I was still washing my hands when Jacob came out of the bathroom. He’d tied a handtowel around the T I’d gouged into him.
“Maybe I should go to a motel,” he said.
I glanced at the clock. Almost five. “No, don’t,” I said. “I have to go to the clinic in an hour and a half anyway. I’ll stay awake. I’ll have some coffee.”
Jacob reached over my shoulder and turned off the faucet. He sighed and leaned back against the sink, crossing his arms loosely over his stomach. “It’s not me that I’m worried about. It’s you.”
“Which is why you should stay. We’ll watch the early news.”
Jacob pinched the bridge of his nose, a weary gesture. He’d been up all night. “Lisa made it sound like I was the problem here, not you. That I needed to get away from you.”
“She said that? Specifically?”
Jacob knuckled his eyes, sighed again, and sat down on a kitchen stool. “I don’t know what she said specifically, Vic. She took me off guard.”
“And then what did you do?”
“I tried to call you,” he said, in a “duh” sort of way. “But it went to voice mail.”
I looked over at the jacket hanging from my back door. The phone was in the inner pocket and it hadn’t made a sound in ages. Cripes. I’d turned it off at the park.
I pulled the phone out of my jacket, flipped it open, and winced. Fifteen phone messages. Lisa, eight times. My own land line: Jacob, I guessed. Maurice, twice. Jacob’s cell. Warwick. Maurice again. And Roger.
“Aren’t I mister popularity?” I said. I hoped I sounded as disgusted as I felt -- with myself for leaving my phone off, or with everyone I know waiting until I was at The Clinic to call me, I don’t know.
“Did Lisa call?” Jacob asked.
“Yeah.”
“Then see if you can make heads or tails of it,” he said, and went into the living room.
I wanted to tell Jacob to come back, but there was something so determined about the way he’d walked off that I didn’t bother. I looked at my phone in my hand and wondered if it would make a bigger ding in the wall than the coaster had.
But I was the one who’d called Lisa first, back at the river when I’d first seen a cluster of ghostly underwater heads. So I should probably listen to what Lisa had to say.
I accessed my voice mail. “Vic,” she whispered. “Shit, I gotta talk to you.”
The next message was a hangup. Actually, it was more like a half second of panicked breathing, but I was trying not to think about it. The next four, more of the same. On the seventh message, she finally said something.
“I shouldn’t be calling you. I’m not supposed to be talking to anyone. And they told me not to use the ‘si-no’ on anyone by myself until I take these ethics seminars, but you sounded so bad in your message. Vic, something’s really, really wrong. And I can’t figure out what it is without knowing what’s going on with you. I don’t know what to ask...shit.”
It cut off abruptly, then picked up again with her next call. “The only person you can trust is Carolyn.” There was a second of shaky breathing, some tinny, intercom-sounding announcement whose words I couldn’t make out, and a little chime. “I gotta go to the cafeteria or they’ll find out I called you. Look, not even Jacob, okay?” She sighed. “Especially Jacob.”
I looked at the doorway to the living room. How could she tell me not to trust Jacob? And how was I supposed to explain that to him? I heard cloth rustling and followed the sound into the bedroom. He was doing exactly what I was afraid he’d be doing: packing a duffel bag. Less than twenty-four hours ago he’d been hinting at getting a place together, and now this.
“She didn’t say anything specific,” I told him, hoping that I could distract him by talking. “I’m not supposed to trust anybody. That was the gist of it.”
He glanced at me and then focused again on tucking a T-shirt into his bag. “She called me up and told me something was wrong and it was because of me. She was pretty pissed off. I tried to get her to go into the ‘si-no’ with me to prove I wasn’t doing anything -- at least, nothing that I knew of -- and she wouldn’t even go there. Then she said she was going to get kicked out of the program if they caught her and hung up.”
Jacob wasn’t going anywhere. That’s all there was to it. I stuck my hand into his bag and pulled out the shirt he’d just packed. He stared at it, but didn’t move to stop me. “Look,” I said. “You’re here and Lisa isn’t, and this ‘si-no’ shit is just too fucking vague. Don’t leave.”
Jacob fiddled with the duffel bag’s strap.
“Please,” I said, taking him gently by the chin and turning his face toward mine. I stared into his eyes and felt the L-word threatening to come out, but it was too soon, way too soon. I pressed my mouth against his to stop myself from saying anything stupid and he kissed me back, slow but sure. There was a slight hesitation, then Jacob deepened the kiss, his tongue sliding over my lower lip as his fingers abandoned the duffel bag to tangle in my hair.
He got his arm around me and pulled me against him, and I had his lower lip between mine, sucking on it, raking it with my teeth, and despite all the horror show it seemed like my life had become, I was hard for him, rocking myself into his hip while his breathing grew rough.
Jacob pulled back from the kiss and looked at me, his hand tightening in my hair. His eyes looked black, his face flushed and intense. Then he glanced at the clock radio, and I did too. Five thirty. There was enough time before my appointment.
He dragged me down onto the hardwood floor, yanking off my undershirt while I unbuttoned my pants, the same ones I’d worn to work yesterday. Sometime while I’d slept, Jacob had changed into sweatpants and a T-shirt (now missing a sleeve and splattered with a couple drops of blood), and he stripped out of those in no time flat.
We knelt together, naked on the floor, my hands moving over the muscles of his chest and belly, brushing against the hardness of his hipbones and clutching him there, telling myself not to scratch him and wondering when exactly I’d turned into Freddy Krueger. I did my best to ignore the towel wrapped around his arm.
Jacob’s hands dropped to my ass. He took a cheek in each hand and squeezed, his fingers pressing into the crack like he could open me right up. My cock must’ve liked the idea. It stood up straight and poked him in the hip.
Jacob groaned and let go of my ass, swaying back enough to get his hand between us and wrap it around my cock. I gasped, and his mouth covered mine, tongue hot and wet, pressing in.
His hand moved on me, that demanding stroke of his, and my hips flexed in time with his pumping. And then he let go, took me by the hips just like I had him, and eased us apart. “Suck me” he said, his voice low and oh-so-edible, “while I suck you.”
I dropped down onto my side and Jacob lowered himself the other way, one hand stroking my thigh while he tucked his other arm under his head. It was a stupid time to have sex, I told myself, what with the disembodied heads and freaky phone calls...and then Jacob’s lips slid onto me, just covering my cockhead, and his tongue did a slow tease at my slit.
I pressed my face into his thigh and let out a trembling breath. He sure knew how to make me forget my problems. I dragged my lips downward until my chin settled into the crease of his thigh, then slid my mouth over the musky skin of Jacob’s balls. He made a low noise in his throat and took my whole cock into his mouth.
My mouth found the base of Jacob’s cock and I pressed my lips into it to feel it swell and harden. I let my breath play over it as I eased my mouth slowly up its length, and ran my tongue carefully over the broad head, and then my own lips, getting everything nice and wet.
Jacob’s hand slid around me and grabbed me by the ass again, squeezing me like he really meant business. I wondered if I’d end up in a backless hospital gown at The Clinic where the whole staff would get a good look at my white ass with red fingerprints all over it, or maybe even bruises. Jacob nudged my mouth with his cock, and I hoped he did mark me up, fingers, teeth, hickeys, the works. The idea made all my blood surge down to my groin.
I took him by the ass too, squeezed it hard and used it to pull myself against him, stuff his cock as far into my mouth as it would go. Jacob made another inarticulate noise and pulled at my ass again, and then one of his fingers was there, stroking my totally exposed hole.
I pulled my face back a little and then ground it into him hard, clutching at him just as brutally as he grasped me, and the two of us fell into some sort of rhythm, grabbing and squeezing and rocking into each others’ faces. I broke first, crying out around his fat cock as he managed to hit all the right nerve endings just at the same time, tongue and lips and fingers all making me crazy. He swallowed like he always did, and his sucking turned from insistent to gentle as he drew my orgasm out, relishing every last twitch he could pull from me.
I got my hand around the base of his cock and started pumping it into my mouth. I felt the cold inrush of air as Jacob gasped around my wet cock, felt his thigh start trembling against my shoulder. It occurred to me that I was going to have stomach tests an hour later, so I pulled off at the first hint of bittersweet, jacked off Jacob’s spit-wet cock and felt his hot come splash over my neck.
I settled my head on Jacob’s lower thigh and simply lay there with my arm draped over his hips while his breathing evened out. No scratches. No grabby ghost hands. No phone calls. Jacob and I were fine.
Chapter Six
I called the Fifth Precinct on my way to The Clinic and had them list Jacob as my emergency contact along with Maurice. Jacob wanted to come inside and wait, but I made him promise to go to work. He’d only do that after I swore I’d call him to pick me up after the GI series. He gave me a good long look before I got out of the car, and a squeeze on the knee. I forced a smile.
The receptionist’s desk was occupied this time, same guy as usual whose name I can never seem to remember. I think of him as, “Nerdy, Horn-Rimmed Glasses,” but I doubt he’d appreciate knowing that. I asked him about altering my emergency contact at The Clinic, and he said he’d get the paperwork ready for me while I was having the procedure.
I didn’t much care for the word “procedure.” I swallowed hard and quelled a Camp Hell flashback. The same nurse from the night before took my pulse and temperature, and instructed me to strip down to my socks, don the pale blue hospital gown, and have a seat on the paper-covered exam table. I tried to see if I actually did have Jacob’s finger marks on my ass but my neck didn’t turn far enough, and there wasn’t a mirror in my room.
Moments later, Doctor Chance knocked once and strolled in wearing a very un-doctor like peasant blouse, denim skirt and cork-soled burgundy clogs that I couldn’t keep from staring at. She was so focused on her clipboard that the urge welled up in me to flash her my ass and ask if she saw any bruises. And then I assumed that I must be getting panicky if I was fantasizing about doing something that’d probably get me committed. Again.
“How are you feeling this morning, Detective?”
I thought about it, kind of. Actually, it was more like I thought about what to say that would sound normal. “Tired.” I said, finally. I figured that’d be reasonable.
Chance kept scanning notes. “Any more alarming sixth-sensory experiences?”
I thought some more. “Uh. Nope.”
“Good. And did you have any coffee this morning?”
Oops. I almost had. But then I had this fight with Jacob and we made up in the best possible way. What were we freaked out about again? Lisa? No, something else.
Oh. The scratches.
My stomach churned its own acid. I wondered if I should tell Chance about the scratches. I decided to hold off, since once I said something I wouldn’t be able to take it back. Besides, I reasoned. The scratches weren’t sixth sensory. They were just fucking weird.
“Detective?”
“No. Nothing since midnight.”
Doctor Chance gave me my choice of strawberry or chocolate barium milkshake, with the warning that they tasted like neither. I chose the strawberry. I was then given a club soda-like drink and told to swallow it but not to burp. And then they took a bunch of X-rays.