EVERYONE’S DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS
a novel by Matthew Miles
One man gets off on murder charges.
The other just gets off on murder.
Everyone’s Dirty Little Secrets
A Novel by Matthew Miles
Published by Brain Tax Included Enterprises
2012 All Rights Reserved
Special thanks to Earl for his editorial guidance.
And most of all to Amy, for always making room for a little creativity in our lives.
Any resemblance to real persons or events is, of course, purely coincidental.
Part 1 - The Hangover
The man in the mirror.
Dodge.
Another man in the mirror.
Could be him.
He looks like Dodge.
A little wider-eyed.
A little crazier.
A little less bright.
Like a drunk Dodge.
Like Dodge right now.
A woman in the mirror, body thumping with the techno beat against some other guy on the dance floor, hair tossed into the air, sweat breaking on her alabaster skin.
Dodge’s wife.
Siobhan.
Another woman in the mirror, walking toward Dodge. A cocktail dress sliding off of her shoulders, its sequins sparkling like a disco ball.
Like her smile.
She wants to be his wife.
Not as in married to him.
She wants to be Siobhan, his wife.
His wife, who owns her, who owns this party, who owns the company throwing the party, owns everything around her.
Owns Dodge.
The man in the mirror.
A reflection of everything he thought he would be.
*****
Only one thing in this bar can drag Dodge’s eyes from his own worried face, staring back at him in the mirror, from the reflection of his wife bouncing against every guy who comes near her, cutting up the dance floor.
His eyes don’t really drag, though.
They leap to Jaime when he sees her coming.
Maybe it’s the sparkle of the sequins. Maybe it’s the crooked smile, and all it promises. Or maybe it’s just all the flesh jiggling its way out of her cocktail dress.
Yeah, it’s the flesh, he decides, watching her saunter toward him in the mirror, spaghetti straps sliding off her shoulders, loosening the cling of her dress to her breasts with every bounce she takes toward him.
Jaime.
Finding his eyes in the mirror, knowing she has his attention, the saunter gives way to more of a dance, a few sultry steps for his benefit, her torso shaking, her hips swaying to the thump of the house music, that dress containing less and less of her.
Christ, he imagines her damn near undressed by the time she reaches him.
Dodge takes a pull off his glass of bourbon – Makers on the rocks, wishing he could get as sloppy drunk as she is.
Falling out of his clothes drunk.
He needs more than booze for things to get really messy though.
He needs excitement.
Enticement.
A simple recipe.
A formula.
An equation.
Logic.
The only kind of math that makes sense to him.
Order amongst chaos.
Chaos out of order.
“Sure could use a drink,” Jaime slurs, arriving at his side, leaning in close to him, sequins pressing into the flesh of his left arm, propped on the bar. It might be the only thing keeping her from landing in his lap outright.
“What are you having?” Dodge asks, keeping his voice low and steady, despite the way she makes his heart pound, in time with the music, with the swelling of her ribcage. “It’s on me,” he jokes.
“What, out of your allowance?” she jabs, smiling to soften the sting of her words.
The bar is open, drinks are on the company tab. End of the fiscal year celebration. Every July. Company tab. Siobhan’s tab. Same difference. Like everything in his life. Not that he’s complaining. Hell, he’s living the high life.
Free and easy.
But money is a trap too.
He knows it.
Money breeds dependence.
“A few people here living on her money,” he reminds Jaime. “Including you.”
“Yeah, but we got to work for it,” she laughs. “You just got to sit there and look pretty.”
“Ha,” he grunts. “So I’m good for something.”
“So I hear,” she says, flashing a sly grin, eyelashes gently falling toward her cheeks.
“How about that drink?” he asks, changing the topic.
“Something wet,” she answers.
“How about something dry?” he counters, ordering her a martini, shifting his body to put a little distance between them.
The move doesn’t go unnoticed.
“Don’t worry,” she chides, a hint of a sneer on her face. “I think your wife’s got other things on her mind right now.”
Dodge follows her gaze out to the dance floor of the club, where Siobhan is crawling all over some dude, her dress scrunched up around her thighs, themselves wrapped around his knees, her back arched so far backwards one hand could touch the floor behind her, the other holding on his belt to keep her from falling over.
The guy himself seems frozen in a pelvic thrust, his arms going all Saturday Night Fever above his head.
Not a good moment to take a look.
“I suppose you’re right,” Dodge concedes, turning back to the bar, giving himself a fake smile in the mirror as he feels the sequins of Jaime’s gown pressing back into the flesh of his arms, her hand falling to his thigh as she leans forward to lift the martini just delivered by the bartender.
Dodge stifles a groan.
“Who is he?” he asks, deciding to ignore Jaime’s advance.
Ignoring also means not stopping.
He doesn’t acknowledge it, but he doesn’t stop it either.
“Client,” she answers, gulping the martini. “Big account. Family money, public image problems. Personal PR. Not our normal stuff. But he insisted. Good for us. He probably paid for this party just in the last 6 months.”
“What’s his name?” Dodge asks.
“Rod Dressler. You know the name,” she assures him.
“So that’s Dressler?” Dodge confirms out loud.
“You know him, then, hah?” Jaime asks, pleased to be of use.
“Yep,” Dodge acknowledges. “Political family. Daddy’s a county rep for the state. Playboy kid. Few scandals, couple of arrests, a lot of embarrassment.”
Dodge does some work on the sly for Siobhan, but Jaime doesn’t know it. Nobody knows it.
Dirty work.
He digs up dirt on people for some of Siobhan’s clients. For Dressler.
So, yeah, he knows the guy.
The police have hated Dodge ever since.
“Then that’s your boy,” she says, nodding her head back at the dance floor. “But you haven’t seen him in the gossip pages in a while.”
“Reformed man?” Dodge asks.
“Ha,” she snickers. “Reformed image. Siobhan is the queen of this business.”
And Dodge is the dick.
“She is good at what she does,” he concedes.
“She’s doing it right now, matter of fact,” Jaime adds. “Men are falling over themselves to hire her - schedule meetings, lunches, cocktails after work.”
“I know how it works,” he reminds her. “I’ve been with her since we were in college, you might recall.”
Dishing on Siobhan is a Jaime specialty. Reminders that Siobhan is Dodge’s wife, that they have a p
ast together – or worse, a future – interest her far less.
“Check out Mr. Chuck,” Jaime says, nodding at the guy he noticed earlier – the one who looks like a more demented version of himself.
Mr. Chuck looks uncomfortable, out of place, lingering on the margins of the crowd, near people, but not with them.
The crowd is camouflage for a guy like that, not company - cover for constant leering, his gaze swinging, lingering, over women in the room – Siobhan, in particular, and Jaime a lot too.
Dodge meets his eyes in the mirror as he eyes Jaime, as he has been all night - whenever she dances, or leans over the bar, or shifts in any way even slightly in his direction.
Any motion that allows him to ogle any of her curves.
Not that Dodge can blame him; every one of those moves pushes one of those curves tighter against some part of his own body, the soft cushion of a breast crushing against his arm, a hard, a smooth hip denting the muscle of his thigh, her fingertips sometimes tracing shapes on his jeans, sometimes just rubbing circles on the small of his back.
All of this is having its intended effect.
There isn’t much he can do, he tells himself.
He’s just sitting here, drinking his whiskey.
The only thing he can do – the only thing he wants to do – is not a consideration, no matter what his wife is doing on the dance floor.
It isn’t going to happen.
Jaime knows this.
Wouldn’t be doing what she is doing if she doesn’t.
“He work at the agency?” Dodge asks, watching Mr. Chuck stare after a cocktail waitress walking past him.
“Not exactly,” Jaime explains. “Mail room. That’s Mail Room Chuck. M.R. Chuck. Mr. Chuck.”
“So now the mail room guys get an invite to the annual party?” Dodge asks.
“No,” she laughs. “He’s creepy. He just shows up.”
“He looks like a little creepy,” Dodge concurs. “He keeps checking you out.”
“He actually looks a lot like you,” she points out. “Not as cute, though.”
“I noticed,” Dodge admits. “Not the cute part. Just the resemblance.”
“That’s more than a resemblance,” she insists. “That’s almost doppelganger. Hope your wife doesn’t accidentally take him home.”
“She’ll know soon enough if it she doesn’t have the real thing,” Dodge tells her, boasting, but not totally taking her bait.
“Maybe I should drag him out to the dance floor, find out,” she muses. Then, mumbling, she adds, “Rock his world.”
She’s drunker.
Dodge stifles another groan as her body slithers closer against him, giving him a hint of what it might mean for her to rock somebody’s world.
He breathes, waits for the world to stop rocking.
When Siobhan arrives at Dodge’s other side, it’s both terrifying and a relief – caught red-handed, so to speak, but saved from a situation he didn’t ask for.
And can’t control.
He can’t control Jaime.
He can’t control himself around Jaime.
That’s where Siobhan comes in.
“Well, if it isn’t my husband and my assistant,” she announces as she lands against the bar, dropping a sweaty arm around Dodge’s neck.
Around her trophy.
Jaime is already separated herself him, sensing with some female intuition that she had caught Siobhan’s attention long before she actually arrived. Brazen as Jaime is when Siobhan isn’t around, she knows her place, isn’t going to jeopardize Siobhan’s benefaction.
That’s how Dodge knows Jaime is playing a game – the flirting and the advances – he and Jaime are both beholden to Siobhan.
Siobhan is the sun, and she would incinerate Jaime if she dares fly too close.
“Thanks for the party, boss!” Jaime toasts, raising her martini, an olive sloshing over the rim.
“Enjoying it?” Siobhan asks. “Or just my husband?”
Her tone is friendly - not totally cold - but betrays a more calculated spar.
Even intoxicated, she has a way with words - a way of cutting to a point.
Jaime knows how to deflect Siobhan’s assertive postures, though, surviving as her assistant for over two years now.
“I thought he was included in tonight’s entertainment,” she quips, flashing her patented smile.
If Siobhan is anything like Dodge, she can’t resist that smile.
Not even Siobhan is immune to Jaime’s charm, relaxing at the joke.
Jaime knows it’s flattery to want what Siobhan has. To show no envy is almost as dangerous as coveting too much.
“He is. For me,” Siobhan declares, tightening her arm around Dodge’s neck and pulling his face into hers to plant a very deliberate kiss.
He doesn’t appreciate the demonstration of power, or the manhandling, but Siobhan is drunk, and even a little jealous, so he indulges her by acting like Jaime’s not there, pulling her into his lap and making her laugh.
“Now take me home,” she orders.
Siobhan is the boss.
He knows it.
Siobhan knows it.
And Jaime knows it, already flitting across the room, to Mr. Chuck or Rod Dressler or some stranger, anyone to demonstrate that Dodge is but a moment’s amusement, just another man on the margins of the crowd, a toy, a trifle, the flimsy wing of a butterfly flapping, an exhale in a hurricane.
Waiting for a cab outside, the jarring plastic yellow of caution tape wraps itself around four metal posts, over a broken piece of sidewalk, jack-hammered earlier that day. Its tail, flapping in the breeze, catches Dodge’s eye.
Siobhan notices, shakes her head in disapproval.
But Dodge is already grinning, mischief twinkling in his eyes, tearing the caution tape loose. “Who needs all these restrictions?” he asks, with a shrug.
“You do,” she insists, trying not to share in his joy at the misdeed, but laughing with him anyway. “You have no idea how to behave.”
“What do you want me to do?” he asks, but he knows the answer.
They hop in the next cab, disappearing into the night, the tape fluttering away in the wind.
*****
And so he does exactly what Siobhan demands, kissing the sweat beaded along the taut muscle lines of her neck as they bounce in the back seat of the cab on the way home.
The cabbie watches in the mirror, but neither of them cares, throwing money at him as he pulls in front of their house. She giggles at the top of her lungs as Dodge chases her through the gate and to the back of the house. She skitters across the deck and straight into the pool, gown and all, laughing the whole time.
He catches her as she climbs out the other side, pulling her out and sprawling her across the decorated concrete. Her dress is soaked, clinging to her ribs, outlining the bones of her hips, and falls to pieces in his hand as he pulls it off of her.
Dodge imagines sequins flying instead, can even feel those curves pressing against him still in his mind.
Siobhan controls his money, and his life - and his body, for that matter.
But his mind is free.
The swirling vortex of a hurricane, the calm center of chaos.
*****
Dodge wakes up, the woven mesh of the poolside furniture branding itself onto his dry flesh.
He’s alone.
He remembers Siobhan cuddling, on her back, on his stomach on this very chair the night before. It’s the last thing he remembers, but it’s a good memory.
Waking up outdoors, by himself - figuring she left him here when she went to bed - isn’t as good of a feeling. He doesn’t complain; a lot of men would have traded their lives for his last night.
Jaime at the bar.
Siobhan by the pool.
He’d sleep out here every night.
Everyone's Dirty Little Secrets Page 1