Broken

  Trumpets blare and announce Queen Elizabeth, whose arrival apparently sends all these people into paroxysms of ecstasy. They abandon us in favor of throwing themselves prostrate on the ground in front of Her Majesty’s procession.

  Joe’s grinning, arms crossed over his chest. I’ve got sunglasses on but Joe’s squinting. If he’s not careful, he’s going to get crow’s feet. Well. Men can get away with that, can’t they?

  The queen is throwing candy or something to the children in the crowd, and the actors are all trailing behind her, hooting and hollering. The washer wenches are moving through the crowd and accosting other people. I don’t want them to come back here.

  Joe’s not paying attention to me, so I reach up and slip my hand into the curve of his elbow and tug lightly until he uncrosses his arms. Then I take his hand, linking our fingers. He seems hesitant but only for the briefest moment, and I can’t help the triumphant smile when he keeps my hand in his.

  This is our tenth date. I intend there to be many more. In fact, before today is over, I intend to convince Joe we need to become a couple.

  “Want to head inside?” Joe turns to me and points at the gate, through which most of the crowd has passed. “Grab something to eat?”

  I nod, giving him what he wants so I’ll be sure to get what I want, later. And I want him. Joe’s been nothing but a gentleman so far. I appreciate that. But it’s time to step it up. Men want sex, they all do, and even though Joe hasn’t exactly been pressuring me, it’s time.

  He leads me through the gate. Inside, the fair has made an attempt to look like a renaissance village with shops, paths, games, booths. It’s hard to tell at first glance which people are actors and which are patrons, since many of the guests have dressed in costume and speak with accents. Some wear elaborately designed gowns and others have cobbled together outfits from what looks like thrift store purchases. It’s creative, but sloppy. In my capri-length jeans and cute white tank top, I’m glad I didn’t attempt to dress up “in the spirit.” I’m even happier Joe didn’t, either.

  “What are you hungry for?” Joe’s still got my hand and he turns, looking expectant.

  I study the main street, where vendors hawk their “Steak on a Stake” and assorted other carnival type food. Nothing looks low fat or low carb, and I can’t help wrinkling my nose. “I’m not hungry right now.”

  “Okay.” Joe nods. He’s looking around like a kid at the circus, but he’s still holding my hand. Sweat slicks our palms because the sun’s so hot, but I’m not about to let go.

  We find a stand selling smoked turkey legs, which look nauseating. Joe eats one. I consent to nibbling on a grilled chicken sandwich without the bun. Joe wants to try haggis, whatever that is, and I won’t have any. He eats the whole plate.

  The sun’s making freckles come out on his nose and cheeks. “You should be wearing sunscreen. Or a hat.”

  He wipes a hand across his face, then looks at the booth a few yards away. “C’mon.”

  This stand sells hats. Not respectable hats. Hats with feathers and lace and bows, big floppy creations and conical princess caps with long scarves fluttering from the tips. Joe picks up a shapeless velvet monstrosity with a long ostrich feather and puts it on his head.

  “How do I look?”

  “It doesn’t go with your outfit.”

  Joe laughs and tries on another. There’s a large mirror along the shop’s back wall, and he mugs at his reflection. He pulls me closer, grabs up one of the pink princess hats and snaps the elastic under my chin before I can stop him.

  “What do you think?” He strikes a pose, looking at our mirror faces.

  “I look ridiculous.” I reach to pull off the hat, but Joe stops me. He pulls me closer, one step, then two.

  “You look beautiful.”

  He’s smiling and staring at me. I think he’s going to kiss me, but I can’t ignore the way the elastic on this hat is cutting into my skin and the feather on his is fluttering dangerously close to poking me in the eye. I don’t lean in to let his mouth have its way with me.

  Joe looks back into the mirror, then takes off the hat and hangs it up. “No good?”

  Relieved, I remove the princess hat, hoping with an inner cringe that the last person who’d tried it on wasn’t some lice-ridden child. Joe puts it back on the rack. I fix my hair in the mirror and turn to see him looking at me.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  This time, I let him pull me into his arms and kiss me. Though it’s brief enough not to be inappropriate, I enjoy every second. His hand lingers on my waist when we’re done.

  He touches me a lot today. We hold hands. He puts his arm around my shoulder, around my waist, rests his hand on my knee while we sit to watch one of the many, many shows.

  This isn’t such a bad day, though I’m getting bored and Joe shows no signs of losing interest. I convince him to grab us some drinks and sit in the shade on a long bench in front of huge cement pit filled with water. While we’re there, one of the women from this morning comes over and begins to wash some clothes in the water. The other two join her momentarily, squabbling over something, and the three begin hollering something about a show. Since we’re already sitting there we stay to watch.

  It’s clever and interactive, a condensed retelling of Antony and Cleopatra that involves a lot of silly jokes. I’m laughing a bit when the redhead comes into the audience and plucks Joe to take part in the show. He goes readily enough, leaving me behind, and though I know it’s just a show, I cross my arms, annoyed.

  The redhead’s sitting on the wall of the pit behind Joe, her arms and legs wrapped around him and telling him he needs to come up with a “good pick-up line.”

  Without missing a beat, Joe looks at her and says, “If I said you had a beautiful body would you hold it against me?”

  It’s groan-worthy, but he earns a high five from the wench and the show goes on. I think the one who picked him is enjoying it a little too much. Acting is one thing, but she spends too much time touching him. I don’t like it one bit. By the time the show is done, I’ve decided I’m ready to go home.

  Joe, however, lingers after the end of the show to laugh and talk to the three wenches, who are lounging without shame in the water of the pit. The redhead takes a swig of water from her mug and demonstrates her spitting technique, pretending to be a fountain. The others laugh and tell jokes, encouraging Joe and the other few people still gathered around to talk to them.

  I wait for a minute before joining him. There’s no mistaking the possessiveness in the way I take his hand. Joe might not notice, but the redhead does. She backs off, and I have to concede that it’s quite likely she wasn’t flirting with serious intent but only as part of the show. Even so, Joe’s here with me, and I don’t mean for him to forget it.

  We spend the rest of the day there, then stop for dinner at a quaint inn before going home. Joe chats about the day. He bought me a metal rose scented with perfume. The sun’s turned his nose and cheeks pink, and the gold’s been heightened in his hair.

  He holds my hand the whole way home except when he has to shift gears. I invite him inside and offer iced tea. In my kitchen he backs me up against the counter, his hands on my waist, and I let him kiss me harder than he’s ever done before.

  Our mouths open. I taste sugar and lemon from the tea. His tongue is cold but warms quickly. He’s a good kisser. When he puts a hand behind my neck to tilt my head back, I break the kiss to take a breath.

  Joe’s mouth hovers over mine. He presses his body all along mine. He smells like summer. His belt buckle is cold on my belly where my tank top has ridden up a little.

  He’s waiting for something. Permission, perhaps. I give it by opening my mouth beneath his. This kiss is deeper. The hand on my waist slides around to cup my rear, to press us together harder. My hand goes to his bicep, where the muscles bunch and tighten. He’s deceptively strong despite seeming so slim, and my breath catches a little in my throat.


  Joe nibbles at my lips and then moves to my jaw, tipping my head back with a nudge of his mouth. The skin of my throat is sensitive and I shiver when he grazes his teeth along it. My nipples tighten. I squeeze his bicep, my fingers gripping.

  How far will he push this? How far does he think he’ll get? He’s kissing me without haste, nuzzling and nipping, and suddenly I feel more like an entrée than a woman.

  I push him back a little bit. “Joe. Stop.”

  He pauses, and for a moment I think he’s not going to stop. That he’ll just keep kissing me, maybe start rubbing me, too. For an instant there’s a look in his eyes that says he’s a man used to getting what he wants, and he’s tired of waiting for it.

  Then he backs off without a word. He doesn’t move away, our bodies are still touching, but he’s put distance between us. The hand behind my neck slides to my shoulder.

  I put my hands up to his shoulders. “I like you, Joe.”

  “I like you, too.”

  I’m not afraid to ask for what I want. I’ve never been afraid. So when I rub my fingers along his collarbone, I’m already certain there’s not going to be any surprises in this discussion.

  “Then I think we should talk about what’s going on with us.”

  Joe nods, and I’m sure he’s been expecting something like this. You don’t go out with someone ten times, after all, unless you expect to talk about what’s going on. Both his hands go back to my waist, holding me loosely.

  “Okay.”

  I lay out what I want and expect from him. It’s negotiation, as it’s been all along, and at the end of it, we’ve both determined where this is going and what we both will gain from the merger. If I have a few more requests and expectations, it’s because I have high standards. There’s no point in continuing something if both parties aren’t on the same page.

  Another kiss seals this round of bargaining, and I’m feeling generous.

  “Come upstairs with me,” I tell him as I take his hand, and that’s what we do.

  I waited, but the story was done. Joe bit into his sandwich, chewing rapidly and washing down the food with a gulp of his drink. I peeled open the wrapper on my granola bar. We ate in silence.

  Shade from the tree overhead dappled his face. His summer freckles had indeed come out. Sunshine was good to Joe. Today he wore a lightweight suit, the jacket off, tie loose, sleeves rolled up to expose the golden hair furring his forearms.

  “It all sounds very…” I paused, not sure what to say. Professional seemed wrong. Stilted? Contractual?

  Joe looked at me with a small smile. “Surprising?”

  “That, too.”

  He shrugged and wiped his mouth with a napkin. “Priscilla is a woman who knows what she wants and isn’t afraid of asking for it. Precisely.”

  That had been clear from the story.

  I worked for the words, aware my conflicted feelings were affecting what I wanted to say. “And what about you?”

  I found many facets of Joe’s personality charming, but perhaps the most appealing was his self-awareness. He never dissembled. He didn’t try pretending he didn’t understand my inadequately phrased question.

  “We’re a matched set.” Joe squinted up to the tree above us, where sunshine slanted through the branches. Then he looked at me. “A pair of prancing ponies. We’ll look good pulling the same carriage.”

  “But is that what you want?”

  Oh, how I wanted him to say no. How I wanted him to admit Priscilla didn’t please him. That what they had done upstairs had left him dissatisfied.

  “To quote the Rolling Stones,” Joe said, “You can’t always get what you want.”

  “But is she what you need?” I gulped back the suddenly desperate tone of my voice and slammed shut my mouth.

  Joe folded his paper napkin in half, then half again. Then once more, making a small, thick square he clenched. When he opened his hand, the paper slowly, slowly opened like a stop-motion flower unfurling, and I couldn’t look away from it.

  “I think so, Sadie.”

  No. No, no, no, I wanted to say, but didn’t. Instead, I steadied my voice with a long sip of tepid water. Everything has to end. The good and the bad. Especially the ugly.

  “You don’t think I can do it, do you,” he asked without accusing.

  I looked over at him. “That’s not my place to say.”

  Joe laughed. “I think it might be, Sadie. You know more about my sex life than anyone ever has. You know more about my life than anyone ever has.”

  “If you’re asking me to make judgment—”

  “I’m asking you to tell me if you think I can do this.”

  “That’s not up to me to say, Joe!”

  We’d turned to face each other. We weren’t even close to touching, but there wasn’t enough space between us. Joe waited, patient, while I thought on how to answer.

  There wasn’t a question of me not answering. We’d come too far for that. The question was how much truth I’d give him.

  “No,” I said finally. “I don’t think you can do this.”

  He nodded, as if he was expecting that answer. He sat forward on the bench, his elbows on his knees. He looked at his hands, clasped together, then back at me.

  “I think you’re wrong.”

  He got up. He tightened up his tie and put his jacket back on. With greedy self-indulgence, I drank in every detail of him, certain this would be the last time I’d see him.

  “I hope you’re right, Joe.”

  He looked at me so long and hard it burned. “Well. We’ll find out next month, won’t we?”

  “Tell me a story.”

  Adam stretched out on the bed, an arm behind his head. I wanted to lick the smooth stripe of skin exposed between the hem of his shirt and his belt. I settled for running a finger along it. At my touch he promptly rolled onto his back, his shirt riding up higher, giving me his skin.

  “Another one? Sadie, I’ve told you all of them.”

  “You can’t possibly have.” I spread my fingers flat on his firm belly and rubbed in slow circles.

  Adam’s sigh sounded annoyed, but I knew he was faking. He loved telling me stories as much as I loved hearing them. He shifted as I stroked his stomach and tugged his shirt higher, over his chest and then his head to bare him to me.

  “Fine. Once upon a time, there were three bears…”

  “No!” I protested, laughing, my hands on his belt buckle. “Adam, no!”

  “Why not? You don’t think bears are sexy?”

  I slipped the leather from the buckle and eased his zipper down. His cock pulsed under my palm as I slipped a hand inside his jeans. I worked my fingers around the tight denim, shoving it down his thighs.

  “I’m not into bestiality.”

  “You assume she’s going to fuck the bears.” He said this archly as he lifted his hips to allow me to undress him.

  “Isn’t she?”

  “You’ll have to wait and see, won’t you?”

  But I never heard the end of the story, because I bent to take him in my mouth and we let other matters distract us.

  Memory is a funny thing, sometimes slippery, but that day had secured a firm place in my mind. It was the last time we’d made love before Adam’s accident. If I’d known it was going to be the last time he’d ever hold me, I’d have paid better attention.

  But I hadn’t, complacent in the belief we’d go on as we always had, that we were untouchable.

  I thought of that day a lot in the days following Joe’s last story. Adam had always told me stories, weaving classic fairy tales with erotic poetry and urban legends. I would tease him with my mouth and hands while he described towers of glass, or he’d trace the words upon my clit with his tongue until I came just as the prince arrived to rescue his fair maiden. Sometimes Adam was the king and I the fairy queen, others he the faithful beast and I the beauty who transformed him. He could fuck me as thoroughly with his voice as he could with his cock, all of it tied up i
n one passionate package.

  Now he didn’t fuck me and he barely talked to me. He no longer told me stories. And now, neither would Joe.

  There was nothing to be done. I had no claim on Joe, could not expect what we were doing to continue indefinitely. All things end, and this had needed to end, should have ended, a long time ago. It should not, in fact, have ever started, but it had and now I wondered what I would do without it.

  I didn’t want to see Adam when I got home, but there was no real choice in that, either. I had to stop in, make sure he was all right, give him the attention he didn’t seem to want and refused to be grateful for.

  Our fight had left a tension in the air that couldn’t be ignored. In the past we’d have fucked our way through it. Now all we could do was wait until it passed.

  Dennis noticed, of course. He knew when to put on the Stooges and get Adam laughing in a way I simply didn’t any longer have the wherewithal to do. Mrs. Lapp noticed, too, fussing with cakes and pies neither of us wanted to eat. I waited until she went home, then scraped the desserts untouched into the garbage, covering the evidence with newspapers so she wouldn’t notice.

  I paused outside Adam’s door. I heard the soft murmur of the television. I put a smile on my face that felt more like a grimace and pushed open the door to his room.

  “Hey, baby, c’mere.” Adam sounded as contrite as he always had after a fight.

  I sat on the edge of his bed. “Hey.”

  “I’m sorry, baby. I was an asshole.”

  My smile became a little more sincere. “Yes. You were.”

  “Well, I’m sorry.”

  I ran my hand over the bristles of his hair. “I’m sorry you were an asshole, too.”

  “Hey!”

  We both laughed. I kissed his cheek. He didn’t smell like Adam any more.