“Okay,” I said nonchalantly, though a bubble began to rise in my stomach. Zack had forgotten, I realized, how much I hated heights.
He disappeared into the trailer and returned with two harnesses. They looked military. “You asked for it, baby! Here, put your hands through.”
He held it open for me to step into like a jumpsuit, legs first. Was I really going to do this? Absolutely. I needed to disabuse Zack of the idea that I’d ever been some mere damsel in distress on those tracks. The whole point of us was how wild and daring and fierce I was.
Ironically, just three days before, I had grudgingly donned a bustier for my husband. Now, Zack was strapping me into a body holster, cinching the padded belt around my waist and yanking the strip that fastened across my chest. The straps dug into my inner thighs and my breasts jutted out. I felt sexy as hell—porn-starrish actually—but I also found myself starting to sweat. And—okay—chafe a little. I clutched his wrists.
He grinned. “You like, this, huh? I thought you might.”
I swallowed. “Okay. Now I’m doing you.” I held open his harness for him. He climbed into it obligingly. I yanked the straps as tight as I could, drawing his pelvis right up to mine.
“Oh,” he said as I finished binding him in. “Oh, hello there.” He wiggled his eyebrows. Were we eroticizing safety harnesses now? Seriously? Though as I’d learned, there seemed to be no shortage of things to fetishize in this world.
Ushering me to the little metal basket, he unlatched the gate and held it open for me like a gentleman. Our harnesses each had a tether on one end. He showed me how to clip the carabiner to a safety hook on the frame of the basket itself, which was not really a basket at all, but a small grate ringed with two sets of bars. It would be ridiculously easy to slip through the spaces between them. My hands were shaking, but I tried not to let him see.
“Okay. Hold on. Here goes.” With the turn of a key, the motor growled to life and a loud warning beep bulleted the air. Slowly, the Condor’s metal arm unfolded. The basket began to rise on its hinged neck, slicing upward with astonishing speed. “Woohoo! Yeah, baby!” Zack hollered. I felt the same burst of panic that I did on amusement park rides and airplanes when they first took off. I found myself gripping the railing so hard, my hands were cramping. “Is this totally fucking awesome or what?” Zack shouted. I nodded as best I could, trying to smile with intense bravery. On one side, we were hovering above the stage, and I could see clearly all the Day-Glo X’s taped to the floor, and the piles of wires and extension cords coiled out of sight behind the platforms. On the other side, just muddy earth falling away.
We levitated higher, so that the layout of the entire stage was now visible below us, a puzzle of black and pine-colored pieces. “See that? Over there is ‘guitar world.’” Zack pointed. “That’s where you’d be, baby, hooked up to your pedals and amps.” He began explaining all sorts of logistical and technical details. I tried just to focus on the horizon, not on the ground, which was getting farther and father away. So this was how I would die: plummeting to the earth in a Day-Glo safety harness above an amphitheater in White Creek, Tennessee. Was this how I wanted my family to find me?
I clung to Zack, his rough hand pressed against my hip as we slowly ascended above the tree line. “Are you okay? You look a little pale,” he said.
My sixteen-year-old self wouldn’t have balked for an instant. I saw Zack watching me, his eyes glittering. “Go higher,” I ordered, though my queasiness grew. I wanted him to ravish me with his eyes, drop to his knees in awe. I was clipped in. It was only the illusion of danger, I reminded myself, just as it had been back on the railroad tracks in Dry Lake.
A wind was starting to blow now, ruffling our hair. My teeth began chattering.
“Are you sure? Baby, you’re shivering.”
“Higher,” I barked.
Zack laughed his lunatic laugh. “Okay, woman. Your wish is my command.”
From the other side of the basket, the soft hills of Tennessee were now visible, rolling off toward the horizon like an ocean, a few towns twinkling forlornly in the distance like tiny lanterns, the sky striated with deepening bands of lavender and peach and gold. The wind blew more fiercely now; we were beyond any talking. Or maybe Zack was talking to me, but all I could hear was my own breath, as loud as a heartbeat in a sonogram. We were high above the amphitheater, looking down at Zack’s meticulous rigging, the rows of black stage lights like dark hydroponic orchids peaking out beneath the tented roof. Miles of trees spread below us, thrashing. The whole world as I knew it was being transformed; it was falling away completely, and it was only the two of us now, me and Zack, on this tiny platform thrusting upward in the Condor toward a darkening sky.
Finally, with a lurch, we stopped. The absence of motion made it no less terrifying. “One hundred and eighty feet,” Zack announced. “Oh my God, Bella, look at this. This never gets old.” He blinked out at the landscape, the slight curvature of the earth, the marvel it was in the sinking sun. I let my eyes run over it all rapidly—it was magnificent, dream-like—though the vertigo was almost unbearable. I returned my gaze to him and fixed it there on his face instead. “Zack Phelps,” I said.
He gazed at me. “It’s wild, isn’t it? All the way here, from that shithole in Dry Lake?”
I snuggled in closer to him. “For the record, though,” I said softly, “I was not trying to commit suicide that day.”
“What? Oh, c’mon, Bella. Forget about it. I was just playing with you.” He kissed me lightly on the forehead. “Jesus, you’re still shivering. Hang on. I got something for that.” Reaching into one of his utility pockets, he pulled out what looked like a small plastic travel shampoo bottle. “Here. This’ll warm us up.”
As soon as he twisted off the cap, I could smell it. And I wanted it. At that particular moment, I wanted it more than I even wanted him. It would be so easy. It was right there. We were not even on the earth anymore; there were so many excuses, so many ways to make it never count.
I looked at him helplessly. “I won’t be able to drive back,” I said hoarsely.
My voice was thoroughly unconvincing. Yet to my great disappointment, he replaced the cap. “Well, I can’t either. Not when I’m operating heavy machinery. Although…” He paused. “Ah, but there is one way around this.” Winking, he took a quick swig, then pulled me up against him. Before I even knew what was happening, his warm tongue and the tequila were all mixing together in my mouth. When the kiss was finally over, he tucked the bottle back in his pocket as if he were putting away an instrument. He smiled. “There we go.”
Every nerve in my body was now on alert. More, please, I was thinking.
I need. I want. Fill me.
More, more, more.
Chapter 12
For some reason, I’d imagined Zack living in an exposed brick loft in the heart of downtown Nashville, a wide-open industrial space tricked out with a black granite bar and a big neon guitar glowing on the wall. Yet his apartment turned out to be a unit in a housing complex outside of a town called Murfreesboro. Three long, low, identical buildings with stucco walls the color of old tube socks had dark timber nailed across their facades to give them a mock-Tudor look. A couple of pickup trucks and an old motorcycle sat parked outside. A sign wicketted into the lawn out front read MONTHLY RENTALS. NOW LEASING. When I climbed out of the Subaru, I could hear the roar of the interstate. Zack’s building was the one farthest from the road, abutting a wheat field. A metal staircase zigzagged up the side to a small second-story landing with a door. “Right up there in the corner. That’s my place.” He insisted on carrying both my suitcase and my guitar. “We’ll go through the lobby, though. Those stairs are sort of busted.”
I was let down by the feel of the place, though it barely registered. As we made our way up to his apartment, we could barely dare to look at each other or speak, the private hurricane brewing between us was gathering such velocity.
He pushed his front door open with his knee and set down
my belongings with a flourish. “Welcome to the Zack Shack!”
The door opened directly into a small living room. All I glimpsed was a fat leatherette sofa and a giant, flat-screen TV with a gaming station that took up an entire wall like the control panel of a spaceship. Immediately, Zack pushed me up against a closet door and I grabbed him by his collar and we started kissing wolfishly. When I released him, his eyes were glittering.
“Shirt off,” I said. “Now.”
“Oh?” He laughed. But he wriggled out of his jacket and shirt, leaving them in a puddle on the linoleum. As we continued kissing, he guided me backward toward the couch, sloppily, in a loose, easy dance, his hands clamped to my hips like starfish. His tool belt kept flopping between us and digging into my stomach. He paused to unbuckle it and flung it on the floor beside a milk crate, where it landed with a clank.
“I can’t believe you’re actually wearing a tool belt. You’re, like, straight out of porn.”
“Ha! I knew you’d get a kick out of it. Why do you think I kept it on after my shift? It’s all for you, baby. Bow-chicka-bow-bow!” He pulled me toward him and yanked open the buttons of my blouse, exposing the lacy cups of my new blush-colored bra.
“Oh my God! Look at you, Bella. You are still a fucking goddess!” Lunging, he buried his head between my breasts. My eyes closed. I heard myself giggle.
“Carry me to the bed,” I commanded. I knew it sounded ludicrous, but Zack scooped me up obligingly and carried me like a bride into an adjoining room where a king-sized bed seemed to consume the space. He threw me down on it. Wrestling with my bra hooks, he unleashed me, flinging the bra like a broken balloon across the mattress, and I lay bared before him in the powdery light; he looked at me impishly, reverently, from beneath his corona of hair, then buried his head between my breasts again. I cupped his chin in my hands and yanked his face up and kissed him hard on the mouth. When I finally let him go, he was breathless. Hurriedly, he pulled off his pants, then my skirt, my black stockings, the lacy purple panties I’d selected especially for him, and he ran his hand up between my thighs lightly, teasingly. As he kissed my neck and stomach, I clutched the sheets, yanking them from the bedframe. This was the first time I had ever, ever been with Zack sober, and I was amazed how every single nerve in my body seemed to vibrate like a tuning fork. He still knew. He still knew.
He smiled. “You like that, huh?” I kissed his collarbone, his sweet, damp shoulders, the plates of his chest. He’d acquired a couple of new tattoos on his forearms and shoulders. I ran my tongue over them without seeing.
It had been so long since I’d abandoned myself to such a frenzy of want, been so wholly unbridled. I ran my hand down the length of his cock, which was hard as machinery and long and slender and, I’d forgotten, curved slightly to the left. So different from Joey’s.
I felt positively drunk, high on my own hotness, high with an erotic desire I had not felt, frankly, for decades: wholly alive, resurrected, ignited with fury and love and desperation and hunger all at once. His head was between my legs now, his tongue making curlicues— My God, I had fantasized about this for so long, it was hard to believe it was actually happening again—I grabbed his hair and pushed him deeper. Then his pelvis was between my thighs, then his head again, then his pelvis. I wrapped my legs around his hips.
I was fucking Zack Phelps. I thought suddenly of Joey, then banished it. I gripped Zack’s back. It was broader than I’d remembered, and I was surprised to feel a few wiry hairs and pimples between his shoulder blades, and also the bulk of him was heavier on me than I’d recalled. He thrust and thrust with a few loud, animal grunts. The angle wasn’t quite right, for some reason—I felt a slight sear of pain—until we readjusted ourselves somehow. To come, I needed specific rhythms established with his hands, his tongue—I’d have to surrender myself entirely, greedily, and stop being sentient of anything around me—the unfamiliar bedroom in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, with its Scotchgard-ed carpet, the thrum of its ventilation system—having a different cock inside me for the first time in twenty-six years—and the astonishing agelessness of us, too. I couldn’t disconnect from all this stimuli—nor did I want to—I wanted to look down on us and watch and look up at him and see and feel everything all at once and brand it in my memory and be totally in that very moment—until all of a sudden, as Zack’s groans grew louder, I gave a start: “Wait. Do you have anything?”
It had been so long with anyone besides Joey, I’d nearly forgotten.
Groaning, he staggered up and pulled a foil packet out of his bedside table. Together, we watched him unroll it methodically like a doctor preparing for surgery, snapping it in place. “Ah. Just like old times, eh?” he teased. “You like? Here you go, babe. Eight inches of latex greatness.”
Afterward, he lay beside me with one wrist pressed to his forehead, panting. “Jesus,” he gasped after a minute. “Nuclear.” He was glistening.
I smiled over at him. He still was so fucking beautiful. The only part of him that seemed discordant, as always, was the cock that he was still so ridiculously proud of—gizzardy in its gummy condom. (Penises: Why weren’t there little accessories to make them more visually appealing? Maybe ribbons you could tie around them with applique flowers? What was that word? “Nosegay”?)
“You good?” Zack said dreamily, rolling onto his side toward me, his eyes at half-mast.
“Actually, nuh-uh. Your mission here, sir, is not fully accomplished.” Now that I was fully relaxed, I was actually ready and edgy and primed. What’s more, now that I was forty-five, I knew how to ask instead of just waiting and hoping that someone else would instinctively know how to bestow pleasure on me.
“Oh? No?” Zack laughed exhaustedly. “Oh, shit. Damn. I thought you— Okay. Gimme a moment. I’ve got to recharge.” Then he squinted past me. “What the hell?” He reached over my shoulder and grabbed a clutch of $20 bills.
“Oh my God.” I sat up. “I totally forgot.”
“Whoa, they’re all over the place. It’s like a money bomb went off.” He switched on the small lamp on his bedside table. “Wait. Turn around. I think there’s one stuck to your back.” He peeled off a bill and held it up to the light and stared at it. “Wow. Is this real? Jesus Christ. How much dough do you have here?”
As quickly as I could, I gathered it up. “I don’t know,” I lied. “Two hundred dollars?”
“It looks like a lot more than that to me.” He picked up a clump, letting it fall around us like leaves.
I collected it as fast as I could, hurried back into his living room, and jammed it into my purse. In New Jersey, I’d gone to four different ATM machines, withdrawing the limit each time from my savings: I was determined not to let Joey track me anymore through my purchases on our Visa. But it had seemed risky to walk around with a thousand dollars in my wallet; that morning, I’d stuck most of the wad in my bra, then, of course, forgotten about it.
“Here’s some more.” Zack waved a couple of bills and squirreled them away in his nightstand. “I’ll just hold on to those for safekeeping. For services rendered, ha-ha.”
I stared at him.
He held up his hands. “Jesus, just kidding, Bella.” Though it seemed to me he took his time returning it. “Tonight’s drinks are on you, though.” He cupped his hands over his crotch and looked around distractedly for some Kleenex.
I gathered the remaining bills. I tried not to, but I thought about the account they had come from, how painstakingly Joey and I had worked to re-amass some savings. Back in Michigan, it was an hour later than in Tennessee, about 7 p.m. I pictured Joey, alone in the kitchen, dialing for a pizza, white gauze taped across his nose like a hyphen. Austin, ensconced upstairs in his room, a cave of dirty laundry and posters, the screen saver of his computer tossing shards of pale blue light across it like a fistful of stars. Oh my God: I’d committed adultery. It was official. Well, I supposed, Joey and I are even now.
Wrapping the sheet around me like a toga, I padded into the l
iving room and tucked the money back in my purse. Through an archway was a small but serviceable kitchen. A laminated breakfast bar separated it from a dining alcove, where a second door, limned with dead bolts, opened onto to the metal stairway outside. In place of a table, Zack had a weight-lifting bench and a rack of dumbbells. A couple of rolled-up yoga mats, navy blue and violet, sat propped in the corner by the door. Zack did yoga?
I strolled around the kitchen, opening drawers (one cluttered, the rest empty), cabinets (ditto), picking things up and setting them back down. Though I tried to imagine the ways I could spruce it all up, it was hard to imagine anyone spending lengthy amounts of time here. A roll-on bottle of Biofreeze gel and a jumbo canister of protein powder sat on the counter beside a half-full Melitta coffeepot. Tossed in a basket were receipts from a 7-Eleven. A card from a strip joint. A pile of scratch-off lottery tickets. Zack didn’t seem to have won anything.
A schedule was stuck to the refrigerator door with a magnetized “Souvenir of Tijuana” bottle opener: Nashville was at the top of the list, then LA, Baltimore, Orlando, Seattle, LA again, and Houston. Travel times and flights were scribbled beside a few. It was exhausting just to read. Could I really follow an itinerary like that? I loved the idea of being a gypsy with a guitar and a leopard-print miniskirt, and the two of us on tour together—though I did hate airplanes. Would Zack ever be amenable to just driving?
“Hey gorgeous. You spying on me?” He padded into the kitchen stark naked and yanked open the refrigerator—all I could see inside was a six-pack, a Styrofoam carton of eggs, a half-empty jar of salsa—no surprises there—and grabbed a bottle of water from the inside door. “You want?” he swigged and handed it to me.
I looked at him. I wasn’t sure if his erection was on the decline or the rebound. The grimness of his apartment saddened me, yet my physical arousal hadn’t diminished: I was full of ideas. I slinked behind him, wrapped my arms around his waist.
“Historical reenactment,” I announced. “Remember that time at the gas station? In your boss’s chair in the back?” I looked toward his living room.
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