by CD Reiss
“You didn’t tell me.” He breathed it, gritting his teeth not in anger but a need to keep his head on straight against the knowledge that his head wasn’t his own.
I needed him. I couldn’t pretend I was experienced or even competent. I’d seen what I’d seen and knew what I knew, but it wasn’t enough. The Quaalude made me eager and optimistic, flooded with the feeling that nothing could go wrong.
“Show me what to do now,” I said.
He took me by the back of the neck and pulled me over him until I was an inch from his 33rpm eyes and I could taste the whiskey on his breath.
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“I’ll already remember you forever. You gonna make it count or what?”
He stroked my cheek with his thumb. His words were hard, but his tone was a caress. “Are you sure you don’t have a set of balls somewhere?”
“You should be the last one to ask that.”
“You’re really special, Margie. You don’t need me. You don’t need anyone. That’s what I was afraid of all this time, that I’d end up inside you and I’d never see you again.”
How many minutes had passed since Hawk made me swallow? Fifteen minutes? Twenty? The room had gone from deeply angled sun to a wash of blue, yet time was nothing.
I didn’t understand any of what I was feeling. The unmotivated elation caused by the drug I’d been force-fed was a bucking stallion behind a wood fence. With every kick, the lock bent. Soon the fence was going to crash down in a splintered heap and I was going to promise him an eternity together for another and another and another orgasm.
“Do I move like this?” I shifted my hips in a circle and drove down until I felt a pressured pain deep inside and my clit rubbed against him.
He groaned. That was good. He took my hips and shifted me up then down again.
“Like that,” he said, hands running up my waist to my tits. He pinched them, and a new shot of pleasure ran down my spine.
I moved up then down until he was deep in me.
“Push against me here.” He took a hand off my tit to press the front of me against him, so my nub rubbed against his body.
I gasped.
“When you come up, angle yourself so you get it the whole way. Go.”
I did what he said, letting my clit feel the length of him. “Oh, God. That’s. Fuck.”
We moved slowly, up and down, pressing deep, the friction and pressure bringing me close to a third orgasm.
“If I make you come on your first time—”
“Gold star. Fuck. God. Gold star it’s so good.”
“You have to come soon. Please come soon I’m so-close-no-I’m-there.” His eyes closed, and his jaw got tight.
I thought the drug had made me feel good already. I thought it had aroused me more than normal, but I wasn’t even halfway there. The bucking stallion of emotion broke through the gate, and I was blindsided by a rush of joy. I cried out from the chest-bursting, brain-exploding emotional high. My world washed bright yellow, and as I dropped down on his dick, deep and hard, my orgasm flooded orange, deep red, explosive, centered on cunt and mind, mixing at the heart of something so vivid I couldn’t see who I was past it.
I dropped on top of him, barely breathing. His chest heaved under me.
“Gold star,” I gasped. “I’ll remember you forever.”
He laughed. “You haven’t even started to remember me.”
Chapter 20.
1983
Strat died about six months after the last time I saw him, and I found out about it six months after that. I was in the library, catching up on schoolwork with a newfound ambition.
The library magazine rack was in front of my Debate Team materials, and I stopped when I saw Strat’s music-strewn bare chest on it. I bit my lower lip. I’d been home a month and hadn’t called him or Indy. I didn’t want to explain about the baby or whose it was (or wasn’t). I didn’t want to revisit any of it. I was a new woman.
But he was majestic, and the photo was dark in a way that made it mysterious. I was curious.
Chapter 21.
1982 – The morning after the night of the Quaalude
The morning after I’d had a Quaalude shoved down my throat, I woke up on the couch with a headache. Indy was already in the kitchen, slogging down a glass of water.
“Where’d you go last night?” he asked.
“Good morning to you too.” The light tasted too yellow. The air hurt. The floor and sky were too loud.
“Here.” He shook three aspirin out of the bottle into my palm. The circles were too perfect and too white, the big B etched into them too capitalized.
He filled a glass of water for me. I washed the pills down and drank the entire glass.
“Thank you,” I said, handing the cup back.
He took it then took my wrist and pulled me toward him. Bone creaked on bone, but it didn’t hurt. I let myself lean on him.
“I have to tell you something.” He spoke into my ear and stroked my back. That didn’t hurt either.
“Mmm.”
“I want to take another crack at last night, but without the ludes.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Or Strat.”
I swallowed.
Jesus.
Last night.
I hadn’t forgotten as much as I’d woken up feeling like I had Dengue fever or something. But, yeah. Last night had happened.
I leaned back until I could see his eyes. “I think I just need to sleep today.”
“Are you okay to stay?”
I shook my brain. Yes. I was supposedly on a camping trip. I hated camping, but I’d had to lie.
Right? I had to wrap my life in lies.
“Indy, I have to tell you something. After I tell it to you, you’re never going to want to see me again.”
He did something that took my breath away. He leaned over and swept my feet from under me, getting his arm under my knees. “Never tell me. Never say it.”
His lips tightened a little, and without saying a word, I was sure he knew.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
I help up my hand. “Open pledge.”
He laughed, and though it was loud, it didn’t hurt my head. “My hands are occupied. Assume it’s up.”
“Swear you don’t want to know. Swear you’re already okay with whatever I was going to say.”
“I do. Close pledge.”
I slung my arm around his neck, rested my head on his shoulder, and let him carry me to his room.
I had a life in the weeks that followed, but not much outside Indy. I helped with the studio, hammering and painting, getting boxes and running cables. I could have done that forever, lost the world and gained my soul.
But there wasn’t a soul to be had.
Chapter 22.
1994
“Evidentiary privileges,” Drew said, sliding a box up high.
I gave him the next one. It was after dark, but we were almost done. I’d spent the entire process watching the veins on his forearms, the way his biceps strained his shirt, the movement of his lips when he spoke.
“I just did that one,” I complained.
“You don’t get to stop until you can bill two-fifty an hour. Evidentiary privileges.”
I picked up another box and brought it to him. They weren’t heavy. “Attorney-client. Doctor-patient. Spousal. Priest-penitent.”
He pushed the box to the topmost position in the pile, and I gave him the last one.
“Done.” I slapped my hands together.
“Contracts, quick—”
“You can’t go from evidence to contracts like—”
“Construction. Give me rescission remedies.”
I put my hands on my hips. He was making it hard, and I loved it. “Builder in breach. No remedy. Owner in breach. Builder gets market value of work done.”
He stepped toward me. “Land sale,” he said in a velvety, non-demanding tone.
�
��Payments less land value.”
He touched my elbows, pulling them toward him, so they weren’t impatient angles on my hips. “Sale of goods.”
I let my arms go around his waist. I wanted him right there, on a stack of boxes, breathing mildew and old air. I’d been with a few guys since Ireland, but I’d never felt so comfortable. Had he only been back in my life a day? Had it been just that morning when he knocked into me in the waiting room? I felt as though we’d picked up where we left off.
“Are we still in rescission?” I purred.
“You’re really cute when you’re buying time.”
“The contract is canceled and either party can sue for breach.”
I tilted my head up, breathing in his Drew/Indiana-ness. I could practically taste him.
“Not quite.” He spoke in breaths, his lips grazing my face. “Non-conforming goods need to be established before cancellation and injunctive relief.”
Our lips were going to touch on “injunctive.” I was on my toes, leaning up, my hands feeling the tightness at his waist.
But when thunder ripped through the air and rain suddenly pattered on the windows, I jumped too far back for him to reach.
“Crap,” I said.
Without a word, we scrambled to the two boxes we’d put outside. He put them into the trunk of his Audi rental, and we scrambled inside.
“Where are you staying?” I asked. “I mean… just…”
“They have me in a condo in Century City.”
The firm had apartments for visiting clients. They must use them for visiting attorneys as well.
“That’s across town from the office,” I stated the obvious. For clients, Century City made sense. For an employee, it was stupid.
“I get the real Los Angeles experience, traffic and all.” He started the car. “Where are you headed?”
“I live in Culver, but my car is downtown, and I have a family thing tonight in Malibu.”
“That’s a mess,” he said.
“I can get a cab Downtown.”
At rush hour, then I had to head west. I’d get to dinner with everyone after ten, and I wouldn’t see my brother. He was having trouble at school, and though it wasn’t my job to correct it, I was the only one he listened to.
Mostly, I didn’t want to get a cab downtown. I wasn’t done with Drew.
I spoke before I thought it out. “Are the partners taking you to dinner tonight?”
“That was last night.”
“Come to dinner at my family’s place then. You can ogle the size of it. We have a great cook, and I have seven siblings to play with. If you like kids, that is.”
“I love kids.”
Of course he did.
Chapter 23.
1982 – Five weeks after the night of the Quaalude
The pregnancy test was in my bag, a big square lump on a heavier lug of books. I didn’t usually carry all my things. We usually bought a separate set of textbooks for home, so all I had to carry were my notebooks. But I had to hide that stupid test. The nannies and housekeepers had started looking suspicious of my comings and goings, and I never knew when one of them was going to innocently (or not so innocently) slip or snoop.
The band had gone to Nashville to meet with a producer. Two weeks. Perfect. I was supposed to get my period in that time.
But I didn’t.
On the day the boys were set to return from Nashville, I got a beep from the Palihood house number. I went up there with my backpack and without a plan. I didn’t know what to tell them. I couldn’t even take the test until the next morning, so what did I expect? What did I want? Should I even tell them I was all of nine days late for my period? I mean, so what? I’d been late before. My schedule was all screwed up. What was the point of worrying them into thinking I was going to ask them for anything besides the number of an abortion clinic?
The side door was unlocked, and I walked in unannounced as always. I thought of putting my bag by the door, but the elephant in the room had been zipped into it, so I kept it slung over my shoulder.
I was about to walk into the kitchen because the beer and cigarettes were there, but I felt a vibration in the floor. Standing still, I listened. Birds. The freeway. The ticking of the clock. Men talking behind walls. And music.
I went to the side of the house I’d only seen down to the studs.
The studio was sheetrocked and painted. Floors down. Gold record and band photos hanging in the hall. The window to the isolation booth sealed and egg-carton-shaped soundproofing on the walls.
Strat stood in front of the mic, copper-gold hair tied at the base of his neck, unleashing a note I couldn’t hear. The door to the adjacent engineering room was ajar. I peered inside. Indy sat at the control panel while a goateed guy I’d seen around untangled some wires.
“Dude,” Indy said into the mic, looking at Strat through the window.
“Dude,” Strat said into his own mic. “Really?”
“Warm as the girl in the middle,” Indy replied joyfully.
My heart twisted once, sharply. I reprimanded myself. It was a metaphor, for Chrissakes. I told myself I didn’t care. I had no feelings on the matter one way or the other. I liked Indy and he was fun, but only until he wasn’t.
I didn’t need to be special to him.
How much longer are you going to tell yourself that?
I opened the door before I could answer myself.
Indy turned. Then the engineer. The man whose baby I could have been carrying jutted his chin toward me in greeting then turned back to the egg-carton-lined room.
“Give me the next verse, Stratty.” He jotted something in a notebook, not even looking at me when he said, “Close the door, Cin.”
I closed it quietly and gently placed my bag on the couch behind the board as if a sleeping monster were inside it.
Strat wore a white T-shirt and black jeans with a chain that made a U from his front belt loop to his back pocket. It swayed with him as he sang. His voice was magic. It had been too long since I’d heard him.
“I need to talk to you guys,” I said.
“I think we need to kill the preamp,” Goatee said.
Indy moved a lever so slightly it could have been nothing at all. A low-level version of Strat’s voice filled the room as he hummed to himself near the mic.
“No,” Indy said, not even looking at me. “Make it work. We’re not cheaping out on vocals.”
“Sure, but…” a pentameter of technical terms I didn’t understand followed.
Indy parried with another jumble of engineering nonsense, and Goatee thrust with his own as he counted a bunch of bills he’d pulled from his front pocket. My request for an audience had been denied apparently.
In the booth, Strat jotted notes, tapped his foot, and hummed verses.
I’d never felt like an outsider with them before, but I’d never seen them working either. It was a bad time. I’d come back after I did the test. Or not. But either way, I was doing what I had to with or without their permission.
I picked up my bag. When the handles got taut from the weight, I had to exert a little more energy to pull the whole thing up, and I wished I could lean on someone. I wished I hadn’t always been so far removed, so cold, so non-demonstrative. I wished I was used to emotions because I was having them and I couldn’t define them. They were moving through me so quickly I couldn’t define them, much less cope with them.
I slung the bag over my shoulder and saw myself in the glass’s reflection. I was translucent. Overlaid onto Strat’s indifference.
I hated this. Needy. Childish. Whining. Grasping. Desperate. I saw myself from the outside. Out of control. Floundering. Hungry for validation. A few synonyms for “it’s going to be all right” wouldn’t cure me of the problem. Not even a little. So why did I want them so badly?
When I opened the door, Indy spun in his chair. “Didn’t you want something?”
“It can wait.”
I left, saving myself from my
self. I could handle emptiness. I could handle solitude and isolation. This rush of neediness was going to kill me. If either one of them had started patting my head and saying he was going to help me/be there for me/whatever you want, baby, I would have told him to fuck off.
So when I heard Indy’s voice behind me, I was tempted to just keep walking down the hall. But the needy part won. I turned to at least tell him, “No worries. I’m good.” His posture, half in and half out of the engineering room, told me that would have been a welcome dismissal.
But I couldn’t. That hot bubbling mess inside me wouldn’t be silenced.
“You all right?” he asked.
I think I’m pregnant.
I’m sick in the morning.
“I’m fine. Welcome back.”
“Thanks.” He leaned back into the engineering room, and I took the opportunity to walk a few more steps down the hall, rescued and abandoned at the same time. “You coming back tonight?”
“Why?” I didn’t turn around, keeping him at my back.
“Why?”
I didn’t know how to answer. Didn’t know how to move or think. I only knew how to blurt out my problems.
Something inside me feels like turned soil.
And I’m late.
And I knew how to shut myself up. I barely knew how to breathe without feeling the tension between breath and words.
“Yeah,” I said. “Why?”
“Because we’re back, and people are coming over. What’s the problem, Cin?”
He wanted an honest fucking answer. He knew my fucking name, but he wouldn’t even fucking use it.
Cin.
Cin, my ass. My fucking left tit. Taking my stupid stunt of a fake name and throwing it at me like a bucket of ice.
“You’re working. We’ll talk later.”
If I’d been able to just walk away, things might have been different, but we were young. I had to offer him one chance to give me what I needed. But no, that wasn’t to be. Indiana Andrew McCaffrey had to stake out his territory.
“Maybe.” He waved at me dismissively, and with that, the potential to have my needs met went down the shitter.