Axis of Aaron (39 page)

“She broke lamps?”
 

“Once. And some little ceramic things, like this clown figurine. All by accident … but they were the kind of accidents that would have been prevented if she wasn’t so hot tempered.” Ebon sighed, remembering her moods for the seductions they’d been at the time. “Oh, but it was intoxicating to sixteen-year-old Ebon. You can’t imagine. I was a little bent; she’d always been my icon of what sex would look like in human form. She told my mother stories, and I sometimes overheard them. Things she did with men. I could imagine her doing them to me.”
 

“Sounds like a true romance.”
 

“She was magnificent, for a warped sort of woman. Tall, curvy in all the right places. Bright-red Irish head of hair, always arranged differently. I remember distinctly wondering, repeatedly, alone and in the presence of various lotions, if the carpet matched the drapes. Turns out, it did.”
 

“Again, hot.”
 

Ebon turned to look at Holly. She was probably just playing along, but for the first time he wondered if she was into girls. It seemed in character.
 

“Anyway, one night my parents were out, and she came over to borrow something. I don’t even remember what it was, because I’m pretty sure her wanting to borrow something was bullshit. She was wearing this short dress with flowers on it, and I remember thinking it looked like she was trying too hard to be sexy. I actually remember that very specifically. ‘Why are you trying to act twenty, Julia, when you’re so hot at your actual age?’ I didn’t say that, of course, but it all seemed contrived. I didn’t have whatever she’d supposedly come to borrow, and she asked if she could use our phone. I said fine. Then afterward, she said it was good to see me, that she hadn’t seen me in a while. Somehow that became her telling me about how well I’d turned out, that I’d ‘grown into a man before her eyes.’ And then … ” He trailed off.

“Coo coo ca choo, Mrs. Robinson,” Holly said.
 

Ebon shrugged on the pillow, Holly’s hand pulling gently at his chest hairs. “I was sixteen. This was the woman I’d always fantasized about. She didn’t really need to bother with the playacting. She could have walked into the middle of the room and said, ‘Let’s fuck,’ and I’d have hopped on her.”

“Was it good?”

“It was …
climactic
.”
 

“I guess that’s good.”
 

“No, I mean … it’s hard to describe. I’d been wanting it for so long that I couldn’t actually enjoy the event itself. I was too busy not believing it was actually happening. Does that make sense?”
 

“Sure.”
 

“And I guess I was okay with that, right after, because then the pressure was off. I was all ready to settle in and enjoy myself for a second round, but she said she was tired and needed to go. So she did. But we never did it again.”
 

“You only did it once?”
 

Ebon nodded. “Before you, I had just the one notch on my belt. Not for lack of trying, mind you. But the thing I didn’t understand at the time — but that I’ve thought a lot, lot,
lot
about since — was that Julia didn’t actually care about me at all. I think she felt herself getting older and needed me to make her feel young. She needed to prove to herself that she still had what it took to seduce someone at their peak. But it was more than that too. A lot of what I took for brash confidence was more likely insecurity. She was so bold and uncensored because she was trying to convince herself that she couldn’t be hurt. That she didn’t feel pain, or anything less than total surety about herself, her body, whatever. Looking back, it seems sad.”
 

“It does.” Holly’s eyes were moist, proving her words. “But not sad for her. Sad for you.”
 

“I was fine. It wasn’t exactly abuse.”
 

“But it was.
Mental
abuse. She was just … she
played
with you!”
 

“She did. Afterward too. I spent months following her around, hoping for a repeat. I thought that if I could prove my worth to her, she’d want me again. It was hard, and it messed me up for a while. I started to think of sex as a reward for being a certain way — for serving someone and doing what they wanted. But not just a reward, an
impossible
reward. She fed it too, the whole time. She called me ‘baby,’ like I was a proper lover, but it was always followed by a request: ‘Baby, can you run to the store for me?’ ‘Baby, can you fix the ceiling fan?’ And I just went right along for the ride. You know the drawings of a donkey pulling a cart, enticed by a stick with a dangling carrot? I felt like that. I kept trying to be and do whatever Julia wanted, handling her chores and errands and all sorts of things, but the promise of her teasing, with lots of wiggling of tits and ass and many suggestive comments, was always out of reach.”
 

“I’m sorry, Ebon.”

“Why?”
 

“I’m sorry that happened to you. I’m sorry she hurt you.”
 

He nodded his thanks. “She had her own baggage. I imagine she thought it was a fair trade and didn’t think of herself as the bad guy — bad girl — at all. If anything, it let me see right through her, and like I said, that made me feel sad. Sad for her. But it went both ways, because I didn’t just want sex. She made me feel wanted too.”
 

“But you were only a kid.”
 

“A
lonely
kid. The funny thing is that at the same time Julia was messing me up, she also gave me this huge boost. You think I’m timid and quiet now? It was so much worse before. My parents were always distracted, and I had to compete with my siblings. I barely ever said a word. I couldn’t order food at a McDonald’s, I was so shy. Julia made me feel like I was worth wanting. Worth being with. And yes, it was twisted, but it was more than I’d had before, and at a time when my parents had no time for me. Just a few months earlier, my best friend, Leonard Ammas, had died in a car accident. He was hit by a drunk driver. That’s why I almost never drink.”
 

“Oh.”
 

“That accident hit me hard, but my parents were too busy to get me through it. Julia made me feel safe. She made me feel understood and anchored during a time of chaos.”
 

Holly said nothing. Just watched him with serious green eyes as he finished speaking. Then, after Ebon realized he had nothing left to say, Holly put her hand on his arm.
 

“You know, I could be your — ”

But Holly couldn’t finish her sentence, because at that moment there was a tremendous booming outside, as if someone had fired an antique cannon or struck the building with a wrecking ball. The floor and bed shook enough to jiggle Holly’s breasts, and a ghostly trail of dust whispered down from the ceiling.
 

Ebon said, “What the hell was that?”

“Is that really your reaction?”
 

He looked at Holly, not understanding.
 

“What’s going on out there?”

“Who knows?”
 

Ebon stood and crossed to the window. He glanced back as he did, and for some reason Holly looked irritated, maybe even angry. Outside, people walked by in the sunlight. Kids played on a distant playground. The building’s geography allowed an oblique view into one of the other apartments, and he could see the man who lived there sitting at a chair at a round table, sipping coffee. Nobody was looking anywhere other than at their personal business.
 

“I don’t see anything,” he said.
 

Ebon looked back. After a moment, Holly slithered from the sheet in a way that suggested she was summoning his return to bed, then seemed to remember she was nude and tucked the sheet demurely around herself, as if she didn’t want Ebon to mistake her gesture for an invitation to sex. She patted the pillow. Slowly, he returned.
 

“What were we talking about?” he asked.
 

“Julia.”
 

“Oh. Hmm. Well, that conversation can be over. I guess I kind of went overboard unloading all that old baggage on you. Sorry.”
 

“It’s okay.”
 

Ebon slipped into bed beside her. As he did, his naked leg brushed hers, and it dawned on him just how completely nude she was. His thoughts shifted. He’d dumped his past on her, but no longer wanted to dig up old bones. What was done was done. Now he was getting horny, and Holly was the right person to be with when that happened. He slid a hand along her body from the bottom up, feeling the skin of her thigh surrender to the skin of her smooth side, with no fabric in between.
 

“I hadn’t really thought about it, but I guess we all need someone to lean on,” she said. “It just so happened to be Julia for you, and it just so happened to take the form of sex.”
 

“Mmm,” said Ebon, still idly stroking Holly’s side with one finger, focusing on her hip, her ass.
 

“But you needed it, didn’t you?”
 

“Hmm. I
needed
it.” Spoken with playful lechery. With each passing second, Ebon was finding he needed it now too.

“We have fun, don’t we?”
 

Ebon moved to cup a breast before answering in the affirmative. Holly took his hand and held it with more innocent flesh.
 

“Well, if we’re going to
keep
having fun,” she said, “I guess that makes us a couple. And couples should — ”

Again, there was a tremendous booming from outside. This time, several knickknacks tipped sideways on the dresser across the room. Holly’s water glass, beside her on an end table, shook enough to spill a glut onto the table’s lacquered surface. Deeper in the apartment, picture frames clattered against the walls.
 

Ebon held his eyes to Holly’s face as it happened. She didn’t stop speaking or acknowledge the disturbance. She finished her thought, undeterred, but Ebon didn’t hear it.
 

“What the hell
is
that?” Again he flexed to rise, but Holly put a hand on his shoulder to hold him in place.
 

“Do you hear what I’m saying to you?”
 

“I can’t hear anything while someone is trying to knock the building down!”
 

“What are you talking about?”
 

“The fact that the whole goddamn apartment is shaking! Jesus, Holly!”
 

“I didn’t feel any shaking.”
 

A long, black crack began to snake across the ceiling, starting in one corner and making its way over the bed. Boards and nails and sheetrock parted with a noise too large for what Ebon was seeing. It sounded as if the world were tearing at the seams. Plaster dust sifted down onto them, turning Holly’s tan skin white in a fuzzy line. Still, her eyes never left his.
 

“Are you hearing me, Ebon?”
 

In one motion, the apartment’s entire far wall fell inward as if kicked from outside. Two-by-fours splintered; plaster broke into crumbles and dust. The girders that framed the apartments in neat cubbies showed themselves as seams ripped, standing tall while the wall’s detritus showered them with splinters and dust. Ebon held his hands up to shield himself, then tried to hold the sheet to shield Holly. But she pushed it down and began to speak, angry, adamant.

“You know, I can be more than — ”

The apartment above collapsed at its outer rim, someone else’s furniture and belongings falling into the space at the bed’s foot. Nails and screws pelted them, and Ebon felt the building seeming to come loose at its foundation. It would tip over any second now. If he were standing, he’d have trouble getting his footing. As it was, lying down, Ebon felt the world almost seeming to spin. He waited, gripping the sheets, unable to think about Holly as she continued to speak as if nothing unusual was happening at all, waiting for the whole works to topple.
 

Ebon wanted to hold Holly tight, to protect her and be her rock as he always had, because she’d always been the flighty one, the one who thought only about fun and parties and pleasure and joy, who had no filter but no fucking adult common sense either. The walls were crumbling while Holly kept blabbing, forcing Ebon, as always, into being the responsible, sensible one. In a hot flash, he felt her frivolity as a burden. She’d always been like this. Up for a good time, but crumbling when it came time to grow up and do what had to be done — for herself, for him, for their lives together, for her career, for the world.
 

But before Ebon could take her and hold her tight as the floor before them gave way (tossing
their
belongings onto the space at the foot of
someone else’s
bed below), Holly pushed him away, her eyes suddenly full of rage. The emotion looked fake — nothing like the anger he’d seen simmering a moment ago. This was almost a caricature. It was like fury played by a bad actor, or written by a bad screenwriter.

“I want to fuck other men!” she yelled. “It’s how I am! It’s how I’m wired! If you want to be with me, I’ll fuck you too!” Holly reached out and seized Ebon’s flagging member and began tugging with sexual malice, as if unsure how it worked. “I’ll fuck you all day and all night, but if you’re not enough for me — and let’s face it, how could you possibly be? — then I’ll do what I need to do!”