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  “Do go on.” I was test-driving my newfound Southern politesse.

  Shannon told me about a guy she was with for a spell, two-plus years of life and love, the only man she’d ever met uncomplicated with sharing a girlfriend on the side. “He goes and violates our agreement,” she said, “breaks the rules in our own bed.” She sipped her soda through the straw.

  “Rules?” I was lost.

  “Trust,” she said. “He violated the trust between us.” I nodded. “See,” she whispered in my ear, “the rule was he would only come inside me.” Tough love. “But when they thought I was sleepin in the very same sheets, I hear him scratchin and moanin and sayin how he loves her, then she up and gives him twins!”

  “Ouch,” I said.

  “What can ya do?”

  “Kick his ass to the curb.”

  “Oh, believe it, I did,” she said. “But that man broke my heart. That girl too. She was sexy as hell, I wanted to kill her in her sleep.”

  “If I’d been there, I’d have held her down for you.”

  She smiled. “We had a dreamy thing goin. But I reckon you have to wake up when the chickens come home.”

  I wanted to say if I were him, I never would have made such a choice. But I couldn’t rightly imagine making such a bed. I’m old-school, it seems like. Despite the downsides, I see the value of monogamy. I used to thrive on such security, real or imagined. I shook my head in silence.

  “So to answer your question,” she said, “I don’t think ya can ever know for sure. Ya just open your heart and love like the whole world’s at war.”

  Shannon appeared to be in control, well-balanced and passionate, forgiving. I felt inferior by her side, nowhere near at peace. She explained how that was her last serious relationship. Her priorities since then, going on thirteen months, were raising her son the best she could and slaving as an office temp and part-time body worker, when her carpal tunnel wasn’t crippling, to dig herself out of credit card debt run up by the heartbreakers.

  I told her about the ex and my recent bad behavior. I knew she wouldn’t judge or force-feed me lame advice. I expected she’d provide a sympathetic ear. What I hadn’t anticipated was her clear-sighted way with words.

  “It’s all good, sweetie,” she said, interlacing her fingers with mine. “Perfectly understandable. You’ve been wronged. You’re hurtin. You want what’s right. No more, no less.”

  She saw through my bitterness to what lay beneath, forgave me for being helpless to act otherwise. She didn’t care that I was broken, a fraction of myself. She would accept me in pieces, put me back together.

  I was glad the movie started then, afraid I might tear up (not the manliest maneuver on a first date). We held each other close, licked butter from our fingers. About an hour in, nuzzling at her neck, I kissed her. It felt right. She turned to meet my lips. We were school kids for the rest of the film.

  In the parking lot afterwards, she pulled me into the back seat of the extended cab of her rental pickup. Its new vehicle scent was soon swamped by her own, a musty morning-in-the-woods wetness I could taste with every breath. “You can smell my pussy,” she said, raising her arms so I could lift off her shirt. Her son’s name was inked inside a gold star on her breast. “He’s a rockstar,” she said. Her nipples were small and hard. I teased them with my teeth. “Harder,” she said. I bit down and she whimpered.

  Burying my face, I pressed her close from the back. My hands moved like starfish on the slopes of her shoulders and spine. Slippery smooth like the sea, she rocked in waves, plunging forward, easing back, rising up, crashing, then rising again. I was the moon and she was high tide. She tore at my button-down shirt, promising to mend it later. Then she said, “Make me . . .” I didn’t think she meant sew, but I wasn’t asking questions. I would listen to her body, follow its direction, take her where she needed to go. I was at her service. It felt like I could do no wrong.

  We were rocking on our knees, my thigh between hers, our mouths hungry, greedy. The famine was over. I reached beneath her skirt, up the back of her thighs, to grip the waistband of her panties with both hands. I pulled it down just so, while she wriggled to assist me. But I wouldn’t get her bare-assed yet.

  I slipped my finger past the band, massaging the topmost spot between her cheeks. Working my way down, I paused just before her tightest hole. “Na ah . . .” she said. Untensing her muscles, she eased backwards. This forced my finger up inside. She grinned. “Uh oh . . .” I kissed her hard as she gripped my shoulders for support.

  I let her steer my finger with the movement of her bubble butt, as she called it, which I now grabbed with both hands stuffed inside her panties. She was a good driver and fast. I held on tight.

  When my wrists gave out, we lay down. I made her leave her skirt on as I brought her lace underwear up to my nostrils. “That’s what all the girls do,” she said. This threw me, but I didn’t let her see it on my face.

  She groped for my cock, pressing hard against my jeans. She took the head in her fist and squeezed, vise-like. I wasn’t complaining. Then the blessed sound of the unclasped belt, the zipper’s teeth, gasp of freedom, fresh air.

  She tugged me like she wanted to snap it off. I thought on what she’d said all night about girls versus boys. I wondered if I was only necessary at best. I stretched around to get my hand between her legs but she pushed me off, taking me into her mouth with the same roughness of her touch. My mind went blank.

  After I came, she licked her chops like a trickster coyote. Her hair was mussed about her face, flushed and smiling. Now it was her turn.

  I walked my fingers along her thigh, but she swatted me away. She said she’d give me something to dream on.

  Singing along with Beatles songs at top volume, I drove past my exit on the highway home. Once I realized this I kept going. The rush of the night coursed through me. I thought of nothing but the power of the engine, pedal to the floor, and the lovestruck Lennon-McCartney plot lines with Shannon and JAG in the lead roles. I was in thrall with my first-ever fling. Our time together would last only a week. I vowed to make each second count.

  At home I couldn’t sleep for hours. With no TV, I surfed OVA (OnlineVideoArchives) for news clips on the Initiative for Peace. The corporate images showed mostly white men in immaculate suits pitching the party line: “The surge in troops is bringing the evil doers to justice. . . . Those who blaspheme our benevolence will have to crawl out of their lairs to trim those filthy beards, and when they do, we’ll greet them with the Razor of Democracy. . . . The humanitarian efforts of Coalition Forces have yielded freedom and security, peace and prosperity for local merchants, women and children.” The indie cameras presented the fleshy flipside with closeups of bombed-out Red Cross buildings, schools and places of worship, grainy scenes of torture, mutilated corpses in mass graves, parents grieving over lifeless bodies of kids, blood-streaked women wailing in the streets, tearing their hair, napalm firing the sky with a hell-glow that wouldn’t fade.

  The next day at church, I was a wreck. I had barely closed my eyes when the alarm sounded. But I managed to sneak in late undetected by the Reverend. I had done right by Good Charlotte. Shannon was my reward.

  A testament to the power of the web, the service was packed to capacity, overflow consigned to the vestibule. I could barely see or hear the sermon, not that my heart was in it anyhow. I’d later convince the Reverend to mount extra speakers and a monitor to service his growing fanbase.

  Afterwards, I chatted with Good Charlotte, who said I looked “a bitty bit peaked.” I explained how I’d been working overtime. She advised that I go out more, get some fun. Her cheeks brightened and she turned away to gaze at the crucifix on the church door. I stole a glance at the hot spot I’d almost known too well.

  I met Shannon for brunch at the Plucky Hen Café by Lake Pleasant. She ordered a glass of chardonnay to go with her omelette. Not wanting to spoil the mood, I requested the same and a fried chicken sandwich. I can drink socially, I
told myself. This would be my first taste in more than three years.

  Our glasses sparkled when the sun shone through the patchy clouds. Both of us felt the same about the night before and we agreed to make the most of the rest of our time together. Like giddy prom dates, we sketched out our plans on a napkin. We’d begun to talk about our kids when the plates arrived.

  “Like I said, Duane’s a rockstar,” she said, showing me a picture of his cute curly head. “He’s beautiful and sensitive, which gets him into trouble at school sometimes. He won’t abide any teasin whatsoever. He’s a little slow with books. My fault . . .”

  “No,” I said, reaching across the table, cupping her bare arm, smooth like high tension wire, bronze from the sun.

  “Rather than go to the teacher he’ll try to settle his problems on his own.”

  “A DIY boy,” I said. “We’re cut from the same clay.”

  “I don’t want him to think he’s bad. I fret when the office calls, not for what he’s done—he’s so little, what harm could he do?—but I worry on how it makes him feel to be separated from his classmates, singled out as a troublemaker so young. If ya ask me, that’s a recipe for delinquency down the road.”

  “Could be.” I saw a mother’s greatest fear in her eyes. “But nothing’s absolute.”

  “I believe him when he says he never starts the fights. And it’s right for him to stand up for himself,” she said. “I just wish he could find a less violent way to do so.”

  “Where’s his father?”

  “He’s with our son now. But the man’s hot and cold. His ex-wife did a number on him, disappeared with his kids.” She laid her hand on mine. “He doesn’t even know where. And he’s too scared to be there for Duane but once or twice a month.”

  “Shameful,” I said, swirling the last of my wine in the glass. We ordered another round.

  “His teachers think he’s depressed. He won’t participate like he should. I give him all I’ve got. But I’m dogtired at the end of the day. I don’t know what more I can do.” Her eyes welled up. I offered her my sandwich.

  “Don’t be sad,” I said, caressing her arm. I kissed her fingertips. Her epoxyed nails were thick and strong, burgundy to match her black dress. She smiled, blotting her eyes with a napkin, not smearing her mascara.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I leak.” She smiled again. “Happens every day.” She bit into my chicken, bobbed her head.

  I explained how I barely knew my son, eleven weeks old last time I saw him. With no picture to show off, I was at a loss to describe him. “My son’s amazing. He’s a baby, I don’t know. He’s small and soft and squishy-faced. He smells like a baby. I used to hold him close and just breathe.”

  “I know.” She veiled her eggy mouth with a napkin.

  “He’s got little fingers and toes, perfect little nails. Dark eyes like mine.”

  It was Shannon now who reached across the table to touch my arm, brushing the fine hairs in small circles. “You’ll see them again, JAG.” She had read my mind. She made me look at her. “You will.”

  I raised my glass, tilted it toward hers.

  With an hour or so before she would have to leave for a shopping date with her aunt, we decided to stroll the lake. Little more than a pond with inflated self-esteem, it was all algae-muck, manmade, but the dirt trail on its perimeter served our needs well enough. We watched as couples walked dogs, carried kids on their shoulders. Without exchanging a word, we headed in the opposite direction.

  Feeling the effects of the wine, we idled for some time, not talking. She smoked a clove cigarette. I inhaled second-hand, scheming on ways to get my son back, guessing Shannon was thinking about her boy as well. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

  She broke the silence first. “When I was little my daddy used to take me fishing on a bitty pond like this every weekend.”

  “That must have been nice,” I said.

  “I used to think so. Then I remembered different.”

  She told me how her CMT training involved body work from other students. Once, when one of her classmates was kneading the pressure points at her hips, she flashed on a memory of vomiting over the side of a canoe while her daddy held on to her. She connected this with an image she long thought was a dream. She was four years old and her daddy was peeing on her. Later, she realized it wasn’t a dream. And he wasn’t peeing.

  “No,” I said.

  “It’s okay, sweetie,” she said. “It’s in a past I only see in bits and pieces.” I squeezed her hand. “My stepdad, on the other hand . . . he’s the one person I would kill if given the chance.”

  This man married her mom after her daddy was locked up for narcotics distribution. Her mom was a lifelong addict. Her stepdad took advantage, had his way with Shannon and her siblings. He only got to her once, after which she left home to stay with a high school friend. She still feels guilty for abandoning her brother and sister.

  “I told my friend’s mom,” she said, “a good Christian lady. I’m grateful to her for takin me in. But she never did nothin about it. She told me to trust that God would provide.”

  Shannon dropped out of school to work at the mall to support her brother and sister. She would leave bags of food and clothes, some CDs on their back porch. Eventually she got out of town. She’s never been back.

  “You did the best you could,” I said. “You were just a kid.”

  She called me a sugarpie, leaned her head on my shoulder. I felt helpless.

  When the sky thickened with storm clouds, I suggested returning to the café. But SexxxeeMama Shannon was prepared. Lifting a compact polka-dot umbrella out of her leather carryall, she said, “We’ll be alright, sweetie.”

  As we walked on, I thought about my own upbringing. I couldn’t tell her about mom, though. How she was pregnant with me while scouring toilets at the Houston Airport Holiday Inn. How she was barely seventeen when she gave birth. How I never knew my father and she never would tell me about him. “This is your daddy,” she would say, pointing to your dad, bro. This was when you were still in the womb. I was four or five. They had recently wed. “This is your daddy.” I couldn’t see myself in him at all. He must have felt the same.

  I remember how he’d ignore me, pretend like I was nothing, invisible. No matter how well I behaved, he’d never toss me a baseball or read me a single rhyme from Dr. Seuss. I used to love “Green Eggs & Ham” and especially “The Foot Book.” Fuzzy fur feet. Clown feet. Quick feet. Trick feet. I always was a fast runner. I had to be.

  Thunder cracked the sky. “Angels bowling,” I said to Shannon. (That’s what mom used to say, didn’t she, bro?) We hiked up a slope that led to a lonely grove. The live smell of green grass and black earth filled the air around us. We breathed deep, grinning beneath the dots as the rain pounded. It was a tight fit, and when our bodies came together we kissed.

  Her mouth was wet, warm. I could taste wine on her tongue, rank with traces of egg and smoke. It didn’t matter. I wasn’t helpless now. I would erase her past, if only while the sky was crying.

  I pressed into her softness, one hand on the curve of her ass—visions of the previous night—the other on the roundness of her slight belly. I could feel the ball of her navel ring through her dress. Her nipples nudged against my abs. Once I’d spread my legs to better position myself between hers, I pushed up into her through my pants, through her dress. She exhaled hard. Devouring my lips, she kissed me crooked. All I could do was thank her.

  When our teeth clacked together we both apologized, laughing. To give her arm a break I took over umbrella duty. This freed up her hands to massage me in the front and from behind. As I bucked my hips, she parted her lips, smiling up at me. I growled at her then, sucking her tongue into my mouth.

  We were shameless teenagers, not once glancing around to check our privacy. When the storm let up she tore away from me, whirling circles in bare feet, heels in hand, singing, “Like a virrrr-gin . . . hey!” It kind of felt like the first time for m
e too. Only I wondered if she wished I were a girl.

  SEVEN

  Shannon gave me a fever like no one I’d ever known. But I couldn’t push her confession —her daddy—out of my mind. And if she wanted girls so much, why get with me? Was she even with me when she appeared to be, or was I some kind of therapeutic mule?

  Maybe I was digging for meaning that didn’t exist or matter. Could I just give her what she needed, what she said she needed? Where would this leave me? Could I give without seeking some return?

  What was going on between us I couldn’t tell. What I wanted for her was bound up with what I wanted from her, though at the time I wasn’t able to parse this out. After an early evening nap I texted Cyrus, who soon came over with an MP3 of “A Love Supreme.”

  “This is God,” he said, busting through the door. “A gift from the Reverend’s prodigal son.”

  I closed my eyes to listen as the jazz group raised a celestial kingdom out of a simple bass line. Cyrus broke down the symbolic heft of the composition. “This music’s a four-part suite, built on a four-note riff, played by a four-piece band, the Coltrane quartet with McCoy Tyner, Elvin Jones and Jimmy Garrison. None better.” He leaned into one of the Reverend’s dramatic pauses. Whether he’d say so or not, Cyrus was his father’s son.

  “Fuck the Trinity,” he said. “I’ll give you God the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost. But don’t forget the collective We—all that lives and breathes, brotherman. We are One in the Spirit. Same vibration. Equilateral. Quadraphonic.” He let his words resonate in the spaces between the splashing cymbals and tenor sax.

  “The song’s in the key of F,” he resumed. “F for freedom. F for feelin fiiiine . . .” He was in preacher mode now. “Feel the spirit!” he shouted. “No foolin.”