Secret Sins: (A Standalone)

by CD Reiss

  I had neither choices nor time. My family, for all their money, was very Catholic, very rigid, very traditional. I had tons of privilege but no rights. So if I was going to abort this baby, it was now or never. Let them disown me.

  I had to run away.

  Chapter 11.

  1994

  Business had been rough for a few years, but Audio City was still the best music studio in Los Angeles. It had a certain something. Reputation-plus-talent-plus-acoustics-times-equipment-equals-hotter-than-hot. Before my parents’ anniversary party, information like that had mattered to me. But sitting with the head engineer in a soundproof room that smelled of stale sweat and cigarettes, all that mattered was the plan—a ruse to get a settlement—and the client, a cellist who might have been ripped off by a wealthy producer.

  “You were the only band in our history who canceled studio dates,” Teddy said.

  I vaguely remembered him. Back then, before Bullets and Blood, I’d slinked in with Rowdy Boys. Teddy’d had a full head of hair and a smile full of straight white teeth. When I sat in the booth with him and Drew (née Indy), Teddy was made of comb-over and nicotine stains.

  “We got our own place,” Drew answered.

  “Still running from what I hear.”

  “Yup. Switching over to digital.”

  Teddy shook his head and snapped a pack of cigarettes off the mixing board. “Fucking digital.” He pushed open the pack with his thumb and offered me one.

  I took it. Then Drew surprised me by taking out his own pack and lighter.

  “It’s the future,” Drew said, shaking out a smoke.

  “Fuck the future.” Teddy lit mine then his own.

  I pulled on it, tasting the dry heat of tar and letting the nicotine run through my blood. I hadn’t smoked in umpteen years, and I’d forgotten how much I liked it.

  Teddy picked a little piece of tobacco off the tip of his tongue. “Digital wouldn’t help you with your cello problem.” He flicked the speck of a leaf away. “It’s those pops and hums that make magnetic tape sound warm. It’s what got you here. If we recorded on digital, it wouldn’t mean shit.”

  “Yeah,” Drew said.

  “Digital’s gonna kill music.”

  “Sure.”

  “But you don’t care no more.” He flicked his hand at Drew, from his fancy shoes to his conservative haircut. “Lawyer.”

  “Douche.”

  Teddy surprised me by laughing. “Yeah. Know thyself, right? I got it. Give me that production request or whatever you call it, and I’ll show it to our lawyer. He’ll get back to you.” He held out his hand to shake Drew’s.

  Here was the problem. The request for production wasn’t worth shit because the fingerprinting thing was made up. Even a shyster lawyer would figure that out.

  “How about a deal?” I said.

  Teddy’s hand froze midway up, and he looked at me. Drew looked both surprised and curious.

  I swallowed hard. “Let us down into the master archives for a Bullets and Blood record. The debut was recorded here, right?”

  “Right.”

  “We’ll just peek at the Opus 33 masters. See if it’s worthwhile so you don’t have to blow two hundred an hour on a lawyer. In return, Indy here will show you how they’re going digital. Show you the right equipment. So you can decide for yourself if you can switch.”

  Teddy stubbed his cigarette into a half-full ashtray. I glanced at Drew. His head was tilted down and toward me, thumb to forehead to hide his expression. His cigarette burned hot to the filter as he smiled.

  “Yeah,” Drew said, looking up. “We’ll do a consult. Above board. You can probably go digital without switching completely. I know you get people and lose people because you’re analog. Let’s see if you can’t do both.”

  Teddy considered, looking away, then back at us. Shifting his box of smokes, shaking his foot, then nodding to himself.

  “Yeah, why the fuck not?” He stuck his hand out again, and Drew grabbed it. “Why the fuck not?”

  Chapter 12.

  1982 – Before the night of the Quaalude

  They started getting that studio together almost immediately. They had recording and tour dates to keep. So during the day, the house was filled with workmen, artists, and sound engineers in leather Members Only jackets.

  I was confused about Strat and Indy. For the next week or so, I was with them all the freaking time. Like a piece of furniture for the new house. Sometimes they beeped me, and sometimes I E-Y-E-B-R-O-Wed them. I met them wherever they were, and we proceeded to act as though we were all in some kind of relationship.

  But they didn’t make a move. Strat had eyes like fingers—they had a way of getting between my skin and my clothes. But he never did anything about it. Not in the week after I told them how to have their house and live in it too.

  Once, when we were at a party in Malibu, Indy put his hand on my shoulder and said something in my ear. I don’t even remember what it was, but the music was loud, so he had to talk in my ear if he wanted me to hear him.

  Strat came up right after that, like a hawk, and put his finger in Indy’s face, lips tense. Indy shrugged. It was the first time I saw them act like anything but best brothers.

  Indy put up his right hand. “Pledge, asshole.”

  “Fuck you.” But Strat put up his right hand. I could see the matching snake tattoos inside their forearms. “Pledge open.”

  “Nothing,” Indy spat. “Nothing, okay?”

  “Closed, dude. I’m sorry.”

  They put their hands down and hugged, back-slapping as if they’d had a whole conversation.

  “What was that about?” I asked when Strat drifted off.

  Indy shrugged, and someone came to talk to him. Male-musician-slash-producer-slash-A and R guy. Thirties. Black plastic sunglasses with red lenses hiding his blued-out dilated pupils. Cartoonishly hip. Guys like that were always talking to Strat and Indy, and they had a way of making sure I was treated like a life support system for a pussy. It would take three minutes for him to angle his body so that he was between Indy and me, then he’d turn his back to me.

  Like clockwork, I was looking at the back of his jacket.

  Fuck this. I didn’t understand any of it. I went inside, picking my way through couplings and conversations on my way to the front door. I’d opened it, letting the cool West Side breeze in when Strat caught up.

  “Where you going?” he asked, nipples hard from the night air.

  I let my hand slip from the doorknob. “To buy you a shirt.”

  He gave me that look. The one that made me warm and tingly. The room was full of women wearing strings and little triangles, yet he was looking at me as if he wanted to devour me skin to bone.

  Yes, it turned me on, but it also annoyed me.

  “What was that about back there? With Indy?” I asked.

  “What was what?”

  “Fuck this.”

  I opened the door, but I didn’t get far. He leaned over and pressed it closed.

  “You don’t know?” he asked. “You can’t tell?”

  “Since the first day you brought me to this house, you’ve treated me like a little sister—”

  I had more to say. Much more. A speech worthy of Ronald Reagan, but he laughed. I just ate those words, chewed and swallowed them, because I’d seriously misread something. He opened the door, still smiling like a fuckhead.

  “Beep us,” was all he got to say before I left.

  I had an orange button on my beeper. I pressed it, and my driver pulled up. Like magic. His job was to take me to and from whatever activity I had going on. His job wasn’t to tell me where to go or tell my family where I was. I barely made it half a block back toward home before I knew I’d beep six-oh-six E-Y-E-B-R-O-W. Or Indy. It didn’t matter. I was addicted to them the way Lynn was addicted to blues. The excitement of their company was the best drug in the world.

  Chapter 13.

  Here’s a comprehensive list of what it
means to be mature for your age.

  1) You see people through their lens, not yours. So there’s less getting offended. Less reactive bullshit.

  2) You have perspective but not experience. You know it all shakes out in the end. So small problems are small, and big problems are small.

  3) You get cocky because you’re mature and you know it. Stupid mistakes are other people’s problems.

  4) Your body is still a slave to your brain, and if your brain is thinking about grown-up shit, like sex, your body is going to be a hotbed. And if your body matures early… well, follow the yellow brick road. The Emerald City has its legs spread for you.

  Chapter 14.

  1982 – Before the night of the Quaalude

  The house in the Palihood had a thousand square feet of unpermitted add-ons. Some even made sense. Most didn’t. One bedroom was five feet wide and had outdoor wood siding on one wall. One add-on was only accessible via five treacherous two-foot-high steps to an attic the shape of an inverted V, and another bedroom was only accessible from the outside patio and through a closet.

  I arrived one afternoon after a respectable activity I could never recall in black pumps and a Chanel jacket. The house was dead except for the open door and obscure punk playing from the sound system the boys had installed over the lead-painted walls and chipped molding.

  I didn’t announce myself. I never did. I was a piece of furniture, more or less. I heard voices from one of the spare rooms. I passed through the third bathroom, into the closet, and almost opened the louvered door to reveal the sound when I stopped. A cry had come from the other side of the door.

  The louvers gave me a choppy view, but I saw enough skin to make me take a step back. I heard panting. Groaning. A man’s voice. Strat. I took a second step back. Stopped. The doors had a space between them, and I leaned forward and looked.

  I recognized the girl from her silky brown hair. When she moved, it swayed over her shoulders. She was on her hands and knees. Strat was behind her, fucking her so hard my face flushed and my body’s heat level went deep in the red. I could smell them. Their sweat and something funkier. The scent between my legs plus a man. I touched the wall. I needed it to hold me up.

  Leave. Turn around.

  “Take it, baby,” Strat muttered, hands gripping her ass. His skin was satin with sweat.

  I wanted him. I wished I was the girl with the brown hair, taking it. I shifted a little so I could see the place where their bodies met. His cock sliding in and out of her.

  God god god I want it.

  I was blocking the way, but I didn’t want to go back and I couldn’t go forward. All I could was hope that no one wanted to go into the spare bedroom right then. I shifted, nervous someone else was near me.

  The second woman had curly blond hair and generous naked hips. I wished I was her, naked with them. Laughing about some whispered words.

  You’re nuts. This is so past what you’re ready for.

  “You want to eat her out, baby?”

  “Yes,” said Straight Brown Hair. She turned to Luscious Hips, still getting fucked, and her eyes lingered on the louvers for a moment.

  She saw.

  “Let me kiss your pussy.”

  No. She didn’t.

  Luscious Hips sat right in front of Brown Hair and spread her legs. I didn’t think my clit could have been more engorged or my pussy wetter. I was glued to the scene as she laid her face between her friend’s legs. I couldn’t see what she was doing, but Strat, that voice…

  “Eat her hard. Suck on it. Mmf. Yes. Make her come.”

  “I’m so wet. So wet,” Luscious Hips shouted.

  Strat put his hand between mouth and cunt. I didn’t know what he was doing, but the intersection of those three things aroused me so much. I did the unthinkable. I stuck my hand under my skirt and tore my panty hose open to get under my cotton briefs.

  I nearly collapsed at my own touch.

  “Get it wet,” Strat commanded as the girl on her hands and knees sucked his finger. “It’s going in your ass.”

  Did he say that?

  I think I’m going to die.

  The girl who was getting fucked had her face in Luscious’s pussy as Strat stuck one finger in Fucked Girl’s ass.

  “Yes!” she looked up long enough to affirm.

  Strat put in two fingers. She shouted, face planted in pussy. Luscious had Fucked by the back of the head, pushing her mouth into her cunt, pumping her hips across Fucked’s face while Strat pumped away and got three fingers into her ass.

  Oh god, I want that I want that.

  But I didn’t want to come. I pinched my clit to shut it up. I had more to see.

  Luscious came, crying, “Eat my pussy eat me god yes baby yes eat me.” She groaned and threw her head back in relief.

  God, that was hot. I wanted someone to eat me out.

  Strat held out his hand and said something to Luscious. She reached into the night table and pulled out a bottle of baby oil.

  What are you doing, Stratford?

  He poured it on Fucked. Down her back and in the crack of her ass. Then he massaged it inside.

  “You ready?” he said, handing the bottle back to Luscious.

  “Fuck me in the ass.”

  I swore the backs of my thighs tingled, and every nerve ending between my legs nearly exploded.

  He pulled his dick out of her and moved it up between her ass cheeks.

  He’s going to do it.

  Fucked’s face tightened and she grimaced, eyes shut, teeth grinding, as Strat slowly but purposefully put his dick in her ass.

  “How you doing, baby?” he asked.

  “All the way,” she said. “Take my ass.”

  I watched his dick disappear in her asshole, and I squeaked.

  They didn’t hear me.

  I thought they didn’t.

  Luscious put her hand between Fucked’s legs.

  I didn’t see the rest. I heard the squeaking bed, the shouts and moans, Strat barking when he came in her ass. My eyes were closed as I stroked myself to the most explosive climax of my young life.

  As soon as it was done and the three of them were laughing and panting, I pulled my hand out of my panty hose. A line of pussy juice stretched between my second and third finger. I curled them into a fist and backed out of the closet.

  Strat was right. I couldn’t handle him.

  Chapter 15.

  1994

  “Aa-choo.” I was on my fourth or fifth sneeze.

  Audio City kept a rust-painted trailer-slash-shipping container in the north corner of the back parking lot. Teddy had given us the padlock key, and when we opened the back doors, we found a wall of banker boxes stacked to the ceiling. They were ordered by date, with the older shit deeper in the back, except when they weren’t. We had to look at every box and hope that the label was correct. We found Martin Wright’s Opus 33 sampler master box pretty quickly, about a third of the way through. It was labeled with his name and the year. Drew put it on a low pile and wiggled off the top. The box had become misshapen from dampness. The smell of mildew got sharper with every pile we unearthed.

  Contracts. Invoices. Master tapes. A pencil case.

  “That’s weird,” I said.

  Drew handed it over. Shiny orange vinyl marked with pen. I pulled the zipper open. It was empty inside but dusted with fine white powder. I held it open for Drew.

  When he looked, he laughed. “Of course. We could probably open up all these boxes and sell coke out of the back of this container.”

  I zipped it closed and tossed it back in the box. “He’s a cellist. I can’t even imagine what the rest of these have in them. We taking the whole thing?”

  “More likely than not.” He jiggled the top back on.

  We’d found what we came for, but we were both hesitating. He looked toward the back, where another ten feet of solid banker box stood. A thick wall of musical history.

  “You’re thinking what I’m thinking,” I
said flatly. The container was hot and oppressive, yet I didn’t want to leave it. “We did come for the Kentucky Killer masters.”

  “You have to get back to the office.”

  “More likely than not.”

  “You can’t stay here with me. Already you’ve been with the visiting attorney too long.”

  “And a law clerk can’t call in sick for the rest of the day or anything.”

  “You’d have to make it up over the weekend.” He put his hands on a high box and slid it down, then he put it in my outstretched arms. It said “Neil Young – 1990.”

  “Yeah. I hate working weekends.” I put the box with the rest of the early nineties. “Maybe five minutes. Then I’ll grab a taxi back to the office.”

  “You should run into the office and call. I don’t want you to get in trouble on my account.”

  He had dust on the shoulders of his shirt, and he’d rolled up his sleeves, exposing the tattoos on his inner arms. I’d done a good job stripping the lawyer costume.

  “Five minutes.” I held out my arms for another box. “Ten. Honestly, I already told Dozer traffic might keep me here. And I have a family dinner tonight. So they don’t expect me until tomorrow.”

  “Saturday.”

  “Come on, you know the drill. Six days a week, et cetera.”

  He slid another box off the top. I’d never heard of the artist. He put it gently in my arms, still holding it. “I’m glad you got your shit together.”

  “You too.” I whispered it because I wasn’t just returning a nicety. I was speaking a deep truth.

  Seeing him again wasn’t just a happy coincidence. He scared the shit out of me. I didn’t do feelings. They didn’t rule me. I did what I wanted, when I wanted, how I wanted. But I was scared, and fear made me uncomfortable.

  I decided discomfort was all right though. I wanted to be around him.

  His fingers grasped my elbows while he held the weight of the box. “I’m not together. I just have a law degree.”

  He wanted to tell me something, and I wanted to tell him something. We couldn’t. We were different. We didn’t know each other and we never had, but the pull was there. I wanted him to know me. I wanted to tell him my secrets. Not because of who we’d been, but because something about his puzzle pieces fit my puzzle pieces. I felt a clicking, like the snap of one piece into another.