Mary Ellen Courtney - Hannah Spring 01 - Wild Nights

by Mary Ellen Courtney

  I told him Mike had called a few times to check in. He wasn’t ready to think about Mike and me in some future widower/widow scenario. To me it had felt like Mike could take it or leave it. It was a different and surprisingly calm place to be. A year ago I might have felt insulted, but it just felt reasonable. I didn’t tell Jon any of that. His refrigerator door was going to take some time to process. I wasn’t stuck on it. But I needed it to fade into my background too.

  I called Mom; she was never home. I finally left a message that I would call from Hawaii and hoped that she was well. It was time to leave. I put the key to the house under the Buddha head, and took a long look at the party house and pool. I closed the gate and patted Sparky on the way by; the guys were going to use her, maybe they’d fall in love with her. I got into the town car the studio had sent and was away.

  FOURTEEN

  Jon was waiting for me at the exit gate. I hadn’t seen him since he’d walked down the steps at the beach cottage and disappeared. I hadn’t seen him since burying Bettina and Amber. Or drawing on my mother. Or since telling my new agent that I’d earned my way. I wondered if he would be romantic in the theory of distance and long phone calls, not so much in the practice of being there in person.

  “Aloha,” he said.

  We stood looking at each other. He was warm muscle and bone dense against me. All the wildness of the first night was still there. I was struck again by how nice it was to not have someone towering over me.

  He put his nose in my hair, then ran his hand over the new smoothness. “This is different.”

  “Not wild anymore. You like it?” I asked.

  “I like it, I liked wild, really doesn’t matter.”

  He smiled and put his arm around my waist and pulled me close. “That okay?”

  “Yes.”

  He took my carry-on and we headed for baggage claim.

  “Good flight?”

  “Except for the bounce on approach.”

  “Yeah. That gets the tourists wailing and moaning. Not as bad as Maui. You hungry?”

  “Not for food.”

  He smiled. We drove in quiet to a small condo complex where he let us into an airy studio with a jungle-like balcony overlooking the water.

  “Is this yours?” I asked.

  “Victor and Kaia’s. They come here to escape the kids. Or make them, unless my math is failing me. I have one on Maui, we swap them around.”

  “Does he have other restaurants too?”

  “Yeah. Not like the place on Kauai. He runs a string of Spam and pineapple wagons. He calls it soul food.”

  “I forgot about the whole Spam thing. Do I need to learn to love it?”

  “You might have to choke it down from time to time.”

  “I need a shower.”

  “That’s an interesting segue. There’s one on the balcony.” He opened the heavy sliding door. A light breeze ballooned the curtains; he turned on an overhead fan that looked like palm leaves.

  The balcony shower was enclosed with translucent shoulder high panels so you could see the water beyond. The air was so balmy; it was like there was no difference between the warm water and the warm breeze. It’s a blissful feeling to lose the edges and melt into the air around you. A sloppy afternoon rain started washing the air. He got undressed and then dragged a teak chair into the shower. He pulled me down on his lap just like the first night.

  We made love off and on for hours. We ended up on the floor on top of a sheet, under the sweeping palm leaves. We’d both fallen asleep. I woke up to him looking at me.

  “What happened to not watching?” I asked.

  “I’m living my life. Are you hungry now?”

  “Starving, and thirsty.”

  “I’ll bet. You can really sing.”

  “Is that good?”

  “It’s like my nervous system is riding a sine wave.”

  “That doesn’t sound so good.”

  “It is.”

  I put on the black dress and we headed to his restaurant.

  I gathered from the double takes that they were used to seeing him with someone else. We sat at a small table by the window and had Liliko’i margaritas. It was a strange combination, but anything would have tasted good.

  A waitress came over.

  “Can I get you guys anything else, JT?” she asked.

  “We’re good, Sara,” he said. “This is Hannah; Hannah, this is Sara.”

  Sara and I agreed that it was nice to meet each other and she went back to work.

  “They’re like family. You can be sure they’re all talking about you. I’ve never brought some one in.”

  “I just figured I was a new woman.”

  “Nope.”

  “Is it going to be okay?”

  “As long as you don’t throw a drink at me. I’d hear about that for a year.”

  “That’s oddly tempting,” I said. “Even after this afternoon.”

  “I know I deserve it, but can we agree to do that kind of thing in private? My command of the situation is usually a lot sketchier than it looks.”

  “I can’t see myself doing it at all,” I said. “So, JT?”

  “Jon Thomas. My father is Thomas Raymond, his father was Raymond George; it’s a pattern, the middle name thing.”

  “It’s nice, they work together. I like JT. I can imagine everyone calling you that. I don’t know if we have a family pattern, unless it’s widows with kids starting over.”

  “That’s a sobering thought. Let’s eat. How about sushi? You probably shouldn’t eat that in India. There’s a good place down the street.”

  We headed out.

  “How do you know that?” I asked. “About sushi in India?”

  “I’ve been reading about the place. I want to know where you are.”

  “You’re ahead of me,” I said.

  We had a platter of sushi then headed back to the condo. Jon looked over at me as he drove; his blue eyes flickered thoughtfully in the streetlights as they rolled off my face and down over the black dress.

  “Ah, man,” he said.

  He turned down a dark residential street, parked, and shoved his seat back.

  “Push your seat back,” he said.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Nothing’s wrong.”

  He managed to get on his knees on the floor in front of me then pushed up the dress. He made a low growling sound when he hit my underpants. Their resistance was futile, he’d figured out a way to include them in the action. He was so fast it occurred to me that they were probably always in the scenario.

  I was kind of surprised he had it in him after our afternoon. But then I still had fuel in the tank. He seemed to sprout four hands, on top of everything else. I threw myself into keeping them all occupied.

  I tried to be quiet, but I ended up taking the fat of his palm in my mouth, like biting down on a bullet while getting your bone set in an old Western. Not that it felt anything like getting a bone set, I don’t think. I’ve never broken a bone. From the sounds he was making, I couldn’t tell if I was helping him or hurting him. He wasn’t trying to get away. A dog barked along with us, then broke into baying and woo-rooing.

  When the baying and rooing was finally over Jon put his head down on my shoulder. Our hearts hammered private code back and forth through our chests as we caught our breath. His head and shoulders were shaking against me. He squeezed warm tears out of his eyes onto my bare shoulder. Oh boy, how sweet is that? I thought I was the one who cried.

  I stroked the top of his head and planted little kisses in his hair to comfort him. He started making that back of the throat squeaking sound, like people make when they’re trying to not laugh about their mother’s coochie in church. He sounded suspiciously like my brother, but I hung in there.

  “Are you okay?” Asked the ever solicitous me.

  He heaved and choked a few times. He wasn’t crying crying, he was laughing crying. He was just using my neck to try to smother the sou
nd. He turned his head to the side to get some air. One of his tears ran down the back of my shoulder. He took deep breaths and made that high “ha haa haaa” open mouth gasping sound you make when you’re trying to get it under control but you can’t breathe. Then he started back in with the wheeze squeak thing and shaking against me.

  “I hope you had your rabies shot,” he managed to get out.

  “Oh my god! That wasn’t me, that was the dog!”

  Someone turned on a blasting yard light. Maybe it was my “oh my god!” that did it. We squinted away from the white glare. It flooded the car and revealed more bare pineapple ass than was seemly for Jon’s mother’s little boy. It really glowed. It was, literally, a luminous moon rising from below his dark horizon tan line. It would have been right at home climbing out of heavy shore break sans trunks, but the front seat of a car is a totally different story. It was quite scenic. His ass has some rockin’ sculpted muscle scoops. He could give Michelangelo’s David a run for his money. Well, if David could run and Jon was seventeen feet tall.

  A man stepped out onto the porch, took one look at my man’s dazzlin’ ass and my whatever was showing, called Max the dog in, shut the door and turned off the light. I imagined him sending the women and children into the jungle for safekeeping.

  “Do you think he’ll call the police?” I asked.

  “Maybe.” Jon was still going for air and trying to not laugh. And not being real successful I might add. He pulled his head back; he was smiling like the oldest brat alive. He kissed the end of my nose. “What are they going to do?” he asked. “Call our parents?”

  “Or my owner. Woof woof. You could be in real trouble at work now. And you mooned that man. I know there’s a double entendre in there, maybe even a triple. He’s probably waiting for his daughter to come home from a date and now he’s in there having a heart attack.”

  “Or loading his shotgun.”

  “You would go there, dad. I mean it. This story could have real legs with Sara and the gang. Howling at a rising moon ass.”

  He was back laughing again.

  “Rising and setting moon,” he gasped.

  “There is that. Oh my god, I hope he wasn’t watching. Total time-lapse nature film with his dog doing voiceover. David Attenborough is going to be pissed. There’s enough material in this to keep the crew talking for years. If they’re like my crews, they’ll howl at us. We’d never live it down.”

  He finally lost it laughing. Apparently getting busted banging in a car wasn’t going to cost him any mojo at work. Getting me to howl, even though it really was pretty much the dog, might even add value. Just another way in which boys and girls are so so different. I looked around to see what, exactly, we were riding in.

  “Oh my god, Jon, we’re in a Corolla.” I said, “This will kill my mother.”

  He dove for my shoulder to bury his laughing. Max the dog yelp yelp yelped inside the house. The yard light clicked on again. We didn’t waste any time. Both our minds had tripped over to shotgun. I stuffed my underwear in the door pocket and yanked my dress around to cover up. Jon was back to only two hands. He used one to zip his pants, while he steered with the other. His foot was a little random on the gas while he zipped. We lurched and wove down the street.

  I got on my knees on the seat and looked out the back window at the man and his dog silhouetted in front porch light. They probably thought I was getting ready to top off Jon with a $20 blowjob. I doubted that Max the dog cared, except that he’d miss another three-way, but I wondered if the guy had gotten our license plate number. We couldn’t be good for the neighborhood.

  I bent over to give Jon a hand with the top button on his pants. He slid his hand up, way up, the inside of my thigh, grabbed a fistful of coochie hair and gave a little tug while he pressed a kiss down deep on my scalp.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “Any time,” I said. “Do you want a blowjob before I button this? It’s only an extra $20 for repeat customers.”

  “Do I ever, but not now. I know a guy who totaled his Porsche doing that.”

  “This is a beater, Jon.”

  “Yeah, but it’s Kaia’s beater. Talk about having some explaining to do. I’ve got nothing on Victor that’s big enough to keep him from telling that story to our kids.”

  We sat on the beach in front of the condo and listened to the surf. There was a torchy tourist luau with flaming batons going on down the way. The sounds of drumbeats and blowing conch shells were adrift on uneven wind waves. We stripped down and floated side-by-side in the water, holding hands so we wouldn’t drift apart in the darkness, then we sneaked naked up the stairs and rinsed off in the shower before getting into bed.

  “I’m sorry about your hand,” I said. “I don’t think I broke the skin.”

  “It’s just bruised. It was worth it. I didn’t even notice it at the time,” he said.

  “It sounded like I was hurting you.”

  “I’ll let you know if you’re ever hurting me.”

  We fell asleep with the door open to the clicking and clacking of palm leaves in the breeze.

  The morning after was mellow. I slid down under the covers and woke him up with the deluxe $40 valued customer version. I kissed his hand and his eyes, and let my tongue have a long silent conversation with his ears. Then I fixed coffee and fruit while he got dressed. He left for work with an odd smile and loose limbs. We probably said ten words the whole morning, and it was fine. I read on the balcony until he came back a few hours later. He had a bag of groceries for dinner, and a sack with fish sandwiches and beer to take to a beach up at the end of the island.

  It was windy and wild, and remote from the metropolis of Honolulu. It was a flat beach with no trees, just row after row of breakers pushing onto the stony shore as the wind tried to blow them back. He said the spray blowing off the backs of the waves was called liquid smoke. We sat looking toward India while people flew gliders silently in the updrafts overhead.

  “This isn’t a little thing,” he said. “We’re going to need to be careful.”

  “I know. But I have to go. I’m committed. It’s a huge deal for a first time credit like this.”

  “Of course you do. I just want us to come back to this.”

  “Do you think we can do this?”

  “I think so,” he said. “But we need to decide one thing now, that no matter what, we can be sure about each other. We’re not doing this with a lot of time behind us.”

  “Can you visit?”

  “No way. I can barely get to the mainland. Chana still needs to do some interviews.”

  “We’ll have email.”

  He smiled at me. “A satellite ping isn’t what I had in mind.”

  “I’ll leave you something. I kept my favorite aunt’s pillowcase for months after she visited.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of a pillowcase.”

  “You can have whatever you want.”

  “Good,” he said. “Let’s head back.”

  I hadn’t taken my phone; it was ringing when we walked in the door. Aunt Asp.

  “You going to answer that?” asked Jon.

  “No. I’ve answered it too many times already.”

  “Maybe it’s important.”

  “It’s not. My brother will call if it’s important. She’s just calling to be cruel. I just this second realized what my therapist meant years ago when she said I could go home on my own terms. I’m home. I don’t owe her another chance to run me down.”

  “What would she run you down about?”

  “Never can tell, that’s part of her charm. But my guess is the miscarriage. I’m sure my mother told her. My mother can no more resist giving her sister ammunition than I could stop agreeing to being stuck by the monkey tree.”

  “Stuck by the monkey tree?”

  I told him about Binky and the monkey tree. How I always fell for it, just like my mother always fell under her sister’s spell.

  We decided to go swimming before we cooked ou
r first meal together. We started dinner and I looked in the refrigerator. “There’s a can of Reddi-wip and a bottle of Grey Goose in here.”

  He smiled at me. “Grey Goose is decent stuff.”

  “Seriously? I thought you didn’t like that.”

  “I don’t like it splattered all over the bar a few hours before the mimosa crowd shows up. I didn’t say it didn’t look interesting.”

  “Does that include pouting and sticking my ass out?”

  “You’re the production designer. I’m an easy audience.”

  “You said you’ve known those girls since they were babies.”

  “It’s just us. I’m pretty sure I can keep it all straight. I just grabbed it; it’s no big deal. My feelings won’t be hurt if you don’t want to climb on me covered in whipped cream.”

  “Oh boy.”

  We had dinner, then went to bed with the can of Reddi-wip. It was one of those nights that starts out self-conscious with rattle can shaking and stuttering spatters on eyelashes, and ends up in total hot fantasy. Then it’s sticky.

  “Will you stop licking me,” I was squirming. “I feel like I’m in bed with a golden retriever.”

  “I’m almost done.” He lifted my breast and ran his tongue along the crescent underneath. “I take back what I said, that was a scary big deal. I actually got a little nervous like I was fourteen again. I’m getting chocolate next time.“

  “Well then you better get dark sheets too.”

  We tried to ignore that we were stuck together and smelled like used dessert plates, but we had to get up, take a shower and change the sheets before we could get comfortable.

  “The last time you were nervous was when you were fourteen?” I asked. “I’m so behind, you’re my first nervous boy.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “It’s true,” I said.

  “Okay, forty-one.”

  “You’re forty-one now.”

  “And I was nervous,” he said. “You’re officially caught up.”