Red Hot Blues (19 page)

We had our time together.

He’d needed me.

I’d needed him.

We filled a gap in each other’s soul. And we
helped each other through a terrible time.

He’s making it through.

I’m making it through.

I’m more confident now, more self-assured. I
know what I have to offer and I’m not ashamed of it. And if a guy
can’t accept it, I know it’s
his
problem, not mine.

I know this now.

We were the catalyst to each other’s
improvement. But maybe that’s all we were. Maybe that was fate’s
reasoning for putting us together: Me—to give him the strength to
stay
and
deal
. Him—for giving me the confidence to
put myself out there, to not accept second-best, to flaunt my stuff
and never expect anything mediocre in a man.

Maybe.

Maybe our paths were meant to cross, and then
we were meant to move along on our separate ways.

Maybe.

I miss him.

I fucking miss him.

But this isn’t working. This is making me
miserable. And I think love shouldn’t make you miserable.

I lie awake all night, thinking of him,
wanting to talk to him. Aching. Deep inside. It feels like
something’s eating me inside out. Missing him. Missing how he
filled me. Missing how he held me. Missing how we stuck our feet in
that rock pool on the way to Virginia and then how he slid his hand
up my thigh, under my dress, and pressed into me, out in the open.
And made me soar.

An eternity ago.

I miss my whimpers around him. How hot he
makes me. How he touches me, how he grabs my breasts in his hands
and devours me.

I miss the spark, the flash, the heat of the
moment.

I’ve travelled all my life, never settled
down. Nashville is my town now. I like the people here. I like the
blues here. I like Layna here. I’m even starting to like the
country music here. I simply like
here
!

And there, in Virginia, another state, far
away, eight hours, is my Ace of Spades.

I need to make a choice.

I need to.

But not tonight. Not in this bed. Not while
I’m thinking about him, getting hot under the covers, missing his
briny flavor, his chest on my breasts. That tattoo of Lady Justice
on his arm.

And the text above it, the text which
embodies the man that he is, and what he’s doing now:

In fear or shadow

I will be your
Justice

when no one else
can

The next day, my mind is whirling. Layna asks
to hang out with me but I can’t. I need to be alone. I need to
think.

I need to come to a decision.

I go to the library, chill out on that brown
leather couch hidden between two non-fiction shelves in the
research area, with my definitely-fiction book. And I look outside
at the park, a small fountain in the middle of it. Some homeless
people lying on a bench, one guy seeming to get a tattoo done right
there on the street with a rigged-up tattoo machine.

Ouch.

I can’t read, can’t think. So I sit here. All
morning, all afternoon.

It’s Monday, tomorrow’s Open Jam night again.
I’ve been writing a lot of lyrics lately. But none of them are
bad-ass like the
Red Hot Blues
was. Not anymore. They’re all
real
blues now: “Oh my baby left me” kind of stuff.

Nothing else comes out.

Love sucks.

No matter what I say in my own head, I can’t
let him go. It looks like we won’t make it, eventually, but not
now. Now there’s still hope. Just a little hope.

So long as neither of us says “that’s it,”
there’s still hope.

How long will it last? How long can we keep
the façade alive?

As long as possible, damnit!

I need to see him. I must. Outside the
library, six-thirty p.m., I text him:
I can’t spend
another night without u. Make space in ur bed for me. Gonna book a
flight.

His answer:
No need, babe.
I’ll be there 2mrw. Wanna sing sum blues?

What?

Things are looking better. I’ll drive down
2mrw. And I’ll b there 4 more than just a night or 2!

Me:
Fuck the blues. I want u
in my bed.

I was hoping you’d say that. :)

Aaron’s gotten production rolling while I’ve
gotten the banks to stop clamoring.

I feel eighty years old I’m so tired. But
things are picking up.

I got some investors called in—
new
investors, none of this Old School Tie bullshit—and they’re backing
me up. I think it would be good if some of the shareholders we
currently have just sold their shares so they could be picked up by
newer, brighter kids on the block. I’ve had enough of Old School
Tie crap. I’ve had enough of that Good Ole Virginia Doctor
attitude.

Hell, if it wasn’t for my mom and Janice’s
education and Aaron’s family I’d let this ship sink. Not to mention
all the people who depend on this farm for their livelihood!
Producing tobacco ain’t never been my dream. I smoke it, but that’s
my personal mistake.

But momma was, by default, saddled with the
debt. It fell on her shoulders squarely. It was no time to be
moralistic. It was time to
make money
.

I like making money, I have to confess. I
won’t get to spend any of it when it finally starts coming in
because it’ll sink down into a debt-hole so large the entire house
could fall into it in a wink. But I’ve grown, picking this ship up
and steering it away from the rocks. It’s been exhausting. It’s
thrown every doubt I’ve ever had, directly in my face. It’s tested
my desire to just get out and run.

But I stayed.

And I faced.

And I have Gin to thank for that.

Gin. Oh, Gin. I’ve missed you. I’ve missed
your warmth, missed your flavor, missed feeling your hips arch and
cringe and your body burst with howling passion. I’ve missed
holding you around your waist, maneuvering myself into you. I’ve
missed being surrounded by you, warm and tight.

My father is the apotheosis of what a man
should not be. Even in his death he took things from me—he took
you
from me. Because I had to clean up his mess to protect
the people I love. And in doing that, I’ve had to be away from
you.

I want you back. I want you back so much that
I’ll ride to you right now, through the night, your face in the
night sky as my beacon. The memory of your lavish breasts guiding
me.

I get up from dad’s leather chair. I hate
sitting in it. If I ever bring this business afloat again, I’m
gonna buy a new chair, and burn the old one. Fuckit, I’ll burn it
now and sit on the floor!

Aaron’s done for the day. A hard worker. A
good man. He insists on staying at his old place even though I’ve
basically given him the keys to the mansion. “Doesn’t feel like
home, sir,” he said.

He just won’t stop calling me sir...

What would have happened if he hadn’t walked
in on my father and mother? Would the gun have fired on her instead
of him?

I owe him my life. But I’ve always owed him
my life, ever since he started teaching me to play guitar at nine
years old.

I walk out into the hallway, then the parlor.
I think I hear a door creak, but I’m still half dreaming of Gin,
looking down at my whiskey glass.

I’m smiling, imagining myself above her.
It’s been too long...

I feel a breeze on my arm...

A breeze?

I step out of the parlor, back into the
hallway by the entrance. The front door is ajar.
This makes no
sense
.

A small alarm signals inside me.

Then I hear the screams.

Far in the distance.

And the
whoosh
of flames.

And Aaron’s voice, bellowing: “Ace, sir—!“
Silence.

I run outside. In the distance—Aaron’s home!
Flames, climbing up into the sky like a hungry dragon!

“Aaron!”

I start run—

Thunk!

Stars. Dazzling, delirious stars clouding my
vision. And liquid, warm, on my neck, pouring.
Blood?

And a dull, forming ache, on the back of my
head, my shoulders.

Throb!

Sparkling flashes cloud my vision, twinkling
speckles of white. Only when I’m halfway to the ground do I realize
something massive has just clobbered me on the back of the head. I
remember hitting the floor. I do remember that. And spinning.
Unbelievable spinning.

And a little bit of vomit.

Like being really drunk
, I think,
lying here.

Only, it’s not: It’s more like being on the
verge of dying.

I’m inside her. Gin, my Gin. Her plentiful
legs around me. Magnificent legs. A woman’s legs. And those hips,
round and luscious. I lick them, lick around them, lick the small
butterfly above her hip. Then lower, lower, down the hill of her
curvy butt-cheek.

Behind her, on top of her, hearing her groan
and moan as I maneuver my cock between her legs.

She spreads them, slowly.

“
I love you,” I whisper to her, in her
ear, while I press quietly at her entrance, maddening her.

“
I love you, too.”

Her voice echoes, like in a dream, a
wonderful dream where—

I thrust, unable to wait.

“
Oh,
god
, my baby,” she
cries.

Her voice is so lustful, so damning. I feel
her tightness around me, completely. She’s hot for me, so hot. And
I like that. That makes me hot as well. That makes me push and pull
desperately into—

“
Oh, yeah, Ace. Oh—”

Thrust.

Thrust. Thrust.

I move my hands under her, under her
breasts; her massive, incredible breasts. Breasts every man dreams
of. I rock into her, a rhythm forming, like music, like when we
sang, like rock n roll. And my hands massage her.

And she says, “Oh, yeah.”

I—

“Wake up, nigger lover!” Ice and water crunch
down on my brain. The pain of knowing I’m not with Gin is worse
than the pain on my head from the bucket of ice and water I’ve just
had poured on it.

I’m tied to a chair. Aaron’s next to me,
bleeding from the mouth. Tied up as well, looking tired, woozy.

They beat him up good.

Everything hurts. Everything. And they
must’ve kicked me in the nuts as well, because it aches there.
Badly. A throbbing burst of sickening sensation.

We’re in the middle of the tobacco field. I
smell gasoline. I see the fire burning in the distance, Aaron’s
house.

And, to the left, about a mile away, my
mother’s— “Momma!
Momma
!”

Randolf Berkeley laughs in a deep rumble in
front of me. Randolf Berkeley, the man who stood in my momma’s
house not long ago and threw a punch at me before momma pulled out
the gun that would finally take my father’s life in self
defense.

A good military man, Randolf.

Childhood friend of my father’s.

Fellow soldier.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what
this is about.

Three other men stand around him. I don’t
recognize them. Their faces are grimed up. Buzz-cuts, all of them.
Big, military bodies. I’ve fought military before. In a ring, it
doesn’t matter. You’re all the same. But
four
men?

The gasoline I smelled is from an unlit torch
in Randolf’s hand.

And...

From my own body. Just a little bit, on my
foot.

I see the gasoline can on the left, like a
deathly shadow of black murder.

Randolf laughs. A deep, echoing laugh.

It’s only my anger that prevents me from
being completely and utterly terrified.

The nightmare grabs me in the middle of the
night.

Something’s wrong. Something. I know it. I
just know it.

That unspoken connection, that moment.

Something’s wrong!

I call Ace. He doesn’t answer. I call again.
No answer. I call a third time, and there’s an answer:

“Oh, baby, did I wake—”

“This ain’t yo baby, sweetheart. This is the
lawd god
and the light of vengeance! No fuck off,
missy!”

The phone clicks off.

Oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god—

“Oh my God! LAYNA! HELP! LAYNA!”

We’re on the phone to nine-one-one. And the
operator tells me about the fire...

We’re in Layna’s car and speeding up to
Virginia. I know, it’s dumb. But it’s all we can do.

An eight hour drive.

I’m feeling sick as we head out.

They say the mind is a powerful thing, that
in a squeeze it can cause things to move and shift and cause all
this poltergeist shit to happen.

I tried it. It didn’t work.

I didn’t pray, because I’m not a religious
man. But I begged, in my mind, whoever was listening, to let me see
Gin’s face again. Just one more time.

And then I did see it: Pale and beautiful.
Eyes so blue. Breasts so white. Naked, pristine, perfect, waiting
for me.

I knew, in that moment, that I would die. I
closed my eyes, and looked at her, just as I last remembered
her.

And I waited to be set into flames.

His phone is dead. Dead. Just dead. I’m not
crying, only because I’m too stressed out to cry.

Layna’s driving like a maniac. This is crazy.
Ridiculous. We’ll never make it. So why are we doing this? It’s all
we can do.

Oh, Ace, I should have been with you. I
should never have left you!

And then I do cry.

But Layna just drives. And drives. And
drives.

Randolf decides to give a speech. It ruins my
mood, because I was ready. I was in that Zen moment. I was ready to
burn, to see my girl’s image in my mind while I left this earth to
face the destiny we all must meet some day. I was ready to drift
away, holding on to that fog of her image.