Sweet Seduction

by Anthology

  Except me.

  I’d changed.

  Let me backpedal a bit. After the rape, when the television news vans littered our street like piles of dog shit that appear after the winter snow melts, Dad installed motion detector lights and two security cameras. Real ones, he’d assured me, hooked up to monitors that recorded night and day.

  Of all the modern updates they could have done to the house, that was the one I’d needed most back then.

  I tossed my bags in the room and bounded back down stairs, deeply dehydrated and craving more cookies. Lena was rinsing mixing bowls and humming along to some pop radio station. I drank a glass of water and then I went over to the piano and began to play Chopin.

  “Again? I think that’s burned into my brain,” she complained. “You wore the black off the keys from that one.”

  I changed over to ragtime. She laughed. I played for a couple minutes, just flitting through a few songs, then gently caressed the keys.

  For two years all I’d done was go to therapy and play piano. The instrument was like Lena. A best friend.

  I walked over to my sister, snatched two more cookies, and plopped down on the sectional sofa in the family room, facing her.

  “Dating anyone?” we asked each other.

  Neither of us laughed, but I hesitated just enough to make her eyes narrow.

  Having a lawyer for a sister sucks. She spots everything.

  “You...who is he?”

  “He? There is no he.”

  “Her?”

  I snorted. “No her.”

  “Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” said my now-openly-lesbian sister.

  “Right. I like cock.”

  “Me, too,” she said, stuffing a cookie in her mouth, pressing her palm against her heart as if offended. “I just like mine at the end of a harness, worn by a woman.”

  “Thanks for that image.”

  “You can’t handle an open discussion about sexuality? You work in residence life!”

  “I can’t handle talking about strap ons with my sister.”

  She cocked one eyebrow. “But you will talk about him.”

  “Him who?”

  She gave me the Jedi stare.

  Bzzz. Her phone vibrated on the dining table, next to an open laptop.

  “Damn,” she muttered, turning off the oven. “I have to take that. We have a huge class-action lawsuit involving workers being forced to use their own time for—”

  I stopped listening, my head filled with the sound of my teeth grinding against pralines crunched and baked into these snickerdoodles.

  As Lena managed the crisis, I ate five cookies. Don’t judge.

  She got off the phone fast, quickly packing her things and searching for her shoes. She looked at me, her sleek bob so pristine, those dark brown eyes like pieces of chocolate in the middle of bright white.

  “Late night meeting. Document review. I’ll be at the firm forever.”

  “We’ll catch up tomorrow,” I assured her.

  She pointed at me as she walked out the front door. “I want to hear about him.”

  “There is no hiiiiiim,” I called out as she sprinted for her car.

  “Put the cookies away!” she called back as she yanked her car door open and shoved her briefcase in.

  I patted my stomach and muttered as she backed out of the driveway. “I will.”

  Him.

  How was I supposed to come back home to my pristine little suburban life with my lawyer dad and my software-developer mom and my superstar sister and talk about Frown? They treated me like a porcelain vase. Like something that had been shattered and painstakingly glued back together, capable of looking pretty close to normal—but don’t pour water inside.

  Something in Frown’s eyes told me he knew a little bit about being glued back together.

  The piano called to me. I answered by going to it and playing my own version of “I Wasted My Only Answered Prayer”. The residence hall where I worked back in Massachusetts had a nasty, out-of-tune piano in the lounge. I played it for fun, but stuck to my keyboard in my apartment. When stress got bad enough, I plugged in headphones and played whatever I wanted for hours.

  Over the past year I’d perfected the piano version of most of Random Acts of Crazy’s songs. Just for fun.

  I played them, over and over until my fingers ached and my shoulders screamed out for a break. Even then, I didn’t stop, the burning muscles something to push past.

  Mid-song, I stopped.

  A wave of exhaustion hit me. The end of the semester meant move-outs and residence hall condition reports. Arguments with students who swore the shredded screen was “like that” when they moved in. That the hot-pink painted wall was “allowed” by some other resident director whose name they couldn’t remember. That the entire ceiling covered in naked pictures of David Gandy—all rubber-cemented into place—had “improved” the room.

  And then there was that kiss with Tyler.

  I flipped on the television and found something about pirates on a cable show. Lena had made about eight dozen cookies. I took my share. As I downed it all with an enormous glass of cold milk I faded out, dreaming of a tatted-up pirate with hands that played piano and made me feel safe.

  Chapter Three

  Tyler

  I have woken up in a lot of messes in my life. Lived in my car for long stretches. Couch surfed. Slept on floors. In beds with women so drunk and passed out we didn’t have sex. Woke up once tucked between the cement foundation of the Boston Public Library and a thicket of bushes.

  I’ve also been rolled a few times. Wallet, money, instruments stolen by street kids, by homeless dudes, by anyone who saw me as weaker and able to be rolled. Doesn’t happen often. Three times, now that I think about it.

  Make that four.

  The light streaming in through the broken blinds didn’t make sense. What time was it? I’d set my alarm to go off at eight, and the light felt...off. Too sunny to be that early. I fumbled for my phone in my back pocket.

  No phone.

  Huh. It must have fallen out. I looked around the room and nearly shit my pants.

  It was empty, except for the nasty mattress I was currently standing on, my hands in my hair, pulling hard as the layers hit me.

  Phone—gone.

  Bass—gone.

  Guitar—gone.

  Backpack—gone.

  Wallet—gone.

  I leapt off the bed and bounded out of the room, heart slamming against my chest like Sam with a tambourine. The five-room apartment took thirty seconds to check.

  Johnny—fucking gone.

  “Fuck!” I screamed, as if it would help. Like words ever make a difference. A frantic search of the apartment showed that nothing but my shit was gone. Then again, nothing but my shit was worth anything on the streets.

  Johnny’d said he’d manage somehow. Oh, yeah. He was right about that.

  My fist punched the cheap, hollow door before I could even think to do it. Like it had a mind of its own. I pulled back after the second hit, a voice deep inside telling me to stop.

  It sounded like my mom.

  Red, burning pain lit up my knuckles. It distracted me. I ran back to my room, flipping the mattress. Carpet beetles ran amok, walking in drunken paths toward the edges of the room. I ripped at the cord for the blinds, pulling them up, looking out the filthy window. A line of mildew dotted the edge, like lace trim on a dress hem.

  Johnny’s piece of shit car was gone.

  My bleeding hand raked through my hair again. The rough sandpaper of my three-day beard scratched like it was judging me as I washed my face with my palm. Think think think.

  He’d fucking cleaned me out.

  How hard had I slept? Stupid. Stupid fucking Tyler. How could I have slept like that? Trusted Johnny like that? Hold on. He’d never stolen from me before. Okay, he’d filched candy out of my Halloween bag when we were kids, but that didn’t count. The little fuckwad stole my bass. My guit
ar. My wallet, my phone my—oh, God.

  I sprinted to the bathroom and flipped the toilet seat up so hard it cracked, slammed back down, and I puked all over the broken white porcelain. Over and over until there was nothing left.

  Until I was hollow. Gutted. Empty.

  Completely void.

  I slammed my back against the stained wall by the sink and banged my head over and over against the wallboard, the dull thud of my brain smacking against my skull really soothing. Sometimes pain gets you through a situation you wouldn’t ever think you could survive.

  The pain can be the only anchor to keep you in this world.

  I don’t know how long I sat there, being empty. When you have nothing, when you are nothing, it’s not like you account for the time.

  You just are.

  And after a while, there isn’t even a you.

  Slowly, my eyes took in my ink. The colors. The thick, black lines that separated one section from another. The contours, the shading, the careful attention to detail. My tats brought me back, deliberately, like they had a process. A plan.

  A mission.

  That voice? It suddenly said, You can do this.

  I could? What the fuck could I do? What this could I do? No money. No ID. No bass. Not even a fucking beat-up guitar.

  No Dad.

  No brother.

  No love.

  I don’t cry. For the record—I don’t cry. Didn’t cry when Mom died when I was eleven. Didn’t cry when Dad came back and took over for us, his first question about how to find the local Social Security office so he could apply for our survivors’ benefits. Didn’t cry when he started bringing weird guys home and one of them—

  I don’t cry.

  You can do this.

  The voice sounded like Darla this time.

  Elbows on my knees, I looked up. No light in the bathroom, so the only way I could see was from the shine of sunlight through the open door. The toilet paper roll was empty. The room reeked of my bile. My mind felt like cotton candy mixed with beer.

  My mouth tasted like that, too.

  A plan. I needed to take all the details in my head and turn them into puzzle pieces. Make the pieces fit.

  No money. No phone. No ID. No instruments.

  What do you do?

  Think think think.

  You start at the bank. I had four hundred bucks in a saving account you couldn’t access with my debit card. Even if Johnny blew through the checking account, he couldn’t get that.

  Unless he beat me to the bank.

  Five minutes later I reeked of puke and sweat, my body running on adrenaline to the local credit union where I’d just sprinted, three long city blocks past junkies and whores and perfectly fine moms pushing baby strollers and happy dads with kids in baseball caps.

  I stopped in front of the bank’s door. If this was going to work, I could look like this. A few deep breaths, some stretches to look like I’d run on purpose. The grim reset button inside me being pushed. The steady decline from being wired to being calm. Cool. To look like a guy coming in to take money out of his account like it was no big deal. Like any other day.

  Like a person you don’t need to ask for ID because he’s just so...okay.

  That whole expectations thing is a game. Do what people expect of you and when you’re actually lying, you can get away with so much more.

  “Hello?” the teller chirped. I remembered her. Sort of. Her face. She’d worked here for a while. “Is that Tyler? Haven’t seen you in months?”

  I smiled. Her face brightened.

  See? We’re on our way.

  “Yeah, Linda.” Thank God for name tags. “How’s it going?”

  “You out for a run?” Her eyes raked over me. So that’s how it was. I gave her my best flirt face and tried not to freak out on the inside as seventeen different pieces of me all screamed in the jail of my ribcage.

  Just let the calm, cool, flirty dude take charge and it’ll be all right.

  “I am. You work out, too, I see,” I said. She glowed.

  I picked the right words for once.

  “How can I help you?” she asked in a low, suggestive voice.

  “I need to take out some money from my account.” I grabbed a withdrawal slip and scribbled the number from memory. I wrote three hundred fifty dollars. Needed to leave some or she’d ask too many questions.

  Stay in the range of safe. Too many standard deviations from the mean and you draw attention.

  As I slid the slip under the glass counter her fingers touched mine. Lingered. “Nice ink,” she said. “Who did the flowers?”

  I looked down. Flowers. That’s right.

  “Oh, you know.” Deflect. “You got any tats?” I made myself give her an obvious once-over. Any other situation and I’d find her fuckable, but right now my cock hung in my pants like a loose seatbelt.

  She leaned in, giving me two eyefuls of creamy cleavage. “I do, but...I can’t show it here.”

  “Really?”

  Linda pulled back and looked at my withdrawal slip. She opened her cash drawer as her eyes went to her computer screen. Please let this work. Please let this work. Pleezeletdiswork. The words became a chant in my head, all meshed into one ball of sound. Like static.

  She keyed in some numbers, then a machine clicked. Shuffling sounds. A stack of bills appeared in the drawer. She grabbed my hand, hard, and pulled it under the glass barrier. A ballpoint pen pressed into my flesh.

  She bit her lower lip as she wrote her number on the pad of my hand.

  “I get off at three,” she whispered, “if you want to get off, too. I’ll show you my tat and you can show me...everything you got.”

  I swallowed. The money was right there. Just had to keep up the act for thirty more seconds. C’mon Tyler. You got this. You got this.

  She had to see how fake I was from the look in my eyes, right? Didn’t she? How could I feel so deeply inside me and have people not sense it? Not see it. Not even know it was there?

  I looked at her and smiled, focusing on a spot between her eyes. If I looked directly at her I was fucking freaked she’d figure me out.

  “Sounds good.” She slid the money to me, still holding my hand. I picked up the bills like they were a beating heart and tucked them in my pocket. Linda let go of me. It took everything not to exhale loudly.

  “I’ll see you?” she asked, eyebrows up, questioning. Flushed cheeks and a sly, almost-evil grin rounded out her look.

  “Sure.”

  “Have a nice day,” she said in a neutral voice as another teller walked behind her.

  “You too,” I called back as I walked out, face frozen in a smile.

  I made it outside and around the corner before I puked again. Some poor insurance agent’s building got the remains of my stomach in their cluster of pansies. Sorry, dude.

  I straightened up and took a deep breath. Looked around. No one saw me.

  And I had three hundred and fifty bucks to get me through this. Thank fucking God.

  I wasn’t quite so empty anymore.

  Maggie

  The knock at the door wasn’t that unusual. Mom was gone, Lena was at the office working again, and in our little subdivision kids were constantly selling stuff in school fundraisers.

  Except kids don’t stand at nearly six feet and have tattoos the color of candy all over them. And they don’t start conversations with, “You got a car and a guitar I can borrow?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Darla call you yet?’

  “Excuse me? Tyler, what the hell are you doing at my house here in St. Louis?” My hinky meter went from zero to Oh Holy Fuck. I’d never had a stalker before, but I’d worked with plenty of women on campus who had, plus after my rape I’d been followed by news camera crews and frat boys who thought—

  “Chill. It’s cool.” He kept his voice low. Too low. “I live here.”

  “You do not live here.”

  “I mean I live in St. Louis.”

&nbs
p; “Get out!”

  “Did Darla call you?”

  “No.”

  “Your phone off?”

  “What? What? What are you talking about? Why are you asking me questions about my phone and Darla and Tyler Gilvrey what in the fucking hell are you doing outside my mom and dad’s house?” I pulled back, imagining myself at a distance from this. My therapists had recommended that when I faced massive fear. Imagine you’re at a distance, giving advice. I could feel the plume of terror threatening to overtake me, and if he made one move toward me, I’d—

  And then he did. One simple step toward me was all it took. Instinct flooded my veins and I pulled one foot up, twisted my hip and kicked him with my leg at a perfect right angle, my flat, bare sole hitting him square on in the nuts.

  I didn’t know a guy could scream like that.

  Mrs. Wilmer from next door shrieked as Tyler folded in half and fell backward off the two-step front stoop. Her little Labradoodle, a mocha-colored puffball with pink and purple ribbons above its ears, began barking furiously and shot across the yard.

  “Margaret! Margaret! Is this man hurting you?” Mrs Wilmer called out. She had been watering her flower bed with a hose and a watering sprayer and came over, still holding it. If she was four-foot-eight I’d be surprised, and she probably weighed less than most backpacks at my college. Her bangs were cut straight across and about a half-inch from her hairline. She wore giant glasses that looked like something from a 1980s sitcom, and she normally walked with a walker.

  That woman fairly sprinted to my aid.

  I felt like one of those spin art canvases, my inner world twirling and splattering into patterns that would later be beautiful and enchanting but right now were just smears and chaos.

  Her dog...what was its name?...jumped right on Tyler’s leg and sank its fangs into his calf.

  Who knew Tyler could hit notes that high?

  “Help! God, ow, help!” he shouted, hitting three octaves at once, rolling on the ground.

  Mrs. Wilmer turned purple with rage. “You can’t hurt Margaret! How dare you!”