Black Leather

by Elizabeth Engstrom

  What she really needed was her sister.

  Cynthia was as miserable as she’d ever been, and didn’t know how to get out of it. She had felt her face mold into a frown the last six months or so of her melting marriage, and these last three months with Irene had tempered that frown into permanence. Irene was pretty damned selfish.

  So was Joseph, as far as that went. Nobody really understood Cynthia. Nobody could see that she didn’t need much, she just needed a little understanding, a little compassion, a little tending. She was more fragile than Irene, who was iron-willed and indestructible. Cynthia was more... precious.

  Not to Irene, she wasn’t. Not to Joseph any more, either.

  Irene had everything she needed. Irene was completely self-sufficient, in and of herself. She didn’t need anybody, she didn’t need anything, she made or bought or seduced everything, and Cynthia could never figure out how she did that. Where did that talent, that relentless drive come from? Cynthia didn’t have any of that.

  Joseph had everything he needed, too. Successful, smart, handsome, apparently he had outgrown his need for her. But that wasn’t quite right. Hadn’t they taken vows? Richer, poorer, sickness and health? Nothing had changed that drastically in their marriage. Nobody was getting rich or poor or sick or healthy. They were just getting more selfish. Joseph was just getting more selfish.

  Irene had it all. Irene didn’t need a vacation.

  Cynthia needed a vacation. Cynthia needed to get out of town, get a fresh perspective on life. Cynthia needed a little bit of fun, and who was Irene to deny her that?

  Cynthia needed a vacation with her sister. If they could have some time together, some fun time, maybe whatever was abrading their friendship would smooth over. If Cynthia could just get Irene out of that rat race she lived in, even if just for a weekend—they could have a few drinks, laugh over old times, get back on track together.

  The idea of laughing with her sister—the very idea of laughing again was so appealing to Cynthia she couldn’t repress the little noise that slipped out with her sigh.

  Irene didn’t remember how much fun they had when they were younger, Cynthia thought. They used to look so much alike that watching Irene laugh was like watching herself. They had great times, being little girls together. Back then, the two years between them had meant nothing. Now it meant everything. Now, at thirty-three, she was just Irene Nottingham’s totally useless little sister.

  Cynthia lay down on the sofa, put her feet up on it, adjusted a pillow behind her head. She’d been lying on this sofa so long it had her body print imbedded permanently into the cushions. That was not good.

  Irene would never take Cynthia with her, and Cynthia couldn’t blame her. Cynthia had become a drudge. Ugly, depressed, sad... not good company for a weekend out-of-town getaway. No wonder Irene didn’t look upon her as a friend any more. What kind of stimulation could she provide someone like Irene? Irene didn’t have many friends. Cynthia assumed it was one of those “it’s lonely at the top” situations. Well, hell. Cynthia would always and forever be there for Irene, whether Irene knew it or not. Irene had always been there to give Cynthia a helping hand, and Cynthia would always be Irene’s best friend.

  I need a getaway, too, Cynthia thought, and that thought spawned another one, such a good one that she sat straight up. I am independent, too, she thought, I have an American Express card. And I can fly off to LA just as easily as she can.

  She thought of meeting up with Irene, and having a couple of drinks and some good laughs together. Cynthia thought that perhaps Irene had a guy in LA, some kind of a squeeze, but if she did, she never mentioned him, and that wouldn’t be like Irene. No, Irene was just out having some out-of-town fun, and Cynthia wanted some of that.

  Cynthia knew Irene wasn’t celibate, but Irene was very discreet. Too discreet. Maybe it would be fun to bust that little secret wide open.

  Exactly what a sneaky, good-times-seeking little sister would do. A great prank.

  She hauled herself up off the sofa, walked into Irene’s office, sat down at the desk and pulled open the big file drawer. Irene was incredibly organized. Joseph had taken care of all his and Cynthia’s accounting chores, and that was a good thing, because Cynthia could never quite keep all her bills in one place.

  Joseph had taken care of her and now Irene was taking care of her. When was she going to grow up and take care of herself?

  She didn’t want to. It was too hard.

  She pulled out a file marked American Express, and opened it out on the clean desk top. Monthly itemized statements, three years' worth. Cynthia went through them, one at a time.

  There.

  Los Angeles. The last time Irene went to Los Angeles, she stayed at the Midnite Motel. That’s odd. The Ritz Carlton would be more like Irene’s style.

  Cynthia tapped her fingernail on the paper once, twice, three times. Then she picked up the phone and called United.

  Thank God for American Express.

  ~~~

  Joseph mowed the tiny lawn of the little house his parents had left him, his heart heavy with the guilt of Cynthia.

  He never meant to hurt her. He meant to love her until the day he died, but things don’t always turn out the way people mean for them to.

  He mowed and trimmed and did a little pruning while the daylight held and tried not to think about Cynthia or her sister. Mowing the lawn was simple; not thinking about those women was impossible.

  Joseph first met Irene when he was called to testify on behalf of a student at the community college where he administered personality profile exams to help the new students determine a course of study. Irene’s client had been arrested for a series of rapes in the campus vicinity, and Irene was his defense attorney. None of the victims could positively identify their attacker, and the evidence against the kid was sketchy at best.

  Irene, in an effort to show the accused’s pristine character and future career intentions, came to the community college where he was enrolled, the same college where Joseph worked as a student counselor, to go through the boy’s records, and there she found the personality profile that clearly said the student was suited for a career in some humanitarian profession. Nursing, teaching, hospice, social work, or even agriculture.

  Joseph would never forget the day Irene Nottingham strode into the Academic Advising office. He peeked around the carpeted edge of his cubicle partition and watched her come in. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. When she asked for him by name, he almost tipped his chair over backwards.

  He testified, the boy was released—another boy, student-aged but not affiliated with the college, soon confessed to each of the assaults—and Irene invited Joseph out for a victory drink. She brought her sister along.

  Joseph felt like he’d been swept up in a raging torrent of hormones as Cynthia latched onto him, overtly flirting, almost to the point of embarrassment. Irene sat back, sipped her expensive champagne and smiled.

  Cynthia. It had been lust at first sight, and Joseph never even put up a fight.

  To his shame, he never remembered how Irene got home that night. He liked Irene, though her professional independence intimidated him. She intrigued him as well, but he couldn’t get beyond the intimidation her poise, her bearing and her professional credentials came to bear. Cynthia apparently had everything Irene had—looks, smarts, a fluid sensuality—but without the “take charge” personality. Cynthia needed someone to take care of her, and Joseph was ready for someone to care for.

  They whirlwinded their courtship and married way too soon. Joseph had no concept of Cynthia’s enormous depth of need. He wasn’t prepared to be a father to anyone but his children—certainly not his wife. When it became apparent that Cynthia was bereft of self-esteem and self-respect, and she needed to grow up instead of clinging to Joseph with such desperation, Joseph sought help, all kinds of help. He made counseling appointments with clergy and professional marriage counselors and psychiatrists. He tried making appointments as a
couple and each of them separately. Cynthia refused to go. From his actions, she just received the message that she wasn’t acceptable the way she was, and that only increased her desperation, her dependence, and it frightened Joseph and occluded his love.

  Finally, it was apparent that she wasn’t going to try to help herself, and he couldn’t visualize a future with her, so over one emotional, candlelit dinner, he asked her to move out. And he held her as they both cried over their broken dreams.

  It was the best thing for both of them, although Cynthia never saw it that way. She still didn’t. She wanted Joseph back, and every manipulative attempt she made at sliding back into his affections only abraded whatever love he had left for her.

  The demise of their marriage felt like a ringing failure to Joseph. He wanted to have a marriage commitment like the one his parents had. They were totally devoted to each other, and to him. Maybe they were a little bit overly devoted, overly protective, after what happened to Anna.

  Anna, Joseph’s sister, had been sent away when she was fifteen and Joseph was eleven. Anna’s overpowering jealousy over her baby brother had continuously threatened Joseph’s life from the moment he was born. Her enormous intelligence gave his parents hope that some day they’d be able to reason with her, but that never happened. They had to work overtime to protect Joseph from his sister. Anna became more and more unbalanced until the final, not unexpected diagnosis of schizophrenia, and their parents had no choice but to place her permanently in a home that could deal with her. Understandably, that was the most difficult decision of their lives. That never ending guilt and heartache prompted his parents to retrieve Anna from the home where she lived for heavily-medicated holidays and the occasional weekend, never a successful event. Everybody was ill at ease with Anna in the house, most particularly Anna.

  Anna strangled herself to death with a strip of her bed sheet tied to the headboard when she was twenty-four.

  Joseph wanted nothing more than to make up for Anna. He wanted to give his parents a couple of fat, happy grandchildren to run and giggle through their house. He wanted children; he had wanted children with Cynthia, but as it turned out, it was best that they waited. Children need a stable home.

  Joseph needed a stable home, and his home life with Cynthia had grown ever more unstable.

  Joseph never wanted to damage Cynthia, and that’s why he was helping her through this. He knew he was treading a fine line between helping her with love and giving her false hope. He had once loved her very deeply, and he was, perhaps, partly responsible for her current state of depression. He was her husband, he had been her lover, he hoped he was still her friend.

  He didn’t want to baby her, he couldn’t let her walk on him, but he’d do what he could. He hoped that when the divorce was final, he’d finally be able to walk away from both the Nottingham women.

  He put the lawnmower away, tidied up his trimmings and stuffed them into the compost bin, then went inside, washed up, popped dinner into the microwave, turned on the computer and got back into organizing his dissertation research. Unfortunately, “Indicators of College Success” was as boring a topic as he could imagine, and it was too easy to procrastinate. But he was after the Ph.D. that would land him the job of Vice President of Student Services at North Beach Community College, and that would secure his future.

  He wished Cynthia had a thesis or a dissertation to complete. It would take her mind off herself.

  Cynthia needed a goal. She needed a project. Something other than calling him a hundred times a day.

  Chapter 4

  At ten o’clock, the music and the people in the dingy east LA bar were just heating up.

  Cynthia stood in the hallway next to the wooden screen that separated the rest rooms, trying to be unobtrusive. She didn’t want Irene to see her just yet.

  United had hourly shuttles to LA, and a taxi got her to the dive where Irene stayed. By the time Cynthia got all the way out to the Midnite Motel in the middle of nowhere, she had been filled with second thoughts about the wisdom of this impulsive act, and was afraid to let Irene see her. Irene would be full of disapproval and probably mad as hell, too.

  What Cynthia was doing didn’t feel like a prank at all any more. It seemed like jealousy.

  The Midnite Motel was awful, with a yellowed and torn bedspread and years of gunk built up on the window screens. The faucet in the bathroom leaked into a long rust stain down the side of the sink. Cynthia couldn’t help but smile to herself. When Irene gets out of town, she really sees how the other half lives, she thought to herself. Nothing could be further from the uptown San Francisco lifestyle that her high falutin’ lawyer sister led. This place had winos and druggies and hookers and smelled like puke.

  Cynthia checked into her tacky room on the second floor, as it turned out, just two doors down from Irene’s, and by that time it was a little bit late for second thoughts.

  Cynthia had never done anything this radically impulsive before. She jumped up and looked out the door every time she heard a room door open. She wanted to meet Irene, to confront her, to talk to her, to reveal her plan.

  Hopefully, Irene would get a big laugh and then they could go out and have a good time together. They could get drunk and cruise guys. Who knows where the evening or the weekend might lead? Cynthia was up for some adventure.

  But when the door down the way finally opened, the woman who walked out wasn’t Irene.

  It was somebody else, but that somebody else had a familiar air about her. It was in her walk. It was in her profile.

  She had short-cropped straight black hair with bangs. She wore over-the-knee black leather boots, a tiny leather skirt with a wide chrome zipper up the front, and a black leather bustier. Cynthia leaned over the rusting turquoise wrought iron railing and watched the woman walk slowly, teasingly down the stairs and right up to a group of Hispanic men in the parking lot. She asked directions. She asked for a ride.

  Cynthia couldn’t believe what she was seeing and hearing.

  It was Irene. It was Irene in a black wig and intensive dark eye shadow and dark red lips.

  What the hell?

  Irene got into the car with one of the men and they took off, the unmistakable sound of her laughter carried away on the dry air.

  Cynthia brushed her teeth, slipped into a pair of jeans and a blue blouse, and caught a taxi to the club she overheard Irene asking those men about. It was less than a mile away.

  And there was Irene, sitting at the bar. She looked like a hooker. No she didn’t, she looked much more dangerous than that. Cynthia could barely believe it.

  The tavern was cavernous, with a long bar at one end, and a country and western band at the other. Little round tables and wooden chairs separated the two, with a wide expanse for the dancers. The place was filled with smoke and Mexicans and what looked like Indians. The band started up with some fast salsa.

  Cynthia tore her eyes away from Irene—Irene was unbelievable—and scanned the crowd, as she saw Irene do, but she didn’t know what to look for. Cynthia wasn’t interested in men, she wasn’t interested in dating or dancing; her heart still ached for Joseph.

  She was sorry she had come. This was Irene’s scene, not hers. This was Irene’s idea of getting away from it all, not Cynthia’s. Cynthia’d rather... take a group of kindergartners to the zoo.

  She looked back at Irene. Damn, Irene looked good. Irene looked like nothing Cynthia had ever seen before. Irene didn’t even look like Irene, and Cynthia had to admire her for it. When Irene got out of town, she got way out.

  Irene did not blend in with this blue-jeaned and cowboy hatted crowd, and that seemed to please her.

  She sat on a barstool, long legs crossed, one spike-heeled, pointed-toe black boot moving with the music, seeing everything yet looking at no one.

  Cynthia felt about as able to compete with her older sister as usual. Irene had it all, goddamnit. Cynthia was no contest, no way.

  She heard the rest room door slam behin
d her, and then a huge presence, like a tree, made itself known at her back.

  Cynthia stepped away, afraid she was blocking the exit, but he still stood there. She turned and looked at him.

  A big, dark-skinned Native American, with thick, straight, black shoulder-length hair stood looking down on her. He was gorgeous.

  “Dance?” he asked.

  Cynthia shook her head no, turned away and looked at the ground. She took another step away so he could pass.

  But he followed her step and continued to stand behind her—so closely that she could feel his body heat. She looked up at him, annoyed.

  “Dance?” he asked again.

  “No,” she said, and tried again to move out of his way. But with every step she took, he took the same step.

  Finally, she decided to ignore him, so she just stood still.

  He bumped into her lightly from behind.

  She whipped around, ready to yell at him, but his face was exactly the same, his big square features totally impassive. “Dance?” he asked.

  It made her laugh. This was a line she’d never heard before. She looked into his eyes again, found nothing menacing there, and perhaps something a little bit intriguing, especially in his approach. She shrugged, smiled shyly, nodded.

  She glanced over at Irene, who was still nursing her beer, holding the brown bottle by its neck, casually, still scanning the crowd.

  Cynthia led him to the dance floor, walking along the far wall, until they got close to the stage, as far from Irene’s line of sight as possible.

  Though the music was fairly fast, the big man put his huge hands on her hips and brought her close to him.

  Unsure of what to do, Cynthia put her hands on his arms, just above the elbows. She could give him a shove if she needed to.

  But she didn’t need to. They just moved gently to the music, drunken dancers doing everything but having sex on the dance floor, swirling, rubbing each other and chattering in Spanish all around them. He smelled good, this big guy, he had that overpowering masculine scent, and every now and then she felt his face in her hair as he leaned over to touch her or smell her or something. Whenever he did that, she got goose bumps.