“So this is gonna be rough, not to mention a cappella.”
“Duly noted.”
So there on the park bench, snug in my coat, at the top of a grassy hill, a hundred feet from Goos Mom, who’s now standing with her hands on her hips watching her flock, I sing, like he says I do, about what’s true—true to my feelings. I sing “Don’t Ask.” I sing about my frustrations, my pain, my lingering anger. When I’m done, I find myself more nervous than I expected for his opinion.
“It’s good. It reminds me of some of the songs on Crushed.”
“You didn’t like it.”
“I did like it. It’s good. Is it your best song? No. But it’s good. And it’ll be even better when you polish it up.” He pauses, pen racing across the lined paper to record his notes. “Anything else?”
“Not my best song?” I say, raising an eyebrow.
He puts the notebook down and smiles. “You know I like your work. You know I loved your last album. I just told you how much. But I’m a critic too. This is my job.”
“So,” I begin, reaching for his notebook and adopting my best reportorial pose. I flip it open to a blank page and take his pen out of his hand. “Tell me about the rock critic in you, Matthew Harrigan. How did you know you wanted to be a rock critic?”
“I will tell you, but this is almost like your Olivia Newton-John fetish.”
“Oooh, a fetish,” I whisper. “The rock critic has a fetish.”
“My parents were both BBC producers.”
“That’s the fetish?”
“No, that was their job.”
“That is so British.”
“Yes, I know. Funny thing—we are English. Anyway, that’s how they met, working at the BBC.”
“But I thought you were…” I let my voice trail off.
He raises an eyebrow, daring me to ask.
“Fine. I’ll just say it,” I spit out. “I thought you were a baron.”
His mouth curves in a grin. “Many of the titled still have jobs.”
I grin back, because that’s as much of an admission as I’m going to get.
“My dad had this absolutely insane record collection. He had bootlegs of all the big English rock bands. He was one of those guys who actually posted ads and responded to ads in collector magazines, you know, trading bootlegs with other collectors. We had Pink Floyd, Rolling Stones, Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Cream, you name it. And we listened to them over and over. So really, I had no choice.”
I write down in big block letters: NO CHOICE. Then I peer at him as if I were wearing horn-rimmed glass. “But where’s the leg warmer and leotard portion of this story?”
“Ah, so how does this all connect? Well, I became totally obsessed with music. And I started reading Billboard. And, because my parents worked at the BBC, they received the top 100 list a week or so before it was actually published. This was nothing special; all news outlets did. But I thought it was the coolest thing in the world. So they used to bring these wretched black-and-white dot-matrix printouts of the top 100 list home every Sunday, which was nine days before it ran the following Tuesday. And I loved them. I plastered my walls with these printouts. So there I was, a ten-year-old boy in the mid-nineties living just outside of London and I didn’t have cars or sports or even music posters. I had these sort of ridiculous printouts of lists of songs instead. And then I would take a green highlighter and draw across week to week to chart the movement of the songs.”
“You were kind of a music geek it sounds like.”
“I was a total music geek,” he echoes.
The Doctor looks up as a fly buzzes past. In a flash of blond fur, she leaps and catches the fly in her mouth. “Have you got a frog there in your dog?” I ask.
“She’s a half-breed, what can I say? Apparently her dad was a fence-jumper. The frog dad, that is.”
“So, The Doctor. Sort of an odd name for a dog. I would have thought maybe Clash. Or Clapton. Or Maxwell Silver Hammer.”
“Ah, you must see me as so provincial. That I don’t venture beyond the world of music.”
“No. I don’t think that.”
“I like to read too. So perhaps I might be more imaginative than Clash or Clapton or Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, not that those aren’t clever names.”
“So then why isn’t she Hamlet, or Ophelia for that matter?”
“Or Cleopatra.”
“Or Shakespeare, since some say he was a woman.”
He raises an eyebrow. “You don’t watch British TV, do you?”
“You’re right. I don’t watch British TV. So what’s the story?”
“We had this dog growing up. A sort of standard scrappy English mutt. We loved that dog, but we hated her name. Our mum had named her Bitsy. What an awful name for a dog, don’t you think?” he asks, looking at me.
“It’s not my favorite name,” I say diplomatically.
“So William and I made a pact. We were huge Doctor Who fans. And we always said the line—I’m The Doctor—together after we’d watch a show. So we decided that if one of us ever adopted a dog, we’ve give it a good name. Not Bitsy or Lady or anything like that. But The Doctor. And seeing as William is only in college, I beat him to the punch, so I had first dibs on the coolest dog name ever.”
“I like that. It’s a clever name for a dog.”
“Why thank you. I’ve always wanted to impress a woman with my dog-naming skills.”
“Well, you have then,” I said, and brush a hand against his hair for just a moment. The moment shifts from flirty to tender as he leans into my hand. The gesture seems so intimate, so like a boyfriend or girlfriend would do. On both our parts.
The Doctor glances back at us, peaceful and content. Then, she whips her head toward the pond. She emits a low growl as a dark gray standard poodle prances by wearing a red rhinestone-encrusted collar.
“The Doctor hates poodles,” Matthew says by way of explanation.
Apparently, The Doctor hates poodles a lot. Because she is off and running. She is galloping no less, hurtling across the grass to the canine she disdains, her leash trailing along behind her. “Bloody hell,” Matthew says with a groan and takes off to chase her. I watch him racing to catch up to his dog, grabbing her just as she’s about to clamp down on a mass of curly, kinky, practically permed, gray dog hair.
I glance down and realize I am still holding Matthew’s notebook in my hand. I see my own silly notes from my mock interview with Matthew. I flip back a few pages so I can try to find the spot where he left off before I grabbed it. I spot the note he wrote back at the kitchen: Jane Black has one song for the new album. Everything is okay. I smile a bit at the memory, at his facetiousness in writing that.
Then I notice there’s more underneath it, the notes he must have taken when I went to the bathroom. These notes aren’t in block letters. They’re in his choppy and slanted penmanship. Jane Black is coming up dry for her new album. T-minus twelve days and she has nothing but a cover tune. She contends she can pen an entire album in twelve days. Note: research past albums written quickly. Twelve days seems insane. Follow-up: Ask again re her normal MO. Does she write all albums in this fashion? Can she make her deadline? If so, how does this impact article?
What the hell?
I raise my eyes from the notebook and see Matthew chatting amicably with the poodle’s owner. He grips his dog’s collar, but he seems to have charmed his way out of the dog kerfuffle.
I return to his notes. Cover tune. He writes it as if it’s a dirty word. It was his goddamn idea after all.
She contends. Let him try writing an album when a rock critic is following him around.
Ask her again. Yep, ask her again, indeed. Because that’s what this is all about. Asking me questions. Getting information. Writing a story. My God, I was so stupid to think his e-mails were true. That his kisses were real. All he wants is to ask me again about the deadline for the album. He wants to press me about what I’ve written so far. He wants to know if I can make my
deadline so he can make his.
I slap Matthew’s notebook on the bench, cross my arms, clench my teeth, and wait for him to return. Soon, he’s walking right toward me, The Doctor at his side. He looks at me curiously.
“What’s wrong? You seem pissed.”
“Are there some things you wanted to ask me, Matthew?” I reach for the notebook and flip it open to the offending page. “Ask again regarding her normal MO,” I read to him. Then I wave the notebook and say, “So, go. Ask.”
“Jane,” he says gently.
“Well, I’ll tell you. I don’t have a normal MO. I just write what I write. Oh, and that’s partly because no one has given a shit when I produce another album till now. Because I used to suck. Remember?”
“Okay,” he says, still a little wary of me.
I glance back at the notebook. “Can I make my deadline, you want to know? Yes. And let’s address this last item. Jane Black is coming up dry.” Then I stare at him.
“Okay…”
“Well that’s not a very nice thing to say is it?”
“Is it untrue?” he asks, finally answering me back. Good—I love a good fight. I don’t want a man just okaying me.
“That’s not the point.”
“But that is the point. You are struggling to write, aren’t you?”
And it’s all your fault, I want to say. It’s all your fault because I’m completely distracted by you, and I can’t write when all I think about is how much I love your hands on me and your e-mails and our chats and your charming, irresistible self. “Yes, I am. But why do you have to write it like that?”
“Those are notes. That’s not the finished story. I haven’t even started writing it,” he says gently, but I won’t be swayed.
“And,” I continue, jamming my index finger against the notepad to emphasize, “you wrote just a cover tune. It was your idea that I do the cover tune!”
“And you should do the song. But you also have a deadline.”
“And so do you, apparently.”
“I want us both to make our deadlines,” he says, softening. “But let’s be honest here. You do have writer’s block, don’t you?”
I sigh deeply and close my eyes. “Yes.”
“Well, what can we do about that? Can I help you in any way? Whisk you off to the family estate in England and let you write in peace?”
I open my eyes and meet his sparkling blues. He’s admitted it. To me.
“You are? A baron?”
He nods, then places a finger on his lips. “Don’t tell anyone.”
“It’s our secret.”
He scoots closer to me. He holds the dog’s leash in one hand and places his other hand on my leg, grazing my thigh. A small whimper escapes my throat.
“We have other secrets too,” he says in a low and sexy voice.
“Do we, though?” I ask. “Are all the things you say in your e-mails true? Or are the things in your notebook true?”
“They’re all true.” He looks at me and if he’s lying, I wouldn’t know it. His eyes are so pure, so sincere as he speaks to me. “Everything I say to you is true. I would never lie to you or manipulate you. You have to know that. I wouldn’t do that to anyone. But I also know what you’ve been through, and I would never toy with your feelings,” he says, then slips his hand inside my coat, wrapping his fingers around my waist, and lowers his voice even more. “You really don’t know how much I want you? Because there aren’t enough adverbs to describe how much. Insanely, immensely, ridiculously. I could go on.”
His words send an electric charge through my veins. “It’s hard for me to trust a man,” I admit.
“It’s hard for me to resist you,” he whispers. Then he lifts his right hand and ever so gently places it on the back of my head, his palm barely resting against my hair. “Incredibly hard,” he says, his voice rough with desire and innuendo.
I am racing, speeding out of anger and charging headfirst into lust. But I have to hold up the warning sign on one very important point. “Please don’t fuck with my heart,” I say in a voice that threatens to break.
“I won’t,” he says.
I make a choice to believe him. I make a choice to trust. And I make a choice to tell him something that became crystal clear to me last night. Barely under my breath, I say, “I can’t write. Because of you.”
“What?” It’s as if I just knocked the wind out of him. He pulls back to meet my gaze.
“Because of this.” I gesture from him to me.
“What do you mean?” he asks carefully.
“Because I like you. Because I want you.”
“I like you too. I want you too. I thought that was pretty clear,” he says with a crooked little smile. “Abundantly clear. Just, you know, to toss out another adverb.”
I shake my head. “I like you a lot, and it’s messing with my head. And I can’t focus on writing. The only songs I’ve managed are angry ones. Like the one you said sounded like Crushed. I can’t write about how I’m feeling because I don’t know how to write when I’m starting to feel like this.”
“I suppose I should take it as a compliment that I’m the cause of your writer’s block?”
“Yes.”
“What are we going to do about that, then?” he asks, and I love that he says we, that somehow we’re in this together. “What do you want to do about it?”
At first, I have no idea. But then I let that word resonate. Want. I know what I want. I know what I need. Because this is the way the Starbucks Couple starts. This is not differential calculus. This is not Japanese. This is The Postal Service and Rilo Kiley. This is Johnny Cash and Arcade Fire. I am not imagining this. In this moment, I have zero doubts about men and women.
“I know what I want,” I say, and my voice is breathy as he trails his thumb along my jawline.
“Tell me.”
“I want to break down your resistance,” I whisper.
He tenses momentarily, then cups my chin, so I’m looking at him. “What do you mean?”
I throw caution to the wind and let the words spill out, holding his gaze the entire time. “Writer’s block or no writer’s block, I just want to touch you. It’s driving me crazy not to. I want to take off your clothes, and I want to feel you all over. I want my hands on your body. I want to know how you respond to me. I want to taste you. I want to take you in my mouth.”
“Fuck,” he says, breathing out a long stream of air.
“Can I?” I look him in the eyes, needing this so desperately. “I want you to come undone for me.”
He looks as if he’s buzzed; his expression is hazy. He shakes his head several times, as if he’s trying to clear his brain as he scrubs a hand across his jaw. “I’m going to tell you something about straight men,” he says, and then he swallows. “When you’re into a woman, and she says she wants to give you a blow job, there’s never any answer but yes. And now. And let me go hail a fucking cab immediately.”
Minutes later, we reach his place.
I imagined Matthew’s apartment spilling over with records. But I don’t see a single shred of music—there isn’t a stereo, an iPod player, or the requisite too-cool-for-school collection of vinyl—and his shelves are filled with books. More by Raymond Chandler and James Ellroy, and the complete works of Shakespeare. He tells The Doctor to lie down on the couch, and she obeys instantly, curling up in a tight dog ball. He takes off his boots and his socks, and then he raises an eyebrow, tipping his forehead to the bedroom.
I am nervous, but I’m also not. Because I want him. He wants me. And now all I want is to drive him wild for me. Maybe that makes me selfish. Maybe that makes me needy. Maybe I’m both, and then some. I take his hand because I am leading this and guide him into his room.
He stands by the bed, holds his arms out wide. “You’re in charge. You can do whatever you want.”
“I can?”
He nods. “Yes. I want you to.”
His body is my playground.
I
press my teeth against my lips, sharp, sweet goose bumps radiating from my belly to my fingertips. I step closer and reach for the bottom of his long-sleeve pullover shirt. I tug it up, my fingertips grazing the hard planes of his stomach. He sucks in a breath as I touch him, and I catalog his reaction in my file of amazing moments. Then he raises his arms for me, and I remove his shirt, taking my time pulling it over his head, so I can drink him in with my eyes. I run my hands down his arms, savoring the feel of his toned muscles. He’s not gym strong; he’s just toned and trim, and I love everything about his body. I explore his chest, and he closes his eyes for a moment, his chest rising and falling as I learn the contours and shape of him. I trail my hands along the waistband of his jeans, eliciting a low moan from him. The sound makes me heady, and sends a rush of heat between my legs. But of course I’m turned on. That was never in question. I want to turn him on, I want to bring him there, I want to watch him and feel him lose control for me.
I unbutton his jeans, then unzip them, and I am so fucking eager to touch him, to feel what I’ve done to him, to discover that I can do this. He threads his fingers in my hair. “Please,” he whispers.
I kneel and pull down his jeans, and he’s wearing snug black boxer briefs that reveal everything. I am ignited. I am lit up all over when I first place a hand against his erection that strains against the cotton of his briefs. He’s so hard, and he twitches against my palm, and this is all because of me. I lean my face against him, inhaling him, feeling how ready he is for me.
“I need to take all these clothes off,” I say, as I trace my fingers against his briefs.
“Yes, you do.”
I press my palm against his flat belly, and push him onto the bed. He falls easily, shooting me a quick grin, that playful, mischievous side of him reappearing briefly. He props himself on his elbows, watching me as I take off his jeans, leaving them in a pile on the floor. Then my hands feather their way up his legs, until I reach the waistband of his boxer briefs, and I tug them off, my mouth watering as I see how aroused he is.
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