The Turn

This Cavalier smells like stale cigarettes--foggy from the night heat of another oily Indiana summer. The engine sounds like baritone sandpaper, but dad's proud of it. He's forty-two, only twenty years older than me, but the cartilage in his joints is rusted from years of construction labor. His mortar and pestle knees have powdered the tissue into nothing. He grips the steering wheel and I watch his dusty red knuckles rise like a Martian mountain range. It's hard to hate a man with workman's hands.

I don't want to cheat, and he knows it. But he'll push anyway. I haven't caved yet, but I will, and he knows that, too. I'm coming straight from work at the menswear store. It's a job I'm lucky to have, but every dime goes to the house. To my parents. Being in this situation in my twenties isn't ideal. It sure as hell makes it hard to land a date when you don't have any spending cash. I loosen my thrift shop tie; suddenly I feel like I'm swimming in this suit--and not just because of the heat. On top of everything else, this car has no air conditioning. I don't like sweating around my family. I never have, and I don't know why.

I think maybe this is like stealing bread to feed your family. I've seen him do that, too. I helped once or twice. But this was stealing bread from his cousin's family and giving it to ours. Although it's not really stealing. It's cheating at a poker game. Or maybe it isn't really cheating, either. In poker they call it "talking across the table," except we're talking before it.

Is it cheating to conspire? Or does it only count when you've done the thing?

"If we come up against each other, fold to me," he says, glancing at me over his drug store readers. "I know you wanna win, but I'm a better player. You're too indecisive--too flaky. You don't know how to bluff. You're too in your own head. It's not dishonest when everyone's in on the game. It's strategy. They expect you to lie, and part of the fun is guessing when you're doing it."

I reach for a cigarette from his pack and light it. Over the darkening street, a spider web of tarry asphalt spreads out over busted concrete. I feel stuck. I can hear pebbles popping under the tires as we drive, more and more as we get into the gravel alleys of the neighborhood. This place is a relic of the seventies. Flat-faced shacks with pocked and oxidized aluminum siding sleep in military rows over the grumbly landscape. Great oaks grow up from dirt and crab grass, like an angel stepping in shit. Dad squints as he drags the last of his cigarette and flicks it out the window.

"This is our last pack," he says, strained as the smoke weeps out of his thick lips. "I left your mother at home with nothing."

"What if I know I've got you beat?"

"You won't, so don't." His cigarette dances as he speaks. "Even if you do, putting me out of the game guarantees we lose. You don't know how to bluff. The odds are never in your favor, you get me? You gotta bluff sometimes to turn things right for you." He grabs the pack and shakes it; only a few cigarettes left. "I know it sucks, son, but we don't have a choice. I've got to make some money here or we don't eat, know what I mean?"

"Yeah." That's all I can say. It's out of my mind. Not worth worrying about. Settled.

We pull up to the house and park on the rocky street. His cousin Ron's house is just like the others: one short story, stony grey aluminum, lonesome in a litter.

As we walk in the back, Ron's wife passes us with a basket of their kids' laundry--little socks and shorts. When we were kids, I used to dream about what her skin felt like. Olive-toned, lean. Sharp-featured. A wide mouth, and an attitude like a cleaver. She locks eyes as I pass--a long, deliberate glance. Her dark eyes walk slowly with me, from the shadows of her coal black brow. Her face is framed perfectly by her short hair, cut sharp as her jaw. She was sixteen when I was ten. I wanted to do something to her back then, but I didn't know what. Whatever it was, I couldn't imagine getting close enough. Touching wasn't enough. I needed to wrap all the way around her, coat her in me, and seep inside. I needed to feel every strained muscle, every wet breath, every pulsing part of her. Every tingle. I wanted to be the lightning in her veins. She looks incredible, still. She finally looks back to her laundry as I enter the narrow stairwell to the basement.

The basement is unfinished, but Ron's made a little casino oasis of it. He's got three well-crafted poker tables that he built himself. Two are set up for tonight's game. He's also got a craps table set up with a crook, and a Rembrant palette of chips in an old refurbished humidor. In the back corner, just around the other side of the water heater and furnace, are two polished slot machines. There's a mini-fridge set up on two sawhorses and an oak two-by-twelve, filled with Coors Light and Stoli. If I looked in the freezer, I'm sure I'd find a bottle of Crown Royal. The others will bring coolers of beer, mostly Coors Light, since that's what everyone can agree on. In the back corner is a pool table; something to do when you get put out of the game. I grab a beer from the fridge and slip a pool stick from the rack. "Cut throat?" I ask. Dad and Ron cue up while I rack.

"Josh'll be high, since he's racking," Ron says. "I'll be mids." Ron's a short, husky guy, with dark wide-set eyes. He's got a head like a dirty red bowling ball, and his black hair is faded and jelled. His ratty goatee hangs around full lips. "I just finished that pinball machine," he says. "Fuckin' tits, ain't it?" The machine is lit up bright, with a marquis of bulbs snaking around the chrome frame. The backbox display has three naked women: a white blond in the middle, a geisha on the one side, and on the other a black lady with a wooly thick bush. The side art has the same women, but looking back over their propped asses. The ball shooter lane is a two-foot prick, and the playfield graphic is a pair of spread legs with a flaming red bush at the top. That, of course, is the goal.

Ron fucks around on his wife. So do most of the guys in my dad's family. Ron always has a new story whenever we come. Some girl he met here or there, working on their plumbing or at some bar on a long call in another town. But he doesn't leave out Crystal. It's been a routine to tell us, in elicit detail, about their Friday bondage sessions just before everyone starts showing up for the game. Crystal had brought with her into the marriage an erotic circus of cuffs, bars, straps, chains, every sort of gag imaginable and some imagined only by her, a rainbow catalogue of tape, and an assortment of dildos that look like an abstract art installation. More than once I've found an uneaten apple with teeth cuts, and once I got a piece of duct tape stuck to my shoe that had lipstick on it. That's without mentioning the tailored furniture and devices they've constructed together, which we've also heard about down to the cubits and fasteners. Between Ron's craftsman hobbies and Crystal's dissertative knowledge of immobilization, I figure the local hardware store knows them both by name.

"Josh," Crystal calls down after me, tearing me away from the menagerie of images I've just described. The cheap wood whines as she descends to the basement. She's put on a leather jacket, and her forehead's already gleaming with sweat. "Can I get your help for a second?"

"What is it, babe," Josh groans as he takes a shot. "I'll get it."

"Nothing big," she says. "You can keep playing. Josh can handle it." Ron glances over his shoulder at her, then at me, before returning to his cue ball. I can't look him in the eye. Now he knows it. But I go anyway.

"In here," she says from the hall as I reach the top of the stairs. I notice the fruit bowl on the counter has no apples in it, just a half-eaten banana with the peel folded around. I turn the corner into the hallway, and nearly collide with her. The narrow passage puts us face to face--almost touching. I can smell the day's sweat on her, the tinge of her right in front of me, her chest rising and settling, wrapped tight in her tank top, under that almost inexplicable leather jacket. It's eighty-five degrees inside this house. She wipes the beads from her upper lip and folds her arms with a huff.

"There's a box in the top of the closet I can't reach. Black shoebox. My coupons for the week." I don't know why she'd store coupons in a place she can't reach. She's taller than Ron, too, so he wouldn't have put them there even if he did give a shit about coupons. I pull it down and hold it out for her. It's been spray-painted glossy black. The heat makes my fingers stick to it. I can see freckles where it's peeled from handling. She leaves it in my hands as she opens it. Inside are a tangle of cuffs and chains and something like a bit you'd put on a horse. A very small horse. A human-sized horse.

"These are not coupons."

"No," she says, in a crushed velvet voice. "No they're not." She unzips a pocket on her jacket and pulls out a motel key. She drops it in the box, closes it, and pushes it toward me.

"What are you doing?" I look past her, at the drug store portrait of her eight year-old daughter.

"What I want." She folds her arms.

"You're married."

"So is he." She draws a deep breath and sighs. "I'm not blind, and Ron's not stupid. I've seen the way you look at me every time you're here. You've wanted a taste of me since you first woke up to it. He already thinks we're fooling around, so let's make it worth it. I'm going to that motel tonight." She creeps in close enough to feel her breath on my chin. "When I'm not here, I'm on my own time. I've got some time for you, but not enough to come on soft." She reaches up and runs her hand down my neck. "Don't flake out on me." She turns to walk away, but turns back for just a moment. "I won't have an escape plan."

We both move back through the living room and kitchen. I watch the light roll back and forth over her leather shoulders, and her ass bounce one cheek at a time. I want to run my hands up her jacket, into her shirt, and thrust my hips into her from behind. I want handfuls. Mouthfuls. I want to bite her neck and suck the sweat off. Instead, I pass her. She eyes me as I go downstairs.

"Crystal's been out this weekend," I hear Ron say as I come down. He sips his beer and eyes me as I approach the table.

"Yeah?" dad says. "What for?"

"She thinks I'm fucking around on her. You know, that kind of bullshit." He takes another sip. "She'll be all right. I'm probably just gonna have to lay low for a while."

"How's it been?" I ask. "Being alone, I mean."

"Oh, I ain't been alone," he laughs. He looks up at the ceiling--the upstairs floorboards--and dips his voice. "I met this chick at a house I was working on. Get this, man--it's the guy's daughter. She keeps coming out of her room, asking me bullshit questions about plumbing, and I know what's going on, y'know."

"She was wanting something, huh?" dad laughs, taking his shot. The balls crack and spin across the felt.

"Fuck yeah she was. Gorgeous, too. She couldn'ta been more than eighteen, man, and great big titties. I love my wife, but you gotta be crazy to say no to something like that. She said she wants to see me again. So I'll let you know how that goes next week," he laughs. "I'm gonna bring her over here. Might have to break out the toys. Show her some shit she ain't never seen before." When he laughs, his face glows like a baboon's ass--two great red cheeks and a brown hole in the middle, quilled with wiry black hairs. The stories have gotten worse and worse every weekend, which makes me question how true they are. The man's a short ball of grease and tattoos. You can only be so charismatic, to use a criminally charitable word. He's losing his wife, so it's no wonder he'd come up with stories to save his pride. I never could figure out how they ended up together. Seeing them is weird, but hell, weird is Crystal's thing. Ron says the kidnap fantasies flare up every time a new season of Without A Trace drops. He's had to call off work to deal with his wife. I can blame him for a lot, but not that. I think if I had a wife like Crystal, I could get into just about anything if it made her crazy.

Ron gets a text message. The door upstairs pounds shut and the screen smacks the jamb.

"She says she put the kids to bed," he reads, "and she'll be back later. Whatever. Who's shot is it?"

"Mine," I say. "We starting the poker game at ten?"

"Same as every other weekend. Why, you got somewhere to be?"

"Running out of smokes," I tell him. "Just wanted to see if I'd have time to hit up the gas station."

"You really oughta quit," he says.

"Yeah, I--"

"You really oughta quit." He stares at me just long enough. He leans over the table to take his shot. Dad looks at me over Ron--What the hell was that? He nods up, indicating Crystal. You two...? I shake my head, but he sighs.

"Well, I need smokes, anyway," dad says. "Here's a ten." He hands me a crumpled bill from his front pocket. "Grab a pack and get back quick. Don't fuck around," he grins.

"What about the game?" I ask. Ron shoots, and the cue cracks against the twelve ball, sinking it with a leathery thump.

"You're out," Ron says.

As I walk down the crumbling concrete steps in the back yard, I get a text.

"Went to the store incase u chicken out n dont bring the box

ill be tied up come save me haha

see u soon ;) :X"

I drop into the Cavalier. Ron's suspicious, and I haven't even done anything. I can't leave Crystal tied up in a strange motel. God only knows what story she'd come up with when someone found her there. What if it was the truth? That she was waiting for me? It wouldn't matter what I said after that.

She's naked and glowing orange under the dim motel lamps. I can see it. Stretched out, roped to the bed, muscles taut and twisted, belly and breasts rolling with every heave. I can taste it--feel the flick of a hard nipple on my tongue. I can feel the bump of her pussy on my lips, smell the sap of her. It's wrong, and I can't get it out of my head.

Kentucky Avenue dances in the humid twilight. The Cavalier rumbles through the heat, cackling mean at every pothole. My phone rings. It's mom.

"Hey, honey, I was wondering what time you and daddy were going to be home."

"We haven't started the game yet. I'm out grabbing smokes. Go ahead and have dinner without us." My voice is quick. I'm trying to get her off the phone and I don't feel good about it.

"That's okay, we'll wait," she says with a sniff.

"All right. I'll see you later tonight. Bye, mom."

"Love you bunches," she says. I click first.

"Son of a bitch." I throw the cell phone in the cup holder. The steering wheel groans as I clench it. There's no food at the house. We're gambling with the fucking food money. If I cheat, we'll lose. He bluffs. He always fucking bluffs, and they know it. The only thing worse than being a liar is being a liar that everyone knows is a damn liar. I can't call him out. It wouldn't do any good. He'd get angry, mope for two weeks. He'd lie in bed drinking coffee and watching TV, dreaming up some quick fix like a yard sale or Craigslist ad to flip shitty furniture he found in the trash. Our garage is full of that kind of crap. This is the cycle. Just enough to scrape by, and less than enough left to gamble. I want out of this, but I can't leave. Mom's at home with my little sister, and there's no food. They're waiting on us to bring it back. I can't get out.

God, just give me a day. Give me one fucking day out of this.

***

The White Flag Inn is a two-story stucco graveyard of doors and buzzing lights, sweating in salmon pink, flickering with the rambling shadows of moths and June bugs. The sign out front rises like a desert obelisk into the lazy purple sky, advertising free HBO. The stretch of concrete in front of the rooms is pocked and cracked, busted heavy, with tufts of grass sawing through the pavement. A waterbug scurries down the door and into one of the tar-lined cracks in the long porch. The idea of an angry sigh is absurd to me as I jam the key into the deadbolt. Through the paper-thin walls, I hear bedsprings shriek and settle.

The second the door is open, she's on me. She grabs a fistful of my shirt and tie and pulls me inside. I'm too pissed off to screw around with it, and before I know what I've done, she's against the wall, her arms wrenched in my hands, and we're staring at each other. Her eyes are black in the dim motel light. She's already breathing heavy. I feel like I've caught an animal. Whatever anger I had is something else, now. She wants to strike, but I've got her pinned to the wall. Her eyebrow twitches as a smile stretches wide across her face.

"Take it out on me," she says, swallowing hard.

"Why aren't you tied up?"

"I'm not a fuckin' idiot," she laughs. She twists her arm out of my grip and grabs for me, but I let her go and step back. "You really think I'm gonna leave myself tied to a motel bed in the middle of white trash hell? What if you didn't come? Maybe you're chicken shit." She looks me over. "Where's the box?"

"I didn't bring it." I look her over. She's topless under that leather jacket. Somehow her jeans look tighter than when she left the house. The room is warm and humid. The light ripples down the sweat of her belly and disappears into her pants, in the gap behind her wide belt.

"I don't go for chicken shit." Her hips rock as she slinks close. "But you're here, so maybe you're not."

"I didn't come here to sleep with you."

"Good, I'm not tired," she snickers. She props a hand on her cocked hip. Her nipple peeks out from the jacket--a tingle shoots up my thigh like the lights on a landing strip. Enough to put me at attention. "The box had the easy stuff in it. Now we gotta improvise." She huffs. "You know, Ron may be ugly, but he's got one thing on you: he's a man."

She knows exactly what she's doing. I'm not stupid, but now I'm angry again. I want to tell her I don't want to do this, but it's a bluff and she just called it. "What do you want me for?" I demand. "Why am I here?"

"It's not complicated," she says, rocking over to me. "You kidnapped me and brought me here. You're gonna tie me to that bed, and then you're gonna fuck me. Hard. You're gonna fuck me harder than you've ever fucked in your life, over...and over...and over again."

"You think that's what guys want to hear--"

"And when you're done, I won't be able to escape if I wanted to. I won't be able to walk. And I don't give a single quivering shit what you think you want to hear."

I loosen my tie, slide it from around my neck, and grip it like a belt in both hands.

"It's a start," she says, mockingly. She holds her wrists out and sighs. I go to tie her hands, but she grabs it and pulls it up. Now it's tug of war. "You're going to have to work for it. You're going to have to get your hands a lot dirtier than that."

I let go of the tie and she stumbles back, but I sink my fingers into her pants and grip her belt. "I don't have time for this. The game starts in half an hour." I drag her to the bed and push her. I wipe her sweat on my chin and loom down. She falls to her elbows as my fists sink into the bed around her. Her legs shoot up and wrap around my waist as I push into her, pressing my lips hard into hers. I run the tip of my tongue across her lips and her mouth roars open. For a moment we're two animals trying to eat each other. I stand up, pulling her with me. She smacks her chest to mine and I stumble with her across the room and slam her against the wall. We pause for a breath, painting each other in the sweat of our foreheads. I move down to her neck, licking, nibbling, lapping her up. She rips my jacket down from my shoulders. I push her hard against the wall so I can throw my arms back to let the jacket fall. She puts her hands on my shoulders and bounces over and over, grinding into my bulge. I grab her wrists and smear them up the wall, holding her hard to it. We kiss like savages, splashing all over each other.