Chuck Logan - Absolute Zero

It was the only pause before they got at each other.

* * *

“I’m starting to think sex is like a shakedown cruise. It’s how you really get to know somebody,” Jolene said to the darkened ceiling when her breathing returned to normal.

“I never thought of it like that,” Broker said. He was surprised at how tentative their physical introduction had been. He’d come at this thinking it would be impulsive, like feeding time at the tiger house. Everybody definitely getting their whiskers wet. Yet, while the lovemaking was carnal, the intimacy was chaste. She had been fragile, almost like she was holding her breath the whole time. Now she looked vulnerable and double-naked in the faint light. Dutifully, she’d turned the volume back up on the monitor, and now Hank’s sleeping breath haunted the dark room.

And Broker was thinking how when you’re young and in bed with a new woman it was an occasion for ego and vanity and it was all surface sensation. Because when you’re young, basically, all you own is your body.

But when you grew older and had been knocked around in a couple marriages, it went deeper than your skin. Now he felt like a trespasser in someone else’s life. And he’d taken a flyer on impulse and overlooked precautions. He was very aware it wasn’t his bed. Broker looked around to make sure he knew where the exits were.

Jolene sat up and hugged the sheets around her. “I used to think sex was about people possessing each other. I’d get jealous. I needed a lot of reassurance.” She smiled a wry smile and touched the hair on his chest. “Of course, I was drinking then.”

“It’s okay,” Broker said, and immediately he regretted the words because they were the same tone and weight of feeling he used with his little daughter when she suffered a minor hurt. “I mean. .” he started to say.

“Shhh,” she stilled him with a cool finger to his lips. “It’s not okay. When you’re dependent, you do things. Things. .” She shook her head and her eyes swam up, conjuring. Quickly, she masked the brightness in her gaze with a raw expression. “I worked as a dancer in this scummy joint once. I took it all off and stuck it in their faces. And they’d tuck dollar bills in my. .” She grimaced, looked away. “Dollar bills. You’d think I would have held out for fifties or at least twenties.”

“Jolene.” Broker sat up, simultaneously feeling an urge to hold her and to run. Like a lot of things lately, this was not turning out the way he’d pictured it.

She grinned at him and it was the kind of grin that would be cruel if it wasn’t on a wild animal that didn’t know better. “Sobriety changes you, all right,” With a faint curl to her lip, she said, “I used to have a pussy. Now I have a vagina.” She raised an eyebrow. “That’s progress.”

“Take it easy,” Broker said.

“ You take it easy,” she shot back, coming up off the sheets, suddenly sharp and brittle. “You’re only the second guy in my life I’ve ever been in bed with sober. You got that?”

In the awkward silence that followed they both pulled away a little and covered themselves with the sheets. Broker had the distinct impression they were both wishing they could smoke a cigarette. She was the first to break the silence, speaking to the ceiling.

“Earl’s waiting for me to give it up, start drinking and crawl back to him. Christ, Allen; he’s like a little kid waiting for a cookie. You-you’re not so easy to figure,” she said.

“What’s hard to figure?”

Jolene turned on her side, propped herself on an elbow, and her hand unconsciously explored the missing waves and volume of her shorn hair. She said, “How many guys show up to return a car and wind up in bed with the lady of the house in two days?”

The lady of the house. So that’s who she was.

Broker sat up in full-blown character and scratched his chest. “You mean guys who go to work and do what their asshole bosses tell them to do, who drive the speed limit, who watch their wives get fat, and who sneak dirty movies and beat their meat?” He cocked his head at her, reached out, and gently tapped her lips with his index finger. “You opened the door, not me.”

She brushed the remark aside. “The thing about you is no flaws, no character defects. You’ve never really been weak or sick, have you?” She sat up and the sheet fell away from her breasts and, like Allen had predicted, they were perfect 36 Cs that stayed tucked and pointed on their own. “Can we cut the bullshit?” she said.

“I’m all for that.”

“You spent time inside, right?”

“C’mon, I spent twenty-three days in Stillwater; I was barely through with orientation when my lawyer got my conviction thrown out.”

“Technicality?”

“Hell, no. The cops got a snitch to lie.”

“And?”

“Some people I know got him to tell a different lie. What’s the big deal? It was a long time ago. And that’s not who I am anymore,” he said emphatically.

“But you did things.”

“Did things?” Broker frowned. “What is this? You’ll show me yours if I’ll show you mine?”

“We already did that. You did things,” she repeated.

“I did things,” he affirmed.

“What things?”

“Look, Jolene. Some people, when they’re young, they don’t go in for nine-to-five, you understand?”

She squinted at him. “Answer the question.”

Inwardly excited, he smiled. He was auditioning, like he was on the job again. But he wasn’t working. That part of his life was over. So what was he doing?

Pretending?

Broker winced. “Okay. Probably not the kind of things that you think. I arranged things.”

“That’s a little vague,” she said.

“I used to believe people should have the right to smoke grass and own guns, okay?”

“Your conviction is for assault.”

“When you arrange things, you guarantee the bona fides of the seller and the buyer, and you secure the transaction. If someone gets out of line, you have to straighten them out.”

Jolene again evaluated his words and matched them to his expression, to the relaxed potential of his body. “But you don’t do that kind of stuff anymore?” she inquired.

“These carloads of very heavily armed black guys started showing up from Chicago and L.A. Crack changed the whole street scene and I got out ten years ago. I made some money and socked it in a little resort up on the North Shore before real estate went through the roof. It was a good investment and I’m comfortable. I suppose getting older had something to do with it.”

“But you still keep your hand in?” she asked.

“Say what you mean.”

She sat up straighter and swung her head, tossing hair that was no longer there. “You said you owed Hank.”

“I owe Hank.”

“I need you to arrange something.”

“Go on,” Broker said cautiously.

“I need you to get rid of Earl.”

“Wait a minute.” Broker held up his hands. “I don’t do. .”

“No, no, silly; I mean I want you to put Earl back where he was before Hank’s accident. Which is at a polite distance and respecting boundaries. I don’t want him hurt. At least not hurt too bad. And I want him to understand I’m going to pay him what I owe him.”

Broker was relieved at the genuine sound of her request which fit the dimension of the debt he owed her husband. And he was consoled that his guilty little fling had now moved on to a practical next step.

“So?” Jolene prompted him.

“I can do that,” he said.

“There’s one thing I want you to understand,” she said. “I want you to remove Earl from my life. I do not want you to replace him.”

“Jesus,” Broker grinned and shook his head. “You don’t exactly go through a lot of Kleenex, do you?” He reached for his pants.