And they danced again to Bill Evans, 'The Sunday After' , there in the soft light of early morning of Leila's bedroom, naked as the day they were born, their arms around each other and their hearts entwined.
Chapter Twenty Five
I was laying on the chair in Dex's booth, listening to one of Mindy Abair's CDs playing on the overhead system at Human Hiero, as Dex bent low and began putting the color in on my butterfly. Technically it was after hours and we were the only two people in the shop. All the rest of the lights were off except for the spotlight Dex had angled down to better illuminate my hip.
The two weeks that we had been back together had been unbelievable.
First off, I would have to say that both of us were a lot more comfortable around each other as we learned the different pieces that made up each of us, the good and the bad, the big and the little.
Examples?
We were both clean freaks, but because we were, most of our cleaning found us doing it together whether it was at my house or his.
Jake's anger was loud but easily forgotten, but when I got angry, I seethed and had to force myself to let go of it in order to move past it.
Dex was creative where I was cerebral, which means he was quick to move and I had to think things through a bit more before actually acting on my decisions.
We'd gone out to dinner with Caitlin and Jake a couple of times who seemed to be the perfect couple to be around since they were so tied to each other but still maintained their individuality. Exactly what I, for one, was hoping to achieve with Dex.
Occasionally the four of us would invite another couple, whether it was Frank-kay and his partner, Stan, or Marianne either with Paul or Ram, or Crys and her flavor of the week.
"You okay, sweetness?" Dex asked, pausing to wipe the extra blood and ink off my hip.
"I'm good, honey," I replied.
"Like this music, Elle," I heard him say as he sat up and reviewed his work.
"Frank and Stan's suggestion." I had heard from Stan that Frank's name really was Francisco but that he had changed it when he was disowned by his family after coming out of the closet when he graduated high school. Seems the Latino community had not yet moved forward regarding the gay issue and, according to Stan, Frank had a lot of things he was working through especially when it came to either his family or his religion. But that Lotti, the one that had turned me from wookie to cookie with her waxing magic, was one of Frank's sisters and one of the few family members that had remained a part of Frank-kay's life.
So I started to see Frank in a new, different light. He was so generous with his patrons, his friends and his partner and yet sometimes, just sometimes, you could see his sadness come through and it made my heart ache for him.
"May have a couple of concerns about having them as friends. But they sure as fuck know their music," I heard Dex say before starting his machine again and bend back down to work his ink-magic on me.
I smiled as I remembered Dex throwing a shit-fit when I had played 'Lady Marmalade', another Frank and Stan suggestion, at an ear drum pounding level the other night when I was making fajitas. Well, at least until he caught me dancing to it using a dish towel in some really inventive ways.
Obviously my man got hot watching me dance.
Good to know.
Even though we had our friends that we met with a couple of times a week, we still had plenty of time for just the two of us.
Like the time Dex got a new machine that was supposed to be quieter and easier to handle, but cost a whack, which I learned meant a crap load of money (who knew?).
And to never, ever call it a gun.
It was a machine.
When he challenged me on his new piece of equipment, I told him that I honestly couldn't see anyone spending that kind of money on anything except for shoes or maybe a handbag.
So he dragged me down to Human Hiero after hours, armed with a couple of grapefruit from the fruit bowl, and showed me the difference, using the grapefruit to practice on.
The only way I can describe it is to think about as attaching a Sharpie to a couple of heavy D cell batteries along with a couple of vibrators and then trying to move the unit at just the right angle, speed and depth to follow the image that you'd transferred on to whatever surface you wanted to tattoo.
And, then you had to worry about keeping the skin tight so the needles wouldn't drag.
Believe me when I tell you, I had a lot more respect for what Dex did for a living, for the beauty that he created, than I did before his demonstration.
I mean, like, a lot.
Just like he did when he read my paper than had been released and that was to be included in both The Atlantic and Scientific American Mind as well as the BBC Knowledge Magazine. I'd given him a tour of both my office and the amphitheater where I lectured and where he heard me respond to "Dr. McCarthy".
He had been really, really quiet as we finally made it back to his place afterwards.
"You okay, honey?" I remembering asking.
He was quiet as he looked at me in my pink, sparkly Harley tank top, Lucky jeans and rhinestone studded, heeled flip flops.
"I'm fucking a doctor?"
"Yeah."
"No, really. I'm fucking a doctor."
I moved to where he was leaning a hip against his kitchen counter and scooted underneath his arm, pressing myself against his side.
"Yes, sweetie. You've finger-fucked, performed very successful cunnilingus and have slid your hard cock inside a doctor many, many times," I murmured softly while dragging my fingernails over his nipple ring through his shirt.
"Holy fuck," was about all he could muster before he up-ended me over his shoulder and took me into his bedroom to do all three things, and do them absolutely perfectly.
There had been a couple of hiccups in the two weeks, as well.
Mrs. Gunderson had started a petition to try and force me to move from my house based on, and I quote," lewd and lascivious dress and behavior" as well as "entertaining, cavorting and pro-creating with people who lacked moral character".
Luckily I had other neighbors that weren't in anyway concerned with whatever it was that I was doing and didn't sign her petition. In fact the neighbor on the other side of me had told her to take her petition and shove it up whatever orifice she could reach.
As for me, I honestly couldn't care less.
Or as Crys had been heard to say, fuck them and the horse they rode in on.
Benny, one of the co-owners of Human Hiero, had actually failed a blood test and was being tested further, which meant that he was out of commission in inking his fair share of the customers and basically took over reception duty for the front counter.
We were all on pins and needles, no pun intended, awaiting the results to see specifically what he might have contracted.
Crystal, my friend and Hiero's resident piercer, had made it very clear that she didn't want to ink, had no intention of inking and there was no one, repeat no one, that could make her do it.
So Dex and Benny put their heads together and called a few buddies before they found a couple of people they felt would be a good fit in the shop until Benny was back on his feet. Benny's son, Gabe, was taken on as an apprentice.
Dex said that maybe it was because Gabe had grown up surrounded by ink, but he had a natural talent in both the design and the inking.
The cool thing, though, was that by bringing in a couple of extra people and an apprentice, the shop could handle more clients and it gave each of the co-owners extra time off.
Dex had told me one night after we had been playing rough, hard and oh so good that Benny was the one that taught him everything he knew about inking and had worked with him as he practiced again and again.
And that Dex, Benny and Max had bought and worked the shop together until Max bought it on his bike just outside of Phoenix where he'd gone to attend a funeral for someone from his old motorcycle club. His will had specified that Crystal, his daughter, was to
inherit and work his share of Human Hiero.
And how every year the shop closed the first two weeks of August while they made their way to Sturgis, SD and made 35% of their revenues for the year as well as partied their asses off. Jake explained that it had taken time and money, but he finally had gotten a standing reservation for one of the motels there and no longer had to sleep in a sleeping bag on the ground.
Along with everything we were learning about each other, Dex and I were still working through our time apart, that gut-wrenching month when we both walked around with a hole in our chests and tried to maintain a real life.
Which everybody that has gone through something similar knows is the hardest thing to do.
I would catch him occasionally looking at me, when he thought I wasn't aware. Or how he sometime clung to me in the middle of the night, when he thought I was asleep.
For me, I have developed a habit of touching him, a soft stroke across his shoulders as he bends over his light-box designing more flash, reaching for his hand when we're just sitting quietly together watching TV or driving somewhere. Resting my face against his chest after wiggling beneath his arm.
I hadn't ever really been a touchy-feely kind of person before, but I found, with him, I was.
And my Dex was just as touchy-feely right back.
Chapter Twenty Six
We were now in the scholastic homestretch with only a few days more before the school year ended. It occurred to me this year, just like with every year before, the ending involved a lot more stuff to do, to wrap up than when it started
My office was partly packed in banker's boxes, marked, labeled with the papers inside and the year they were done, where I knew they would languish in the attic space in my garage. I'd never opened a box containing the scholastic achievements or embarrassments of any of the previous years and, just like every year before, I'd try to talk myself into getting rid of some of the previous years' detritus.
But, I never did.
The end of the year also brought the ratings and reports that had to be written on those below you, like Carla, my T.A., or on you by your department head who held the reins of your career in their hands and called it tenure.
To cut or be cut by the guillotine of another's opinions, kindly wrapped up in words that really have no meaning when you break them down, but help to cover a host of complaints that covered the very bedrock of reasons that one can think but never say. Things like, 'I don't like you' or 'you're so good you are a threat to my job' or even, 'I like someone better so you need to leave and they can come on board'.
I had an appointment with Carla to review her performance as my Teaching Assistant for the last academic year. If you would've asked me to give an assessment in February, it would've been a lot different than the one she was getting from me now.
"Hello, Dr McCarthy," I heard her say in the open doorway of my office.
"Hey, Carla. Please come in and close the door, alright?" I shifted the box I had been filling from my desktop to the floor. I pulled both the original and the copy of her assessment from my center drawer and slid her copy across my desk as I sat down.
"Do you want to read it through before we discuss it?" I asked. I wasn't nervous but it must be said that I had never gotten 'real' on an evaluation before and I was hoping we both would walk out of the office unscathed.
I watched her nod before she tipped her head down to read.
At her first gasp I knew she had gotten to, 'seems not to be interested in student's absorption of necessary knowledge but more intent on hearing the sound of her own voice'.
I watched as she read, her face losing all color for a time and then flushing a deep, dark red.
Her jaw clenched so I was figuring she was reading that, 'Carla's demonstrated lack of social boundaries with the professor she was to have been supporting make her imminently unsuitable for the job of T.A.'
It was the last portion, the portion that said that I, 'encouraged her to find another field of endeavor where her skills and personality may be put to use.' that had her absolutely livid.
"This isn't true," Carla yelled her chest heaving, her face almost purple.
"Which part?" I asked calmly.
"All of it."
"All of it? I gave examples, Carla, detailed examples including the name of the class, the date and the time. So which part are you refuting?"
"You…you.," She stuttered.
I waited.
"You think you're so hot with your new clothes and everything," she sneered.
"What does that have to do with your assessment, Carla?"
"You're just jealous," she yelled.
"I am? Of what exactly?"
"I was with him before," she went on, really working herself up.
"With whom?"
"That tattoo guy, the one you've been seeing."
"Really? And when did you two hook up?"
"Before you got with him!"
"And that would've been when?"
She glared at me, nostrils flared.
"Okay, let's just put the timing aside. But, his name, Carla, do you have a name or in the time that you allegedly 'hooked up' what did you call him?"
Again, I got Carla's version of the death glare.
"Let me see if I have this right. You are refuting everything on the assessment of your time as my Teaching Assistant this year because one, I think I'm hot due to some new clothes and two, because I'm jealous because you hooked up with 'the tattoo guy' but can't give me his name or the time you were seeing him. Am I correct?"
She stood up so fast that my visitor's chair, the old fashioned, heavy kind made entirely of wood, teetered on its legs at her sudden movement.
"You either rewrite that," she said, her eyes narrowed and her fists tight, "or you'll be sorry."
"Think I'm going to have to go with door number two, because I won't be rewriting your assessment, Carla, and I will be submitting it to the Dean without your signature, if that's how you want it to go."
"Then I'll tell them that you never showed it to me, that you were trying to get back at me." Wow, for a little thing, Carla could really project hateful in a big way.
I pointed my finger to the upper corner of my office. "Smile, you're on Collegiate Camera."
I don't think I'd ever heard my door close quite so loudly before as it did when Carla left.
I sighed.
I know that I was more than a bit flippant when I should have made an effort for her to understand that she really wasn't suited for the field of education, especially when I myself was ready to call it a day and find some other line of work.
I decided to stop packing and make my way to Dex's. Our lives were spent shuttling between our two houses and we had two sets of toiletries plus extra clothes at each other's place so we weren't schlepping stuff from one house to the other.
We had even gotten really daring by giving each other a key to make a small portion of our lives a little easier.
I left Dex a voicemail, letting him know that I was on my way to the grocery store and that he would be manning the grill for tonight's dinner. We were at that stage in our relationship where neither one of us was diving for our cell every time the other one called.
I was calling it progress.
I had stowed the groceries and taken a shower, popping on an easy sun dress with its own shelf bra and leaving my hair to air-dry before I started on the au gratin potatoes and fresh peas that were going to accompany the chops.
I glanced at my cell to see if Dex had called while I was in the shower but there weren't any missed calls. Hopefully, he was just finishing up and would be home soon.
I was hungry -- for both my man and food.
The doorbell rang and I could feel my head tilt. I wasn't even aware that Dex had a doorbell and I couldn't think of who it might be since all our friends tended to call in advance, letting us know they were coming by.
I grabbed a dish towel and made my way to the door.
"Hi, can I help you?" I said through the screen. The woman on the other side was attractive but had seen better days even though she was trying to work the green halter top and short, denim shorts paired with scuffed cowboy boots.
She took a drag off her cigarette and blew the smoke directly at me.
"Dex here?" she questioned with a chin lift.
"Sorry, no, he's still at the shop. You can probably reach him there…" I began but stopped as she opened the screen door like it was something she had done a thousand times before and stepped into the house.
"Name's Edie, but he's pro'lly told you about me," she said glancing around the living room. "Shit, he's a lucky fucker. I mean, look at this place."
I, honest to God, didn't know what to say or how to act.
Dex had never mentioned anyone by the name of Edie nor had he clued me in that there would be company stopping by. I was kind of in the dark and didn't know how he would want me to play this.
So I decided not to play it at all.
"Where's the can?" Edie asked in her deep, gravelly voice. I pointed the way to the bathroom down the hall and went back to putting together the potatoes and rinsing the peas which I wouldn't start to cook until the chops were almost done.
"Swear to God, had to take a whizz for the last two hours. Felt like I was emptying two fuckin' bladders instead of just one." I still didn't speak because, seriously, how do you respond to someone telling you about their latest urination?
Edie sat down at the dining room table and lit another cigarette. I opened a couple of cupboards trying to find anything she could use as an ashtray. Finally I just sat a saucer in front of her. Which got me a wink and a 'thanks, doll'.
"Gimme a beer, honey, please?"
And, still not speaking, I pulled a beer out of the fridge and sat it in front of her before turning back to getting dinner ready. I saw her take in my wet hair, my sundress and bare feet before I saw her slide a hand over her so blonde it was brittle, shoulder length bob.
After emptying half her beer in one swallow and taking a deep drag off her cigarette, Edie turned to me.
Human Hieroglyphix - Dex & Leila Page 19