by CD Reiss
“She’s not here,” a voice said from behind me.
It was Zack. His hand was out to shake. I looked at it. Considered ripping it off. But it was a funeral for fuck’s sake. I shook his hand. I could break his face another day.
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know. No one does. Apparently she didn’t go to her mother’s funeral either.”
“What did she say?” My throat burned with bile to ask, but I had to swallow it back. Let it burn again. None of this was my choice, and it wasn’t about me. It was about Diana. “Anything? Last night? This morning?”
“Nope.”
“Why aren’t you trying to find her?”
“I don’t know what you think—”
“This is her father. He was everything to her. And you don’t know why she’s not here?”
“I’m not her keeper.”
“Yes, you are.” My promise to keep my shit together was falling to pieces. I gripped his elbow as hard as I’d ever gripped anything. If I didn’t, I was going to rip off his balls.
“What are you doing?” He tried to wrench away but was as cognizant of the crowd as I was.
“You’re supposed to take care of each other,” I hissed. “If you don’t hold up your end—”
“I’m not fucking her. Jesus.”
I loosened my grip enough for him to get away.
He rubbed his elbow. “You’re a damn psychopath.”
“I saw you in our lobby.” I was as good as calling him a liar. I was also starting to doubt he was lying at all.
“A few days ago? Lloyd was sick, really sick, and I took her home. Look, I tried. I admit it. Her ring was off, so I tried. But she’s all yours, okay?”
“It’s not…” I stopped myself and straightened my cuffs. I didn’t want to be misunderstood. “It’s not that she’s mine. She needs to be treated right. That’s all. No more than that.”
“What do you want me to say?”
I looked around. We were being watched. They’d seen my vise grip on Zack’s arm. I felt like a criminal.
“Ask around, all right? See if anyone knows where she is. Please,” I said.
“All right. For her. Not you, because you need help.” He tapped his temple, saying I was crazy. Which I was. Completely out of my mind.
“I’m sorry about your arm.”
He waved it off and went to talk to a group of three young women Diana had known in college. I forgot their names, but I knew they wouldn’t know where she was.
I looked at Lloyd, painted in repose. The middle-aged woman kneeling in front of him made the sign of the cross and got up. Before I could think twice about it, I took her place, putting my knees on the pink velvet bench and my elbows on the brass bar.
“Lloyd, buddy,” I said so softly I didn’t know if the dead could hear me. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get her back. It’s complicated.”
She missed her mother’s funeral too.
I felt stupid, but I couldn’t keep myself from talking to a dead guy. I was out of control, but not in a frightening way. “She’s going to be really broken up about you, and it’s not going to kill her. I know. But I don’t want her to be alone.”
She missed her mother’s funeral too.
“I’m not a praying guy. I don’t believe in miracles. But I want to make sure she’s okay. So—”
She missed her mother’s funeral too.
I didn’t have to finish the sentence. Of course. I knew exactly where she was. Finding her there was a shot in the dark, but darkness was all I had.
“Lloyd. You’re all right for an in-law. See you on the other side.”
Chapter 44
I was aware she was an adult woman who was perfectly capable of taking care of herself. That unimpeachable truth sat in my consciousness right next to the fact that she needed someone to take care of her. The best someone for the job was me, but if not me, someone. Even adults who could take care of themselves needed to be taken care of.
I didn’t try to make sense of it. The two ideas would never sing in harmony. Fuck it. I could own them both.
Manet’s Luncheon In The Grass was in Paris. She could have caught a flight. The airport was my next stop, but first I had to check the Impressionist gallery at the Met. It was a short hop to Central Park.
I didn’t get past Madison Avenue because I ran right into the beating heart of a protest.
The street was blocked by blue sawhorses so police could keep traffic away from the throngs of people holding signs (Christians Against Blasphemy! Some Art Is SIN!) and chanting slogans I couldn’t understand.
“Go around 84th,” a female cop told a family of tourists. “Back that way. Left. Left. Straight. Can’t miss it.”
“What’s going on here?” the father asked.
“New exhibit. People don’t like it. There’re pamphlets all over the street if you want to grab one.” Not wanting to get embroiled in a discussion, she held her arm out to someone lollygagging. “Move along. Move along, everyone.”
I picked a pamphlet off the ground.
IS THIS ART OR BLASPHEMY?
Under the headline was a color picture of Serrano’s Piss Christ.
I smirked. The Piss Christ was a big joke on everyone. Maybe. A photo of a white plastic crucifix that was (possibly) in a glass of (what could have been) urine meant to drive everyone batshit while the artist sat back and watched. Pure genius.
I wasn’t an art guy. Not the way my wife’s family was. Pieces like Piss Christ made me laugh, because they didn’t put food on the table. Didn’t solve any problems. Didn’t make money for more than a couple of people. It was art. A conversation starter. You want to poke everyone? Say you’re defiling the crucifix.
Holding the pamphlet over a trash can, I stopped. The photo glowed red and orange. If you forgot it was supposed to be urine, it was beautiful. If you didn’t think about the corruption of purity, the oranges and reds had a hallowed life of their own.
As if the cross made the urine holy.
And I thought, why did I think it was my filth that ruined Diana?
Why did I not think Diana purified me?
Why wasn’t she cleansing me?
Like a checkerboard that you always assumed was black on white, but once you saw the possibility that it could be white on black, you couldn’t unsee it. The mind goes back and forth with the opposites, melding them into an agreement of inverses. The way a grown woman could take care of herself and need to be taken care of, she and I could ritually defile and purify each other, black on white, white on black, spinning like a pinwheel faster and faster into constancy.
I let the pamphlet drop into the garbage. She and I were linked like black and white as long as the world spun, and I knew that on the day of her father’s funeral, she wasn’t in the museum.
Chapter 45
“I don’t have the key,” I repeated to the doorman. “Look at me. You know me. I’ve never needed a key. I’ve been coming in and out of Lloyd’s co-op for five years and I haven’t raped or killed anyone.”
The doorman knew me. He also knew Lloyd had died and had admitted Diana was in her father’s apartment.
“Tell me what you’re checking for and I’ll look for it,” he said.
“My wife. Please. She’s not answering the phone, and I know she’s upset.”
He didn’t know I’d signed and sent the divorce papers. He didn’t know I hadn’t seen Diana in days or that I’d given up on us. But he knew I wasn’t going away, so he unlocked the little cabinet behind the lobby desk and took a key off the hook.
I followed him to the elevator and up to the front entrance with the plant in the hall.
He knocked, waited forever, knocked again, waited an eternity, then shrugged. “Sorry, Mr. Steinbeck, but I can’t open it if—”
“The back way. She could be in the kitchen.”
He looked at me with narrowed eyes. “I have to get back to the lobby.”
“If she’s hurt herself and y
ou didn’t open the door, I’ll do worse than sue you.”
“Fine.”
We walked down the hall, around the corner, and through the door to the back stairwell. We heard a muffled, high-pitched squeal.
“The teapot,” I said, knocking before he had a chance to raise a goddamn objection.
No answer.
“Open this door,” I said. “At the very least, the stove’s on.”
He opened the door, revealing a kitchen washed in twilight, the blue flame of a gas burner, and a violently whistling teapot that rattled. It must be almost empty. I reached for the knob. That was when I saw her.
She was no more than a shape under the window, barely visible in the darkening room. Knees to chest, back to the wall, arms around legs.
“Adam?” Her voice was soft in disbelief.
“Ma’am?” the doorman said. “I’m sorry to bother you.”
“Get the fuck out.” She said it softly, but with conviction.
He left, snapping the door closed. I crouched to see her. She was cast in twilight shadows. Blocks away, a car alarm went off. A crosstown bus ground the brakes with a deep grumble a New Yorker would barely hear unless they were trying to listen to their wife’s soul cry out.
“Can I turn a light on?” I said.
“No.”
“Were you going to leave the teapot on there all night?”
“I meant to get it. Did you go to the wake?”
I sat on the floor with my back to the stove and one leg bent. “Packed. Wall-to-wall people.”
“I should have gone.”
“Why didn’t you?”
She played with her fingers in the dark, worrying at corners that weren’t there. “They’d all wait for me to cry, and I can’t. I don’t want anyone to see.”
“See what? That you’re not crying?”
“They’ll think I’m a monster.”
“Everyone knows how much you loved him. They’d think you had superior self-control.”
“That’s me. Self-control girl.”
“Are you hungry?”
“No.”
“Do you want me to finish making the tea?”
“I don’t know what I want.”
“I’m making you tea.” I got up on a hand and a knee. “I don’t even care if you drink it.”
After standing and straightening my jacket, I put the teapot under the faucet. When it was full and the sound of the water left us in the semi-silence of New York, I heard her whisper.
“Get out.” Her voice had a flat conviction, almost dominant in its command.
“I’m going to stay here and take care of you,” I said, flipping on the burner. “You don’t have to like it. I’m staying. You’ve gone through too much alone already.” I shifted the teapot as if it would make a difference. “You had no support in Montauk. None when you got home. Maybe Lloyd was here when you got the signed divorce papers. I don’t know. What I do know is I’m depleted. If I had to face something like this right now, I’d have nothing left.”
She sat on the floor, unmoving, staring into the middle distance.
“You need me,” I said, “and you’re taking everything I can give you.”
She blinked. No more. Watching the teapot had the expected effect, so I kicked off my shoes by the back door and sat in front of her. I took her bare foot in my hands and rubbed it, digging my thumbs into the soft part. She groaned and woke up a little. I dug harder, pushing out the tension, letting her know I was there. She flinched from the pain but came around, making eye contact in the dark room.
“I love you, Diana.”
“I don’t want you to.”
“Tough.”
The teapot hissed. Her head moved so slightly I could barely perceive her saying no, as if I’d misunderstood.
“I want you to hurt me,” she said.
I dug my thumbs in harder. She didn’t resist or react.
“Take it from me.” She pulled back her foot.
“What do you mean?”
“What you did to Serena. Give it to me. Take it. Make everything hurt. Make me do things.”
The teapot whistled, and my dick swelled.
“Do you know what you’re asking?”
“Yes. I’ll say pinochle if I have to. But no means yes.”
I stood and turned off the burner. I hadn’t gotten a cup or a teabag. I hadn’t made a plan or a list of limits. We hadn’t had a cold, honest discussion to protect us from each other.
“It’ll work out better this time,” she said from below me.
“No.” I had to put my foot down. She was in no condition to give up her will so completely.
“Do you know why you scratch an itch?” she said, getting on her feet.
“It’s still no.”
“Because an itch is pain.” She peeled off her T-shirt. She wasn’t wearing a bra, and the streetlights on her nipples cast long shadows across her breasts. “A scratch is greater pain. It drowns the itch out.”
“Diana. What you’re asking for takes hours of negotiating and talking.”
I didn’t want to talk. Didn’t want to turn on the lights. I wanted to give her what she asked for, and though a part of me cried against it, I couldn’t help but play the scene in my mind. Her body was so beautiful in the soft light, her skin satin, waiting to be marked. I could destroy her utterly and put her back together.
“I trust you.” Her voice was a velvet blanket I wanted to rip into a scream.
“Do you?” I reached for a hard nipple and pulled it.
Her eyes fluttered closed when she gasped. She couldn’t have known how bad it could get. She couldn’t have foreseen it. “Yes.”
But I could play it out. I could give her what she needed. But I couldn’t.
“Please,” she implored. “Make me.”
I could.
I twisted her nipple until she grimaced. I ached for more, and I was going to get it. I took a deep breath of acceptance. I was a sadist, and a masochist was asking to be hurt. I loved her with every bone in my body, and if giving her what she needed broke that love, I could at least give her what she needed.
As if she knew I’d come to a decision, she pulled away and pushed me aside, dodging to get to the door.
The first move was the hardest because it set the tone, and without preparation or discussion, I was playing it by ear.
I took her by the throat before she got past me and pushed her against the refrigerator. She clutched my arm.
“This what you want?”
“Fuck you,” she spit.
“No, huntress. Fuck you.” I stuck my free hand down her sweat pants. She was soaked.
She fought me. She fought hard, twisting and punching. So hard I wondered if this was what she wanted. Wrestling her to the floor, I got her on her stomach and put my knee between her shoulder blades, gasping for breath. I pulled my erection out but left my pants on.
“What’s your name?”
“Diana. Get off me.”
I grabbed a handful of hair and jerked her head back so I could see her. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-eight-fuck-you.”
I held her hair, moved my knee, and got her pants off. She hit me so hard I saw stars. She made it two steps before I got hold of her wrist and threw her over the kitchen table.
“Self-defense advice,” I snarled. “Don’t end up on your stomach.”
She growled and twisted. I had control of her for a moment, but I knew I’d let her get away again. It was how I exerted control and how she surrendered it.
I could do this.
I could keep it safe. I could be the master. I could play the game. I had no rules, no contracts, no list of hard limits, but I knew her. I knew her better than I knew any other human being. All I had to do was trust that.
I jammed my hand between her legs, sinking three fingers in her. “You’re so fucking wet. I could just fuck you right now like a nice guy. Just fuck your cunt sore and make you come. But that wasn
’t what you wanted, was it?”
A rack of cooking supplies sat by the fridge. A bottle of oil was stuck sideways between soy sauce and salt. I grabbed it and opened it with my teeth, spitting out the cap. I dumped it onto her lower back, letting plenty fall into the crack of her ass. She’d need it.
“We could have done this nice. But have it your way.”
Two of my wet fingers drove into her ass. She held back a scream. I pushed her face into the table, stretching her ass. I didn’t have plugs or tools. I didn’t have time or cooperation. This wouldn’t be painless, but it wouldn’t be without pleasure either.
“No!” she said.
But no meant yes, and though I thought I’d stop when she said it, I didn’t. I trusted her and myself.
“You’re taking it. All of it. I’m going to tear you apart.”
She rocked back and forth violently, kicking and flailing.
I let her go before driving her to the floor. She crawled out of the kitchen. I snapped up a towel, throwing it around my neck.
I found her in the dining room with her back to the table. The front door was steps to the right, but she backed away in the other direction.
“Get on your knees and I’ll take it easy on you.” One step forward.
“No.”
One step back.
A horn honked outside. She got distracted, and I lunged. Her foot slipped on a bead of oil on the floor. I caught her and drove her to her knees at the same time, pushing her face on my erection. When she opened her mouth to scream, I shoved my cock in it. Her face went beet red as I pushed down her throat. Her hair was a mess. Her fingernails dug into my thighs. When she looked up at me, her eyes were webbed with red and she was so close to utter submission, I almost came in her mouth.
She gulped air when I pulled out. Before she could get away, I was on her, twisting her onto her side. I put my forearm on her head to keep her still. Her leg flailed over my shoulder. With my other hand, I put my dick at her ass. Held her still. She bucked. This was going to rip her up if she didn’t stay still.