Bartenders like him.
And chopper pilots.
Not a good ratio altogether.
He hits the elevator and heads for the third floor, wondering if he should have called ahead. If Siobhan is not back from the city, he’s going to have some time to kill. He’s anxious to check out the footage, to clock the second by second disintegration of order down the length of the Thruway, from catalyst to catastrophe.
“Hey Jaime,” he announces himself as he enters Siobhan’s office suite.
Jaime greets him with a happy smile, betraying her joy at seeing him.
He can’t help but return it.
“Yay, you came all the way down here just to see me,” she teases.
She still smiles.
So does Dodge.
The smiling almost feels silly, there’s so much of it.
“I won’t say it wasn’t on my mind,” he tells her, trying on his best charm before getting a little more serious. “But Siobhan asked me to come down. She back?”
“Asked or told?” Jaime says, still all sweetness, but doing that thing everyone does, whenever they get a chance, to remind him he’s a kept man.
This is Jaime’s revenge for him coming to see Siobhan, not her, or at least for not lying about it more. She sees the effect it has on him.
“As long as you’re here,” she says, the sweetness more for real this time, “I’m happy. I had fun at the party,” she reminds him.
He imagines her, falling over and uninhibited, leaning against him, the press of her hard parts, and the crush of her soft parts, against his own body. He forgives the verbal dig a minute ago, because he wants her happy with him. He can’t help himself like that around her.
She knows it, she toys with it.
He lets her.
He doesn’t see the harm.
“Were you able to reach Siobhan?” he asks, changing the subject.
“No, Dodge, I’m sorry,” she offers.
“Not back from New York?” he asks.
“New York?” she inquires, raising one eyebrow.
“What?” he asks.
She just smiles at him. “She got back this morning. But she has to do lunch with Rod Dressler,” she explains. “She wasn’t expecting you until later this afternoon.”
“Rod Dressler?” he asks.
“John Travolta from the other night?” Jaime reminds him. “Remember the sweat on the dance floor?”
Images drift back to him, previously washed away by the pleasures of the evening’s poolside climax.
Rod Dressler.
The bad boy client.
“I know who Dressler is,” he tells her, scowling.
He’s just wondering if his new assignment has more to do with him.
“They won’t be back for a while,” she promises. “But I’m free. You can take me out for lunch - I’m all yours if you want.”
“Sounds irresistible,” he concedes. “Do you have something in mind?”
“My sweet man, I always have a plan,” she assures him.
They leave for Bleu, a trendy café a few blocks away, near the park. Jaime requests the window seat, under the palm tree. The host knows her; he’s happy to oblige, though he stares warily at Dodge.
From the window there’s a view of the park across the street, and from his seat, Dodge can also view the sidewalk seating of the restaurant next to them, watches the leisurely and moneyed couples wining and dining their way through the day. But he can’t spare them much attention as Jaime shakes her hair out of its ponytail, her blond tresses free to fall about her shoulders and frame her face in a shower of golden locks.
“I’m hot,” she says, the fabric of her white blouse stretching across her chest as she struggles to pull her suit jacket off. Leaving it abandoned on the back of the chair behind her, she unhooks the top button of her shirt and Dodge can see she is, indeed, sweating beneath her clothes.
This is what it is like to be around Jaime, and he feels guilty for indulging himself in her company. Jaime’s behavior toward him amuses Siobhan; him responding is what is not tolerated. He should not have come. He reminds himself to play it cool.
“Come here often?” he asks.
“This is one of Siobhan’s favorites for clients,” she tells him. “Sometimes I get to tag along. It’s nice to be treated like Siobhan every once in a while.”
He smiles at her. For all of Jaime’s games and flirtations, she’s not totally duplicitous. She idolizes Siobhan and - as for many - worship is equal parts respect and envy. So Dodge knows that what Jaime wants is not him; it’s everything that belongs to Siobhan. Sometimes he wonders if Jaime is taking advantage of him, or if he is taking advantage of her. He understands her motivation better than she does. He knows nothing can come of it. But for the sake of some cheap thrill, some ego boost, some grimy titillation, he entertains her.
Because it entertains him. Better than anyone, though, he understands the power of small catalysts to have huge effects.
“Do you want a beer?” Jaime asks as the waiter arrives. “You look a little tense. You need to relax.”
She’s right. He makes an effort to relax, slouching back in his chair and letting his arms dangle down the sides. “What are you drinking?” he asks her.
“I’ve got to go back to work,” she reminds him.
“I’ve got to show up for work for the first time in forever,” he counters.
Not that it’s a fair argument.
He can’t get fired from doing nothing because he had a drink at lunch.
Jaime can.
But he doesn’t mind testing her.
“When is Siobhan back?”
“Not for a couple of hours,” she smiles, taking his bait. “Chardonnay,” she tells the waiter.
“Glass or bottle?” the waiter asks.
“Bottle,” Dodge answers, smiling to himself. “So, where is Siobhan, exactly?” he asks.
Jaime smiles back at him, deliberately, knowingly, and nods her head toward the window. The gesture confuses Dodge at first, but as he follows her eyes, he sees Siobhan walking past the window, with Rod Dressler in tow, his arm linked around hers. Their backs are toward him and they don’t see him; fortunately, they don’t see Jaime either. Dodge panics that they’re coming in here, but Jaime is already shaking her head and nodding back over her shoulder, as Siobhan and Dressler are seated by the hostess at Maxine’s, the high end bistro next door, at the corner table of the sidewalk seating, less than twenty feet away.
Jaime is silent, and Dodge realizes she brought him here to show him this. Nothing untoward happens between Siobhan and Dressler specifically while Dodge watches, but there is something unsettling about it just the same, a familiarity that makes him uncomfortable.
An easy laugh from Siobhan.
Her head bouncing back as her body pulses with a moment of joy.
A hand that occasionally touches a forearm as they talk.
These are small things.
Somewhere on the planet, though, a small gesture is generating a tempest of emotion, of potential conflict, between a couple, a triangle, nations.
Dodge can’t say which flap might prove to be a hurricane.
He smiles at Jaime, but neither of them can deny the mood has changed.
“Dodge,” she says carefully, still smiling at him, but without the playfulness that had made this fun a few minutes earlier.
“Yeah?” he asks, short on words.
“All the games aside,” she says, perhaps more sincere than he’s ever seen her. “You know I’m your friend, right?”
He nods. He doesn’t actually have a lot of friends left. It’s hard to deny anyone who still identifies herself as one.
“Well, I just want you to know what I know,” she explains.
“I know,” he tells her, but he can’t take his eyes away from Siobhan and Dressler.
“Hey,” she says, smiling tenderly at him to get his attention back. She rubs her foot along the round muscle of his calf, bobbing her
head and trying to grin at him to draw his eyes back to her.
“Remember why you wanted to come out to lunch with me to begin with?” she asks, her tone playful again, leaning over the table.
The AC has kicked on; the sweat is vanishing, leaving only flesh glowing in the sun.
Dodge believes she is just truly trying to cheer him up.
It works. They can’t leave until after Siobhan and Dressler do, so Jaime orders another bottle of wine.
“What about going back to work?” he asks her. He doesn’t want her to get in trouble because she went out on a limb, looking out for him. But he prefers her company at the moment.
“Dodge,” Jaime says, leveling her gaze at him. “We have some time.”
He gulps, not wanting to think about that, and knocks back his glass of wine, preparing for the next bottle. He watches Siobhan and Dressler leave, relieved that Siobhan doesn’t see him in the window, and even more that she simply looks all business.
He knows that look.
Just like he knows the look on Jaime’s face, and the feel of a toe on his thigh.
She’s just looking out for me, he tells himself.
*****
They exit the restaurant not long after, making short work of the second bottle of wine.
Dodge is quiet.
“What are you going to do now?” Jaime asks, some concern in her voice.
“I don’t know,” he tells her, wondering the same thing. “I think I got to just walk around for a little bit or something.”
“Care to escort me back?” she suggests. “We can kill a little time in the park on the way. You need to unwind.”
He hesitates.
“You have to meet Siobhan this afternoon anyway,” she reminds him.
She’s right. He has to report into the boss, after all.
“And I’m telling you,” she continues, “you have time.”
There’s not much to argue. She wraps his elbow in both of her arms and tugs him across the street to the park. They walk down a path that way, still clinging to each other, wandering off the path and across the grass, her pulling on him.
“Come on, cheer up,” she says, laughing for his benefit, pushing him away from her and dragging him back, knocking him around, off balance.
He smiles for her.
Her heart is in the right place.
His is not.
“Look!” she exclaims. “Caution tape - your favorite!”
She runs over to a merry-go-round with a bright yellow strip of ribbon hugging its bars, wrapped around each rail and then stretching to the next, all the way around it, back upon itself, like a snake biting its own tail, sealing it off.
“Can I do the honors?” she asks.
Finally, Dodge laughs, seeing her joy at finally getting to him.
“Tear away,” he tells her, and she snaps a piece of it in two, opening a section of the merry-go-round for them to sit on.
She beckons him over like a game show hostess with a wave of her arms, plopping him onto the sagging wood of the forbidden park ride. She drops herself gracefully into his lap after him, the section between the railings not really large enough for two.
His heart is the wrong place, he reminds himself, but she sits lightly on the thick part of his thigh, leans against the rail, putting some small distance between them, which he needs. He doesn’t trust himself.
“Tell me what it is about the caution tape again,” she asks, twisting her torso to look back at him.
Some of that distance disappears.
“Look at the people walking around the park,” Dodge tells her, nodding toward the lawn spreading away from them, where people are bustling about. some stroll, some rush from one place to another, some barely move at all – everyone crisscrossing in different directions, cutting through the park for different reasons.
She looks away, leans back against the rail again.
“Yeah?” she asks.
“Now look at the paths - the sidewalks and the walkways,” he tells her. “There are people walking all over the park, and there are paths there for them, but look how many people aren’t using them at all.”
“Only a couple are even on the paths,” she notices.
“Exactly,” he explains. “See, society is like an organism all itself, taking on a life bigger than any of the individuals who make it up. And it imposes an order on itself that doesn’t necessarily exist naturally. It’s just kind of arbitrary.”
“Okay, yeah,” Jaime says, indulging him, her sarcasm creeping out anyway, though. “We call that civilization.”
“Okay, alright. Fine – fair enough. Get this, though. Whoever designed this park thought they could predict, or pre-determine, where people should or would walk. But that would be like knowing the mind and soul of every individual who might come through here. Which no arbitrary order can control.”
“I get that,” she says, looking back at him again, smiling, “but I still don’t get why you like to steal caution tape – it’s there for a reason, you know.”
“I just like to break the rules,” he tells her with a grin.
“It’s funny, I get it,” she tells him. “But it’s dangerous, too.”
“I won’t take it today,” he promises, sighing. “Since this is to keep children off, after all.”
“Thank you,” she says, leaning her back against his chest and giving him a kiss on the cheek. “My knight in shining armor.”
Now - with her body resting against his, her lips still near his face - it’s not just his heart that is in the wrong place. He is silent, trying not to move, to keep what distance he can.
She turns her head, dropping it on his shoulder, looking up toward him. He can feel her breath on his neck when she speaks.
“Dodge,” she says, her voice turned tender, but he senses a note of distress too.
“Yeah?” he asks, trying to sound cool, calm.
“Do you remember when we …” she starts to ask.
But he cuts her off, his body tensing, before she can say it.
“We need to forget about that,” he reminds her, his voice growing stern.
“I know,” she says, her voice going soft.
He hears the hint of regret he’s come to expect, that makes him lose his breath, afraid of what might come out.
“It’s just that …”
“It’s just that what?” he demands, a mix of panic and anger seizing him.
He doesn’t want to deal with this. He doesn’t want to have this conversation.
The pause is gigantic. He’s ready to toss her off of him.
She opens her mouth, but doesn’t quite say anything, until finally, she just utters it.
“She knows,” Jaime says.
Panic gives way to terror.
“What do you mean, she knows?” he asks, pulling away from her to look into her eyes.
But he knows what she means.
“She knows, she knows,” Jaime explains.
But she doesn’t have to explain.
Dodge groans.
“She could only know if you told her, Jaime,” he snaps.
“Well, not exactly,” she offers.
“What do you mean, not exactly?”
He’s tired of pulling teeth, wants her to say what she has to say.
“I think Dressler might have told her,” she tells him, her voice cracking with guilt.
“Might have?” he asks, trying to digest this.
Though the question should be how Dressler knows.
But he doesn’t want to ask that, doesn’t need to hear the answer, doesn’t like the jealous rage simmering in him.
This is about him and his wife, not about Jaime and whatever she does.
Jaime senses this, though. She swivels on his leg to face him, her own legs dropping between his, draping her arms around his shoulders, insisting, in her own way, that this is about her.
She makes it hard to think about anything else.
“Is there any c
hance she might not know?” Dodge forces himself to ask, despite Jaime’s efforts to distract him, maintaining hope.
“It’s possible he hasn’t told her,” Jaime concedes. “Yet.”
Everyone's Dirty Little Secrets Page 3