time’s sake.”
Kadin sighed and placed his hands on the small of Eddie’s back. “I’m sorry, kid,”
he said, “It’s not going to happen tonight or ever. I’m not fucking you anymore and I’m
not ripping your
bloodless
off.”
“It’s called a
bodice,
” Eddie said, reaching down to stroke his dick. Kadin didn’t care what it was called. Eddie wasn’t getting the message. If that
meant he had to be mean, he didn’t care anymore. But then he heard the front door slam
shut and the sound of footsteps crossing through the entrance hall. When he turned his
head to see who was in the house, Eddie was still holding him and rubbing his crotch. His
head was pressed to his chest and his eyes were shut. The music was still playing, and he
only cared about getting into Kadin’s pants.
And now Gregory stood in the living room doorway, holding two bags of
groceries in his arms, staring at them with his mouth wide open. A second later, he
dropped the bags on the floor and stepped back. He continued to stare, pressing his right
palm to his stomach.
Kadin pushed Eddie away and faced Gregory. “This isn’t what you think. I wasn’t
doing anything. He showed up unannounced and he was just leaving.” Then he turned to
Eddie and said, “Tell him it’s the truth. Tell him you were just leaving, and that I didn’t
ask you to come here.” Kadin had never cheated on anyone in his life. He’d never even
cheated on his ex-wife. He’d waited until after they were divorced to start visiting the
picnic area.
Eddie was buttoning up his white shirt. Most of his body was covered now. But
the fact that he wasn’t wearing any pants didn’t make him the most convincing source.
When he opened his mouth to speak, Gregory kicked the torn grocery bags across the
living room floor and ran out the front door. A package of pork chops landed on the sofa,
a can of creamed corn rolled under a side table, and a head of romaine lettuce sailed
through the air and fell on top of Eddie’s head. Kadin pointed to Eddie and said, “You stay inside until I come back. And turn off
that goddamned music.”
Then he ran outside to stop Gregory from leaving. His penis was still semi-erect
and it hurt when he ran. But he wasn’t going to reach down and hold it in front of
Gregory. Gregory was about to reach for the door handle, but he dropped his keys. When
he bent down to retrieve them, Kadin pressed his hand against the door and leaned over
him. “I know this looks bad,” he said, “But I can explain. Eddie is just a friend, nothing
more. Please don’t leave. Not like this. Let me explain first.”
Gregory stood up and pushed him away. He was stronger than he looked, because
Kadin almost fell back. “He sure is a
good
friend.”
“He’s someone I get together with once in a while,” Kadin said. “I’m not a monk.
He’s a good fellow, but there’s nothing between us other than sex. This is the first time
he’s ever shown up without calling. He wasn’t supposed to be here tonight. I know it’s
bad timing, but you’ve got to believe me.” He moved in closer and reached out to hold
him in his arms. “I’d never do anything to hurt you or ruin things between us. I’ve waited
so long to be with you again.”
But Gregory pushed him back again and opened the car door. “And what the hell
was that outfit? Is that the sort of thing you like?” He slammed his hands on the steering
wheel and shook his head. His face and neck were red and a huge vein bulged at the top
of his forehead. “God, I feel like such a fucking fool.”
“Ah, well,” Kadin said, “I didn’t ask him to wear
that
. I’d never ask anyone to
wear something like that.” He thought for a moment and rubbed his jaw. “Eddie is a little
different…flamboyant. He likes kinky things sometimes.” He rubbed his jaw again, deciding to keep to himself the time Eddie had worn high heels and black lace panties to
the motel room.
“Well,” Gregory said, “I hope you and Eddie will be happy with all your kinky
little adventures, because I’m leaving.” Then he started the car, put it into gear, and
pulled into the driveway so fast the back end of the Chrysler fishtailed and knocked the
mailbox over.
* * * *
“What happened after that?” Gregory asked. He was sitting forward on the end of
his seat, waiting for more.
But the nurse came to take him for routine blood work and Kadin had to stop
reading. “You can hear more later after you’ve had your tests and your dinner,” she said.
“That’s right,” Kadin said, “After dinner, I’ll read some more.” He was tired for
some reason. “And I’m going to take a nap while you’re having your tests.”
Gregory stood up and slowly walked to the wheelchair, which was mandatory for
anything involving a medical procedure He sat down in the chair slowly and folded his
hands on his lap. He looked up at the nurse and asked, “Did you ever hear of something
called a bodice?”
Kadin gulped with a hard swallow and looked out the window to watch the steady
rain.
“A what?” she asked, releasing the safety brake with her right foot. Her head went
back and her lips twisted to the right.
“A bodice,” Gregory said, as she turned the chair around. “I’ve never heard of it
either, until today.” He gripped the arms of the chair and shook his head. “Someone was wearing one in the story this nice man is telling me.” He hadn’t referred to him by his
name in over a year. It was always, “this nice man,” or “the kind fellow who works here.”
The nurse lowered her eyebrows and gave Kadin a look. He shrugged his
shoulders and smiled. “It’s like a corset,” he said.
She shook her head and laughed. “And I thought I’d heard it all around here.”
Chapter Ten
In the late 1950s, Betsy Jayne Lampnick was a plump, easygoing young woman
with thick ankles and lopsided eyeglasses that hung from the end of her nose. She liked
being a “miss.” Her tailored clothes were simple, her dishwater brown hair was always
pulled back in a tight bun, and she never showed much interest in men. As an architect
and designer, she knew she’d never become famous by creating great monuments that
garnered worldwide attention. But she liked to draw and she knew her limitations. She
deserved credit for this: she was perfectly content to spend the rest of her life drawing up
plans for flat strip malls and ticky-tacky subdivisions filled with identical little boxes
called split-levels.
She loved cats, but couldn’t keep one because she was allergic. If a cat so much as
crossed her path, her face tripled in size and her throat closed. So she collected tiny
porcelain cat figurines made in Japan. She kept them lined on neat pine shelves all over
her one bedroom apartment in downtown Atlanta. Her favorite was a white Persian with
almond-shaped eyes that sparkled when the morning sun hit it at just the right moment.
Her only other passion, besides the porcelain cats, was reading mystery novels.
Her nightstands were stacked with books. The novels that filled the shelves of two living
room walls were organized in alphabetical order, never mixing paperbacks with
hardcovers. She didn’t cook much; her books were stacked against the backsplash on the
kitchen counter and they lined the top of her stove. She read fast: three mystery novels a
week. But more than that, she belonged to a well-known mystery novel club and wrote
monthly reviews for their newsletter under the pen name Lynn Gerry. She gave her character, Lynn-Gerry-the-book-reviewer, an interesting life, too. In
the bio at the back of the monthly newsletter, Betsy made her a successful lawyer who
worked at a fictional firm in Des Moines, Iowa. And she wrote her reviews with a pithy,
snarky voice she never would have had the courage to use in person as Betsy Jayne
Lampnick, the mousy, frumpy architect.
When she thought about what Lynn Gerry might look like, if there really
had
been a Lynn Gerry, she pictured a plump woman in her late forties, with sensible shoes
and tweed suits—a soft, ripe tomato balanced by two thin toothpicks. She’d live alone;
she didn’t need a man. She’d have an expressionless face as round as the hubcap on an
old Ford and straight, flat black hair that showed she wasn’t interested in frilly, feminine
things.
Betsy’s book reviews boldly reflected her unyielding personal taste, and her
conscious—she always knew what she was doing—dislike of the male sex organ. Her
mission in life was to protect the world from what she considered trashy mystery novels
with too many sexy, smutty scenes. She loved mystery novels with strong, sexless
women and very weak men, and she reviewed them well. But if she read a mystery novel
where there was a strong, sexy male character, she verbally tore it to shreds. She took
passages from the book and displayed them out of context on purpose. Beneath the
passages, she’d write sardonic comments to make readers laugh at the author. If she
couldn’t find a fault in a book she didn’t like, she created one just for the sake of writing
a bad review. Sometimes, though she’d never have admitted this out loud to anyone, she
enjoyed writing the bad reviews far more than she enjoyed writing the good ones. So with all this experience in reading and reviewing mystery novels, it was no
wonder Betsy started to wonder about why Gregory had gone all the way down to
Savannah with such little notice. She’d developed a keen sense of knowing when
something wasn’t right, thanks to mysteries. She always trusted her instincts.
When she tried to phone him at the motel where he was staying in Savannah, the
phone rang endlessly. She called on Friday evening, and later again on Saturday
afternoon, but no one answered. She could have called first thing in the morning, but she
didn’t want it to look as if she were checking up on him. He might have misunderstood,
and she didn’t want him to think she didn’t trust him.
Gregory was the only man she’d ever met in her life that she’d even consider
marrying. He came from a good family, they shared a love for good design, and they
never argued. She didn’t want to ruin a good thing. He didn’t try to put his hands down
her shirt or up her dress; he couldn’t have cared less about having any intimate, awkward
relations with her that involved private body parts or the exchange of bodily fluids.
Up north, when she was still in college, she’d dated a guy who couldn’t think
about anything but getting into her pants. When they went to the movies, he always tried
to put his hand on her knee and slide it up her dress. Or he’d yawn, lean back in his seat,
and casually place his arm around her shoulder so he could squeeze her breast. And she
wanted none of that; she always smacked his hand and told him to behave.
But the more she turned him down, the more he tried to get into her pants. The
last time she saw him, they were in the front seat of his car after a dinner date. He turned
off the motor and kissed her on the mouth. The kissing wasn’t so bad at first, but when he
put his arms around her and stuck his tongue inside her mouth, her eyes opened wide and her body went rigid. She wanted to gag and spit out the window. But she didn’t back
away at first, because she thought this was something she was supposed to be doing. She
figured if she just sat there and pretended to like it, he’d get bored and stop in due time.
But when he gently took her soft, clean hand and pressed it between his legs, and she felt
his hard, filthy organ poking through the fabric of his slacks, she pushed him back,
jumped out of the car, and ran back to the women’s dorms as fast as she could.
She didn’t date anyone else until she met Gregory.
The only thing Betsy Jayne Lampnick hated more than a mystery novel without a
strong female protagonist was the male penis. With Gregory, she didn’t have to worry
about kissing with tongues, hot, sticky embraces, or holding a disgusting erection in her
spotless, delicate palm. In all the time they’d dated, he’d never once pulled down his
zipper and asked her to touch the ugly thing. When he kissed her, it was on the cheek and
not the mouth. He even suggested that when they were married, it would be best to have
separate bedrooms. What more could she ask for in a man? Gregory was perfect for her,
and she didn’t want to lose him.
But she was worried about this new turn of events. When Gregory didn’t answer
the phone at the motel in Savannah, Betsy went to see his mother.