William Lashner - Past Due

“What is a huff, do you know?” I said.

“No.”

“Is it a type of cat?”

“Maybe,” she said, with a quick laugh.

“I just kissed you.”

“I know. But I was apologizing and I wanted you to know that I am trying to be sorry for what I did.”

“For storming out of the bar.”

“Not just that. I want you to know that I am also trying to be sorry for what I was doing back then, for the drugs and the money and the stupidity and the belief that we were blessed when we were really only criminals. For the whole time I was involved with Tommy Greeley.”

“You paid your price.”

“But not in the heart. You see, not that. Not yet. But I’m working on it. Cooper’s been helping me.”

“Cooper Prod?”

“Yes. But it’s not easy. Like he always says, the more we learn about the past, the less we will ever understand.”

“He seems pretty evolved for a jailbird, Cooper does.”

“He is. And he’s very interested in you. He wants you to know that, and that he will help however he can.”

“Is that why you came over, to deliver his message?”

“One reason, yes.”

“How sweet.”

“I could have called.”

“Okay.”

“There’s something else I wanted to tell you. Something I thought I ought to make clear. I might have given you the wrong impression about something.”

I kissed her again. This time I kissed a little harder and this time I could feel something give in her, and her head leaned back and her mouth parted slightly and her hand lifted gently to rest on my throat. And then with that hand she pushed me away.

“I need to tell you this.”

“All right,” I said, not really listening, just wanting to kiss her again.

“It’s about Tommy and me and Lonnie.”

“All right,” I said, but even as I said it the fruity taste of her lips worked upon my mind like a drug and I tried again to kiss her. But this time, with that hand curled at my throat, she kept me away.

“No,” she said. “Listen. I told you the thing with Lonnie and me-”

“The marriage you mean.”

“Yes, the marriage. My marriage.” She took her hand from my throat, rubbed her two hands together, as if cleansing them under a spigot. “I told you it was after my relationship with Tommy. But it wasn’t, not really. Cooper said I should tell you everything and so I need to tell you this. Tommy and I were together sometimes even after I was married to Lonnie. It was just something we did, but we did it.”

“I knew that.”

“How?”

“I just did.”

“But-”

I put my finger on her lips to quiet her and then I thought of something. I thought of something and I took my finger away and I kissed her, kissed her quick and rubbed my tongue again gently on her lips and then I pulled back and gazed into her sweet brown eyes.

“Did Lonnie know?”

“About Tommy and me?”

“Yes,” I said. “About it continuing after you married him.”

She turned away from me. “He found out.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t trying hard to hide it. I think he suspected something and then followed me.”

“How did Lonnie take it?”

“How do you think he took it?”

“Not well. That’s how I would take it if my wife betrayed me with my boss. Not well at all.”

“Maybe I should go.”

“No, don’t. Please.”

“This whole thing, just talking about it has got me…”

“It’s okay, Chelsea. It’s over. All of it. Everything that happened was a long time ago. It’s over.”

She turned to me, her eyes glistening. “But it’s not, is it?”

She wanted some assurance, but all the assurances I had were false. She was right. It wasn’t over. Not all of it, not any of it. I had nothing I could say to her so instead I leaned forward and gently kissed a tear welling in one of her eyes and then kissed her cheek and her jaw and then again her sweet lips. And this time she kissed me back, as if she was suddenly relieved of a burdensome secret and was able, now, to respond, finally, to my touch. She placed her hand gently on the back of my neck and pulled me closer and kissed me. And it was lovely and soft and somehow as sad as her eyes and as we kissed I felt the alcohol in my blood start to boil.

And then I saw something approach us from the left, just the shape of something, of a man, of a man in black leather. I guiltily jerked my head away from her, certain I had been caught. Caught? Caught at what? Adultery? No. Who was married? Caught by whom? By whom else? By Lonnie Chambers. And for some reason it scared the hell out of me.

But it wasn’t Lonnie, it was some guy with glasses, his black leather jacket butter soft and draped loosely over his narrow shoulders, leading a little white dog on a leash. The spurt of anxiety disappeared. The man smiled at us wanly, the white dog came close, sniffed my legs, my crotch, gave me a worried glance, and then hurried away.

“Let’s go upstairs,” I said, and we did, and what followed was the usual thing, you know how it goes, tender kisses, soft caresses, frantic unbuttoning, unbelting, long, languorous licks of the neck, the collarbone, the soft mounds rising above the black frill of lingerie, the reaching hand, the fumbled clasp, the bra falling away leaving breasts like the motherland itself, glorious and free – all followed by the inevitable howling bout of outright humiliation.

I WAS LYINGin my bed, alone, my head turned toward the photographs pinned to my wall, my mind not quite pinned to anything at all, but instead floating free with thoughts puzzled, prurient, and strangely paranoid, when the doorbell rang.

I wasn’t just then in the mood to receive visitors. I still was half drunk, half dressed, half erect, fully confused, and mortified. Let’s just say it hadn’t gone as well as I had dreamed with Chelsea.

I rolled out of bed, made my way stiffly to the living room, grunted a “What?” into the intercom.

“Is that you, Victor?”

“Yeah.”

“Were you sleeping?”

“No.”

“Do you have, like, a minute?”

“Yeah.”

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“You’re not going to invite me up?”

“Who is this?”

“Helloo? Jammy, V, who do you think?”

“I should have known,” I said, and I should have, since every sentence ended with a question mark. I looked around at my apartment in disgust, figured it didn’t matter, and then buzzed her in.

I took off my suit pants, slipped on a pair of jeans, a white T-shirt. I closed the bedroom door firmly behind me and started cleaning up the living room, putting the cushions back onto the couch, dropping the half-empty beer bottles into the blue recycling bin, tossing into the hall closet the clothes I had stripped off with hopeful abandon just a few dozen minutes before – my suit jacket, my tie and shirt, my belt.

I gave the living room a quick appraisal and, just as the first knock at my door came, I spotted something. Black and thin, like an accusing finger reaching over the edge of the couch.

I stepped over to it. It was a thin black strap. I lifted it up and with it came the whole of a lovely black bra. She had forgotten it, or couldn’t find it, when she dressed to leave. Taking it off had been the highlight of my day, my year, and yet that very act had sabotaged everything.

I had led Chelsea up the stairs by her hand. She was strangely passive, it was like when we first kissed on the stoop, like she was allowing me this. Normally that would have stopped me, I don’t like to be allowed to do anything, but in my current state, still brazened by alcohol, still sexually charged, still in thrall to the pictures of the younger Chelsea pinned to my wall, I didn’t care that she was merely allowing me. Merely allowing me was enough.