by A. R. Hadley
“What kind of feminist are you?” he asked in his I-want-to-eat-you-alive tone.
The smug bastard, here for a week and probably trying to find his way into anything in a skirt. Good thing I didn’t wear skirts. Swiping a pair of scissors from my cute little cat cup, I stabbed the shears at the plastic wrap, cut the bow in half, and then did the same to his basket.
He laughed. I smiled, unable to help it.
After removing the crackers, sausage, and pineapples and transferring the apples, oranges, bananas, and kiwis into basket number one, I went to the shelf and grabbed some candy and alcohol wipes, the ones I had repeatedly taken from the fast-food chain. I shoved them inside the basket too.
“I’m the kind who wants her office returned because she is entitled to it, not because she is a woman but because she worked for it and earned it.”
By now he had the knot of his tie undone — finally I could breathe. He looked hot. Not desert hot. Not Hollywood hunk hot. But hot — uncomfortable.
Holding the big basket against my hip, I stood under the doorframe and smirked. “I work like a man, maybe better. I fuck with the heart of a man and without making excuses. I can drink you under the table.”
Leaving him standing there — minus one sexy, smug smile — I could still feel his eyes on me as I marched down the hallway. Jesus. I never did know when to shut my stupid fucking mouth even sober.
I walked through the line of people outside the building waiting for a hot meal but could only see the children. The dirty faces, a few drawn cheekbones. One boy stood out, a tattered blanket in his hand; he nuzzled it almost compulsively. I wanted to replace it, but the one he clutched surely meant more to him than any bargain-store fleece thing would.
I passed out the candy, sanitary wipes, and fruit, making sure I knelt in front of each child, only touching them if they wanted me to.
I smiled even though I wished to cry.
I breathed in.
I breathed out.
I looked everyone in the eye and conversed with several adults, listened to their stories. I heard them. Didn't interject, didn't offer unsolicited advice. I only nodded and expressed my concern.
After finishing, I looked up to the window of my office. The curtains were split in the middle. A little open crack on an otherwise covered pane of glass. I could see hands and fingers and the shadow of a man I had no business looking at or thinking about. I could smell him on the streets.
The money and the power.
For once in my life, the two evils beckoned me. I didn’t know if I had any strength left to fight what I wanted … or if I could continue to carry the weight of the world on my back.
FIVE
I could write a sonnet about a man's back. The curves. The arch. The muscles. The definition. Dozens of little crevices filled with immeasurable strength.
I liked to watch him paint. He often did it shirtless. He did it without question, and he made each stroke appear as easy as breathing.
I didn't want to imagine how a man who displayed such fortitude could have broken into homeless pieces or what it took for him to go months without a bed, a roof, or enough food. Except, if you asked him, he would tell you that even at the height of being a part of the streets, he’d had everything.
My niece, Gabby, wobbled toward Jeremiah, unsteady on her tiny two-year-old feet. How I’d gotten roped into babysitting for my brother and his damn one-life-number-two wife was beyond me. They never asked for favors, and I was definitely not at the top of their childcare list. I was the bottom of the food chain. The last resort. Her mother, Monica, was the one who had phoned earlier in the day. Last minute emergency, she had said. No one else, she had said.
It was Gabby who had sent me over the edge. Her face could melt the heart of a witch. Maybe some of her cuteness might rub off on me.
She stood and watched J paint for a few minutes, an eternity in the attention span of a toddler. She seemed mesmerized by the colors and strokes of the brush.
Take a number, kid. He mesmerizes me, too.
"Does she always talk this much?" Jeremiah asked.
Gabby babbled, but it was incessant, partly coherent, and she hummed.
"How would I know? Do I look like I'm good with kids?"
"You're good with them at the shelter."
"That's different."
"How so?" He had since knelt, torn the plastic from a tiny canvas, and given Gabby a paintbrush.
"You are going to ruin her little designer Beverly Hills outfit."
"Come on. They're kids’ clothes."
Oh, my hippie Zen master. He was clueless. Her clothes had probably cost more than a modest family might spend on their weekly grocery bill.
I slipped one of my white tanks over her head. She reminded me of ET in his Halloween costume, except we could still see Gabby's darling little face — dark hair and dark eyes — you wouldn't have even known she was a Drazen but for her hips and the shape of her eyes. She had Monica's eye color but Jonathan's shape, and she had his gait.
Poor kid.
Gabby held the brush in her fist and talked all kinds of shop. She slammed the dry bristles against the white square and demanded paint with her stare. Hmm… Maybe she’d inherited that demanding attitude from my brother too.
"Pwaint," she grunted.
Jeremiah was patient. He showed her the palette and the water. She made a sign with her hands as she said the word ‘water’ with an extra T and not a lot of W.
He pointed to each color and explained: "Red. Green. Blue."
Gabby took over for him, brow furrowed, spouting off the other blobs of color. She knew them all. She also knew exactly what she wanted and how to go about getting it.
"Pwaint!"
"Jesus. Let her paint already, Mr. Teacher."
"Pwaint!" She looked at me and nodded.
"Auntie Dee is being impatient," he said.
"Auntie Dee is hungry. Are you hungry, Gabs?"
Oh, she was deep in the zone now, brush filled with color and endless opportunity at the tips of her fingers. The little devil didn't even hear me.
I left the artists to work and sauntered into the kitchen, made a pan of mac n’ cheese with real cheese, not that fake goop, and my favorite noodles, rigatoni. It was one of the few things I could cook well, and I liked it.
While watching the two of them yacking it up, I wrote in a notebook and waited.
Jeremiah was a natural at everything.
It seemed whatever I wanted came hard. Or maybe that was what I preferred to think.
As long as things came hard, I was comforted.
SIX
I didn't let people touch me who weren't supposed to touch me. I didn't know why he was different or what power he held over me. He had only been at the shelter for a few weeks. Weeks of open-ended staring contests and eyes full of something I shouldn't have considered, but he must have known it or seen it or smelled my forty-one-year-old prime-of-life drive because now he stood directly behind me as I pretended to rearrange some of the shit that was always around — paperclips, documents, stuff in the office, my office, the one he seemed to think was his, as he put his nose into my hair.
I should've been disgusted. I should've stopped him.
His entire posture, and his breath on my skin, reminded me of being a little girl who needed attention. He touched my arm on the crease of my elbow. What I had to say couldn't wait any longer, or I might lose my nerve.
Turning around, I broke the contact.
He stepped back and looked over my shoulder toward the door.
"I want you to transfer, reassign, or move," I said.
"Can you excuse us please and close the door?" Pierce spoke to Haddie — the reason his gaze had been elsewhere — one of the many vendors who brought us food. How long had he been standing there? What had he seen? Would he talk to Jeremiah? "Thank you."
Haddie nodded as he exited, wiping sweat from his brow.
"Who the fuck do you think you're t
alking to?" Pierce flicked his gaze to me as the door clicked shut.
"I've been here for years." I stepped forward, closer to the fucker’s desk. My desk. I pointed at his chest. "You only just appeared. You are a disruption."
My eyes followed his lean length, and after a lazy trip up his torso, they finally landed on his blues. The color was different than Jeremiah's. Deeper. Pierce had steel in his eyes, I was sure of it, and he knew how to hold me in place with only a stare. I couldn't move.
"Are you married, Deirdre?"
Smug. Fucker.
He knew the answer. And he knew I couldn't reply because my normal sarcastic tongue was twisted up in knots … along with my panties. I tried to catch a breath, but the air had left me. The man with the solid molten beams for eyes held it in his fist next to the world.
"Engaged?" He brushed nothing off his pants, relaxed against the desk, crossed his arms and ankles, looking like he was prepping me for dinner. "Are you exclusive ... with the person you are seeing?"
I flinched, swallowed, tried to leisurely wipe my sweaty palms across my thighs.
"Your eyes give you away, sweetheart." Standing tall and straight, he extended an arm and touched one of my curls. "You are in love."
The sexy prick smirked then laughed. I swatted his hand away.
"If you're so in love, why do you continue with this cat-and-mouse game? Why can't you work with me?"
I settled my gaze on his steely blues. Something swam inside of them, and I wanted to dive in and find out what it was. I swallowed what little saliva I had left then opened my stupid mouth.
"I want to know what it’s like," I said with an ache that resonated deep inside my empty chest.
Stupid, stupid mouth. It was always getting me into to trouble. Either with my words or in the form of a glass filled with vodka.
He smiled, and for a second I thought I saw a faint recognition or a recollection he called upon, but whatever he had summoned went away and the lust returned.
"First..." He attempted to touch me, but I took a step backward. "First, I would lock the door." He studied my body and face. "Then I would tell you to stand here." He pointed to the end of the desk and started to circle me as if I were prey. "I would come up behind you, push aside your shirt and bra, and expose your tits. I would bite and flick your nipples until you cried and your knees buckled, and then I would strip you of your pants, bend you over, and enter you without even checking to see if you were wet, but you would be wet. You would be ready." His low and throaty voice in my ear had me on the verge of coming even though he hadn’t laid a finger on me. "And then I would fuck you so hard you would forget who it is you keep trying to be, and you would surrender to me. Chest on my desk..." he hissed. I shivered. "…hands gripping the edges." He rested his palms on my hips. "Each time I would re-enter you, you would forget. You would cry. I would give you what you needed until you begged me to stop."
A knock on the door caused me to jump. Pierce took his hands off my body, stepped aside, and cleared his throat. "Come in."
Damn it. Haddie had returned. Now Pierce was sure to eat him alive.
I watched as Pierce spoke, commanding him in the same manner he had me, minus the bristling sexuality. I clutched my throat, clawing at the skin of my neck, probably leaving marks.
I don't know… I couldn't feel anything.
The sound of my own heartbeat filled my ears as I walked out of the office, pulled my notebook from my purse, found a quiet corner, and wrote. Fast.
A wine tasting
You are served
I become part of the spit
in the bucket
Tannins mixing
Looking like blood
Washed down the drain
Forgotten
You'll buy a fancy bottle
An expensive kind of red
Pop the cork
and swallow something much more palatable than the bitter
I would leave you with
I
Am
Dry
and I don't pair well with others
SEVEN
“I need it rougher, please. Please.”
“I am, babe,” Jeremiah replied.
“More,” I grunted, begged.
Did I want control, or did I need to give it up?
All I knew was that I couldn't feel him.
He was behind me, driving into me like a madman, and I could not feel him. Not the way I needed to.
Face against the mattress, ass in the air, I reached back and clawed at his hips. “Fuck. Me. Harder.”
“Jesus, Dee. What has gotten into you lately?”
He shouldn't call me Dee. Not anymore. He didn't know me, didn’t know I lusted after money-suit-man who would disown me in a second or that if I kept missing confession I wouldn’t be able to keep up with the non-drinking. He didn’t know I was a drinker, a reformed drinker… if there was such a thing. Still, he thought he knew me because he was inside of me, because we shared laughs and a passion for indignity. I tried not to know him, but it was nearly impossible not to know at least some of the miniscule details in the mouse house of a space we shared.
He liked cats. He hated spiders.
He licked his lips habitually while he painted.
He rarely swore.
He didn’t leave a mess of anything in the bathroom or on his easel.
He liked to wash the dishes.
And it calmed his nerves to use crayons inside the lines of those ridiculous adult coloring books.
I continued to write about him in my notebook. I didn't call it a journal. I took it everywhere. I had written some of my best stuff while in Sri Lanka, but no one would ever see it. No one I knew anyway. It was easier to share with strangers. Like him — the man fucking me without hitting me as hard as I could stand because he was too much of a gentleman, trying to give me what I asked for but unable to make me cry, leaving no mark or scent or trail.
I could tell him a few of my private things, and he would take it or leave it and probably forget. I needed to forget, but the way he pounded me only made me remember.
I wanted a drink.
Holding onto the sheets, fisting them, I pinched my eyes shut until tears slid out of the corners. I had never wanted so many things. Because I usually wanted nothing.
What did I want from him? What could he give me? Why was I thinking of the sharp gaze of another man, one who represented everything detestable to me, while this other man, the better man, was inside of me?
I didn’t think I would be able to release.
I wanted to ride. Needed my bike between my legs. Not a dick.
The Buell I had painstakingly outfitted, customized, and made my own — the bike I’d paid for with the first of my income from the shop, my shop, the one my brother technically owned — called out my name more than the elusive orgasm I chased.
I had bought the grey, sleek 2005 Lightning XB once I finally had enough money to pay my guys and my loan — and enough cash to keep the lights on.
My body shifts with the speed
and wrestles wind
My hair blows
a million miles an hour
I allow the abide to sustain me
It carries me on its broad shoulders
I'm hunched over
Superseded
by moral ambiguity
“What are you thinking, baby?” He stopped moving. I could feel him softening. “You’ve left me.”
Why had I started crafting a poem while we were joined and trying to find our way through a passionate ritual?
I was heartless or mindless. Lost. I needed my pencil.
“Please, get off me.” Shrugging, I escaped, swiped my pencil and notebook, ran to the bathroom, slammed the door, and slid to the floor.
I couldn’t write as fast as I could think.
Hurry. Hurry. Please.
“Dee.” He rapped at the door.
“Go jerk off, Jeremiah.” The pencil kept moving of
its own accord. “I can’t fuck you or blow you.”
The words came out of my mouth and onto the page like tears or blood. A result of an old wound that needed cleansing. Jeremiah hadn’t caused it. He didn’t deserve it, but someone had to bear the brunt of it.
I thought I heard him make a noise, like the sound of an injured animal retreating. He needed to give me space. Hadn’t he learned anything about me in the two months we had spent together playing the pseudo version of man and wife, painter and muse, starving artist and natural-born brooder?
I finished. Read the words. Erased. Rewrote. I read them so many times it hurt. Blinking away tears, my nose filled with so much snot and snivel I couldn’t breathe, I set the notebook aside, stepped into the shower, and let the water scald me. My face heated to a million degrees. My sinuses drained, but my thirst increased. My throat felt parched. I didn’t think I’d had a drop of water all day. Opening my mouth, I allowed the water from the showerhead to enter me. Stupid. But at this point, what did I care? After weeks of formerly homeless Jeremiah finding his way inside my body, weeks of fantasizing about another man who smelled of old-fashioned peppermints and money, months of craving a drop of a drink — not the kind flowing from Los Angeles’ disgusting tap, a real drink, a warm drink, a burn, a clear liquid that would numb my nerves, make me feel or not feel — I didn’t care.
I stepped out, wrapped a towel around my body, and opened the door. He wasn’t anywhere.
Papers lined the floor
Crumpled
Wasted words
My thoughts spilled into fine lines
In the end
It meant nothing
A reminder
A blur
A spot on someone's windshield
He was gone.
One tiny room: my bed, my hippie couch, Jeremiah’s easel and canvases, my desk and notebooks, my shelf, my grandmother’s rosary beads.
He was gone.
I went to the window, shoved the curtain aside, and looked at the pavement. He must have taken my bike.