by Gabi Moore
I took the cup and pressed the hot liquid to my lips.
No way.
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t continue down that thought process …that was how bad men got to be as powerful as they were – good men let them. I didn’t care if I had to fill out forms for the next year, I would do this on my own steam, and Vito and his clowns could fuck off. I was decided.
My phoned pinged and I pulled it out of my pocket, catching an email from the lawyer. He found another document that wasn’t correctly signed and would need to see me again once I could procure another properly authorized copy. I cursed loudly under my breath and went back to my office.
I stared at the giant painting of Costa Rica on the wall. Sophia had been so happy when we visited a year ago. I could see her beaming, nearly-sunburnt face under her big straw hat as she paraded around in her bikini in the hotel room, dancing to salsa music and slightly tipsy. It was a good look on her. She loved to dance. And I loved to watch her dance.
We had gone out late every night to the salsa clubs and laughed and drank till the sun came up. On our last night there she had gotten that naughty look in her eyes and accosted me in the elevator up to the room. I had kissed her so hard it was as though my life depended on it.
I swallowed the last of my coffee and woke up the laptop. I had work to do. There was no point daydreaming about any of that. That Sophia was in the past now.
Chapter 8 - Sophia
When I was younger, I thought that farmers’ markets like these only existed in the movies.
Cute little tents with shiny, happy vegetables lined up in rows, and people milling around with golden Labradors and shiny, happy faces as they bought their organic vine tomatoes or their beeswax candles or their eggs from chickens that had lived a nicer life than many humans… it was all too pretty. Too perfect.
Of course, I loved coming out here with Leo early every Sunday morning to pick through the offerings, but deep down, it was becoming clear to me that what I loved best about these outings was the fact that I could avoid The Great Standoff.
I don’t know when The Great Standoff started happening to us. Maybe it crept up on us both slowly at first, but it was a full-blown, weekly phenomenon now.
The Great Standoff was all about sex – or the lack of it. All week it felt like Leo and I dodged one another when it came to fulfilling our ‘quota’. The opportunity to make love was always there on the table, always in the back of both of our minds, but the game was to see how distracted we could both pretend to be so that the opportunity floated away and we could both breathe a sigh of relief and claim that our schedules were busy, and we’d just have to wait till next time.
But on Sundays, there were no distractions. And we had all the time in the world. Leo liked morning sex. A lot. He was a deeply sexual man, and the only man I’d ever known who could come three times in one session …and be ready to go again in an hour.
Sometimes he’d poke me in the back with his hard-on and smile and say nothing, but I’d pretend I hadn’t noticed. He’d stroke and tease my neck, and wrap his warm hands around my waist and grind his hips against mine as I slept. Sometimes he’d ask outright, and I’d laugh and tell him sure, but if we do then we’ll get to the farmer’s market too late and then it’ll be so busy we won’t get parking…
And so these days we just went to the farmer’s market instead. An ‘alternative’ famer’s market, and the double meaning in the name wasn’t lost on me. I wasn’t an idiot. I could tell it irked him when weeks went by and the fire between us died right down to cold ashes. Sometimes there was no way to avoid it, and we’d steel ourselves and have a little morning romp together. That way, I felt like at least could ‘reset’ things and could buy myself some time. But these encounters were awkward enough that he’d back off for a few days afterwards.
It was a problem.
I hated how things were. But I didn’t know how to fix them. I was good at impulsive, here-and-now decision-making. I don’t know why my body had stopped responding to him. But it had. This whole long-term relationship deal was completely alien to me. And wasn’t it normal for people to lose interest in one another over time? I had no idea. Nobody had ever stuck around with me long enough.
For the time being, though, things were holding up. Barely. I think. Leo seemed a little distant, a little preoccupied, but I chalked it up to all the new developments at work.
He held my hand tightly as we strolled through the market, bonding a little over the fact that this week’s Great Standoff had been successfully avoided and now we could just buy some zucchinis for dinner in peace.
“Hey, these are cool,” he said and drifted over to a tent. I followed to see him holding up a giant string of dried red chilies, arranged in a tight whorl so that they made a cute-looking garland.
“But baby, what would we do with so many chilies?”
He put it back down again.
“I was just saying. I didn’t want to get it or anything,” he said, and we kept walking.
I’m sure all the women that walked past us wondered how such an amazing guy had ended up with a tramp like me. I’m being serious – Leo was distractingly good looking. His two-tone eyes weren’t even the most noticeable thing about him. He was built so solidly. Even when he wasn’t weight-training, he had a natural heaviness to his frame, and at nearly six and a half feet, that solidness gave him a sort of gravitational pull that seemed to catch the eye of every passing girl in a three-yard radius.
He had chestnut brown hair, tanned, freckled cheeks and lips that I had only ever seen once elsewhere: on a marble bust of the Roman Emperor Augustus we saw together in a museum the year before. They were the most insanely sexy lips. Shapely, curved on the top and bottom, suggesting some kind of perpetual kiss. He was completely unaware of how hot they made him look, though, and was always absentmindedly chewing or sucking on them.
Even though we were in a pretty serious sexual lull, it didn’t mean I couldn’t see how gorgeous he still was. Or, for that matter, how gorgeous strangers in the street thought he was, too.
It didn’t matter though.
He had proposed.
For the time being, I had ‘banked’ him, and as long as I kept my slate clean and quit my stupid obsession with my Wednesday night ‘salsa classes’, I’d be fine. The sex would pick up again, I was sure of it.
“Oh my god, look at this!” he said and guided my arm away again. I was steered towards a community notice board that Leo was excitedly pointing at. He read it out loud.
“Everyday Tantra – Workshop for Couples. Intimacy, Balance, Connection. It’s a weekend retreat …” he said and scanned the details of the poster.
“This is your kind of thing, isn’t it baby? Hippie sex stuff. I’m down it with. We should totally go,” he said and flashed me a goofy grin.
I laughed.
“Baby, do you even know what tantric sex is?”
“Uh …sure I do. It’s like meditation, only sexier,” he said, and shrugged. I raised a teasing eyebrow at him. He continued. “Yeah, I’m keen. It’s been a while since my third eye’s been, you know, opened.” He held his hands in a silly prayer posture as he eagerly read the fine print. I couldn’t help but laugh.
“Oh, my god, you’re actually serious.”
“Of course I am.” He had taken his phone out and was snapping a picture of the poster.
“But baby, you don’t’ even know what it is, though…”
“Isn’t that all part of the fun?” he said and took my hand again. “Fine, bossy boots, tell me what it’s all about then. Unweave the rainbow for me, go on I’m listening.”
“It’s actually a very serious spiritual practice, it’s a very ancient set of techniques and rituals that…” He had on his goofy face again, pretending to listen to me intently. I laughed and slapped his arm. “Stop it!”
“Stop what? I hear you. Very serious. Very spiritual, got it. I have just one question, though.”
“Yes…?
”
“How much actual boning do you think there’ll be?” he said, hands in Namaste and eyes twinkling. I couldn’t help laugh again. I loved when he got into this playful mood of his, even though the topic was a little too close to home this time.
“How much? Oh, it’s loads. I mean, see all these people drinking their matcha smoothies? It’s not for their health. Oh no. It’s so they can keep up their stamina for what goes on in those classes, believe me. That’s how baby hippies are made, didn’t you know?”
“Let’s do it!
“You wouldn’t last two minutes,” I scoffed.
He gave me a hurt look. “What? That’s not true. I’d win so hard, those sex hippies wouldn’t know what hit them.”
I chuckled. “I don’t think it’s a competition baby…”
“Sure it is. I’ll win first place for hottest girlfriend and then I’ll win again when they see my mighty throbbing kundalini,” he said, nuzzling in for a kiss.
“Kundalini? Ooh, nice use of the lingo, I’m impressed.”
“Eh, I just saw it on the poster,” he grinned.
“So help us all, once your mighty throbbing kundalini’s out, I don’t know what we’ll do,” I giggled.
He smiled wide at me and we walked off. Our conversation fizzled as we walked on and he looked at this and that. It was all just a light-hearted joke. Just something cute and silly. But at the same time, something about it all aggravated me. I pushed everything out of my mind.
We picked up some veggies, chatted about this and that and soon found we had seen everything we wanted to get. It was time to go home. Time to face The Great Standoff, Part Two – which was easier to manage since I could always claim I was too tired.
When did my life get like this? Did I really go through years of therapy, a million stints in rehab and a mountain of self-help literature only to create a life so full of obligation I felt the only thing to save me from it was to dawdle a little longer at the honey stall on the way out?
Leo was awesome. He had a rough past, but he had overcome it. I clearly didn’t deserve him.
We climbed into the car and set off. The day was light, clean and easy, but my head was a mess. As he started the engine and began to drive us home, it occurred to me plain as day: I had a Madonna/whore complex. And now that I had so thoroughly stomped out the whore part of the equation, all I could do was be a better and better Madonna. And being a Madonna was boring as hell.
“Sorry for being a bit grumpy back there,” I said, and leaned over to squeeze his strong thigh. He turned to give me a warm, easy smile.
“Grumpy? You? On a Sunday morning? That’s almost unheard of!” he laughed, but he squeezed my knee back in silent acknowledgment.
“Yeah, well, I’ve just been kind of busy at work and stuff… lost a few clients lately and you know how it is, I’m always worried I’ll never find new ones…”
“Completely understood, baby,” he said, smiling and keeping his eyes on the road. “We’re building our lives together, we’re making a future, these things do take time.”
I looked down at the glittering rock on my finger, pretty but so alien. How could I have sex with a guy who was so sweet, gentle and considerate? I was like a baby duckling who had imprinted on all the bad boys in her formative years, and now she couldn’t even recognize a regular, normal guy as a potential mate. The more patient and understanding he was, the more turned off I felt.
It was tragic, when you thought about it.
So I didn’t think about it.
Lizzy at the group always said “don’t get rid of old behavior patterns, replace them”. So, for the time being, sexual frustration and a dead bedroom were the replacement on what honestly used to be a lot worse. I could just chalk it up to progress and hope like hell that I’d come around again.
‘Speaking of buildings,” I said, and changed the topic.
“Well, the inspectors came over the other day. I swear to god the red tape makes me want to scream. But, they line up the rings and I gotta jump through ‘em, right?”
I smiled and started to stroke his inner thigh a little, since my hand was already there.
In the early days of our relationship, he turned me on so much I had once made him pull over so I could suck him right there and then, because I couldn’t wait till we got home. I remembered days when just sliding a single finger up and down the inside of his leg would have him hard and speeding to get home as fast as possible. Today, though, it was more like a consolatory gesture – a friendly caress to apologize for the fact that we didn’t do that kind of thing anymore.
“I guess so. Busy week ahead?” I asked, pulling my hand away and staring out the window.
“Always. You?”
“Same. In fact, I might need to sort out some invoices and things this evening, my paperwork is looking like a hurricane went through it.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. I think I’ll have an early night, too.”
And then I saw it. His broad jaw clenched a little, something moved over those perfect, arched lips of his and his hands tightened on the steering wheel.
“You OK?” I said.
He flashed me a tight smile.
“Sure, of course. Maybe I’ll squeeze some work in this evening too.”
And so it was. We drove on in silence, The Great Standoff descended on us like an invisible blanket. I loved Leo. More than anything in the world. And that was why the stakes felt so high. I didn’t know what was wrong with me, why I couldn’t just clean up my act and let go of my stupid past already.
But I would be the perfect girlfriend for him.
I had to.
Chapter 9 - Leo
I was in the same diner again. Two girls were in the same corner again, and they were a different pair from before, sure, but they were still the same, after everything’s said and done. They looked me over out the corner of their eyes and I looked them over, and we all looked and tried to pretend that nobody was looking.
And that’s when I saw Vito on the news.
The same grainy driver’s license pic they had been using for him for years now flashed across the screen. It was new laundering allegations, sure, new investigations into trafficking from Eastern Europe, but it was still all the same, after everything’s said and done. People like Vito are the whack-a-moles of the world – you beat them down in one place and they just pop up again some other place.
The TV volume was low so I couldn’t hear much, but a few images of pretty young women flashed across the TV screen. Prom-style shots, candid club photos. One was smiling broadly, glitter on her cheeks, a black choker on her neck. She looked so young. The words “Human trafficking on the rise?” rolled slowly across the screen beneath her.
As far as I can tell, the game has always been about masks. The first mask is the front business –a laundromat, a café or, in Roselli’s case, a sleazy strip club with a corner devoted to rigged slot machines. What lies underneath that is the real business. The illegal electronic imports, stolen cars, drugs, prostitutes.
But there are masks below that, too.
Vito and his cronies are family men. And in a family like theirs, there are always hierarchies. Keep peeling away the masks, keep looking past the goons and the runners and the bullshit bureaucrats and eventually you get to the inner circle, the people who are so loyal to one another it almost goes deeper than blood.
I looked at my watch. My jaw clamped involuntarily as I realized the fat fucker was late, again.
Lately, by some strange laws of relationship alchemy, Sophia had seemingly transferred all her sexual energy into browsing online for wedding crap instead. We hadn’t fucked in weeks, and yet she had decided and re-decided on a reception color scheme four thousand times over and written a million updated lists of guests and dress vendors and potential wedding favors (what the fuck is a wedding favor anyway?)
I wanted her to be my wife. More than anything. I would have cut off my right arm if it meant makin
g her happy. But lately, I’d been feeling a little grated that the things that made her happy these days never seemed to have anything to do with my dick. I couldn’t tell if I was angry that this idiot was wasting my time again, or if I was just horny. Or both.
The bell on the door tinkled and I turned to see the fat, heaving figure I recognized as Joe Smith. The meeting before, he had told me his name and I had laughed that it sounded so fake, but he had shrugged and said that it just meant never having to lie to hotel staff whenever he was cheating on his wife.
He sat beside me, waved for an espresso and knotted his fingers in front of him on the counter, like some kind of budget funeral director about to talk business. I couldn’t believe that he was Vito’s right hand man.
“The shipment has been collected,” he said. He took his espresso from the waitress and folded his thick lips round the rim for a sip.
“Good,” I said. “I’ve gotta wonder why Vito himself can’t come down here and tell me that.”
He nodded slowly.
“None of us know where Vito is, buddy,” he said and puckered for another sip. The tiny cup looked comical curled in his big, hairy hands.
“What?”
“What you mean what? You don’t watch the news? Vito’s gone. The feds have been on us for months now.”
I suddenly became aware of the hair on the back of my neck. Gone?
“We need you to hold another shipment for us,” he said, and drained the cup.
“No way. I told you I would help you out once. I did it. That’s it.”
He gave me a long, exhausted look.
“You don’t gotta do anything. You have the space already. You say nothing, we come, we go, it’s over. What’s your problem?”
“I don’t have a problem, this is your problem. This is Vito’s problem. I can’t help you, sorry.”
He frowned, pulling his bushy eyebrows into a clump in the middle of his forehead.
“Ok, I think I’m not explaining this properly or something. This is in your best interests,” he said, slowly, as though speaking to a child. “Believe me, you want to do this for Vito.”