Coda (Songs of Submission #9) (7 page)

“Easy, it’s not a big deal,” Darren said.

“Really?” Adam seemed put off.

“I’m moving out of Echo Park.”

“You’re moving in together!” I squealed joyfully. “That’s awesome!”

“Yes, but that’s not it. We did something impulsive, and we’re just sticking with it before some asshole makes it illegal again,” Darren said.

I heard something about assholes at the end, but not really, because I’d scraped my chair back to run around the table. I plopped right in Darren’s lap and hugged him. Adam got in on the action until we were a pile of happy limbs.

“Just say it so I know I’m not hugging you for buying a pot farm,” I said.

“We got married!” Adam said.

Three tables of people twisted around to look at us then broke into applause. I stood and clapped too, and Adam pushed his lips onto Darren’s cheek. My ex-boyfriend blushed. I sat when the applause died and our food arrived.

“So,” I said, “why now? Or then? Or when?”

“Yesterday,” Darren answered. “The deal was, when I had a foothold as a musician—”

Adam interrupted between taps on his phone. “And I was not holding my breath—”

“Oh, fuck you.”

“It’s got nothing to do with your talent, and you know that, honey.”

“Whatever. That was the deal. I’ve been working at Redlight Studios pretty regularly, and Harry and I have been working on some really broad, commercial stuff.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I know all this. Why are you stalling?”

“I don’t want you to compare this to what you get, because you, I mean you’re getting a different kind of deal.”

“Oh. My. God. You got signed.”

“It’s nothing,” he said. “It’s music for a video game.
City of Dis
, if you’ve heard of it.”

“I have.”

“Well, it’s a good gig and good money. And I didn’t even mention it because who cares? But it just got us noticed enough that we’re getting signed by Beowolf Records for a really small thing—”

Adam dropped his phone on the table. “And this is why I said, ‘Marry me now, or I’m done with you.’ Nothing is a big enough deal for him. He’d accept my proposal after his fifth Grammy, maybe.”

“Are you guys having a party or something? I want to give gifts and get drunk. You owe me that.”

“When we get a place not in the slums of Los Angeles, so sorry,” Adam said. “Something nice on the west side with a big enough yard for a reception.”

The look on Darren’s face told me there had been some contention over either the size or the location, but I said nothing. I’d get it out of him later.

My phone rang.

“Let me get this.” I slid the phone off the table and walked outside.

Jonathan and I had made a new deal after he reclaimed me. If he called, any time, any place, I picked up. If he called during a show, I had to pick up in front of the audience. The only way to avoid that was to tell him when I would be on stage and when I would be in the studio, then he’d only call if it was an emergency.

“Hello, goddess,” he said.

“Hi.” I felt warm and giddy.

“I think we should cancel on Sheila tomorrow.”

“Why?”

“I noticed you were walking straight. Can’t have that.”

As appealing as the thought of him making it hard for me to walk was, he needed to be at Sheila’s tomorrow. “We can work around it.”

“Since when are you so eager to see my family?”

The rule of never lying to save each other pain was still in effect. I couldn’t travel thinking he wanted me gone, and he couldn’t chase me out to save me from being around him. We were to be direct in our insecurities and our desires, even if they would hurt.

“I want to go,” I said, telling the truth but keeping a tiny lie to myself. “I happen to love almost all of your sisters as much as Margie.”

“Truth?”

“Truth.”

“Come home.”

“May I finish lunch?”

“Hurry. I want to fuck you blind.”

Fluid rushed between my legs. I almost buckled at the knees. We hung up, and I dialed Margie while leaning against a parking meter.

“Yes?” she snapped.

“He’s trying to wiggle out of tomorrow.”

“You have one job, Monica. One job.”

“I can do my best, but—”

“For the tenth time, he is not going to have a heart attack when we yell ‘surprise.’ You’re going to give yourself an ulcer,” she said.

“The doctor said no stress. That’s stressful.”

“Is he taking all his rejection meds?”

“Yes.”

“Eating right?”

“Yes.”

“Is he exercising?”

I sighed, frustrated. She was building a case, and the jury would find in her favor. “Jogs miles and miles a day.”

“Is he not taking care of himself in any way possible?”

“He’s a model citizen.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“I love him, and I don’t want to lose him. That’s the problem. When are you going to tell him about the Swiss thing?”

“Tomorrow I’m going over to your place to get some things signed. I’ll bring it up then. Be scarce.”

“Okay.” What I said with that “okay” was that she’d better do it or I would blurt something out in the bedroom. We’d agreed that it should be presented as business, and Margie was business, but after one more day, it would feel like withholding.

“What did you get him for his birthday?” Margie changed the subject.

“I wrote him a song.” As soon as I said it, I knew the song was wrong. It was about a flat compromise over a house. I’d written it before he’d reclaimed me, and I suddenly hated it.

Margie’s sigh was audible over the traffic. “You’re a good wife. It’s almost sickening.”

chapter 10.

MONICA

T
he morning of Jonathan’s birthday, I woke him by putting his cock in my mouth, and he twisted me around and put his mouth on me at the same time. He didn’t even say good morning before I came, groaning with his dick down my throat.

“Monica, you didn’t ask.”

“But, wait, we’re in scene?”

“Get up and stand by the window.”

I had to write him a new song, and dinner was at five. I was already cutting it close. I wasn’t a particularly quick songwriter. Since we’d both collapsed without fucking the night before, this could go on for hours.

But I couldn’t hesitate. I wasn’t afraid he’d beat me harder. I was afraid he’d think I didn’t want to play. So I stood, already naked, and faced the back patio. I wanted to do this and do it hard, then write the song, because I had no idea what I wanted to write. I had no idea what to say except everything.

“Put your hands on the glass.”

I leaned forward and put my fingertips on the back doors. Behind me, I heard his belt buckle clink and his fly zip as he put on his pants.

“Whole hand. Come on, Monica. Commit.” He spanked my ass playfully.

I put my whole palm on the glass and stretched my back.

“Open those legs.” I did, and he pressed on my lower back until my ass was all the way up. “Good.”

“Thank you.”

He nonchalantly went out the back door and looked out over the ocean. The salt breeze blew his hair back. Then, as if noticing something for the first time, he played with the bamboo stalks in the patio’s stone planter as if they were strings on a harp. Then he stood in front of a pot of rattan. It looked just like any other potted palm in Los Angeles. He’d had it brought in a few days ago to block a sliver of view from the beach. He’d insisted on rattan, and from what I’d heard on the phone, he had to go see it personally. I’d had no idea what his problem was. I didn’t know if it was some obsessive pickiness he’d inherited from his new heart that hadn’t yet had the opportunity to show itself or if it was something I simply had never known about him.

But my king wasn’t impulsive. He bent one of the leaves and snapped out his pocketknife, which also just happened to be in his jeans. He cut off a branch and stripped off the leaves.

He stood right in front of me on the other side of the glass door, as if he were in a different room, as if I couldn’t see him. He rolled the cane around in his hands, then across them, inspecting it for I didn’t even know what.

He walked back in the house with the switch. “Now,” he said from behind me, “I think we’ve talked about your orgasms before, and who owns them.”

“You do.” I looked out the window. Without him in front of me, I felt exposed, my breasts hanging, ass up.

“No one can see you.” He slapped my ass.

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you believe me?”

“I want to.”

He swatted me with the rattan switch, lightly, as if testing. Then he did it harder. It was no thicker than a pinky, and that second time, it made a whipping sound before it landed with a
crack
. Then he did it a little harder.

I sucked in my breath.

“How is that?” he asked.

“Good, sir.”

He cracked it again, at the topmost fleshy part of my ass. The sting was incredible, searing me. I felt as if my flesh was opening. Then he did it again, an inch or so below the last stroke. I let out an
mmm
sound, biting my lips. And he did it again. There was a rhythm to it, a slow build as he worked his way down to my knees, searing pain leaving blossoming pleasure in its wake. Two taps to aim, one to awaken the skin, and one to make me scream in pain, and it went
thwap thwap
thwap THWAP.
thwap thwap
thwap THWAP.
thwap thwap
thwap THWAP.

***

In the little studio in the guest house, the piano keys went
tap tap
tap TAP.
tap tap
tap TAP as I searched for the notes. I shifted in my seat. Jonathan had given my ass and thighs plenty of aftercare, but I wouldn’t be comfortable for a couple of days. I’d think of him and his mastery of me whenever I sat or walked, which was the point.

I had only a few hours, and I was slow. Slow with words and clunky with melody. I missed Gabby. She made things work in minutes. I’d write a poem to the snap of my fingers, and she would tap out the rhythm and embellish it until we had a song. Not every song was good, but at least I knew what I was dealing with before ten minutes had passed.

But by myself, I had a hard time. I thought the work was good in the end, but I wasn’t producing well under pressure. I didn’t even know what the song was about, except time.

Ten years. It had been impossible to talk about that length of time without impaling myself on it. It was so far off, and tomorrow. It was a lie, because it could be so much more if he took care of himself and played by the rules. Even after his heart gave out, if the doctors saw he ate right and took his medicine, he’d get another heart if it came available. It had been done. And was it really ten? Because there was a very healthy guy in Wyoming who had had his for a record-breaking twenty-five years, and there were new advances in anti-rejection meds every day and and and… .

None of that would matter if he was dead. So I’d planned for that eventuality by girding myself, day after day. It would hurt. I would be in the hospital again, crying over him, alone, vulnerable, and scared. A shaft of ice already stabbed my spine whenever I passed Sequoia Hospital, and the knowledge that one day soon, I would go back for the same reason froze me in panic.

All I did was pray for him. The first six months of our marriage had been one big prayer without end, amen.

I couldn’t get control of it by running or staying, and he wanted children. Children. I’d lost my father, and it had crushed me. But Jonathan wanted to have children and disappear when the oldest was nine. Or eight. Or who even knew. Left with a hopeless mother who had lost the love of her life. No amount of money could cure that.

And now, six months later, with his breath in my ear and his sexual dominance reestablished, was anything solved? No. Nothing was. But God damn if I was going to sing him a birthday song about a house because it was the only thing we could agree on.

He was better than that.

We were better than that.

I had a few hours to write him a new song. Not about how much time we had. Not about all our failings, but about what we meant to each other. About how fulfilling and worthwhile those ten years could be, if I stopped squinting into the distance at the end of them.

Tap tap
tap TAP.
tap tap
tap TAP.

chapter 11.

JONATHAN

J
ogging. Herbal tea. Rabbit food. Jesus Christ, how had I survived six months without making my wife beg for mercy? I stood in the driveway, looking at our house from the street, for the hundredth time. It was deep in and behind a wall of roses, but who could see? From what angle? If I fucked her on the back patio, were her shaking tits visible from the public part of the beach? Could they hear her scream next door?

The low-slung, mid-century glass box was so well-designed and so well-placed that unless we kept the lights on and fucked against the window in a certain part of the bedroom at night, we couldn’t be seen. I’d known that from the second day. But it
felt
as if we were exposed, and she liked that.

That morning, before she’d slinked off to the guest house to tap on the practice piano, I’d taken her against that window. Her handprints were still on it, like two frosted starfish. She’d put her hands against the glass when I told her to, ass out, legs spread almost but not quite wide enough. I’d stuck my fingers in her.

“No one can see you,” I’d said then slapped her ass.

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you believe me?”

“I want to.”

I’d caned her hard and thoroughly until my arm ached and she was a groaning mess. It was her way of telling me she trusted me but needed that shade of doubt. It brought her so close to orgasm, I barely had to touch her with my dick before she came.

I might even learn to like this house.

“What are you doing in the middle of the street?” said a voice from behind me.

I didn’t turn around. I knew my sister’s voice better than I knew my mother’s. “You should call before you show up.”

Margie was hanging half out of the window of her Mercedes and waving for me to get out of her way into the driveway.

“I’m a newlywed, you know,” I said.

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