I think Erin is a smidgen spoiled. Thomas won't admit this, and I could be biased. But I need nicotine, so I'm not responsible for my opinions.
"Where's K?"
"She went in with your dad."
"Brian was here."
Freeze frame. “What did you say?"
"Brian,” Erin repeats, her head bobbing slightly to the music piping into her brain from the Ipod. “He was here."
"Where did he go?"
"I don't know,” she makes a halfhearted effort to relate to the outside world. “For coffee, maybe?"
"He said that-he was going for coffee?"
"I guess."
My imagination is racing. “Did he say anything else?"
"I don't know. He has a beard like dad. Weird."
I blink. “That's all you have to say. You just meet your half brother for the first time and that's it?"
I'm being hard on her. I don't want to see Brian, but I know I have to. I've never met him; it's not that. It's just … well I'm not sure what it is.
"Take a pill, Caroline."
She means a chill pill, but I'm thinking of the other kind. Thomas has a thing about that, he likes to make sure I take mine and when he can, he watches me.
"That's it sweetie, that's my baby girl,” he will kiss and hold me, knowing as he strokes my hair how important this is to me, how I have vowed that I will never have children for very good reasons. It's not like I wasn't taking them already or like I would stop without him-that's not the kind of power that turns Thomas on. It has to do with the affirmation, with seeing how his praise turns me on … how much I want to be a good girl for the right reasons, for once in my life.
"If there's a regret,” he told me once, while we were having our daily tea and philosophy session across the street from the office at Starbrew's. “It's that I had to wait so long to find you; that I didn't get to tell you all along how special and beautiful you are."
Comments like that put me in la la land, so much so that after I go to the bathroom and come back I forget how my panties are hanging at the moment over his leather desk chair, a little trophy from our lunch time lust session.
"You're going to give them quite a view,” he points out of the two men at a nearby table who are in full range to see up my skirt.
"Omigod.” I quickly go to close my legs, red with shame, but he stops me, a hand between my thighs. “No. Stay as you are. I want them to see what they can't have."
His voice has deepened, silk over steel, the seductive tone of the Master, pushing his submissive girl to new limits. My eyes convey my panic, my passion, and my need.
He knows what a stretch this is, how I am terrified of the least little embarrassment, how I can't bear to stand out in public, a legacy, probably of growing up in a family with so many dark little secrets.
I am so wet. I am dripping for him. “Yes, Daddy."
My breath comes in short stabs, the tea we are drinking forgotten. Outside a gathering storm, electricity in the air, the sounds of the patrons, smell of exotic coffees, snooty Winter Park aromas. And us, in our own little world.
Boom. A clap of thunder. The plink of rain on the windows.
"Bingo.” Master rises to his feet, takes my hand. We are going.
We run up the street to the hotel we sometimes play hooky at for the afternoon. “Why did we leave so fast?” I ask as he takes out two cigarettes for us to smoke under the awning before we go in.
"I saw what I wanted."
I feel the secret chill, ex post facto of men looking at Master's pussy. Daddy’ hairy pussied, smoke-like-a-chimney girl. “But I didn't get to see,” I pout.
"I can make the faces if you want,” he offers magnanimously.
I slap his chest. His blue cotton dress shirt is plastered to his skin. I crave those lean muscles; that body so carefully and proudly preserved. I should only hope to look so good in nineteen years.
"You're mean."
"Wait until you see what I do to you upstairs."
I laugh, tingling, anticipating, totally jazzed, knowing whatever new surprise he'd come up with-and there was always something-it would only lead me to new heights of delicious letting go … a plunging into wild ecstasy.
"Caroline, you in there?” she waves a hand in front of my face, bringing me out of my reverie and back to the hospital reality.
"I'm sorry, Er, I'm being spacey. And bitchy."
She shows mercy beyond her years. “It ain't no thang,” she uses age appropriate ghetto talk. “You're just upset about dad."
"I am, kiddo, yea."
She gives me a hug. I try to hold it together. “I need to go out … for a smoke."
"I'll come, too."
"No way. Your mom's still upset at your dad and me for the time we took you for super sundaes and you threw up at Fun Park USA. All I need to do is get you smoking."
"Like mom doesn't know already."
"Dad doesn't."
She rolls her eyes, pushes me to the door. “Go."
I make like a zombie down the hall, white washed corridor, uniformed people, in green and blue scrubs, doctors with stethoscopes, an EMT and two Orange County Sheriff's deputies.
Thomas would be much more at home in this than me. He's the one with ten years in the Air Force and all the political connections. Him and his spit polished shoes and creases in the pants.
Oh, he can fucking give orders, though.
And I take them. Never did that for another man, trust me.
He's said on more than one occasion that if we were in the “scene” doing the “lifestyle thing” he would put his collar on me.
It's something I try and argue but he will just smile at me.
"That isn't the kind of thing you debate, Caroline."
He means that he would just put a collar on me and then it would be there and from then on I could choose to obey or I could fight but I would do it all as his slave girl.
How does that fit with the whole safe, sane and consensual deal? How do I explain he never makes me do anything I don't want and that I can bet my life he never will?
How the fuck should I know, he's in a coma and I can't ask him.
I exile myself out the sliding glass doors. It's pitch black out, there are stars in the sky and cars in front of the hospitals. People, too, a security guard in white with a puffy belly and black pants, a couple of old Spanish speaking ladies and a woman in a floral print dress and denim jacket with a five o'clock shadow who isn't a woman at all.
"Smoke?” she asks with a deep voice.
I pull out one of mine, no judgment, because that's how Thomas is. Never treats anyone different, if they're homeless or a corporate CEO. And he knows plenty of both in his line of work.
Real estate development. On the grand scale. Housing complexes, entire communities in one fell swoop, deals to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.
To his mind it's all pushing dirt.
Seriously, if you ask, that's what he'll say. I'm in dirt. That's what he told me, the night we met at my first Alcoholic's meeting in the dingy basement of a United Methodist Church downtown.
"Hi, I'm Thomas. I'm in dirt."
"I'm Caroline,” I let him take my shaking hand. “And I'm in deep shit."
I suck smoke with my new companion, lost somewhere in time.
"Got anybody in there?"
"A buddy,” I say. “You?"
"Yea. Me, too. A buddy."
"Cold tonight."
"Yea.” I huddle in my jacket, dungaree like his. I have jeans on, too, and a sweatshirt. The height of fashion, me.
"Caroline?"
I see Thomas, holding two coffees.
Scratch that, a younger Thomas, a little taller, maybe a little smaller nose, but the lips and the chin, they're the same.
And the hands, holding the Styrofoam.
"Brian?"
"Caroline."
"Brian."
He nods. “Now that we have the name thing down, want a drink?"
For a split second I flash back. Wanna drink. Those two words were my trip wire, my magic seduction; I could hear them or say them equally well. Drink with me, you were my best friend, sleep with me, stab me in the back, regardless. Turn me down; go all dry and Carry Nation on me and you were off the list forever.