Sideways

by Rex Pickett

  “You picked him up and fucked him, didn’t you, bitch?”

  “Yeah, I picked him up and fucked him,” Zaftig said defiantly. “I’m a bad girl. I’m a bad girl.”

  Cuckold slapped her face hard without losing stride. “And was his cock as big as mine?”

  “No, Daryl. Your cock is bigger. It’s the biggest, I swear to God.”

  He slapped her again, grunting. “But you liked fucking him, didn’t you, you fat little whore?”

  “I liked seeing you catching me fucking him.”

  Whoa!

  “I bet you did, bitch,” was Cuckold’s reply. “You’re just a horny little fucking slut who likes to be bad so she can be spanked, aren’t you, huh?”

  They fucked and bantered like that, taunting each other with mounting accusations of faithlessness. I took it all in from my low vantage point as my eyes roamed the bedroom searching frantically for Jack’s wallet.

  I was about to throw in the towel when suddenly I spotted it on the opposite side of the room, lying open on the dresser, ten forbidding paces away. Jack must have unpocketed it and brought it in when it was time to go for his condoms—at least the man had some semblance of sanity, given that Zaftig’s vagina must have been a petri dish of every imaginable STD.

  I hung my head, thinking what to do, breathing hard. The screwing continued unabated, their dirty talk bordering on the burlesque. Zaftig wasn’t going to be a problem for me, obviously, because she was secured to the bed. Cuckold was the problem. Not only was he a big man, he was an enraged man—a potentially violent, pugilistic lunatic

  The years without sex—probably a lie, I thought—must have numbed him because it took the son of a bitch a good fifteen minutes more before he finally gave it his Hail Mary shot. As his thrusts and running monologue sped up, indicating he was reaching the end of his sordid mission, I scrambled to my feet, dashed across the room, grabbed the wallet, and tore back down the hallway. Behind me, I heard Cuckold shouting, “What? What the fuck?” followed by Zaftig shrieking, “He got the thousand bucks! Get him! Get him!”

  Cuckold came hurtling, massive and buck naked, out of the sliding glass door and tackled me on the dead run just as I was making what I thought was a triumphant escape around the pool. We plunged into the cold fetid water together. His weight dragged me down, holding me underwater. I flailed helplessly, hitting the bottom of the pool, as he relentlessly pushed down on my head. Precious seconds passed and my lungs started to surrender the last of their oxygen. In that suspended moment, as the final images of life passed through my brain, I saw Victoria and a succession of snapshots of our normal, loving life, and thought regretfully how stupid I was to have so royally fucked it up.

  I pushed and struggled, feeling close to blacking out. Then I heard a sustained scream followed by a crash. All at once the weight that was holding me underwater was released and I popped to the surface as light as a cork, gasping for air. When my eyes finally focused, I saw Jack in the pool. He had Cuckold in a headlock and was towing him out into the deep end. Cuckold thrashed in Jack’s strong,

  “Fucking stop it, man. Or I’ll break your fucking neck!” Jack was screaming.

  I clambered out of the pool, coughing up water and sputtering for air. Out of breath, I knelt down on the deck and inhaled deeply over and over in an effort to get my wind.

  “Did you get my wallet?” Jack hollered.

  Still in a daze, I shot up my right hand, wallet triumphantly aloft, Aeneas with the Golden Bough.

  “Good job, Homes!” Jack let go of Cuckold and shoved him roughly away. Then he swiftly breaststroked to the shallow end and climbed backward up the sunken steps out of the pool, wringing wet.

  “You fuckers! I’ll kill you if I ever see you again,” Cuckold shouted from the pool where he was treading water. A number of people had poked their heads from their units to see what was going on, and I think Cuckold wasn’t too eager to get out in his undressed state and chase after us.

  Jack helped me to my feet, harnessed an arm around my torso, and said, “Let’s boogie.”

  We half trotted, half stumbled back to my 4Runner like contestants in a three-legged potato sack race. Safely inside, Jack rooted through the sopping wet wallet until he found the wedding bands. They were in a small, square, blue felt jewelry sack. He emptied out the sack and cupped the rings in his hand to display them to me. I took my eyes off the road briefly and met his. Tears were actually streaming down the ravines of his scabbed face. You would have thought we’d won the state championship at the buzzer or summited Everest in a blizzard the way he was carrying on.

  “You got the rings, man,” he said through hysterical laughter and tears. “Fucking amazing. I want to hear all about it.”

  I regaled Jack with all the details on our drive back to Buellton. We were bedraggled and weary, but still keyed up and laughing, as we pulled into familiar territory.

  “But you got the rings, man,” Jack kept repeating as if he couldn’t believe it, as if their existence alone was an epiphany. “I’m proud of you. I did not think you had it in you, Shorthorn.”

  “You owe me, Jackson. You owe me.”

  Back at the Windmill Inn, we showered and changed into dry clothes and then headed over to Ellen’s Pancake House for a fortifying, celebratory breakfast. It was the day of the big Pinot festival and I wanted to load up on protein. Over breakfast, we continued to congratulate each other on the morning’s successful raid. Jack was in stitches as I described the surreal bedroom scene at Zaftig’s. We were both positively giddy, bonding again over our latest trial and triumph.

  “So,” I said as I dug into my five-egg Denver omelet, “today we have a glass—or five—of exquisite Pinot, a quiet dinner somewhere afterward, get you up to Paso Robles tomorrow in time for the rehearsal. Sound like a plan?”

  “I do think it’s time to settle down,” Jack said. “One woman. One house. One piece of snatch. I’m looking forward to it.” He smiled, and for a moment I believed him.

  “Amen, brother,” I concurred. “Amen.”

  Jack laughed again. “I still can’t believe you went in there, Homes. Fucking outstanding.”

  “You were crying, man. I haven’t seen a grown man cry since those reviews of our film hit the newsstands.”

  “I picked that up from Babs,” Jack said, wanting me to believe he had seduced me with an act. “When she wants something, she cries.”

  “Yeah, right. I think for once in your life you were scared shitless.”

  Jack smiled wryly.

  After a sip of coffee, I added: “You think Babs is going to buy the car accident?”

  “I hope so.” Jack gazed out the window at my damaged 4Runner. “Looks pretty much like she’s been in a smashup to me.”

  “So does your face. You might want to reschedule the wedding photos. Wait until that mug of yours heals. You’re going to do some serious camera damage.”

  “No,” he said, proud. “I want to remember this face.”

  We settled the bill and then lumbered out. The storm had blown through and washed the skies clean. Everything glistened.

  When we got back to the Windmill Inn, to our utter astonishment we found Brad, the repentant boar hunter, perched on the hood of his Ford pickup thumbing through a Soldier of Fortune magazine. He jumped down when he saw us and greeted us affably.

  “Jeeves!” Jack said, spreading out his arms to welcome our designated driver—seemingly forgetful of the fact that the man he was preparing to hug had only recently tried to shoot him. “Look at you, man.”

  Brad was spiffed up in a white cotton button-up shirt, dark pants, and a pair of dress shoes that were newly polished. Brad grinned. “Sorry if I’m a little early,” he said diffidently. “I wanted to make sure I got here on time.” His smile vanished when he got a closer look at Jack’s face. “What happened to you?”

  Jack gestured to the front of the 4Runner. “Got in a little fender bender,” he said, trying his story out for the first ti
me.

  “How’d you get the scratches?”

  Jack turned to me and shrugged. “Sorry, Homes, but I think we’re going to have to do a number on the windshield to seal the deal.”

  “Whatever,” I said wearily. “Get it on.”

  Jack turned his attention back to Brad. “Well, actually, Bradley, there’ve been a couple of incidents. When you get older, you’ll understand.” Brad nodded dubiously. Jack clapped him on the shoulder, and raised his voice as if emoting from a stage. “We didn’t think you were going to make it, Bradley.”

  Brad shifted in place and looked down at his feet. Was this shyness I detected? Whatever it was, it was a complete transformation from the beer-drinking hillbilly who had fired a couple of shots at us for kicks. “Well, I would kind of like to get my gun and wallet back,” he said.

  “Well,” Jack said in an exaggerated drawl. “We’ll start with the wallet and put you on a point system with regard to the firearm.”

  “Okay,” Brad agreed.

  “I’m a little apprehensive about giving you the gun back just yet—all things considered.” Jack slapped Brad on the shoulder again. “But I have a lot of sympathy this morning for guys without their wallets.” Jack and I shared a confidential chuckle.

  “That’s cool,” Brad said. “I like totally understand.”

  “I’m going to check for messages,” I said, breaking up Jack’s and Brad’s pseudo-bonding moment. “Then, let’s hit it. I’ve got a mean thirst for the grape.”

  In the room, I dialed home for messages. There were

  The second call was from my agent. My heart quickened. Evelyn’s message was brief, just saying call her. She also reminded me that she left the office early on Fridays. I glanced at my watch. It was 2:00 in New York; she’d probably be gone already. Or was I just afraid to call and learn the verdict? I slowly replaced the receiver in the cradle and stood up. I paced back and forth along the wall stacked with the cases of wine we had amassed on the trip, trying to interpret the tone in Evelyn’s voice. If it had been good news, wouldn’t she have said something? Maybe it was qualified good news and she didn’t want to raise my hopes.

  I went back outside, lost in my thoughts.

  “What’s up, Homes?” Jack asked. “Any news?”

  “Agent called,” I said tonelessly.

  “Did you call her back?”

  “She’s out of the office.”

  “Got her home number?”

  I nodded, thinking.

  “Call her.”

  “I’ll wait.”

  “What’d she say?”

  I shrugged. “Nothing, specifically. Maybe it’s gone to committee and a final decision has yet to be made.”

  “Well, you can call her from Fess Parker’s.”

  “After I get a couple of tastes in me,” I said, smiling uneasily.

  “After you get a few tastes in you, absolutely.” Jack peered at me over his blotched nose. “But not too many.”

  We all piled into the 4Runner. Jack and I took places in the backseat while our designated driver settled in behind the wheel and fired up the engine. The dangling front bumper started rattling like crazy, but it didn’t seem to bother anyone except me. Brad shifted into reverse and slowly backed up.

  “Do you know where Foxen Canyon Road is, Bradley?” Jack asked.

  “Yeah,” he replied. “I live here. Remember?”

  Jack flung an arm jauntily in the air. “Head that way, Jeeves! And tarry not.”

  Brad circled around the Windmill Inn and turned onto 246. Jack had surreptitiously slipped a bottle of sparkling wine into an ice bucket before breakfast and now he was handing me the dripping wet Byron for the uncorking duties. I did the honors with alacrity as Jack held out two plastic cups and nodded for me to fill them up. “It’s our last day. Let’s go out in style.”

  I filled the cups to overflowing, recorked the bottle, and dunked it back in the bucket. Jack handed me a cup and we toasted.

  “Here’s to good news from your agent,” Jack said, broadening into a smile.

  “Here’s to your getting my car fixed.”

  “Here’s to your getting my wallet back. Fucking awesome, dude.”

  I raised my glass for another toast. “Here’s to your finally coming to your senses.”

  He toasted me back. “Here’s to your ex-wife and her new husband. May they lose all their money in the stock market and have to take jobs at Starbucks.”

  I laughed. “Here’s to your lovely fiancée, Babs. May she never learn what went down in this valley of sin.”

  Jack howled with delight. “Amen, brother. Amen. I escaped the wrath of God and lived to tell the tale!” He turned his attention to Brad, who was driving responsibly—staying below the speed limit, overusing the turn signals—making me wonder if his driver’s license might still have a little probation time left on it.

  “Bradley, what do you do for a living?” Jack asked. “Besides poaching wild boar and taking potshots at strangers, of course?”

  “Construction,” Brad answered, as he cautiously merged onto the 101 and headed north. “What do you do?”

  “Work in the film business,” Jack said matter-of-factly.

  Brad turned around, startled and maybe a little impressed. “No shit. Are you a producer?”

  “No, I’m an actor and a director.”

  Brad turned back to the road and the streaming flow of speeding cars. “No shit? I once worked on a commercial up here.”

  “What’d you do on it?” Jack asked. “Security?”

  “No. Rigging,” Brad answered, adjusting the rearview mirror so he could frame us in it. He spoke earnestly into the mirror: “Can you get me a job in Hollywood?”

  “I don’t know, Bradley. But I’ve got some advice for you.”

  Brad swiveled his head around and said eagerly, “What?”

  Jack bent forward. “Don’t go shooting at prospective employers. Bad first impression.”

  Brad laughed nervously, or possibly dementedly, depending on how one interpreted his strange, stuttering snicker.

  “That’s all right, Bradley,” Jack said, slapping him on the shoulder reassuringly. “You’re a little nutty. But you’re in luck, because we’re the kind of guys who understand nuttiness.”

  Brad cackled again. In the mirror I could see his eyes pinched shut and his acne-stippled cheeks coloring red. Jack and I fell into a laughing jag. Somehow Brad’s was bizarrely infectious. The Byron was beginning to sandpaper the edges and once again I felt myself dissolving into its delicious emollience. There was so much to think about: the fate of my manuscript, my tenuous life as a writer in L.A., and Maya. I wondered now if there was any way in hell that something could be salvaged from the wreckage of our last encounter. The champagne coalesced all my worries into one amorphous blur, distancing them with each palate-puckering sip.

  I rolled down the window and let some warm air buffet my face. Jack was chatting up Brad, inquiring about his sex life of all things, but I tuned out and let the rushing wind mute their voices. I couldn’t remember if I was so sex-obsessed before my marriage, but I also thought this particular rite of passage did something to a man. Maybe marriage isn’t natural, I philosophized. Sure, bonding, coupling, that’s in the genes, but perhaps marriage is just too inadequate an institution, faultily designed to curb our primitive instincts and preserve the family unit. Is that why men go nuts before taking the vows and women make such ceremonial pageantry of the whole thing? I suddenly tuned back into Jack, who was eliciting a confession from Brad that he’d surrendered his virginity on the high school football field when he was seventeen. I rolled the window up and rejoined the conversation.

  “Homes, what was your first sexual encounter?” Jack

  “A car,” I said laconically.

  “Brad fucked a cheerleader on the football field,” Jack roared.

  “She tried out for cheerleader,” Brad corrected, making an important distinction.

  “Oh, a
failed cheerleader,” Jack teased. “Is that when you went off the beam?”

  Brad cackled again. It sounded like an automatic weapon with a jammed trigger. He liked Jack. So did most who made his acquaintance.

  Brad took the 154 exit and headed east toward Foxen Canyon. Vineyards started to come into view as the terrain turned bucolically agricultural.

  “You want to know where I first had sex?” Jack asked.

  “We don’t want to know, do we Brad?” I said.

  “All right, I’ll tell you,” Jack said. “High school play. Her name was Nicoletta. I was her leading man.”

  “How fucking trite,” I commented, with a smile.

  “No, listen to this, Homes. After rehearsal, we used to hang out backstage and do it in our costumes. She had a thing about my costume.”

  “What was the play, Come Blow Your Horn?”

  Jack laughed so hard I thought his nose bandage was going to come unmoored from his face. Brad cackled, too, even though it seemed unlikely he was up on his repertory theater.

  “And guess what, Bradley?” I added. “He’s marrying a costume designer.”

  Brad gave us another round of his rat-a-tat-tat laugh.

  Jack, growing quickly tipsy on the bubbly, turned to me and sputtered, “God, that first snatch is something, isn’t it, Homes?”

  I looked at him and smiled. I had a vague memory of six months of heavy petting, ending one clumsy night in the parking lot of a Presbyterian church in five minutes of frenetic, soul-emptying penetration. I remember Lisa looked stunned, like, Is that all it is? Three months later I was holding her hand in a fluorescent-lit office listening to a gynecologist sympathetic to teenage mistakes, a thousand bucks lighter in the wallet, and scared shitless I had almost become a teenaged father.