That creepy Mr. Chuck is watching.
Dodge scans through the folder.
Siobhan is sending him out of town.
“Montreal,” Jaime tells him. “To cover an expo for a client unveiling a new product. Photos, article, press release.”
Not his typical kind of assignment.
This is a legitimate job.
Kind of dull, actually.
He wonders that the catch is.
He’s got to go. He’s got to go tonight. The event is tomorrow.
“Wow, pretty boring,” he mutters looking in the folder, wondering if there is some other instruction in there.
Who he’s supposed to burn this time.
“You want some company?” Jaime offers, her eyes smiling.
Dodge glances nervously toward Siobhan’s office, even though she’s gone, and that’s enough said.
Three days.
Siobhan is sending him away for three days.
She is nowhere to be found when he stops by the house to pack his clothes and grab his passport.
He can’t bring himself to listen to her message. Even if it might be telling him what his real job is. In a way, going to just cover a product launch is a relief, even if not all that exciting.
Maybe the time away is a good thing.
He leaves her a note.
In Montreal, baby - wish you were there.
Nothing has changed, he tells himself.
Nothing has changed.
*****
Hands tapping the steering wheel, Dodge races south on the Northway. It’s time to get back. He’s been gone three days. He hasn’t spoken with Siobhan. It’s eating at him. He’s just a bundle of nerves, driving way too fast. He did his job in Montreal, though. He did what she asked, though she’s never sent him on a normal, simple assignment before.
This isn’t about the job in Montreal, he knows.
Something deeper is wrong.
Jaime.
Rod Dressler.
He wonders where Siobhan has been for the last three days.
His leg twitches constantly. He thinks his cell phone is vibrating. He is trying to learn to ignore it, despite the automatic response. It’s just his leg twitching. It only feels like a cell phone vibrating. He digs it out of his pocket. There are no new calls. There is the message from Siobhan. The one she left before she sent him to Montreal. He can’t get himself to listen to it. The message is from when he didn’t show up at the office; from the day he was in the park, Jaime sprawled on his lap when he was supposed to meet Siobhan.
He stares at the message icon, unable even to keep his eyes on the road. The Northway, between Montreal and Lake George is perfectly straight. There are no curves. There are no stops. There are no other cars. There are no cops. It is a lawless strip of highway. Speed limits hardly matter. Further south, cars from Quebec are always still flying past everybody else. It doesn’t occur to them that they’re not still on the lonesome, lawless strip that introduces them to New York. No one knows the difference between miles and kilometers, no one knows what the signs mean anymore.
The landscape doesn’t change much crossing from New York into Canada. But pass one little, artificial line, and people speak a different language. Follow a different leader. Sell drugs cheaper. Rarely fight wars. Let you touch strippers. Provide care to all of its citizens.
Hypnotizing ourselves in our own little worlds - believing in fate, pre-destiny, God, law and order, history books - it’s easy to believe this is the way our world is designed, by intelligence, not the way we made it, just a tangle of individual motivations competing against each other. Sure, there’s an order. Not a divine one, not one in synergy with anything around it. Cross one little line, though, and you can see how contrived that order is. And how fragile.
One little line that we made ourselves.
Dodge stomps on the gas pedal. He can’t get home quickly enough. He doesn’t want to get home at all. A sense of danger fuels him - terrifies him.
He can fracture that metaphorical line, in a fraction of a second.
It takes five hours to drive a straight line home.
We like straight lines. They’re easier to follow.
Dodge feels his phone, now buried once more in his pocket, pressed against the hard, twitching muscle of his thigh, vibrate again. He knows this is the same old trick - that he shouldn’t bother to pull it out again, doesn’t want to stare at a reminder that the only person to have called him is Siobhan, days ago. And that he hasn’t called her back, hasn’t even listened to her message.
But he pulls the phone out anyway. Maybe because it only vibrated once. Normally, it feels like it’s constantly buzzing in his pocket. This time, it was just once.
For real.
A text message.
From Jaime.
Boss in NYC. Bringing friend 2 ur pool.
This is not good. He gets excited, despite himself, has a hard time typing even a simple response.
No.
He hits the send button.
He knows the protest will hardly work. He assumes nothing will.
Maybe he hopes. Maybe he fears.
His phone, still gripped in the flesh of his palm, vibrates again.
Picture message.
Dodge groans.
It sounds like the wrong kind of groan, even to him.
This will only get worse.
He opens the message.
When r u getting back?
There is a photo. A close-up of Jaime’s bare back, the smooth, silk curtain of her skin interrupted only a tight bikini string, cutting its way into her soft flesh. She is being clever.
He gets the message.
All he can think about is getting back. She’s flashing her best smile over her shoulder, that patented Jaime glint in her eye.
The devil may care.
Jaime does not.
Dodge knows she is capable of anything. That she will do anything.
He understands how a man can live in both hope and fear.
He has to get back before Siobhan does.
*****
Chuck knows how transient luck is.
If it dares pass you on the road, follow it.
There is no way he would have missed Jaime in a bikini top, in a convertible. When she passes him, it is easy to follow her. Hell, it almost feels innocent. But Chuck is honest. He knows right away he is going to follow her - is absolutely intoxicated at the prospect, even.
She’s going to Mrs. Dodge’s house, he realizes. It’s not like he hasn’t been there. Or by there, at least. He knows where she lives. So that’s clear early on. But even with that settled, this smacks of intrigue. Some kind of excitement.
He watches Jaime pull in past the gate, a friend in the passenger seat. Siobhan doesn’t lock it, he knows, but it’s nice to have a gate, just the same. He circles his car around the block, parks on the street, not knowing how he’s going to navigate this one yet. Straight up peep? Or is it time to pull the party crasher move? That’s bold for him. He’s a peep. A stalker, even. But he doesn’t really have the balls, or the brains, to figure out how to be part of the action.
That’s why he usually just follows his luck. He sees Dodge approaching in one of Siobhan’s cars, not long after Jaime. This is more intriguing than he had expected. He decides to start walking in, times it to be in front of Dodge, stepping into the gated driveway just before Dodge turns to pull in.
“Jesus, did she invite you too?” Dodge asks him through the passenger window.
Chuck marvels at how much Dodge looks like him, wonders if he could ever use that to his advantage.
He just grins and shrugs at Dodge.
Dodge throws open the door. “Hop in, then,” he tells Chuck.
Chuck acts hesitant, but he’s not. After a moment, he slides slowly in. “Thanks, Mr. Dodge,” he says.
Luck is a fickle mistress but she must be courted if she dances your way.
This is an easy rule to follow.
If that’s your idea of a rule - do whatever comes your way.
Things don’t happen for a reason.
Reasons don’t matter.
*****
Jaime is surprised when Mr. Chuck steps out of Dodge’s car, baffled at how the two came to be together. They don’t really know each other, though they certainly saw each other at the company party. Maybe in the office. They would recognize each other. They look alike, after all - people tend to notice that.
Brigitte – the friend she dragged along - splashes her, diving into the pool, and Jaime chases her to the shallow end, sending a wave of water into her face.
Jaime likes playing it by ear.
There’s a reason for everything. If you watch and listen long enough, you’ll figure it out. Then you can make those reasons work for you. She knows she can handle both of these men.
She pretends not to notice Dodge and Mr. Chuck approaching the pool, jumping onto Brigitte and wrestling her head toward the water. She knows exactly how awesome this looks to the two men.
She knows how Dodge will behave.
She worries about Mr. Chuck, though.
He’s a wild card.
But she’s not going to fuss over him right now. There may be a reason he showed up, in the end. Things like this end up being advantages a lot of the time, if you let them play out - and are smart enough to turn them to your favor.
She only has eyes for Dodge now, though.
He looks really hot, still in his tie, loose and twisted from his race here, his dark shades with their big lenses, the scruff. No matter how cool he plays it, though, she knows how hard he raced here. Especially after the second pic she sent.
After that, he stopped protesting. She couldn’t get him to flirt at all, though.
That’s his style, she knows. She imagines he is a great text flirter – he’s such a great writer - so she tries really hard. But even the pics don’t work, for Christ’s sake.
Hell, Mr. Chuck would agree to stop following her for even just one of those.
He wouldn’t really stop.
He would just agree to it.
Dodge only stares down at them for a minute from the edge of the pool, his jacket thrown over his shoulder. Jaime practically drowns Brigitte wrestling with her to get his attention.
He smiles, but walks away just the same, without a word.
She lets Brigitte breathe.
A few moments after he walks into the pool house, she follows. She’s not stupid. She knows he’s watching. She swims back to the deep end, leaving Brigitte to Mr. Chuck. She feels bad. But she can’t pretend she didn’t come here for one thing. She doesn’t know how long she has to get it.
She emerges slowly from the deep end, taking each step with incredible care, leaning forward to display her best angles. She laughs at herself, shaking her hair to send water flying. Actually, there are no angles on her body – only curves. Hitting the top step, she faces the pool house. The pool house windows, to be precise, and runs her hands down her stomach, wiping loose beads of water off of her, before taking slow, deliberate steps toward the pool house, hoping Dodge is enjoying the show.
She pauses at the door, shivers with a memory.
The pool, the pool house – these things bring her back to her childhood.
Not to the wonderful, fun family times a pool should recall.
Her father lived in a house not unlike this – what seemed like a mansion at the time, with the same kind of stamped concrete deck with its patterns of colorful tiles radiating away from the edge – the same turquoise shimmering beneath the glare of sunlight reflecting off the little waves in the pool.
When Jaime was four, her father left her and her mother for another woman – a wealthy widow - and they had another daughter, Jane, together.
The widow had a son too – Mark - a little older than Jaime from her previous marriage..
Her father didn’t totally abandon Jaime, but she stayed with her mother who, despite some alimony, struggled to get by on her own and raise Jaime.
A little bleaker than the more privileged life of her step siblings - with their beautiful pool, and the pool house, and all of the games and toys.
Her father took her on alternating weekends for a number of years, until her teens, at least - until about the time she started wearing bikinis.
Jaime remembers being confused in those first few years after the split, especially after her half-sister was born. Why her father left them. Why he didn’t take her. Why his life at the new house was so much better than hers – the gigantic house, the pool, the manicured yard, the snacks, cable TV – all these things that she didn’t have.
Jaime’s not stupid, of course – she knows this is why she was so insecure. She thought there was something wrong with her, that her father left because of her, for some reason - until she started to turn into the woman she is today.
That’s when she started to realize there was nothing wrong with her – that everything, in fact, was right.
Boys – men, even – cops, teachers, preachers - were swooning over her.
Lining up.
It didn’t take her long from there to figure out how to get pretty much anything she wanted.
Except, of course, her father - who, while friendly to Jaime, never quite treated her like part of his new family – more like part of a dark, secret past.
It doesn’t take a goddamned shrink to figure Jaime out. She craves men’s attention, and likes to burn them once she has it.
Her father’s new wife, of course, hated her.
Right up until she kicked Jaime out of the house forever.
She shakes off the memory like water from her hair.
Dodge is not at the pool house window like she expected, not in the front room at all.
He’s in the Jacuzzi, she realizes.
And wonders who is seducing who.
*****
Dodge doesn’t know if he’s hiding from Jaime, or inviting her.
It doesn’t matter.
He knows she will follow him no matter where he goes.
Living room.
Kitchen.
Jacuzzi.
Bedroom.
Maybe the hot tub in the steamy, private sauna room in the pool house is a bad idea.
Maybe it’s a great one.
He doesn’t know how to stop what’s happening from happening.
*****
Jaime figures that Dodge is hiding from her, or at least avoiding her - avoiding this situation. He doesn’t want to be responsible for this. Jaime’s not going to make it easy for him, though. Easy either way. If this isn’t what he wants, he has to do a better job convincing her. And he can’t hide from it. If he can’t be man enough to decide what he wants, she won’t give him a choice.
She was in the pool house, of course, at her stepmother’s house, when she was kicked out of forever.
One of the boys that began fawning over her, around the time she started to wear bikinis, was Mark - her father’s stepson, the half brother of her half sister.
When she’d come over to use the pool, he’d hover around her, always teasing her, prodding and poking her. He’d come up from behind her and fake wrestle with her, pulling her down to the ground. He made like it was play, just for fun, but of course it was simply a pretense to grope her and fill his hands with her at every chance he got.
They weren’t siblings, but it didn’t feel right – they were family, even if not related. But Mark couldn’t control himself – he was just a bundle of horny hormones and wandering paws, taking advantage of their familiarity, of having wrestled as children when it was still innocent.
He treated her like she was one of his toys he left lying around the pool house.
Jaime had to constantly be on guard, avoiding Mark or at least not letting him get too near her – opposite ends of the pool, locking the door if she was changing.
But even so he caught her one day when she was napping by the pool and didn’t know he had c
ome home. He was suddenly there tickling her - trying to untie her top really – while she tried to squirm away. But he had her trapped in the chair, straddling her.
Everyone's Dirty Little Secrets Page 5