Private Internship

by Kitsy Clare

  “This storm is worse than Hurricane Sandy,” I venture, remembering the last great hurricane where the East Village was without power for five days. “That knocked out everything south of Fortieth Street.”

  “And Staten Island and Coney and Jersey and—”

  “Ugh. How could I forget?” I shiver, wishing I could snuggle up with Caz for warmth. But it’d be wrong. I don’t want to lead him on. “Feel the cold air pouring in through the gaps in the panes? And look at all the stuff flying around outside.” I point to a jagged section of corrugated roofing and someone’s torn store awning, both soaring high above the river like alien spacecraft.

  “Must’ve dropped a good twenty-five degrees,” he agrees, moving perilously close to me again. “Soon this place will be a meat locker. C’mon, we’d better get prepared.” He reaches for me, and we venture on.

  Stumbling through two more rough, dark rooms we make it into Caz’s gym, the site of our almost make-out session. Grainy light filters through the dirty panes onto the piles of sugar packets in each corner.

  “We can always burrow down in those if we need insulation,” he says wryly.

  “Ha, quite the cushy quilts.”

  We press on, our fingers entwined, him taking the risky lead, me following. I could get used to the warmth and security of that strong, guiding hand.

  When we make it to his office, I sink, exuberant but exhausted, into one of his leather desk chairs. It feels like I was suffering from zero gravity on a spacecraft and then, upon landing, I got to plant my feet on solid planetary soil.

  Caz rummages around in his various drawers and shelves for supplies while I hug my messenger bag to my chest and eye his key with the red suede tag. It’s right there, in that ceramic bowl, silently calling to me, Take me, I dare you.

  I could slip it in my bag, and he wouldn’t notice since he’s on his knees, pulling out candles from a low cabinet.

  Do it, my bad angel urges, do it!

  I’m glad I don’t follow my urge because Caz gets up abruptly, wheels around, and looks right at the darn keys. He has four fat candles in his arms, and he lines them up on the desk. Holding a match to them, he grins triumphantly under the swell of their light. His impish delight is almost sexier than his grownup wily gotcha grin. This is how I imagine him at ten—before whatever sadness invaded him, embittered him.

  How do I know? I don’t. It’s an innate feeling—but a strong one. He’s as haunted as this warehouse. Is that why he feels comfortable here?

  Sitting on his desk, he swings his cowboy-booted legs, his palms cupped above a candle to warm them. “Penny for your thoughts?”

  My stomach has started to growl relentlessly. “Now that I know I’m not going to freeze to death in that black pit, I’m suddenly hungry.” I pull out my tin of cookies. “Might as well have another snack.”

  “Brilliant, Sienna.” He grabs a handful and chows down.

  “Since it’s Halloween, and I can’t go to Harper’s party,” I say between chews, “why not have a party here?” I haul out my pumpkins from the greenmarket. “Let’s have a jack-o’-lantern carving contest.”

  “You’re full of surprises.” He laughs, loud and genuine. I’m loving it. “And I have a penknife, so we’re in luck.” He opens a desk drawer and brandishes a blue-handled one. “Trusty Boy Scouts. Always prepared.”

  Caz carves a face with a snaggletooth smile, triangle eyes, and surprised eyebrows. It’s fun watching him go at it. He’s clever with the knife, no doubt from all of his years of doing installations. I carve crescent-moon eyes, a round nose, and a zigzag mouth. He says mine looks like a confused clown. Ferreting out two more candles from his stash, narrow enough to fit into the pumpkins, he sets them in the jack-o’-lanterns and lights them. Their faces snap to fiery life.

  “They definitely cheer up the room.” I surreptitiously wipe yucky pumpkin pulp off my hands onto my pants and shove the pulp-filled plate farther away on the windowsill. The blobby pumpkin guts have triggered my OCD urge for neatness, but I hide that from him.

  “I can’t offer you food,” Caz apologizes, “but I do have iced tea. And beers for guests.” He walks over to a window and raises it a few inches. The second he does, rain courses in. He pulls up an insulated bag and hurries to shut out the screaming wind. “I’m amazed these bottles didn’t shatter.”

  “Do you always stash your drinks outside like you’re living in a tenement? Whatever happened to mini-fridges?”

  “Old habits die hard” is his quizzical reply. Flipping off the tops with his penknife, he takes the iced tea and hands me the beer. Yum. Cold, fizzy, super refreshing.

  “No beer for you tonight?” I ask him.

  “Not any night,” he answers definitively, and I wonder if he ever drank, but that’s a question for later.

  “Oh, almost forgot, I came prepared to be a fortuneteller at Harper’s party.” I pull the paisley scarf from my bag and fashion a turban. Then I get out the Tarot deck, remove its cellophane wrapping, and shuffle.

  Caz hops off the desk and circles around it to sit next to me. He eyes the cards warily. “You’re not serious.”

  “Sure, I’m serious. You’re my first client.” I fan out the cards and lay them face down.

  He shakes his head vigorously. “I don’t believe in that junk.”

  I detect a flash of anxiety in his eyes. Scrutinize him in the flickering light. “You’re not scared, are you? You said that fear was a good thing.” It’s fun payback to mirror his silly advice.

  “Who says I’m scared?” He makes a goofball face. “Whatever. Do your thing, fortuneteller.” Scooting in his chair, he leans in close, which pricks up my senses.

  “Pick the cards that feel hot,” I advise. “Don’t look at them, just fork them over.” He complies, making exaggerated groaning sound effects like a kid.

  Charming. Not.

  I consult the Tarot diagram and arrange the cards he picks accordingly. The process comes back to me. When I finish, he lets out a gasp—at what? I follow his gaze to the Death card in the final position—a grinning skeleton dancing a jig with a jeweled saber in his fist. Whoa, that freaks me out, too. I’m no expert on Tarot interpretations, but it doesn’t look good.

  “Do you have an overall burning question?” I ask him.

  He wags his brows. “Pick one, any one.”

  Why are you so into joking around? “Okay, then, a general reading.” Consulting the Arcana booklet, I delve in. “The immediate question surrounding your reading is...will you ever be able to get unstuck, grow in your personhood?”

  He snickers. “Didn’t know I was stuck.”

  I press on, undeterred. “The past elements that influence the present are...something about a female. Something that really upset you.”

  His ensuing frown looks ghoulish. “A grown woman or a girl?”

  “Not sure.” When I tell him that, he looks relieved. “The cups have to do with creativity.” I point to the cup cards he’s chosen. “You have lots of those.”

  His charismatic smile is shining again. “Figures.” Arrogant, take him down a peg.

  “Yes, but these cups are connected to the female, the girl.” His overconfident look fades again. I tap on the king of cups. “Your hope is that you’ll get your talent and voice back.”

  “I never lost it.”

  This time I tap the queen of swords, which is reversed. Reversed cards have a different meaning from their upright counterpoints. “You have plenty of talent, but this card indicates that it’s been diverted, twisted. In a sad, even dishonest way.”

  “Rat shit!” Caz shifts uncomfortably. In the candles’ fluctuations, I see a nervous sheen spreading across his forehead. He’s always so impenetrable, but at this moment? He’s literally twitching in his chair.

  “Are you cold?” I ask softly. It is freezing in here. In a mere couple of hours the temperature in this dank place has dropped at least fifteen degrees more.

  He nods, hugging himself. In ans
wer, I take off my enormous scarf and wrap it around his shoulders. He looks grateful, but still wears a grimace of pain. What happened to you in the past? I ask him silently. But, of course, he doesn’t hear me.

  The death card is last. Like the queen of swords, it’s reversed. I flip through the book to interpret the card, and a rush of fear crashes through me—fear for Caz. Holy shit! I don’t want to forecast his death or anything so horrendous. This card reading was a lousy idea, after all. It’s bad enough we’re trapped here with no power, no lights, no heat, but the Death card, staring at us with its sunken eyes and a creepy battle-axe in its bony claws?

  Skimming the meaning of the reversed card, I release a huge sigh of relief. “Oh, wow, it’s good, Caz!”

  “Really?” The bubble of hope in his tone catches me off guard. He takes this seriously? If he can lie about how seriously he takes Tarot, what else can he lie about? “What? What does it mean?” He nudges me impatiently.

  “It’s a transformational card,” I read. “It means you might be able to remake yourself, start over.” I pause, studying him for his reaction. Suddenly, he looks almost teary eyed. What the heck? “It has to do with that queen of swords,” I improvise, “changing how you see—”

  “See what?” he snaps.

  “See the actions of the girl. What she did to you, how she made you feel? Not sure, Caz, not sure.”

  “It’s absurd to think that a person from the past could affect my art so much.” He snorts. “Absolutely 100 percent ridiculous.”

  So! He’s insinuating someone did affect his past. A bad lover? What? I really, really want to know. “Okay, okay, Caz, it’s just a reading. You said you’re a nonbeliever. Then why—?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why do you look so spooked? You said yourself that there are no coincidences, no random events. That things fit together like puzzle pieces.”

  “Ha. Don’t believe everything I say.” He downs the rest of his iced tea in one shot, as if it were numbing liquor. He gathers up the cards, stacks them, and stuffs them roughly back into the box.

  When he places the deck by his ceramic bowl, I see that the key on the red suede chain is still there, glimmering, tempting me.

  “I’ll read you,” he declares.

  “With the cards? You just put them back.”

  “Don’t need them to get an accurate take on you,” he growls.

  “Whatever.” A sick twist in my belly tells me he’s ready to crucify me for exposing him—for his embarrassing weakness I don’t even understand.

  Brow furrowed, dark eyes irate, he launches into a tirade. “You’re a girl who lives in a wealth of dreams and floating jewels, always hovering above your past, above the real world, which you think is dirty and chaotic. You mistakenly think that if you compartmentalize the world into ordered particles and symmetrical prisms, it won’t scare or disappoint you. You’ve been badly disappointed before, by a parent or....” He pauses. “Am I close?”

  He has no idea. I force myself not to flinch, instead to stare directly into his blazing intensity. “Why do you want to hurt me?” I ask. “Does it make you feel strong? You’re a bully, you know that?”

  I get up and walk away from him, stand in front of my digital print still clipped on the drawing line. “You told me earlier you liked my work. Was that bullshit? And what about your work? What are you really trying to say with it? Because, if that Tarot reading was on the money, you play a lot of clever games but distract yourself from what your heart really needs to express.”

  I spin around and stare at him. The candlelight lends everything a witchy, theatrical flair. Figures. After all, it is Halloween.

  His face is a fast-moving flurry of emotion: fury, that elusive, unnamed sadness, and, could it be—a glimmer of sudden lust?

  My chest fills with waves of unexpected, guilty desire. “Am I close?” I mirror his words.

  “Close,” he murmurs, his voice thick. He rises and stalks slowly toward me, locking onto his quarry, the inked panther on his neck rising and falling. “Sienna, beautiful, strong artist. My lord, woman, what are you doing to me?” His expressive hands reach out and lightly graze my cheekbones, the vulnerable sides of my forehead. Then he gently brushes the hair back from my face. My heart is beating so hard I feel like I might pass out. He shifts closer, and his perfect lips grace my forehead with tiny kisses. Each one is a firebrand, each one a hotter stamp.

  I moan, surprising myself, and run my fingers through his cascades of hair. This is so wrong, on so many levels, yet I’m pulled inexorably toward him, and our bodies burn bright enough to light up the whole of New York Harbor.

  He grabs a fistful of my hair in each hand and pulls me in. Kisses me hard. His tongue slides suggestively over my lips, and then teases them open. With unexpected determination, he thrusts his tongue through to meet mine. His mouth tastes like iced tea and utter sweet deliciousness. My quivering legs threaten to buckle under me. I’ve never been loved with such feisty abandon.

  Dangerous, beats my heart, dangerous, but I ignore its warning. Caz lifts me up, carries me into his bedroom, and places me gently on his quilt. He collects one of the candles for the bedside table and rejoins me.

  I keep ignoring my silent warning bells, as he straddles me, both of us fully clothed, and eases his burly shoulders and torso onto me. “Too heavy?” he rasps, over a clap of thunder and torrent of rain against the windows.

  “No, I like it,” I murmur, wrapping my arms around the broad curve of his back, and sliding them down to his narrow waist and hips. He twines his legs around mine, and we kiss, rolling over each other in a joyful, ardent knot.

  “Let’s sleep together, tonight,” he whispers in my ear. “Keep each other warm.”

  Sounds inviting. It’s so cold in here, my nose is a sloped wedge of ice.

  His hands stray to my breasts and linger there, circling them. The slow movement makes me ache with wanting more, faster. Then he slides one hand down to the hem of my yellow cords and inches down the zipper. Somehow, the rough hitch of the metal teeth wakes me up to reality. I’m in Casper Mason’s bed! He’s older than me, he’s irascible, a browbeater. Surely he has other, more famous lovers. He fired my best friend for trying to clean his studios.

  I jerk back and stare at him.

  As his glazed eyes focus, his jaw stiffens. “You’re scaring me, Sienna, looking at me like you don’t even know me. What happened? Did I do something bad? Tell me.”

  He’s completely gorgeous. His lips are swollen from our kiss-fest, his tousled bed-hair is movie-idol worthy, and the way his T-shirt is twisted around his remarkable pecs has my inner thighs tingling. I sit up. “It’s not what you did. It’s what I did.”

  “Huh?” He sits up, too, looking truly alarmed, which would make me grin, if things weren’t so deadly serious. Confused? Nah, not me!

  “Look, I can’t be doing this,” I exclaim. “You’re my boss. You probably have a stable of famous girlfriends….” I painfully recall Erik’s mention of his euro dealer’s stable of artists. With a double stab to my heart, I continue. “And, um, I just accused you of being an intimidating bullshit artist.” I again start to grin but catch myself. “Don’t you see the absolute hypocrisy?”

  His hearty, refreshing laughter brings me delight, despite my horror. “Oh, Sienna, you’re so damn cute!”

  I play slap him. “Don’t you dare call me cute. That’s invalidating after I told you my heavy-duty truths.” I level my best glare at him. “Down to earth, practical truths, since you accused me of being a romantic freaking dreamer.”

  He squares his jaw. “Fair enough. I’m not trying to make fun of you—far from it. And I have no famous girlfriends, not even infamous ones. Scout’s honor.” He reaches for my hand and kisses it chastely, like a refined royal kissing a delicate princess. “Pray tell, fair lady, what would thee have me do?”

  Why does Caz have to be so gallant when I’m trying so hard to resist him? Especially, since, half-an-hour
ago, he was as slippery as a snake oil salesman?

  “I…I think I should sleep on a cot, or a sleeping bag on the floor. You have one here?” I ask hopefully, yet miserably.

  “Sienna,” Caz sounds let down, “you’ll freeze. Seriously, I’ll be on good behavior. Why don’t you sleep on my bed, and I’ll give you your own cover.” His eyes plead with me. Really? This abrasive character has transformed magically into a gentleman of the highest order? Why am I suspicious? I must still look it because he adds, “Wrap a blanket as tightly as you want, so it’s impenetrable armor.”

  I shake my head stubbornly and instead begin to fashion a lumpy makeshift bed on the cold concrete floor out of my messenger bag, my sweater, and wool coat. It’s still not enough. The “bed” is rock hard.

  “If you insist on the floor, at least get more comfortable.” Caz rummages around in his closet. He puts on one sweater and tosses over an armload of others to me. He also gives me his thick fleece bathrobe. When he’s not looking, I sniff it for whiffs of Caz. Umm, yesss. Candy sugar mingled with his yummy, expensive cologne.

  All too soon, I hear his steady breathing, while I toss and turn and try in vain to cover both goose-bumpy legs. How can he sleep so easily in the middle of a freaking hurricane? The perma-chill has seeped into my bones. My teeth are chattering, and the high wail of the wind sets my every nerve on edge.

  After a half an hour of listening to Caz’s soft, rumbling snores, I creep over to his bed. I take care not to trip over anything, but it’s not easy. The candle’s gone out, and I’m negotiating by moonlight. I’ve bundled up his sweaters to take over with me. Slowly and carefully, I slide next to him and turn on my side, facing neatly away from his sexy body. Arrange his thick sweaters along my shivering curves.

  There are gaps between the sweaters that let in drafts. I’m still freaking cold! Gingerly, I get under his covers and wriggle closer. Oh my God. The moment my back touches his, I get an immediate electric charge. I’m not merely warm, I’m getting hot! My supercharged body sings his name: Caz, Caz, Caz.