Page 34 of Nasty
Yvonne slid the ice from one side of her glass to the other. “Perhaps this was a bad idea. I don’t think…I told you those things in confidence. They were part of my confession. I never thought—”
I tossed back my whiskey, placing the high ball down onto the bar with exaggerated care, then I pierced her through with my eyes. “You used to sit on the front pew every week and stare at me, Yvonne. I noticed. Your husband sat there because he cared what people thought, wanted them to believe he was fucking perfect. The most pious. The most devout. But you sat there, with your skirt hitched up just a few inches too high, your knees pressed together like you were pinching a hundred-dollar bill between them, because you liked the idea of me seeing you.” I gestured to the bartender, motioning for a refill. Meanwhile, Yvonne’s face had turned so red, she’d started to look like a beet. “You used to run your hands up and down your thighs. You wanted me to notice you,” I murmured. “You sat there on the front row, and you used to imagine what it would be like to have my head between your legs. My tongue buried in your pussy. And when you went home, when you touched yourself, you’d imagine what it would be like for me to thrust my cock inside you until you screamed. And then, you’d come to me to confess and flagellate yourself over it. And being in that tiny little box, all hot and bothered under the collar, listening to my voice, hearing me breathe…that made you want to go home and do it all over again, didn’t it?”
Her hand shook as she slowly put down her glass. “I think I ought to be going now, Felix.”
“Don’t be such a fucking coward,” I growled. “Don’t you see, this is all bullshit? We’re all animals. We have base needs that drive us. There’s nothing we can do about it. Life is only fucking bearable if we recognize that and we’re fucking honest. Even if it’s only with ourselves.”
The bartender placed another glass of whiskey on the bar, and then he held out his balled-up fist to me. “Amen, brother.”
I bumped it without even looking at him; so what if he was eavesdropping. “Life is short, Yvonne. If touching your pussy makes you feel good, then so be it. If touching your pussy and thinking about me makes you feel good, then that’s even fucking better. You have my permission to go to fucking town. I’m not gonna be upset.”
Poor Yvonne. Her horror was written all over her. But her pupils were wide, like she’d just snorted an entire gram of coke, and her lips were wet and parted. She was turned on just as much as she was embarrassed. I leaned an inch closer to her. “You can politely excuse yourself and run back to fucking Gus. You can go home and scrub yourself until you feel clean again after bad, bad Felix made you feel dirty,” I whisper. “Or, you can come with me into the bathroom back there, and I can show you what it feels like to have my tongue on your clit. I’ll show you what it feels like to have my hard cock inside you, and then, when I’ve made you come, you can go home feeling like a woman. A woman who took what she wanted.”
This was wrong. This was really bad. But fuck it. I was fucking done being good. Yvonne didn’t take her eyes off me. She was panting, her breath coming in short, panicked little gasps. “I can’t do that. I love my husband.”
“No, you don’t.” I laughed into my whiskey glass as I held it up to my mouth. “You love that he makes six figures. You love that you looked perfect together in your wedding photos, like a perfect goddamn American dream come true. You love how jealous people are when they look at Mr. and Mrs. Prescott, and they imagine how wonderful your fairytale life is. But you know the truth, and so do I. You hate Gus.”
Indignation flashed in her eyes. “You shouldn’t say things like that. It’s not…it’s not right.”
I smiled at her, the first real smile I’d given anyone in a long time. “All right. Then run along home. I’m sorry to have upset you.”
I flagged the bartender again, pointing at my empty glass. Yvonne looked boneless as she slid off her stool, slowly collecting her purse and her coat. She didn’t say anything as she slowly, mechanically turned around and walked out of the bar.
“That was impressive,” the bartender said. “Here. A double, on the house. You got stones the size of fucking bowling balls. Shame she didn’t pick up what you were putting down.”
I watched him pour until the whiskey was almost level with the lip of the glass.
I didn’t say a word.
One… Two…Three… Four…Five… Six… Seven…
The door to the bar swung open, and Yvonne hurried back inside. Her coat and her purse were still in her hands. She kept her head down as she continued past me, her eyes barely flickering toward me, as she made a beeline for the bathrooms at the rear of the bar.
I picked up the whiskey, tipped back the glass and I drained the thing in one.
I got up.
The bartender’s mouth was hanging open. “Holy shit, dude.”
I still didn’t say anything as I followed Yvonne into the bathroom.
FIFTEEN
GUEST LIST
SERA
Lights.
A million lights.
Small flicking flames, scores of them guttering and dancing in the dark like blades of grass in an endless field. They covered every available surface as Fix guided me through the ancient graveyard, lining the cracked, jumbled flagstone path before us, and perched on the tops of headstones, so close that the wax pillars had merged and melted together to form drunken, lopsided structures.
The headstones themselves looked like the nubs of decaying, broken teeth, protruding from the ground. So old. Beyond old. I caught sight of a couple of the dates inscribed into them as Fix wrapped his arm around my shoulders, pressing me to him: eighteen ninety-three; Seventeen ninety-one; Eighteen fifty-six. Arthur; Gerald; Beatrice; Agatha: the names inscribed into the aged stonework were from another time. Another world. The New York they’d known must have been very different to the metropolitan hub that flexed and breathed and seethed today, never pausing, never sleeping.
“How does this guy host parties inside a church?” I asked, my voice hushed. Seemed rude to speak loudly amongst the dead.
“The building was damaged in a fire fifty years ago. The parishioners couldn’t afford to repair it, and the arch-diocese wanted to build a more modern, contemporary church close by, so this place just sat here for years. Rabbit bought the land, thinking he could tear down the building, but the ground’s still consecrated. You can’t legally disrupt consecrated ground, so he said fuck it and renovated instead. I’ve seen old photos. It looks exactly the same as it did before the fire now.”
