by CD Reiss
It’s night. We’re on a high floor, and Los Angeles is covered in a blanket of lights. I see myself naked, reflected in the windows, a ghost over the city.
“Put your hands on the glass,” he says. I do. The basin is spread before me, a checkerboard of pinpricks, exactly as Mondrian had envisioned. Squares of light, blinking signs of life create a haze in the distance. Above it all, my body, leaning into the window, stretched across miles of Los Angeles, bent at the waist as if I was about to fuck it.
“Anything that sounds like ‘no’ or ‘stop’ is effective. But you have to say it.” He draws his palm across my ass in a hard slap. At that point, he hadn’t spanked me yet, so my surprise overwhelms the arousal. I am immediately angry and defensive. “You have to use your voice. Do you understand?”
He puts his left hand on my rib cage, fingertips brushing my breast, and slaps me again. I’m not surprised the second time, nor am I angry. The raw tingle is arousing, as is the stroke and grab that follow. But what really arouses me is letting him do it. I submitted to it, making myself beneath him, under his command and control. I want it. I want every sting, every brush of his fingers against my sensitive skin. He slaps the back of my thighs, and I gasp.
“Monica, was that you?” he asks. I see him in the window, just behind me, his dark suit nearly invisible. I want him to take me, use me, fuck me like a whore. He reaches between my legs and jams two fingers in my cunt. My knees nearly buckle under the weight of my arousal. “You’re wet.”
“Yes,” I whisper.
“You want me to fuck you?” He slaps my ass again, hard.
“Yes, please,” I reply in breaths.
“Say it.”
I can’t. I can’t engage my vocal cords. I can’t make sounds. My voice kills people, I am convinced of it.
He takes his belt off and loops it once. “You don’t know the power you have.” He whacks me with the belt. God, it hurts. I’m more aware of the presence and place of my cunt. I feel it hanging between the raw singe of my ass cheeks. It’s heavy, bloated, engorged with desire. He hits me again, lower, the leather kissing my wet opening. “Say it.”
“Please fuck me.”
“With your voice.” Whack. The sting is definite, lingering, burning as if I’d sat on a hot stove. “You don’t know the power you have.” He hits me repeatedly on the word power until my ass is on fire. My clit is so engorged the belt touches it when it snaps, and I scream.
“Monica, was that you?” He’s breathless himself.
I can’t make the noise again until he drops the belt and slaps my cunt twice, hard and fast. The sting then the rush of pleasure pulls one long vowel sound from my throat.
“There it is. That beautiful voice.” Behind me, he takes out his cock and places it at my opening. “Say it.”
“Fuck me. Fuck me please.” The air from my lungs vibrates my vocal cords, and I hear myself cry out as he rams into me. His hips touch my raw behind, making me feel every thrust as pleasure and pain. I’m filled with the spectrum of sensations, every thought, every cell, every warp of my soul feels him move inside me.
He pulls me up. My hands leave the cold glass, and I stand again, draped over the city, Jonathan fucking me from behind. I see him in the window, and he knows I’m looking at my giant self over the basin.
He whispers in my ear, “You’re not the same woman I met. You have control.”
I realize I’m hearing him say it the way he said it to me yesterday when he was trying to convince me to cut that EP. That same weak, enervated voice that I’d infused with muscle in my mind. I had stolen it and pasted it into the scene like a collage.
His fingers slip between my legs. I’m sopping for him, my clit a hard knob under his touch, and I watch my face in the window as I open my mouth to yell with pleasure as he whispers in my ear.
“You don’t know your own power.”
*
I put my head by his shoulder and fell asleep for a few hours.
thirty-one
MONICA
I went to the cafeteria aching from sleeping like a pretzel. I felt like the ghoul of Sequoia whenever I walked in there—until I saw Declan. He was the ghoul, of course. I was an amateur.
He sat with a young woman who was twisting her long dark hair, making a single, lacquered curl. They spoke earnestly, emotionally, much as he and Jessica had spoken the other day. To be more accurate, she was talking and he was nodding in the way a therapist might. He understood. He heard every word. He had answers posed as questions. He’d go home and forget it all.
I sat at my usual table. I could have gone back up to Jonathan, but I had business in the cafeteria. I was perfectly willing to sit and work on a song until that business came to me.
Take these rolling hills
Shorn grass and dewy mornings
Dump a street on them
Shove a house, then ten times ten
Take this starry night
Clean air and sparkling skies
Spray paint it with poison
Send up bleating sirens
I’m gonna rise through
My jawbone on your throat
Gonna get black tarred again
My heels dug in
Feasting under the surface
Death on life, me on you
Claws dig, teeth cut
Locked in a forever fuck
I was considering changing the last verse to a chorus when I felt someone above me. I knew who it was without looking up. “Mister Drazen.”
“Miss Faulkner, or should I call you by your new name?”
“How do you know my last name?” I leaned away from my notebook, closing it so he wouldn’t see my anger spit up on the page.
“I could start with you next to my son at the Eclipse show. The journalists had you figured out by publication. My daughter Theresa still speaks to me sometimes. She told me about you. May I sit?”
“Sure. Could it have been the notice you pulled out of my notebook?”
“Shouldn’t leave it lying around if you don’t want people to see it.”
“You bought my mother’s house,” I said.
“Both of them. I didn’t actually want property in Castaic, but—”
“You almost sent Jonathan over the edge.”
He folded his lips between his teeth, a move so like my lover’s I had a quick vision of what Jonathan would look like if he was ever allowed to age. “That wasn’t my intention.”
“Maybe.” I paused, dunking my teabag repeatedly. It had no effect, but it gave me something to do with my hands. “What do you do down here all the time? You’re a fourth-generation billionaire, for Chrissakes. Can’t you pay someone to wait around here for you?”
He laughed. I didn’t know what it was with the Drazen men. Every time I mentioned their money, they thought it was hilarious. He twisted and put his back to the wall, stretching out his feet. It was a gesture for a younger man, a man who wanted to take up a lot of room. “It’s always amazing to me not what people do for money or revenge, but what they do for love. That woman I was just talking to?”
“Yeah.”
“Her husband just got beaten nearly to death in a parking lot two blocks away. They wanted his car, but he had worked for it, so he wouldn’t give it up. She said they only got the keys away from him when they threatened to rape her.”
“That’s awful.”
“It wasn’t even that nice a car,” he mumbled, flicking a crumb off the table.
“But why’s she down here talking to you?”
“That’s the interesting thing. See, he was in surgery, getting his internal bleeding sewn up. But it was so bad, and it was taking too long. Two doctors came out to talk to her every hour.” He held up two fingers to make his point. “They said, ‘We’re working on it. He’s stable.’ Then, on the fourth hour, three doctors come out.” He held up three fingers that time. “She knows, from when her father had cancer, that three doctors coming out after surgery means bad news. I
f one doctor is attacked by a violent family member, the other is there to hold him down and the third is to call security. So she saw three and ran down here before they spoke to her.”
“And like a shepherd with a lost lamb, you found her.”
“If my son won’t see me, at least I can do some good down here.”
“Like buying my mother’s house,” I said.
“You’re getting the idea.”
I didn’t trust him, not one bit. I didn’t believe he stayed in the cafeteria to be in the same sphere as his estranged child. I didn’t believe Jonathan had misconstrued a lifetime of manipulation and bad deeds. The facts didn’t drive my mistrust; it was simply that I had to pick someone to believe. I chose my husband. Yet, if I was going to do what needed to be done, I would have to trust him enough to keep his word.
“He’s dying. That suture tears a little more each day. He’s bleeding into himself. A couple of days is all he’s got. Tell me you’re down here to do some good, and we can talk about something.”
He shifted in his seat until he faced me, elbows on the table. “Go on.”
“I’m a distraught wife. I might just suggest things I shouldn’t.”
“Grain of salt taken. Congratulations, by the way.”
I ignored his glance at the borrowed ring. “There’s a heart with the right blood type in this hospital. It’s connected to a dead fucking brain. I want it.”
“The Italian. Patalano, I believe? Paulie Patalano?”
“He filled out a donor card, but there’s no living will. His family’s keeping him alive with machines and prayer. It’s time for the machines to give the prayers a chance to work.”
“And?”
He wasn’t going to give me anything. If he intuited what I was asking, he wouldn’t step up and verbalize it. I had to do all the heavy lifting.
“And I think that if someone could arrange an opening in security, that heart could be available real soon.”
He studied me as if seeing me for the first time. The depth of his stare made me uncomfortable, as if fingers were rooting around my insides, knocking around corners and dark places. I stayed still. Let the fucker try to figure me out. I didn’t have all that many corners, and at that point, I didn’t care what he turned up.
“Who would go through the opening?” he asked, an eyebrow lifted.
“Me.” I said it without question or lilt in my voice.
“I admit, I thought he cared about you because you were beautiful,” Declan said. “But I was wrong. You’re loyal to the point of martyrdom.”
“I’m tired of praying for miracles.”
“You might need a miracle after the deed is done.”
“I’ll take my chances with him alive,” I said.
He smirked, and I saw Jonathan’s face in his one-sided grin. “You think because Patalano’s brain dead already, you can get off. If you play the distressed woman, of course. Who would doubt you? As his wife, you have more to gain from him dying than living. And with the Drazen machine behind you? How could any judge even send it to a jury, much less convict?”
Murder. It was the word he’d avoided.
Despite the conversation, I was struck by a thought I couldn’t get out of my head. I hadn’t even wanted to date Jonathan, and there I was ready to commit murder for him. “I’m sure it won’t be that easy. For you, maybe. You’re Teflon.”
“More well-seasoned cast iron,” he joked. “What’s in it for me?”
“There’s nothing I can offer you but Jonathan’s life.”
He nodded. With a slight twitch of his hand, he indicated the entirety of the cafeteria. That twitch told me that Jonathan’s life simply spared wasn’t enough. He would still be relegated to the cafeteria at Sequoia Hospital. “I’m no martyr. My relationship with some of my family is painful. I don’t want any of them leaving this world a stranger.”
“I don’t know if anything I can say will change his mind.”
“Let me know when you figure it out.”
That was it. That was the deal I was offered. Get Declan in to see Jonathan, and give him a heart attack that’ll kill him. Don’t get Declan in, and watch Jonathan die while some brainless mobster down the hall kept a heart alive for someone else.
thirty-two
MONICA
I stood outside Jonathan’s door, listening to the symphony of instruments that kept him alive. I hated them. They intruded, bullying me into remembering my place when we were alone together. He faced away from the door, the tendons of his neck and the line of his jaw pale in the morning light. He turned when I tiptoed in, and he held his hand out for me. I kissed it, then his lips.
“Goddess.” His voice was shredded, his breathing audible. I’d die if I had to watch him deteriorate.
“How do you feel?”
“With you here?” He touched my cheek. His fingertips were electric on my face, even in his condition. “Like fucking, but that’s probably a bad idea.”
“I have a headache anyway.”
“How does it feel to be Mrs. Drazen?”
“You didn’t need to marry me to protect me from your father.”
“He’s destroyed everything of mine he’s ever touched. And look, he’s already stepped in to get control of you.”
How could I bring up seeing Declan? He’d be convinced his father was a puppet-master pulling my strings. “I married you for the right reasons. Not out of desperation,” I said.
“Desperation’s all I have. There’s something unfinished in my life, and it’s us. I needed you bound to me in front of heaven and earth. I’m glad we did it.”
“I’m afraid I gave you permission to die.”
“I don’t need your permission.” He seemed so collected when he said that, as if he was totally okay with leaving me, and marrying me was just him tidying up his affairs.
I felt a spark of rage and clenched my teeth. As his thumb stroked my jaw, the anger melted into irritation, then mild annoyance, and then into a liquid place that had been the base coat of my anger all day. The rush of sadness felt physical as it washed over me, pulling me into an undertow of grief. He was dead already. He knew it. It was a simple fact I hadn’t come to terms with, holding out ridiculous hope. A dead man stroked my cheek, and the awakening between my legs from that touch was a ghastly perversion. I wanted a corpse. He looked ready for a coffin, peaceful at last, hands crossed over his chest, left ring finger bulging and swollen around his key ring band.
I broke as if an egg had been cracked behind my face, leaking yolk and clear albumin. My eyes fell apart under the weight of my tears. My nose clogged, lungs kicking air in hitched gulps. He touched my tears, but couldn’t do anything else. He could barely lift his own head. I turned my wet, ugly, twisted face onto his palm and let him feel my sobbing contortions.
“Goddess, please,” he said.
I was past the point of reason. “I’d kill for you, Jonathan. If I could—”
“Shh. That’s enough.”
I couldn’t finish speaking anyway, my breathing was so charged with sobs. I swallowed a pint of gunk that had collected in my throat and squeezed my eyes shut until I’d stopped crying long enough to get out a sentence. “If I can, I will. You mark my words.”
“Okay. Just hush.”
“I’m going to suggest something. I don’t want you to have a heart attack over it.” I snapped up tissues and wiped my face. My eyes felt swollen and pained.
“Funny girl.”
“Your father has been in the cafeteria for a week to be near you.”
“Fuck, Monica. No. What did he say to you?”
I put my hands on either side of him and leaned over his face, blocking the light from the window. “I’ll make a deal with the devil to save you.”
“Don’t. Whatever it is, don’t do it.”
“I’m giving you a reason to live.”
He swallowed hard and stared past me at the ceiling. “You are my reason to live. Fuck.” His lips moved in a
litany of fucks that had no sound. They were made of breath and panic. I glanced at the machines. They seemed okay, not that I knew what that meant. They weren’t beeping or honking. The stylus that kept track of his heartbeat was making the same scritchy noise it always did.
“It’s okay,” I said. But was it? I had no guarantee I wasn’t being royally fucked with. I had no idea who I was dealing with. Declan seemed to be a different person to everyone who spoke about him. Who was he to me? Would I find out the hard way?
“I’m stuck here,” he said. “I can’t do anything but trust you, can I?”
“No. You can’t. I love you, you have to know that.”
“I know it. But your decision-making...”
“I decided to wait you out when you left me. I decided to ask you for exclusivity. I decided to let you kiss me on Mulholland Drive. I could go on.”
“Maybe later,” he said weakly.
“Will you do it for me? See your father?” I put everything into the question, and that was a mistake. He shouldn’t see any emotion from me with regard to Declan. I should have played blithe or irritated. But I played it honest. I didn’t realize my error until the machines whined and Jonathan’s eyes closed.
thirty-three
JONATHAN
Fiona had gotten kicked in the chest once at the riding academy when she was making a token attempt to learn to check a hoof for splits. The thoroughbred had gotten annoyed, and Fiona, who never listened to a damn thing anyone said, had been sitting in the wrong spot. She went flying. Two broken ribs and a bruised ego later, she quit riding. I’d probably never see Fiona again to tell her getting defibrillated repeatedly felt the same as getting kicked in the chest by a horse looked.
Monica stood in the corner, wringing her hands as if she wanted to break a bone. She was terrified. I must have gone into arrest at some point in our conversation. I forgot what I’d said.
“How are you feeling, Mister Drazen?” asked the doctor, a young guy I’d seen a couple of times. He looked at his chart and barked orders after the question. The number of people in the room had doubled in the minute I was unconscious.
