Dangerously Happy (35 page)

He stooped and whispered, “Wait. Just a couple minutes. Let him get it out. Then go and take care of him.” The change in Xavier's voice was shocking. He sounded kind. Tender, even. He picked up a wool throw from the end of the couch and handed it to me, then disappeared in one of the back rooms.

I waited as long as I could bear it, then went to Dario. Knelt down by him, wrapped his naked, trembling body up in the wool blanket, then curled up against him, pulled him to me, held him. I felt like I'd just lived through half an hour of cruel emotional and physical abuse, and couldn't fathom how ground down and wounded he must be feeling. Why had he needed that? Had he just needed to suffer? Was it punishment? Or treatment?

He was silent the whole drive back to the loft. Once we were home, he said, “I'm sorry. I didn't know it would go that way.”

About a dozen questions were sparking off in my brain. I asked him, “Did it help?”

“
I don't know.”

“
If it does help, don't be sorry.”

After dinner, Dario came to where I was sitting on the couch, distractedly reworking some lyrics for a song I'd started writing a couple weeks earlier. He laid down, rested his head in my lap, and started reading the book he'd been holding. Some Latin American novel. I felt a bittersweet pang of relief, of joy; it was the first time since that awful night he'd disappeared that he'd initiated any kind of physical contact. When I combed my fingers lightly through his hair he turned his gaze up from his book and met my eyes. God, it was good, how nearly himself he looked. Thanks to Xavier. No thanks to me.

Xavier had seen it. What had been devouring Dario from the inside. His guilt. His shame. For a while I tried to convince myself it was because Xavier had participated in that impossible scheme of vigilante justice, so he was feeling it, too. He had the insider's insight. But that wasn't it. Everything Xavier had intuited, forced Dario to confront, everything Xavier had punished had been plain for me to see. The only reason I hadn't seen it, was because I was too scared. Terrified to face the most dangerous reality of what Dario had done. Not only that he'd chosen to do something terribly cruel to punish someone, but even more scary, that he might have done it to the wrong person. And now he'd have to live with that menacing shadow of doubt forever.

That night we didn't make love, but Dario was warm and close and tender and I felt that chasm that was separating us, that threatened to swallow us if we tried to get across and get back to each other, starting to close. Slowly, day by day, that assured steadiness was coming back to Dario's gaze. Little by little, as the nights passed, he'd come to bed wanting, touching, kissing. But always seeking to please. Never seeking his own pleasure. He was never hungry and needful. Most of the time, he didn't even get fully hard. And some nights, he was still having the nightmares.

Once again, things went back to an eerie normalcy on the weekends. When I'd asked Dario if he wanted to shut down the collective or a few weeks, or maybe indefinitely, he said no, and didn't want to discuss it beyond that monosyllabic decree. I wondered if it was because he didn't want to do anything that could be construed as suspicious if the guy he'd caught did decide to go to the cops. More than that, sometimes I wondered if the main reason Dario kept the shows going was to prove to himself he'd punished the right man; if no one got dosed again, it meant he hadn't hurt an innocent person.

I came off the stage sweaty, my body buzzing and my consciousness high on the music, on the vibrations of the crowd. Dario walked up to me with such determined purpose that I thought he was going to kiss me, and as much as that sudden certainty hammered a hot stake of adrenaline into my chest, more than anything I was disappointed when instead he handed me a sheet of paper folded in three. “Go upstairs. There’s a gift waiting for you. When you find it, read this.” His mischievous grin was so endearing I could hardly resist initiating the kiss myself. “Not until you find your present,” he said with mock menace, tapping the paper.

For a second I had the funny feeling I was only seeing what I wanted to see. That Dario’s present to me must be some random girl who’d appeared enthusiastic enough that he’d made her what he playfully called his indecent proposals. Because it couldn’t be her.

But it was. The woman we’d seen playing banjo at The Mint that eventful night we’d spent with Xavier. She was lying reclined on our bed, in another skirt so short that her panties had to be no more than an inch out of sight. Legs bare. Feet bare. Toenails painted a red so dark it was almost black. And from the way she smiled at me when I appeared, it was obvious she’d been waiting for me.

“
Hello,” was my witty opening remark.

“
I was sad to miss the last song. But I think surprising you was worth it.”

“
Me too,” I said, still not quite able to believe she was in my bed. Our bed.

“
I’m Didi.”

“
Hi, Didi. I’m Aidan.”

“
I know.”

“
And I know you could beat the devil at the crossroads, the way you play banjo.”

“
You do remember me.”

“
I do.”

“
Your friend Dario said you would.” The way she said it, I had the distinct feeling she was clueless about us. She got up, unavoidably flashing the crotch of her bright pink panties as she maneuvered herself off the bed, and the sight sent a tingling warmth through my cock and balls like a gentle caress. “He also said I could come up here and play your guitar. He said you’d enjoy hearing me play again, even if it’s not the banjo. Was he right?”

“
Yes.”

She grabbed my acoustic guitar from where I’d left it sitting on the dresser. She gestured to the bed. “Lay back. Relax. Enjoy the show, Aidan.”

I gave her a flirtatious smile and obediently got on the bed, but I wanted to see Dario's note. “I’m supposed to read this,” I said, waving the piece of paper in my hand.

“
Is it from Dario?” she asked, grinning playfully, giving me the pleasant notion that she was hoping almost as much as I was that he might join us.

Luckily I’d almost gotten accustomed to Dario’s illegible scrawl, and I managed to decipher his missive:
No holds barred. No quid pro quo. Enjoy your gift. P.S. I want to taste her on you next time we kiss.

So, he wasn't coming to join us. He'd just set this up. A diversion. All the mirth and arousal the situation and the sight of Didi's bare thighs and pink panties had provoked cooled and waned.

When I set the paper aside, Didi said, “Your friend told me you were trying to sneak a peek up my skirt during our show at the Mint.” With that she planted one foot on the edge of the bed, flashing a clear and not entirely brief glimpse of the crotch of hot pink panties before she hopped up to standing on the mattress. She took her stance, feet planted wide apart on either side of my knees and, I realized a moment later when I stopped staring at the outline of her cunt under the flimsy red silk, gazing down at me with a thoroughly self-satisfied grin, began to play with the same transcendent virtuosity as she had at The Mint.

It was a memorable sight, her brazenly displayed crotch, the contours of her sex plainly visible the way the thin fabric had molded itself to her flesh. Her impossibly deft fingers, bending my instrument to their will. Suddenly, in the middle of a robust, complex phrase, she stopped. As if she’d forgotten the next note she was supposed to play.

“
Really?” she said.

“
What?”

“
You’re seriously just going to lie there? Doing nothing?”

I laughed. “I didn’t want to be rude and interrupt your impressive performance.

“
I have excellent focus. Just don’t upset my balance.”

She started playing again, not missing or repeating a single note, as if she’d never interrupted herself. Fucking Christ, was she kidding?

I wanted to. I wanted to reach up. Touch. Strip those flimsy panties off her. Look. Touch. Kiss. Maybe she'd keep playing, even then.

But I suddenly felt sad. Drowning in sadness. Because Dario had been like a ghost for weeks, an ethereal presence I could see and here, but couldn't touch.

I curved my hands at the backs of her thighs, and planted a kiss on the soft, warm flesh just a few inches below the black-trimmed edge of her pink underwear. She kept playing. I wondered, if I did it, if I tugged her panties down and kissed her, licked her, would my arousal come back?

“
Didi.” She was looking at me, still strumming and plucking. I laid my hand over hers, and the final few notes slowly died. “I'm sorry.”

She looked shocked. Like he idea of being refused had never occurred to her, maybe because no one had ever turned her down before. Or maybe just because I'd let it go far enough that she felt I'd made a fool of her. After a few seconds, though, she smiled, and hopped down from the bed. She put my guitar back on the dresser, then came back to the bed and sat down next to me. “Does it have something to do with him?”

“
With who?” I asked, playing dumb for some reason.

“
Dario.”

“
Yes.” It wasn't even hard to say.

“
I think he wanted us to . . . ” All her bravado had dissolved. Now, she sounded almost shy. “Don't you?”

“
Yes,” I admitted.

“
So, it wouldn't be like you were cheating.”

“
It's not that. We're just . . . going through a bad time, right now. And I don't want to . . . use you as a distraction from that, I guess.”

After waiting for a while, she smiled, leaned in, and kissed me. Just a soft, warm, lingering press of her lips on mine. Then she said, “I hope things work out.” She got up and put on her shoes. “Ever play with other people?” The note of shyness in her voice was gone.

“
Uh . . .”

“
You were incredible tonight. You’re playing in the wrong league. No offense to the rest of your band.” I laughed. When she'd said, “play with other people,” I’d thought she was talking about sex. About threesomes. About me and Dario. “Seriously, if you ever want to collaborate on something, write something together, whatever, let me know. Dario has my number and e-mail.”

“
You’ve set the bar for presents pretty high,” I teased Dario when we closed the door behind the last of the guests. “Suddenly I feel like when your birthday comes, an Amazon gift card isn’t going to cut it.”

“
A new book of Rilke’s or Cabrera Infante might be a more subtle pleasure, but it would also be a more lasting one. The two of you were up there less than an hour,” he reprimanded playfully.

I asked what machinations he’d gone through to get Didi into our bed. Maybe I was stalling, but more than anything, I wanted to sound him. Figure out what was going on in his head.

He laughed. “I shouldn’t even tell you.”

“
Why not?”

“
Because, it’s foolish to give up all the credit you must be giving me. She was in the crowd, watching you guys play. I noticed her, recognized her from that night at The Mint, so I went over to say hello. She didn’t recognize me, which was to be expected since she was the one on stage that night, not us. I asked her how she liked the music and she said it was kind of like drinking Budweiser. Sometimes the buzz isn’t really worth it. I was halfway into the wondering how someone who played so phenomenally could have such poor judgment when she said, ’Except for the lead. That’s top-shelf, well chilled vodka. In a dirty glass.’”

“
What’s the dirty glass? The group? My outfit?”

Dario laughed. “Sometimes it’s best not to examine metaphors too closely. Want to know what she said next?”

“
Do I?”