by Dan Noble
“Hello,” he sang up, nearly giddy. “I have croissants. I have black coffee.”
My heart jumped. Our connection had thickened.
“Up here,” I said, the opposite of giddy. Serious, probably as serious as I’d ever been. As I heard his footfalls, I changed my position, pulled my legs together, turned on my side, and propped my head up on one elbow. My hair slipped down my shoulders. The natural light in this room was dense, palpable. Probably it was something to do with the ocean’s reflection. I watched the surface of it as I heard him approach.
I turned to him as he entered the room.
“Oh,” he said. In his hands were a bag and a cardboard tray with two takeout coffee cups. He let the bag fall to his side, and his mouth twitched, as if a weaker man would have let it go slack.
He put everything on the side table, knocking over his coins, removed his shirt, sat to remove his boots. His strength was visible, as if he wasn’t just muscular, but charged up, ready to power the world if it needed him to do so. By the time he stood, I could see his erection. My breath caught. He saw me look and respond, and clearly this turned him on. God, being a woman could be a mighty thing. He reached for my hand, pulled me to my knees at the edge of the bed. Our lips hovered, nearly touching. I was breathless. You are a straight line. Yes, and this was precisely what enticed me. A straight line in the middle of all this. A straight line with a rigid perpendicular line shooting out your underwear. Hee hee. Show, don’t tell. I had no idea what it meant, though he’d explained it to me twice, but I did my best to interpret. I wanted him to overtake me, and so I tried not to move even a centimeter. I was before the pink flower, and I would not harm it. Geraldine, wherever you are, sister, you would be proud.
It worked. He pressed his lips, his chest, his hardness to me. A moan escaped me. Something clenched inside, and I felt everything drop, go liquid. Just like that, he unbuckled his belt, his jeans fly, and revealed himself. The shaft pressed against me. I quivered. He repositioned, and there was the tip of him. No, no. This is not a good idea. And yet ideas had nothing to do with it. He was pushing. And then he was in. On my back, I slid my legs as wide open as they would go. I wanted him all the way. And then release circuited somewhere key inside me. I pulsed around him, taking him in tighter. “Fuck,” he said, and then there was wet on my stomach.
He collapsed onto his back and pulled me onto his chest, kissed my forehead. Safe. It was the safest I’d ever felt. If he couldn’t give this to Erin any longer, then they were broken. Very broken. When was the last time they’d fucked like that? If she was moving on to a new world, then perhaps he was too, here with me. Or maybe I was nothing to him, a push-button release. Still, he didn’t seem the type.
He reached to the side table, grabbed the drinks, passed one to me.
“Thanks.”
“You’re most welcome.”
“Hey, Gav?”
He started at the nickname. Sat up. Shit.
“I think I need to get back to work after we eat,” he said.
18
AGGIE
That little minx! Aggie couldn’t believe her friend had it in her. Good on her for sleeping with that bitch’s husband. Watching them had turned her on. The window facing the parking lot was small, so she saw only a rectangle of their skin touching, but in a way this was more personal, focusing from this angle on one small spot, a view which even they never got to see. She had to drag her eyes away and force herself to reverse out of the museum parking space. She wasn’t a peeping Tom, after all.
The following week, she decided what to do. She wouldn’t ruin Irene’s good time by involving her. Instead, she’d get the wife in trouble by telling her husband about the affair. She knew about men’s double standards. But how would she approach him? Who would she say she was? Why would she say she was telling him? Because . . . because she was probably in danger, his wife, and Aggie had to let him know before it was too late.
But why not just keep it to herself and let Micko hurt the wife? Surely, at some point he would. But this way, the woman would suffer for sure. She’d lose everything, and maybe Irene would get everything instead. Yes, that appealed to her sense of justice. Irene was a lovely girl. She deserved everything, and Aggie would give it to her. Micko and the whore be fucked.
19
ERIKA
In the shower, she takes extra time. Shaves what little hair she has, then decides that maybe she will shave off everything. There is a sense of crescendo. After, she looks in the mirror at her bare self. The frankness feels right. Almost beautiful. She is art. Perfect.
She pulls on the slip and the dress, white, white. Pins up her hair. Pearl earrings, lipstick. But beyond the dressing table, out the window, is a girl parked in a car in front of the museum who captures her attention. It is the bartender. She feels rattled. The girl is watching her. She knows this because as soon as she catches her eye, the girl looks away, starts the engine, and drives off.
Erika is rattled as she drives to Micko’s. If this girl has been watching Erika, then what else does she know? And who else knows? No, no. She cannot know about the murder plot. How would she? But wait. It wouldn’t matter if she knows because Erika will be dead in a few hours if all goes to plan. But what if it doesn’t? She is going to have to depend on Micko more than ever to have mercy on her and let her go and die if that’s what she wants. They will make it look like suicide so he will not be blamed. She should write a note. Why hadn’t she thought of this before? A note to absolve him. She pulls over and starts writing.
Dear
And already she is stumped. Is she writing this to Gavan? And if so, then should she explain what she is doing here? Selfish. She knows he hasn’t read the pages, doesn’t set foot in her office. She cannot do this to Gavan. Pantsing. It is wonderful, but it is also reckless because you can’t predict what will happen until you are in situ.
It must be written to Gavan.
Dear Gavan,
Here I am, trying to say the unsayable. Show, don’t tell. Surely you have heard me say this, back when we had things to say. A straight line cannot tell you what I have done here. You are a straight-line man, and so I know this is difficult to understand. But you do have imagination. You are inspired by strength and have shown incredible sympathy even if you aren’t always able to put yourself in others’ shoes, because you have seen too much to be compassionate about those who fall outside your code. Which I am afraid I do. I do not say that to gain your compassion. In fact, I believe you are as compassionate with me as you are able—have pushed yourself in this direction beyond the limits of most humans. Know I appreciate it. Know I blame you for nothing; in fact, it is the opposite: I blame me. I do not say this lightly. I will not use worn-out euphemisms to diminish what happened to our daughter and our reactions to it. Let the art speak for me. Let the art become me. I have already become the art. And this is the best outcome. Go. Start again. It is what I am doing, in my way. The pages are on my desk. Read them. Read me. I will not use the L-word. What we have is more and less and different and ours always.
Forever, Erika
He will understand the name when he reads the story. She tucks the page and the pen beneath her handbag on the leather passenger seat and continues to her destination. She no longer feels selfish. She feels like destiny fulfilling itself. Everything lined up perfectly.
20
AGGIE
She’d done it. A weight felt lifted. Her next stop was Micko’s house. Yes, she knew where it was. She’d been there. He was a slightly rough fuck. But she’d liked it. She wanted more, but he pretended not to know her the next time he’d shown up at the bar. Dick. She’d always suspected he was bad news, but that confirmed it. Unfortunately, seeing his wife with the black eye had only challenged her. She could take him, even if that woman couldn’t. She was strong. Yeah, right.
So. She didn’t know exactly why she was at Micko’s except for vague feelings of doom and duty. As a citizen, she probably should hav
e told Irene about the woman with the black eye. She probably should have just told that woman the day she’d asked, that Micko was a good lay, but dangerous. If nothing else, her expression would have been priceless. But there was such a thing as justice, and this time, it was in her hands. She could decide who knew what, and she liked that. Especially if it meant that Micko might be fucked over as a result.
She slid into a spot where Micko’s street curved, so that from the house itself, she couldn’t be seen. It was as if the spot were put there for exactly this purpose. For a long time, nothing happened. She was getting bored and had eaten too many cheese Twisties. They were beginning to repeat on her.
Finally, the woman, who she’d been pretty sure had recognized her parked out front of the museum earlier, emerged now from around the corner. She walked in Aggie’s direction, until she turned up Micko’s walk, which was sandwiched between swaths of fresh dirt, from which small shrubs were putting down roots. The woman didn’t seem to see Aggie, who watched as she made her way up the three steps to the porch familiarly. Aggie had been so drunk when she’d been here that she’d tripped over the bottom one and scratched her knee. There was still a jagged, shiny scar.
He made her wait a moment after she pressed the bell. Aggie could see him watching the woman from the staircase landing above, which had a large window overlooking the walkway and front steps. Dick. Then he hurried down the stairs and opened the door. In the light of the entry, the woman looked glamorous, in pristine white. Mick looked her up and down, as if she were for sale, and even from this distance, she could tell he liked what he saw. Was she jealous?
He led her inside and closed the door. Now Aggie couldn’t see anything. She sat like that for another ten minutes. Closer. She had to get out of the car and get closer. Maybe she was a peeping Tom. Swiftly, she closed the door, walked the block as if she belonged there, in case anyone was watching, and then turned into the driveway and took a seat at the bench that gave her a view through the kitchen and dining room windows. The branches on the tree overhead were low enough that she felt concealed.
21
GAVAN
He hated that woman with the short haircut right from the start. Why was she meddling? What did she have to gain from telling him that his wife was having an affair? It should have surprised him more. But he was a pragmatic man. They’d had sex exactly three times since Olivia died. All three were desperate, clutching affairs, grunts and thrusts designed to fuck through everything. For a second, each of them worked. After one particular time, they’d gotten drunk on dark rum and lay in bed until noon the following day, which was the one time he’d ever called in sick. But the next day was back to reality. Their family had been smashed. If God had any sympathy, he would have taken them all out in one go. But if God was anything, he was a motherfucker.
No, Gavan wasn’t angry about the affair. But he was incredibly jealous. If he couldn’t have his wife, why should some other fucker have her? Okay, so he was also angry. And getting angrier the more he thought about it. Yes, one could obviously make the point that he had Irene. But he didn’t know what to make of her. Sometimes it made him sick to think of how young she was and whether he was having some kind of Freudian crisis here. All he knew was that there was something uncomplicated and purely pleasurable about his time with her. And afterward, he felt like a disgusting, selfish prick for about ten minutes, until he told himself to harden the fuck up and just think of it as a means of survival, a way to get by. Feelings aside. It worked. When he wasn’t with Irene, he locked her up in a corner of his mind and didn’t go anywhere near her.
But now his wife was doing it too. And he wouldn’t have it. Disgraceful. What if other people had seen her? This was Australia, not America, and no one would bring it up, obviously. No one would ask him to talk about how it made him feel. But they’d know. And he’d know they knew. A man whose wife fucked other men. What would that make him? Weak. There was no way around it. Who was going to respect him if his own wife didn’t? Nah.
Dignity. That was what he needed to use to attack this situation. He would confront her and tell her to stop it immediately. If she had respect for him, she would. But what if she didn’t have respect for him? What if she thought the way he’d continued on through life, as if there hadn’t been any other choice, had been the action of a weak man, and she’d lost all respect for him, the way he had of himself? Soldier on. The words sounded embarrassing to him now. He’d used them as a way to escape what he hadn’t been able to deal with. And now he was fucking a girl who wasn’t much more than a teenager. His wife might even know. And now she was going to leave him for another man.
He went in her office and ransacked it. But what he’d been looking for was right on her desk. He recognized the pile of papers. She’d left them there in the open this whole time. Had she wanted him to read them? Had she wanted him to save her from this? Had he again failed miserably?
He sat at her desk, fingers gripping the lovely, thick paper, with its expensive weave. She was so elegant, Erin (Erika, as she thinly veiled herself in the story). The first story of hers that she’d let him read was about a girl who kisses a man for two hours without letting him put his hands on her body. In the end, the girl walks away and giggles with her friends, pointing at the man when they next see him walking in front of the shop where the girls hang out. He said it was cruel. Erin said it was true. And that it was about the difference between girls, who think they have power over men, and women, who realize it is men who have the power, and that girls put themselves in danger by ever believing differently. In the end, the woman is much older, letting her husband have sex with her though he repulses her. After, she makes him tea. Gav had argued this was a negative view of the world, but he knew she was right. Mostly, she was right.
This, from a woman who had always had power over him. He’d done his best to convince her of the opposite throughout their marriage, but it was true to this day, obviously.
But what to make of the supernatural bits of the story? Memento mori. Connecting with their daughter? Even as he grunted, he felt himself wanting to believe. You never stopped irrationally believing you’d see those olive eyes again. The mismatched socks and backward, misbuttoned shirts that he’d never had the heart to correct. Erin’s deeper insight had always been a force of his attraction. Despite himself, he wanted to believe. Of course he did. He obviously wasn’t the only pathetic hopeful. Wasn’t this the kind of outlandish miracle that religion and art based themselves on? In the end, there may be something more. Right-o.
So what? Let his wife kill herself? Or force her to live miserably for his benefit, which, let’s face it, was no longer very beneficial? Soldier on? If it had been a military exercise, there’d be rules, and therefore no question. But it wasn’t.
22
ERIKA
Micko’s place smelled like Christmas. That was what Gav would have said. He’d been using that phrase so much in their brief exchanges, it was driving her mad. If their words were so limited, why use clichés? But the saying was growing on her all the same. Lamb was sizzling, confirming he’d read the pages (or that he liked to cook lamb). So, their first look said, we both know what we know. But she was nearly bluffing because she didn’t have a plan to get him to kill her. She was pantsing this bit, but could pantsing be considered a plan? It had gotten her this far, and she was pretty sure she couldn’t have worked this out beforehand.
He took in her dress, top to toe, removed her white jacket at the front door, began sliding the hem of her skirt up with his splayed fingers. So, it was going to be like this? Shockingly, she found herself incredibly turned on. At the precipice of what would come next, it was as if the old had been erased and there was only this moment. Which was precisely what she had been wanting all this time. She gave herself over to it.
Micko slammed the door shut and pushed her up against it. His eyes were closed tightly as he entered her, and they both came quickly. No one bothered about protection. What w
ould be the point? She felt him come inside her and took that, too, as a sign of their understanding. A dead woman cannot have a baby. When their breathing relaxed, his eyes opened, and he kissed around the back of her neck, where his head had been resting. He clutched her tightly before loosening his grip and helping her to straighten up.
She took a seat on the couch, next to the lamp, and asked him for a glass of wine. While his back was turned, she sized up the diameter of the lamp to see if her memory of it had been accurate.
When he returned, Micko sat next to her, staring at the lamp. She stared at him, waiting for him to call it off. Now would be the moment, wouldn’t it? But he said nothing. Moved closer to her, starting kissing her ear. She responded, this time taking the lead, pulling down her panties and straddling him.
As she took him in, he groaned and whispered something that sounded like, “I love you.”
She stopped.
“What did you say?”
“I said I love you.”
Their noses were nearly touching. He braced her hips and pushed himself deeper.
She tried to pull back, but he wouldn’t let her. “Why would you go and do something like that?”
He shrugged. “Didn’t plan for it.”
Her shoulders slumped. She gazed at the ceiling, then jerked her face back his way. “Then you’ll do it.”
“I can’t.”
“Please.”
“It’s crazy.”
“Crazy? What do you know about art? You’re a builder.”
“Don’t do that.”