Vertical

by Rex Pickett

“I found the other half in the bathroom.”

  I fell back on the pillow and slapped a hand to my forehead in mortification. “Oh, Christ.”

  She propped herself up on an elbow and looked down at me. “Hey, don’t worry about it.” She grabbed my rudder and gave it a little pull. “You’ve had a lot of wine.”

  “Yes, I’ve had a lot of wine,” embarrassment wrecking the magic of the moment.

  “Ah, don’t be sad, Miles,” she cooed.

  “I guess there’s a pill for that, too, huh?”

  chapter 14

  Dawnlight poured in through the canvas-slatted blinds. I blinked awake, my head about as light as the Liberty Bell, complete with crack and tintinnabulation produced by the repeated impact of the clapper. On the twin bed, I found myself in a sweaty knot of naked body parts. I stroked Natalie awake. She reached, apparently instinctively, for my cock. The 50 mikes of Viag must still have been coursing through my bloodstream because my organ sprang to life from fallow, parched ground. We made love again, less intensely, more agreeably, ignoring each other’s halitotic breath, sticky flesh and piquant bodily fluids.

  When that session had come to another rousing conclusion, complete with fingernails clawing my back and intense eye-locking looks, I crawled over her and out of bed. I slipped into the change of clothes I had brought in the brown paper sack, kneeling before her as she lay on her side, her pretty head balanced on her hand. “You are something, Natalie. You are really something,” I said, genuine feeling swelling in my heart. I took her free hand, held it in mine and stroked it. In my befogged vision I noticed a faded area at the base of her ring finger. The left ring finger.

  “Are you married, Natalie?”

  She smiled a somewhat distant smile, sighed through her nose. With the back of her wedding band-less hand she caressed one side of my unshaven face. “Yeah, I’m married. And… I have a kid.”

  “Oh.” I felt like a sewer main deep within me had developed an air lock and the cloacal waste matter was backing suddenly up into my stomach. “Where is he?” I asked anxiously, half expecting an irate, hung over, oenophile–probably French!–to burst into the room wielding one of those machetes used on ceremonial occasions to open champagne.

  “Back in New York.”

  “That’s a relief.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “I think you and your husband should see a sex therapist,” I half-joked, feeling around for a foothold on this friable precipice. I dared not look down lest I go mad.

  She laughed, probably at my obvious mood shift rather than at the wit of my feeble remark. “Yeah, probably. We haven’t done it like that in a long, long time.” She took a momentary look inward. “In fact, we haven’t done it in a long time, period.”

  “You must play a lot of Scrabble?”

  She laughed in the affirmative.

  “It’s amazing how many women out there are in sexually unfulfilling relationships. Why get married? Why be with one man? All you’re doing in the long run is consigning yourself to a life of sexual barrenness.”

  “Well,” Natalie started as I found myself pouring from the Arnoux (at 7:00 a.m.!), “we don’t all base our marriages on the illusion the sex is going to be great the rest of our lives.”

  A night of uncorking had softened the wine. The sulfites had blown off, the tannins had muted, and now it was all pure Pinot fruit.

  “So, what then? You stay married and get royally fucked on the side when the opportunity presents itself?” That came out sharper than I meant it to, but I was feeling hurt.

  “Something like that,” she said. “Now that we live well into our eighties, I don’t think it’s humanly possible to fuck the same person for half a century or whatever.”

  “Probably right,” I agreed. “But even if I started tomorrow, I’d have to live nearly to a hundred to test the theory. And I don’t think Pfizer has a pharmacological solution to that.”

  She smiled. I smiled back, raked my hand through her long dark hair, mildly depressed, hung over, sleep-deprived, a touch of panic setting in at the thought of my roustabout freak troupe wondering on what shoals their captain had shipwrecked.

  “If you’d known I was married before we slept together, would it have been any different?” she challenged.

  “Probably not.” I rose to my feet, trying not to wobble. “Can you run me back to where I’m staying?” I asked, blatantly impatient, and feeling a bit rooked.

  “Are you angry?”

  “Me?” I emitted a laugh that sounded bitter even to myself. “I was just starting to like you, that’s all.”

  “Half our life is the tragedy of relationships.” She looked up at me and smiled. “Paraphrasing Willa Cather.”

  “Well, with all due respect, fuck Willa. Fine prose stylist, but she always came across like a pretty frustrated dyke to me. How about that ride?”

  “Don’t be angry.”

  “I’m not angry. I’ve just returned to normal, happiness once again having narrowly eluded me.”

  The mordancy was not lost on her. She pulled herself together while I waited, refreshing my sommeliers’ glass with another splash of the Arnoux.

  We drove in a clock-ticking silence back to the Brookside Inn. It was another blistering hot day in the making. The digital thermometer on Natalie’s generic rental reported mid eighties. The sky was a cloudless, immutable blue, the Sunday roads devoid of vehicles.

  As before, I had Natalie stop at the turnoff. She slid the stick into Park and turned to me. “I’m going to be coming out to LA in Septembe–”

  “Natalie,” I chopped her off, “I have to be honest with you, too. I met this Spanish girl on the trip up. It was just one day and one night, but there was something special there. I’m thinking after I get my mother to Wisconsin I’m going to play it out, see what happens. My problem with seeing you on the sly is that every time I see you, when you leave it’s just going to remind me how fucking lonely and empty I feel. Am. If you were available… you’d be my dream girl. I’d go all in. But, you’re not. So, thanks, but no thanks.”

  “Okay.”

  “I don’t want to get all entangled, then have to disentangle myself–it’s just such an emotional rollercoaster,” I said wearily, massaging my temple with the palm of my hand. “I had a great time, Natalie.”

  “I said ‘okay,’ Miles.” She replied with a smile, at least. “I had fun, too.”

  I kissed her on the mouth, opened the door and stumbled out into the implacable early morning heat, already feeling lonely and empty… and stupid.

  Fifty yards from The Carriage House I heard faint but unmistakable ululations from the ground-level floor. I quickened my pace. When I reached my mother’s suite she was calling out frantically: “Joy! Joy! I have to go to the bathroom!”

  I lumbered, a little buzzed from the Arnoux, into her room and found her, to my dismay, lying on her back on the bed, helpless. “Where’s Joy?” I asked, sensing something calamitous.

  My mother gaped at me, panic-stricken. “Oh, Miles, I’m so glad you’re here. I don’t know where she went. I’ve been calling and calling. I’ve got to go. Will you help me, please?”

  Battling a hangover that felt like a sledgehammer pounding a submerged rock, I exhaled wearily and sprang into action. I rolled her wheelchair next to the bed, helped her sit up, and slid her over to the lip of the mattress. “Okay, Mom, give me your hand.” She held out her right hand and I grasped it. I pulled her closer to the edge of the bed until I managed to get her feet to touch the carpet.

  “I’m falling, I’m falling,” she wailed in an exaggerated paroxysm of fear.

  “No, you’re not, Mom. Now, come on, stop being a baby.”

  With our right hands lashed together, I hoisted her to a tottering upright position, then eased her into the wheelchair. I rolled her into the bathroom, praying she wouldn’t pee her pants, performed a mirror image of the previous transfer maneuver, exited the room while she urinated, apprehensive a
t the thought of Joy off with one of the randy Japanese Bourgogne rouge hoarders from the Mosh Pit at the Salmon Bake.

  My mother called out that she was done and I returned to the bathroom, block-and-tackled her off the throne, and wheeled her back out into the main room.

  “I’ll go find Joy,” I said.

  “She’s no good,” my mother barked in a croaking voice.

  “Mom, she’s exceptionally good. More to the point, she’s all we’ve got. So, just fucking cool it. It’s your birthday today and we’re going to go to this big champagne brunch. You like champagne, don’t you?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said, her ill tempered expression instantly transmogrified by the mere mention of drink. “I love champagne.”

  “Okay. I’m sure Joy’s just taking a walk somewhere.”

  “And smoking her goddamn Mary Jane!”

  “All right, Mom, chill. Not everybody’s perfect. Not even you.” That extracted a chuckle from her. “I’m sure she’ll be back soon to give you your bath.” I walked out before she could start in on her litany of complaints, closing the door behind me so I didn’t have to hear them trailing me like a pack of bloodthirsty coyotes.

  I trudged upstairs. I noticed that the heavy door separating the upper floor rooms from those on the lower floor, usually left open, was closed. I opened to the unambiguous sounds of humans engaged in wanton copulation. Moaning. Grunting. Female. Male. More alarmingly, this noise was issuing from Jack’s room. I crossed the hall as if the floor were booby-trapped and I were a snapper with a mine sweeper. The door was slightly ajar, so I ventured a peek.

  The reality by which I was confronted was worse than I had feared when I thought Joy had gone AWOL. My eyes widened in horror at the spectacle that rudely greeted me: Jack lying on his back, Joy (!) doubled over him, sucking his fully–and I don’t employ that term lightly–resurgent cock. Our demure little taciturn Filipina looked like a jackhammer run amok. The salacious tableau so suffused me with revulsion I just about vomited on the spot.

  Instead, I drew a hand across my haggard face, hoped the image would be effaced–it wasn’t–miraculously regrouped psychologically from the multiple consequences of this ghastly revelation, pushed the door open to about six inches, instantly summoning Jack’s attention. Joy, oblivious of my presence, fed voraciously like a jackal on the carrion of his dick. He attempted to wave me off. In silent reply, I fashioned a face of outrage and pointed my index finger at Joy, stabbing it several times in her direction for emphasis. Then, as if pantomiming a desperate hitchhiker in a game of Charades, I jerked my thumb downward, making clear where Joy was truly needed.

  Jack held up both hands, one of which was intemperately holding a sommeliers’ glass half-filled with red, mouthing: Okay, okay, let her finish.

  Disgusted, I crossed to my suite, ensconced myself within, and collapsed on the bed. I was still having difficulty processing the image of Jack and Joy in unholy congress and the repercussions of that for the rest of the trip. I had to keep my eyes open to ward off the appalling picture of their incongruous coupling, but even then it wouldn’t go away, it stuck to my brain like an insect on flypaper–and agonized there, still horribly alive.

  Twenty minutes later, a sheepish-looking Jack shambled heavy-footed into my suite and filled up one of the chairs with his bare-chested girth. He sipped from the sommeliers’ glass, apparently welded to his hand. “She’s with your mom now.” I was gratified to hear a tinge of remorse.

  I closed my eyes at last, exhausted. “I didn’t think you’d do it, Jack. I really didn’t think you would.” I opened my eyes and bulged them out. “Joy?”

  “The chick was all over me, man. You get a little wine in those Asians and they go nuts.”

  I nodded in despair. “That’s because they don’t possess the gene that helps them to metabolize alcohol.” I looked over at him sharply and raised my voice. “What the fuck were you thinking, man?! Huh?”

  “We were just having a good time.”

  “What’re you, going to fuck Joy all the way to Wisconsin while my mother wails at the top of her lungs for her to help her relieve herself? Which I just did, motherfucker!”

  Jack furrowed his brow and waxed defensive. “Miles. Let me tell you something. That chick’s about to mutiny, your mom is such a fucking a-hole. My fucking her is about the only thing that could save this trip.”

  “That is such fucking twisted logic, Jackson,” I groused, pinching my temple with my thumb and middle fingers to impede the blood now throbbing into my hurting brain.

  “Hey, I’m sorry, dude. It just happened. It was one wild fucking night.”

  “Fine. So, it’s over now. I’m not going to dwell on it.”

  “Me either,” Jack said.

  A disconcerted silence fell over us. Birds chirruped out in the trees. They didn’t know anything about over-imbibition, hangovers, stroke-addled mothers, sex (me and Natalie, not just Joy and Jack) that never should have happened. They just knew hunger and procreation, and maybe blissful avian contentment in flight.

  I exhaled through my nose. “How’d your big guy hold up?” I inquired.

  “Worked like a gem sans meds. No pain.”

  “I’m relieved to hear that.”

  “How was Natalie?”

  “Fucking smoking. On paper, the ne plus ultra. But… she’s married. Has a kid. Lives in New York, anyway. Though I’d risk hospitalization to get on a plane to see her, she’s that hot.”

  “Just keep her in the coop, Miles. For when she comes out again.”

  “I’m over that. Too bad, though. We really bonded. There was never a forced moment, never a lag in the conversation. The sex was levitational. And she’s fucking married!”

  “What’s with these married chicks today?” Jack said. “Fucking hornier than shit.”

  “You know what it’s like. One, two years in, you’re lucky to get licked. Five years, forget it. Maybe once a month when you’re half asleep and don’t know what you’re doing. That’s why there’re so many women at this bacchanalia. They need to get away, get drunk on their ass, and get fucking pounded. They’re not looking for commitment. In the winter they’ll rendezvous in the Bahamas and fuck Jamaican kiteboarding instructors.”

  “Good for them,” Jack said, toasting his glass to motiveless sex.

  “Yeah,” I said, “good for them.”

  “So, what’s on tap for today?” Jack asked. “Another mystery tour?”

  “No, it’s my mother’s birthday. We’re going to take her to IPNC’s champagne brunch, back at the campus in McMinnville.”

  “When’s that?” Jack asked, rising to his feet.

  “I don’t know, starts at 11:00, goes to whenever. If we don’t get too plastered, maybe we can check out of here and make a dent in the leg to Wisconsin.”

  Jack pushed himself up from the chair with some effort. “Okay, I’m going to try to get a little shut-eye.”

  “So,” I said, “you’ll just put the brakes on with Joy until we get my mom to her sister’s?”

  “No prob, dude. Besides, I think I ripped her up pretty good.” He winked. “She might need till Wisconsin.”

  I smirked through my nose. Jack turned cumbrously. I heard the door close and Jack’s heavy footfalls receding down the hallway. I closed my eyes. All I could see was Natalie Meunier’s naked, yoga-lithe body pressed up against me, her widemouth smile looking at me joyfully as she humped away with abandon. Oh, well.

  In the middle of a sinister dream hurled down by an angry god, my iPhone jangled.

  Joy said, “Your mom wants to go to champagne brunch like you promised.”

  I glanced at the time. It was nearly 11:30. I’d slept four hours. Why didn’t I feel at all rested? “Okay, Joy, I’ll be right down.” I rang Jack’s cell.

  He answered grumpily. “What is it?”

  “Champagne brunch. My mother’s seventy-fifth. Remember?”

  “Three-quarters of a century. Man. Do you think we’ll ever make
it to the big seven-five?”

  “The more probing question: Do we want to? Limp dicks and gray pubes.”

  “I hear you. Gimme fifteen.”

  A quarter of an hour later, on the nose, I was downstairs. Jack ran late as usual. Joy–a little worse for wear–was trying to brush my recalcitrant mother’s hair and make her look pretty. “No, not like that,” the patient said peevishly.

  “How do you like it?” Joy asked.

  “Let me do it myself,” my mother snapped, snatching the brush from Joy’s hand. “You’re no good.”

  “Stop it, Mom. Stop it!”

  She brushed her hair off her ruddy face with slashing strokes. She needed a drink, but didn’t have the courage to voice it.

  Joy backed away. Jack sauntered in.

  “How’s the birthday girl?” he said in his booming voice, having obviously gotten a start already on the day’s drinking. At my mother’s non-response, Jack grew silent, looked to me for elucidation.

  “All right, everyone, let’s go,” I said, clapping my hands, hoping that would disperse the mounting disquiet that everyone, for entirely discrete reasons, was clearly feeling.

  “I don’t want to go,” Joy said.

  “Oh, come on,” Jack tried to persuade her.

  Joy’s face hardened into a mask of silent contempt. Jack stepped close as if to comfort her when I waved him off, shaking my head in a tight no.

  “What if I have to go to the bathroom?” my mother piped up, still locked in combat with her hair in front of the mirror.

  “I’ll take you,” I said. “But, if we’re lucky, you can hold it this once.” I turned to Joy. “All right, Joy. Why don’t you just relax, get some sleep? We’ll take her off your hands for a few hours.”

  Joy swiveled her head to the side until her chin was touching her right shoulder and glowered at the flora.

  The Oak Grove had been magically transformed. The dunking contraption remained, but the vat had been drained and disassembled. At the entrance where we signed in, a young woman informed us that a lot of people hadn’t shown, unapologetically citing their crucifying hangovers, and invited us to take whatever table we favored.