Looking back, it had been around then, in the early days of spring when Nico had first laid out several lines of cocaine on a tray, asking if she’d ever tried it. Stunned, she’d studied him incredulously when he held out a straw. “A friend of mine gave it to me as a gift. I’ve never tried it before, but he said to do it with my girl.”
Maya had shaken her head. “Nico, I don’t do drugs. I can’t believe you want to.”
She’d grown up in a neighborhood where the dealers ruled the streets and she’d had to literally fight her way out. Even children were recruited by gang leaders, and turf wars claimed many lives. She recalled trembling in fear at the first sound of gunshots—taking her younger siblings and hiding in the closet.
Nico had cavalierly brushed off the enormity of his request. “Come on. Let’s have fun tonight. Why let it go to waste?”
Knowing it was wrong, she’d felt anxious. “You go ahead, Nico. You do it, but I don’t want to.”
“Look, Maya, I’m exhausted. It’s just a little pick-me-up, you know. And I’ll be able to go longer and pleasure you more.”
“I thought the stuff keeps you from getting hard. That’s what I heard.”
“It can…so I’ve been told. So I also have this,” he’d shown her a blue pill in the palm of his hand, then popped it into his mouth and swallowed it. Since she hadn’t taken the straw, he’d bent his head over the tray and snorted up a few lines at once.
Maya had scowled. “Viagra? And coke? Are you looking for a heart attack?”
He’d held the straw out again for her. “Come on, baby. It’s just this one time. What can happen?”
Upset, Maya finally stood up and grabbed her jacket and bag. “Look, Nico, I have an early call tomorrow, so let’s just call it a night.”
Nico had seized her firmly by the arm. “No way. You’re not leaving.”
“Ow, that hurt!” She broke away, automatically using a fight maneuver. Pissed off, she then yelled, “What’s wrong with you?”
“Maya, baby. Look, I just snorted it and took the pill so we can have a good time. You can’t leave now. I’ll be up all night alone. Or I’d have to text a girl.”
“Oh, that’s just wonderful. Great. I can’t believe you! Fuck it!”
Nico’s badgering was incessant, and it had been easier to give in than to argue with him. Taking the straw, she’d done one of the three lines remaining on the tray. “OK? You satisfied?”
Nico had leaned over, running his tongue over her lower lip before sucking on it. Maya could tell by his mannerisms—the way he laid out the lines, the way he held the straw and sniffed the water up his nose—that was not his first time snorting coke. “Beautiful. Now get in the bedroom,” he’d murmured.
As promised, he had pleasured her slowly, licking her pussy and fucking her with his fingers and tongue, teasing her until she clenched the sheets, pleading for him to let her come. Each time he brought her to the point of release, he stopped and pulled on his cock. Then, taking his time, he brought her back again, until he finally let her come, and she shuddered with a wracking orgasm, pulling his hair and crying his name.
Wildly, with an insatiable hunger, he pulled her to the edge of the bed, spreading her legs wide before plunging relentlessly into her. When he didn’t come, Maya got on top, and moving over him, brought herself to another orgasm, expecting him to climax with her as he often did. Pushing her head down, he lifted her tantalizing ass the way he liked, admiring it as he ceremoniously lavished coconut oil upon it. Enraptured, he fucked her from behind, his hands planted firmly on her hips. He kept forcefully powering into her, causing her to whimper, until she finally begged him to stop. Moving from the bed, she knelt on the floor under him and lustily sucked his cock, taking him all the way to the back of her throat. He had insisted he was holding back, basking in the euphoria, but Maya knew it was the drugs. The Viagra had kept him hard, and the coke heightened his pleasure but delayed his gratification. Playing with his balls, her fingers gingerly penetrated his anus while she deep throated him, and he finally bucked his hips, groaning as he jetted into the back of her throat.
Her hair was plastered down her back, and Nico was drenched in sweat. They had been at it for hours. She went to the kitchen and returned with two bottles of water, then lying next to him, she nestled into his body and fell asleep.
Pulling into the parking lot, Maya realized how the drive to Amaru every day after work had become part of her routine. Sitting in her car, she thought about Nico being away for a month. As much as she would miss him, she knew she needed this time to focus on herself and detox. Colleagues had begun to comment on her weight loss, and she also realized she didn’t look as healthy as she used to, either. When she walked into his office, she found him frantically looking for his passport. He pulled out file boxes and haphazardly rummaged around in them, then opened drawers and dumped out the contents. It looked like burglars had tossed the joint. Calling out to her, he scolded, “What took you so long? Where is my passport?”
Maya dropped her bag and quickly stripped off her jacket. “I don’t know. Where do you keep it?” Not looking at him, she started picking up the drawers from the floor, putting the contents back in. Nico stopped in his tracks and glared at her until she looked met his gaze.
“Are you serious?” he asked snidely. “I asked you a question! Don’t fuck with me. I need my passport! Help me find it!”
Maya didn’t dare reproach him. She could see he was exceedingly agitated and finding the passport was a priority. She continued to pick things up off the floor and put them away while also carefully looking for the passport. “When did you last see it? Just try visualizing.”
“Um, it’s in a dark red leather case that Luna gave me.” He went to a letter holder on his desk and began flipping through the papers, finding the passport case with the passport inside. “Got it! I was looking for a blue plastic jacket. I forgot.”
Relieved, Maya put the drawers back in the desk. Just then, his phone pinged, and he huffed and texted a quick response while he barked orders. “I have a thousand things I need you to do. Just start packing for me. What’s the weather in Abu Dhabi? I need dress clothes, too!”
Googling the weather on her phone, she called out, “Average temp in December is in the seventies, but it can get down to sixty at night.” Maya got busy laying out piles of clothes.
“And here,” he tossed her a Lululemon shopping bag from near the desk, “I have some new yoga clothes. Pack them all.”
As she removed the contents from the shopping bag, Maya asked intrepidly, “Did you try them on?” Then, surmising he hadn’t bought the items for himself, quickly added, “Should I cut the tags off?”
“Let me see these things.” Stripping off his well-worn sweatpants, he put on the black stretch pants.
Cutting the tags off, she silently tallied the items before packing them into the Louis Vuitton suitcase, another gift from Alexa, who adored all things LV. The grand total was over one thousand dollars. Commenting would only provoke him, so she kept quiet.
Handing her a new shoebox, he casually instructed, “Here, pack these, too.” Catching her peeking at the $275 price tag, he quipped snidely, “Don’t be so nosy, Maya. You’re just like Luna. In Abu Dhabi, everyone is a billionaire. Alexa got me some new things, and believe me, I wish she hadn’t. Because I will have to pay for it, one way or another. Nothing is free, you know.”
“Sorry…” In a way, she knew he was right. The half million dollars he’d just received from the sheikh in the Emirates was through Alexa’s contacts, and that meant he owed her.
Nico hovered, asking her a million times if she had packed his charger, his razor, his dress shoes, and a dozen other items. Remaining composed, she checked again as he watched her, even though she knew she had packed them. Once more, he asked if the wire transfer had come through to his account, and she again showed him that the $500,000 had been posted to his account in US dollars. “When I get back, we’ll put in an of
fer on the place in Temecula. Don’t forget to call the realtor and tell him I want that cabin with the five acres. We can plant a vineyard.”
Maya smiled, promising she would call first thing in the morning. Watching him, she saw he was skittish and his nerves were frayed. She assumed he was high, but asking would only antagonize him. As if reading her mind, he said aloud, “I assure you, there is no way for me to take drugs there. In Abu Dhabi…I would never risk it.”
She was counting on him returning clean—of getting her old Nico back. Reflecting back over the past eight months, she concluded he had lied last spring when he’d claimed it was his first time snorting coke. But she was confounded how he’d hidden it from her until then. In spite of her vociferous objections and better judgment, he’d kept pressuring her to do coke with him. Not wanting to lose him, and knowing he would find someone else to party with if she refused, she’d given in.
Hugging him, she cooed, “Nico, why are you nervous? You’ve been paid a lot of money to teach a powerful kriya. You should be thrilled.” She could feel him trembling.
“Maya, you don’t understand. I’m under a lot of pressure.”
“You’ll do great, baby.” His business had exploded, and still he worried it would collapse around him at any moment. Maya knew he had close to a million dollars in his bank account—and that was before the wire transfer. But if she questioned him, he got angry and paranoid.
Showering him with praise, she consoled, “I know it’s far away, but we can Skype every day.”
At the sound of his cell phone ringing, he rolled his eyes at Maya, putting his finger to his lips to remind her to be quiet. “What, Alexa? I’m packing. I have a million things to do.”
Maya could make out most of Alexa’s side of the conversation because she had such a loud voice. “I want to see you before you leave. Are you coming over?” she whined.
“I just told you. I’m swamped, and I don’t even have time to cut my toenails.”
“…gone for so long…miss you…,” Maya picked out enough to get the gist of it. She would have liked to put two fingers in her mouth, the sign for gagging, but knew it would piss him off, so she restrained the urge.
“Don’t cry. I can’t deal with this right now. I’m only going for a month. I’ll Skype you.”
“…call me…you get there.” Maya couldn’t make out her words, since she was obviously crying.
“Yes, I promise. OK. Let me go.”
“…love you…miss you…,” Maya heard Alexa’s pleading voice, and Nico rolled his eyes in disgust, hanging up without replying with a similar sentiment.
But he must have felt the need to say something to Maya, quickly blurting, “These women are infatuated with me. They are crazy in the head from menopause.”
Maya had been jealous, unsure what their relationship was until she realized Alexa was in love with Nico and he used that to get what he wanted. When Maya had seen bruises on Nico, she’d remarked about them and he’d told her that Alexa was crazy and had tried to stab him. Then Nico told her how Alexa had gone off the deep end. She’d torn her hair out, punched herself, and cut her arms with a razor in front of him, as if that would get him to love her back. Maya began to feel sorry for her. She hadn’t cut an artery, but Nico had freaked out anyway and taken her to Mexico. There, the drugs were cheap and plentiful and he could make her happy, at least temporarily. It was as if doing it in Mexico negated the reality for him.
After making his favorite roasted chicken, her mom’s recipe with rice and beans, and sharing a bottle of red wine, they watched Elysium on Netflix. She was relieved when he didn’t bring out any cocaine. Nico soon fell asleep on the sofa with his head in her lap. Reluctantly, she nudged him to bed, happy when he fell right back to sleep. Spooning him, with her arm draped around his waist, it hit her hard how much she was going to miss him. Nico had made her stronger by giving her tools to overcome fear. He had changed her forever—she just wasn’t sure it was for the better.
Luna stood before the full-length mirror in the waning afternoon light, modeling the buttery soft midriff halter-top she’d just completed for one of the stars on Going My Way. Constructing it by herself instead of assigning it to one of the seamstresses had been good therapy. It fit perfectly, revealing just enough cleavage and accentuating her beautifully defined shoulders. Her full breasts appeared ample above the bra, and her arms, long and thin, were still graceful from years of ballet. Contemplating keeping this one for herself and making another for the actress, she headed to the fabric room for more suede.
A carton stuffed with multi-colored suede scraps had prompted her to sew a patchwork version, like those handbags from the ’60s. She was selecting beads and feathers from one of the clear bins when inspiration struck her to make Nico a medicine bundle.
It had been six months since the incident with Erin’s tweets, and she hadn’t heard from him, other than the newsletter saying he would be on a special assignment in Abu Dhabi till January. She’d joined an exclusive chakra healing center in May, shortly after she and Nico had their final falling out. Working through her kriyas, she envisioned wading into the deep pools of his eyes and touching the serpent’s coil of his hair, moving through her addiction to Nico by facing it. As Thanksgiving and her birthday drew near, not a day passed that she hadn’t felt the fire butterflies connecting them to each other. Although Tyler’s voice had been measured when he demanded she have no contact with Nico, Luna still visualized the hurt and disappointment on his face. His message was clear—he would not tolerate her obsession any longer. So far, she’d kept her promise, but that hadn’t prevented her from fixating on a photo of she’d found on the internet of Nico flanked by glamourous women wearing Zuhair Murad gowns, standing in front of a white Maybach.
Digging around in the bins, she found an arrowhead and a horse hair tassel that had once been attached to a handbag. Shamans’ medicine bundles, considered holy, often contained items like hair and bones used in rituals for protection and healing. Taking apart an African ankle bracelet, she collected the cowry shells, adding them to the pile of objects along with tobacco from a pack of cigarettes that had been shoved into a drawer. Studying her treasure, she realized the items were reminiscent of the ceremonies she’d done with Nico. Sprinkling in some sweet-smelling pine needles from a sachet, she stitched the soft honey-colored leather bundle closed, adorning it with feathers and sprigs of white sage and attaching the arrowhead as a final flourish. In the center of the leather pouch she carefully drew the Ouroboros, a pictograph of a serpent eating its own tail, representing kundalini energy. Surely, she thought, he would grasp the meaning of the Ouroboros. After all, he’d named his studio Amaru, the sacred serpent—so the teachings would not be obscure to him. In Tantric Buddhism, the concept of the wheel of time, known as Kalachakra, expresses the idea of an endless cycle of existence and knowledge, as does the wheel of life in Native culture. Certainly, he must know their bond transcended time.
Luna was grateful when Tyler suggested Santa Fe again for the holidays. The Inn of the Anasazi, just off the Plaza, was perfectly romantic, with a kiva fireplace in the room. The sky was a cloudless turquoise, and the aroma of burning piñon hung in the air. Snow drifted down as they drove up the winding Canyon Road to Geronimo. The elegant restaurant, with its thick white adobe walls, exposed beams, and large fireplace adorned with enormous elk antlers, had been the original Borrego House, built in 1756. They sat at the bar while awaiting their table, playfully guessing where they thought people were from based on their outfits. Tyler ordered a hearty red zinfandel with dinner, and they shared the wasabi Caesar salad and elk tenderloin with applewood smoked bacon. Luna purposely did not mention Nico throughout dinner, and was dismayed when they were walking to the car and Tyler casually asked, “Are you getting Nico a Christmas gift this year?”
The year before, Tyler couldn’t conceal his distress over the attention she’d devoted to Nico’s Christmas gift. He’d commented sarcastically, “A gift c
omposed of photographs and imagery devoted to Nico is perfect for a narcissist.”
Unable to ignore the tone in his voice, she’d asked if it bothered him, and he’d answered, “No, what bothers me is that he doesn’t appreciate you. Your lack of self-respect hurts me the most, Luna. Not that you do so much for him and care so much, but that he disrespects you.” That was Tyler—to a T.
Linking arms with him, she snuggled into his winter coat and without hesitation answered, “No, we haven’t spoken in seven months, Tyler. You know that. And after that stunt in July when he accused me of stalking, I’m really trying to disconnect…” As an afterthought, even though it may have sounded hollow, she added, “And not think about him.”
The sound of country music was pouring out of El Farol, an old stagecoach stop near Geronimo. “It’s early, Luna, do you want to go in?” Tyler suggested.
Delighted, she exclaimed, “I’d love to!” It wasn’t very late, but normally Tyler would have gone straight back to the hotel. Pulling off her hat and gloves, Luna asked the bartender for their best brandy straight up, and Tyler seconded her. Luna knew Tyler didn’t like talking about Nico, but she felt she needed to say something, “I’m sorry, Tyler. I know it hasn’t been easy. I’m going to end this thing—whatever it is—that binds me to him. I love you so much, you know that. And no one would put up with what you have. I’m lucky you understand how he manipulated—compelled—me, and I want to break it.”
Tyler shrugged. “OK. Enough. I’m done talking about him. I don’t want to ruin our time here.”
Luna almost said something, but then saw the look in Tyler’s eye. He was still pained. It had been too many years of Luna running to Nico every time he needed her. Tyler picked up his glass of Gran Duque Spanish brandy. Luna picked up hers as well, and they clinked glasses. Sipping the warm, golden liquid, Luna showed Tyler a picture on her phone. “Look, Ty, the six of us at this bar. It must be at least fifteen years ago, right? We look so young! Our first trip here…it was in October. Remember how cold it was?! I bought that camel four-ply cashmere sweater at Santa Fe Dry Goods and I never took it off!”
The Sleeping Serpent: A woman's struggle to break an obsessive bond with her yoga master Page 37