Cards of Love: The Hermit

by Cora Brent

  He was only too happy to tell me. “Your father was a goddamn freeloader. A user. He lazed about spending your mother’s allowance and getting drunk. I would have been willing to do a lot more to get him out of the family but I didn’t need to. He snatched the check and ran off without a second glance. The last time I checked he was busily drinking himself to death in Costa Rica. I did you and your mother a favor. That man will never do a single worthwhile thing in his life. And neither will Alex Paskevich.”

  “You’ll hurt him,” I said, the terrifying realization becoming clear. “Or me. Or both of us. That is, if I don’t do what you say and break things off.”

  My grandfather was getting bored with the conversation. He picked up his pen again. “Deirdre, you listen to gossip too much. I’m not threatening physical harm to you or the boy. But you will do this. One way or another.”

  “No.” I stood up and took care to keep the quaver out of my voice. “I won’t.”

  I turned and left my grandfather’s study, unsure of what consequences were going to follow me out the door. On the outside I found my Uncle Greg and his brothers, Robert and Cliff. Judging by their disapproving glares I knew they’d been listening.

  “Your master awaits,” I sneered at my uncles and held my head up as I marched down the long hallways back to my room, trying not to think about things like Galina Paskevich’s unbuttoned blouse or the icy look in my grandfather’s eyes. He was right. I did listen to gossip. I knew that Cliff and Robert had been charged with beating a man to within an inch of his life. The man was a small time bookie and he disappeared after my uncles were arrested but that didn’t matter because the district attorney had already decided not to go to trial. They were released. There were other rumors too. Local gambling rings and drugs dealers operated freely in the low budget motels my grandfather owned around upstate New York. And my uncles were the enforcers.

  The weeks uneasily passed and the harsh winter gave way to spring. It seemed I’d been wrong. Alex and I continued to see each other, counting down the days until graduation, and although my grandfather would glare every time he saw me he made no more mention of ending my relationship.

  By early May the world was turning green again. I even felt nostalgic over the knowledge that this would be my last spring in Barringer. I’d accepted a scholarship at Syracuse University and Alex would be coming with me. His grades weren’t outstanding and he didn’t have much interest in college so he planned to get a job and perhaps take some vocational classes to learn a trade. The important thing was that we’d be together. As soon as he could save up enough for a small apartment we’d get married.

  Alex wanted to drive out to a secluded lake one Sunday afternoon and we made love on a picnic blanket on the banks. While I was threading my fingers through his hair he propped himself up on an elbow, traced my lower lip with his forefinger and dropped the bombshell.

  “Your grandfather wants me to come work for him.”

  “What?” I bolted upright. “What are you talking about?”

  Alex smiled. “Your grandfather is going to give me a job.”

  The idea was almost too bizarre to contemplate.

  “So now you’re going to stay here and do Richard Kilmartin’s bidding for him?”

  Alex shook his head. “No, apparently he has some business interests in Syracuse and he thinks I’d be useful helping to manage them.”

  I didn’t believe it. I still heard my grandfather’s words calling Alex the son of a Russian thief. Once my grandfather made up his mind about someone he would never change it. And I was positive he wouldn’t hire Alex to tie his shoes.

  I took Alex’s hands and pressed them to my lips. “Please believe me. I don’t know what he has in mind but it’s nothing good. We only have a few more months until we’re out of here. Please, Alex. To hell with my grandfather and his job offer.”

  Alex frowned. Usually I adored the way his forehead would crinkle when he became serious but right them I just wanted him to listen to me.

  “Deirdre,” he sighed. “I don’t have this great academic future like you do. I’m being offered an opportunity and I have to take it. I’ll need to earn a living somehow when we get to Syracuse. For us, and also because I’ll need to send money home to my mother. She won’t have my paycheck at the convenience store to rely on anymore.”

  I felt a stab of guilt over the mention of Alex’s mother. I’d never mentioned to him what I’d seen that day last fall; Galina furiously buttoning her shirt over her large breasts as she stumbled out of my grandfather’s office. I still wasn’t sure what had happened. And I didn’t know what Alex would do if I told him about it.

  He mistook my silence for thoughtfulness and resumed speaking with eagerness.

  “Look, your grandfather really wants me to feel like part of the family. He even arranged for your uncles to take me out wild turkey hunting next weekend.” He laughed. “You know I’m not much of a hunter but I can fake it for the sake of a bonding ritual if that’s what it takes.”

  I didn’t like any of it. I didn’t like it at all.

  “Please.” I touched his face. “Please don’t trust them.”

  “Deirdre.” He leaned in and planted a kiss on my lips. “I love you. You don’t have to worry. They’re your family.”

  I didn’t know how to make him believe that was exactly why I worried. All week I tried to talk him out of the trip. I sought out my Uncle Greg but he was consistently unavailable. My grandfather waved me away when I tried to speak to him. And even Galina looked at me as if I was crazy when I told her she had to stop Alex from going.

  I kissed him goodbye in the early morning darkness and by then even I was convinced I might be a victim of my own paranoia. My uncles were in a good mood, cracking jokes and teasing Alex as they packed up Robert’s pickup for the trip to the mountains. It would only be two days. Two days and then he’d be back in my arms and we’d resume making plans to get away from Barringer and from the Kilmartins. Graduation was only a month away.

  I never saw him again.

  They told me it was an accident.

  They told me his gun caught on some barbed wire when he tried to crawl underneath a fence to reach a meadow on the other side.

  They told me he was killed instantly when the blast hit him in the face.

  I went to the police. I contacted the media. All I received were pitying looks and a suggestion that I receive some counseling to handle my deranged grief. Nobody was listening. Nobody cared. And if I stayed I knew I wouldn’t survive. I’d be consumed by my sorrow and loathing.

  “I will hate you forever,” I told my grandfather on the day I left town.

  He nodded, unsurprised. “I’m sure you think so right now.”

  The guilt has chased me through the years, the crushing knowledge that somewhere in the web of events that led to Alex’s death there was something I could have done differently. If I’d broken up with Alex he’d be alive. If I’d tried harder to talk him out of going anywhere with my uncles he’d be alive. If only I’d been stronger, wiser, then he’d be alive.

  I told all of this to Jeremy, the first time I’d given voice to the things that had been quietly tormenting me for ten lonely years as I buried myself in work, in research, in the finished words of history where all the hurt has already happened.

  “Cry all you want,” Jeremy said as he held me while the floodgates opened and I sobbed out the last words of Alex’s fate. “Cry if that’s what you need, Deirdre. I’ll be here.”

  Chapter Ten

  JEREMY

  Eventually she stopped crying and calmed down enough to tell me the rest.

  “I was sure they’d come for me,” she said. “When I was in Syracuse every day when I woke up I thought this would be the day my uncles would come and drag me back to Barringer, to imprison me in the old house like some kind of Victorian horror story. I slept with a baseball bat within arm’s length, not that it would have done any good. I knew by that time that no on
e could stop them from doing as they pleased. If they could get away with murder then they could get away with anything.”

  I was still absorbing the details of her story.

  “You took his last name,” I noted. “That’s what you meant when you said I didn’t know your real name.”

  She nodded. “I couldn’t stand to be Deirdre Kilmartin anymore. So in my last year of college I legally changed my name.”

  “To D.C. Paskevich.”

  “Yes.”

  “Damn.” I shook my head. “I’m sorry. That’s a terrible story.”

  She sighed. “Some stories are. You know that, Jeremy.”

  I did know that. And we were more alike than I’d guessed. We’d both endured our own style of isolation, been imprisoned by a self-imposed quarantine. Deirdre hadn’t escaped to the desert as a way to close the door to everyone but she’d hidden from life in a different way.

  She sat up in my bed and I stayed where I was, running my palm down the smooth planes of her back. She arched her spine at my touch and her hair tickled my fingers. She had such long hair. From this angle she looked like a glorious Renaissance painting with that hair spilling down her back and I wanted her again. My thumb trailed along her spine at the hollow of her lower back and she issued a kind of breathy moan that told me what I needed to know. If I wanted to take her again then she was ready.

  Deirdre turned her head to peer at me over one bare shoulder and I wished I could capture her in that moment, the wildness of her hair, the flushed color of her cheeks.

  “Jeremy, it’s been so long since I’ve let myself feel anything.”

  I understood. I’d convinced myself I was dead inside while suffering the same struggle. And I was fucking tired of it.

  I sat up and kissed her bare shoulder and felt her shiver.

  “Feel something now,” I said. “Feel it with me.”

  Our lips touched and the kiss was sweet, almost shy. Which was kind of funny considering we’d already fucked our brains out more times than I could remember. But now I wanted to give her more than that so I slowly slipped her my tongue and felt her soften in my arms. My hand traveled up her spine and cupped the back of her neck to draw her in closer. I played with the tender skin of her lips, I sucked on her neck and I kissed her so deeply I could feel her melting against me. I wouldn’t have minded kissing her this way for a long time but it couldn’t last. We were both too hungry for more.

  “I want to ride you,” she whispered. “I want to ride you hard.”

  She couldn’t have spoken more directly to my dick if she tried and I was impatient now, falling on my back and pulling her on top, grabbing two handfuls of her soft ass while she straddled me. And then I was inside her and she stiffened for a second as she adjusted to the feeling of taking all of me in. She moved her body slowly at first and I helped her move faster, finding a rhythm that made her gasp while she braced her palms on my chest and rode me like the motherfucking goddess she was. I grabbed a big handful of her long hair and tugged and holy fuck she liked that, making all kinds of noises like the hottest porno ever recorded while I admired the magnificent view of her head thrown back and her tits pushed out. I didn’t want to pull out yet. I wanted to keep living in this moment but Deirdre was at the threshold and I gritted my teeth and begged my dick not to explode as she shuddered and came apart.

  “I’m gonna come,” I warned her because after a full minute she was still in the throes of the world’s longest orgasm. If I had any sense I would have gone to town by now to pick up some rubbers but so far I’d always pulled out instead.

  “I want you to,” she whimpered. “Jeremy, I want to feel you come inside of me.”

  If she was trying to break me then she sure as hell knew exactly what to say. There was no stopping the outcome once I heard words like that. I squeezed her hips between my hands, pushing so deep and moving so fast I hoped to god I wasn’t hurting her. It was the fuck to end all fucks. I couldn’t get a single thought through my head until I was finished spending everything I had inside her body. She let out a soft sigh when I finally slid out of her and then I drew her to my chest to be nestled in my arms.

  Neither of us said a word as we lay there in a sweaty pile waiting for our breathing to return to normal. We’d started this thing with both of us wanting something simple and physical and it already felt like more. Much more.

  I switched off the light, tenderly kissed this girl who was quickly claiming a place in my heart, and welcomed sleep. When I awoke the gentle light of early morning seeped through the window shades and I was in bed alone. I could hear Deirdre talking though so I knew she was nearby. I swiped my boxers off the floor and followed the sound of her voice outside where I found her wearing my t-shirt and tossing feed at the chickens.

  “Hello there, pretty girls,” she cooed to them. “Now don’t fight. There’s enough for everyone.”

  I leaned against the door and admired the view. She didn’t have any underwear on and I could see a lot from here.

  “Aren’t you going to say good morning, Jeremy?” she asked without turning around.

  Without making a sound I crossed the distance between us and grabbed her around the waist, pushing the shirt over her hips and shamelessly pressing my morning wood against her soft flesh.

  “Good morning,” I growled and pushed her hair aside, kissing her neck. She leaned back into my chest and I slipped my arms under the shirt and around her waist. That skin to skin contact combined with the way she pressed her ass against me got my dick jump started to a new level and I tugged my boxers down so she’d know it.

  “Not in front of the chickens,” she said, wriggling out of my grip and smoothing the shirt down. Her nipples were hard. I could see them plainly through the shirt. I wanted them in my mouth.

  “You realize the chickens are about as self aware as that feed you’re tossing to them, right?”

  She looked at the feed bucket, then at the chickens pecking their hearts out on the desert floor. “Maybe. But if you collect some eggs I’ll cook you breakfast.” She winked at me as she sashayed back into the house.

  I figured that wasn’t a bad offer so I ordered my dick to stand down and grabbed a basket to collect whatever eggs I could find. There were five. And I knew there was a block of thick bacon slices in the antique icebox I kept in the corner of the tiny kitchen.

  Deirdre already had things figured out when I returned. She had the coffee pot on and was frying up the bacon in the cast iron skillet. She smiled at me when I handed her the eggs and I pulled up a crate and sat down at the table, content to watch her. She’d located her underwear. What a pity.

  I always let her take the chair when we sat at the table while I stayed where I was on the crate. I could have sat with her on my lap but I knew we’d never get around to eating breakfast once we started down that road. At any rate, now that I was having regular company it might be time to look into getting a second kitchen chair. And maybe a few more dishes so Deirdre didn’t have to serve me breakfast on an upside down pot lid.

  Thanks to last night I’d worked up an appetite and I shoveled in the food and gulped the black coffee. Deirdre was watching me eat like a pig while she took dainty bites of her omelet.

  “What are you doing today?” I asked her. I kind of hoped she wouldn’t have plans and we could spend a few hours resuming last night’s activities.

  “I was thinking about paying a visit to Prickly Flats. Betty’s museum is still on my list of things to do.”

  “There’s not much to that place. Some decrepit mining tools and a bunch of dusty old photos.”

  She took a sip of coffee and grinned. “I like dusty old things.”

  “Then you’ll have an excellent time.”

  Deirdre set down the green coffee mug. It was actually hers. She brought it over last week because she had a whole set of them and she didn’t much like sharing the one cup I saw fit to own. “Why don’t you come out there and meet me for lunch?”

 
; “Where? Prickly Flats?”

  She bit the corner of her lip and I wondered if she’d been nervous about asking me. “Yeah. We could make a date with some of Sherman’s famous hamburgers.”

  “A date.” I mulled that over. The word sounded quaint, like something you did with a girl before you screwed her a few dozen times. I couldn’t remember the last time I had one of those. It must have been with Casey. I hadn’t done the old fashioned boyfriend kind of thing with anyone else and for years my social activities had been limited to chatting with Betty Grable. But now I wanted to. I wanted to do something like that with Deirdre, something normal, something that would make her happy.

  “It’s fine if you’re busy,” she said and started to rise from the table.

  I took her hand. She paused but returned to her chair, looking at me like she was afraid of what I’d say.

  “I’m not busy,” I told her. “And I’ll meet you there for a date at noon.”

  The smile that lit up her face was so brilliant you’d have thought I’d just proposed or something. I kissed her hand and we resumed eating breakfast, talking about the weather and Deirdre’s book and the stupidity of chickens. I would have been glad to take her back to bed and get a few more erotic rounds of exercise in before we started the day but I knew she was eager to get to work so I just drove her over the hill to her house and kissed her goodbye.

  She turned and gave me a cheerful wave before she disappeared into the house and I just sat there for a minute before slowly driving back the way I came. I was starting to recognize something important.

  I knew I could get used to this, being with Deirdre. Not just fucking her. But going to sleep with her. Waking up with her. Laughing with her over breakfast.

  Yeah, I could get used to doing this indefinitely.

  Chapter Eleven

  DEIRDRE

  Betty Grable’s smile was instant when she looked up. “D.C.! I was hoping you’d pay us a visit this week.”