Being Eloise (An Erotic Romance Collection, Books 1-3) (19 page)

Lights brightened in the trees around the deck and D. H. lit a few candles and I poured myself a nice whisky (he didn’t want to presume how much I took, he said) and after a half hour of digestion I was something close to happy there in the sweet cloud of citronella and the warm night, and Mr. Irldale letting the insects make their music instead of subjecting me to another obscure-to-me
Wings
album

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s a bad habit.”

“What is?”

“Ego. Everything’s been about me. We’ve been talking mostly about me since you got here and you can’t have flown out here for
that
. I still don’t know why you’re here.”

I didn’t say anything for some minutes. “I’m in a place in my life where I feel torn in two,” I said, finally. “And you live in the farthest place I can get to without needing to renew my passport—and that I can afford. I just needed to get away for a bit.”

He nodded, slapped his arm, and lit another citronella candle with the wick of a lit one. He set it down on the deck. “Tell me about it.”

“Maybe there’s not two directions but one,” I continued. “And I’ve been deluding myself. I’ve got a much, much younger lover who I’ve just found out isn’t really mine.”

Irldale coughed.

“I’m not married, he’s not married. I don’t mean that kind.”

“That’s good.”

“But it’s complicated,” I said. “I think, I think I’m turning, or being turned into, a dominatrix. Of sorts.”

“Hey now.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“You? You’re so sweet.”

“I know. I mean, no, I’m not. I just wanted to come out here and see what the world is like being decent, maybe good.”

“Here? Here is what it’s like to have money. That’s it.”

“Come on,” I said. “I’m the one who was writing your autobiography. I
know
you.”

Mr. Irldale pointed. “Fellow up the hill there? He rents out his place for porn films. In
this
neighborhood. Couple over there I swear are running some kind of medical fraud. The ones below me beat their kids. I’ve called child services twice.”

“And this guy?” I pointed at him.

He shrugged. “I don’t know.” He pointed at me.

“That’s my problem,” I said. “I don’t know either.”

“The confused.”

“Lost.”

“Lonely.”

I looked at him. “You’re lonely?”

“Everyone’s lonely.” He held out his hand.

I took it and we sat there in our chairs like we had those months ago, except this time we didn’t fall asleep. I didn’t want to even move. I put my nose into my whisky glass and inhaled the rich smoky peat. It felt like here on the deck was the only place we could talk this openly. Inside the house the lighting would break up this moment, the picture frames of his kids and his wife would slice up this space further. Soon I’d be standing out by the street beside the For Sale sign stripped down to just my clothes and backpack. (And what was I doing, at my age, with a backpack?)

Mr. Irldale sat up but didn’t let go of my hand. He blew out the citronella candle nearest him and his face darkened and softened. He stood and pulled me up and we walked hand in hand into the house. He turned off the lights and I was thankful for the dimness.

“Can you help me move something?” he asked. “I should have done this long ago.”

I nodded. He led me into a room and turned on the lights. The room was filled with framed memorabilia and enough trophies to melt down into a dozen solid bars of metal. Mr. Irldale left me alone there for some minutes. I’d seen enough boy’s rooms and trophy shelves in my time, but to be in an adult’s trophy room, even someone as accomplished in sport as Irldale, filled me with a kind of sadness I’d never felt before, as though the greater the accomplishments of the past, the weaker the totality of the man today.

“Here,” D. H. said, bringing in a thick stack of unfolded cardboard boxes. I took one and folded it, following his lead. He took frames off one wall and put them in his box. “You can grab the trophies,” he said.

I tried but they were impossibly heavy, even the smaller ones.

“Gotta really yank. They got wax underneath for earthquakes,” he said.

“You want to put them in tissue paper or some bubble…”

“Nah. I know a guy who sells stuff on eBay. I’m going to let him sell it all, every last goddamn thing. Donate it all to a charity. What’s you favorite charity?”

It felt like a loaded question and seemed to imply that giving to charities was something I could regularly afford to do. By mentioning a charity I’d be revealing to him who I most thought deserved my attention. “I’ve always like Doctors Without Borders,” I said, after running through a few possibilities. “The idea of them being on the front line somewhere, keeping all those little babies with malaria from dying.”

“Okay. Doctors Without Borders it is,” he said. He stared at one wall where the unfaded paint behind the row of removed frames shone brighter. “I feel ten pounds lighter already,” he said.

We worked for a good half hour packing up his memorabilia, his framed jerseys, his trophies both large and enormous, until the room was cleared of everything but the couch in the middle and the large upholstered coffee table in front. He turned off the light and sat down and stared out the window. You could see the deck from up here, the two deck chairs sitting in near darkness, the city spilling to the edge of the sea which I could see now as an endless darkness. I took a seat beside him on the room’s couch.

“You okay?” I asked. “I still want to finish that book.”

“Look me up in ten years,” he said.

“Five,” I said.

“Okay. Five.”

I put my hand on his knee and he put his hand over mine and we sat there for at least a quarter of an hour before he kissed me or I kissed him. And this part—this part is mine. I gave you my ex-husband, I gave you Terrance, I gave you Drake. But not Mr. D. H. Irldale. All I’ll say is that it was warm and pure comfort and that if it was passion and excitement his wife left him for, I hope she found it. Those things deserve what they attract. Irldale was the kindest lover I’d ever had. Sorry, but this one you can’t have.

I left a day later, not because I wanted to, but because of Olivia’s messages. Olivia was counting down the hours until Wednesday and began detailing the repercussions if I missed another session. Free rent adios. Ex, back in the picture in the baddest, cruelest way. Terrance gone for good. She controlled me even here in the Hollywood Hills, and all because I was a mother to a son. Were I single, alone, child-less, she’d have no control over me. I could have stayed out here in L.A. forever. But I’d ceased to be my own person when my son had been born, when I’d said to mother nature: go ahead, let’s do it your way. I can’t tell you how much I wished I could do what Mr. Irldale did, how much I wished there was a room I could simply empty and be free of my past. And I meant that at the same time that I despised myself for even entertaining that impossible alternative. I shot myself into the heavens, one planet amid billions. I dove back and touched the Higgs boson that might underlie everything. Why did I have to live in this narrow in between land ruled by emotions and time? And I needed to lay off the science and space documentaries, that was for sure.

I wrote a thank you note to Mr. Irldale and left while he showered. At the street, waiting for my taxi to the airport, I uprooted the For Sale sign and found a spot between houses where I could throw the sign down into the canyon. If I couldn’t stop Mr. Irldale from selling his house, I needed to at least try. I needed to know that a place like this existed. That these two days existed. That the good me was still somewhere you could find on a map. There, someone could point. She was good right there. If that’s what I managed to get out of this trip, I thought, then it was all and everything.

I spent the whole day at the airport waiting for a flight, and ended up on a red-eye where I let a grown man, asleep, continue his slumber on my shoulder for the majority of the flight. It was uncomfortable being kind. But comfort wasn’t everything.

Back in my apartment on the dark side of dawn, I slept fitfully in the clothes I’d worn for two days. In the morning I showered and straightened the apartment, sweeping the dead leaves from around the bases of my coterie of houseplants. The mother-in-law’s tongue on my desk was the only plant that seemed to have thrived, extending a long spear across my laptop. Or maybe the spear had just fallen. There was a message on the machine from my son. The reception was terrible, but I got the words campfire, marshmallows, and some laughter. I was happy he was happy—which isn’t the same thing as being truly happy if we’re honest with ourselves.

It was Wednesday.

I dressed. Not in the catsuit but in a sweater, long skirt, and some pantyhose to hide the nicks from shaving. This time I walked over to Drake’s house before he pulled up. The house was locked, but I waited out front on the steps. I had a vague notion of what I needed to do. I had some grievances to settle, but on my terms. Those grievances are well known to you by now: Olivia’s manipulation of Terrance, of me, and of my ex.

The sun was warm, finally—not Hollywood Hills-warm, but enough for me to take off my sweater and tie it around my waist. There were two carved lions at the ends of the steps and they stared out at the drive. I broke off two gerber daisies from the flower bed and lay them across the lion’s stone tongues, red on the left, purple on the right. The distant water tower, where the old part of town sat, gleamed like a silver UFO. All but the ash trees were green with new leaves. Cars drove past on the road, the sound silenced by the long stone wall. I didn’t hear anything until they were past the opening of the driveway, and by then they’d be gone when I looked up. I knew what I was listening for, anyway. The slow crunch of gravel smothered under rubber. It didn’t take long.

Drake’s car slowed when he saw me, then drew close. I held my hand up to the sun so my eyes could follow Drake as he exited the car and made his way up the steps. He fumbled with his keys, unlocked the door and looked back at me.

“It’s been a hell of a couple of weeks,” he said, somewhat angrily. Then, softer: “Thank you for coming.”

I said nothing, but followed him inside. There were women who get paid for this kind of work, but I was doing it for me. Bridge?
Check
. Gasoline?
Check.
Match?
Lit.

Drake fixed himself a drink, downed it and took another, then hung his jacket over a chair in the kitchen, there in front of a half-eaten slice of toast and the dregs of orange juice from this morning’s—or last morning’s—breakfast. There was a decidedly unkempt feeling impinging on what was usually Olivia’s meticulousness. I rather liked it.

“Shall we?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Cat got your tongue?” he asked.

“Something like that,” I said.

He frowned then turned toward the stairs. He was wearing pale slacks, the kind only a man over fifty can get away with, and a powder pink shirt (same allowance). He paused at the top stairs and removed his shoes. Argyle socks. He opened the door to the bedroom. I felt the heat of his empty shoes evaporating over my outstretched palm as I followed. I didn’t want to do this, but I needed to do this. I needed to inflict some pain on another so I wouldn’t be the one on the bottom of the heap.

“Olivia says you have something in the closet,” Drake said.

I looked at the closet door. So this was it. No mailroom reenactment, no impending board investigation. It was this thing in the closet.

“I’ll be just a second,” I said. “Gonna freshen up.” I undid the clasp on Olivia’s necklace and threw it and the key to Drake. I didn’t care if he had his own key. I didn’t want mine after today’s session. “Get undressed and on the bed. Get the straps ready for me.”

He looked at me.

“Get going you little shit,” I said, and I meant it.

That seemed to be what he was waiting for. I left him as he pulled out the suitcase. I walked into the master bedroom. I began whistling
Don’t Worry, Be Happy
for no rational reason. But those lips of mine were closer to my heart than my head and I smiled between breaths. This wasn’t going to be Drake’s afternoon.

There was a TV at the foot of the enormous sleigh bed. The finish of the bed was a dark rosewood. Light came through a pair of French doors. I opened them and stepped onto the balcony that overlooked the front drive where Drake’s car sat, its well-waxed top reflecting the clouds and the fringes of the encircling trees. But I wasn’t here to take in these kinds of views. Turning around, I walked into the master bath and opened the medicine cabinet. I turned on the tap and ran the water hard to mask the sound of me riffling through their prescriptions. Still whistling, I lifted up a few and spied the pills within before finding what I was looking for. Not the placebo-like expired estrogen tablets, but the Viagra. The real stuff. I tucked the bottle into the pocket of my skirt, then pressed RECORD on the voice recorder in my left pocket. I filled a glass with water.

“Let’s do this,” I said to myself, then turned off the water. I shut off the lights and returned to the bedroom.

“Someone peeked,” I said, noticing first the partially opened closet, then Drake lying naked on the bed. I put down the glass of water, then opened the closet and saw a bulging garment bag hanging from a hanger. The zipper was halfway down. I looked first at Drake, then pulled the zipper clear down. I removed what was inside and had to fold it out completely to see what it was: a bright yellow hazmat suit with built in booties, gloves, a cinched waist, and plastic headpiece with a built-in visor. And a large yellow dildo strapped to the crotch. At first I couldn’t help but laugh. What was I supposed to do, pretend Drake was toxic?

“Okay, Drake, let’s get this show on the road,” I said. “Sit up.”

When he didn’t comply, I grabbed the suit and the base of the dildo and slapped his legs. Up he went, he and his member. I bound his arms to the bedposts, then his legs. I put a pillow behind his back. Lumbar, you know. I’m not a complete masochist. And then, when I was sure I had him securely fastened to the bed, I shoved the hazmat suit back into the closet.