by Piper Denna
“You sure? Cause I could stay awake at least another two or three minutes.”
“You must be exhausted from having to do all the work your maid usually does.”
I flipped her off as I headed to bed. Before I fell asleep, I had big plans for the next day.
All Fore Revenge
Chapter 14
I had an e-mail from Cam the next morning.
Ali,
I tried to call you, but either your ringer was off, or you were ignoring me all night. I really regret that e-mail I sent you. The last thing I want is to make you feel pressured. I guess I’d really like it if you hated me having another girlfriend. I think you do, but your pride won’t let you show it.
So… if I’m not getting the cold shoulder, could you please call me sometime tomorrow? Not knowing if you’re mad at me feels shitty.
I love you.
Cam
I replied,
Cam,
OK. It will only make things harder for us to admit this, but here it is: I see red whenever I hear the name Randi, or hear you talk about a date, or even that you talk to Erin late at night. I have fantasized that Randi is ugly as a mud fence, or that she has a third breast. Or grows one, suddenly, when you go to bed with her. Or, even better, she’s a drag queen like Madame Butterfly, and you haven’t figured it out yet. Or that you can’t get it up for her. Those are only the milder things, OK?
Yesterday I was mad enough about it that I had sex with a gay man. I was probably in the middle of anatomy lessons while you were calling. I’d be gratified to hear that you are disturbed by such images, but I’m sure you’ll think it was therapeutic in some way, or that it was only a manifestation of my “issues.”
Some character blacked Shurre’s eye last night while I was out working off steam. I’m launching my own private investigation about it today. If I find out it was her husband, well, can you post bond and be my legal counsel? Seriously, I doubt it was him. She’s been down the abusive man road before, and in most cases she learns from her many mistakes. I will call you later when I’m somewhere alone.
Love,
Ali
I sent the message, then signed off and snapped my laptop shut. Cam would be alerted on his phone right away, I knew, and use the computer in his van to check his inbox.
When I came out of the shower, I had a text message from Cam. It read:
TARZAN WILL BEAT GAYBOY!!! MORE PUBLIC SERVICE? LOL LOVE U.
Shurre’s eye looked worse in the daylight. Rather than wake her before I left, I slipped out quietly with a note that said I was on re-con for stats for my book. It wasn’t entirely a lie—I never knew what I might toss into a book.
First stop, current husband. I took a deep breath before walking into the bank where Robert worked. He was a VP, forty-five, with two grown kids. He’d treated Shurre like gold since they’d first dated and I couldn’t imagine him hurting her.
His secretary gave me some flack about him being in a meeting and my needing an appointment, but when he walked past her desk from an obvious trip to the soda machine, he saw me.
“Alison. Hi,” he said to me. To the secretary, he said, “Can you hold my calls please, Hillary?”
He put a consoling hand on my shoulder and walked in his office with me. “I’m really sorry about the trouble you’re having,” he told me, with cool formality as he shut his door behind us.
“Thanks. I’m… handling it. Did you see Shurre at all yesterday? Like in the evening?” I scanned his face for signs of lying.
“No. I golfed after work. By the time I got home, she’d already gone to your place.”
I nodded. It didn’t look like he was lying, but I wasn’t a real expert.
He squinted over his bifocals at me. “Did she get drunk again? Do you two always drink together like that?”
“Robert,” I asked, sidestepping his questions. “have things been, um, good between you two up ‘til now? I’m sure she’s told you about her past, and I mean…”
“Everything was fine until about two weeks ago. Right when you got here.” He stood with his arms crossed over his chest, eyes narrowed while he looked out his window.
“Do you think it’s because of me?” I had to try not to sound defensive. “I mean, tell me what changed.”
“She’s been sleeping around, I think.” He avoided answering whether he thought I was the cause of the problem, which told me he probably did. “She tells me she’s been out at your place, but I don’t know what she’s doing. She’s… different.”
“Different, how?” I asked.
“I don’t know why I should tell you this,” he said, looking at me from the corner of his eye, “but I will. She’s, shall we say, domineering.” He flushed and loosened his tie. Well. He’d obviously enjoyed the dominance. “Um. She’s not around much. And she traded off her car without even telling me. She said Ronnie wanted her to have something dependable.”
“Ronnie. Maybe I should talk to him. They’ve always been close.”
“Yeah. He’s cool. He bought the new car.”
“Have you asked her what’s bothering her? She won’t talk to me.”
He looked pleased with that news, which I resented. I also resented that he thought she was out drinking because of me. She’d messed up plenty of relationships without me around.
“I don’t really get to talk to her much lately, since she’s always with you.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to point out that he’d been out golfing the night before instead of spending time with her. While she was getting pummeled. But that wouldn’t be productive, so I took the high road.
“Robert, I’m worried about her. You’re right. She is different. Keep in touch with her, okay?” We exchanged worried and mutually suspicious glares before I left.
“Well,” I mumbled to myself, out in the blinding sunlight, “that was sweet. The guy thinks I’m some kind of bad seed corrupting his sweet, clean wife. What a switch.”
Next stop, Rich, Shurre’s second husband. Their marriage had lasted five years, a record for her. Rich was a very successful electrical contractor and, besides the two kids they had together, he’d been great to Alice, Shurre’s daughter from her first marital failure. Rich had tried hard to work things out, mainly for the kids. I was sure he’d endured the last three years of their marriage only because of them. Shurre took Rich to the cleaners in their divorce, and he paid her outrageous child support.
We’d spent lots of vacations with Rich and Shurre while they were married. Rich and Bill had been good friends, too. But the divorce was ugly, and Shurre was my friend, after all.
I walked into his shop, uncertain if I’d be welcome.
“Hey, Ali. What’s up?” Rich smiled, and took my hand when his secretary called him out.
“Hi. Just, um… do you have a few minutes?”
Second interview, second office with a closed door.
“I’m, uh,” I wiped my palms on my shorts, “worried about Shurre.”
“Other than exchanging the kids, we don’t really talk.” Rich was remarried, and keeping his communication with Shurre to a minimum was likely the best route for his marriage. Shurre had been known to lure her first ex back to her bed on several occasions.
I nodded. “I’m sure. She’s ahh, kinda off on a tangent lately. I mean, I think she hasn’t been running around since she married Robert.” I didn’t want to tell him she was running around on her current husband, since it might mess up their custody arrangement. “I wonder if you ever noticed anything weird with her behavior when you were married.”
“There’s not much normal about Shurre, Ali. Christ, she’s a sex-crazed bitch half the time.”
“Half the time?”
He shrugged, then rolled his eyes. “You know, she’d turn over a new leaf for a few months and be the world’s best wife and then, bam! She turns into Elvira or some shit, and then I’m not enough for her so she’s off at the bar taking guys in the car like a bunch of dogs
coming to a bitch in heat.”
“So, was she, like, dominant?”
His head nodded, affirmative, yet impatient at the intrusive question.
“Like, did she ever, um, force you?”
He looked more impatient still, like it was the most ridiculous idea he’d ever heard. So maybe she never forced herself on men. Maybe only on people who couldn’t or wouldn’t stand up to her. Namely, me.
“Okay. One more thing. These episodes. Was there a pattern? Did they coincide with my visits?”
“Jesus, Ali. They didn’t have anything to do with you. I don’t know, I kinda wondered if her family brought it on somehow. Always after the holidays, and after they all got together for July 4th. I don’t think we ever spent a New Year’s Eve together.”
“She really went to the bar and took guys in the car?” I was mortified.
“I followed her a couple times, to see who she was fucking. She’d have her hands all over some guy, just luring him into it. Even if he was there with a girl. The harder they were to catch, the longer she kept ‘em in the car.”
“God, Rich. How did you put up with it?”
His eyes glossed up some before he answered. “She’s not a bad person. I loved her, ya know? And she always confessed what she’d done, so it got to where it was a given that she could go do her bar-predator trick, and then she’d come make up to me and be really, really into me for a spell.”
It took all types. “So what changed? Why’d you end it?”
“She started lying about it. Came home one New Year’s and she hadn’t used a rubber, you know? That was the rule: gotta use a rubber, keep it clean. She swore she hadn’t been out at the bar. Next afternoon I come home from work early to make up with her, and she’s got teeth marks on her ass. New ones. And finger marks, too, on her hips. I went through the fucking roof because she tried to convince me it was all from the night before. So I stuck my finger in, and sure enough, no rubber. Again.” His face turned red with anger, even so long after the fact. “She cried and begged, but it was all I could take, Ali. Fuck. A man’s got limits.”
“Shit.” I sat and held my head in my hands. “Two nights ago it was finger marks on her chest. Last night it was a black eye.”
“She must be hookin’ up with Harley again. The one she lived with before we were married. He beat her a lot.” He shook his head, disgusted.
“I don’t think that’s it. She knows better.”
“She needs drugs. Legal ones, from a shrink. I hope you figure it out. But if you don’t, and I find out the kids are in any risk…”
“I understand. Thanks, Rich.”
“Ali? Where’s the rock?” he asked, pointing at my left hand.
“I’m not as patient about my spouse sleeping around as you were. Not even close.”
“Oh.” He seemed surprised, but predictably sympathetic.
“Thanks, Rich. See ya.”
*
I decided I didn’t have it in me to face another of Shurre’s exes in one day. Instead, I stopped by the library and picked up a couple of books on sexual and mental disorders.
Before leaving the library parking lot, I dialed Cam. “Hey,” he answered, “hold on. Let me finish parking this beast.” A back-up beeper chimed. “Okay. Done.”
“The van has a back-up beeper?” I asked while turning the ignition.
“No. I’m in a truck now. I’m doing new construction instead of service. You know, no appointments…”
“No bending housewives over coffee tables?” I joked and turned up my AC. “Did you change jobs because I said that?”
“Not entirely.”
“Cam. I’m sorry.”
“No, I was tired of the grind anyway. Always looking at the clock, getting stood up.”
“Yeah, going into nice air-conditioned houses. Now you’re outside in the heat all day.” I felt like such a heel.
“It’s not a deal. Really. So how’s the investigation going?”
I told him what I’d learned from Rich, and how Robert wanted to blame me.
“The guy could be shifting blame because he hit her. Or he could really feel threatened by you. Maybe he thinks she’s a closet lesbian with the hots for you.”
“Like you do? Cam, we’re like sisters. Not like…”
“Then why did you have sex?”
My throat closed up on me and I tried to clear it. The van was suddenly hot, hot. “Um. Still working that out. There was a lot of alcohol involved.”
“Yeah right. Not enough to keep you from feeling guilty about it, or scared of it happening again. If it was a drunk mistake, then why are you so sca—”
“Okay! Enough. Fuck!”
Cam took a deep breath and I imagined him rubbing his eyes to keep his cool. “It sounds like somebody bullied her around in bed, so she wanted to bully you.”
“Yeah. But why me? Why not some guy? I was her friend, an ally. Why hurt me?” I hated sounding so whiny. Fiddling with the dangling keys, I asked, “Um. So how was your date?”
He laughed heartily. “Not as exciting as yours, I bet. You do have a thing for bringing in the stragglers, huh?”
“Shut up. He wasn’t just any gay guy. I’ve known him since I was a teenager, and lusted after him for almost that long. I ran into him at the grocery store, he invited me for dinner, things just happened.”
“Yeah, I bet. He knew what he was doing from the minute he saw you among the canned goods.”
“God. So you think I’ve been had, or what? Come on, he’s an old friend. A gay one.”
“Just because he’s gay doesn’t mean he’s dead. Or blind. Obviously. Ali, you’re hot. Men are gonna come after you, especially now that the wedding ring is gone. So will some women.”
“Okay! Please, not back to that again. She’s my sister. Just think of her as my sister.”
“Yeah, the one who molested you. Makes me really comfortable to think of her shacked up with you.”
“You make her sound so evil. It wasn’t like she tied me up and poked me with a tire iron or something. I was into it—I just didn’t want to be.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere!” He sounded a little too enthusiastic. “I had a psych professor who would be coming in his pants right now.”
“Nice image.” Great. Now I could be the object of a psych study.
“That’s the really insidious kind of incest. Where the victim doesn’t feel forced, but helplessly aroused. And responsible. There’s the key. Responsibility. It lets the perp off the hook.”
I sat there feeling very sick, not wanting to think I was a victim of anything.
“It messes you up for sex with other people, Ali.”
“Yeah, I can see it really stopped you and I from having a good time, right?”
I was pissed. Pissed at Cam for making me feel damaged, when I felt fine. Well, mostly fine. And pissed at Shurre for tricking me into having sex. And at whoever made her such a monster in the first place. But for now, Cam was front and center, so he’d get the hard knocks.
“Maybe you just want out of this whole thing. Maybe you’re totally insecure about my history, and think you can’t keep me happy for the duration, so you’re trying to make me think I’m fucked in the head. No more games, Cam. Just spill it, tell me you think I’m a tramp.”
He started to deny it, but I cut him off. “Or maybe the lumberjack gives better head. That’s probably it. Well, fine. Then go get some, okay? But stop making me feel like shit in the process. I’ve got enough of that going on when the guy I bent over backwards for in bed—literally—for the last fourteen years decides I’m not enough anymore. So maybe I am fucked up. Maybe it’s impossible to have sex without it changing your head in some way. Your head got fucked with before you even had sex. That’s how you got this fairy tale idea that your semen is some kinda fuckin’ magic potion. Some fuckin’ fairy dust that I’ll never be good enough to get.”
“All you have to do is tell me you love me, and…”
&nbs
p; “Oh, fuck that!” The keys I’d been playing with jangled as I slammed them against the steering column. “You don’t have to love anybody to have sex with them! And why should I have to do or say anything in particular to earn sex with you? You’re no different than people who demand sex before they’ll do or say something. It’s not a fucking bartering tool. It’s an act of passion. It’s a carnal need!”
Whoa, that bit about carnal need sounded like Shurre.
“It’s more than that and you know it, Ali. It’s connected to everything else.”
Damn! How could he stay so calm? I wanted him to yell back, show me he was as hurt by this argument as I was. But instead he was all analytical objectivity.
“I’ve gotta go. This has been very enlightening. Not uplifting by a long shot, but enlightening. Bye.”
I hung up on him then, and though he called me back repeatedly, I didn’t answer. I was angry, hurt, and confused when I pulled into my driveway next to Shurre’s vehicle.
*
With only a cursory, “Hey,” I marched past where she was doing her sloth imitation on my couch, tossed my laptop and library books in a corner of my room, and slammed my bathroom door. One look at myself in the mirror brought me to tears. I felt like a walking pile of shit.
Only a couple of months before, I’d been a happily married lady-who-lunched. Now I had a husband I refused to sleep with, a boyfriend who refused to sleep with me, sons who thought I was bulimic and destroying my marriage, a little girl who wanted me to be her mommy (which would likely never happen), a psycho friend who alternately needed and bullied me, a mother disappointed in me and, worst of all, a fear that maybe I really was completely fucked in the head.
I slumped to the floor, bawling, my face on the rug. Smelling how much it needed to be washed only sent me further into despair. I was a lousy housekeeper, too.
“Hey, what the heck is this?” Shurre knelt next to me and stroked my hair. “Ali. Hey, what’s wrong?”
I looked up to see her face puckered in concern, hiding most of the black eye.