequila, nothing fancy but nothing cheap either, a bottle of triple sec, along with limes, and a little bag of sugar too. I doubt she’s ever had a real margarita. Or fajitas. Or good guacamole. All this stuff I’ve kept close to my heart for all these years, I want to show her. I want her to know all the tiny things that are my biggest secrets.

  With the bags in my hands, I head back across the street. I knock on the storm cellar door, and she unlatches it.

  “Hello, handsome.” She stands on the steps, the entryway dark behind her, smiling up at me.

  Wearing nothing but a 2014 Southwestern International Rodeo apron.

  It’s been about seven hundred years since I last cooked for anybody, and I’m pretty nervous. She’s adorable about it, though, and just sits on the little pre-made kitchen cabinet that’s next to the stove, watching me. Naked still, except for the apron.

  “You’re making it really difficult to slice these onions,” I say. I can’t take my eyes off the way the tie presses into her skin at her sides.

  “Nobody’s ever cooked for me before,” she says.

  It hits me then. I’ve never cooked for a woman before. I’ve cooked for my mom, but not for a woman. I feel like this is the big moment.

  Man. Does this make her my girlfriend?

  I stare at her as she turns a red pepper over in her hands and plays with the stem. Is she my girlfriend? She’s my fucking girlfriend.

  I go back to chopping my onions. My eyes fill up with tears. It’s the onions, goddamn it. I sniffle. It’s the motherfucking onions.

  She gets down and digs around for some plates. She makes a thing of leaning down and showing me all her glory, and I almost cut the shit out of my thumb. “You’re dangerous.”

  “Isn’t that my line for you?” she asks, emerging from the cupboard with two dinner plates and two placemats, rope-and-saddle themed.

  “I used to be dangerous,” I say, sliding the onions into the hot pan. They sizzle and sputter. “Now I’m just…yours.”

  She slides around behind me and wraps her arms around my waist, pressing her face to my back like she did on the motorcycle. I could fucking do this forever. I want to fucking do this forever. This is too good to be real.

  The onions sizzle a little too high.

  “Go set the table, beautiful,” I tell her, “Otherwise you’re going to make me fuck up dinner.”

  “10-4, Chief,” she says, and gathers up the plates, placemats, and forks and knives to put on the little card table in the corner.

  I hear the sound of a television turning on, the quick half words and cut-off tones of her flipping channels. I hear the serious noises of the nightly news.

  I turn my attention to the steak and start cutting it against the grain. That’s when I hear it:

  “In Connecticut today, Lunchmeat King Charles Burchett was arrested following a DUI in Greenwich.”

  “Oh God,” Lucy says. I turn and see her with her hands over her mouth. I drop the knife on the counter.

  “When he was pulled over, authorities say he was in a compromising position with a prostitute in the car. He is being charged with public indecency, solicitation, and driving under the influence…”

  “No, no, no, no,” Lucy whispers into her hands.

  “Following this development, Mr. Burchett was booked into jail without bail, when the judge deemed him a flight risk, weighing concerns about his upcoming SEC investigation. At a press conference today, police allowed Mr. Burchett to read the following prepared statement….”

  I’m this close to unplugging the television, but the way she’s hanging on every word, I just can’t.

  Now there’s her dad on TV. I can see her in him. But she got the best of him. No doubt. He’s reading off a piece of paper, and looking up and around, saying, “I want to apologize to all of my loyal meat and cheese customers over the years for what can only be described as a mysterious illness afflicting our plants over the last two months…”

  Lucy groans.

  And her dad says, to someone off camera,
“Is my gag order lifted?”

  A voice says, “Yes, sir. Go ahead.”

  “Okay. I would also like to say, for the record, that my daughter Lucy Burchett is not involved in this at all. At all. Her involvement in the embezzlement was completely without her knowledge. She’s got nothing to do with it, she is completely innocent, and her mother wants me to ask her to come home. Lucy. Please. Come home.”

  Now Lucy yelps.

  The newscaster keeps on with the story, but the words don’t even more through my brain. What hits me are the images on the screen, one of those montages they run when there’s a big story of someone who’s really in the shit, and they pull all the pictures they can off the internet to have something to show while they talk.

  Those pictures are from a whole different fucking planet.

  From a whole different life. A whole different class. A whole different universe completely.

  A yacht named The Lucy. A huge fucking mansion with a security fence around the perimeter of the huge yard. Lucy and her dad giving a speech at the…I squint. The Clinton Global Initiative. Jesus H. Christ.

  I stare at her. She has a yacht named after her. A fucking yacht. She knows Bill Clinton. Bill Fucking Clinton.

  She’s on the phone now, and she looks worried. “Mom, it’s okay,” she says. “I know. It’s okay to cry.”

  She has one hand over her forehead. She’s looks up at me and grimaces. “I know. I’m sorry I left, Mama. I am…”

  I feel this ache, this fear, that the dream is coming crashing down around us. It sounds like an earthquake and it feels like it too.

  “Mom,” she says, more serious now. “You don’t sound so good.” She looks worried, and she’s looking at me. “It’s okay. Mom, are you alone?” Lucy pauses, then says, “You shouldn’t be alone right now.”

  I hold her stare. Then she looks to the floor, shaking her head.