by CD Reiss
To my left, a pile of hair accessories: a brush and a scrunchy. And a disk of birth control pills. Open. Half-used.
“Are you sure you’re taking these right?” he’d said one month when I was a day late.
“It’s easy enough.”
“Not if you’re knocked up.”
The lights changed and illuminated the walls, making the little piles of my things disappear in the darkness. The scribbles became legible, and more than my things on display, more than the exact value of what I’d left behind, those words, written as one long, run-on sentence, brought months of sidelined emotion to the back of my throat.
I didn’t say she was more important why do you have to make everything about you she needs me she tried to kill herself, Kevin, what the fuck do you think is going on in your life that’s more important right now how can you tell me I can’t practice how can you try to silence me again I’ve put everything on hold for you I can’t do this I can’t take care of everyone I can’t be there for everyone I need to go I need to go I need to go I need to go.
“Bullshit in a box?” Jonathan asked from a safe distance, as if he knew coming closer would be inappropriate.
“These are the last things I said to him.”
I walked to the other side of the room. More scrawled words on the wall.
I’m not telling you not to work I’m telling you to stay with me when I’m with those guys they make me feel inadequate and stupid and you’re the only one I trust you’re the only one I know who doesn’t make me feel small without you I’m not a man you don’t understand I need you I need you I need you I need you I need you.
I walked out as fast as the low-hanging entrance would let me.
fourteen
Having been inside the relationship described in the Faulkner Coal Mine, I knew how brave Kevin was to create and display it. We had been impeccable together. We looked good. We never fought in public. No one heard a word from him or me that anything between us was less than perfect. He dragged his confidence around like a skin he seemed to own. That installation fearlessly let his friends and admirers know that not only was our relationship imperfect, but he himself lacked confidence and swagger.
But that was Kevin. Mister one hundred percent. When he’d loved me, it was with all of his heart and soul. I never worried about his commitment or his fidelity. I never found a leak in his passion. I was his everything, and as suffocating as that was, I never wondered where I stood. That in itself was liberating.
But now all our friends would know our last straw. Tuesdays had been his poker night. All the guys would sit in Jack’s loft smoking cigars and talking about didactics in postmodernism, or definitions of folk art from the twentieth century’s cultural diaspora. The girlfriends would sit in the kitchen talking about sex and drinking wine. It was like the fifties.
Gabby and I had finally put together a band because playing music made her feel better. That burned his ass. Because ever since Gabby had tried to kill herself, I got less available. Harry got us free studio time on Tuesday nights, for rehearsals. Perfect. He could go play poker so I could rehearse. But he threw a fit. He needed my support. He needed me there. Why was I abandoning him for Gabby? And you know what? I felt bad. My first reaction was that he was right. Because that was the whole relationship. His needs, and they were plenty.
In the sculpture garden, behind a little pagoda, was a spot the lights didn’t reach. I knew about it because I’d given Kevin a blowjob back there the night he helped his mentor hang his retrospective.
I was headed there when Jonathan grabbed my arm on the patio. “Monica?”
I took his hand and pulled him along with me until I caught a glimpse of Jessica. She smiled at us. I was trying not to burst out crying, so I nodded and let Jonathan do all the smiling.
He let go of my hand.
I glanced back. He and Jessica were talking. He half-faced her, one foot still pointing in my direction, like he wasn’t committed to either one of us. I had no time for that. I didn’t need him anyway. I ran down the stairs.
I was halfway to the courtyard when I heard his shoes tapping behind me. “Monica, wait up.”
I slowed, and he took my hand again without another word.
When we got to the ground floor, I turned into the sculpture garden. It was empty, mostly, so I slowed down. I wasn’t breathing well. That was how I cried: breathing badly. Then fat tears would come. I was a ladylike bawler, more or less, which was why I let Jonathan put his arm around me and slow me down. If I was a messy blubberer, I would have run away and gotten the bus home. He sat me on a quiet bench, slowly, as if remembering the damage he’d done to me.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
I put my finger to his lips, then I put my arms around him and rested my head on his shoulder. “I’m so sorry about all this.”
“It’s okay.”
“Tonight was supposed to be your drama.”
“I prefer it to be yours, to be honest.”
I picked my head up. “That was why he invited me so late. He wasn’t sure if he wanted me to come. And that was why it was a single space on the list and not me plus one.”
“But you tricked him.” He took a hankie out of his pocket and handed it to me. It was thick, possibly silk, and monogrammed.
“God, I feel like such a bitch leaving the way I did. What kind of person just leaves all their stuff and—” I took a hard breath, and the fat tears came every time I blinked. I dabbed my eyes with the hankie.
“Someone who’s scared,” Jonathan said. “Come on, he made that thing from his perspective. You didn’t expect it to be fair, did you?”
I shrugged and dabbed, trying to get control of myself and not lose too much makeup. I sniffed hard.
“I just walked out on him,” I said. “I had no closure. I know the way I did it was the only way, because I could be strong once and leave, but he had a way of making me forgive him. We would have been the couple that was always half broken up, and I knew I couldn’t be strong another hundred times.”
I dabbed the insides of my eyes with the hankie, but I didn’t want to get mascara on it, so the wet blobs stayed on the outside of my eyes. Jonathan stroked the back of my neck and waited patiently.
“I don’t know what this will make you think of me,” I said.
“That any man who’s with you better pay attention, or they’ll find you gone.”
A short exhale of a laugh shot out of me. I shook my head. If I wanted more from Jonathan than a casual fuck, my chances of getting there had just shrunk to nil. Who would want to be with such a psychopath?
“See, I was keeping you on a need to know basis,” I said. “And now you know too much about me. I’m going to have to kill you. Sorry.”
I looked up from the hankie. He was gazing at my mouth as if it was the most interesting body part he’d ever seen. He touched my lower lip with his thumb and brought it down to my chin.
“I know you’re trying to be guarded, but you’re too real for that.” He brushed my lips with his fingertips, and I kissed them. “I think that piece up there wasn’t bullshit. I think it’s the most unkind thing I’ve ever seen. And to sell off the pieces to a stranger is a dirty trick.”
I looked back down at my lap, where my hands sat. My wrists were covered in bangly bracelets to hide the bruises. I felt beat up.
“Thanks for listening,” I said. “This can’t be attractive.”
“If you have never seen beauty in a moment of suffering, you have never seen beauty at all.”
“Who said that?”
“Some German poet. Now, blow your nose. The sniffling’s making me crazy.”
I held up the hankie. “I can’t. It’s too nice.” I sniffed again.
“Are you serious?” He snapped the hankie from me and draped it over his palm. He put it over my nose. It had his dry, foggy smell. “Blow,” he said.
I looked at him over the silk fabric, and he looked back at me, tilting his head as
if waiting impatiently for me to blow my nose into his hankie-covered palm. The corners of his mouth curled ever so slightly. He was trying not to laugh.
“Come on now,” he said, squeezing my nose.
I couldn’t hold it in. I burst out laughing.
He laughed too, even as he said, “Blow already.”
“I can’t when I’m laughing.”
“Stop laughing then.” He was a poor salesman for not laughing, of course, as he was mid-crackup.
I took the hankie back and turned away from him. I blew my nose right into that really nice, embroidered accessory, folded it, and blew again before turning back to him. He leaned back on the bench, his arm around the top of it. Streetlamps reflected blue on his cheeks and the tips of his hair. His finger brushed my bare shoulder.
“Do you want this back?” I said, trying not to laugh all over again.
“Keep it.”
fifteen
I waited in the back seat as Jonathan spoke to Lil outside. I wanted to see him naked again. I wanted his cock and his lips. I wanted his hands on my hurting parts. But I couldn’t stop thinking about Kevin. After I’d left him, I thought he’d forgotten about me. I sometimes thought he might have been hurt, but I took only gleeful satisfaction in that thought. He had always been the strong and confident one, and I was the doormat.
Jonathan slid in across from me, and Lil slammed the door after him.
“You going to tell me to spread my legs?” I asked.
“I’ll get to it.”
He didn’t. He just looked at me. My knees were pressed together. My nipples were hardened from the fierce air conditioning, and my hands lay folded on my lap. Once he was done with my body, he looked at my face.
The car moved, and the view of the parking lot turned into L.A. at night.
“I want to do things to you,” Jonathan said, “but you’re not in any physical condition for that right now.”
“I’m not made of sugar.” I tried to keep the disappointment out of my voice and feared I’d failed.
“Indeed.” He touched my collarbone and drew his finger down, under my dress, pulling it down below my breast. The knit of the straps strained and held as he extracted my nipple. “Shift forward again.” I pushed my hips to the edge of the seat, flinching with pain. He pulled the other side of my dress down and, getting off his seat, kissed the nipple he took out. I groaned and held his head to me. He sucked it hard, then bit on it, and I gasped.
“I want to tie you to the bed in a hundred positions and fuck you everywhere, but I want those bruises to heal first. I want a clean ass to bruise again.”
“I shouldn’t ask this.”
“Then don’t.” He brushed his finger against my nipple.
“I need to know if you’re like this with everyone. All the women.”
He looked in my eyes for a second, silent, then cast his gaze downward. I didn’t know what I wanted him to say, but the curiosity burned me from the inside out.
His fingertips touched my lips, and I opened my mouth for him. “Make these wet,” he said. “You’re going to need it.” He slid two fingers in.
I put my tongue against them, and I felt them rub my tongue and slide down my throat. He pulled them out, then shoved them in again. I sucked hard, trying to get my saliva going.
“Come on, Monica, you can do better.” He slid his fingers in and out of my mouth, hovering just at my lips then pushing them back in. My sore cleft pounded with heat. I wanted him, despite the pain, or because of it.
His fingers were in my mouth up to his hand. My lips curved around them, and I was sucking. He used his fingers to pull my head up until I faced the ceiling, and his fingers fucked my mouth from above.
“Pull your skirt up. Gently.” I heard the smirk in his voice as he pulled his fingers out then back. I shifted my skirt around my waist.
“Ah, this is gorgeous.” With his free hand, he stroked under the garter at the tops of my legs where the pain wasn’t so bad. “Now spread these beautiful legs.”
A war raged in my pussy between the pain of soreness and bruising, and the intense fire of need. When I opened my legs, I groaned into his fingers, because I got warmer when exposed to him.
“More, Monica. Don’t be shy.” I moved them out a little more, but my muscles burned. With his free hand, he yanked my legs apart. I gasped with pain and pleasure. He pulled his soaking fingers out of my mouth, and with his left thumb pressed under my chin, he kept me facing the ceiling.
“You don’t want a relationship,” he said. “But you keep asking about other women.” He put his fingers under the crotch of my underwear and stroked my clit. “Why is that?”
“I can’t say.” I didn’t know how I made words instead of just sounds. The pressure between my legs was so distracting.
“Yes, you do.”
“Ah, that’s so good, Jonathan.”
He put his two fingers in my pussy. They burned all the way in, and I thrust my hips forward. His thumb rubbed my clit, and I went with his rhythm. His left thumb stayed under my chin almost painfully, keeping me from moving freely.
“Yesterday,” he said, “you mentioned something about rumors, and you asked how many women I brought to the club, and now, another question. Do you want to fuck or not?”
God, had I been so childish? “I want to fuck.”
“So what’s your intention? Why do you keep asking?”
“Curiosity.”
He took his fingers out and moved my panties back in place. I thought ok, now he’s going to tease my cunt all night, and let’s face it, I’m going to love it. But he did something that surprised me. I couldn’t see it because he held my chin up, but it felt as if he flicked my clit the way he might flick a crumb off the table, with his thumb and middle finger. His thumbnail hit my engorged clit like a pebble tossed on a water balloon. I felt it as exquisite pain followed by sharp pleasure. I made a vowel sound in my throat, still looking at the ceiling.
“Tell me, Monica. Why so interested?” He flicked me again.
“Oh, Jonathan….” I moaned. Flick. I started to squirm.
“Tell me what’s on your mind.”
It was gorgeous torture. I had no idea when the flicks were coming, and they were sharp, excruciating, and beautiful. I’d never, ever be able to come even if he did it twenty thousand times.
“If I tell you,” I said, “you tell me everything.”
He flicked me twice in quick succession. I cried out. “No deals,” he said.
“Don’t make me scream,” I said. “Lil will hear.”
“Then talk,” he said, flicking me again.
“Fuck you.”
“Talk, baby,” he said softly, as if cajoling me.
I breathed heavily, feeling the light pressure of his hand on my throat. I could have stopped him. My wrists weren’t bound. I could have pulled his arm away. Honestly, I wanted to tell him. “I want you.”
“And?” He rubbed my sex over the now wet fabric of my underwear. It soothed the heat but not the arousal.
“I want you all to myself. I want to know what they didn’t do so I can do it. So I can keep you longer.”
“Ah.” He took his thumb away from under my chin. My legs were still spread, and his knees prevented me from closing them. I looked at him, feeling ashamed. I was sure he’d drop me like a foul ball, right there in the back of his Bentley in a designer dress and new garter. “Three times is my limit. We’re one fuck to our expiration date,” he said.
“I hope it’s a monster because I’m going to miss it.”
He smiled at me, then pushed himself back. He closed my legs, and I pulled my skirt down, smoothing it against my thighs, pensive.
“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “I can’t promise you anything long-term. I can’t get past my marriage. But I like you more than I care to, and I’m not interested in anyone else right now.” He pressed my hands in his and looked at them, then back at me. “Let’s do it. As long as you understand where I
can’t go. Jess talked me through a lot of shit. She rescued me in ways you can’t even fathom.”
Asking him to explain would have been aggressively intimate enough to break whatever we had. Whatever indefinable thing that was, short-term monogamous relationship, friendly fuckery, exclusive fling, it was not what he had had with Jessica. Our connection didn’t have the bandwidth to sustain the pain buried far enough in our past to cause the grind of our present. His past belonged to her, even though she’d cut the line, taking it with her, tugging at him, leaving no one else for him to give it to.
“I get it,” I said, “and I’m okay with that.”
“Not for long. That’s what I’m afraid of.”
I stared at him for a second, then down at our hands. “I didn’t get into this car wanting anything more from you.”
“Yes, you did. You just don’t tell yourself the truth all the time.” He put a finger on my chin. “You’re a goddess, Monica. Never be afraid to ask for what you want.”
Our faces were a breath away. I kissed him gently, minutes passing while the city zipped by outside the windows. I heard my phone bloop, and I ignored it. His dinged, and he ignored it. Our devices were like a chorus of bells in the wrong church. I felt the car drop from the nose to the back, as if it were falling off a cliff.
I looked out the window as we stopped. “You drove me home?”
“You’re black and blue in just about all the places I want to fuck, and if you come back with me, I’m fucking them.”
“The things that come out of your mouth,” I said.
“Do they please you?”
“No, actually.”
“Come on, Monica. I’ll be gone for a few days. When I get back, we can pick up where we left off.”
“You’re leaving me like this for days? I feel like I’m carrying a baseball between my legs.”
“No touching either. That orgasm’s mine, and I’m trusting you to hold it for me.”
I put my face to his, kissing his cheek, his nose, his lips. “It weighs ten pounds. Just release me.”
