by Reiss, CD
I got off her and she sat up. Her hair was falling out of her braid and the hem of her dress was bunched around her waist. One shoe had fallen off. I found it and slipped it back onto her foot, then helped her off the table.
“Thank you,” she said.
“My pleasure.” I kissed her because I had no choice. When she walked toward the house, I touched her neck as if I needed to tether her to me for another second. I brought the stuff on the sideboard into the kitchen and set the table. I had a handful of silverware and stopped myself.
Fork on the left, spoon above.
Or if it was a soup spoon, did it go on the right?
If she noticed I’d done it wrong, she’d tease me. I’d like that enough to throw her across the table again, which was not what I wanted to do. We didn’t have all night, and I wanted to actually share a meal with her. I put the spoons on the right and set the tureen between the bowls.
I liked her. She was great. Outstanding. Gorgeous and smart. All those words seemed cheap, though. My rejection of them alarmed me, because they weren’t good enough. I was losing control, and I needed to figure out why.
The lack of a condom was definitely something, but only part of the story. The fact that we were far enough along to feel each other’s skin spoke volumes. Her looks were something also. She was beautiful, but not my type. I usually went for blondes, so maybe not. Her singing that night at Frontage ticked it up a few notches for me, but I had fucked other artists since Jessica. Monica was honest, real, and honorable. Those were commodities I didn’t see every day, and those were words worthy of her, but those qualities didn’t seduce the mind or calm the heart the way she did.
I forgot where the napkins went. Fuck. Where was Aling Mira when I needed her?
The issue with Monica was obvious, but I wouldn’t allow myself to utter certain words, even in my mind. Certain commitments and feelings were simply inaccessible and needed to stay that way. I’d rejected my ex-wife, but the passions she’d thrown away were dead. I regretted that, grieved their loss, because if anyone deserved true, deep feelings, Monica did.
An honorable man would have given her up before she fell in love, choosing a small hurt over a bigger one later. But I wasn’t that honorable. I wanted her more than I’d wanted anything in a long time, and I would have her until she couldn’t bear it any longer.
I felt like an animal.
I heard her clopping down the hall in those cheap, sexy shoes. When she came into the kitchen, I sighed. Her hair was down, except for a thin braid at the side of her head. She was well put together, yet she looked like someone had just fucked the shit out of her. I held out my hand and she took it.
“I’m starving,” she said.
I pulled out the chair for her. She glanced at the setting and said nothing. Instead, she tilted her head to see what was inside the tureen. What made me think she even cared where soup spoons went? She made me unsure about the simplest things.
She sat. “That looks good.”
I ladled her stew, and then mine. She put her napkin on her lap and waited for me to sit before she took a scoop and blew on it.
“I’m sorry. I think it’s pretty cold,” I said.
“Ooh, good, she used banana blossoms.” She pointed her spoon at a smaller dish. “Is that pinakbet?”
“Yes.” I speared a piece of okra and held it to her lips. She parted them, allowed the fork in her mouth, and slid it out, her teeth barely scraping the silver tines.
“That’s nice,” she said, chewing.
“Have you been to the Philippines?” I asked.
She smirked. “I’ve been to Mexico.”
“No farther?” I placed another forkful of pinkabet before her.
“No.” She took the food I offered.
I poured wine for us. “I’m surprised. You seem more… worldly than that.”
She shrugged. I noticed a little redness around her ears. “I’m not sheltered. There’re plenty of ways to get into trouble in a thirty-mile radius.”
“Do tell.” She shrugged and took a spoonful of stew. “Come on,” I said. “We’ll make a trade. I’ll tell you something that will make you run away if you tell me how to get into trouble in Los Angeles.” The way she glanced at me made me think she had something more than a harmless exchange of stories on her mind. She obviously didn’t realize the depth and breadth of the stories I could tell without touching the things I didn’t want her to know.
“Deal,” she said.
“Ladies first.”
She took a sip of wine and straightened her shoulders, as if daring me to think less of her. Then she swallowed a little too hard, and I knew that down deep, she was afraid I might. I tried to remain impassive, but I was jumping out of my skin.
“One time…” she said, then paused.
“Go on.”
“I shot up heroin.”
I tried not to choke on my wine. “How was it?”
“Incredible.”
“Really? And just the once? I don’t get a whole story? Just six words and an adjective?”
“I’m gauging your reaction.”
“I went to private schools. My friends financed dealers and producers to ensure their own product flow. So,” I poured more wine, “how does a beautiful Catholic girl end up with a needle in her arm?”
“I’ve been tested since, you know. I’m clean.”
I didn’t say another word. I held out another bit of pinkabet, which she took. I was going to feed her until she told me about this tiny crevice of her life.
“Ok, well.” She swallowed. “It was, like, the core of a laugh. You know that wavy good feeling you have inside before the laugh comes out? But the laugh is a release from that feeling, and when you’re done laughing, it goes away. So without the laugh, and the release, it got huge. It kind of started in my heart and worked outward like a supernova and stayed there. Imagine that feeling, that happy feeling before you laugh, being big and staying. I was lying down, but I was flying, and at the same time. Well, at first it was just the good pre-laugh feeling, but then the tension came and I wanted it released, because it was painful. Emotionally painful. Like, if the tension got too much, and it broke, so much sorrow would come out.”
She paused and took a sip of wine, not looking at me. “When I came down, I puked and I felt like crap. I mean, who wouldn’t, right? But I knew the first time is the only really great time, and I didn’t want to end up some sick addict. Not even to be Janis Joplin.”
“But why do it in the first place?”
“Kevin… I know you’re his biggest fan. He and I used to do things just to experience them. Just to see, you know, if there was something to it, or if we could translate it into our work. So we did some stupid things.”
“But he never tied you to a bedpost?”
“No.”
“He’s a sad man.”
She laughed. “We ran with our eyes closed. We walked through downtown barefoot. We slept on Skid Row a whole weekend.”
I think I let the silence go a little too long. I was thinking about her huddled in filth under an overpass, broken glass underneath her, and strange, unstable people within arms’ reach.
“What?” she asked, sipping her wine.
“Did he sleep? When you were on Skid Row?”
“I guess.”
I took her hand. “I couldn’t sleep knowing you weren’t a hundred percent safe. I couldn’t walk you into danger or watch someone put a needle full of drugs in your arm. I couldn’t rest.”
“Well, good, because the piss smell kept me up and I was hungry. Speaking of, I’m going to eat more oxtail stew, and you’re going to tell me something that makes me want to walk out. Except I won’t.”
She took a spoonful of stew and glanced at me, so sure her feelings could survive any revelation. I had so many wonderfully juicy stories that wouldn’t even half nudge her out the door. So many others would require a discussion that would ruin the evening.
I asked, �
��Are sexual escapades on the table?”
“Sure.” She looked into her bowl. Maybe that was a bad idea. I didn’t want her to get bent out of shape. If she told me a story like the one I intended to tell her, I’d get bent out of shape.
“Are you sure you’re sure?”
“As long as your wife isn’t in there.”
“Why? Besides the fact that she’s not the escapade type?”
“I’m not going to pretend your ex-wife’s my favorite person ever. But to me, what goes on sexually in a marriage, you don’t talk about. So—” she put her hands over her ears “—la la la, don’t want to hear it.”
In the five minutes I had to decide what to tell her, I’d prepared a story of bedding three women at once. It was absolutely true, terribly unsexy, and funny all at once. But she’d thrown me by respecting a woman who’d lied to her and caused her hurt, by honoring a vow she’d had no part of. Monica deserved better than a canned story I’d told a hundred times at the club.
I took her wrists and pulled her hands from her ears. She smiled at me.
“I agree,” I said. “You’re safe from my marriage bed. But not the rest.” I took my hands away and picked up my wine glass, taking a deep breath. “There’s a difference between a dominant and a pig.”
“Really?”
“My father,” I said, leaning forward, “is a pig.” She looked as though she was ready to choke on her oxtail stew. “You all right?” I asked.
“I’m fine. I sense an example coming?”
“I hit puberty early,” I said. “By thirteen, I was done. Close to my fourteenth birthday, my father wanted to know why I hadn’t gotten laid yet.”
She chewed, then gazed up me with those big, chocolate disks. “Okay?”
“He set me up on a date with a girl. Woman. Rachel. She was a couple of years older than me. That was my first time. And guess what? Turns out, she was his mistress.”
She swallowed hard. “How old was she?”
“The math you just did in your head was correct.”
“Wow. He whored out his underage mistress?”
“To his underage son. Like I said. Pig. And you should see the look on your face.” Her heartbeat was practically audible. She pushed food around and I worked to control my nerves.
She sighed heavily. “Honestly, I didn’t expect you to even have a story like that.”
“You think rich people don’t have sick shit in their houses?”
She raised her eyebrows and swirled her spoon in her stew. “Something like that.”
I laughed. Partly because I was nervous about voicing a fragment of the story, and partly because I was relieved she hadn’t run away. Not yet, at least.
She put her spoon down and sipped her wine. “Did you see her again?”
“I did but on different terms. It was messy for a while.” I cleared my throat. “She died.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry. How?”
“Car accident. I was about sixteen when it happened.”
I should have shut up way before mentioning the accident. If she looked into it, I was deeply fucked. So I stopped talking. Just stopped.
She waited, slid off her chair, stepped over to me, and put her hands on my face. “You know you have to tell me the whole thing, right?”
“There is no more.” I put my hand up her skirt until I felt the lacy top of her stocking. “You’re going to have to take the dress off for where we’re going next.”
“Upstairs?”
I put my fingers under the lace and up the garter straps. “Nope.”
“Where?”
“Have you finished dinner?”
“Yes.”
I pulled her down, kissing her hard. She tasted of lovingly made Filipino food and cold white wine. I wanted her all over again, but we had someplace to be.
CHAPTER 7.
MONICA
I slipped into my jeans, keeping my fancy underwear on. I felt filthy, sexy, sensual with garters under denim. When I reached the front foyer, I found the door open and a loud rumbling in the driveway.
Jonathan straddled a matte black rocket of a motorcycle with red touches at the rims. The back seat was suspended by nothing but air and the promise of velocity.
“Well,” I said as I clopped down the porch stairs in my heels, “is this new or is it some old thing you found in the back of the garage?”
“I got rid of the Mercedes and saw this.” He handed me a helmet in the same matte black as the bike. “You’ve ridden before?”
“Yeah.” I slipped on the helmet. I’d dirtbiked with Kevin in the Sequoias until mud covered me from knee to toe and I walked like a cowboy coming home from a week on a feisty mare. Once, in freshman year, Ivan Ikanovitch took me out to Ventura on his new BMW. Needless to say, I had to take a cab home.
“Let’s go then, little goddess. This trip usually takes forty minutes, and we have thirty five.”
I slid onto the back seat and put my arms around his waist. “You shoulda let me recite ‘Invictus’ as fast as I wanted. We’d be on time.”
The gate slid open as if by his thought waves alone, and we took off, my legs clenching the seat and my arms clutching his waist. When we stopped at a light, I heard his voice in my head.
“You’re cutting off my circulation.”
The clarity of his voice was shocking, and he turned to me, tapping the helmet.
“There are microphones in here?” He nodded. “Fancy.”
The light changed, and we took off. We didn’t talk much as we zipped onto the five, turning onto the 110 freeway. I tried not to squeal when he went really fast since he could hear me. Instead, I leaned on him, enjoying the softness of his leather jacket and the way it creaked against mine. Even though it was early November, the air was warm as it whipped under my clothes.
Another piece of the puzzle fell into place. He was fourteen when his father loaned him his mistress. His first sexual experience was coated in familial ties and discomfort. He went to the institution when he was sixteen, right about when she was killed. He’d given me a portion of the story. His time in the institution had something to do with his father’s promiscuity and penchant for young girls, as well as his absurd expectations of his son’s virility.
I was still missing some puzzle pieces. Something was very seriously off, but his explanation was a start, and I felt a sort of relief knowing that eventually, when he was ready, he’d fill in the blanks.
We traveled eighty miles an hour past the industrial tinkertoy skyline and outlet malls with their blindingly bright, sky-high screens, blasting high above neighborhoods still burned out from the riots, and back to a middle-class residential zone.
I slipped my hand under his jacket, then under his shirt. I felt his taut stomach and the little hairs on it, the warmth of his skin making me feel safe and cared for.
“Are you making a pass at me?” he asked in my head.
“Not at this speed.”
“Okay, because I’m having you in a couple of hours.”
