Resist (Songs of Submission #6)

by Reiss, CD

  Up ahead, a big white truck was parked and running outside a light industrial building. The building was painted west-side tasteful—charcoal, with white trim and a chartreuse door—and guys in bunny suits trotted in and out with six-inch diameter hoses. I checked the address, and I was sure I had the right one.

  A guy in a polo shirt put orange cones on the sidewalk, stopping me. “Street’s closed.”

  “Is that twelve thirty-eight?”

  “Sure is.”

  “I have an appointment here.”

  “Not today, you don’t. Got a lead and asbestos removal team coming in. It’s a hazard, so you’re going to have to go around the block if you want to pass.”

  I pulled out my phone. No message. Crossing the street, I craned my neck around the truck and saw Jessica in the side alley, arguing with a guy holding a clipboard. Her smooth veneer was slipping, just a little. It seemed to be as much of a surprise to her as it was to me.

  Of course.

  Jonathan.

  Well. Didn’t that just suck ass.

  I started calling him and thought better of it. I texted him and deleted the whole thing. I’d already thrown out one unfounded accusation and gotten no reply. A string of them would do no more than make me look psychotic.

  I walked to Washington Boulevard, where I’d at least be able to find a café where I could sit down and blow my cab money. I found a purple building housing a tea shop called Yellow Threat. I got something hot and herbal and sat down on the outdoor patio.

  She texted me soon after.

  —So sorry. I’ll be held up 30 min—

  I felt like her co-conspirator at that point. Jessica and me against Jonathan. I was determined to understand the situation so I could help him. His ex-wife, perfectly content with his broken heart until she saw him with me, was hell-bent on destroying him for money and spite. She wanted to meet so she could use me, and Jonathan wanted to prevent that so I didn’t hurt myself or him. Both of them underestimated me.

  They forgot I was a musician, that I’d gone to a performing arts school and been the victim of manipulation and backstabbing. I’d already opened my case and found my strings cut and my staff notes swapped. I’d already been given the wrong time for auditions. I couldn’t come out of that world without learning a thing or two.

  —I’ll be at Yellow Threat for an hour if you want to come by—

  Jessica and I, working against Jonathan to see each other. Ridiculous, yet somehow inevitable.

  I checked my watch. I’d definitely lost a writing day. I wasn’t happy about it, but there was nothing I could do but warm my hands on my tea. The sidewalk made the block walkable, but it was empty. The light industrial street had been taken over by architects and production companies at the turn of the twenty-first century, and they’d painted everything in bright colors and edgy murals. I noticed one of Geraldine’s half a block away. She’d painted the side of the building to look as if I could see through it to the highway, as if she wanted to negate whatever happened inside.

  I saw him walking across the crosswalk in a dark suit with a blue shirt open at the collar. His black hair caught the wind, and his eyes scanned every plane and surface.

  “Mr. Santon,” I said when he reached me, “what a coincidence.”

  “You believe in those?” He sat down.

  “No. I’m assuming my lover sent you to talk me out of seeing his ex-wife?”

  “Close. But no. I can’t tell you what he hired me to do, except I’m not supposed to be sitting at a table with you.”

  “You must have put your own cameras in the house. If you know where I’ve been, I don’t know how. I haven’t seen you.”

  “That was off the table, obviously. We’re not watching you. We’re watching the other one. And you’ll never see us, Ms. Faulkner. Any trace of us is gone before we even are.”

  “Big scary ops guys. My dad always said he could take any of you in a brawl.”

  “The idea is to avoid the brawl in the first place. Knowing what I know, which is too much, everyone involved wants to avoid a clusterfuck. Except you and Ms. Carnes. So I am going to sit here and enjoy a cup of tea, until night if necessary. If anyone joins you, I’ll be right here. Then I am going to drive you home.”

  I leaned forward, elbows on the table. “How do I shake an ops guy?”

  “Guys. Plural.” He glanced at a guy on a cell phone halfway down the block. He gestured and spoke loudly to make himself just another piece of furniture. Someone standing quietly with a phone to his ear would attract notice. Then Santon glanced at a black Toyota at the light and waved to the driver with a flick of his wrist. The driver flicked back and drove off when the light changed.

  Great. Even if I ran away and jumped in a cab, I’d have to shake the other two. “He needs to trust my loyalty.”

  “That’s between you and him.” He twisted around, hailing a waitress. “Personally, I don’t give a shit.”

  The waitress came, and he ordered himself a cup of coffee and a muffin. She flirted with him, a nervous grin crossing her face. He was a nice-looking guy. I’d forgotten to notice.

  “What’s with the pinkie ring?” I asked when the waitress left.

  He held up the simple gold band always present on his pinkie, not an affectation or accessory as I’d assumed. “My wife’s.”

  “She wearing yours?”

  “Around her neck, with her dog tags. We swapped when we re-upped. Weren’t there four weeks when she took sniper fire half a mile from the Green Zone.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It was messy. Death always is.”

  “You understand, I’m just trying to protect him.”

  “I’m just trying to do my job.”

  I sipped my tea, and we sat in silence as his coffee was brought. A black Mercedes stopped at the light. A blonde driving. Jessica. The parking lot was around the corner, and her blinker flashed for the turn.

  I looked at Santon, and though his eyes appeared to be on the scalding black coffee he was about to swallow in a single gulp, he gazed in the halfway point between the table and the street. Blank sidewalk, but Jessica and I would be in his peripheral vision.

  Jessica saw me, and I shook my head. She nodded and turned off her blinker. Will Santon could take me home. Motherfucker.

  Chapter 20.

  I knew Will wasn’t gone for good. I had a gig at Frontage that was well-attended, including a table of five guys in agent-gear by the warm speakers. I greeted them, played, and said goodbye with a stinker of a smile, but my heart felt made of lead. Jonathan hadn’t called, texted, written. No contact besides Will Santon’s unwelcome presence.

  Could he be that mad?

  Was that how he got mad? Falling off the face of the earth? How was I supposed to react?

  Irrelevant questions. What I needed to ask myself was how I wanted to react. So I called him. It went to voice mail, which I didn’t want. There would be no angry, terse, or blustery messages. I texted.

  —Are you shutting me out? WTF?—

  I had friends who had given men their hearts only to find them turned to ice directly after. Or slept with them after declarations of indefinite amounts of attraction, but the indefinite amounts lasted no more than a week. I wondered if that was what I was dealing with. Had my commitment to him chased him away? Or did he expect my submission to be an abdication of control over my decisions? Was obedience required inside and outside the bedroom? Had I missed that point on the list?

  I couldn’t have. I never would have allowed it, and neither would he.

  I had just gotten home when my phone blooped. I dug around my bag and found it, hoping against hope that it was Jonathan. An outsized level of disappointment flooded me. It was Jessica.

  —I’m at Make on Echo Park and Baxter. I believe you’re nearby?—

  That presented a problem. It was a block and a half away, but I had to get there. I believed Santon when he said I wasn’t being watched, but Jessica was. That meant
something or someone would stop us from meeting in that block and a half.

  Fuck it.

  I looked out the back door. My house was built on a lot that was nearly vertical toward the rear. A retaining wall of cinderblock held the hill at bay, barely. Behind it, untouched chaparral stretched five hundred feet to a walkable dirt alley kids used to get into trouble. The whole stretch was unlandscapable without a bunch of money, which Dr. Thorensen had, apparently. His plot was terraced into vegetable gardens, private spaces, and a little utility area with a shed. My part of the hill, naturally, had fallen to scrub and brush. A hundred-year-old ficus with exposed roots was on the downslope, and wildflowers bloomed in spring. In the first weeks of December, dead thorns twisted around the trees, weeds turned to sticks, and brown was the new black.

  I’d have to go through that to get to the path, then get spit out onto Echo Park Avenue. Of course, it wouldn’t work. I’d get bitten by a rattlesnake or something. Worse, Santon, who’d probably taken a vow to never sleep again, would be waiting for me on the street.

  I dug my old cowboy boots out of the back of the closet, and a pair of jeans I didn’t care about. I’d spent the whole day trying to get this done, and I wasn’t giving up yet.

  My yard needed some love. I hadn’t trimmed anything at the end of summer, so the flagstones and garden patches were covered in dead leaves and detritus. I tossed the pink and orange balls back over the fence to the Montessori school and made for Dad’s tangerine tree. He’d planted it for me before he and Mom moved away, saying it would feed me if I got hungry. It just kept growing and was high enough to hug the spaghetti of power lines crisscrossing the sky. I used it as leverage to climb the wall onto the overgrown slope.

  It was pitch dark back there. The path was no more than a right-of-way between the backs of houses. Echo Park and Silver Lake were full of untended spaces. Staircases built during the Depression, forgotten paths that were never lit or patrolled that were taken over by residents for extra garden space or burial grounds for unwanted cars.

  I grabbed saplings and vines to pull myself up the hill. There was garbage everywhere. Just as I was thinking about how I had to get up there in the daytime with a few plastic bags and clean it out, I was pushed into the ficus.

  “Where are you going, goddess?” His voice came from behind me.

  His breath in my ear, his scent in my nose, the feel of his chest on my back, the way he fit like a puzzle piece… I didn’t even want to ask him what the fuck he was doing in the woody part of my backyard.

  “You didn’t call.” I leaned my head back and exposed my throat. He made me forget everything when he unlooped my scarf and put his mouth on my neck, his lips a lightning rod for the electricity to my core.

  “I was busy. I’m sorry.” His teeth found the place where my neck met my shoulder, and he gifted me a little crush of pain that translated directly to pleasure. I sucked in my breath. He ran his hands down my arms, to my hands.

  “Apology rejected. Return to sender.”

  Knotting his palms to the backs of my hands, he pressed them to the tree trunk.

  “Spread your legs,” he said in my ear. I wasn’t fast enough. He kicked them apart. He was so fucking rough, and the precarious feeling of not knowing what he’d do next sent a gush of moisture between my legs.

  How long would Jessica wait? Until tomorrow. Because Jonathan had appeared, and his hands were on my stomach, pushing up my bra. He pressed my bruised places gently while finding the untouched spots and pushing his hands against them until I groaned.

  “You want something?” he asked.

  “I missed you.”

  “I missed you, too.” His voice softened as if he meant it, and his hands drifted down to my waistband.

  “Are you going to fuck me?”

  He unbuttoned my jeans and unzipped without answering, pressing his cock against my ass. I ground against him. “God, I want to.” He took my right hand from the tree trunk and, still pressing my left to the tree, he slid it down my pants. “But it looks like you’re going somewhere?”

  “Yes.”

  “You wet?”

  I ran my finger to my hole and felt the sopping, slick mass under it. “Yes.”

  He removed his hands from mine but curved his body around me, his front to my back, his voice in my ear. “How wet?”

  “Fuck-me-now wet.”

  “Touch your clit. Do it so it feels good.”

  I rubbed my engorged member with one finger, circling it, pushing myself into him.

  “Two fingers,” he said, pulling away just a little. “Use two fingers on it, letting the center fall in the crease between them.”

  I moaned.

  “Feel good, goddess?”

  “Yes.”

  “How good?”

  “Not as good as you fucking me.”

  “Good answer. Hook your fingers. Put them in your cunt. Then drag them back out to your clit. Rub with the very tips.”

  “Oh, Jonathan, please. Please fuck me.”

  “Don’t you like this?” There was something in his voice, some sarcasm. As though this wasn’t foreplay, but him making an argument. I stopped and started to pull my hand out of my pants, but he grabbed my bruised elbow, making me flinch. “Don’t stop. Make yourself come.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Do it.”

  I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t demand he explain what the fuck he thought he was doing because when he said do it, I wanted to. I wanted to please him, to submit, to be his. I was more than a submissive because submission implied a choice. I was his slave.

  I rubbed my clit, gathering fluids, juice flooding between my fingers. I let out a high-pitched ah then choked it off.

  “Let’s hear it, Monica.”

  “Oh, God,” I whispered.

  He moved to my side, crouching so his breath was on my cheek. I turned to face him, eye to eye, my legs spread, my left hand on the tree, my right hand in my pants. He still didn’t touch me, just breathed with me as my lower lip dropped and my lids hooded.

  “You like it.”

  “I like you better.” My breaths got shorter and hitched. My cunt was hot under my fingers, twitching, engorged, soaking.

  “I bet,” he said.

  “Take me.”

  “Come.”

  “Yes.”

  The tingle ran from my knees to my waist, and my ass bucked as if Jonathan was still behind me. I cried out loud enough for the neighbors to hear, driving my hips into the tree as if I was fucking it. My chest rose and fell against the white bark, my cheek feeling its rough winter texture as I looked at him, just a shape in the darkness.

  “That was okay?” Jonathan asked.

  “More, please.” I took my hand from my pants.

  “You’re insatiable.” He kissed my wet fingers. “I’m glad you like it, because that’s your life if I go to jail. I’m not one of those nice guys who will tell you to date other men. I’m the guy who owns you whether I’m in jail or not.”

  “Tell me what you think she’s going to say.”

  He leaned on the tree and put my index finger in his mouth, sucking it clean. “Is it so wrong to want to keep you away from the ugliest parts of my life?”

  “Yes.” The feel of his tongue as he sucked my fingers was arousing me again. I leaned my shoulder against the tree, bracing myself against the drop down the hill with my boot heel.

  “It’s wrong to want to protect you? To keep you above my shit? A goddess?”

  “Yes. It is wrong. It can’t last. If you make me into some perfect thing that’s separate from your life, we’re going to disappoint each other. And that’ll be it. We’ll be over.”

  “I don’t think so.” He finished with my fingers and knotted our hands together.

  “Yes, Jonathan, yes. We’ll be over. I love you. I love your past, no matter what it was. I love your present, and I want to be your future. But lying will break us. One day you’ll wake up and realize I don’t really k
now you, and it’ll be too late to bring me close. That’ll be it, whether you leave me or not. We’ll be over.”

  “My secrets might be out for public consumption very soon. So let’s have now, before you run away.”

  “I want to hear it from you.”

  “No.”

  “Then I have to go meet someone.” I dropped my hands and grabbed a branch, hoisting myself up the hill.

  He put his hands on my biceps and pulled me back. “Don’t. Just give me time.”

  “No.”

  I said it, twisting a little to face him, and lost my balance. I fell back, my weight on him. He lost his footing, and we tumbled down the hill, all elbows and feet, complete with oofs and screams and the sounds of cracking, rustling brush. My world blurred into a spinning, dark vortex before I landed in a heap at the top of the retaining wall. Jonathan fell onto the flagstones in the backyard, his back slamming against the low wall bordering the tangerine tree.

  “Oh!” I shouted, scrambling up. “Jonathan!” I jumped the wall and landed by him.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, though I was standing and he was prone.

  “I’m fine. I’ve fallen down that hill a hundred times.” I pulled him up. He cringed.

  “Are you sure?” He picked a twig from my T-shirt, and I brushed his collar. He turned his head and grimaced.

  “Could I be any more bruised than I am already?”

  He smiled, then I smiled, and we laughed. He put his hands on my cheek, and we kissed through our laughter. He bent his neck and drew a long breath.

  “I think you twisted your neck good,” I said. “You should have just let me go meet her.”

  “Never.” He kissed me again, keeping his neck straight. I kissed him back, deeply, because I was about to disappoint him.