The Morbid and Sultry Tales of Genevieve Clare

by Hartnett, J. B.

  “When?” he asked.

  “When what?”

  “When did you go off it?”

  “I just kinda stopped this morning. Well, not kinda. I just didn’t take it.”

  “Good.”

  “Yeah?” I was worried there for a sec.

  “Yeah, baby. Because I have a surprise for you, and I’d hate for it to go to waste. Tonight’ll be our last drinking night for a while. And we can both have sloshed jiggy-jiggy.” He smiled.

  “Amazing to me how you can say those words with a straight face,” I commented, loving him even more.

  “Barely, Gen. It takes great concentration, but I say it because it makes you smile, and because of that, I’ll say whatever ridiculous phrase you want me to.” He reached behind him into the duffle and pulled out a tee, first cleaning me up, then himself, and took us down the river to our secret destination.

  Ahren could have taken me anywhere. Northern California was not short on romantic destinations. Hell, in a few hours, you could be in Yosemite. So when I stood on the steps of Ahren’s cabin, I was far from disappointed, and definitely surprised.

  “Come on,” he said with humor in his voice then gave me a gentle push toward the door, reached around, and opened it. What lay beyond the door was the real surprise.

  “Wow.” I had no other words.

  He began to set food from the picnic basket on the table, which was expertly dressed with a runner of jewel tones. “Hungry?”

  “Yeah. I could eat.” I blinked, took a look at him, and saw he was trying not to laugh. Again. “Ahren?”

  His entire body now shook with silent laughter. “Yep?”

  “What the hell happened in here?” Since my last visit to the cabin, which had been many months before, he had completely redecorated. New linens, new kitchen, new furniture, and the old stuff had been really nice, too. But now, it was magnificent. Like a five-star luxury cabin getaway.

  “Do you like it?” He handed me a plate of antipasto. Little olives, cheese, prosciutto, bread, and some kind of pesto dip.

  “Uh… yeah. It’s pretty fuckin’ awesome.” I grinned approvingly. I was trying to visualize the same décor at Eden Hills.

  He sat in one of two big cushy arm chairs. How he got them through the door should have been my first question. Before I could ask though, he had his bare feet on one of two matching ottomans and said, “Take a load off, Gen.”

  I sat with my plate and just took the place in. “It’s very romantic.” By the time I saw his house in Mill Valley, most of his stuff had been packed up, so I never really knew what his style was. One thing I did notice was a mobile which hung in front of the kitchen window. It was the focal point and determined the décor of the entire place. The remaining daylight came right through the glass and cast blue and green hues on the wood floor.

  “Oh my God,” I whispered.

  “Gen?”

  “Did your dad make the window in Delilah’s house?” I could still see it perfectly, and the memory hit me with a sudden stab of melancholy.

  “Yeah.” The way he answered told me he understood my reaction, because he’d had it, too. “He used to hang those mobiles in the woods, on the walk here. Things he’d find on the river or in people’s gardens. I asked him where he got his inspiration, and he told me one day he’d hiked a few miles north of Bodega Bay. He noticed these stacks of stones, man-made of course, but someone had left their mark there. They didn’t take away from nature; they added to it.”

  Yeah, Adam was a special guy.

  I remembered his dad made recycled art. I also remembered that I loved it.

  “So, I have a business idea,” he said excitedly, breaking my train of thought. “You ready to hear it?”

  I looked at my plate, shoved off my sandals, and pushed my body back into the big, comfy chair. “Yeah. I’m ready.” I smiled as I closed my eyes in pleasure.

  “Good chair, huh?”

  “God, yes. Tell me your idea. If I drift off, you can wake me up with your hand in my shorts.”

  He chuckled. “Will do.”

  I heard a drink being poured and a glass set down between us.

  “Wine,” he explained.

  “Nice.” I balanced the plate in my lap and reached until I felt the stem. “Continue.” I sipped with my eyes closed.

  Again, he chuckled, but I listened with rapt attention.

  “The guy from Delilah’s funeral, Mir? He owns those beautiful holiday cabins up the river from us. During spring break and summer, the place is sold out, some cabins booked five years in advance. But the winter, he usually has to close down. I spoke with his grandson, who pretty much runs everything now. There are five cabins farther up the river, bigger, an open plan like this. Spread out and private. He needs an investor to upgrade then advertise them as a kind of a honeymoon destination.”

  “And are you that investor?” I knew the answer, but what fun was a one-sided conversation.

  “Yeah, but here’s the interesting part.”

  I stared at him and silently waited.

  “Delilah’s house?”

  “Yesss,” I replied.

  “I asked around. I wanted to buy it. The garden, you know, it feels really…”

  “Personal,” I finished for him.

  “Yeah. I found out she left it to us, Gen. Everything still has to go through the normal legal crap, but eventually, it’ll be ours.”

  I sat straight up in the chair, then promptly fell back into the cushions against my will. The chair was just that lush. I shook my head. “I can’t believe that!”

  “Yeah, you can. She loved that we were finally together. She had no one else.”

  I had a pretty good idea what his plan was. “We’re keeping the house, of course.”

  “I want to make it a rental. Maybe a holiday rental. We’ll see how it goes. I don’t want it to get trashed though. I also want to make it seem like we’re investing in those cabins, but really—”

  “We’re giving it to him.”

  He smiled warmly at me. I’d said exactly what he was hoping to hear.

  “Yeah. However, I like the idea of turning over old places, doing them up, making them into rentals. Just river property. And…” He looked at his feet, then back to me. “We could open the office in town again. Cosmo has his license. I’m in the process of getting mine. I’ll deal just with local listings and holiday rentals, and Cosmo will take care of everything else. It’ll keep me from going nuts.”

  I pulled my feet up and exchanged my plate for my wine glass. “I thought you loved being outdoors.”

  He looked around the cabin and looked back at me. “From the time I was a kid, I wanted to work with my dad, Gen. In a lot of ways, I’ve been doing what you’ve been doing, trying to keep him with me as long as possible. I decided when I sent Rocky that email, if you agreed to come here, it was time to let him go. I just wasn’t sure what to do instead.” He took in the cabin, a cabin his dad had built and Ahren had transformed. “This is something we can do together. Entirely up to you, but I think you could put your touch on each property. We can do up small places like this, guarantee privacy, leave an order form for the guests, they fill in what they want, and I’ll deliver them in the morning. You’d still have time for your oldies, as you call them, and whoever else contacts you for a funeral. I think it’s important, what you do, and I know why you do it. I don’t expect that to stop. But most important of all, I want you to be happy.”

  I looked at the empty wine glass in my hand then back to Ahren. It all sounded wonderful actually. We were in the process of creating our own lives, not ones dictated by what our parents did or the grief they left us with when they passed.

  “And,” he added, “I know you’re wondering who decorated this, and it wasn’t me.”

  I was suddenly going through my list of women he knew and wondered who he could have given this task. Coming up empty, I was fighting a pang of jealousy, thinking he’d hired a woman, met her here in a spa
ce that, when you walked through the door, felt intimate. A space where he and I shared some pretty significant moments in our history.

  “Gen?” He snapped me from my spiralling thoughts and informed me, “It was Rocky.”

  Yeah. When it came to making something beautiful, Rocky had a knack. She didn’t even have to try hard; it just kinda happened.

  Ahren rose from his chair and pushed my legs apart to sit between them on the ottoman. “Look at me, Gen.”

  “I am looking at you.” Guilt was written all over my face though, I was sure of it.

  “You don’t trust me?” It really was disconcerting he could read me like a book.

  “I do, which is why I probably have a look on my face that says ‘asshole’ in big bold letters.” I smiled sheepishly.

  “Baby, I gave Rocky the keys and told her how to get here. She and Cosmo came here together and set everything up for us to have this night. She wants to do something besides work in her mom’s shop. She thought you might be interested in working for Guava a couple of days a week. Between the two of you, you can both have a flexible schedule and—”

  “Yeah,” I interrupted, giving him a soft smile to convey my gratitude and embarrassment for doubting him. Still, I needed to explain. “I’ve never really been faced with the jealousy thing yet. Sorry.”

  He leaned into me, his face just inches from mine. “When that day comes for me, it’s gonna get ugly. I trust you, but it’s still gonna get ugly.” He grinned and touched his lips to my cheek. “Love you, Gen,” he whispered.

  “Yeah,” I said and closed my eyes as his lips brushed slowly down the side of my neck. “Are we having sex now?”

  He chuckled against the top of my shoulder as he pulled down the straps to my bra and tank top. “Yeah,” he replied.

  “Hang on a minute.” I leaned around him and grabbed the wine bottle. “Drink,” I commanded.

  He leaned back and took a huge drink from the bottle and handed it to me. I did the same, and after two more turns each, the bottle was empty. Half a bottle of wine each. I knew we were both feeling it, and I felt uninhibited enough to say, “Fuck me hard and dirty.”

  The other straps were immediately pulled off the other shoulder, and his face was between my tits, pushing them together, sucking one nipple into his mouth then onto the other and back again. It was fevered, it was fabulous, and it was about to get filthy.

  He pulled me to the edge of the chair by the waistband of my shorts, and, somewhere in the back of my mind, I worried if we were going to make a mess on the nice, new, comfy chairs. “Should we get a towel or something?”

  “No one will ever stay here but us,” he returned and yanked my shorts down so hard, I heard a rip in the fabric.

  “These are the only shorts I own,” I panted.

  “No.” He threw them across the room, along with my panties. “Rocky bought you five pairs.”

  Then his hands were under my ass, pulling me to his face as he knelt on the floor. The second his mouth hit me, I whimpered… I was that worked up.

  “Not yet, baby.” He pulled his face away from me and replaced it with a finger sliding inside. He crooked it in a way, like he knew exactly what he was searching for, and pulled me, one finger hooked inside, his thumb circling over my aching clit, as his mouth hit mine.

  It was carnal, so freaking rough it was almost painful, but I loved every second of it. The desperate grabbing of my breast, his shoulders tense as he held himself at my entrance, my fingernails digging into his ass, urging him inside.

  “Tell me how you want it again,” he breathed heavily against my mouth.

  “Hard…and dirty.” I shuddered beneath him with anticipation, and then he drove into me, pounding so hard, the chair edged backward.

  Hours later, after another bottle of wine, he made love to me.

  ****

  I’d been going through requests on my website and came across one I could not say no to.

  “Hey,” I said to Ahren as he made us breakfast in the newly beautified kitchen.

  “Something interesting?” he asked, frying up bacon in an iron skillet, all old-school and manly in cargo shorts and nothing else.

  “This woman said she needs someone to clean up her toybox.” I waited for him to ask me for more information.

  “A grown woman? With a toybox?” He cracked an egg in the frying pan.

  I took a sip of coffee. “As in, she doesn’t want her family to know about her dildos and anal beads kind of toybox.”

  He lifted his head, turned to me, and said, “I think you’re going to need help with that particular job,” then grinned. Big.

  “I’m not even sure how to write up a contract for that. I mean, normally, the nursing home calls me, or the funeral home or a family member. How is a family member going to…?” An idea popped into my head. “I got it. I’m good. I’m totally going to do this. Can you imagine what kind of service this provides to people? I mean, if my parents were still living and they had to go through the suitcase under my bed—”

  “Wait, what? What suit case?” His eyebrows knitted together. He almost looked pissed. “How do I not know about a suitcase under your—”

  I grinned playfully. “I thought you could read me like a book?”

  He turned back to the pan and lifted an egg to each peacock-green dinner plate; each already had a pile of bacon and white toast. With real butter.

  He sat down, setting my plate in front of me first, and before he took his first bite, he informed me, “We better go shopping for a suitcase. And shopping for things to put into said suitcase.”

  I laughed and tucked into my meal when he asked, “How are you gonna do it?”

  “If the family is cool, it could be as easy as her telling them I’m going to come by and pick up a few things, or that I’ll be helping with the clean-up of the room. I’ll have to work on an idea, but I’m gonna guess she’s already thought of that.”

  I finished my grand breakfast as Ahren told me more about Adim and his grandfather. Adim was the same age as Ahren. He thought it was crazy they’d never met before, but he felt that Adim could become a friend, something Ahren was short on, I’d noticed.

  So I asked him, “Why don’t you have any friends?”

  He sat back in his chair and held his coffee mug as he explained. He didn’t even have to think about it.

  “When I lost my mom, the friends I had in high school had no idea what to say. As it was, I was always helping my dad, so I didn’t socialize all that much. Then in college, I had a girlfriend who did her best to be a controlling bitch. My work isn’t really social work. I think my closest male friend in the last thirty-eight years is my cab driver, Jimmy.”

  Oh my God.

  Jimmy.

  I quickly wiped my face. “Ahren! We haven’t invited Jimmy. We have to invite him and his wife! How could we have forgotten Jimmy?”

  “Gen?” Ahren reached out for my hand to calm me. “He knows, and he’s already said yes. I’ve got you covered.”

  And he totally did. Invitations, getting the house ready, Rocky and Cosmo’s wedding, it was all coming together, just like us, just like our future.

  The summer months had gone quickly, but the hot weather lingered. Suddenly, it was late October, and Rocky, Guava, and I sat in the back of Brewster’s. Our table was covered in plates with little slices of cake and three jumbo mugs of Joe. Meanwhile, the delighted townspeople of Greer’s Rest were pointing, whispering, and smiling with pure, unguarded delight.

  “Tell me why we’re doing this again?” Guava asked, which I thought was a silly question.

  “Never question free cake, Mom.” This was from Rocky, who turned to me and asked, “What was the one with that almondy stuff?”

  “That’s Bing cherry cake with marzipan frosting and almond, cherry, and buttercream filling.” This was Brewster’s, and if I had been born twenty years earlier, I would have challenged Betty Brewster to a duel for her husband, just for free cake.


  “Rochelle?” Using her full name meant Guava had reached her limit on all things baked, all things sugar, all things cakes, dresses, hats, gowns, mother-of-the-bride duties, and purple roses in October. Except for pumpkins. I was in charge of pumpkins.

  Normally, Guava was about the most relaxed, Zen person you’d ever meet.

  Rocky’s eyes moved slowly to her mother and seared her. “You have one child, me, and I’m getting the distinct impression you’re not enjoying yourself…Mom.” Her sarcasm was felt and heard by the entire room.

  “Rochelle,” she said quietly with her fingers pressed into her temples. “We have been here for two hours. Two. I’m buzzing from sugar and caffeine, not to mention I have a list, provided by my daughter, that I need to get through. You have eaten the cakes here since you were a child, Rochelle. You do not need a tasting for goodness’ sake. It’s just a waste of time!”

  I decided to step in and save the mother/daughter team from descending into pre-wedding hell. “I’ll take it from here, Guava. Just give me a call. I have a meet in an hour, but I’m free late afternoon to do whatever you need. ‘K?”

  She gave my hand a squeeze, glared at her daughter then walked out the door.

  “God, thank you! Now I can eat cake in peace.” Rocky stabbed her slice of cake with murderous intent.

  “Dude?” I asked carefully.

  “Ugh.” She dropped her fork and pushed back from the table. “My teeth hurt, damn it.” Something was wrong with the bride, and it was my job to figure out what that was.

  “We’ve consumed seventy-five pounds of refined sugar in all its manifestations, Rock. Now, what’s going on?”

  She looked at the cheesecake—the cake tasting wild card—picked up a fork then threw in down with the words, “She wants my dad to walk me down the aisle.”

  “Huh?”

  As far as I knew, and I’m pretty sure Rocky knew as well, the identity of her father was unknown. Guava was an earth-mother hippie-type from way back. She’d had a wild weekend when Rocky was conceived, the details of which she shared when she’d hit the bong, then the wine, much to Rocky’s horror.