Secret Sins: (A Standalone)

by CD Reiss

  I stepped back with the box, and his fingers brushed my arm as I pulled away.

  That felt nice.

  I turned away and put the box on the pile. Fear was uncomfortable, but the rainstorm between my legs wasn’t much better.

  Chapter 16.

  1982 – Before the night of the Quaalude

  I happened to know that most stars, real stars, didn’t get mortgages. They paid cash or had their corporations loan them the money, so they paid interest to themselves. But Drew and Strat, and Gary to a lesser degree, were normal guys on the brink of becoming real rock celebrities.

  We lived on chips and pretzel rods because we were young and skinny. Indy lounged on the blue velvet couch, plucking on his guitar, and Strat scratched his head over the papers laid out over the coffee table. I had my legs slung over the arm of a matching blue velvet chair.

  “Can you start booking the studio in August?” I asked.

  Indy strummed his twelve-string. Even without an amp, the sound was thicker than a six-string, and he got his fingers into the narrow spaces between them as if he’d been playing since he was seven.

  “Yup,” Strat said.

  He didn’t have a shirt on, and I tried not to look at him. Strat was so beautiful it hurt. The promise of sex had diminished since poker night. Part of me said to hell with them, and the other part just wanted to know why.

  Indy, Gary, and Strat were tight. Real tight. They’d grown up together in Nashville. Only sons in their families. Graduated from their local suburban high school. Like cupcakes dropping out of the same pan. Different, but all from the same batter.

  An empty pack of Marlboro Reds landed in my lap.

  “We’re out,” Strat said.

  “There’s a carton in the fridge,” I said.

  His knees bounced, and the swirls of musical staffs buckled where his body folded. A snake coiled around his firearm, biting inside his wrist. Gary and Indy had the same snake tattoo. Gary had married young and fathered up quick, so he wasn’t around unless there was music to be made.

  “Tell me what that snake’s about,” I said. I wanted to get him a box of smokes, but I didn’t want to do it because he’d told me to. He was a bossy jerk. Sexy and powerful, but jerky.

  “It’s about you getting a fresh pack.”

  I didn’t move. Indy ran his pick over his twelve strings. I didn’t think he was paying attention.

  “You all got matching tattoos so you could be a fucking asshole? Shit, I can get one too.”

  “Why? When you’re a bitch already?” Strat’s words and tone didn’t match. The words were cruel and divisive. The tone was warm and friendly. His face invited me to kiss it, as if he was the only one who would tolerate Margie-the-bitch instead of Cinnamon-the-groupie.

  It took me a split second to put together a snappy retort, but Indy cut it off by putting down his guitar and standing. He shot Strat a dirty look and paced out of the room. Strat watched him.

  Something was going on, and Strat was too cool a customer to tell me.

  I bounced off the chair and followed the guitarist. The house was barely furnished or painted. The guys didn’t have the money or time to do the fancy stuff. They had parties, but everyone sat on the floor and in folding chairs. I crossed to the south side of the house where I could see the pool. They’d had that cleaned and finished because to have a party, you needed a pool.

  The kitchen had nothing of use in it. Paper plates and plastic forks. The gas was hooked up but was used to light cigarettes and heat spoons of white powder. The fridge had beer, vodka, cigarettes, and a china tea saucer with blue pills arranged around the center circle.

  Indy stood in front of the fridge, pulling out a carton. He flipped his wrist, and the box spun midair, dropping on the island counter with a slap. Red-and-white packs swirled out. I grabbed one before it fell off.

  “It’s not your job to do what he tells you,” I said.

  “Can I ask you a question?” He took a pack for himself and cracked the plastic, letting it flutter to the floor without a second look. Both of them were fucking slobs.

  “Sure.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?”

  He didn’t respond, verbally or otherwise. He just wedged out two cigarettes and held the pack to me. I took one.

  “Stop the bullshit. You’re past that.” He took a zippo from his pocket and clacked it open. “We’re past that.”

  He lit me. I blew out a stream as he tilted his head to light his own, cupping it as if we were in a hurricane instead of a kitchen. He was unselfconscious in that second, and I admired his face and shoulders.

  “Be more specific then,” I said.

  He clattered a glass ashtray between us. “You don’t wonder what’s going on here?” He pointed his finger down and made a circle.

  Here. I knew exactly what he was talking about, yet he was so vague I could have kept the game going on long enough for Strat to stroll in for his smokes. But I couldn’t. I was as tired of this shit as he was. Both. Neither. All. None. The space between them was getting uncomfortably tight.

  “You mean that you guys are always beeping me, and you keep me around but no one’s fucking me?” I ask.

  “There you go.”

  “Yeah. I wonder that.”

  I wondered it at night, when I was home alone with my hands under the sheets. When I felt inside myself, the edge of the unbroken membrane tight on my finger. When I imagined some composite of the two of them was on top of me. Or one or the other. Or they fought over me, and both won. I didn’t know what or who I wanted, but my body got wet for both Sexy Strat and Sincere Indy. Not that I knew what to do about it. I was old for my age, but there was nothing like actual experience.

  “Little Stratford and I, we don’t fight over women.”

  “Okay.”

  “That’s the deal.”

  “You’re implying you’re fighting over me,” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  “You know what that does for a girl’s ego, right?”

  I didn’t actually believe him. That was the problem. I was cute as hell, but come on.

  “When I needed Strat, he was there for me. My father was a drunk fuck.” Indy rolled the ashes off the tip onto the amber glass of the ashtray. “Still is. I needed this house for a reason. The guest house in the back? It’s for my mother. To get her out of there. So when I finally talk her into leaving him, she has somewhere to go where she feels safe. If I’m hotel to hotel on a bus, that’s great, but it’s like leaving her to rot. And the guy in there”—Indy jerked his thumb toward the living room, where his best friend was probably still looking over paperwork—“he gets it. I can’t do any of this business shit without him. My head’s not in it. He’s giving up a chunk of his advance to make this house and studio happen.”

  “I’m glad, Indiana. Really. He’s a great friend.” I stamped out my cigarette. “What do you want out of me?”

  His frustration was bigger than anything we said. His fingers curled, and his teeth gritted. He stepped forward and put his hands just under my chin, an inch from touching them, as if it was as close as he could get. As if his palms and my jaw were the north sides of two magnets.

  “I’m fucking nuts about you,” he growled, then leaned down, so his face was level with mine. He smelled like tobacco and cologne, with a hint of music and risk. How many times had I watched his fingers on a guitar and wished they were on me? “You have to make a move,” he said more softly but with urgency. “You have to choose.”

  “You’re not supposed to have feelings.” I said it as if “supposed to” mattered at all.

  Strat’s voice came from the patio. “Dude.” He took the length of the kitchen in three steps, snapped up a pack of cigarettes, then pointed at Indy with the same hand. “Watch it.”

  “Is he telling the truth?” I asked. “You have a deal about me?”

  “A deal?” Strat asked, ripping the pla
stic off his pack. “I wouldn’t call it a deal.”

  “What do you call it?” Indy asked. “A pledge?”

  “Call it a fucking truce.”

  “You guys are both…”

  Insane.

  Annoying.

  Beautiful.

  Looking from one to the other, knowing I could have either, I couldn’t pick an adjective, much less a man.

  I’d never liked feelings, even before I consciously pushed them away. They made me feel like seven people living in the same skin. Now I had these two guys looking at me as if I was supposed to say something.

  What did they want out of me?

  One or the other?

  What was normal about this? I hadn’t kissed either one of them.

  Or anyone.

  I threw my hands up. “Fuck you both.”

  I walked out. I didn’t want the car to get me. I wanted to walk this off. This bullshit. This pressure. I couldn’t admit I was in over my head. I’d never admit a situation existed that I couldn’t handle, especially not something as basic as two guys wanting me to choose between them.

  I was warmed by the setting sun, but the air chilled my skin. Good. I wanted sensory distraction. Anything to make this shit run in the straight line.

  What did you expect?

  Nothing. I hadn’t expected anything.

  No, I’d expected them to choose. I’d suspected that one of them liked me, and the other one kept me around as a courtesy to the other, and I expected that the one who liked me was Indy. And that brought about the bigger question.

  Which one did I want?

  Both. Neither. Either. Some fourth choice.

  “Hold up!”

  I thought about not turning around. Just walking to the nearest cross street and calling the driver. I got three steps while deciding what to do. I heard the footsteps quicken behind me, and I turned to see Strat. He was wearing the jacket he kept by the door.

  “You got dressed. Nice going.”

  “Hold up,” he repeated, grabbing my elbow.

  I yanked away. “You guys need to work it out and get back to me.”

  “No, baby. You need to wake up. That guy back there? You’re not going to find anyone better in your life. You turn your back on him, and you’re an idiot.”

  I was surprised. Here he was, the god of them all, lean and sharp with a voice like a fallen angel, advocating for his friend.

  “Why do I feel like a pawn in some game you guys got going?” I asked.

  “It’s not a game.”

  “What if I want you?” I didn’t mean to say I wanted him, even though I did. I didn’t mean to imply I’d made a choice because I hadn’t even known there was a choice to be made.

  “Sorry,” he said, narrowing one eye and shaking his head slightly. “I’m not that kinda guy.” He started to walk away.

  “I saw you,” I called, and he stopped. “With two girls. Couple of days ago.”

  “Yeah?” He tilted his chin up as if I could swing at it if I wanted, he didn’t care.

  “It was hot.”

  “That shit’s not for you, Cin. That’s a couple of blues and boredom. Not your scene.”

  “How do you know?”

  “You’re too good for that shit. He’s too good. This is fucked up, the whole thing. I don’t know who you are or what planet you’re from, but it’s not mine. It’s his.” Without another word, he walked back up the hill, long hair flipping as he stepped into the wind.

  I watched him turn into the gate, then I hit the little orange button on my beeper. If I went right home to change, I could make it to the Suffragette Society planning committee. I needed to get away from this weird fucking scene.

  Chapter 17.

  1994

  I’d stopped sneezing. Either we had gotten so deep into the trailer we hit ancient allergens I didn’t react to, or my body just gave up.

  Drew’s arms and shirt front were covered with dust, and he had a war-paint-shaped grey streak across his jaw. It was getting late and his cheeks were getting a dark shadow. I felt as if we were no closer to the box for Bullets and Blood, and I was close to giving up. But every time I thought to mention it, I stopped myself. I enjoyed Drew. His connection to my life before. The pain we shared. Even the shared pain he didn’t know about.

  “I kept the business going, even after the band broke up,” he said. “Gary wanted to find another lead, but I was done. I just wanted that house.” He picked up a box. Looked at the label. The handwriting had changed an hour earlier. Someone must have gotten another job.

  “Did your mom ever move in?”

  “Yeah. After my dad died of liver failure.”

  I took the box from him. Rick Springfield. “Fuck him then.”

  Drew laughed. “Yeah. Fuck him.”

  I laid Rick’s box on top of the others. We’d developed a quick system so we could get all the boxes back in place, but it would still be a big job. We were deep into the woods.

  I went back in to meet him. I was going to say something like, “Hey, I think we gotta ditch this,” but he stood over an open box, looking at the contents with silent reverence, and I knew. I stood next to him. It was late, and the trailer’s fluorescents flickered blue.

  “Is this it?” I said, standing next to him, staring at the box’s contents.

  Master tape boxes. Ampex. Four of them. A folder. An envelope. He put his hand on a box marked Kentucky Killer. They’d recorded it for Untitled Records at Audio City before I came into the picture.

  “Nothing happened,” he said, more to himself than me. “When we did this, we could have been anyone. But nothing happened.”

  “You’re not the first.”

  “Remember his voice? The way he grumbled then sounded clear in one breath? He developed that here. Before that, he sounded like a girl all the time. See, he could imitate any voice perfectly. Any accent. He could repeat Russian back to a Russian perfectly and not understand a word of it. But he didn’t want to sound like anyone else. So he was trying to create this new sound during that first session, and he sucked. So bad. All over the place. And we were so fucking high. Really high. Everything sounded like shit. The studio smelled like pot and donuts.”

  He took a break to smile into nothing. He was beautiful. Radiant.

  “What changed?” I asked.

  His eyes moved toward me, and the answer was in his intensity.

  “After you left?”

  “His voice. What changed his voice?”

  “We were laughing at Gary. He was doing an imitation of his kid. She was two and said pickups instead of hiccups and fillops instead of flip flops. And…”

  A smile spread across his face. He pinched the top of his nose between his thumb and first knuckle.

  “Strat couldn’t breathe. We thought he was still laughing but he was choking on a fucking donut.” He took his hands away and looked at the ceiling. “Oh my God, what happened? I remember. I gave him the Heimlich. He spit up this wad of donut that looked like an oyster. We’re laughing. I nearly broke his ribs and we were laughing. But his voice…his esophagus must have gotten shredded or something. Or his throat felt different and knew how to do it. He had a way of hearing that went right to his lungs. He did it once and never forgot it. Fucking gift.”

  He tilted his head back to the box and slid out a set of reels.

  “You miss him. I’m sorry.”

  “I wish I could have stopped him.”

  I didn’t expect him to put his arm around me, but he slid it over my back, up my spine, and over my shoulder, then he pulled me to him. I watched as he took the top off the smaller box. Inside was a clear plastic reel with brown magnetic tape. It didn’t look magical, but to him it was, and we stood in silence for a minute as if praying to it. Then he put the top back on as if shutting out a thought.

  His arm tightened around me until I had to loop my arm around his waist. From there, the rest was a dance. He turned. I turned with him. He bent down. I leaned up.
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  He smelled different. He was cologne and tweed. Sharp and clean.

  I turned my head before our lips met, and though that movement came with the knowledge that I didn’t know this man, I considered telling him what had happened to me.

  Chapter 18.

  1982 – After the night of the Quaalude

  I didn’t know what to pack, but I knew I had to go. I yanked my smallest Louis Vuitton suitcase from the back of my closet and slapped it open. I didn’t know what to put in it, so it was first-grabbed-first-served.

  Outside, the anniversary party was breaking up. Long black cars headed down the drive, just moving dots of white and red lights. I didn’t have much time.

  I had to get out of there.

  Out of that house and to an abortion clinic. I’d come to terms with being disowned. I wasn’t having this baby. Not now. Not scared in my room with a party going on downstairs. Not with my mother getting a hundred congratulations for being just as pregnant as I was. Not with the spanking I’d just gotten still stinging my ass.

  He’d never done that before. Would he do it again?

  I picked up the phone to beep… who? Lynn or Indy or even Strat, who was the last guy I’d beep unless I was desperate.

  Which I was.

  Desperate.

  Time was slipping away, and the consequences of my stupidity were going to land like an anvil in a cartoon. I’d be flat. I didn’t know what my parents were going to do, didn’t know if my father had even had a chance to tell Mom anything. But I couldn’t get the last half hour back. I’d spent it staring out the window, trying to sort my head out. Identifying feelings for what they were. Useless.

  This is fear.

  Ignore it.

  This is shame.

  Pat it on the head and send it away.

  This is regret.

  Kick it.

  I tapped the headset on my upper lip. Lynn’s family knew my family. All my friends were from the same circle. I’d be sent right back home.