by Mysti Parker
Okay, deep breaths. I'm wearing sneakers, and I remember some jujitsu from middle school. Damn, now I wish I’d kept taking lessons instead of dropping out after I recovered from the accident. That crash still haunts my dreams, makes me paranoid anytime I'm in a car.
Jack touches my arm lightly. “We’re here.”
I almost jump from my skin. “Oh, that was quick.”
“Yeah.” He pulls into a ginormous garage with automatic fluorescent lights that flick on in a steady rhythm, illuminating car after car – the kind I can never afford – five in total.
I yank up my purse from the floorboard and am out of the car before Jack even opens his door. Like a slack-jawed hick who's never seen cars before, I scan the garage slash museum. Though I can't name all the cars he owns, the interior design of the garage alone is enough to brag about. Black and white tiled floor, navy blue walls covered with posters and photographs of racetracks, sports cars, drivers, and bikini-clad women (of course). Decorative chrome light fixtures make the car paint sparkle even more.
“Wow, this is some garage." It's the cleverest thing I can say at the moment.
Jack stands at his open car door, elbows propped on the car’s roof, and shrugs. “It’s all right, I guess.”
“All right? You should open it to the public and sell tours.”
He laughs. “Not a bad idea. Would you like a tour?”
There's a hint of hopefulness in his voice that tugs at my heart. “Sure. I’d love one.”
“Okay.” He shuts the car door and pats the hood. “This is a '91 Lotus Elan convertible, an American version of the original British car, and my favorite one at that. Only about thirty-eight hundred were produced, and only around six hundred sold in the U.S. It handles like you wouldn't believe.”
He shows me the rest, and I'll never remember their names, but he's so proud and excited to talk about them, which is just adorable. When the quick tour is over, I follow him to the door that leads into the house and notice a small four-by-six photo pinned to a bulletin board just to the right of the door, beneath a row of hooks where umbrellas and hats hang. It's a picture of two young boys and a man standing beside a Bandit edition Trans Am.
“Who’s this?” I ask, then wish I hadn't.
Jack's smile fades, and his eyes hold a faraway look, tinged with regret. “That’s, um, my dad and Jesse and me.”
“Oh. Did you go to car shows a lot?”
“Yeah. Well, until… Yeah, we used to.”
The reluctant tone in his voice tells me not to ask any more questions. I remember hearing people talk about how his mother had shot his father to death – it was one of the few things I remember clearly from that time in my life. The accident had stripped away a lot of other more palatable memories. The kids in school were all wary of Jack and Jesse for a while after the shooting. Jesse had acted out by becoming the county’s most notorious bully while Jack immersed himself in sports and later in every willing girl he could find.
Wordlessly, Jack opens the door and climbs the two steps into the mudroom. I follow, wishing I could console him somehow beyond the sexual encounter we have planned. Then I fall prey to the wonder of a mudroom as big as the living room in my apartment.
A fancy red washer and dryer set is the focal point on one of the narrow walls. Expensive-looking dress shirts and pants hang from a stainless steel rack, looking as though they’d been freshly pressed. The whole room, however, is spotless. Not a lint ball or stray dryer sheet that I can see anywhere.
“Nice.” Boy, my compliments are sooo clever today. Not.
“Oh, yeah, my housekeeper likes it.”
“And do you like her?”
“If you mean, do we get it on, no. Mrs. Gonsalves is sixty and married. Her husband is my landscaper. I also don’t sleep with married women…despite what you may have heard.”
My cheeks grow warm. Sure, I've heard the widespread rumor that Jack had been messing around with Penny Stanton, the sheriff’s former wife. But I never know what to believe. I don't put a whole lot of stock into gossip, but Jack does have a love-em-and-leave-em reputation going back to high school.
We leave the mudroom and enter a huge kitchen lined with marble countertops. Stainless steel cookware gleams from a rack that hangs from the ceiling. Everything looks spotless in here too.
“Does your housekeeper do the cooking, or do you have a personal chef?” I ask.
“She does some cooking, but mostly for her and Eduardo. Her main job is taking care of my roommates while I’m gone. They both live here, in a private apartment over the garage.”
"Is she here now?"
"No, I think she's at mass with Eduardo. They usually go out to dinner afterwards, so we'll have the place all to ourselves for a while."
"So are they your roommates?"
"Not exactly." He opens a big double-doored refrigerator faced with custom-made panels that look like the wooden cabinets around the kitchen. “Care for a drink? Beer, soda, water, gin?”
“Just some water, please.” Though alcohol would have calmed my nerves, I still don’t know if a hasty retreat will be necessary, so keeping a clear head is my best bet. “Am I going to be meeting these roommates?”
“Probably, unless they’re too shy.” He hands me a bottle of water and leans with his back against the center island, arms crossed, and regards me with his deep-set eyes that seem able to undress me down to my innermost secrets.
I take a few gulps of ice-cold Evian and wince as the temperature makes my teeth ache. I need to gather some courage before melting under the weight of his stare. “So now what?”
“How about I shower while you make yourself comfortable?”
“Meaning?”
He smiles. “Anything from get naked to watch TV on my couch. One of those I’d prefer over the other.”
“I bet you would.” Heat rises to my forehead and races down to my toes. I avert my eyes, checking out his full-size wine cooler. He must think I'm a virgin or a prude, blushing like this.
If he does, he doesn't mention it. “Have a look around and help yourself to anything. The den I like best is downstairs. I’ll be out in a bit.”
I nod as he strides away through wide open French doors and starts up some stairs at the rear of a formal dining room. I wander into the burgundy-painted room finished with white trim and wainscoting. In its center sits a dark cherry eight-person dining table with brocade-upholstered chairs. A large vase of fresh yellow carnations and white porcelain place settings with brown cloth napkins suggests he likes to entertain.
But there isn’t a speck of dust anywhere, a crumb on the rug, or even a water spot on the empty wine glasses. Does anyone ever use this stuff, or is it all for show?
A scratching noise draws my attention to a breakfast nook at one end of the dining room. There's a wire cage there, and inside is some sort of box, a bowl of water, and another of mostly eaten vegetables. Something pokes its head out from the box. I yelp and step back.
Then I laugh. A raccoon stares at me curiously and grabs a grape before retreating back into his hut. Overhead, a pair of glinting eyes shines down at me from some kind of shelf, and meows in an annoyed tone. It's a rather fat calico cat. She disappears into an opening in the wall at one end of the shelf. Weird. Glancing around, I notice several such connected shelves with ramps and ladders, leading to other openings. It's a feline elevated highway, like something I've seen on Animal Planet.
The same staircase Jack had gone up also has a descending set of steps that must lead into the basement. He did say to look around, so I set my purse on a chair and retrieve my cell phone from it. Then I creep down the stairs and reach a landing and another set of stairs that turns back on itself. I creep down those, the light from the stairwell fading the farther I go down.
“Give me some pussy!” someone cries out from downstairs. The voice is high-pitched and slurred. A drunk woman, maybe?
I freeze, one hand clutching my water bottle, the other with a death
grip on my cell phone.
“Oh shit,” I whisper, my mind conjuring up a lewd scene of writhing bodies, handcuffs, and blindfolds.
What on earth have I gotten myself into? There are horror stories of sex slaves held prisoner in some weirdo’s basement. I dare a look over my shoulder, in case Jack has sneaked up behind me with chloroform or something. No one’s there. The only thing I hear is some distant water flowing through pipes. The shower, I hope.
I turn on my cell phone flashlight, tiptoe down the last few stairs, and shine it around a shadowy corner. A dark shape flashes through the light. I gasp. It looked orange and…fluffy? Probably another cat is all. Jack’s a vet, so that would make sense that he has pets, considering he has a raccoon in a cage upstairs. But a cat can’t say, ‘Give me some pussy!’ even though it is, technically, a pussy.
I shine the light around me, but my eyes adjust enough to see a very dim lamp upon a table beside a plump black leather sofa. Nothing moves. No bodies writhing. But something flutters in the corner by a fireplace. There’s another cage, with another animal moving within.
“Show me your titties!” Ah-ha – there’s the culprit. The squealy voice came from a big grey parrot that regards me with a few turns of his head and scratches his neck with a scaly, clawed foot.
In the opposite corner, a small, golden-haired primate clings to a branch, blinking at me with round, golden eyes. A dog with dark orange fur, bushy tail, and black legs and ears trots up to me, holding a plastic bone. I start to pet him, but realize it’s a red fox and draw my hands against my chest. They’re wild, aren’t they?
“Go on, shoo!” I whisper, fluttering my hand at him. He squeaks the dog toy, then tosses it in the air. The shiny blue bone lands at my feet. He stands back a little, glancing from me to the toy.
“Oh – you just want to play? You won’t bite me, right?” Slowly, keeping my eyes on him, I bend over and pick it up. It’s covered with slippery slobber. Grimacing, I fling it across the room. He goes after it, grabs it in his mouth, and trots off into another dark room.
“His roommates,” I say with a chuckle, relieved it’s not a sex den after all.
This paranoia is stupid. I’m an adult. He’s an adult. There’s no reason we can’t enjoy a consensual physical relationship. What am I really scared of? That he’ll be repulsed with the scars from my accident or my stubborn muffin top? I’m not so naïve as to think he’ll fall in love with me and whisk me away to his castle in the sky.
The basement den is pretty far from looking like a castle. If anything, I’d call this a bachelor pad. The room is smaller and more casual than the ground-floor rooms. Brown shag carpeting looks like something my grandparents had in their home. The furniture is mismatched, as though grabbed up haphazardly from random garage sales. The design, or lack thereof, grates on my fashion sense.
A bag of chips, an iPad, and two open beer cans sit on the scratched coffee table in front of the sofa. Water marks form ugly rings across the tabletop, despite the stack of coasters sitting inches away. Decorative red velvet pillows are rumpled, one on the floor. There’s a little kitchenette at one end of the den, so I put the chips in a cabinet and throw the beer cans away. Mrs. Gonsalves must not clean down here very often.
Back at the sofa, I pick up the fallen pillow, fluff it, and set it against the armrest. As I straighten the others, I spot something narrow and red sticking partway out between the sofa cushions. Freezing for a moment to make sure it isn’t a snake or other such “roommate,” I gingerly pick it up.
Instead of a living thing, I exhume a red silk thong and hold it at arm’s length. Ugh. Where’s the hand sanitizer?
Footsteps thump down the stairs before Jack appears at the bottom step. “So, are we ready for this no-strings-attached thing?”
I hold up the thong. “This string’s not attached to anyone. Do you even know her name?”
“Of course. I’m not that shallow. It was Missy.”
“What about her last name?”
He ducks his head and grins, scratching his jaw. “Uh…okay, so I’m a little shallow.”
“But not stupid, right? You use protection?”
“Of course, but…it didn’t really… Missy didn’t work out.”
“Work out as in exercise or work out as in you didn’t sleep with her?”
He strides to the kitchenette, flips on a light, and takes a bottle of beer from the fridge. “I didn’t sleep with her.”
“Was she married?”
“No, I just couldn’t…”
“Get it up?”
He laughs nervously and twists off the bottle top, then takes a long draw of his beer. “No, that’s not a problem.”
It’s probably best to not press the issue of possible underperformance, since his pride is on the verge of being wounded.
The fox runs back into the room, excitedly jumping up on Jack’s legs. Jack squats down while the fox flips over on its back. Smiling, Jack scratches its belly, the animal’s black legs flailing around in the air.
“I’ve never seen anyone with a pet fox before,” I admit. “What’s his name?”
“Jesse.”
“After your brother?”
“Yeah. This guy was a little terror when he was a kit. Just like my brother.” Jack looks up with a slanted grin, much like that of the real Jesse. “Mrs. Gonsalves must have forgotten to lock the dog door. Luckily, he hasn’t damaged anything or eaten any of the other animals.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Foxes are hunters by instinct. Precocious to the extreme. You can’t leave them unsupervised for long or they’ll tear up the sofa and anything else they can get a hold of.”
“Ah, that explains it.”
“Explains what?”
“Why it looks like a blind dude decorated the den.”
He laughs – it’s rich and genuine, which I haven’t really heard yet from him. It’s like he pulled back a curtain for a moment so I could catch a glimpse of the real him. It passes as quickly as it came, his smile once more that of a charming millionaire playboy.
To my horror, the fox clamps down on Jack’s hand, but he doesn’t flinch or anything. “Oh my God, does he bite?” I fight my mouse-sighting instinct to jump up on the sofa – totally useless in escaping a fox. Or a mouse for that matter.
“No, it’s not a bite.” Jesse lets go of Jack’s hand and accepts a scratch behind his ears. “More like a love bite, a way of showing his trust.” Jack stands again and points to a dog door near the kitchenette. “Time for night-night.”
Jesse the fox flips over onto his feet, makes a mad lap around the den, pausing for a sniff and a lick at my shoe, then races to the dog door and dives through it. The door flaps back and forth a few times before going still. Jack goes over and locks it.
“He goes outside? Is he wild?” I’m still amazed a fox just played at my feet and didn’t eat me.
Jack chuckles. “No, not wild. It’s an outdoor enclosure, fox-proofed, of course, which is quite the challenge. He’s actually a surrendered pet, as are most of my roommates.”
“Surrendered?”
“Yeah, owners who thought it would be fun to own animals that were never meant to be captive. They don’t realize what they’re getting into and won’t do what it takes to keep their exotic pets happy. So, guess who ends up with them?” He shakes his head, sighs, and takes another drink of his beer.
“It’s really sweet of you to take them in. I like animals, but I know nothing about exotic pets.” I can already feel myself warming to Jack, in more ways than one. That could be dangerous.
“I adopt them out when I can find the right owners,” Jack says.
The parrot squawks and curses again. “Fuckin’ A!”
“Yeah, fuckin’ A, old bird.” Jack scowls at the parrot. “Except for Quincy – he’s an asshole.”
Avery laughs. “I can tell.”
“A navy veteran owned him – the guy often had his buddies over for poker games. Apparent
ly, they used some pretty flowery language during their games.”
“Poor Quincy.”
“Don’t feel sorry for him. He’s smart enough to be retrained, but too old to care. Aren’t you, Quincy?”
“Fuckin’ A!” Quincy agrees, bobbing his head.
Jack walks right up to me, setting his beer on the table. My breath hitches, having him in such close proximity. I reach down and grab a coaster, then set his bottle on that. There’s no excuse for water spots, my mother always said.
He chuckles then cracks his knuckles. “So, are you more of a just-get-it-on kind of girl, or do you prefer a massage first?”
How do I answer that? Think, Avery, think… “I’ve got a better idea. How about a game?”
Jack crosses his arms and arches one eyebrow. “What, like Twister or strip Poker? I’d be down for those.”
“No…” I flip through a few apps on my phone until I find one that will work. “Truth or Dare.”
“Ummm…” His eyes narrow.
“If you refuse to answer a question, you have to remove a piece of clothing.”
A grin spreads across his face. “That’s more like it.”
Relief washes over me. Though I’ve agreed to the whole no-strings-attached thing, I want to get to know Jack a little more before we know each other in the Biblical sense.
Jack plops down on the sofa, one arm stretched across the back. “Who goes first?”
“Um, how about you?”
“Okay.” He reaches for the phone, and I hand it to him.
“You just ask the question, and wait for the answer, then tap next.”
“Gotcha.” He studies the screen for a moment, before grinning up at me. “You can sit down, unless you want to strip while standing.”
“Okay.” I sit, keeping to the opposite side of the sofa and tuck my hands between my legs to keep them from trembling. Why am I feeling so nervous?