by Brent Pilkey
Did Lillian visit Scott in his office? Had they fucked on his desk as the student body passed his door? Hawthorn had no doubt; a woman who exuded such raw sexuality would not be dissuaded from taking what she wanted, where and when she wanted it.
Hawthorn sighed remorsefully. Evelyn had once burned with such a passion. How shocked would Karen and her husband be if they learned that the prim and proper Evelyn had once muffled her screams of ecstasy by biting and drawing blood from Hawthorn’s shoulder as she rode him beneath the stands at a political rally?
But no more. They had aged and their sex life had aged with them, but poorly. For Evelyn, sex was now a need like eating or sleeping. An itch to be scratched as quickly and efficiently as possible. Hawthorn could not remember the last time he had seen his wife nude outside of the bedroom.
Hawthorn put the memories and regrets aside. It was time to go home. A sultry evening; the downtown sidewalks and patios were crowded and he watched the people disinterestedly from behind the barrier of the car window. The traffic on Dundas Street was moving briskly and he wondered how many people were heading home and how many were bound elsewhere.
Stopped at the red light at Jarvis Street, Hawthorn realized he was about to cross into Jack’s division. Back when there had been some form of civil discourse between them, Jack had joked with Hawthorn that once you went east of Jarvis the buildings and people got uglier.
Hawthorn had been driving this road for years but had never thought of it as anything but a route connecting his office to the highway. Now, as the cars began to flow again, he studied what lay beyond the front of his car. On his left loomed a neon sign proclaiming the finest nude dancers were inside Filmore’s.
A strip club. Had that always been there?
He swung into the curb lane so as not to impede the drivers behind him as he reduced his speed, captivated by the sights around him. Jack may have been joking but there was a certain . . . dinginess to the area and people, as if life here was not quite as bright. The pedestrians moved slower, at times seemingly without a purpose or destination, and the buildings appeared tired, resigned to a dreary fate.
Hawthorn chuckled softly, imagining what his editor would say if he used such descriptions in his new book.
Stopped at Sherbourne Street, he watched as a group of young men sitting on the steps of a church passed a bottle among themselves. To his immediate right, in a small parking lot, two men suddenly pounced on a third, throwing him to the ground, pummelling him with their feet.
Hawthorn quickly looked around, sure someone would come to the man’s aid or at least be reaching for a phone to call police, but no one exhibited anything but mild interest. A few members of the drinking group shifted for a better view of the fight. People walking by either gave the ruckus a cursory glance or kept their eyes purposely averted.
Hawthorn jumped when someone rapped on the passenger window. He turned and found a black man leaning down and grinning a gap-toothed smile at him. The man tapped again, his other hand held palm up, displaying three small pieces of some off-white substance. The man pointed at the pea-sized chunks, nodding encouragingly.
It dawned on Hawthorn that the man was offering to sell him some crack cocaine. Out in the open at a busy intersection. Abruptly, the man walked away, the hand holding the narcotic vanishing into a pocket as a police car, its roof lights flashing, sped silently down Sherbourne Street. Hawthorn thought the police car would pull into the parking lot for the fight but it passed by without even a flash of brake lights. Trouble elsewhere.
A horn sounded behind him and on impulse Hawthorn turned south on Sherbourne, following in the wake of the police car. He glanced at the parking lot as he passed. The two assailants were gone. Their victim was staggering upright, blood, vividly bright in the lot’s overhead lights, masking half his face. Then Hawthorn was beyond the lot and the bloodied man was lost to sight.
For the next ten minutes Hawthorn aimlessly cruised the streets of this strange, alien landscape. Twice more, in the span of a few minutes, police cars roared past him, both times sirens accompanying the emergency lights.
Distanced as he was from the conflicts, Hawthorn still felt his heart thumping strongly in his chest in response to the sirens’ urgent wailing. Is this what attracted Jack to this place, kept him locked here? The excitement?
Hawthorn turned off the main street. He was travelling onto a side street, residential in nature and an unexpected oasis of tranquility. Ahead of him, a car pulled quickly away from the curb, forcing him to brake suddenly. Hawthorn stared after the car as the driver, obviously unmindful of the possibility of children, sped past the cars parked on the narrow street.
Puzzled as to what could have spurred the driver to such reckless action, Hawthorn looked to his right and found himself staring at a young woman who blatantly returned his gaze. Blatantly but with no hostility. Invitingly, even.
She had on a brief shirt that left her lean, alluring stomach bare to his eyes. Her worn jeans rode low on her hips and Hawthorn wondered what it would feel like to run his hands over those hips, to pull them back against his groin. Smiling, the woman hooked her thumbs under the thin straps of her panties and tugged at them suggestively. She cocked her eyebrow at him, half question, half challenge.
For the second time that evening, he was startled out of a senseless daze by a horn honking impatiently. Embarrassed, Hawthorn drove off, positive the occupants of the car behind him believed he was in search of a prostitute. He turned onto the next major street, not sure where he was until he saw Filmore’s again, but from the opposite direction.
Traffic was backed up from the lights ahead and Hawthorn slowed to a stop directly out front of the strip club. A poster hung next to the club’s front doors. Behind glass was a picture of a woman wearing a small pair of panties and pulling her shirt off over her head, revealing the bottom swell of her breasts.
In his mind’s eye, Hawthorn pictured the prostitute he had stared at stripping off her shirt in a similar manner, giving to him her small, firm breasts. He knew if he desired to, he could go back to her and have her peel off her shirt for him, bare the rest of her body to him. He could take her any way he wanted, could sink his fingers into the depths of her long, dark hair as he thrust inside her. Whatever he wanted was his for the asking. And the paying.
I’ve never been with a prostitute and I’m not about to start now.
But as the traffic tide bore him to Jarvis Street he turned north with no conscious thought.
I’m just going to take Gerrard to the Don Valley, that’s all, he reassured himself. She won’t be there anyways. Someone will have picked her up.
But as he wheeled onto the side street, again with no conscious thought, she was there as though she was waiting for no one but him. He slowed the BMW and as he crept past her, she shrugged as if to say Do you want me or not?
He coasted to a stop by the curb and watched in the mirror, his stomach churning with anxiety, as she sauntered toward the car. Her hips swayed hypnotically. He wetted dry lips. Sudden panic took him. How much money did he have? Would it be enough? Fear of the embarrassment he would suffer if she laughed at his offer dropped his hand to the gearshift.
And then she was there, leaning on the passenger door. She tapped softly, teasingly, on the window, each click of her nails icing Hawthorn’s spine down to his balls.
He was reaching for the window control when his cell phone rang.
The unexpected electronic purr shattered the silence inside the car. Hawthorn started, then frantically searched his pockets, consumed by an overwhelming need to answer the phone.
The woman was still at the window. Tapping, tapping.
He couldn’t find his phone and it seemed with every ring it grew louder, more impatient with his ineptness. His jacket! He pulled it into his lap and pawed through the pockets.
Tap, tap, tap.
Hi
s hand finally snagged the phone and he snapped it open. “Hello?” he said breathlessly.
It was Evelyn. “Are you all right, George? You sound peculiar.”
Tap, tap, tap.
“No, no, I’m fine. No.” He waved his free hand at the woman, shooing her away.
“No? George, what’s wrong? Is everything all right?”
“I’m fine, Evelyn. It’s just . . . it’s just one of those squeegee people. She wants money.”
“Oh, I hate how they pester you. Just drive away, George.”
The woman was still there. She stepped back from the car and spun a slow circle for him, showing him what could be his. She leaned down once more, her head tilted questioningly. Hawthorn shook his head emphatically. No. The woman shot her middle finger up at him then stalked off.
Hawthorn twisted in his seat to watch her walk away. Her hips no longer swayed seductively. Instead of relief, he experienced an odd sense of loss.
“George, are you there?”
“Sorry, Evelyn. She’s gone now. She was rather . . . persistent.” Hawthorn dropped the car into gear. “I’m on my way home now.”
Jenny was on her own, no backup. She was in this by herself.
First the prick in the Beemer stiffs me, now this.
“C’mon, baby. Jes a li’l suck ’n fuck.”
She stepped back as the john reached for her yet again, his electric wheelchair grinding painfully as it lurched after her. I bet we look like we’re dancing.
The john looked old enough to have fought in the Civil War and smelled like he hadn’t showered since. Jenny was almost convinced she could see the reek rising from him in wavering lines like the heat off of asphalt. Faint wisps of blue smoke drifted up from the chair’s labouring motor to mingle unpleasantly with the john’s vapours.
“C’mon, baby,” he crooned. “Ah got muh cheque t’day. Le’s party.”
“I said no,” Jenny snapped, her patience and amusement long since eroded by the john’s persistence. He’d chased her up and down and across the street, too horny or stupid to take the hint. She could have arrested him a dozen times over but Kris and Tank had made it abundantly clear with their laughter that they had no intention of coming to her rescue.
“Don’ be like that, baby girl.” He gummed her a toothless smile. “Ah jes wanna —”
“You just wanna take a hike,” Jack said, walking up.
The ancient john twisted in his chair to look at Jack. “Who’re you?” he rasped, his eyes scrunched up suspiciously.
“Who the fuck do you think I am?” Jack growled as he tucked his cell phone away. “Get lost.”
“Ah’m goin’, ah’m goin’,” the old man muttered as he steered his wheelchair down Pembroke. “Damn pimps.”
“Thanks. He just wouldn’t take no for an answer. And those two —” she shot Kris and Tank the finger “— thought it was just hilarious. And where were you?” she asked, turning some of her frustration on Jack.
“On the phone with Mason,” he said. “Hope you don’t have any plans for the weekend.”
“Just a date with Brian. Why?”
Jack sighed. “Then you better hope we catch the asshole who’s tuning up the hookers before your date ’cause until we do, you and I are officially on loan to the MCU.”
“Great. So much for a social life.” She blew hair out of her eyes. “Do we have a choice?”
Jack just looked at her.
“Damn it,” she swore. “How about you? What’s Karen going to say?” Jenny had filled Jack in on her unexpected and unpleasant meeting with his wife and she had no doubts the news would not sit well with Karen.
Her partner grinned but it was utterly without humour. “Who knows?” he said, fingering the raw flesh of his knuckles. “But after the last couple of nights at home, even this shithole is starting to look good.”
Jack cut the engine and the weary old car sputtered before dying. I hope that’s not an omen as to how the night is going to go. He glanced at the empty spot in the driveway next to his Ford. Karen’s probably at her parents’.
He opened the front door and after greeting Justice called out hopefully yet pointlessly. “Karen? You home?”
The house answered him silently. Jack paused in the front hall and listened to the silence. The house felt different — not just unoccupied, as in waiting for the owners to come home, but empty.
Jack let Justice out the kitchen door and as he waited for the dog he surveyed the room. The counters were clean; no dirty dishes sat in the sink awaiting scrubbing. He checked the magnet clip on the refrigerator where he and Karen posted notes for each other. Empty.
Justice tagged along as Jack wandered through the dining and living rooms. Again, everything was in its place, as it should be. But then why did the tidiness scare him so much?
He mounted the stairs and with every step his dread grew. “Karen, you here?” Though his words had been barely above a whisper, they sounded far too loud to his ears.
He checked the office and guest room — what was meant to be, in time, the baby’s room — and found both neat and tidy. But empty. He stood outside the office staring down the hall at the master bedroom. Justice trotted along the carpeted hall then stopped and looked back at Jack, as if to ask, Are you coming?
“Yeah, yeah.”
Jack approached the closed double doors — Karen had started closing them with Justice’s arrival, claiming she didn’t want the dog on the bed even though the shepherd had never shown any inclination to sleep there — and rapped softly. “Karen?” His stomach clenched at the stillness from the room.
He nudged open the door and followed Justice into the bedroom. Like the rest of the house, the room was neat and tidy. The bed was made and the floor was, as always, clear of clothes. Jack stood at the foot of the bed and slowly turned in place, looking. Looking for what, he had no clue.
“She’s probably with her parents,” he told Justice. “She’ll be h —”
One of the dresser’s drawers was ajar, a corner jutting out like a broken tooth. It got wedged when Karen was putting away laundry. That’s all, he told himself and even he knew it for a lie.
He tugged open the drawer, settling it back on its track. It was Karen’s underwear drawer and like the rest of the house it was neat, tidy.
Empty.
Thursday, 26 July
1012 hours
“But why hasn’t he called?”
“I couldn’t say for certain, dear.” Evelyn sat beside her daughter on the guest bed, stroking her hair soothingly. “Perhaps he’s still asleep. After all, you just woke up and you weren’t working last night.”
“I . . . I guess that’s possible.” Karen sniffed back tears as she clutched an old childhood teddy bear to her chest.
Evelyn frowned at the stuffed animal but kept her expression from Karen’s sight. She was secretly pleased that her daughter had come home last night but in no way approved of this childish behaviour. She would tolerate it for a day at most and then it would be time for Karen to begin fighting.
Karen had shown up on their doorstep last evening with a suitcase in hand and a determined yet frightened set to her face. She had blurted out a troubling story involving going to the police station to apologize to Jack — that did not sit well with Evelyn — running into his tramp of a partner — disappointing to Evelyn; she had thought somewhat better of her son-in-law — then storming out of the station and ending up at her parents’ home — both actions meeting Evelyn’s approval. Karen had stumbled to bed, emotionally exhausted, and Evelyn had spent the rest of the evening expecting a visit, or at least a call, from her son-in-law. Neither had occurred.
“Or he could be waiting for you to call him,” Evelyn suggested offhandedly. No need for Karen to be giving Jack the benefit of the doubt.
Karen stared at her mother. “Why
would I call him?”
“I’m not saying you should, dear.” Evelyn kept her voice soft, comforting, but silently she rejoiced at the steel in Karen’s words. “It’s just possible that he’s expecting you to call him since you were the one who walked out.”
“But I had no choice,” Karen defended herself righteously. “I knew he’d come home. Not for me,” she added, laughing bitterly. “But to look after that damn dog. There was no way I could be in the same house as him, not after seeing the good person —” her voice was mocking “— his partner is.”
“I hate to suggest this, dear, but is it possible he came home but didn’t stay there?”
Karen stared at her mother in shock, then her eyes widened. In fear or outrage? Either would work but Evelyn preferred outrage. Jack would soon learn the consequences of defying Evelyn Hawthorn and the plans she had for him. No one walked away from her.
“Mom?”
Evelyn focused on her daughter. “I’m sorry, dear, what were you saying?”
“I asked if you really think Jack could have spent the night with . . . with her.”
“I have no idea,” she responded vaguely. “But, as we all know, he’s no longer the man we used to know.”
Tears welled up in Karen’s eyes. “Oh, Jack.”
“Would you like to come down for some breakfast, dear?”
Karen shook her head. “No thanks, Mom. I think I’ll just sleep for a little while longer, if that’s okay.”
“Of course, dear.” Evelyn patted her daughter’s hand. “You’ve been through a traumatic event. You need your rest.”
Her husband joined Evelyn in the kitchen while she was brewing herself a mug of Earl Grey tea. George raised an eyebrow at the mug. Evelyn never strayed from her china cups unless she was particularly upset about something.
“How is she?” he asked.
“She’s sleeping right now. Would you like a cup?” George waved off her offer. Evelyn stirred a healthy dollop of honey into her tea then settled at the kitchen table. She raised the blinds on the bay window and sighed contentedly as the heat from the summer sun warmed her shoulders and neck.