by Kylie Parker
I start unbuttoning my shirt, and she tosses hers. Neither of us seem to have the energy to hurry back to the bedroom, but I like a good change of pace every once in a while. She removes her pants and after I toss the rest of my clothes, she climbs into my lap with her matching pink and silver undergarments still adorned. I blush. The pink and silver combination reminds me of Éclair, and I feel a hint of guilt run through my veins. It’s weird; I’ve never felt like I’m cheating on Éclair before. Both women, while I have obviously never met them, are perfectly aware of each other. Éclair and I have been sleeping around with other people ever since we first started our little love affair. And Sylvia knows I have myself an occasional fuck-buddy. The other night I had run out of Éclair’s house after sleeping with her because I had felt a weird sting of guilt. Why? Because I like Sylvia. Because I see a future with Sylvia, but I just can’t bring myself to start to think about settling down with everything going on. Yet, here I am, seeing Sylvia dressed in Éclair’s favorite colors, and it makes me hesitant.
“Are you okay?” Sylvia asks, noticing me freeze up for a moment.
I shake the weird and out-of-character thoughts I am having about Éclair and those gorgeous and completely unusual purple eyes of hers. I focus on Sylvia, and it only takes me a second before I am ready to go. I unsnap her bra, and she tosses her panties. She remains seated in my lap, her legs bent at my sides, as I slip myself up into her. Sylvia wraps her arms around my neck and works her hips up and down. I grab hold of her waist to give her some assistance.
She kisses my lips and I smile under that kiss. Her lips are always so soft. I smell a hint of pizza on her breath, and by the way she is acting I can tell she is slightly self-conscious about it. “Oh, James, oui!” she shrieks, and I cringe.
Did she just speak French? That is mine and Éclair’s thing. It’s like she’s trying to make me think about Éclair while I’m boning her. Now I can’t get Éclair out of my head. Why did Sylvia all of a sudden throw in a random French word? She’s not half French like Éclair, at least I don’t think she is. I recall that we had had our first date in France during the Tour de France. She must be fantasizing a little, but all that did is make me cringe again. I keep picturing Éclair now. Fuck! How the hell am I supposed to keep this shit up if every time I am with one of them I keep thinking about the other? I’m losing my mind. Plus, Sylvia is on top, another one of Éclair preferred methodologies. Just to make this feel a little less like I’m fucking Éclair, I wind up throwing Sylvia down onto her back on the couch. She doesn’t realize why I had the sudden change in preference, thank God, but she goes with it. She spreads her legs wide and pull me down onto her.
I kiss her throat and breasts, making her moan loudly with each movement. “You’re amazing, you know?” I tell her, trying my best to focus on every inch of her completely flawless body just so I can get Éclair out of my head. I notice a few cuts and scrapes on her –probably from her latest equipment test run. She’s a good athlete, but if she is anything like myself she likes to push herself. I kiss her little scrapes, and she laughs at the gesture. She has a large bruise on her waist. “What happened there?” I ask.
“Fell off my snowboard,” she says with a slight orgasmic cringe, “right into a damn tree, that is.”
I press myself as far up inside her as I can, and she cries out excitedly just as I am cumming. We both collapse next to one another, curling up close together to enjoy one another’s body heat. I’m able to focus on just Sylvia now. Thank God. I really am starting to think I’m going to have to decide what I want soon. I would hate to accidentally call Sylvia Éclair in bed; it would probably hurt her feelings, and calling Éclair Sylvia would probably get me punched in the dick.
40
After spending the day at Sylvia’s, I decide to head back to my own apartment. She has an early appointment with a client tomorrow morning, so I don’t see any sense in keeping her up. And I know if I had stayed there we would have been up half the night because she’s just so damn tempting to me. I have my driver come and pick me up, and I can tell he is a little disgruntled seeing as how his along with all of my other employees checks have not showed up yet. I assure him my lawyer is working on getting everything straightened out, and I also thank him so much for bearing with me.
We’re about halfway back to my apartment when suddenly my driver gets a little chattier than usual. He also has a bit of a smart mouth as it turns out. “Sir?” he asks.
“Yeah?” I grumble from the back seat, my mind a million miles away from our conversation.
“Do you know my name?” he asks.
I did not expect that question. Do I really come off as that big of a prick to my employees? “Leonard Troft,” I say, “But your friends call you Leo.” I look at him through the rearview mirror, and I can tell he is embarrassed for asking the somewhat random question. I sit upright, “Is there something bothering you, Leo?” I ask.
He grips the steering wheel tight. “My apologies, sir.” He says, realizing his smart mouth was a line crossed.
“No, seriously,” I say with firmness in my tone, “Say what you want to say.”
“There has been some talk around the company,” he says honestly, “to be honest, sir, we’re all just worried about losing our jobs… and whether or not you even give a damn about that.”
Harsh. “I do,” I say. “I really do, Leo. I am still hoping this all gets straightened out –not just for my sake. Yours too. And everyone else at the company. I never expected anything like this to happen. I’m doing what I can.”
“Of course, sir.” He says.
I am dropped off in front of my apartment, and I say goodbye to my driver –trying to appear friendlier than usual. He’s always been a nice guy, but evidently he has not thought very highly of me. I sigh, realizing I probably deserve that. I head inside and into the lobby of my high end apartment building, heading towards the elevator when I spot an attractive young woman just awkwardly standing outside the elevator. I smile at her, knowing she does not live here and is probably a guest of one of my neighbors.
As I pass by her and get on the elevator, she suddenly decides that she is going to get on the elevator as well. “What floor?” I ask her.
“Top.” She says.
The elevator doors close. “The top is a penthouse. It’s private.”
“I know,” she says, “but that’s where you’re going, isn’t it?”
“Um…” I smile at her. I am not really sure what to make of this. Women have been forward with me before, but not show up at my home and try to hitch a ride to my apartment without so much as a hello forward. For a second I wonder if I am about to get laid for the second time today, but then that thought quickly drifts away and is replace with self-disgust when I realize who this woman is. “Are you?” I ask, unable to form a complete sentence.
“Kate.” She says, “One of Eddies’ sisters.”
I feel a desire to claw my own eyes out because I had looked the woman up and down and attempted to imagine what she looked like under that knock-off petty coat of hers. I don’t ask her anything else, but I put in my keycard that allows access to the top floor. The elevator opens up into my penthouse, and she follows me inside. She looks around quite starry-eyed, clearly never having been somewhere this nice before.
I’m not really sure why she has come here to talk to me, but I play the part of the kind host. “Can I get you something to drink?” I ask.
She smiles and simply says, “Yes, thank you.”
I go into my kitchen, “What’s your poison?”
She frowns, “Water.”
“Oh,” I say, “You’re not the-” I bite my tongue.
“The alcoholic?” she says bluntly, “Yes. I see Eddie has spoken about us to you.”
“Not much, to be honest.” I say, “But truthfully I have never given him much of a chance.” I pour her a glass of water, and she shyly comes over to the bar and sits herself down.
“For the rec
ord,” she says while she plays with the glass, “I am nearly five years sober. That was a lifetime ago.”
“Good for you,” I say as honestly as I can.
She’s older than Eddie and I. I study her face for a moment and try to gather what I can. She has wrinkles under her eyes, yet she seems too young for that –probably due to her former alcoholism, but then again, I’m not so sure. Her hair is brown with a few gray strands here and there. There is a familiar gentleness about her that I can’t quite put my finger on just yet. I look at her purse, taking note that it’s a fairly large tote. I smile, realizing I figured something out. “You’re a mom?” I ask –recognizing that gentle, nurturing look in her face as something I had seen in my own mother as a kid. The large bag was probably full of emergency items that any mother would carry around.
She smiles, “Yes. I do have kids.” She suddenly goes digging through that giant Mary Poppins style bag of hers and pulls out a wallet. She opens it up and shows me a picture of three of her children. A sixteen year old boy named Bobby, a fourteen year old girl named Lana, and another boy at age twelve named Jack. She mentions she has more children, but I don’t see a picture. Kate nervously sips on her water for a few minutes before our conversation goes anywhere. She tells me she had tried to go see Eddie at the hospital, but that they would not let her in to see him because she couldn’t prove that she knew him. “I’m not sure how Max got back there to see him,” she says, “But I know the hospital has been letting you visit, so I came by here to ask… if you don’t mind, well, you see, Bobby really wants to see Eddie. And so do I. Bobby is really worried about him.”
I nod, “Of course. I’ll take you all by there.”
“Oh, good. Yes, thank you.” She smiles at me, awkwardly avoiding eye contact. “I’m sorry,” she says, realizing her unusual behavior, “It’s just that, well, I hate that this is why we are finally meeting. Eddie always spoke so highly of you, and I never showed much interest in meeting you.”
“It’s not all on you,” I say, “I didn’t even know you’re name or that you have children.” She does not say anything, so I keep talking. “So, is your son Bobby really close to Eddie or something?”
Her face lights up suddenly. “Yes. Eddie got him back in school. He had dropped out about a year before Eddie found all of us. I tried everything I could to get him to go back to high school, but I don’t know what it is about Eddie, but he could talk a vegan into eating pork. He has taken Bobby to a dirt bike track a few times, and it’s all he can talk about. He lets Bobby come out to his summer home with him sometimes to ride around on a bike he bought for him. Bobby’s so upset about all of this… Eddie had promised to come see him compete in a race, but from what Max has told me, it doesn’t sound like that is going to happen now. Eddie has even sat down and helped Bobby and Lana study for school before too. It’s just me, you see. My husband died… that’s what started the drinking….so it’s always been hard trying to balance my three kids by myself with work.”
“I can only imagine,” I say, “What do you do?”
She blushes. “I, um, wait tables.”
“Oh yeah?” I question, “Where at?”
“The Fox Hole.” She says.
I frown. “The strip club?”
She does this awkward flick of the writ, pointing her finger slightly as though to say that’s the one, you’ve figured me out. Holy hell, she’s a damn stripper… at a club I’ve fucking been to. I do my best to not think about the club. Dear God, I hope I’ve never gotten a dance from her from there… she might as well be a long lost sister. Kate looks absolutely humiliated. I shouldn’t have asked so many questions. “So…” I say nervously because I don’t really want to know the answer, but my stupid mouth won’t let me not ask, “Are you a stripper?”
Kate crosses her arms, “I used to be. I just wait tables now. I busted my hip a while back, so I can’t really get up on the pole like I used to.”
I try really, really hard for Eddie’s sake not to imagine that. I try to make light of the conversation. I try to joke. “What happened? Did you fall off the pole or something?”
Wrong question. “No...” I can tell from the uncomfortable look on her face that I don’t want to hear the rest of her answer, but she seems to have just as bad of a problem of stopping herself from saying stupid shit as I do, “I used to, um, take clients in the back room, and this one guy got a little excited and he, um, well-”
“I will pay you fifty bucks not to finish this story.” I say, and she suddenly starts laughing her ass off.
“I’m sorry!” she says, “I’m so stupid. I’m such an awkward moron sometimes.”
Her laugh is slightly contagious. I laugh too. “I shouldn’t have asked.”
Much like with Max, the two of us wind up spending a considerable amount of time talking about Eddie and life in general. She turns out to be a pretty nice woman, and I feel like an asshole for just now having met her.
41
While the actual factory is still shut down, the office is slowly starting to get back up and running. The police have finally brought me back my office material and my computer that they had taken away as evidence, so I am able to start getting some actual work done. My files have been returned as well. A very small part of me had started to miss actually working. I focus on what I can do to get paychecks to my employees. After my conversation with my driver, I’m feeling an extra layer of guilt. My lawyer, Lillian, had managed to get some of my accounts unfrozen. If I have to loan some of my personal money to the company until this shit gets straightened out so that my employees can get their paychecks, then so be it.
I wind up getting a call about an old shipment, something Eddie had had his hands in. I wind up having to place the client on hold as I go down into the factory to rummage through Eddie’s files that have thankfully been returned. There are still police all over the factory, and it makes me sick to my stomach. I wonder if this shit is ever going to end.
I sit behind Eddie’s desk, feeling incredibly uncomfortable to be here. For one thing, the large glass windows allow the cops to stare in at me as they pass by. I prefer the privacy of my office. Another thing is that this is Eddie’s desk, not mine. Eddie should be sitting here, not me. I cringe because it makes me think of Eddie lying in that hospital bed, and that makes me wonder why the hell I’m even here. The doctors said he had been doing a little better, but whether or not he would actually be able to be taken off life support is still up in the air. I’d give anything to talk to him right now. Trying to do his job and mine is a nightmare; this is probably how he felt all the time –I can’t even handle both jobs while the factory is closed and nothing is going on. Eddie took over my shit all the time; I can’t imagine being him. No wonder he was always acting like he had a stick up his ass.
After about thirty minute of being unable to find the appropriate paperwork, I grab the desk phone off of Eddie’s desk to talk to the client. I apologize profusely and explain to them the situation. The guy on the other line is fairly understandable, but I can still sense the annoyance in his tone. He says he’s seen the news coverage, so he cuts me a break and says he will call back next week to give me time to riffle through some paperwork. Since the cops have returned everything, nothing is where it is supposed to be. It’s driving me crazy.
I keep digging through Eddie’s files, grumbling and cussing under my breath the entire time. I finally get to the point that I am so frustrated that I stand up and kick the shit out of his desk, stubbing my toe and making the middle drawer pop open. “Fuck!” I shout and drop back down into my seat; I notice a cop snicker as he walks by the office. I have to resist flicking him off. I got to close the drawer that popped open when I notice an envelope with Eddie’s name scribbled on the outside in a familiar handwriting. It’s my dad’s handwriting.
A part of me knows that I shouldn’t, but I can’t stop myself. I pick it up, close the drawer, and lean back in my seat. I open up the envelope and pull out a handwr
itten letter. It does not take me long to figure out that it’s not just any letter –it’s the letter. The letter our dad, my dad, left Eddie after he died. The one Eddie never let me read. I tell myself to put it away, but I wind up reading it anyways like a complete idiot.
Edward,
I realize I should have told you this before now, but I promised your mother I would not. I feel that it is unfair to you to bring this secret to the grave. You are not my son. There was a brief period in mine and your mother’s marriage in which we were separated –and I do mean brief. In fact, for the longest time I had assumed that you were, in fact, my child. Not long after James was born, your mother told me the truth about your lineage. Your real father’s name is Ricardo Smith. He lives in LA. I do believe you have some various other siblings through him, but I honestly could not tell you. It’s not your fault, and I realize that. I did my best to raise you as my own, but at the end of the day I always felt differently towards you than I know I should have. I suppose you could call it indifference or sometimes even a hint of anger or hatred. You were and still are a good person, so I hope that this news does not change that, but I felt that you should know the truth. As I’m sure you have found out by the time this letter is reaching you, as my only biological child I am leaving most everything to James. This is not meant as a jab at you, but in my last days I have had to think about where my priorities lay, and after careful consideration I realize that you are not one of them. I have set aside more than enough for you to live comfortably; besides, you are smart, so I am sure you will prosper on your own. I truly am sorry that this is how you are finding out about all of this. Take care of my son for me. Best of luck to you,
-Howard Mont
Best of luck to you? There is literally so much in this letter that makes me want to scream. It’s not outright hateful, sure, but it’s so damn cold. There was so much in it that was just unnecessarily cruel. Why tell Eddie that he felt indifferent towards him? Saying he felt anger and hatred –was that necessary? Saying that he wasn’t a priority? He didn’t even bother signing it Dad or your father or anything! He signed it Howard Mont! He couldn’t have even said I love you? This, this bullshit, is what our father left behind for Eddie? I try to imagine what it must have been like when Eddie had first read this letter just a few years ago.