by Jerry Cole
His expression was lewd and hungry as he drove into my body. He looked down at me and watched my face as he began driving his hips down. The force of his thrusts reverberated through my body, pushing the breath from my lungs and leaving me clinging to his body as he took what he wanted. He kissed me hard and threaded his fingers through mine as we found our rhythm. Before I knew it we were in the middle of a dance that only he and I knew. He kept the beat while I rode the melody, touching and tasting him as pleasure buzzed through my veins. He kept driving forward until we both came. Only then did he leave me, rolling off of me and plopping down on the mattress next to me, panting heavily.
“What was that?” He chuckled.
“What?”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done this, but you looked too cute. I couldn’t help myself.”
He seemed completely unaffected by what just happened and I wasn’t going to contradict him by acting sentimentally.
“Yeah, well, get some shut-eye. I’m sure your foot is going to hurt like hell in the morning,” I said. He agreed, threw a blanket across his hips, and promptly fell asleep.
When I woke up, he had already had a shower and was negotiating his way into his underwear.
“I can help with that,” I leapt out of bed and helped him put on his boxers. He didn’t say thank you but he didn’t stop me either. I guessed that was a good sign until I saw the way his jaw tightened and his lips looked pale. He was hurting.
I didn’t bother to ask, I simply got his pills from the table where we left them and handed him a glass of water. Then I followed his example and took a shower. When I came back the pills must have been making their way through his system because he looked considerably more relaxed. There was no point in pretending as if nothing had happened. Yesterday was a reality and even if what passed between us was “just sex” it changed the landscape a bit. At least for me, it did. After I’d gotten my underwear on, I sat on the bed next to him. He looked up from his phone and ruffled my hair.
“I know you’re ready to leave, but at least until your foot heals, why don’t you just stay?” I tried not to sound too obvious but I was hoping he wouldn’t examine my motives too deeply.
He looked up at me and then out the window into the distance. My heart skipped a beat. Maybe, just maybe, he was thinking the same thing.
“I’m sure there’s something you can do to keep yourself occupied until you’re healed up. You’re the most ambitious person I know.”
He frowned at that but didn’t argue.
“I didn’t mean it that way. I just meant,” I sighed, what the hell did I mean anyway? “I just meant that you like a challenge and you need something to fill your time. I’m sure there’s a pet project that you’ve been dying to start. Since you are incapacitated, I really don’t need you around the office. Helen can handle everything and you can work remotely for the time being. But, I’m sure there’s something you want to do with the rest of your time.”
He looked out the window again and a sad smile spread across his lips.
“An art show.”
“A show?”
He nodded.
“I didn’t know you were into art.”
“I’m not. It was Ariana’s dream. She was an amazing artist until she got too sick to really finish her work. But, until then, she just kept creating. I have so many of her pieces. Most of them could hang in any museum in the world. But I think I want to make her dream come true. She wanted to show them at a gallery. Maybe I can make that happen for her.”
I felt a light turn on in my brain. If what he needed was a gallery to make his sister’s dream come true I knew of one that would be willing to let her work be part of a special collection for charity.
“You can!”
“Really?”
“Zubaidah’s is putting together a collection and I’m sure that I can make a phone ca—”
“No phone calls,” Marcelo insisted.
“Okay, fine then I’ll just go stick my head in the oven.”
He ruffled my hair and laughed.
“Thanks for the tip, but this is my sister’s dream and I want to make it come true for her. I want her work to get the credit it deserved, not special consideration.”
I wanted to laugh but it was clear that he was serious. How could he have spent so much time around me and yet remain so innocent?
“Listen, Marcelo, in the art world NOBODY gets the credit they deserve. Every gallery opening and show I’ve ever been to were products of special considerations, as you put it. You don’t just happen to be really talented, work hard, and get a shot at greatness. You have to be fucking the right people, invited to the right parties, descended from the right rich old bastards, or otherwise fabulously lucky. How the hell do you think people build whole careers by producing artwork that is objectively shit? Why do you think so many of the greats died poor or even unknown? If you want to be rewarded for creativity and skill go into animation or comic books. The artworld is a cesspool, not a meritocracy.”
Marcelo looked a little dejected but undeterred by my warning. I was discovering that once he made up his mind, he was incredibly stubborn. He was a man of principles, which was part of what made him so incredibly attractive. It was also a fucking nuisance.
“Be that as it may,” he began.
“You aren’t going to listen to me anyway. Right?”
“I just want to see her work hanging up in a gallery somewhere. Just one time. I don’t need to make a splash. I don’t want people to be writing articles about her short life and her amazing talent. I just want the chance to share her work with the world just once.”
I could tell by the way his voice got high and his eyes took on that molten chocolate quality that he was serious. He didn’t want much. I was amazed that he would even bother to work so hard for so little. But, it meant a lot to him.
On any other day, I would have agreed to stay out of it and gone behind his back to put a little grease on the right gears to make it happen. I would have made sure that at least one of his sister’s pieces sold for a pretty penny. I would have called a junior reporter looking for an opportunity to make a name for themselves and made sure that they were at the show and took particular interest in her story. I would’ve done it all without batting an eye.
But not today. Today I squeezed Marcelo’s hand and smiled at that foolish man and his foolish dream. If it would keep him busy and in town for a few more weeks, then I would support him.
“You’re a good brother,” I said to him.
“I tried to be,” he agreed.
“You succeeded.”
Chapter Eight
We agreed to lay Ginger to rest under a tree next to a small manmade lake that had particular significance for me. I had my first real kiss here. My initials were even carved into the trunk of a tree somewhere in the area.
I’d originally thought that it would be nice to bury the cat with Marcelo’s sister but it turns out that digging holes in graves, even tiny cat-sized holes, is discouraged by law. Graveyard groundskeepers seemed to agree that it was akin to desecrating a grave and bordered on grave robbing, although that made no sense to me since we were trying to ADD something to the grave. Needless to say, we could seek special permission to add the dearly departed kitty to the burial plot but neither of us felt that the vicious fat cat was worth the effort.
So, we settled for burying her ourselves, in a place where we were probably not supposed to dispose of dead bodies. But honestly, it was in a wooded area. How many dead raccoons and squirrels in the area were rotting away, exposed to the elements?
“We just have to make sure that the hole is deep enough,” Marcelo said, handing me a shovel.
“How deep is that?”
He shrugged and closed the trunk.
“At least a good three feet down.”
“Do we leave her in the box or just dump her in the hole?”
He thought about it for a moment.
“It is a n
ice box. But who would want to use it after a dead cat’s been chilling in it overnight?”
“Ha-ha,” I clapped him on the back. “I got it. Chilling.”
Marcelo looked at me like I’d lost my mind again and I realized he had not, in fact, intended to make a joke at all.
“I’m sorry, my nerves are getting to me. I’m not really good at this kind of thing,” I said.
“I know,” the muscle in his jaw jumped again but he didn’t bother to scold me. We both knew it would be pointless. I pulled out the scooter we’d picked up from the clinic so that Marcel could get around without walking on his broken foot. He was still a little awkward with it, but I was sure that there was a path that led right up to the tree. We walked along in silence as I tried to remember the spot. After about ten minutes I was ready to give up and bury the damned cat under any bush that looked comfy.
Luckily, we stumbled upon it, just as I was ready to throw in the towel. I know nothing about trees, but I knew this one was special. It had a great wide trunk and thick branches that stuck out so far it seemed impossible that branches that thick should be able to reach so far. Surely the weight of them should make them droop. But, the thick, knotted trunk held fast, through storms and droughts and blizzards. It remained. Unlike most of the trees in the area, it wasn’t very tall. But it was its own impressive example of organic engineering.
I ran my hand along the smooth trunk and walked around the circumference of the tree, looking for my name. There were so many letters carved into its flesh. Some of them were scored deep and others scratched in with car keys. Some had faded with time and others were still fresh.
“It’s beautiful here,” Marcelo said.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “It’s a pretty popular spot for people who want to have a private romantic moment.”
“I can see why.” Marcelo looked out over the tiny pond that the city had installed in the middle of the park. It was nothing to write home about, but from here, you could pretend that the waters stretched out further than they did and the sunsets that rippled along the water’s surface were just as pretty as any I’d ever seen from the deck of a yacht. It was better than that cat deserved, but I suppose it would do justice to the fact that the orange demon had been his ailing sister’s constant companion.
“I’ll dig,” I volunteered.
Marcelo’s lips curled into a smile but he didn’t say anything. He leaned against the tree and watched as I rolled my sleeves up and got to work. I confess to wanting to look cool in front of my once and (hopefully) future lover. I was hoping that I wouldn’t be reduced to a red-faced, sweating blob before I had a chance to be gallant and lay his squashed cat to rest in a hole I dug all by myself. It sounds stupid now that I say it out loud, but it is the kind of gesture that usually elicits a favorable opinion from others. Like donating money to a children’s hospital, or cleaning up a park, this was no different. Or at least it would have been if the universe weren’t intent on making sure that Marcelo understood just how much of an incompetent ass I truly was.
Despite being so close to the water the ground was unusually hard and I admit I struggled to break ground. And, once I did manage to crack through the first few centimeters of topsoil I was met by an impenetrable knot of roots. Every shovel full of dirt became labor-intensive and several times my hands slipped on the wooden handle and sent the dirt flying in my face. After nearly twenty minutes, I was purple in the face, breathing heavy, my hands were raw, and I’d succeeded in creating a little basin, fit for a birdbath and nothing else.
Marcelo snickered softly as I lost my temper and began hacking away at the ground with the sharp edge of the shovel.
“Stupid ground!”
Marcelo clapped his hands in glee, which made me stare at him like he’d lost his mind.
“Why don’t you try over there?” He pointed to a spot further away from the trunk of the tree where the grass had grown lush and little flowers danced in the breeze.
I grumbled under my breath something about who was truly assisting who these days, picked up the shovel and walked over to the designated spot. Expecting to meet the same resistance I jammed the shovel into the dirt, only to have it cleave through the soil like a warm knife through butter.
“Shit!”
Marcelo let out another peel of laughter but still offered no assistance. He stood there, his shin resting on the scooter, the box holding the dead cat in his arms, and a stupid grin on his face. The message was very clear. This hole was my responsibility. I hefted a shovel full of dark, moist, considerably root free earth over my shoulder. Then another. Then another. Before I realized it I had a rhythm going and a nice three by three-foot hole dug.
“It needs to be deeper, I think,” Marcelo said.
“You’re probably right,” I pushed the shovel into the ground and leaned on it heavily. “But, I’m spent. How the hell do people do this for human bodies?”
“With a backhoe, usually,” Marcelo said.
“Why didn’t I think of that? I could’ve made a call and—”
The look on Marcelo’s face told me I’d somehow veered off into dangerous territory.
“Is there anything you don’t solve with money?”
“If I have enough money to solve my problem why shouldn’t I use it?”
“Right,” he said, nodding his head. “I forgot who I was talking to.”
“Oh, come on Marcelo,” I held my raw hands out for him to see. “I’ve been doing the work. I tried hard. Why should I choose to have rough, ruined hands when I can call somebody to do it for me?”
“Won’t they have rough hands as well?”
“Yes, but their hands are already rough and ruined. That’s the life they chose. At least at the end of it, they get paid. What do I get from ruining my hands?”
“The life they chose?”
“Yes, well, I-I-I assume nobody would dig graves if they didn’t want to.” I sounded like an idiot and I knew it. Nobody would choose to dig graves for a living if they had better options and we both knew it. But I was my father’s son and he firmly believed the plight of the “underclasses” was the fault of pockets of bad luck, poor choices on their part, and a startling lack of character.
I could hear him in my head right now.
“Still,” he’d say as he filled his snifter with something dark “at least they are opting for decent, legal, work. You can at least respect a man who makes honest money.”
I remember the disgust I felt the first time I heard him say something like that. Sure, there was nothing wrong with honest work, no matter what kind of work. That much was true. But, something inside me knew that the rest of it was wrong. People who didn’t have money weren’t poor because they were bad people. That didn’t seem like the truth, but as a child, I had no way of refuting him. By the time I was old enough to argue with him I’d stopped caring. That was the insidious nature of that kind of thinking.
I think on that day I must have looked at him the same way Marcelo was looking at me now. Disgust, shock, and horror all rolled into one open-mouthed, wide-eyed expression.
“You don’t believe that, do you?”
His question was almost a whisper.
I shook my head.
“No, not really.”
“Then why did you say it?” His voice was stronger and the shock in his face was replaced with anger. He was angry at me again. This was not going according to plan at all.
“Because it’s easier,” I said, annoyed by the question.
“It’s easier? Easier than what, Patrick? Easier than admitting that blue-collar guys aren’t always blue-collar by choice. Sometimes they got dealt a shitty hand and they played the hand they were dealt.”
“Right. Sometimes. But not always.”
“Right, not always, but a whole lot more often than you think. Jesus, Patrick, I’m one of those guys. Before I started working for you I used to be a handyman on the weekends just to make ends meet. I worked all kinds of odd jobs to get t
hrough school. And it wasn’t because I wanted to, but I had a dream and no rich relatives who could help me make them come true.”
I felt a little shell shocked. I never knew that about Marcelo.
“Anyway...you want some help?” He reached out for the shovel and I shoved his hand away. I didn’t want his help. He’d spent the last seven years helping me, cleaning up behind me, covering my mistakes, and doing all of the things I should’ve been doing myself.
“You’re still one of those people, right? That’s why you want to quit. So, you can stop being one of those people,” I said softly. “You took this job so you could take care of your family, and you stayed because of your sister’s medical expenses...shit, Marcelo. All this time and I never saw it. You never WANTED this life, you just played the hand you were dealt.”
“You’re just now figuring it out?”
“I don’t know why?” I shook my head. “I knew everything but I never thought about it. You were well paid and you never complained.”
“I never complained because I knew that a lot of people would kill to be in my shoes. I lived well, could pay for my sister to get the best medical care, and still send money home to my mom. What was I going to complain about?”
I knew the hole was deep enough for the cat but some part of me wanted to make it deeper. Deep enough for me to jump into it. I kept looking down into the hole we’d dug, wondering how many times our positions had been reversed. How many times had I stood on the sidelines while he did all of the heavy lifting? How often had he been the one exhausted, aching, and drenched in sweat so that I could indulge some stupid flight of fancy? I didn’t even care if he was still laughing at me. I deserved it.
“We should say a few words,” Marcelo said, coming to stand beside me.
“Like what?”
“Ginger was a horrible cat, but she was also an amazing friend. She stayed with my sister all through her illness, never leaving her side for a moment. She kept her warm and reminded her that there were still people and cats that depended on her and were really happy that she was around. For that alone, I owe her more than I could ever repay.”