After a few seconds, he smiles.
“What?” I reach for my phone, he snaps it away. “What!?” He holds the phone in the air and looks up at it, and I can’t reach it! “Hey! What are you smiling at?” I jump up but the phone is still too high up. He’s so tall!
With a grin, he reads out loud: “‘Hot? More than hot. I’d do her. Oh yeah baby.’’” He cracks up laughing, then fixes me with his glorious gaze. “I’d have to agree.” He eases down to my lips and manages one peck before I slide away and snatch my phone back!
“Hey!” he says.
I run! He chases me to the back of the loft and lifts me off my feet. I start kicking! We’re choking crazily with laughter. My phone’s slipping from my hand. “Let me go!” I say as a joke.
“One kiss, then you can go.”
I instantly flush hot with heat. I don’t even bother putting up the façade of a fight. “Fine, put me down and kiss me then.”
He does put me down, and when his lips touch mine, my fingers and hand relax. And my phone falls to the ground. My nipples harden.
He eases away gently, licks his lips. He looks as dazed as I feel. “Deck?”
“M-hm?”
“You look like you’re in a dream.”
In a deep rumble of a voice, he says: “Feels like it.”
-5-
I pick up my phone (grateful as hell that it’s got a sturdy cover on it) and I scroll through the rest of the forwarded messages from Xavier. For a short, confused moment, my mind takes me back, and seeing the name XAVIER next to all these unread messages throws up images of the past which I don’t care to look at. And for an almost indiscernible second, I even expect to see Savva’s or Patryk’s name in amongst the messages. Something like, Hook up at ten tonight? Or Awesome set, love, S.
The mind is a funny thing. If it could just let go of things, maybe we wouldn’t all suffer so much.
But the messages I’m reading now, although from his phone, are not from him, they’re other people’s messages. Each one lifts my mood up more and makes me forget Skitz-O’s crappy comments (although, not completely.)
The last one he writes is:
Xavier: Need 2 talk money. Call me.
I call him.
“Ola, baby. Get a good night’s rest?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Get all my messages?”
“Uh-huh.” I’m waiting anxiously for the money subject.
“So, Randy said he gonna give you da full payment for both the other DJs. Now these are small parties, so even the top DJs don’t get paid a lot, but how’s two Gs sound to you?”
“Two...grand?” If I’m getting two, I wonder what the other DJs were really getting, seeing as Xavier wouldn’t be Xavier if he wasn’t lining his own pockets at least a little.
“Dass right, baby.”
Pause.
“Blaze, you there?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Good news, right?”
I’ve hardly ever even made two Gs in an entire month before... Cut or no cut, it’s a mountain of money to me. And I’m not ungrateful for it. “Amazing news, Xavier. Thank you.”
“Yeah. Well. Now, our brains are too fried today, but stay by your phone. Randy’s keen on getting you into a few clubs. If you generate enough interest, maybe he’ll get you on the label. He wanted to know if some of the stuff you mixed was all your own. I told him yes because I remembered you creating all that EDM stuff on your computer back when we used to hang. So, was it?” EDM is Electronic Dance Music, the equivalent of our crowd’s Rock n Roll.
“Was it what?”
“The stuff you played, was some of it your own?”
“Plenty of it was.”
“Dass what I told him. Yeah, so that means he’ll definitely wanna talk about releasing a single. You interested?”
“If it pays, sure.” Getting a record deal has never been my goal. Making music has always been. That and paying the rent.
I remember the two Gs again. The earth shifts. I lean against my kitchen counter.
Xavier says, “You still doin’ those kiddie parties for dough?”
“It pays the bills.”
“I guess. Well, each to his own. We all do what we have to to survive, eh?”
I don’t comment. Xavier’s been talking to me again for less than two days and he’s already getting on my nerves.
“Anyway, chiquita, there’s big things coming, so you might wanna take on less work for now.”
“I’ll take on less work when I get the gigs.”
“You always played it safe, didn’t you? I guess that’s a good thing. Would’ve helped if Savva had done the same. Anyway, what’s done is done. Send me your account info. Randy wants to pay you tonight. He said you’re the hottest news of the underground scene right now. And he wants dibs on you.”
“Tell him I appreciate it, but the landlord’s knocking, and realty developers are kicking me out my home. So, first come first serve.”
“That old fart? Fuck ’im. You tell him—”
“Xavier, stay on track here.” Xavier really knows nothing about Mr. Bernstein. Few people do. And his constantly blasé comments about Savva are really starting to piss me the fuck off!
“Fine. Well, I’ll pass the message. But don’t go gettin too much of a big head. One set you did. I’d take what Randy can throw your way.” I tense my teeth. If Xavier wasn’t the way in for me here, I’d be slamming the phone down. Then, on a total one-eighty, he says, “Look, Blaze, about them haters online. Fuck ’em. Haters are always gonna hate—goes with the territory, comprende?”
“Yeah.”
“Best is to ignore them.”
“I’ll try.”
And that’s the thing that always confused me about Xavier. The Yin and the Yang. One minute sweet as a rose, the other, vile as a festering wound. Not the same as Tolek, no. Because I do believe it’s the chemicals screwing with Xavier’s mind that make him this way. Doctor Jekyll’s potion. (And, you gotta ask yourself, was Robert Stevenson really referring to A Certain Corn Flake from California when writing about a potion that “removed inhibitions”?)
“OK, chiquita. I gonna get me some rest. I been up since yesterday morning. Damn, you played a fine set. Do something for yourself tonight. Hey, you wanna grab some coffee some time? You know, you, me, some music, some X, hmm? Like old times?”
Urgh! “Xavier...look, I appreciate the gig. But don’t expect this to be more than it is.”
“We’ll see.”
Part of me wants to jump down the phone line, wrap my hands around him and say, No, we won’t see, you fucking punk! The other part of me tells me not to overreact, tells me that this is just the way Xavier is.
“Lemme know when Randy wants to meet.”
“Will do.” A pause. Then, Hyde goes away again and Jekyll comes out: “Look, Blaze. I’m...I’m sorry. You know. About... About everything, OK? I really am. No one expected it to happen, or for it go so far.”
It’s as if someone just winded me with a whoosh of a punch in the gut. Trembling, I say—no, I whisper: “Yeah, rearview regret. But...thank—thank you, X. I appreciate you saying that.”
He sighs. “OK, babe. We just gotta move on, no?”
I wish I could. “Yeah. Look, Xavier, after you tell Randy ‘first come first serve’...uhm...also thank him for me. From the bottom of my heart. Really. A lot. And, er, thank you again, OK?”
“I knew joo was a softy underneath all that riot grrrl bullshit.”
When I put the phone off, Declan (who is now chilling on my beanbag with a copy of Nineteen Eighty-Four) says, “That sounded intense.”
A tear almost cracks through as I think of Savva’s beautiful face, marred forever in my mind by that final blue image of her. “Uhm, yeah, lots of early stuff resurfacing.” I go to the faucet and wash my face. Then, remembering again that I just made two freaking Gs, I say with a smile, “Deck, I think supper’s on me tonight.”
-6-
&n
bsp; I intended to take him out right away. I did. I intended for us to eat, to talk, to do what...I guess...people do in these kinds of things.
But then he grabs me. His hands graze against my waist as I reach for the door on our way out. And my gasp betrays that it’s already been too long since he’s touched me.
I hear him breathe of me, feel his nose by my hair, inhaling; his hands moving up my sides.
I move my own hands over his. Logic tells me to wait. Logic tells me to not let it get too physical before it gets emotional.
Logic loses.
I turn on him. Slam my hands to his chest and push him back against the Grandmaster Flash poster near my bookshelf. And then I dive into him with my tongue.
My kisses are headlong and furious. Hungry. I slide my hands under his sweater, ease them over the granite of his body. I kiss his neck, lick it. His own tongue goes ballistic on my ear, then my chin.
Fire burns in me. Sounds play in my mind but the only beat is the syncopated one of our breaths. Hot and violent.
He cups my cheeks. His gaze is molten lava. It burns through me. It feels like he sees every dark secret of mine, every fear. Every bone-gnawing worry I’ve ever felt anywhere and at any time. Like he knows me.
I start pulling him closer, but there’s no more space to fill. I tug, I grab. He clutches my back. Before I know it, my top is off, then my bra. And, small as they are, I bare my breasts proudly to him, for the first time completely comfortable showing them to a boy. Only one thing is missing now: “Wait,” I say. His face shows momentary shock, but I kiss him to let him know I’m with it. I don’t know why, but I am. “I just need music.”
I take out my phone, scroll down to Girl with One Eye by Florence and The Machine. I place it in its dock and turn up the volume. Then I dim the lights so the one or two people who actually do still live across the road, can’t look in.
Florence’s mellifluous—and angry—voice crashes into the room. I’ve set the sound to loud and my top-quality B&W 683s don’t let me down. Thanks again, Patryk.
I stand still, close my eyes, feel my body sway. Feel the music wrap over me like warm hands.
Declan moves over to me. Snatches me toward him and presses my tits to his. “Interesting choice of music.”
“You should hear the mix I made of it.”
His lips are on mine before we talk more about it.
My arms flop to my side.
He swipes me off my feet, slides me onto the bed.
Drums and guitars clang. And Deck kisses my stomach, licks my belly button. Then moves onto my breasts. I get his sweater off. He says, “How far can we take it? I mean, so you’re comfortable...”
“I think this is my limit,” I confess.
“That’s cool.” He slides on top of me, lying above me. “This OK?”
I groan, then nod, smiling deliriously for sure.
He rubs against me. I feel his hardness behind his jeans.
“Still fine?”
I hold him. “Oh yes. I’ll tell you if it’s not.”
The kissing throws me into a whirlpool. Florence sings about cutting a girl’s eye. Declan laughs. “Damn fine choice of music.”
“It’s just so you know what you’re getting yourself into.”
In between kisses, he says, “I don’t think it’s really you. I think it’s a front.”
You’re right.
I turn him around. Then I’m on top of him, straddling him. I push down hard with my crotch until I see him wince; I wriggle lower, slowly, in rhythm to the thumping bass drum and crashing rock. I ride him. When he groans I tighten the grip of my legs around him.
“You make me crazy, Blaze. I—” He clutches my waist.
I speed up, pressure building, the eighth-beat loop just before the explosion. Down There.
When it finally comes crashing down, for both of us, there is no world left. The walls collapse, implode. Declan’s roar echoes in sync to Drumming Song—the next track.
I break out in a sheen of relieved sweat.
And I fall on him.
-7-
Lying on his chest, I remember the call with Mamah a few days after Savva died, telling her I was still gonna stay here. “Because I’m American, Mamah. I was born here, and I will die here.”
I was thinking a lot about dying in those days.
I remember Patryk, torn and broken, leaving for Poland. Thereby abandoning me to fend for myself. The three musketeers now becoming the Lone Ranger.
I remember the very first conversation with Mamah about me staying in the US when she first planned on returning to Poland two years before that. I told her I would survive. That, where there was a will there was a way. I remember the sadness in her brown eyes. The disbelief of adulthood in youth’s constant insistence on the existence of hope and promise in a hopeless world.
Or their insistence on the existence of dreams...
That was about three years ago.
Besides Tolek, there had been some boys. Mostly when I was slammed. And none of them serious. All of them the same. All of them wanting one thing. Xavier being the last of them. But at least, for Xavier, there had been some emotion on my part, even if it was only that of a lingering childhood friendship which never really bloomed into anything more for me, even when we tried.
It’s Xavier’s Jekyll that keeps people returning to him. The knowledge that, deep down, hidden though it may be, is a real and caring person.
Tolek had no Jekyll. He was all Hyde—just different shades of him. Two-Face. Black-haired and big. Rough. Angry. I wanted something from him he couldn’t give, just as he wanted something else from me that I couldn’t give. Ironic. Different, and yet the same.
I wanted from him what I feel I’m getting now from Deck. Do I have a word for it? No. Just as a child has no word for needing food, only an innate sense that, without it, it would starve and die. Declan feeds me, if that makes sense.
I think of the two grand I just made in one night. If things go well, I might be making two grand a week not too long from now. And then finding an apartment might not even be so bad.
And, while Declan’s hand makes it to the shaved side of my head now, and while he kisses me silently on my sheening forehead, most of all, I think how none of all this fucking matters anyway. I think of how, if all I could do would be to lie here, and breathe in his soapy scent, I’d be OK. All I’d need would be this feeling, and my music.
And nothing else.
A real game changer.
So let’s play ball.
-8-
We do go for supper, at a tiny rustic place with tables that were probably workbenches once before. It’s dark, and a solitary candle glows between us. Declan’s eyes look almost demonic, lit only by the white flame.
We do talk. But mostly we stare. Or he stares. I catch him a few times. I say, “You there?”
He shakes his head, says, “Oh, yeah, sorry, I was just...” Then he looks away, the candle on the table guttering away.
He looks back at me, eases a hand to mine, holds it, tilts his head and doesn’t let his gaze stray from mine.
“Why are you staring?”
“I just...want to.”
I laugh it off, embarrassed.
We talk. I find out he plays football—a lot of it. I find out Trev’s like his brother and that Deck knows him and Skate from back in their school days. Skate since High School, Trev since they were little kids.
I tell him music is my life, that I can lose myself in it and not come out for days—no food, no sleep. The only drug I need.
He tugs my hand toward him, starts kissing the top of it. “What are you doing?” I look around nervously. He says nothing, puts the tip of one of my fingers in his mouth, licks it.
I melt. Heat rushes over me. “You’re going to ruin me.”
“Why?”
“Because all I can think of is being with you for hours and hours every day.”
“And that’s a bad thing?”
&n
bsp; “Yes, because I need to mix. I need to practice.”
“I have to work tomorrow, so it should give you time to focus on that.”
“Somehow, I think I’ll be thinking of you all day tomorrow. Too distracted to actually catch a beat.”
“Then mix me a tape.”
“They don’t call them tapes anymore, you know.”
“What do they call them?”
“Just mixes.”
“Then mix me a mix.”
He makes me laugh, regularly, and every laugh is a quiet release of worry. “No problem.”
“You got a Spotify account?”
“Of course.”
We exchange usernames and I start following him and then he follows me. I follow him on Twitter, friend him on Facebook, and add him to my circles on Google Plus. He doesn’t use MySpace so I give him my username and tell him he’s welcome to subscribe to my updates. “I’m hoping to get the ‘live’ feed, instead,” he says. “You got a blog?”
I give him the address.
“Damn, you’ve covered all bases, haven’t you?”
“And still, what it really took was just a phone call from someone to get a break. Makes me feel like the internet’s the Pacific Ocean and I’m just a raft in the middle of it somewhere.”
“I got most of my biz from word of mouth as well. I did some internet advertising, and it helped a bit I guess. But my biz is local, so, I think that makes it easier when people search.”
“What business are you in?”
He reaches into his pants pocket, pulls out a card and flings it in front of me.
“DWAT?”
“Read the heading underneath.”
“Dude with a Truck.” Another laugh from me.
“That’s me. I take my truck, lift shit, put it in the back of it, and move people to new apartments or houses.”
“No shit.”
“No shit.”
I steal a glance at his body, smirk. “Well, I might end up needing your services soon.”
“Yeah, I kinda figured that when I heard you talking on the phone.”
“Yip. Realty developers are wolfing down the neighborhood. My landlord’s caved in to the pressure, and, well, in six months I’ll probably be out on my ass.”
Know Me (Truthful Lies Trilogy - Book One) Page 9