I waited, expecting to hear more. He sat in his chair and simply stared at me. “So that’s it?”
“Unless you have something else you want to tell us.”
Strange how you can feel the compulsion to volunteer something.
“No,” I answered.
“Then you’re free to go,” said the detective. He handed me a business card in case I thought of anything else.
Outside the precinct house, Jill saw the question forming on my lips: why? Why didn’t you give up Erica as Steven’s other playmate?
“The same logic that says you two had consensual sex and no one got hurt—much—goes for whatever Erica did with him, too,” she explained. “It rules her out as a suspect on that score. Cops enjoy gossip like everyone else, and I’m not about to confirm for Holland that Erica Jones gets hot over guys chained up. I’m her bodyguard. The way I see my job, it’s not just about the physical threats. Besides, Holland can be a bit of an asshole.”
She paused a moment then added nonchalantly, “I notice you didn’t mention anything about Erica and those handcuffs either. That’s how you heard about them, right? She told you?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, well. She was his fiancée. You’d think the cops would have asked her about them when they questioned her anyway, right?”
I said I didn’t know. When Erica had emerged from her own interview with the cops—hers at our apartment—it was one of the few times she was actually reticent with me. She didn’t feel like talking about her own inquisition. And I didn’t press.
“Did they?” I asked. “Get nosy with her about the cuffs?”
“No, they didn’t,” said Jill. “I asked her about it at the time. But you couldn’t have known that for sure before Holland spoke with you.”
I stopped and studied her. I wondered if she were somehow testing me. Or playing games.
“You’re very loyal,” remarked Jill in a breezy voice. “That’s rare. Hey, I guess we should get back to Erica at the studio. Why don’t you wait here, and I’ll bring my car around.”
She was sniffing around a lot for a bodyguard. I didn’t know how I was going to get rid of her, but I resolved to find a way. The funny thing was, I never did, and when the issues over Steven’s murder cooled down and began to fade, I was glad I hadn’t.
Attractions
Life went back to what passed for normal in the pop music business. Any remaining friction between Jill and me dissolved as we went about our separate jobs, and we even developed the camaraderie of the entourage. You need it when you work on big headliner tours. Things turned a corner in Boston when Jill and I went to fetch Erica in her dressing room after the show, and too late, Jill opened the door without knocking. I should have warned her: Erica gets horny as hell after concerts. There she was, naked and dripping with sweat, one of the white stagehands eating her pussy while a black sound guy was fighting to control coming into her mouth, Erica bleating and squeezing her eyes shut as her release made her belly and breasts shudder. She didn’t even notice us come in.
“Oh, shit, I’m sorry!” Jill said, slamming the door shut.
“Chances are, she didn’t hear you,” I said in the tone of the veteran. We walked back towards the wings of the stage, watching the roadies tear down the set and pack up. “Told you you’d see plenty of shit. Tomorrow night it could be another guy—or guys.”
“She’s crazy,” said Jill. “There’s all kinds of nasty stuff going around out there.”
“She’s spontaneous in the moment,” I explained. “Doesn’t mean she’s not selective. She has these guys checked out.”
“She does?”
“Who do you think gets to ask the difficult questions?” I replied. “You’ll probably get enlisted to help.”
“This doesn’t bother you?” she asked.
“You’re not going to call me Erica’s pimp, are you?” I asked. “I’ve heard that one before. From guys usually.”
“Good Lord, of course not!” she laughed. “What I meant was, it doesn’t bother you what she’s doing to herself? She’s one of the nice ones. I’ve had to baby-sit some real creeps, and she’s not bossy, she’s not a diva. She’s smart and fun and talented, and she’s just folding in on herself. Hell of a way to grieve.”
“She did this stuff before Steven died,” I pointed out. “She’s simply doing it more. I’m hoping she’ll come out of it. And, yes, it does bother me. It breaks my heart.”
“Maybe she needs one steady guy, a good guy,” remarked Jill.
I shook my head, forgetting myself for a moment. “I can’t stand that pop psychology stuff that says a guy will solve all your problems—”
“Hey, I’m not saying that.”
“It’s the kind of love she needs,” I argued. “Erica’s more complex than anyone knows…”
The truth is that I didn’t look forward to the time when Erica would move on and find another steady guy. Her casual screwing around meant that I was her reassuring continuity. I was the one she confided in and relied on.
I didn’t notice for a moment how Jill was looking at me. It was disconcerting how she studied everybody and everything so intensely. To fill the pause, I added, “Erica is very choosy.”
“Yeah, I get that.”
Yes, it did sound ridiculous after what we’d just seen.
“It’s remarkable how you love her,” said Jill. “As a friend, I mean. You’ve known her since high school, right? She’s very lucky to have someone like you who’s got her back.”
The compliment made me blush. “Thanks, I guess.”
“We’re going to miss our flight if we don’t get moving. You think they’ve finished by now?”
I was surprised as well at how the tension seemed to dissipate between Luther and Erica. No awkward pauses, no hidden meanings in casual conversation. They were friendly to each other and fell into their easy rhythms of working together on the songs. For a while, I couldn’t figure out what was going on. She had become as reticent about him as he was over her—at least this is the way they were with me, perhaps because I was a friend to both of them. If Erica wanted to try again with Luther, she seemed resigned to the fact that he was no longer willing. A reminder of that—a surprise to me—was that Luther had hooked up with Jill.
He told me about it over dinner one night. Ever since I had met him at that first party in the hotel, Luther and I had a “brother-sister” kind of friendship. It was so relaxed and easy between us that there was hardly a blip on the screen for Luther when he learned I preferred women. He liked having female friends when there was no burden of sexual tension. I think it demonstrated a guy who could genuinely appreciate women. And he confided in me. We were in this Peruvian restaurant called The Courtyard on 57th Street, all candles and Tapada paintings and Inca-style jugs for decoration, and he rolled out the tale of how Jill went after him with a vengeance. He wasn’t bragging. He said her attention just blew him away.
“She has a small house out in Brooklyn, and she wants me to help her repair her kitchen roof,” he explained, smiling shyly as he studied his red wineglass. He had done his share of carpentry and handyman work years ago before music paid the bills. “She says she had this leak from the washroom upstairs, and the water’s collected for who knows how long, and she’s got this big hump coming out of her ceiling now. I say, ‘Well, get yourself a good contractor, honey.’ She tells me, Hey, big producer-man, maybe you make the big money, but I can’t afford some guy to come out for x-hundred bucks! I need a tall guy and an extra set of hands and blah, blah, blah, she gets me out there.”
Right where she wanted him. Jill’s house in Brooklyn, he said, had echoes of both Erica and Morgan in its decoration. Great shelves of books, every picture hung on the wall in black and white, discerning choices in plush white furniture. But her bedrooms and basement all had modest towers of boxes stacked and gathering dust, as if her work and solitary life never allowed her a chance to settle. Jill greeted him at the door in a tart
an shirt with the tails knotted, showing off a nice midriff and cut-off jeans, instantly handing him a rum and Coke.
“This better be my first and last unless you want everything crooked,” he joked.
“Well, do the job right, honey, and you will be rewarded.”
He let that one go by without comment. She asked him if he wanted some lunch first, since he’d come all this way, which only confused him further. We’d better get to it, he said.
“Oh, we’re okay for time, I did the Polyfill in the ceiling holes already.”
Then what did she need him for? She couldn’t be sure she had done the job properly, she explained. And she knew it would take her forever to paint the ceiling all by herself. With a sigh, he said let’s start—the sun will go down soon enough. Yes, they’d have the lights on, but natural light always helps.
They were chatting about nothing important, just work and artists they liked, movies they ought to see together. Painting a ceiling, they were bound to get drips and drabs spattering them thanks to gravity. Jill soon had plenty of white splotches on her bare legs.
“Damn, I thought life would be easier if I wore less,” she told him. “Instead of wrecking my clothes, I thought I’d just take a good bath. I mean I was going to paint naked if I had to do it all by myself, but this stuff is drying hard. I got to scratch it off my skin. Ugh.” She came over to him with a wet cloth and washed a tough stain off his forearm. “See?”
He couldn’t resist. “Hey, you can still paint naked if you want. I’m not stopping you.”
She patted his face with her hand and said, “Get back to work.”
As they kept at it, Jill said it was funny talking about painting naked, strange how people could get about their own bodies. She’d heard a story about Steven Swann, how he’d actually paid to have a gold set of manacles suspended from his bedroom ceiling. Luther said it wouldn’t surprise him in the least.
They were done about a third of the way when Luther noticed large cracks emerging in the stucco plaster. “Jill, when did you do the job with the Polyfill?”
“About an hour ago, why?”
“Look at this,” he told her. Pushing the paint roller over the filled-in holes had disturbed the repairs. All their hard work was crumbling apart.
“Shit!” she hissed. “What do we do?”
And perfect timing, there was a modest but ominous crack, Luther dropping his brush onto the newspapers on the tiled floor and thrusting up two hands to catch the buckling ceiling. Jesus, he muttered, and Jill was saying, Oh, God, oh, this is just great. Defeated, she clapped her hand on her lovely bare thigh and told him you might as well let it go, just let it come crashing down. Luther was telling her not to give up, they could jump in the car and hit a hardware shop to buy new plaster board sheets, but right now she should fetch a bin before they had a gigantic mess all over her floor.
“No,” said Jill.
“What?”
“No,” she said, flashing a smile of dazzling white teeth at him.
He didn’t know what to think as he gazed down at her from the short stepladder, hands over his head, playing Atlas. “What do you mean no, Jill? Look, my arms are getting tired and—”
She began to unbuckle his trousers.
“Jill, what are you doing? I have to let go of this thing, and it’ll break into a gazillion pieces on our heads unless you go get a trash can or something—”
“You’re not going to drop it on us, are you?” she asked. She laughed as she pulled his trousers down to his ankles.
“Jill! Come on, my arms are getting tired. What are you—”
“Luther, I’m counting on you, babe. Don’t let my ceiling cave in, just keep your arms up there.” Her hands caressing his legs, giggling all the time as her fingers stroked his thighs and dug under his Jockey shorts to grip his buttocks.
He couldn’t help but laugh, but he felt completely vulnerable. “Jill, this is crazy—”
“Just hold your position, soldier. I want to talk to little soldier. Hi, there.” Tugging down his underwear in one smooth yank, her mouth sending a hot breath on his testicles and the thick girth of him springing to life.
“What’s this little soldier crap? Jill, my arms—”
“Hold still, baby.”
Laughing all the while as she rested her head and moaned happily against his thigh, feeling the heat of his cock against her cheek, her fingers tracing the globe of a buttock and then reaching up to find hard muscles in the small of his back. He felt ridiculous even while he was aroused, his laughter taking a bit of energy out of his hard-on, until she slipped off her shirt and pushed his cock between her two large breasts, rubbing him between them. When she brought her mouth down on him, he couldn’t take it anymore—
As if ducking away from a bomb explosion, he bent over to shield her from a rain of plaster and paint. Both of them laughed helplessly as shards of plaster dropped off the scarf around her hair and Luther’s shoulders. He had obediently kept his position on the stepladder. Jill helped free one leg from the trap of his bunched trousers and underwear, and he jumped down to take her in his arms. Filthy, dusty, white speckles over writhing brown bodies, Luther slipping her jeans over her narrow hips to reveal she was wearing no panties at all, and he lifted her with those strong biceps muscles that could drum congas and barrels, raising her high enough that he could enter her in a wet rush. He moved her to the kitchen counter, Jill’s ass sliding on a drape cloth over gas burners as Luther pounded inside her, wrapping her arms around his neck, his broad back, whispering hoarsely, “Bed—Bedroom…”
He said she made love like no woman he’d ever had before. I asked him: This African Tantric Yoga stuff? Yeah, he said, looking away at his glass again. He couldn’t remember everything she did, feeling so swept away, but it was amazing. “Her middle finger would fire out like a shiatsu therapist or something,” he said, and she’d spear a muscle in his groin, light pressure at the base of his cock, making him feel like a steel bar. Fingers massaging his glutes as he thrust inside her, unravelling him and making him feel like he was about to come, only to have her hands withdraw and the tide subside, her expert touch discovering a new point, sending a fresh charge through him. Gazing down at her, spatters of white paint on her lovely brown skin, her breasts heaving, touching him and making him feel so powerful, more attractive than he ever saw himself except in his days of drumming on stage. His muscles expanding and contracting, biceps and abs chiselled and defined just as her gorgeous athletic body showed him what she could do.
We’re like two zebras, dirty like this, she laughed, cupping his balls and running a nail down the inside of his thigh past an island of hardened white paint. It made him shiver with delight.
They showered together and cleaned up for their second bout, and as the ochre sunlight spilled into her bedroom, they were like children at play, Jill setting the tone, contorting herself for her amusement and to drive them wild. Lying on top of him faceup as he sagged his body against her headboard, his cock inside her, Jill touching her clit as she craned her neck back to bite his lip and tickle herself with his goatee. She slipped her tongue under his, his hands rubbing circles around her nipples as her right hand reached around and found this exquisite point in the nape of his neck, and uhh…His chin on her shoulder, looking down at her glistening beautiful wetness under her one finger, loving to watch this woman stimulate herself, the way he disappeared into her under those tight black curls—
I had never listened to a guy describe sex from his point of view, and to have a guy like Luther, who would never be crude about it, who created a picture of the two of them with words and who talked about Jill in ways both lyrical and tantalising…I was fascinated. I could see her as she felt him start to come, moving her hips just enough so that she could reach down with her small hand and grip his engorged cock, her vaginal lips still encasing the crimson head, summoning a cry out of him he had never given in any intimate encounter before, burying his cock into her again in
slow motion that made them both spasm violently. And then another tender kiss, her fingers on the nape of his neck—
“She made love like it was choreography,” said Luther. “You know I don’t want to sound sexist, Mish, but some girls, they expect you to do all the work. They let things be done to them. Jill is one of the most sensual women I’ve…I mean, Jesus, it’s too bad we couldn’t have something.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
He looked pensive for a moment. Then: “I told her the truth. I told her she ambushed me, took me by surprise, not that I’m complaining.” He chuckled a little, and the pensive expression returned. “I know I said I thought it best to leave Erica alone, but…I don’t know. I think I’m not as over her as I thought. Jill’s nice. She’s great, really. But good sex doesn’t mean a guy gets mush in his head right away and falls in love.”
As they lay side by side in afterglow, she had kissed him, two fingers delicately stroking his penis, trying to awaken it again as she said baby, it’s okay. She wasn’t looking for anything serious. It would have been nice if they could see each other for a while, but if he didn’t want that, well, life was too short for vanity. She didn’t feel scorned at all. She hadn’t had her toes curled in so long, and she had really needed him. Luther said he felt strangely flattered.
“Stores must be closed by now,” he had said to her. “What are we going to do about your kitchen?”
“It’s all right. My contractor’s coming tomorrow.” And as he sat up, she added, “I can’t afford a set of golden handcuffs.”
I couldn’t say a damn thing,” laughed Luther, ordering another round for us.
“She’s kind of like Erica in a way—needs sex, but not men,” he laughed. He sighed in exasperation. “What am I doing, Mish? Do I carry around a magnet that picks up girls like this? No, that’s not fair, I chased Erica. You think I’m a fool for still holding out for her?”
I told him I didn’t know. It was the safe answer, the diplomatic answer. I wasn’t really thinking about it at all. He couldn’t have known how I had disconnected from our conversation. My mind was frozen on the image of them together, the idea of Jill Chandler in an intimate embrace, all this sexual prowess for which she dropped beguiling hints and he had now confirmed.
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