by Toby Neal
I hear the sound of his head hitting the floor.
I shut my eyes and cover my face.
“I know, Pearl. Ruby told me your father passed. I’m the one who’s sorry, reminding you of it.” He puts an arm around me, draws me close.
I don’t deserve to be treated so nice, and I shrug him off. “It’s okay.” I swipe tears and salt water from my cheeks. “Looks like we’re almost there.”
Murano is so small I can see from one end of the island to the other as we approach, and every inch of it is covered with buildings. We hop off the launch and Brandon takes me to his favorite glassblowing house, a barnlike structure warm with the heat of the furnaces. I’m fascinated with the way the glowing molten glass, the texture of thick honey, is manipulated and fired and blown by the muscular men working it in their aprons, pulling and twisting and blowing with pipes.
Brandon buys me a tiny, clear Pegasus sculpture as we leave. “Food now,” he says, towing me out of the factory and down a narrow alley toward some unknown destination.
Even with the enchantment of the glassblowing, I can’t seem to shake off the terrible memory I’ve had of Dad’s last moments. I tuck the box with the tiny Pegasus in it into my capacious purse and resolve to put it behind me.
The cafe he takes me to has no sign outside. It’s just a wooden half-door and a room with tables inside set with beautifully woven red cloths and candles on them.
It’s very romantic. I feel dread curdle my ravenous appetite. I know this situation can’t go on. I have to jump one way or the other.
Brandon orders for us in Italian, exchanging pleasantries with a proprietor who evidently compliments him on his choice of dinner companion if his fulsome commentary is any indication.
“So tell me about your dad,” I say, unable to leave the subject that’s nagging at me like a sore tooth.
Brandon shrugs, looks at his hands in the candlelight. They’re graceful, clean-lined. “I idolized my dad,” he says softly. “He was a businessman, had his own company. He was a lot of fun. Enjoyed being a dad, because he coached my soccer team and liked to take me to work at his office. He had a heart attack.” Brandon looks up at me and his golden-brown eyes are filled with candlelight. “It was very sudden.”
“My dad went suddenly, too,” I whisper.
Brandon takes my hand. His thumb slides across my knuckles. It sends a warm tingly feeling up my arm and south from there.
I take my hand away. “Brandon. I really like you, but...”
“Oh, here we go,” he growls. “I don’t want to have the ‘I really like you, but’ talk. Not tonight. Can we save it until I leave? I promise I won’t try to kiss you or pressure you.”
I open and close my mouth. He must have been reading my signals. It’s another point in his favor that he’s picked up on them.
“I’m actually going through a lot. Personally.” I duck my head and feel my hair slide down over my face in a protective curtain.
“I know. And I can take a hint. So can we rain check this conversation and just enjoy Italy?”
“And agree not to talk about our fathers any more, either,” I say. He pours a glass of chianti for each of us from the ever-present carafe on the table.
“Agreed. With pleasure.” I pick up my glass and with that, we toast.
I feel like I’ve got a reprieve, and I’m grateful to Brandon for giving it to me. We ride back to Venice and I sleep much better that night in the pensione. The shoot goes better too, because I’m able to focus. Brandon must have said something to Odile, too, because she’s more respectful, bringing me water and other basics to keep me going.
Each evening Brandon and I do some activity in and around Venice: Visiting art museums. Taking in the glorious, gold-frescoed churches. Wandering street markets. I feel my relationship with Brandon deepen. He makes no romantic gestures to me other than hugs and holding my hand, and I find I’m both grateful and a little disappointed.
I can’t sort my feelings out, and suddenly it’s time for him to leave. I still have a few days of shooting left.
“I’ll see you in Boston,” Brandon says. He’s dressed in a camelhair wool overcoat over tailored trousers, and looks every inch the successful young businessman. I go up on tiptoes and kiss him on the mouth. He tastes good.
“You’ve had chocolate without me,” I scold.
“Didn’t want you to get tempted,” he says. “I’m looking out for you.” He touches my lips with a finger. “See you back in the States.” And he hops on the motor launch that goes to the airport, and I’m on my own again.
I’m tormented with thoughts of getting high that night. I tell myself to just hang in there and the mood will pass, but in my explorations with Brandon I’ve spotted a dance club with some shady characters. I’m pretty sure I could make a buy there. My body, sexually frustrated, exhausted and starved, twitches and tortures me. The craving crawls along my nerves like a spider, and I stare at the ceiling, my eyes too dry.
Barely able to make myself stay in my lonely bed, I decide to call Magnus. Long distance bills be damned. I’m supposedly making money, not that I’ve seen any.
I take out the dog-eared card he gave me from the side zip where I’ve stowed it. I have no idea what time it is in the States.
MAGNUS THORNE. Just his name, and his number. What does he do? Something that involves needing a gun for protection. It can’t be good. But he’s been good to me, and he’ll understand what I’m going through.
I dial the phone. It takes a while to get through as I have to access an international operator, and agree to charges that will come to my room, and other rigmarole that almost makes me lose my resolve. Eventually I hear ringing.
“Hello?” his voice is thick with sleep. I picture his black hair mussed, his dark eyes half-open, his big body naked in the bed I glimpsed from the kitchen of his cabin. The thought makes me flush all over, and all he said was hello.
“Magnus? It’s Pearl.”
A pause. “Pearl. What’s wrong?” I can almost see him sitting up in bed, the bedclothes falling around his naked waist.
“I’m so sorry if I woke you. What time is it there?” I bite my lip, looking at my clock.
“It’s really early. Or very late. Are you all right?” There’s alarm in his voice.
“Oh, no, I’m okay. I’m sorry.” My voice wobbles on my second apology. “There’s no emergency but—I just need someone to talk to.”
“So you thought you’d call big brother Magnus to chat.” I hear amusement and annoyance in his tone. It feels like his voice plucks at my nerves, making me tingle and light up.
“Not big brother. Never that,” I say. We both just breathe for a moment.
“This must be costing a fortune. Aren’t you in Italy?”
“Yes. And... I’m tempted. You’re the only person I could think of calling.”
“Yep. I’m your non-sponsor. Tell me what’s going on.” His voice is intent, serious, and the dark we’re both in across all the miles feels like a confessional.
“The shoot has been going okay, and I should be done soon. Brandon came to visit me here.” I hear Magnus suck in a breath. Good. Maybe he’s a tiny bit jealous. That’ll serve him right for withholding on me. “Anyway, we’ve been going out every evening. Doing stuff. Seeing sights. It’s really great here,” I gush.
“Get to the point,” he growls.
“Well, Brandon left today. And it did something to me, triggered me.”
“So you have feelings for him?” I’m pretty sure Magnus is grinding his teeth.
“I don’t know. I just know I remembered something really terrible while he was here, something I haven’t been letting myself think about, and when he left—it’s been hard. I just want to get high. I found a place where I could buy.”
“First of all, commit to me you won’t go out again tonight. You don’t have to think about anything past right now. Can you do that? You won’t go out again tonight?”
“Yes,” I sigh the answer.
I’ve promised Magnus I won’t go out tonight. I’ll keep that promise. It’s all I have to decide right now. The relief is tremendous, if probably short-lived.
“What is this terrible thing you remembered?” His voice softens.
I snuggle deeper into the sheets, hugging my pillow, the receiver pressed to my ear. “How my dad died. How it was all my fault. I killed him.” I feel the words catch in my throat. My eyes fill and tears well up. “Oh shit. I’m crying. I’m going to look terrible again tomorrow. Odile will have a fit.”
“Tell me,” he whispers.
I wrap my arms tighter around the pillow for comfort, the phone digging into my ear. “Dad came to the Carvers’ house to get me. He hadn’t called first. The family tried to stop him from going to the back bedroom where we were. That was the only warning I had, the sound of the dogs at their house barking, my dad’s voice shouting, and the sound of his boots on the floor. All of that woke me up, but I’d been partying late. Partying hard. And I was still in bed with them...” My voice trails off. I’m crying harder, trying to muffle my sobs in the pillow.
“Them?”
“Connor and Keenan. My boyfriends. We’d gotten high the night before, and spent the night in bed. Using. Having sex.”
A deep silence. I can hear the miles hissing between us. It feels like eternity, like a bad dream, like the distance between galaxies. He now knows the worst about me, what a slut and a whore I am. He’s going to despise me now, like I despise myself.
I take a breath and go on. “Dad yanked the door open. I sat up in bed but I didn’t have any clothes on, and Connor and Keenan were there too. He just. . .” I see it again, in horrible technicolor slow motion. The way his eyes bulged, his mouth opened and closed, the terrible color in his face that came and went. The sound of his head hitting the floor as he went over backward. “He had a stroke. He died.”
“Oh, Jesus. Pearl.” Magnus sounds so sad. I’m crying hysterically now, too hard to talk. He listens for a time and finally when I’m winding down I hear him say, “Your dad wouldn’t want you to lose your sobriety thinking about his death, would he?”
“No, he wouldn’t,” I eventually say. Dad and I always had more conflict than he had with my sisters, but I knew he loved me. Knew it bone deep, knew he’d have hated to be a source of pain to me. But no one gets to choose the moment of his death, how it happens. And I’d been the one to bring on his, and way too soon.
“That’s not the only bad thing, though,” I continue. “The Carvers didn’t want Dad dead in their house, didn’t want anyone to know they’d allowed the boys and me to shack up in the back bedroom. So my boyfriends and their dad Len grabbed Dad’s arms and legs and hauled him outside, all the way to his car. Stuffed him in the front seat. And we pretended he died there.”
I’m sobbing again. The shame is overwhelming.
“I’m sorry that happened. My God. It must have been a wake-up call.”
“You’d think. But all I wanted to do was feel better, and I knew how to. So I just did more of the same, deeper and deeper, until Rafe and Ruby dragged me to Boston. I hate myself!”
The surges of pain and shame are so bad that only physical pain in my body will do. I dig my nails into my thigh, gasping at the blinding fire erupting in my skin as blood wells from the scratches.
“Pearl. What are you doing?” Magnus’s voice is a whip crack cutting through the blur of tears, the overwhelming chaos of emotion.
“Nothing.”
“You’re doing something to yourself. Stop it. Now.” I feel the fit of madness receding, some sort of calm taking its place, a dissipation of the extremity. I can’t mark or hurt myself. Magnus told me not to. And the swelling from crying will be bad enough to deal with tomorrow. Maybe I can pretend I’m sick, but then I’ll have to stay in the room all day. With no TV, no drugs, no alcohol, nothing to read and no boyfriend.
I’ll be jumping out the window by noon.
“I know you’re hurting right now and you’ve never let yourself feel your pain before without medicating it. Well, there’s another way.” Magnus’s voice is low, hypnotic. “Turn on your back.”
I let go of the pillow and roll on my back, the phone still plastered against one ear.
“Take off whatever you’re wearing.” His voice is so sure, so commanding. I do what he says. This is Magnus. I trust him. He’s going to make me feel better, and as I shuck off my sleep tee, I begin to have an idea how.
“Are you naked and on your back?”
“Yes.” My voice comes out a whisper. The wavering light of yellow street lamps reflects off the waters of the canal outside my window and dances in liquid patterns on the plain white ceiling above me. I’m here in Venice, magical Italian city, and he’s somewhere on the outskirts of Boston, but I can almost feel him in the room. My skin feels sensitized, blowing hot and cold, tingling with excitement. My nipples harden. “Tell me what to do.”
“Touch your breast. Tell me what you feel.”
I shut my eyes, reaching up to fondle the firm, soft tissue of breasts that Ruby thought were too big for modeling but turned out to be just right for lingerie ads. “It’s round, and soft. It feels good. Silky.”
I hear his breath catch, and heat flushes my body, setting up a liquid warmth between my legs. I imagine it’s his big hands stroking my breasts.
“Circle your breast. Around and around. Trace the shape.”
It’s my own hand doing it but my imagination turns it to Magnus’s hand. Here, in the dark, it feels possible and real.
“Take hold of your nipple. Roll it between your finger and thumb. Pull it upward at the same time.”
I gasp at the sensation, at the heat radiating out from that hardening peak to light up nerve endings all the way to my melting core.
“Pinch it. Hard.”
I cry out involuntarily, my back arching, as the sharp pain somehow translates to pleasure. “Isn’t this better than hurting yourself?” Magnus still sounds harsh, arrogant. “You won’t do that anymore.”
“Yes,” I say. “I mean, no. No I won’t.” I’m panting. My voice sounds scratchy. He chuckles and it sounds a little strained.
“Now, the other side. Begin with circles.” He talks me to the peak of the other breast and then has me flick my nipple, and once again I cry out.
“Prop the phone against your ear. Use the pillow to hold it in place. Did you do that?”
“Yes.”
“Now slide both your hands down your body from your breasts to your hips. Back up.”
I obey, my hands traveling and sliding. It feels amazing. My skin feels like velvet, my shape firm, all dips and smooth hollows.
“Do it again.”
I’ve begun to writhe on the bed, my eyes closed, my whole body alight with delicious sensation and anticipation.
“Open your legs. Slide a finger in. What do you feel?”
“It’s hot. And—slippery.” I feel my cheeks heat at my bold words, but I’m just describing what I feel. I realize in that moment that all the sex I had with Connor and Keenan wasn’t even the beginning of what there was to discover in the hands of someone who really knew what he was doing.
“Oh, hell,” he mutters. And I know he’s enduring his own kind of suffering. The thought warms me even more.
“I wish you were here,” I breathe.
He doesn’t answer that. “Tell me what you’re feeling.”
“I’m swollen. I’m so—tender. It feels fat like a cherry, just waiting to be sucked on.”
Now it’s his turn to gasp, then he says, “Sit up a bit. Slide two fingers inside, and rub with your thumb.”
I rearrange myself so I can reach that far, touching myself in a way which I’ve never tried in my limited self-explorations.
Moments later I’m exploding in an inarticulate, melting, shivering orgasm.
Slowly reassembling myself a few moments later, all I want is for him to feel this ecstasy too. “What are you wearing?” I ask.
; “Boxers. Tee shirt.” His deep voice is strained.
“Take them off.”
I hear rustling. The sound of his breathing.
“Did you like telling me what to do?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“Did you imagine your mouth on me, your hands on me?”
“Yesssss,” he hisses through clenched teeth.
“Well, now my hands are on you. First, at the top of your head. Sliding through your hair. Oh, it feels so good. And I’m kissing you. My tongue is making love to yours. Do you feel it?”
“Yes. Oh, God, Pearl.”
“Put your hand on yourself. Slide it up and down. Hard, fast. It’s my hand on you, so tight, so hot, so good.”
I have a different style than he does, with his brusque commands, but I can tell by his hitching breath that it’s working.
“One hand is working below, the other is on your nipple. Circling it, rolling it. Now I’m licking it. Pinch it. I’m biting you.”
He moans.
“Don’t stop. Don’t stop what you’re doing. Keep going, because now I’m sliding my tongue down your ribs, kissing you over your abs. I’m at your groin and I’m taking you in my mouth. Deeper and deeper, all the way. My tongue can’t get enough of you, my hands are all over you, you fill me in every way there is. Now ride me hard.”
Seconds later I know, by a guttural cry, that he’s found his release.
Another extended moment in the darkness. Thousands of miles of separation and yet so intimately together. Our breaths have fallen into sync.
“What is this, Magnus? What is this between us?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “But you’ll sleep well tonight. And you won’t use or hurt yourself for another day. And you’ve told me your worst secret, and you survived.”
“How do you know that’s my worst secret?” I ask.
He laughs, an abrupt snort, and hangs up. I snuggle, still naked, down into my silky sheets and fall immediately asleep.
Chapter 18
Odile is furious, as I knew she would be, the minute she sees my swollen, puffy face the next morning.