Wild Licks (27 page)

“This isn't the same.”

“Pretty sure it is. I think the Need is just sadism, Mal. That's all. It's not good or evil; it just is. We've swallowed so many messages about sex itself being evil, desire being the devil, even before you get to talking about kink. You have to get past that, man.”

“You've always had a more robust enjoyment of your sexuality than I have,” I told him.

That made him cackle. “Robust enjoyment. I was a horny kid and I grew into a horny man, that's all. Jeez, there it is again, you know? Even the word
horny
is supposed to be the devil horns, right? How about
randy
instead. I was a randy kid and I'm randy now.”

“But you don't get off on causing Ricki pain.”

“Well, not exactly. I like to spank her and flog her and stuff, but it's all part of controlling her, of taking this incredibly powerful woman and knowing she bows to no one except me. It's why we're so into bondage and restraints, control and making her mine.” He picked up the pen and twirled it again. “Sadism and masochism are just one small thread in what we do. For us, it's more about the total package of ultimate trust.”

I looked at my hands. The fingertips of the left were dull from guitar calluses, the palm of my right seemed redder than the other, as if all the times I had reddened it while spanking Gwen had left it permanently ruddy. Perhaps it was my imagination. “For me, it starts and ends with pain. Pain is how I know I'm alive. But I learned long ago that it is even better to give than receive.”

“So that's what you've been doing for two weeks in your hotel room? Smacking her around?”

“Yes,” I said, for the sake of the argument, but I felt that burn in the pit of my stomach that I felt whenever I lied to someone close to me. “Well, no.” My mind was full of the sensation of her sleeping in my arms, of the fierce protective urge that seized me whenever I pushed her physical limits. “A little of that, a lot of sex, and even more talk and sleep.” I shook my head, as if it would make all the ideas circling in my head settle down. “I still fear that under it all, I'm merely a very well-behaved psychopath.”

“What makes you say that?”

“How else do you explain these delusions that spring up? Like after I'm done hurting her, how I rush to patch her up and make sure she's all right. I gaslight her into thinking it wasn't that bad at all so that I can do it all again, so she'll keep letting me do it.”

His face was skeptical. Incredulous. “You
really
think you convince her it wasn't so bad and that that's why she lets you do it again? Does she set limits and do you respect them? Do you negotiate?”

“Yes, but it's camouflage.”

“I dunno, Mal, I think after two weeks if she didn't like it, she'd have said something. I really don't think she would have come to Montreal when
I asked
her to if it was because she was under some delusion you planted.”

“She's never refused me.”

“Never?”

Except tonight, I realized, when I'd tried to prove…what, exactly? “Once,” I said. “Tonight.”

“So she put her foot down to protect herself after all and you walked out in a huff?”

“No! Wait…” I felt like the cartoon character who gets tricked into arguing his opponent's point. Gwen
had
asserted herself. “I was…trying to make a point to her about fantasy and reality, that she needed to stop living in a fantasy world.”

“And it sounds like she asserted reality pretty strongly, Mal.”

He had a point, but so did I.

“I'm a terrible person for using her to further the band's ends.”

Axel made a frustrated noise. “The only thing that will make Gwen feel used is if you break it off with her now. Honestly, Mal, just because you want to run from your demons doesn't mean you have to run from
her
. You're afraid of hurting her? That's what you're doing by pushing her away. Trust me on this.”

“I want to believe you,” I said. “I want to believe that I actually love her and not that my twisted brain makes me act like I do so I can feed my sadism.”

Axel reached over and squeezed my hand before letting it go. “Listen. We all love and accept you the way you are. But you bottle up a lot of rage, Mal. You know why I think you rush to patch her up?”

“Why?”

“Same reason you did it for me when we were kids.”

“Because I was overcome with remorse for having hurt you?”

“No. I don't think that was it at all. I think it was that once you let the rage out, the positive emotions could finally come to the fore. I think that's your real ‘Need.'”

“I think you have been watching too many pop psychology TV shows,” I growled, and pushed back from the table. Was he right? I almost wanted to reach over and shake some sense into him, but maybe that only proved that he had hit close to home.

I walked back to the hotel with my thoughts as tumultuous as they had been on the previous walk.

What if you're wrong, Axel? Whenever one of these shooters is caught or killed, his friends and neighbors always say they never suspected he was violent.

Axel wouldn't say that about me. He knew I was a sadist. He knew me very well.

Maybe he also had to say whatever he could to keep everyone in the band on an even keel. Maybe he would say whatever he thought I needed to hear, whether it was true or not. Who was gaslighting now?

I sat for a while in the hotel lobby, but as morning neared I did not want to linger there. What was I going to say to Gwen when I got upstairs? I was fatigued and did not relish having the same fight all over again.

But when I reached the room I found her absent. A note that looked hastily written was on the bed. It read:

I was in the airport on the way home when I saw the e-mail from my agent about the video job.
I should have seen this coming,
I thought. Of
course
the music video Simon had been talking about was for The Rough. I'd even introduced him to Christina. In fact, reading his e-mail again, it made it sound like he thought I already knew it was going to be a Rough video.

Very rough.
I wondered if Mal knew or if he would find out when he got back to town. Was he going to accuse me of stalking him for taking the job?

Should I even take the job?

As soon as Axel had called to let me know he'd seen Mal at the studio, that Mal was being as stubborn as ever and that he was on the way back to the hotel, I decided not to be there when he returned. There was no way I could listen to all that about quitting kink again. I caught a cab directly to the airport.

It had not been difficult to get a flight once the ticket agent realized I wasn't concerned with the price. I had just enough time to grab some coffee and breakfast before it was time to board.

The world felt strange around me—not just because it was Canada, where everything was almost the same but not quite—but because I hadn't been in the real world in two weeks. I fumbled taking my change from the cashier at the coffee stand while behind me a dozen people waited impatiently for me to get my act together. I juggled my open wallet, the coffee, and the croissant in a paper wrapper as I tried to get to a table before I dropped everything. Thank goodness a businesswoman got up and left the one near the counter. I made it there without spilling anything but then burned my tongue on my first sip.

I wondered if maybe there was something wrong with me, if maybe everything was somehow my fault.

I wanted to go back to being the best version of myself, not a klutzy, neurotic wreck. Was that what Mal had been trying to say, that the real me wasn't good enough? No, he'd never said that. If anything, all he'd said was that the real version
of himself
wasn't good enough, but maybe that was the message I was supposed to hear that he was too polite to say.

That was when I checked my e-mail and saw the one from Simon with the details. Where to be, what time. The concreteness of the news grounded me and immediately stopped my neurotic slide.

I was still contemplating whether I should back out, though, when I read a little farther into Simon's e-mail, which described the director's concept for the video and how it was like a mini-movie. They might even try to turn it into a short to enter into film festivals.

The director was Miles Redlace.

There was no way I was backing out of this job. I typed back an answer hoping I sounded enthusiastic, helpful, cheerful, and professional, or at least not like a sad weirdo who'd just been roundly rejected by the man she willingly served as a sex slave for two weeks.

I felt a flare of deep chagrin, my cheeks as hot as the coffee. I bit angrily into the croissant. Out here in the real world that was what it looked like, didn't it? I'd just let a man fuck me six ways from Sunday—
two
Sundays, in fact—and then he threw me away. All his talk about how he did it because he loved me seemed like just that, nothing but a story, a fairy tale.

God, I hate you, Mal Kenneally,
I thought as tears prickled my eyes. Then I shook my head. What the hell kind of a thought was that? I looked down at the tiny hole in the lid of the coffee cup, at the wisp of steam coming out of it, trying to get a grip on reality.
This is the world,
I thought.
This is how the outside world would see us, if they knew.
The tabloid version of our story. But I also knew all too well that the tabloid version of reality wasn't reality at all.

It would be easy to fall into, though. A comforting, consensual delusion where nymphomaniac women are preyed upon by manslut rock stars. If I could believe in that reality I could hate Mal and move on.

The thought was almost tempting.

But my sister and Axel's relationship ran smack dab into that delusion. And so did the burning in my heart that had nothing to do with coffee, the solid fist grasping the core of the truth. I loved Mal, he loved me, and that love was built on
something
deep inside us that didn't fit the outside world's ideas. That
something
could only come out in music and acting and the reality we made for ourselves when we were together.

Maybe there was no way to prove it to him. Maybe Mal was actually incapable of seeing it. Maybe he truly didn't feel the bond between us, and it was my imagination after all. If so, maybe the relationship was doomed, and there was nothing to do but cry and try to move on…

No. Don't give up. You're not going to give up on your acting career or Mal's stubborn attitude. Hate the culture and the people who made him that way if you have to hate something.
I cursed the family and the exes who must have taught Mal he didn't deserve love.

I looked up and realized I'd just heard “Los Angeles” coming from somewhere. A gate announcement? My coffee had gone cold, the croissant was still in my hand with a bite taken out of it, and they were calling my flight. I gulped down a few more swallows of the coffee, then threw it and the croissant into the trash and ran as fast as I could, panicking the entire way to the gate.

I made it onto the plane, and in first class they fed me, and then I actually slept almost the entire way to LAX. I decided to take it as a sign that things were going to start going right.

The phone rang. I picked it up, saying nothing.

Axel's voice: “Wake-up call.”

“What makes you think I slept?”

“That bad, eh? Did you guys fight all night?”

“No. She's gone.”

“Ah.” He cleared his throat nervously. “Um, does that mean we should call off the studio session for today?”

“Of course not.”

“Of course not?”

I was in no mood to explain. “See you there in an hour.” I hung up the phone and then attempted to stand. I had been sitting at the side of the bed without moving for enough hours that my back and legs were stiff. Since coming in and discovering Gwen was gone—her toothbrush, her suitcase, completely gone—all I had done was sit there and think.

In fact, for a while I didn't even think. I merely sat there in shock. Her absence hit me hard, like a chunk of my head had been torn away.

You idiot,
I thought.
You wanted her to leave.

But it felt nothing like a victory to have her gone. Not that I had been expecting it to; I had been expecting it to hurt. When I told her I cared for her, loved her, it was true. That still wasn't enough to bridge the yawning chasm between what she needed and what the Need would let me be.

I stood in the shower for far too long, my mind caught in a loop, the water too hot but somehow I couldn't bring myself to lessen my suffering. Perhaps I was reminding myself I was alive.

The studio, the band, the album beckoned. How could things that were so important to me seem so insignificant all of a sudden? I felt as if I were deep down in a dark well, and everything in my life was contained within the bright circle that looked so small and distant above me it may as well not be real.

I forced myself to put on socks. To put on trousers. A band T-shirt would do. In the bathroom with the comb in my hand I discovered the folly of standing under the water for so long after such a wild and restless night: the bottom twelve inches or so of my hair were an impenetrable mass of tangles. I took the knife from the pile of sex toys that I had amassed in the past two weeks and sawed it off just below my shoulders.

Some fan would probably pay thousands for the mass of hair in my hand,
I thought bitterly. I chucked it into the trash. So much for love.

I encountered Axel at the elevator. He looked openly shocked at my appearance. “She dumped you?” he asked, sounding confused.

I merely shook my head and said nothing.

“Look, we really don't have to go into the studio today—”

“If you are worried that the destruction of my relationship with Gwen will negatively impact my attitude with Larkin Johns, you are mistaken,” I said evenly as we got into the elevator. “I promise you I shall be docile as a lamb.”

“A lamb bit me at a petting zoo when I was five.” Axel showed me one of his fingers. “You can still see the scar.”

“You're not funny, Ax.”

“You're not exactly a laugh riot yourself,” he said. “Seriously, Mal, what happened?”

I shook my head. “She finally took all my exhortations to leave to heart, and she left. At least the record's mostly done.”

“Small consolation,” Axel said. “I feel like it's my fault. I mean, fuck, I—”

“It's not your fault.” The elevator doors opened and I strode out into the lobby.

Axel caught up to me and we got in a cab together but he stayed silent this time, perhaps unable to come up with a suitable tactic to broach the subject again. Or perhaps, like me, he had decided to focus on the day's work instead. I expected a grueling day since much of what remained to be done was tedious redubbing work and filling in gaps.

Then again, perhaps that was a saving grace. Redubbing I could do with my brain and fingers on autopilot and my heart turned off.

The first few hours passed without incident. Then we began work on a song entitled “My True Soul.” Axel and I had cowritten the lyrics, and the song had a bridge with a vocal line and a guitar line repeating like a call and answer. As we listened to it, though, quite suddenly Chino put his hands over his eyes trying not to laugh. He waved a hand though, as if to say,
Ignore me
.

A few moments later, Samson's eyes widened and he burst out laughing, too.

Johns looked around. “Something wrong?”

Samson gestured for him to go back. “Play the bridge again.”

Johns started the song again from an earlier point and Axel's voice, soaring with heavy reverb, sang, “A soul, a soul, a soul!” This time it caused the two of them to laugh uncontrollably.

“Oh my God,” Ford said, and put his head down on the conference room table, also laughing.

Axel and I looked at each other and then he put a hand to his forehead. “
Oh my God
is right. It sounds like I'm singing ‘asshole, asshole.'”

“It doesn't
really
,” Chino said, eyes still crinkled from laughter, “but once you hear it, you can't unhear it, and the more you repeat it the more hilarious it gets.”

I could see why they were laughing even though I couldn't feel any mirth myself at that moment. I couldn't feel much of anything. It was as if I were in a tank, underwater, while they were all on the surface, and I could only see and hear them from far away. Later we took a conference call from Marcus about the video they planned us to shoot when we got back to LA. I barely absorbed the details. We'd all be going back to California, but I was at the bottom of a well where I couldn't feel anything.