ROMANCE: THREESOME : Billionaire Brothers' Party (MFM Menage Romance) (New Adult Contemporary Threesome Short Stories) (110 page)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

It was 6:30 in the morning when the Trans Am idled in the parking lot of West Memphis. Despite Dez’s insistence that they continue driving, Charlie was adamant that they pull over before he fell asleep at the wheel. Samantha was already unresponsive in the back seat.

“I’ll take over then,” countered Dez.

“No complaints from me. Except what your next move is, kemosabe.”

“Well, we have one of two choices. Go back through Oklahoma—”

“Which ain’t going to happen.”

“Or see what we can find down in Texas for a few days. Relax, take it easy for a few days and hit the road again. All I know is that we got to get out of Arkansas. Place gives me the creeps. Like something out of a science fiction movie.”

“Great. Now what about long term plans?”

“Well, shit. I’ve always wanted to see Nevada. And chances are we can scrounge something for work out in Vegas. Place is teeming…”

“Las Vegas? After Sammy, there ain’t room for another black man in Vegas, unless I convert to Judaism myself.”

Dez chuckled at the joke. “Don’t be so sure. Remember Bob Hutchinson? Last I heard he was working out there as a chef and living pretty comfortably. And if that brain dead jackass can pull it off, think of what the three of us can do. Besides, you have any other ideas?” There was an uncomfortable pause. “Thought so,” he continued.

“I suppose I don’t have an option.”

“You want bus fare back to St. Louis? Is there anything in particular waiting for you there? A good job? A girl? I love you to pieces, Charlie. But let’s face it. Serving up lunch at a high school isn’t exactly what you should be spending the rest of your days doing. You’ll go crazy—or go back on the needle.”

“Man… You know, for a sociopath there are moments in which you actually make sense. Lucid, like. Might be rare, and it might just be in passing, but you do occasionally make sense.”

“I’d like to think the best of our people do.”

“Our people?”

“We Sociopathic-Americans.”

“You’re not as clever as you probably think you are.”

“Never felt I had to live up to my own misperceptions. Texas, Charlie?”

“The alternatives?”

“You come up with a better one than what I told you, I’m all ears.”

“Texas it is, then. Lead on, kemosabe. Just wake me up once we get there. And Dez?”

“Yeah?”
“Try not to kill anyone else on the way.”

*****

Dez had little in the way of sleep for the past 48 hours. His nerves were a steel trap, coiled, poised to strike on its quarry with neither warning nor mercy. Its quarry, however, was Dez himself.

The events of the past three weeks played themselves out in fragments behind his eyelids, in hues of detachment and varying levels of objectivity. He had killed in self-defense before, and several dozen times; but always for the sake of a cause or on external orders. He had never killed in self-defense to save his own life. Or so he told himself.

But was it
truly
self-defense? Perhaps that first night.
But
, he thought,
what about those rednecks in the parking lot of the bar?
Was that purely out of saving the honor of a woman he barely even knew? Was it motivated purely by the instinct for self-preservation? Or was it tainted by revenge, by the desire to shed blood, by an overpowering tumult seething in his blood, propelling him to murder? Even the shooting of the gas station clerk not even seven hours prior technically could be claimed as self defense, at least in his eyes. But deep down—wasn’t he driven by something else entirely? Not greed. Not avarice. Not even the nobility of theft borne out of sheer necessity like some romantic Jean Val-jean of the Midwest highways; but a much darker seed that was blossoming in his soul. A drive to step beyond the boundaries of day to day morality and claim a code that was his and his
alone
to live by – a code that demanded
true
force,
true
action, and the purity of impulse in order to express itself. A code that branded his heart with the ferocity of a red hot iron, singing its way through the layers of pride, of silent restraint, of fear, of prejudice.

Samantha herself was begin to grow increasingly disengaged from her surroundings, experiencing them like other people might experience a pinball machine; directly, almost ritually—but ultimately as a pastime, as sheer illusion. She hadn’t been anywhere near crank for over three weeks. But she still felt the lethargy of the withdrawal playing tricks with both her mood and her peripheral vision. The waiting, the time, the very air she breathed—it all seemed like a hypnotic distraction. She felt her skin being stripped away, fragile centimeter by centimeter, in agonizingly slow motion. But what would be revealed underneath?

They drove down I-40 into the glare of the sun. Somehow, it didn’t quite seem so mocking to Dez’s eyes as it normally was.
Then again,
he reasoned,
the purpose of an optical illusion was to persuade.

*****

It was 3 in the afternoon by the time they found themselves in downtown Plano. Though he initially planned on driving out further, even if it meant all night to the border of New Mexico, Dez simply couldn’t. The adrenalin in his bloodstream had subsided, and all he could feel was the cold distant hum of exhaustion. He needed to lie down. He needed to get his bearings together.

Downtown Plano seemed to have emerged overnight, a pre-fab cluster of office buildings, convention halls and blandly identical retail centers built on the graves of farmers and settlers. It was a city no one could get lost in, for everything reverted back to downtown, its solar plexus—a sprawling mass of concrete, glass and simulated Texan hospitality that dwarfed its visitors not by size but by its overwhelming sterility. Dez had wanted the real Texas, the wild, untamed Texas; the Texas of the Alamo, of Sam Houston, of the Apache, of the Comanche, of the Wichita. He settled for the Texas of tourist centers and tacky souvenirs.

They pulled into the parking lot of the Plano Inn. Though its beige stucco facade seemed brand new, there was a distinctly preserved sense that came over Dez, as if he was stepping into a past that was reserved for someone else entirely. He nudged Charlie awake.

“Welcome to Armadillo Town, Big Chief.”

“We in Vegas yet?”

“You changed your mind about Vegas already?”

“
Anywhere
is going to be better than Texas. Last time I was out here, it was like walking into a Fun House; if it was designed by Yosemite Sam.”

“Now, now, good sir,” Dez laughed. “We’re in Plano now. There’s some fine, fine golf courses and other wholesome activities for upstanding citizens such as you and I. I’m going to go get us a room. Wait here in the car. Make certain no varmints try to infringe on this fine filly here.”

Charlie waited until Dez was safely in the lobby before he turned around to Samantha. “Let me ask you a question. How old are you, anyways?”

“You already asked me that. I’m 21, remember?”

“Right. Right… 21,” he said to himself. “21. Well listen, I don’t know how long you known Dez but you notice anything different about him?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. I mean, I guess. He’s always talking real strange… cryptic, you know? Like he’s on some other kind of wavelength. Other times, he’s normal. Actually kind of sweet.”

“He tell you we was in the war together?”

“Yeah, he mentioned that. A little bit.”

Charlie lit up a cigarette. “I’ve known Dez since we were in high school. Always been his own person. Always had his own rules, his own way of viewing things. We were pretty tight when we were over in ‘Nam. One night, we were on leave when our C.O. said he wanted to take us out to Laos. Turns out, he wanted to go to a brothel. Now, in all honesty neither Dez nor I were too keen on the idea - namely ‘cause our C.O. was the most arrogant son of a bitch on the face of the planet. Mean, mean temper, too. But we went along. Told him we were just gonna have ourselves a few drinks at the bar… he could do whatever the hell he wanted. He picked out a girl… couldn’t have been older than 17. Maybe 18. And he goes back to the room with her. Comes back out 20 minutes later, asks us both to come in. This little girl is crying, and I mean real tears. And this son of a bitch C.O. is just screaming at her, calling her every goddamn ugly name imaginable, and he’s kicking her, telling her how worthless she is. Spitting on her. Just really roughing her up. It turns out that what the C.O. wanted was the three of us with her. But he didn’t wanna pay extra. We was dead set on high-tailing it out of there, but he kept his pistol on us. Told us we had no choice. We didn’t. It was just… really, really brutal. I remember looking at Dez and seeing his face turn completely blank. I mean, something just took over him, like he was a robot or something. I went first, and I did it quickly… just wanted to get it over and done with. Then, it was Dez’s turn. And the look in his eyes… it was like he wasn’t human. Like his eyes turned inward. It was horrifying ‘cause I realized that he was blacking out. Like he was trying to separate himself from what his body was doing. As if he wasn’t his body. He was never exactly the same after that night. He was pretty shook up about it. Didn’t utter a single word for weeks after, just stared straight ahead at you. Through you. I ain’t saying this to frighten you, honey but… last night, I saw the same look on Dez’s face that he had on the night of…” Charlie’s eyes started to well up in tears, thin and glassy. “The night of… the… the,” he stammered.

“It was rape, Charlie. And that girl wasn’t the only one raped that night. You both were.” Samantha reached out her fingers to the sides of Charlie’s eyes and brushed away his tears, kissing the top of his head softly.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Dez had only been asleep for five hours when he felt Samantha’s hand prodding him awake. “Dez… baby…. wake up. Come on. I got something to show you.”

“What day is it?”

“It’s still Monday, baby.”

“Wake me up when it’s morning.”

“Baby… Come on. This is important.”

“What is it?”

“We were gonna wait, but we couldn’t stop ourselves. You know our score?”

“Mmmm.”

“I thought you said it was gonna be about $500.”

“Seems about right.”

Samantha turned on the end table lamp. “Baby, there’s close to a grand in the bag, you lucky bastard!” she exclaimed, tossing a wad of cash at him.

“Huh?” Dez jolted wide-awake, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

“I don’t know how you did it, my man,” said Charlie, sitting in a chair nearby. “I don’t know how you guessed it, but you’re one lucky son of a bitch sometimes, you know that? I don’t know what sort of business that gas station was pulling in, but you really did hit the honey pot, my man.”

“We added it,” exclaimed Samantha. “Checked it three times over. Baby, there’s $972 in this bag!” She tossed it up into the air, giggling as the bills scattered like confetti all over the motel room.

“How the hell?” Dez wondered aloud.

“I don’t know how the hell you did it either, but you sure did it, brother. Let’s celebrate. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m starving. I’m in the mood for one of those 36-ounce rib-eyes.”

“I want champagne!” piped in Samantha, collecting the bills from the floor. “And lobster! You know, I’ve never tried lobster.”

“Now just wait a minute,” said Dez. “Before we go pretending like we’re Rockefellers, remember a grand isn’t all that much. We still need to get to Vegas. And even once we’re there, we don’t know what the hell we’re going to find there. Hell, I might find myself washing dishes again. Or we could find ourselves homeless. I’ll try to get a hold of Hutchinson, Charlie. See if he has any leads. I booked us this room for the next four nights. What we got to think of doing now is to conserve. Budget. No fancy dinners, no splurges, and no unnecessary bullshit. Not until I hear from Hutchinson what the scene’s like out there.”

“But Dez,” pleaded Samantha. “What’s the point of having all this money if we can’t spend a little? We earned it, after all.”

“I’m serious about this. We got to think of gas, we got to think of food, and we got to think of lodging… Everything’s indefinite.”

“Samantha’s right, man. No matter how it ended, we have the cash now. Let’s live it up a little. Plenty to tide us over ‘til Vegas. Shit, I still have $30 in my wallet I had completely forgot about. Might seem like chump change, but I can add it to the kitty.”

“No go, Charlie. Don’t want to seem like Scrooge, but there’ll be plenty of time to celebrate once we’re in Vegas. We figure out where we’re going, then we can talk of celebrating.”

“Come on, man—”

“I’m serious. You want to celebrate, you can take your cut and go home. No hard feelings. But if you’re going to be hitting the road with us, then we all need to learn how to budget. I have too much invested in the past—especially the past few weeks—that I’ve already lost. And I don’t mean money. I can’t turn back now. You two might, but there’s no way in hell I can. So, it’s like this. I’m giving the both of you a choice. We can split this money up three ways and you can go about your merry business. Go home and start all over. Hell, I’ll even pay for your bus fares just to show there’s no hard feelings. But me, I’ve got to move ahead… and unfortunately, that means money. So the other choice is to move on forward, whether that means Vegas, California… Hell, even Canada. We’ll know our destination once we get there. Hate to put a damper on your party plans, but nothing’s goddamned certain in this world. Charlie… Samantha…. There’s the door. What’s it going to be?”

*****

The three of them found themselves underneath the vast mahogany arches of Marseilles Steak House an hour later, waiting for their orders of filet mignon and finishing up their second bottle of vintage Bordeaux. The looks from the other patrons—all who shared a median age of 62, bedecked in three piece suits and cocktail dresses—were enough to slice through the scruffily attired trio. In fact, they had almost been denied entry; until twenty dollars in the palm of the maitre’d and Dez’s assurance they were members of a touring band put any wariness to rest.

“So Charlie,” he said. “Something I’ve been curious about since I got out here. Long as I known you, you seemed deep down at heart kind of a homebody. How come when you moved to St. Louis, you didn’t settle down with a woman?”

“Truth be told,” he replied, finishing up the last of his wine. “Truth be told, I did. ‘Bout two years ago. Beautiful woman, man. Smart. Talented, too. She was a singer for this local jazz combo, and during the day? She was a teacher, believe it or not. Hit it off beautifully. Don’t know why. Don’t know how, but we did.”

“What happened?”

Charlie rolled up his sleeve and made a stabbing motion into the vein of his arm, slapping the skin for emphasis. “Happened so quick. We were together almost a year, man. Then I found out. Cost her her job. Couldn’t support the both of us… Not on my pay. Told her that I couldn’t stand by and watch her kill herself. Couldn’t deal with the temptation, neither. Gave her the choice - me or the dope. She made her choice plain and clear.”

“Seen her since?”

“Yeah. Few months after, I heard she was dating her dealer. Real scumbag… Used to turn women on and turn ‘em out, know what I mean? Nothing I could do. Tried to play it cool but you know how it is. Anyways, one night, I was at this bar when she came walking in, strung out as anything. She was a wreck. Her teeth was all ruined, and she was stumbling all over the place, trying to get every dude in the place to buy her a drink. Had to turn away, so she wouldn’t recognize me. But she did. Kept offering me a taste, if I’d be willing to pay up front. Says she wanted to remember the old days with me. Had to push her hands off me. It got ugly. She slapped me a few times, screaming this shit about how I was no better than her and all this crap. Bartender had to literally drag her out kicking and screaming. Fucked me up, man.”

“What about now?” Samantha asked. “Do you still miss her?”

Charlie lit a cigarette and took a long drag. “Yeah. Not what she’s become but what I know she is deep down under all the mess she made. Ripped me off for damn near $300 before I kicked her out. Not that I hold that against her... Lord knows I been there. Probably would’ve done the same. Sometimes, I think about what could’ve been. Gets me down, man. Know you’re not supposed to live in the past, but…” His voice trailed off, faint and crackly. He held up the bottle of wine. “What say we have another?”

“Sure thing,” replied Dez. “Just as soon as the waiter gets here. “Y’know, the Greeks had an argument about time. That it doesn’t exist outside of what occurs during it. That it relied on those events. Wasn’t independent of them.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” asked Samantha.

“Well, we’re all shaped in one way or another by the past, right? For better or for worse…
Garcon!
Another bottle,
s’il vous plait.
” He scratched his chin and gazed at Samantha with a strange half-smile. “Our identity, our perspective, our experience of the world around us… Everything’s shaped by time. Memory. But what if time was one big perpetual intersection? Where the present and the past collide? What if all our current experiences were just memories, memories we can’t really know because we’ve got one foot behind us in the past, and one foot on the ground of the present? We don’t really know the future because all that we experience right now are just memories waiting to occur. We never think about tragedy or loss or joy until after the fact. And we’re so fucking numb by this obsession with the past that we’re blinded by the present. The present is just a memory. But the past goes on to influence both the present and the future. Can’t help but live in the past. Can’t help but to move your foot forward into the future, neither, until you choose to. Then you realize it’s all the same fucking body of water anyways.”

The waiter arrived with the bottle of wine, and poured it into their glasses with a sour look on his face. Dez simply blew him a mocking kiss, which only served to send him scowling even further and set the entire table into barely restrained chuckles. “Ah, to hell with it. I’m sick of letting my past dictate my life anyways. So you never wound up with another after she left?”

“Nope. Maybe better off that way. I don’t know.”

“Another what?” interrupted Samantha. “Another girl? As if we’re all just one in a line of possessions, is that it?”

“No, babe. What I meant—”

“Was that Charlie here can just grab another fish in the sea, right? Plenty more where she came from. No regards to whether or not this was the love of his life. No regards to what she might have meant to him - just another girl. Another rest stop he’s just passing through.”

“I think Charlie can speak for himself quite well.”

“No, no,” replied Charlie. “Let the little lady speak. Go on.”

“You were just talking about how you can’t help but live in the past. What if something you see in the present is so sacred, so unique, that you can’t bear to part with it? Even if you know you have to? Because you know it’s going to be nothing more than a memory anyways, and you know you’re going to be left wondering what could’ve been? Does that make that something any less unique or cherished? Or should you just toss it aside ‘cause you know you’re going to lose it anyways?”

“I think… you got to see each occurrence like a math equation. That the end equation is only as strong as the numbers that came up before it.”

“You avoided the question entirely. And you managed to equate experience and love with a fucking number. Way to go, Dez. Bravo for you.”

“Holding on is misery.”

“It’s also happiness.”

“Maybe there’s no real difference between the two.”

“That’s bullshit. You can honestly tell me that with a straight face?”

“Think of human suffering; long-term pain - terminal cancer, for example. Now, the cancer patient’s family isn’t necessarily happy at watching him suffer. Given a choice, nine times out of ten, they’ll just pull the plug. And nine times out of ten, all you’ll hear from them is ‘He’s in a better place now. He’s not in so much pain.’ They’re happy he’s dead. But they’re still going to be holding on to the memories of him up in that hospital bed, with tubes sticking out of his nostrils just as much as they are when he was happy and healthy. They’re never touching the real. Never seeing him in the flesh be it hooked up to a machine or sailing on a yacht. All they have is memories.”

“So, you’re saying that something can simultaneously be its exact opposite?”

“Don’t know about simultaneously. Don’t know about exact, either. But yeah, that’s the gist of it. Even though it flies in the face of most Western views of philosophy.”

“But you’re still avoiding my question.”

“Refresh my memory, babe.”

“Is there a point in throwing something away you cherish so much because you know it’s going to die anyways? Or is the point not cherishing anything at all?”

“Sometimes… Sometimes there is no point whatsoever - just a random series of accidents and meaningless occurrences. Maybe the point is that it’s up to us to find meaning in them for ourselves.”

The food arrived and the three of them sat around the table in silence, oblivious to the murmurs and hissing of the patrons and servers surrounding them.

*****

It may have been the fourth bottle of wine they ordered. Or the nightcaps of cognac they had at the restaurant. Or the four rounds of drinks they had on the way home. Or the miniature bottles of whiskey they found in the hotel mini-fridge. But by the time 1 a.m. rolled around, Dez, Samantha and Charlie were extremely drunk. Lucid. But drunk.

They were lying on their respective beds. Dez looked up at the shadow cast by the desk lamp on the ceiling. Periodically, Samantha would make shadow puppets with her fingers in the light, causing Dez to chuckle. Charlie sat on his back on his bed, looking straight ahead. Dez’s whole rap during dinner—about time, about experience, about memory—seemed so startling to him for some reason. Even though he had heard it before from Dez’s mouth several times over the years, he felt it was the first time he comprehended it intuitively. He was still the same Dez, with his crazy talk and his dreams and his plans that never seemed to have an end goal in sight. But he could sense something changing in him. Something impalpable, that seemed to permeate every one of his words and gestures. He tried to shut his eyes, oblivious to the horseplay of Samantha and Dez on the bed adjacent. Each time he tried to drift off to sleep, their sporadic fits of giggling would ring in his ears.

Dez had taken his shirt off with the most innocent of intentions - simply getting comfortable enough to go to bed. But Samantha had other ideas in mind. She snuggled her head in the crook of Dez’s shoulders and traced her lips across his smooth chest, her tongue leaving soft trails along the narrow archways. She raised her head up slightly and let the ends of her long auburn hair whip gently across his chest, tickling him, listening to the moans of appreciation coming from his throat. She placed her mouth against it and nibbled at the taut skin, hearing him growl lowly as he traced his fingers up and down the arch between her lower back and the crack of her ass. She raised her arms up as he removed her shirt, making certain their eyes were firmly locked on one another, even in the dim glow of the hotel room. She didn’t know how long she had left with Dez, but she knew that ever since they fucked that morning in the sleazy motel in Vinita, her life had been imbued with a substance and meaning that seemed to transform her. He seemed to pull something out of her, a shamelessness and buoyancy that exuded from her without effort; a second layer of sweat, subtle yet mesmerizing. She felt it alive on her skin, secret and fertile with the essence of who and what she was. Her innermost self now brought to the forefront, in drips and in droves, but always undetectable.