“You’re kidding, right? We’re going on a hiking trip tomorrow—for our honeymoon. If that won’t hurt the baby then neither will fucking me.”
“Hiking?” I said, grasping for something and then immediately regretted it. Surely Nate knew his own honeymoon plans.
Come to think of it, that explained why the guests kept giving us camping gear.
“Oh pu-lease,” she said. “Don’t give me that. What’s wrong with you anyway? You didn’t used to be this shy.”
Shrugging, I said, “I’m a little bit country. And you’re…a little bit Norwegian death metal.”
Erika squinted at me suspiciously.
“Is that from TV or something?”
Nate and Erika were just a tad too young to know who Donnie and Marie were.
“Yeah, one of the Matrix movies I think.”
“Whatever. And just who the hell was that Mexican woman Betsy told me about? She told me you were having a good time talking to her.”
“She’s nobody. Don’t worry, I hate her guts.”
I crossed my heart.
“Uh huh,” she said, and then began taking off her dress.
Despite it looking incredibly complicated, she managed to get it off in about seven seconds. To my surprise, she had both breast implants and a tramp stamp, but that wasn’t a problem. That was just awesome.
She struck a challenging pose, staring at me dangerously in nothing but her bra and dental floss, the tattered remains of her poofy dress heaped sullenly at her feet like something conquered.
Ok, I’m the guy who can’t forget anything, but right then I think I forgot to breathe. I felt trapped. Worse, she was getting off on it, judging from the wicked smirk playing across her face. And because I’m damned for all eternity due to a little misunderstanding over this one time I killed myself in college, she took off the rest, put her hands around my neck and climbed me like a stripper pole. Light as she was, she unbalanced me enough that I came down on top of her in a barely controlled crash, causing her to scream with delight.
In a last-ditch attempt at resistance I tried to stand up, but Erika’s nails were like cat’s claws—you were fine until you tried to pull away. She snorted again, making me wonder why I never realized before how adorable her little laugh was…
***
Twelve hundred million years ago, according to my friend Kirk’s mostly legible notes from freshman biology, a small but momentous event occurred: a single-celled, asexual, eukaryotic organism came waltzing along one day, when bam, it got eaten by another eukaryote. But unlike all the other times this had happened since that other momentous event two billion years before that—the emergence of life—this time a miraculous thing occurred. The DNA strand from the eaten eukaryote became entwined with the DNA of the cannibal.
According to Kirk, it was kind of like the creation of the peanut butter cup, only “way weirder.”
From that moment on, whenever the cannibal ate another cell (sex), instead of the offspring from cell division having one double-helix of DNA, it now had two copies, resulting in the very first living thing with DNA from two parents. The implications were staggering. Before, if a strand of DNA became damaged, the cell would die. Now the cell had a second copy of DNA to splice-in for repairs.
The competitive advantage of the cannibal so outclassed all the asexual organisms that today its descendants account for the majority of species in the fractal of life: from plants and fungi to insects, fish and mammals.
But even within a species, there are differences. Men are larger and have stronger muscles, and women hurtle down expressways applying cosmetics while talking on cell phones. It is as if those millions of years of divergence have taken that identical pair of DNA strands, once merged into a single species, and created two new, entirely different species all their own, separated by chasms of time and experience so vast as to be all but reconcilable.
That is until Erika and I, defying eons of exile, merged our divergent flesh back into a single, completed organism.
The next several hours weren’t pretty. Nate’s McMansion had a lot of rooms, and Erika and I did our best to sully and defile most of them before ever making it to the bedroom. Once or twice I reflected that I was going to fry like a chicken roaster for this one.
To hell with it, I did my best.
I mean, it’s not like I was an unknown quantity here. The Great Whomever should have sent one of his saints instead of a guy who hadn’t been laid in fifteen years. Of course, the odds were the old guy would’ve lost a perfectly good saint.
If the neighbors called about the noise, we wouldn’t have heard them. If teams of scientists came to witness the event, we would have gone on blissfully unaware, like rutting leviathans in an ocean of astonished minnows.
I didn’t remember sex being this strange when Sandra and I were dating. Unlike Sandra, Erika would swear and say things I couldn’t understand, but our love transcended mere English. Once, she got some of the wedding cake from the kitchen and made me eat it off her—and that’s really stretching the definition of the word “off.” But when she went downstairs and returned with the locked, pink trunk that had been such a mystery, that’s when things started to get out of hand.
The kinky little trollop. Peeking inside, I saw multicolored bottles of lotion and weird sex toys, no less colorful. It wasn’t something I was into, but hey, judge not lest ye be judged, and Lo unto the mimsy sea goes he who walkith in the tabernacles of sin…
“Oh Hun Bun,” Erika purred, pulling out two sets of handcuffs, each wrapped in something fuzzy. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
Actually, no, I wasn’t thinking what she was thinking. Just looking at the handcuffs brought back vivid images of Jill, the daughter of that seedy drug dealer, but I couldn’t tell her that.
Nervously, I said, “Uh, you’re thinking of arresting me?”
She flashed me a frightening smile.
“Would you like that very much, Hun Bun?” she said, snapping one of the manacles around my wrist. Then she nipped at my chest, playfully.
At the last second, just before she went to secure it to the bedpost, I resisted.
“Uh, honey,” I said, unable to clear the images from that house in Memphis from my mind. “Listen, it’s not that I’m not into…you know…adventures and all. But I have this phobia, right, and—”
Her neck arched back seductively as she broke into a peel of wicked laughter.
“Izms scared of the big bad handcuffs?”
Izms wasn’t scared, exactly. Izms couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but he knew he didn’t want to be handcuffed to anything.
“Well,” I said, and tried to keep my sanity as she nibbled my naked earlobe.
It had been about half an hour since our last act, and Nate’s body was so healthy and horny I couldn’t see straight. Pretty soon, there wasn’t any hiding that fact from Erika.
“That’s my naughty boy,” she breathed, snapping the other end of the cuff to the steel headboard.
Coming to my senses, I tried another tack.
“Erika, hey, come on, we were fine just a minute ago…I kinda want more of that cake, don’t you?”
Her finger pressed against my lips, shushing me, then she replaced her finger with her mouth. Before I could offer another objection she slipped a cuff from the other pair around my free wrist.
A sudden vision hit me of Jill, bruised and pitiful in a house reeking of cigarettes and beer, crying out desperately for her doomed father…
“No, hey, Erika stop!” I shouted at last, panicking. I didn’t know why, but I suddenly felt exposed and vulnerable like never before.
In a rush, Erika threw all her weight against my right arm and snapped the other end shut around the steel post.
Effectively chaining me to Nate’s bed.
Shrieking with laughter, snorting so much it sounded like a farmer’s pigpen, Erika leapt from the bed naked, tore out of the room, and then bounded down the stairs.
Chapter 31
“You’re in a real pickle, now, Danny Boy,” I said out loud. It was my father’s favorite thing to say whenever I’d gotten myself into trouble. As a result, I’d spent my whole life pulling pickles off my burgers and dinner plates. I’m sure pickles are perfectly fine, but the rituals incurred from childhood scarring simply must be observed.
Erika had been gone for about thirty minutes. To me, it was as if all the pickles I ever chucked aside had somehow found their way back.
I tested the cuffs again, flexing them against the steel headboard, but it was no use. I couldn’t achieve the necessary leverage to effectively employ Nate’s uber-muscles. With nothing to do, I settled for waiting patiently.
When Erika finally returned she was fully dressed and carrying her purse.
“Going somewhere?” I said, and admired my cool delivery.
“Just returning, actually,” she said, tossing her purse on the floor next to the bed with a light thump. Then she calmly removed her clothes and started throwing them at random to different parts of the room, smiling mischievously all the while.
Erika climbed onto the bed and straddled my chest, looking down at me.
“Miss me much?” she said.
“Sure. But you’re here now, so why don’t you unlock these handcuffs, Erika?”
“I would, but I’m not sure where the key is,” she said, in a way that suggested a lack of truthfulness.
“Come on, quit playing around and get the key. This is our wedding day. You don’t want to ruin it, do you?”
I hoped by acting as if she were just joking, she’d chicken out of whatever she was up to and let me go.
Erika assumed an expression of intense thinking, then perked up.
“I think I know where it is!”
“Great, go get it, I promise to wait right here.”
Grinning in a way that made me wish I’d seen it coming, Erika reached down, grabbed me between the legs and squeezed.
“Hey, ouch! What are you doing?”
I began to buck and heave, unable to help myself, but Erika held on, mounted on my chest like a rodeo cowboy.
“That’s not the key?” she said, her face a mask of innocence.
“No!”
“It’s sort of like a key. But it’s all smooshy. I’m thinking it has to be more stiff, don’t you? So you can get it in the keyhole?”
Then she started rubbing me, her expression one of hedonistic pleasure. Worse, against all my instincts and the ridiculousness of the situation, Nate’s dumb, ultra-healthy body began to respond.
I made objections. She responded by shifting her perch on my chest to straddle my waist. Helpless, I decided the best course of action, all things considered, was to just let time pass for a few minutes. I suppose I could have kicked her off the bed or tried to strangle her with my legs, but that would leave me stranded in Nate’s bed. I didn’t fear death, but the idea of starving to death horrified me. After all, who would come looking for me at home when we were supposed to be off on our honeymoon? No, I had to play this out and see where it led.
About three no-comment minutes later there came a series of loud bangs from downstairs, followed by the unmistakable crack of splitting wood. It sounded like someone had just kicked in Nate’s door.
Erika’s face lit up with delight.
“Oh my goodness!” she said. “I think we have company, Hun Bun. I wonder who it is?” She said it in the same tone a child might say, I’ve got a secret and I’m not telling. Then she shimmied from my waist to the side farthest from the door and draped her hand casually across my chest, stroking me.
Moments later, Rob stepped into the room.
***
The last time I saw Rob he’d been wearing a tuxedo. He’d ditched the tux in favor of jeans, a black T-shirt, leather gloves, and a black stocking hat. He also looked amused as hell. Call me a pessimist, but I didn’t think his arrival was that of a rescuing hero.
“I’m not interrupting anything, am I?” he said, with a wry smile.
Quite aware of my nakedness, secured by fuzzy handcuffs and smeared with pink and blue icing, I said, “Not at all. I was just about to put on a shirt and do some laundry.”
Rob threw a questioning glance at Erika.
“He’s been saying clever shit like that all week,” she said, sitting up, serious now and a few degrees cooler.
“Shut up a minute,” Rob said. Then he walked around the room, sizing it up. “Looks like my little brother’s doing pretty good for a teacher. Got himself a big empty house to go with his big empty head.”
Christ. Another brother?
I began to feel the first vestiges of real shame. It had been my job to find these things out.
Erika said, “Rob I’m sorry, I just thought it was a good idea to do it now. I didn’t think I could go through with what we said—I got scared.”
Rob took two quick steps to the bed and backhanded her hard across the left side of her face.
“I said shut up,” he said, not changing the tone of his voice in the slightest.
In my experience, a guy who could do it that way was old-dog hard in ways the thug puppies littering the culture often admired but could never pull off themselves.
Recovering quickly, Erika said, “Good, that’s right, hit me again. It has to look like I got beat up or the cops’ll be suspicious.”
Rob turned to me and said, “You see what she’s like? Really Nate, I’m doing you a favor.” Then he reached behind his back, pulled out a silenced pistol and pointed it at me.
Rob squinted at me, the look on his face ranging from perplexed to amused and then back again. But he lowered the gun.
“What’s with you, anyway?” he said.
“What do you mean?”
Wagging the gun at me, he said, “I mean look at you. Layin’ there naked as a jaybird, no famous good-boy shyness anywhere, tossing off jokes like ‘flesh and blood’ cuz we’re all adopted. It’s too cute, too smart, not like you at all. How can you be so calm knowing I’m about to blow your head off?”
Adopted, huh?
Things were beginning to gel now, which made me think the old cliché, Better late than never, made no sense at all.
“Oh, that,” I said, nodding. “Listen, forget that. Why don’t I just write you a nice fat check, give you half? You can cash it, it’ll clear, and then we never talk to each other again. There’s almost two hundred million in the account. This way you don’t have to kill anyone and Erika can go back to being a hooker or whatever she does when she’s not ruining people’s lives.”
That earned me a fist to the crotch from Erika. Rob had to run over quickly to pull her off me.
“I’m fine, get off!” she yelled, making a show of composing herself and glaring at me to show she’d do it again.
Meanwhile, my vision pulsed with every heartbeat—and oh, the pain. The kind of hurt that starts at the bottom of a mountain with no top and just keeps climbing.
I didn’t think for a second that this was some everyone-hates-Nate party. These two were after Nate’s winnings. Lucky for everyone I didn’t care about the money. If I could get Nate out of this mess with no more holes than the day I found him I’d call it a win.
“That’s not the deal, Rob,” Erika said, sitting back on the bed in a huff. “If he gives you the money, what’s in it for me?”
“Hold on, babe, let’s hear him out, see what he has to say.”
Hardly daring to hope, I said, “Just like I said. I write the check and hand it over. I don’t call the cops. The last thing I want is you two holding a grudge against me. I’m frugal, I don’t need much. Even half is more than I’ll ever spend.”
“Bullshit!” Erika shouted, turning to Rob. “You don’t believe that, do you? He’ll say anything right now. Fruga
l? Him? He’s got a goddamn Ferrari! As soon as you let him go he’s going to call the police.”
Rob had had enough. He grabbed her and shouted, “Ok, we do it your way. You want some bruises?” He hit her twice in the face, knocking her to the floor, senseless.
He looked at me, eyes raging.
“I was the one who got us out of that house, away from that crazy old man. I didn’t want to do any of those things to you two, but he made me. When I couldn’t take it anymore, I was the one who killed him. I protected us. And what’d I get after? Psychologists, foster homes and more of the same from another perv, only this time not so old he couldn’t get it up himself. Then it was off to juvey. You and the homo got to grow up together in a good place with soccer and Boy Scouts and shit while I got beat up every day by niggers and queers. Then, when I got out, surprise surprise! Neither of you want nothin to do with me.”
I got the sense if Nate knew anything about Rob it ended after their shared history. Call it a hunch, but Rob didn’t seem the type to confide these things to anyone he wasn’t about to kill.
“But, we’re friends now,” I said. “I mean, we’re making things right, hanging out and everything. You’re my best man, dude.”
Rob laughed out loud.
“I’m friends with anyone who wins two hundred million dollars. When the homo talked you into making me best man instead of him, what was I gonna do, say no?” He leaned back, pointing at me, laughing so hard his face turned red. “That’s some irony right there, that’s what that is. Best man. Hah!” Moments later, calmer, he shook his head. “Like that could ever make up for what you told the judge.”
I threw him a questioning look.
“Thought I forgot that part, huh?”
I started to say something but he waved me off.
“I’m not backing out now,” Rob said. “I put this thing together, and Erika’s gonna want something for those black eyes I just gave her. Man, she messed this whole thing up real good.”
“What do you mean?” I said, stalling for more time.
“Oh,” Rob said, chuckling. “You’re gonna love this. She was supposed to push you off that cliff you were heading to—on account of you being a big hiker and not afraid of heights. It was all set. She’d stand near the ledge in the morning, sipping her coffee, waiting for you to show up and put your arm around her. And when the right moment came—woosh, you’d go down the quick way. They’d call it an accident.” He shook his head. “Now I gotta stage a goddamn home invasion. Christ.”