Crowne of Lies

by Reiss, CD

I hugged her and—out of habit—bent down to kiss my wife, forgetting I didn’t have to pretend in front of Mandy. Ella must have forgotten too, because she kissed me back.

  “Oh, you guys,” Mandy said, pointing from one of us to the other. “I almost believe it.”

  “What are you doing here?” Ella asked, ignoring our friend as I took a chair.

  “I have news, and I was hungry.”

  The waitress came. I ordered something while she poured water for me.

  “Okay?” Ella said. “So what’s the news?”

  “Byron’s going to be out soon,” I said, picking up my water glass. “I give it a month before Crowne is mine.”

  “Yes!” Mandy exclaimed, lifting her wine.

  Ella followed suit and we toasted.

  “Congratulations, boss. You did it. You got what you wanted,” Ella said sullenly.

  Her tone hit me like a brick. She sounded like that a lot, and I thought it was just how she was. Forty-five percent cynic. Thirty-five percent pessimist. Twenty percent product of Los Angeles.

  For the first time, I realized she wasn’t at some benchmark of happiness I could improve incrementally. She was miserable, and I had the feeling it wasn’t the fact that Papillion wasn’t hers.

  “What?” Ella asked me when I’d stared too long.

  “Nothing,” I replied. “Am I interrupting a girls’ lunch or something?”

  “Mandy was about to tell me something.”

  My friend’s smile turned as bright as her yellow blouse. “Well, I’m glad you’re here. You both get to hear it.” Mandy sighed and gazed lovingly at the industrial ceiling vents. “I’m not supposed to tell you.” She looked down, drinking her wine.

  “Well, in that case—” I said.

  “Renaldo’s getting a divorce.”

  “Really?” Ella exclaimed.

  “He get caught?” I asked.

  “No! Don’t look so shocked.”

  Who could blame me for being surprised? I managed to stay monogamous even though I wasn’t fucking my wife. Renaldo had a gorgeous wife he could fuck and he still couldn’t keep it in his pants. Guys like that weren’t motivated to leave their wives unless they’re pushed out.

  “I’m shocked and happy for you.”

  “Me too!” Ella said, grabbing her friend’s hand over the table in a touch so sincere, I envied her for it.

  “He’s coming to Paris with me for the fabric show,” Mandy said. “God… travelling with him? Not having to hide? It’s going to be orgasmic.” Her eyes rolled as if the orgasm was actually happening in front of me, over lunch, then she went rod straight as if her idea woke her from a trance. “You should come! Both you guys! You”—she pointed at me—“never took her on a honeymoon, and you can finally meet Rennie.”

  I tried to meet Ella’s gaze so she could read my mind. Us, in Paris, on a romantic holiday, smiling for the cameras, kissing for show, sleeping in separate rooms.

  Instead of looking back at me, she pushed out her chair. “Excuse me, I have to go to the ladies’.”

  She walked away without another word.

  “What?” Mandy asked. “Bad idea?”

  “I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I’ll check our calendars.”

  “What’s going on?” she asked, pushing away her salad. “Everything okay?”

  Was everything okay?

  Sure. Everything was fan-fucking-tastic. Ella was doing exactly what I wanted a wife to do. Socially, she was at my disposal. She was devoted even when no one was around, making sure I had everything I needed, asking me about my day without nagging about my hours, never having a single trouble or concern of her own. Exactly what I always wanted, without the sex. She asked for nothing. Perfect helpmate. Perfect in every way.

  “She’s unhappy,” I said.

  “She told you that?”

  “No. I can see it. Has she said anything to you?”

  “About what?”

  “Hating me. Being miserable. Anything?”

  “No,” Mandy said.

  “So she loves her life and she just looks like she wants to die?”

  “What’s the difference? She sold you a year. She knows that. Now you just have to pay up.”

  The Papillion buyout could have started any time. I’d told myself I was waiting for the stock to go down, but it kept dipping and I kept telling myself that if I waited a little longer, I could get it cheaper. Ella conceded that cheaper was better, but she didn’t know the timeline the way I did. She thought it would take a week. I knew better and still stalled.

  “It’s better for me if she’s happy.”

  “Why?” Mandy leaned over the table with an expression like a laser bright enough to cut sheet metal.

  “Just is.”

  “Do you have feelings for her?”

  “I do.” I leaned back to let the waiter put my drink in front of me. “She’s my friend. Same as you.”

  Same except without the need to connect our bodies with a touch, or the kisses I had to peel myself away from.

  “So.” Mandy sat back and crossed her legs, lips twisted in a knowing smirk. “What would you do if you thought I was miserable?”

  “You’d tell me you were unhappy and what you wanted me to do about it. That’s the difference.” I yanked my napkin off my lap and tossed it on the table. “She’s like a locked box with a big smile painted on the front. She blames it on the art she’s doing. She says it’s shit and it’s distracting her. And I believed that for a while, but now? No. I don’t believe it. She looks like a trapped animal and I’m the fucking zookeeper.”

  “Look, Logan. Here’s the honest truth.”

  “Thank God. Please. Tell me the honest truth.”

  “Her art isn’t going well, that’s true. But she also misses working. She’s bored. She cares about you as a human being and a friend. She doesn’t blame you.”

  “There has to be something I can do.”

  “Just let it go. In six months it’ll be over.”

  Like hell.

  My wife was mine to care for. Mine to satisfy. Mine to spoil with trips and money and whatever else she didn’t know she wanted.

  When Ella returned, she was fifteen percent less sour, but I was one hundred percent more committed to nudging her.

  “Have you ever been to Paris?” I asked.

  “My father took me. If you want to go, we can go.”

  “But what do you want?”

  “Whatever,” she chirped before sipping wine.

  “You know what?” Mandy said, standing. “My turn to go to the ladies’.”

  She left as if her ass were on fire, leaving Ella and me alone.

  “I just want a straight answer,” I said.

  “I don’t care is a straight answer.” Her chirpiness was gone.

  I actually preferred the hint of a growl. It was real, and I wanted more of it. I wanted her so mad she told me how she felt, or hit me, or walked out in a huff.

  “Pick yes or no,” I demanded.

  “Fine.” She dug around her bag. “You have a quarter?”

  “What?”

  “Straight answer.”

  “You know I don’t carry change or small bills. Why?”

  “Never mind.” She pulled a penny out of her purse. “Heads we go to Paris. Tails we don’t.”

  “We can’t decide things on the flip of a coin.”

  “If neither one of us cares, then we can.”

  I cared. I cared a fucking lot and I was sick of being told I didn’t.

  “Flip it.” I pointed at her. “Heads, you suck my dick, tails, I fuck you blind.”

  What was she thinking for the eternal length of that pause, with her mouth twisted to one side and the penny balanced on the pad of her index finger? Was she hoping to suck my dick or get fucked blind?

  The penny fell on the tablecloth.

  “Tails,” she said. “Paris can wait.”

  “Ella.”

  “I can’t be the only one maintainin
g this relationship. Like… fuck this.” She stood in one motion and slid her bag off the back of the chair. “If we were married for real, I would have divorced you already.”

  With that, she strode out the door just this side of running. I caught up to her on the sidewalk.

  “Ella!”

  “Go back to work!” she called over her shoulder.

  I got in front of her, blocking the way. “Don’t make someone call the cops on me.”

  “Then get out of the way.”

  “Talk to me.”

  “Why?”

  Because I can help you.

  I can make you happy.

  I can give you what you want.

  “Look,” I said, “we’ll start the buyout. Tomorrow, when markets open, we’ll start.”

  Her shoulders relaxed, but her expression tightened to hold back what she wouldn’t say. She didn’t believe me. She thought I was lying to shut her up.

  “Swear it,” she said finally.

  That was all she’d wanted. The deal. No more. I should have been relieved. Instead, I felt like a man who’d grasped for some precious unknown object, only to find it was never there.

  “I swear.” I held up a pinkie.

  “Fine.” She hooked her pinkie in mine and pulled, but I didn’t let go.

  “Are you sure that’s all you have on your mind?”

  “Let’s go back before Mandy freaks out, okay?”

  We pulled our pinkies apart.

  * * *

  After lunch, I went back to Crowne. Ella went to her studio, or home. I knew now she didn’t want to be at either.

  When I got back to the house, Ella was in her room behind a door we kept closed.

  I took off my shirt and undid my belt, stopping at the door between our rooms. It had never been opened. She’d set the boundaries and I stayed on the right side of them. I existed in my own space as if that door wasn’t even there… until she told me to fuck myself with the flip of a coin and Byron told me he was giving up his place at Crowne.

  If she was awake, I’d knock.

  Close to the wood, I listened for the sound of her computer keys, or the TV, or her talking to a friend on the phone.

  But nothing. Was she even in there?

  I put my ear on the door, cutting out the white noise between us, and I heard her breathing.

  She was there. I could knock.

  Just as I was about to pull away, her breaths turned into a moan. A stab cut my chest.

  Was she alone?

  Fuck, she’d better be alone.

  I closed my eyes, listening for a second set of breaths. A second voice. A bed creaking under two bodies.

  She moaned again. Just her. She was alone.

  Laying my hands flat on the surface, I envisioned her naked, upright on spread knees with her hand between her legs, butterfly tattoos all over her body, and was rewarded with her breath getting sharper and her moans rising.

  I shoved my hand down my pants. My cock had already produced a bead of pre-cum. I used it to lubricate my hand, imagining her thrusting hips, her free hand twisting her nipple, her lips silently shaping my name.

  Fucking my fist to the rhythm of her unh-unh-unh, I came with her final, long moan, squirting against the doorjamb without an ounce of shame and no regrets whatsoever.

  I wasn’t allowed to satisfy my wife’s hunger. Maybe I could fill her soul.

  21

  ELLA

  “Talk to me,” Logan had said on the sidewalk a few hours before.

  I almost did. I almost told him things I hadn’t even dared to say to myself.

  That I looked forward to seeing him in the mornings. That when he was away, I missed him. That I felt neglected in a way I didn’t have a right to.

  That I wanted him with an indefinable longing.

  I still had feelings, and not having sex with him wasn’t killing them. Denial was only feeding them.

  But he was Logan, and he did what Logan does. He’d assumed it was about business, saving the yearning of my heart from slipping out of my mouth. I made him promise to start the buyout because I couldn’t bear his refusal to promise what I couldn’t even define.

  He’d walked me to my car, and when he kissed me on the cheek, I could tell there were things he wanted to say and couldn’t either.

  What a mess.

  I went to the studio.

  The Big Blank still leaned against the warehouse wall, and I went there a few times a week to stare at it while I sketched possibilities, filling black-bound books with pasted headlines, broken thoughts, and disjointed ideas.

  Amilcar and Tasha came soon after to kill a few hours between her school dismissal and the opening call for the musical.

  “Just throw a paintbrush at it,” Amilcar said. “Break that shit up.”

  He rocked in the swing I’d hung from a ceiling beam, curating his playlists while Tasha sat on the floor, surrounded by her thick history books.

  “Don’t listen to him,” she said, flipping pages and making a note. “You gotta plan what you want to say.”

  Amilcar made a pfft sound.

  Tasha was probably right, but I had no plans. I was dormant, and I hated it. All the time and money in the world couldn’t buy me a purpose. I sat back on the couch and threw open a sketchbook, finding a blank page I could fill with meaningless garbage.

  I was drawing arrows all over it, rendering them in fine detail, when Logan texted me.

  —Home at six. You?—

  “Bullshit,” I muttered.

  “What?” Tasha asked. She was curious and stubborn. She never took “nothing” for an answer.

  —I’m going to be out—

  “Logan thinks he’s going to be home at six. As if.”

  Tasha shook her head as she took notes. “Men ain’t worth it. Give them your name and you get grief back.”

  “Stop talking about us like that,” Amilcar said. “I’m right here.”

  “You’re not a man. You’re a teddy bear.”

  He threw a pillow at her. She put up her arm to deflect it just as Logan dinged me.

  —Where?—

  “You almost done?” Amilcar asked his sister. “We gotta stop at Liddy’s before the play.”

  “Give me five.” She flipped a page.

  “How is Liddy?” I asked.

  Liddy was a GAC member, from way back when the Collective was the only meaningful thing in my life.

  —Going to see a friend in her high school musical—

  “We’re doing a piece by the river and we’re checking out—”

  “What?” I bolted straight in my seat, sketchbook snapped closed in my lap.

  Amilcar and Tasha glanced at each other, then she went back to her work.

  “A piece?” I might as well have been clutching my pearls in horror. “With who?”

  “Come on, Fance,” Amilcar replied. “You know the crew.”

  “But… I thought the Collective closed.”

  “No, you ran off to marry some rich guy.”

  Logan texted me back, but I didn’t look at it.

  “You’re saying I abandoned you?”

  “Not what I said.”

  “So what are you saying? That I closed the GAC and now you all are saying fuck you, Fancy, we’ll do shit without you? At the river? The LA River? What is it?”

  “You know how it’s called Frogtown over there—?”

  “And who’s financing it? Where are you based? Who’s handling logistics? What if you get caught?” The raw energy of betrayal brought me to my feet. “Why did you leave me out?”

  “Are you fucking with me? No, no, you have got to be fucking with me.”

  “I started it! I put everything into that crew!”

  “And you left! We didn’t all drop dead,” Amilcar said.

  “I didn’t think that.”

  “So what did you think? We couldn’t do it without you? Or what? We wouldn’t want to? You’re the big inspiration? You leave and we all flop
down like those balloon men? Turn the fan off and we stop waving our arms or some shit?”

  “No! I—”

  “You need to check yourself, girl.”

  “Stop it!”

  The vehemence of my protest was a tell for the fact that I hadn’t given a thought to what I thought the rest of the crew would do while I was on hiatus. I’d put myself in the center of a group of people with their own dreams and desires. They had enough talent and the capability to surpass anything I’d done with them. I’d known that, but at the same time, I hadn’t let myself believe it.

  “Done!” Tasha cried, slapping her book closed and packing it all away.

  “Amilcar,” I said, “do you guys need anything? Money? Space?”

  “Nah.”

  “You sure? I have so much.”

  “We’ll get you the deets. You can come see it. The crew would be cool with that.”

  “If you get into trouble, will you call me?”

  “Look, I appreciate everything you’ve done. But we got it. We don’t need you coming in like Batman to save us. Just check us out, okay? It’s gonna be big. People are gonna pay attention to this one.”

  He wasn’t going to tell me what it was and I couldn’t blame him. I’d just be some outsider inserting myself into their project. I’d throw money at them and I’d feel as entitled as they felt obligated.

  I had made a bigger life for myself, with more people, more money, and more freedom. But I was no closer to finding out who I was. My face tingled and my nose got a wet tickle inside it. I sniffed.

  “Fance, come on, man.”

  “They will pay attention.” I wiped my eyes with the heel of my hand. “And I will. I’ll be there, cheering you on.”

  Tasha slung her bag over her shoulder and hugged me.

  “No white lady tears,” she said, holding me tight.

  I laughed. “I miss you guys is all.”

  She let me go. “You’re coming to see me tonight, right?”

  “Of course!”

  “I have a car now. I can come by any time.”

  “That is not a safe vehicle,” Amilcar mumbled.

  Tasha kissed my cheek.

  Amilcar shook my hand, then pulled me into a hug. “We’ll see you later.”

  “Get out,” I said. “Before I cry again.”

  They closed the door behind them. In the back, the headlights of Amilcar’s Toyota flashed through the back window, blinding me. They got smaller as he backed up, swung left, and disappeared into the city.