by C. D. Reiss
“Hi,” I said.
“Where are you?”
“Santa Monica and Canon.”
“I’m sorry.” Her voice was taut. “Did you guys discuss you not coming or something?”
“No?” I sat upright. “What’s going on?”
“He’s in surgery today and I thought you might want to be here when he got out. Unless something changed with you two.”
“No!”
Fuck. I rang the bell to get off at the next stop. If I picked up a connection, I could make it in an hour.
“What was that?” Margie asked. “Are you on the bus?”
I anticipated a full-on shitstorm. In my haste to get off the bus, I dropped the viola case and it popped open next to the driver, who yelled at me, leaving me to scramble to get it together before it got stepped on, while the phone was pressed between my jaw and shoulder. I didn’t have a free hand to pick it up, so I had to listen to Margie have a fit over my location and circumstance, which irritated me enough to shoot back at her. “Parking is fifteen dollars and it’s permit parking on the street over there at this hour and I don’t need to blow gas money when the bus is fine.”
The bus dumped me in front of the Beverly Hills Police station. I headed across Santa Monica, scuttling to make the light.
“Wait,” Margie said, and I immediately regretted blowing off steam at her. “Did you know about the graft or not?”
“I was on my way to the studio, but I can make it there in an hour if I get the Rapid at Beverly.”
“Stay where you are. Lil is coming for you.”
CHAPTER 5.
MONICA
I sat in the back of the Bentley, wanting to absolutely die. The idea of being in the studio when Jonathan got out of surgery was unacceptable, yet the thought of not showing up to sing for any sickness besides my own seemed ridiculous. This was going to cost Carnival a fortune. Everyone would have to be paid. An orchestra full of people. Assistants. Session guys. Whatever executive felt like showing up to see Miss Taking-The-Bus cut her debut EP. I was a complete career fuckup. Who would set up another session for this bullshit?
Margie met me in the hallway as soon as I got out of the elevator.
“They just wheeled him into the OR and he didn’t ask for you which tells me he knew you weren’t coming.” She walked me down the empty corridor.
“I told him I was laying something down for Carnival Records this afternoon. If he told me his graft was today, he knew I’d cancel.”
“Is it important? The studio thing?”
“Not as important as being here.”
“Spare us the emotional comparisons.” Her impatience must have been a sign of how tightly wound she was. Her words were clipped and her intent unmistakable. I felt compelled to give her any answer she asked for. She must have been a magician in a courtroom.
“It’s going to make my career,” I said. “But not today.”
“First of all, you don’t ask my brother ever again about his condition. He’s a notorious liar of convenience.”
“No shit.”
“Secondly,” she stopped and stood in front of me. “How broke are you?”
“I’m fine.”
“You two are so sweet together. Really. He lies so you go to the studio, and you omit your destitution so he won’t worry about you. It breaks my fucking heart to see this level of well-meaning duplicity.”
We stared at each other for what seemed like a minute and a half. She had that Drazen thing where she looked perfectly put together even though I knew that between her family and her work she was getting eaten alive. Her hair sat up in a copper bun, her skin was luminescent and her lavender business suit looked like it should still be in the dry cleaning bag.
“How broke?” Margie asked.
I took a deep breath. I didn’t want to tell her. It was shameful, but I couldn’t avoid it any longer.
“I haven’t had a roommate in months. I haven’t worked since before I left for Vancouver. I bought clothes I shouldn’t have. I fixed a car I didn’t need to. Here I am.”
“Is he not taking care of you?”
“I’m not his whore.” I said it in a sotto whisper, but it seemed to amplify and echo against the hard walls and floor. Margie took me by the bicep and pulled me into an empty room. I followed because I didn’t want to make a scene, but by the time she closed the door, I was livid.
“Is bossiness a Drazen thing?” I said.
She held her finger up. “Don’t you posture with me. No one who ever saw you together would call you his whore. So stop it. How much do you need?”
I held my hands up. Taking gifts from Jonathan was one thing, having his sister write me a check was viscerally offensive.
“I’ll figure it out.”
“How?” she asked. “What’s your plan to stay with him and go to work at the same time?”
I didn’t have one, except closing my eyes and hoping I’d wake up at the end of it with a healthy Jonathan and an undamaged career. The signs did not appear to be in my favor. As a matter of fact, I was pretty sure I’d wind up unemployed, ten pounds lighter, and evicted by my own mother. In addition, my EP wouldn’t get cut and I’d have a reputation as a flake.
“I’m going to be there for him,” I said. “If it makes me broke and ruins my career, that’s the deal. And I’m not taking a dime from you or anyone else. If you have a problem with that, you can take it up with him when he comes around.”
“You’re a real pain in the ass.”
“Can I have a roll call?” I leaned on the foot of the empty bed.
“Theresa’s calling but she can’t come in. Deirdre’s in chapel. Leanne is here but running off to some Asia backwater in three minutes. Fiona’s in and out with her entourage. Sheila’s ripping paper. Carrie’s still not coming.”
“And your mother?”
“Fully medicated. I spoke to her.”
I nodded. Margie and her mother had a sisterly relationship from what I could see, considering the elder Drazen was only fifteen and a half years older. “I spoke to her” meant Margie had reprimanded her own mother over her treatment of me, which included stone cold silences, saccharine kindness and blatant disregard when she was tired.
“Will she ever say more than two words to me?”
“She and Deirdre love Jessica. That’s not going to change.”
“I don’t expect it to.”
“Good. There’s something else.” She glanced to the door as if making sure it was still closed. “Jonathan hasn’t spoken to our father in fifteen years. He’s here. You might not see him, he and Mom are on the outs, but he’s in the building. If he meets you, whatever he tells you, grain of salt, okay?”
“I don’t know what he’d have to lie to me about.”
“He’d say something just to see how you react. My brother thinks it’s evil. I think it’s just a shitty hobby.”
“Can we go?” I collected my things and stood up straight, ready for the door.
“I’m not done. About the money.”
“You’re done.”
CHAPTER 6.
JONATHAN
When I first felt like I was dying, I stood in a doorway at the LA Mod for half an hour, trying to get control of the tightness in my chest. I focused on my breathing, sat down, tried to think about anything else, but it kept getting worse, and I kept sitting there, thinking I had to get to Monica before my father did, and I really started panicking.
It all tumbled down from there, to that ridiculously long hospital stay, to getting wheeled into an operating room for surgery at 32. When I woke up, I had the feeling something had gone terribly wrong.
I swam to consciousness feeling like I was being choked. I panicked the same panic I felt in that doorway. I couldn’t control anything, my sensations, my body, my thoughts. I couldn’t see clearly. I couldn’t move my arms. I was bound like a prisoner. My voice was dead. My face itched. Was I warned it would feel like this?
Or was I dead
and in the hell of everything I’ve ever done to every woman I’ve tied down and fucked? I thought of Dante, his hells being the excess of our desires, and in the deepest circles, the pain of our victims. Here I was. Fuck. I was terrified, and for eternity, I didn’t think I could stand it. This blackness. The crippling paralysis. No control. Utter submission to emptiness. And my throat. I was breathing, but the pressure on my throat was enormous. I’d never choked a sex partner, because I never believed I’d be able to control the results. How could my hell include this? I never believed life was fair, but was God this unjust?
“Jonathan.”
A voice. Female. I recognized it as Sheila’s. She always had a way about her, like she gave birth to the world and loved it to maturity, even when her words cut deep and rage twisted her mouth.
I realized I could open my eyes if I chose to. The whisper and beep of machines broke the silence of my anxiety.
Okay. Not hell. Not dead. But the choking feeling was real, and I started to panic again.
Sheila’s face blocked out the light. “You’re intubated. The machine is breathing for you. Keep still. It’s okay.”
I chose to believe her. And I waited. It was five minutes to three. I couldn’t speak to ask her to unbind my wrists, so I stared at the clock for five minutes, and when the hands met, I closed my eyes and imagined I could lift my arm and touch my lips.
CHAPTER 7.
MONICA
Three pm came unexpectedly. I figured it would, since I was supposed to be in the studio, so I’d set my phone alarm to remind me. It dinged in my ear as I listened to Eddie launch into a diatribe. I closed my eyes, shut out Eddie’s aggravation, and touched my lips, thinking of nothing but Jonathan. The warmth in my chest and the smile on my face didn’t last.
“Are you fucking with me?” his voice was tight enough to shatter my reverie.
“He’s your friend too. It’s not like you can pretend to think I’m lying.” I was in the third floor stairwell, avoiding the mob scene in the waiting room. It was nice that Jonathan had so many family members care about him, it was also so overwhelming I took a phone call on the emergency stairs.
“We got the contract signed in a week,” he said.
“I know.”
The fourth floor door smacked open and Leanne Drazen tore down the stairs. Theresa’s Irish twin, she was two years and ten months older than Jonathan, but she looked and acted like she was in her mid twenties. A tote bag flew behind her, and her red cowboy boots clopped down the steps. She was otherwise tattered and slovenly, strawberry blonde hair falling out of a ponytail and her bag open.
“That’s fucking unheard of,” Eddie said. “And we had to send twenty-two people home. Do you know what we paid to get them in there on two day’s notice?”
“No.”
Leanne grabbed the bannister and swung around, inertia and centripetal force taking her to the top of the next set of stairs. She grabbed my shoulders and said, “he’s out!”
I put my hand over the receiver.
“A fucking lot,” Eddie said into my ear.
“How does he look?” I whispered to Leanne.
She put her thumb up and smiled, then took off down the stairs with a wave. Sweet girl. Too bad she was never around.
“I have to be here, Ed,” I said as I bounded up to the fourth floor.
“I’m not saying I don’t understand. I was at the show. I saw it. What I’m saying is, I don’t know if I can herd these cats again.”
“Tell me what hoop I have to jump through to get a reschedule and I’ll jump it.” I strode through the waiting room, past two sisters and a mother. Margie indicated a room at the end and I went in. Sheila was with him, the most vulnerable-seeming of the bunch. With wild wheaten hair and four children born close together, she was the one most visibly upset about her brother.
“When can you do it?”
Margie yanked me into a recovery room that looked like all the others. Jonathan was there, lying on his back arms on top of the blankets and tubes everywhere.
“Next week. I think he’s going to be better.”
“I need a guarantee.”
I touched his arm, and he opened his eyes. When he saw me, he winked.
“Guaranteed,” I said and hung up the phone.
“Well?” I said to Sheila, “It went okay?”
“Yeah. They just pulled a tube out of his throat and unstrapped him.”
Jonathan picked his hand up and flicked his fingers to Sheila. The international sign for shoo. She started to object but Margie grabbed her arm. “Come on. The kids need you.”
“Onna has them.”
Margie pulled her out, but Eileen, Jonathan’s mother strode in.
“Ma,” Margie said. “You were just here.” But Eileen ignored her.
“Jon,” she said, standing over him. “How are you feeling?”
“Tired.”
“Should we go?” She put her hand on my arm, as if I was going out with her.
“Yes. I mean, let me talk to Monica for a minute.”
She smiled, the biggest, fakest thing I have ever seen in my life. “Of course.”
“Oh, ma?”
“Yes?”
“Spot for Christmas Eve.” He pointed to me. “Okay? Don’t forget.”
“Of course,” Eileen said, then looked to me. “You’re free?”
“You bet,” I put on my customer service smile. Once she was out I sat next to him. I didn’t say anything, but somehow he intuited what I was thinking.
“That’s just how she is.”
He looked as pale as death, and his body was flat under the sheets as if he could have just sunk into them. And his face. His face looked slack, inactive. His eyes were unfocused and the lids didn’t want to stay open. This wasn’t Jonathan. This was some other, powerless man who didn’t yank my head back by the hair as he pounded me from behind, or fuck me in such a slow and controlled way I felt every inch of my orgasm. This wasn’t the man whose name I’d cried into the night; the man to whom I entrusted control, to whose dominance I submitted. This was another man entirely, and I loved him.
I took his hand.
“You look like shit,” I said.
“You look like an angel.” His voice crunched like gravel under a tire.
“I should tie your elbows behind your back with a belt and spank you until you scream. To get your voice back. Works every time.”
A smile curled the side of his mouth.
“A week,” he croaked so low I had to put my ear to his mouth to hear him. “I’m going to do unspeakable things to your body.”
“Really?” I kept my face to his and my voice low. “Like what?”
I realized I’d asked too much of him when he licked his lips, paused, and said, “Secret.”
He’d love to tell me, I knew that, but between having his chest cracked open and the tube down his throat, it probably hurt to speak.
“I know already,” I said. He raised an eyebrow. “I can read your mind.”
“Not this. It’s filthy.”
I reached over until my body bridged his and touched his ear with my lips. “The great and powerful Madame Monica will predict the future with utmost certainty. Are you ready to hear your destiny, young man?” I looked into his eyes so closely I could see the blue flecks.
“What’s this gonna cost me?”
“Everything.”
“Worth it.”
We are in your house. The living room. I’m naked from the waist up, and you’re in jeans and a polo shirt. You’re looking at me like you want to eat me alive, but you’re not. Yet. You’re waiting. You’re thinking. You’re constructing the next minutes of my life like a movie director blocks a scene.
You tell me to take my pants off, and I do. You watch. You like my body. The way my breasts hang when I bend over to release my feet. My ass when I bend at the waist.
When I step out of my jeans fully, you step toward me in your bare feet. I look nervous. You tell m
e to stop my hands from twitching, and when I cast my eyes down and say ‘yes, sir’ you can feel the power surge in you, that everything’s under control. Everything’s going to be all right, unless it’s not. What you have planned can go terribly wrong. The worry bothers you.
You ask me my safeword, and I tell you to shut up and fuck me.
‘Oh Goddess,’ you say. Then you take the hair at the back of my neck and pull until I’m looking at the ceiling. My lips part, and I sigh.
‘Say it. Or you can put those jeans back on and go home.’
I mouth the word tangerine, but don’t use my voice.
You look down at me and you say, ‘say it.’
I whisper it so softly you can barely hear it.
You spin me around and shove me into the kitchen. I start to turn back to you but you bend me over the butcher block. You are sharp and violent, and when you see me cringe, your dick gets hard. You want to see me scream. You need it.
You.
Need.
It.
Your dick is out, a throbbing piece of meat aimed between my legs. There’s wetness emanating from me. It would slide in so easy. You’d be sucked into my cunt so fast and you’d forget everything.
‘Say it or you go home.’ You feel me quiver under you. You think you might just have me put my jeans on and leave. That would be the right punishment for making you uneasy. You slap my ass, and I yelp as if I didn’t expect it. Your hand stings, and you’re poised to do it again, when I speak up.
‘Tangerine.’
The word is barely out of my mouth and you’re fucking me, pressing my cheek to the butcher block. Thrust after thrust...you know you’re pushing the countertop against the sensitive part of my hip. I’m yours to hurt, and you know it. The things on the counter rattle as you fuck me. Salt and pepper grinders. A canister of utensils. Fancy bottles of condiments. You pull my ass cheeks apart with your free hand so you can go deeper, gripping hard enough to bruise, watching how your fingers indent my skin. My feet come off the floor, you’re pounding me so hard. I gasp and grunt.