“Yes?”
“Do you want to … ?” Ebon nodded toward the bedroom.
“Well, that’s romantic.”
“I just thought we’d established precedent.”
“A girl likes to be wooed.”
Ebon rolled his eyes.
“Unfortunately,” she said, “I have a visitor.”
He looked into the bedroom again. Her statement was so casual that Ebon felt insulted. Vicky should make such announcements with care — or perhaps with apology, knowing as she did what he’d been through with his cheating dead wife.
“Who?”
Vicky blushed. “I’ve got my period.” She flapped her hands in a gesture of surrender. “I thought that was universal slang.”
“Slang?”
“‘Got a visitor.’ ‘Aunt Flo is here.’ That sort of thing.”
“Maybe you could just say what you fucking mean,” Ebon suggested.
Vicky had been about to take a sip. She lowered her lemonade, slightly cocking her head.
“Nevermind.” Ebon resisted the urge to sigh, along with the urge to ask for a blow job. He wasn’t exactly the kind of guy who asked outright, but a lot had changed since he’d moved to the island. Not only had Ebon become acutely aware that life was short and that pussyfooting around was a waste of time, but Aimee’s platonic cocktease dance had left him with a strong preference for straight talk. A guy might get rejected asking for a blow job, but at least he’d know enough to move on.
For the scantest of moments, he saw himself through the eyes of the Ebon he’d always been, wondering at his own behavior. Then the introspection was gone, and he found himself wondering how to proceed.
“I just wanted to see you,” he said.
“Oh,” Vicky replied, seemingly unsure whether she wanted to let his earlier transgression go or hold it against him.
“I thought we could spend the day together.”
“Oh.” Kinder this time. A reluctant smile began to spread across her wide ruby lips. Even without makeup they contrasted markedly with her pale skin: a vividly colored cartoon drawn on a white moon. “That sounds nice.”
“Sure. So it doesn’t even matter that … I mean, just hanging out was my whole idea.”
“What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know. See the lighthouse?”
She chuckled, now seemingly defused. “I’ve seen the lighthouse.”
“Maybe you want to see it again. It looks like something that belongs in this house.”
Vicky looked around. Given her extreme décor preferences, that had been a fairly big risk. And with that thought, all of a sudden, it dawned on Ebon that he didn’t know Vicky well at all. She felt as familiar as someone from his past, but in truth they’d just had a few days of acrobatic sex and little else. She wasn’t even really his girlfriend. She wasn’t the one he should run to for comfort, though that’s what he was beginning to realize he’d just done. She was a woman who got him off, and now he was proposing a trip to the lighthouse and making design suggestions? It was presumptuous. Not right. Vicky might turn out to be an insufferable bore once he got to know her better, or she might not appreciate his base taste intruding on her artistic sensibilities.
But Ebon doubted she was boring. Far from it. She’d seemed so elegant and poised — so … life-experienced and worldly — from their first moments together. They’d had enough pillow talk for Ebon to know all he needed to know, so long as his infatuation stayed at the surface. She spoke French, for instance. She traveled the world. She had wealthy clients who whiled away their days in life’s most polished corners, and she had tastes that were exquisite to the point of impracticality for all but an isolated bluff island home. And yes, she was a mother, but Ebon tried not to think about that and to keep her mentally in place as a sexual plaything. In Ebon’s life, depth was what Aimee was for. Passion and love, despite what the romance books said, never seemed to blend when poured into a single bucket.
“Thanks,” said Vicky.
“So what do you think?”
“It’s pretty cold out.”
Ebon shrugged. “I just walked here. Without calling first.” He laughed uncomfortably to no response. “It’s not bad.”
Vicky looked uninterested. “We could stay in and watch a movie.”
“Which movie?” She’d probably want to watch something with subtitles. But sophistication was hot on Vicky. She might not be willing to have sex now, but somehow he was sure that the snootier the movie, the more it would add to Vicky’s mystique for the next time he unwrapped her. And hey, maybe she’d let him play with her boobs. Maybe she’d let him fuck them instead.
“Something funny,” she suggested. “I get bummed out when the weather turns.”
“Okay.”
“Maybe a Jim Carrey movie.”
Ebon’s head turned as if on a spindle. He was about to laugh at the absurd suggestion from the cultured woman, but Vicky didn’t look like she was kidding.
“Seriously,” he said.
“Or I have Happy Gilmore. Under the TV there. Have you seen it?”
Ebon had seen it, all right. With Holly. He’d even liked it. But for some reason, hearing such a low-brow suggestion from Vicky was like watching her sniff her own armpit.
“Yes,” he said.
“So … should we watch it?”
Ebon looked at Vicky. A few locks of hair had come loose from her pony tail, so she took the rubber band out and fluffed it before beginning to retie it. But the light must have shifted, because to Ebon’s eye her hair’s color didn’t look as red as it had a moment ago. He looked toward the windows, but the sun was where it had been when he’d entered, behind the house, not yet blasting against the polarized glass.
“What?” she said.
“Your hair looks different.”
“Different how?”
“I don’t know. Did you dye it?”
She shook her head, gently pursing her lips. Then Ebon saw something else.
“Do you … ?” But he couldn’t say it. Besides, he knew the answer. Yes, she had a big zit on her chin. It was shiny, probably because she’d rubbed her makeup off in prep for her bath. Her elbows were back, hands behind her head fussing with the band. Ebon tried not to stare at her jiggling breasts. “It just looks less red,” he finished.
“Oh,” she said. “Maybe it’s the sun.”
“That’s what I thought, but the sun isn’t coming through the windows yet.”
“I meant just being out in the sun. I was in California all last week. I was out in the sun a lot there, and that brings out the red.”
Ebon looked at Vicky’s hair. The idea of her red being “brought out” was absurd. She was redder than red … except that now that he was staring at it, her hair wasn’t that red at all. It was kind of reddish brown, like burnt sienna.
“Maybe that’s it,” said Ebon.
“It was haaard coming back,” Vicky continued, her voice now dreamy, finishing with her hair and lowering her elbows. “It’s always seventy-eight and sunny there. I spent all my time on the beach.”
“I’ll bet you need a lot of sunscreen,” said Ebon, imagining all that exposed skin. He still had a bit of a boner, and the statement was vaguely (though clumsily) sexual.
Vicky shrugged.
“So you were there for work?”
“Sorta. But the best part was, my ‘client’ — and I use that term loosely — looooves the beach. So that’s why we were there. We met on the beach. I got paid to be at the beach. How cool is that?”
“Cool.”
“We just hung out and … ”
“I’ll bet you drove your clients wild, lying around in a bikini.”
Vicky looked amused. Her somehow-not-as-red hair whipped with a turn of her head. “Oh, I wish I could still wear a bikini.”
Ebon felt his eyebrows wrinkle. “Of course you can.”
Vicky smiled, disarmed. She was probably appreciating Ebon’s dutiful compleme
nt (“No, baby, you don’t look fat!”), but he seemed to be getting extra points because he’d sounded so sincere. He wasn’t acting though; he was confused because he had been sincere. Vicky had a belly like a drum and the tits of a goddess. He’d explored that territory in detail. Her wearing a one-piece swimsuit would be a crime.
Vicky sat back, then gently patted her stomach. “Mommy bulge. There’s really nothing you can do about it.”
“You must’ve done something. It sure looks amazing to me.” Perhaps he should have used the past tense, rather than the present. Her belly had been flat when he’d run his tongue across it, yes. But as his eyes fell on her loose shirt now, it seemed less so.
“Thanks.” Vicky stopped, and Ebon felt his curiosity as blue-balled as his groin. She apparently wasn’t going to explain the discrepancy. It was as if she thought he was being polite, when in fact he was annoyed that she was demurring with such false modesty, her self-effacement becoming obnoxious.
“So did you want to watch a movie?” she asked.
“Not really.”
“I hope you don’t want to play Chutes and Ladders, because the spinner is loose, and I don’t want to tax it for the few times I can get Sabrina to come up.” Her smile seemed a bit off kilter. It wasn’t at all unattractive (quite the opposite, actually), but it was different, as Aimee and Aaron had been different. Or at least Ebon thought it was different. But again, beyond sex, he didn’t really know Vicky at all.
“Do you really need to talk about your daughter?”
Vicky looked over, a wondering look on her face.
“Sorry,” he said, irritated for a reason he couldn’t understand.
“What’s wrong, Ebon?”
“Nothing.”
“Oh, come on.”
Ebon sighed, realizing with the release of tension that he’d been holding it in. He’d raised a kind of attitude wall, and it had made him snap at Vicky. But he didn’t need to hold that wall up, even though he really didn’t want to think of his hot piece of island ass as having a daughter. It was so unsexy to slam someone’s mother from behind while the headboard made a drumbeat on the wall.
“Just kind of having one of those days. And Aimee won’t let it go. About Holly, I mean.”
“She’s your sister. She’s allowed to be overbearing.”
Ebon frowned. When they’d met, it had seemed sensible to tell Vicky that Aimee was his sister — just as he’d told Holly, the time or two Aimee had come up, that she was like a sister. Hearing his own lie recited back now felt wrong, but it was too late and too awkward to correct things. Why had he said Aimee was his sister? There wasn’t anything between him and Aimee to hide. But the truth was too complicated, and his relationship with Vicky was simple. Lies, as needed, would suffice.
“She doesn’t have to be a bitch though,” said Ebon.
“Tell me about it.”
But Ebon didn’t want to tell Vicky about it. Telling her about it would make their relationship more complicated. Why did women do that? He’d thought they both understood what this was. This was about sex. So why was he here, if sex was off the table? And yet he couldn’t leave. Even though he sensed a patronizing tone creeping into Vicky’s voice, he couldn’t back away and go home. And besides, sometimes he didn’t mind being patronized. It was close to being lauded, vindicated, or proven correct. Or made to feel at home, as the center of another’s attention.
“Aimee’s cool and all, but sometimes she won’t let up. She keeps prodding me like she’s trying to find the root of something, but it’s not like there’s a root there, and I kind of just want to get on with … ”
“Well, she’s your sister.”
“I know who she is, dammit!”
Again, Vicky paused. Then she made a little come-here gesture that happened only at her wrists, her arms flapping toward her chest as if fanning an odor. Ebon considered resisting but found himself unable. He crossed to the couch and sat beside her, leaning in, his head resting on her pillowy breasts. He found his eyes on her cleavage as her hand wrapped around him, comforting.
“You know me too well,” he said, his irritation draining. Being here was like a roller coaster. All of his emotions were a soup, confused in the way they always were around Vicky. What was she to him? And why was he so drawn?
“I don’t know you all that well,” said Vicky. “But I know you’re a human being, right?”
“I guess.”
Vicky chuckled. Again: patronizing. Like she was trying to rock him to sleep. He kept his eyes on her cleavage, noticing freckles he hadn’t noticed before.
“So tell me about it,” she said. “Tell Vicky what ails you.”
“I’m tired of thinking about Holly. Aren’t I allowed to just let it go?”
“That’s up to you. Are you still angry about what she did?”
“Maybe. I guess. I don’t know.”
“What does Aimee say?”
“She says … ” But again, he didn’t want to complicate this. Whereas Aimee had seen Ebon rise to highs and plummet to lows over the course of his time on Aaron (not to mention hearing the details unfold live over the Web and phone beforehand, and knowing him almost his entire life), Vicky had been given the CliffsNotes version of his story — his own approved, boiled-down version. The correct version. The version that made everything simple, straightforward, uncomplicated, and above all easy to accept, as it should be. As it truly was.
“She says I should learn to stop being angry,” he finished.
“I think that if you’re angry, you should let yourself be angry,” said Vicky in an Aimee-should-really-know-better tone of voice.
Ebon nodded against Vicky’s breasts. “Right?”
“Right,” agreed Vicky, her chest moving as she nodded back above his line of sight. “It’s sad that she died, but I don’t think that means you have to let her off the hook. I saw it when my bastard uncle died. He was a son of a bitch and hit his wife, but when he died everyone acted as if he’d always been a saint. They cried at his funeral. The preacher gave a touching eulogy. My mother put a framed picture of him on an end table in our house, beside a small bowl with a bit of his ashes. This is the same woman that had to stomach his abuse when she’d been younger, who’d once had her jaw shattered by the man she was mourning.”
“Death forgives everything.”
“That’s the way people act. But I think it’s bullshit. She cheated on you. She broke your heart and your trust. So you know what, Ebon? It’s okay to keep hating her even though she died. She’s at fault here, not you.”
“I do hate her a lot,” said Ebon, deciding to believe it.
“When Sabrina’s father cheated on me — ”
Ebon flinched, annoyed that Vicky kept mentioning her daughter. He wanted simple, not complicated. Hot and single, not encumbered and responsible.
“— I felt totally destroyed. I didn’t cheat. He did.”
“Yeah,” said Ebon, his head nestled on Vicky’s chest.
“Just like you. You stayed true to Holly.”
“Right.”
“And after what you told me about, from before you were even married?” Vicky shook her head, and more of that not-quite-as-red-for-some-reason hair swished at Ebon’s peripheral vision. “She cheated from the start. She was always a cheater.”
“She had a high libido,” Ebon explained.
“But not for you, right?” A genuine note of anger had entered Vicky’s voice. It was as if Holly had betrayed Vicky instead of Ebon, but that was probably just Vicky being protective a few months too late. Like the sister Aimee supposedly was. “Oh no. She only had a high libido for other men.”
“Well … ” The truth was that Holly had had plenty of libido for Ebon. In fact, sometimes he couldn’t keep up. His relationship with Holly was a lot like the renewal of a preexisting contract: He always got the right of first refusal. But with someone as adventurous as Holly, a mortal man had no choice but to issue a fair number of refusals. Often she
took her needs out on the shower massager. She wasn’t shy, and when she spoke up about it, she just told him again that she had no filter. That meant she was supposed to be an open book, but had she ever truly opened? Or had she been a one-trick girl, always seeking her next stimulatory fix?
“You deserve better, Ebon.” Vicky’s hand went to his hair and began to stroke it, as if he were a dog. The opposite of sexy.
“We had our good times,” Ebon said.
“You’re idealizing the good times. Just like my mother did with my bastard uncle. Just like Sabrina does with her father.”
This time, the mention of Vicky’s daughter didn’t bother him. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, to Sabrina, her father is wonderful.”
“Is he?”
“He’s a cheating bastard.”
Ebon turned his head to look upward. Vicky’s face seemed strange from below, her red-tinged hair tickling his nose and cheeks. “Well, he doesn’t cheat on his daughter.”
Vicky looked down. Why had he once thought she had alabaster skin? She wasn’t tan, but her skin color definitely wasn’t porcelain. But of course, he’d known that. Just as he’d known she had reddish hair (bordering on brown, really), not red-red hair. He felt like he was snapping out of a nap, blinking into the realization of where he actually was.
“You don’t know him,” she said.
Ebon shook his head apologetically. “Of course not.”
“He’s a son of a bitch. He got an itch, and he ran off to scratch it, not caring that he’d be ruining all our lives. Did you know he gets alimony from me? What kind of judge awards alimony to the man?”
Ebon, sitting up, thought that alimony would likely be awarded in the direction of descending income, from the higher earner to the lower earner. But he knew it wasn’t his place to say so, even though he intuited that he should. She’d bad-mouthed Holly for him, so he was probably supposed to bad-mouth Sabrina’s father in return. But Ebon didn’t know the man, same as Vicky hadn’t known Holly. He might be an amazing father. Everyone had two faces, at least. And everyone carried their baggage.
(I have my own painful past.)
“I don’t know,” Ebon said.
“I got a raw deal. Everyone felt sorry for him because he’d just had a heart attack. Even the judge. But he’s better now. He was better right away!”
Axis of Aaron Page 39