I asked, “What’s that?”
She sat next to me before she opened the container and put two fingers in, then Jackie rubbed her fingers across my cheeks.
She said, “Aloe vera. Should help with the burns.”
“Thanks.”
“Whatever.”
“Yeah. Whatever.”
When she was finished, she went back to her side of the room and eased back in the bed.
I reclined on the sofa.
“Dmytryk.”
“Yeah.”
“The bed is big enough for both of us.”
“You sure?”
“Just stay on your side.” She moved to the far left side. “You’re in enough pain.”
I eased off the sofa and went to the right side of the bed. I took off my suit pants and shirt, felt my wounds, and wondered how much Jackie knew. I wondered if she was asking me about being an assassin because she knew what I had done. I pulled off my socks and slid underneath the covers.
Jackie was already in a deep sleep.
Not long after, I went to sleep too.
It had been six months since I was in the same bed with a woman.
My side of the bed was on the right. I moved close to the edge and went to sleep craving my wife. But when I woke up I was in the center of the bed, the way I had grown used to sleeping on my bed at home after Cora had left. I had cuddled next to Jackie, her warm body up against mine. My fingers traced her skin, then she captured my hand. I thought she was about to move my hand away, but she brought my hand up to her breast. I rubbed her nipples and squeezed her breast, then adjusted, found myself wanting to kiss her neck, her shoulders, and I did, I kissed her until she turned and kissed me back. She kissed me like I was her husband and I closed my eyes and kissed her like she was my wife. I rubbed her and kissed her and felt her and she kissed me and rubbed me and felt me.
It became too hot, and I eased away from her.
She whispered, “Dmytryk.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No. That felt good.”
“It felt good to me too.”
“Put your arm around me again.”
“Are you okay?”
“No. I’m not okay. But what you were doing, that made me forget all the bad things in my life.”
I moved back and put my body next to hers. Jackie moved back into me and made herself comfortable. A moment later she turned and faced me, put her hand on my cheek.
She asked, “Your face feel better?”
“It’s calmed down. Thanks.”
Without warning she kissed me again. It was a soft kiss, but it was direct. Her lips felt good and I closed my eyes. It was the kind of kiss that reminded me that it had been too long since I had been intimate. She pulled me closer and she put my hand where she was the softest. Then she touched me where I was becoming the hardest. Some need inside me came alive and I became voracious, put my hand inside her hair, and pulled her face to mine, kissed her while she massaged me.
“You liked it.”
“Liked what?”
“You were standing in the door frame watching Sammy and me make love yesterday morning. You wanted to be where Sammy was. You wanted to be Sammy.”
“Believe what you want.”
“Don’t lie, you pervert. You like the way that feels? When I do that, you like that?”
“I do.”
“Help me get through the night. Come here and help me grieve for Sammy.” Her voice was heated and lined with a sensual pain. “Come give me what I need and I’ll give you what your wife stopped giving you. You can close your eyes and pretend I’m her, if that helps you any. You can call me her name too.”
“Don’t mention my wife.”
“I was just saying that if it helped your fantasy, you could call me Cora if you wanted to.”
I paused. “Don’t say her name. Not now. Not right now.”
Jackie kissed me again, kissed my face, sucked my neck, and massaged me.
I asked, “Where are we going with this?”
“I think you know.”
Jackie reached inside her purse and proffered me a condom that had been bought for Sammy’s pleasures. Holding a condom that had been meant for another man felt blasphemous. Jackie removed her lacy bra. Then she took off her dark, lacy thong. I started to speak but she kissed me again, her soft tongue snaking deep inside my mouth. She kissed me and held the firmness and frustration that came from six months of sexlessness in her hand. It seemed like forever went by before I stopped kissing her. I didn’t know how to stop kissing her. I didn’t want to stop kissing her. Not because it was so good, but because I knew what came next. Adultery, the most common sin, was sucking my tongue and pulling away my clothing.
I said, “We’d better stop.”
“You have values in a world that has no values. You, my friend, are a serious minority.”
“You were with Sammy yesterday.”
“You’re right. You’re right. This is wrong.”
“On many levels.”
She caught her breath. “One of us should go sleep on the sofa.”
“Okay. I will.”
“But not right now. Hold me for one more minute.”
Jackie’s body felt good against mine, regardless of whose mistress she was. She felt too damn good. But I pulled away and sat on the edge of the bed.
I asked, “How did you end up here, Jackie?”
She whispered, “Get back in bed and hold me for a while.”
It took a moment, but I did what she asked. I snuggled up close, wrapped around her body. It had been a long time since I had held a woman. Holding her felt wrong, but it also felt good.
She said, “Sometimes I feel so alone in this world. Sometimes I feel so damn alone.”
“Same here.”
“You asked me how I ended up here.” A moment later Jackie said, “I guess if I was like my mother, then my life would’ve been better.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing. I don’t like telling my business.”
“It’s up to you. But I won’t repeat it, if that’s your concern.”
“My mother has two MBAs and a Ph.D. She’s a professor. My father is equally educated. So, in their eyes, I’m the slacker in the family. I’ve always been the outcast. I went into the military, maybe to spite them, married a man they hated, again to spite them. They’d never send a dime to help me. They cut me off when I didn’t go to college. Then they disinherited me when I married the loser I married. But the big thing for them was college. No college, no trust fund and you’re on your own. My birth name was Cholita Gonzalez de Lupo. But I changed it to Jackie Brown after high school, right before I joined the military. I took the name from the movie that had Pam Grier in it. I loved Jackie Brown.”
“Why not just go back home?”
“I’m dead to them. No contact in the last eight years. Not even a text message or e-mail.”
“My wife was the same way with her family.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“Such is life.”
I pulled away from her heat and sat up, but she took my hand and pulled me back to her.
She said, “Come back and hold me again.”
I held her. She rubbed her body up against me. I became excited. I rubbed her skin. She moaned. I kissed her skin and she pulled me closer. She kissed my hand, sucked my fingers. Then I was on top of her, between her legs, grinding on her, the moment almost out of control. I eased inside the heat of a dead man’s mistress. She was on fire, but I dominated her, forced her to feel euphoria.
“Wait. Put a condom on.”
I stopped, backed away from the temptation of her flexuous body, and took in a panoramic view of her curves and softness, then shook my head and caught my breath. I’d been with one woman the last six years. She had been gone for six months, but my wedding ring made this feel wrong. I had read that it took half the time a relationship lasted for someone to heal. I still had over two year
s to go.
Robbing a bank was easier than breaking my vows. No matter what Cora had done, no matter where she was, the ring I wore reminded me of my onus, of my promise.
I said, “We really should stop.”
“You’ve already been inside me. The connection has been made. So it’s been done.”
“In some ways. Yeah. It’s been done.”
“Bareback. You were inside me bareback. I don’t do bareback.”
“Sorry. I was . . . I’ve been married a long time.”
She bit her bottom lip. “Did it feel good?”
I rocked. “Amazing.”
“Yeah. That felt amazing.”
“This wasn’t what I intended, Jackie.”
“This won’t change your debt, so get that out of your head.”
“I don’t want you to think that.”
“I know. I was joking. But since it’s done, we might as well finish the wrong that we’re doing.”
“You’re Sammy’s girl.”
“Sammy is dead.”
“I know.”
“And your wife left you.”
“I know. But I’m still a married man.”
“So. Since this unexpected thing has gone this far, either we finish it, or I’ll have to be a lady and excuse myself to the bathroom and complete what we started, and you’ll be out here doing the same.”
“I’d regret this in the morning.”
“Me too.”
“But?”
“To be honest, Sammy’s inside my head.”
“He’s inside my head too, Jackie. I saw him die.”
“I feel him inside my body. I smell him on my skin. I don’t want the last man I slept with to be a dead man. I know it sounds bad, or stupid, or desperate. I might be crazy right now, but I want you inside me. I want you inside so I can stop feeling Sammy. I need to feel somebody else or I’ll lose my mind.”
“Jackie—”
“Stop being a gentleman and just open the condom.”
I’d spent countless nights worrying about my wife. Not knowing where she was had been the hardest part. I couldn’t get her out of my head. Some nights I needed to feel her so badly that I had to please myself. Countless nights I pretended my hand was her hand, my hand was her mouth, nights I had to spit in my hand and imagine my wet palm was like being inside her, nights I’d spent looking at her photos and grimacing and grunting and battling thoughts that refused to end, thoughts that had plagued my mind sixty-nine times a day. And when I was done, I’d feel so angry.
After I put the condom on, Jackie came to me and we kissed again.
I caught my breath. “How do you want to do this?”
“Effectively and with aforethought and malice.”
I smiled a little.
She yielded a one-sided smile and whispered, “Sometimes sex isn’t about sex.”
“Really?”
“Sometimes it’s about something else.”
“Like what?”
“Sometimes it’s about getting rid of the ghosts.”
She gave me soft kisses, butterfly kisses, kisses on the neck and lips, then my tongue met hers and a ravenous dance began. I didn’t know if I was kissing love or tasting an evil that had gone dormant. She eased down on her back and pulled me on top of her. The injuries kept me from moving the way I wanted to, but I moved. I was where Sammy had been. I was inside the warmth of his home away from home. A minute or so later, Jackie reached down and took the condom away. She pushed me on my back and mounted me, just like my wife used to. I moved inside her not knowing I was sinking into the warmth and tightness of a brand-new duplicity. It had been a long time, and right or wrong, my dead friend’s mistress or not, I was human and had my frailties. It was crazy. It was erotic. It was wrong. And it felt good. I closed my eyes and pretended I was back in my bed in Detroit, pretended I was with Cora, and every pain went away. When the pain left, the wildness came. Jackie was a rough lover, a lover in search of pain. She began having a spastic orgasm. Her hands pulled the covers from the mattress, then she tugged the sheets as she moaned Sammy’s name, and my moment was almost destroyed. I gripped a handful of Jackie’s hair, pulled her mane into a ponytail and held it like I wanted to yank it out at the roots, pulled her hair like I wanted to break her neck, then I moved against her with disdain. If this was the season of deception, death, and infidelity, so be it. I came and held her until I could breathe again. I was hot. I was sweating. So was she.
She smiled and whispered, “You’re pretty good. I thought you’d be a real bad lay.”
“Same for you.”
“You’ve made me get there twice already.”
“Really?”
“Not many men have been able to do that, so have a drink and pat yourself on the back.”
“You’re pretty good yourself.”
“We have a good fit.”
A few minutes later she went and got a towel and cleaned me.
She thought I was done, but I wasn’t.
It had been six months sans intimacy, and now the dam had been broken.
She said, “Put a condom on this time.”
“Why bother?”
“Just put it on. Fill it up and I’ll dump it when we’re done.”
I put a condom on and took control again, made her forget about Sammy and scream my name.
She forgot about Sammy while I remembered and fantasized about my wife.
When we were done, Jackie removed the condom, went inside the bathroom, and shut the door.
I listened but I didn’t hear the toilet flush.
I waited for her to come back, wanted to use her and keep the fantasy going, wanted to use her to escape this reality, but after an hour of waiting for her to come back to me, I had fallen asleep.
12
When I woke up coughing and in pain at sunrise, Jackie’s scent had saturated my skin. The sweetness from her perfume wafted from the bathroom into the suite, but she was gone. Three hours had passed since she’d taken the condom and gone inside the bathroom. It felt like a dream. My guess was that she had slept for two hours, then eased out of the bed, packed her bags, and abandoned me. Abandonment seemed to be the story of my life.
She left a note that said she had caught a taxi to the airport so she could get on the first flight into Atlanta. She wasn’t going to risk getting snowed in and miss the job Eddie Coyle had waiting.
The note told me to look between the mattresses on the side of the bed closest to the window. When I did, I found her loaded .22. Catching a plane meant that she had to leave it behind.
Jackie was gone and I was glad. The remorse was strong. I’d betrayed Sammy and his ghost was sitting in the room next to me, a knife in its back.
And now I had betrayed my wife.
Jackie’s note said that I’d better be on time for the Atlanta job, and above all to be professional. The word professional was written in capital letters and underlined three times.
Last night had been a new mistake for her as well, I knew that for sure. Her note made it clear that it had never happened.
I turned on my laptop and went online. First I searched for news on Rick. Minutes later I hit the Web sites for the news stations back in Los Angeles. Our crime was a day old and it was already old news on the West Coast. Still I searched for about an hour. I called my house in Detroit and checked the messages. There were none from Cora. Then I searched for her, hit the usual Web sites. I went to her friends’ pages on Facebook and other social networking sites. I checked the faces of the people on the sites. It was as if she had never existed.
Twelve hours passed like six months in solitary confinement.
I covered the rest of Texas and Louisiana, then took my journey through Alabama to get to Georgia. Since Los Angeles, my Buick Wildcat, the car I had inherited from Henrick, had covered over 2,200 miles of driving through rain, Dairy Queens, Super8 motels, and below-freezing temperatures. I’d been traumatized, beaten, and had lived on little sleep and covered
2,276 miles in less than three days. If I hadn’t been on Vicodin and been slowed down by Jackie, I could’ve made it to Atlanta in two days.
I played foreign language CDs until I stopped in Meridian, Mississippi, mostly Italian and French. I needed something to keep my mind occupied and away from the pain. I needed to close my eyes, so I grabbed the blanket out of the backseat and rested in a hotel parking lot for almost two hours.
When I fell asleep, it felt like someone was inside my car with me.
It was Sammy.
I could smell him; his Old Spice scent was inside my car, deep inside the leather.
I had seen Sammy in the back of that car in Phoenix. He had been as clear as day.
The local radio station said schools, colleges, and many businesses were closed. Up ahead, one car had flipped over and another had become good friends with the center divider. I eased around the traffic jam and came up on exit 7. Exit 7 was Cascade Road. The bottom of the ramp was stacked up with traffic, another accident there, and it took another ten minutes before I was able to negotiate a right turn. Going right was easier than going left. Traffic wasn’t moving in that direction. I headed west and went outside of the city’s perimeter, like the instructions said, and drove toward the strip mall that held the Starbucks.
Another wave of pain and fatigue hit me. Eyes burned. Legs cramped.
I was exhausted. My body hadn’t had real food in over two thousand miles and I was famished. Eyes on the road, I reached over to the passenger seat and pulled my suit coat over to my lap, then fished inside the pocket and pulled out the bottle of Vicodin. I shook the bottle and the pills rattled like a poisonous snake. It was dangerous to do in never-ending traffic, but I opened the bottle and popped another pill, then washed the drugs down with cold coffee. I held the bottle in my right hand as I drove, then glanced at the name on the front of the prescribed medication from time to time.
My gas level was in the red so I pulled into the BP gas station on Cascade Road.
Businesses and banks stood sentry on the four-lane boulevard. The area looked like it was populated with the middle class and the new rich. The streets were filled with Benz and BMW owners. This was where doctors, lawyers, and dentists made and kept their money in banks.
Tempted by Trouble Page 14