Short Stories

Fulfilled
As seen in the web anthology "In Her Place:  Stories about Women Who Get Around"

            She liked looking at herself in the mirror.  The contours of her face, the curvature of her body, it was all very pleasing to her.  But today as Alona stared at her image in the mirror backstage at the Miss Louisiana State Beauty Pageant, all she could see was a cracked egg.
           She looked around the changing area with all the women in various degrees of dress.  They were too preoccupied to notice but if they had they would have assumed she was sizing them up.  She had long moved past trying to befriend them.  Many of them had grown up with her on the pageant circuit.  She knew their names and weaknesses, but she didn’t know her competitors any better than they knew her.  They were all colorful marionettes who were only taken out for the big show.  Many of her counterparts had enhanced their appearance with spray tans, obsessive dieting and breast augmentations.  They hated her because she was so effortless.  Even the hours of practicing how to walk and stand had come easily to her.  She had a natural poise that couldn’t easily be fabricated and for those gifts, the pageant girls had generously given her the constant view of their backs.  And their snarky comments.  
            She felt her mother hovering over her before the older woman’s face appeared beside Alona’s in the mirror.  “What are you doing, Alona?  We’ve been preparing your whole life for this.”  Her mother’s eyes were ablaze with enough passion that Alona could feel it tingling in her extremities.  She just didn’t feel it in her heart.  She had learned early on that pageant crowns were heavy and full of sacrifice.  
            She’d never known a father and to compensate, her mother had often worked double shifts down at the factory during the week to pay for the frilly Easter egg colored dresses Alona needed for an endless amount of pageant competitions on the weekends.  At first that meant spending lots of time with her grandparents but by the time they had passed away, there was already a continuous stream of boyfriends who would watch Alona after school.  Some of them were scary.  Some of them were mean.  Some of them left dark holes in Alona’s childhood that she refused to revisit.  
            One Mother’s Day she was standing on a wooden chair next to the stove making her mother breakfast when her mother came into the kitchen in an old fuchsia-colored bathrobe.  She sat down at the table and asked what Alona thought of her current boyfriend, the one who was still asleep in the next room.
            “He’s okay,” Alona said never taking her eyes off the simmering frying pan.  She cracked an egg on its side but when it opened, there was no yolk.  Alona never forgot that.
            And there were always the pageants.  Smile.  Turn on your toe.  Look over your shoulder with a twinkle in your eye.  It didn’t matter what you were feeling that day.  Whether you wanted to laugh or wanted to cry.  It was always about making the judges believe you were the most beautiful woman in the room and Alona was good at doing that.  She had an entire room full of crowns and sashes at her mother’s house to prove it.  
            She lined up with the rest of the girls just behind the curtain where they could see the stage but not the audience.  In her head, she concentrated on the words to “Amazing Grace” just like she always did in the moments before a big show.  
            When Alona was fifteen, the man her mother was seeing took them all to church.  Her mother was left uninspired but as the minister called his congregation into action, Alona found herself longing for the power of the Holy Spirit to enter her.  The pageants gave her the illusion of divinity but the Holy Spirit would make it so.  She believed that.  And she began to pray.  She prayed so hard, in fact, that it caught the attention of the handsome youth pastor, Luke Ciphor who crowned her with his full attention.  They spent long hours together alone in the youth room in the basement of the church.  She idolized him, hung on his every word.  He made her feel beautiful.  The touch of Luke’s hand thrilled her.  The touch of his lips drove her to new passionate heights and the things they did alone together she never considered to be depraved.  They were acts of physical love.  It didn’t matter to her that he was thirty-one and she was fifteen.  Wasn’t love blind in the eyes of God?  The minister didn’t think so.
            They were both banished from the church and Alona found herself having to endure sitting in the room as Luke begged the minister for forgiveness.  
            “She’s the muse of the devil,” he cried pointing at her.  “She seduced me!”  
            Alona just huddled so low into herself she hoped she might disappear.  The minister then asked her mother what to do and, of course, her mother saw no point in ruining anyone’s reputation.  Alona had shiny crowns to uphold.  So the entire ordeal was kept very quiet and no one mentioned it directly to Alona again.  She only ever heard it mentioned behind the scene in low whispers.  
            One by one the girls began to parade out onto the stage and Alona thought about the last time she’d actually seen that particular church.  It was through an angry haze of yellow yolk on a deserted night with an empty plastic egg carton in her hand.  The anger of that moment flushed Alona’s cheeks and as the hot spotlight fell on her, she smiled and walked to her place in front of the judges.
            Since then she’d been with a continuous line of boyfriends of her own.  The most recent one would lie next to her, their naked bodies sticky in his repugnant sheets.  He kept the shades of his apartment closed so that, even in full daylight, it was so dim that if she looked over at him she could only see the dark holes where his eyes should have been and the hot ash of his lit cigarette. 
            Alona smiled, despite the blinding hot spotlight that left beads of sweat on her upper lip and when they called her name, she walked to her mark with the showmanship of a circus performer.  Somewhere over the light, in a place where she could not see, there was applause and the calling of her name.  She ignored the revelry and concentrated on the judges before her as the man with the neatly trimmed beard carefully read a random question on an index card into the microphone.  “In recent years, the use of prescription drugs among teenagers has skyrocketed.  How would you, as Miss Louisiana, educate our minors on the dangers of these drugs?”
            That was easy.  The answer was automatic.  Alona didn’t even need to think before she began speaking into the microphone.  She’d practiced the answer to this question hundreds of times.  It was a subject she knew about intimately even though her brain refused to link the question to the Vicodin in her medicine cabinet that she used when prancing around on heels became too painful for her once shattered ankle.  She didn’t believe it pertained to the Percocet her doctor prescribed for her migraine headaches or to the OxyContin hidden in her underwear drawer that was strictly for “just fun”.  She liked the way they made her feel numb to the world because in the numbness there were no disappointments, no painful realities.
            She could feel her competitors nervous shifting as the judges’ scores were tallied.  Collectively, their breaths quickened as the apprehension built.  The crown would mean something to any one of them, but Alona felt anesthetized as they waited in their high heels and their false smiles.  The man with the beard walked the results over to the MC who took a sneak peek and grinned slyly.  There was a drum roll that should have shaken her to reality and a preamble which should have made her heart pump with anticipation and desire.  Her name was called.  The girls surrounding her shook her, hugged her and still was nothing as she walked to the middle of the polished stage where the MC and former Miss Louisiana waited with her prize.  She accepted the roses they laid across her arms graciously and stood still as they pinned a crown high upon her head.  It slipped, falling right into Alona’s arms.  She laughed at the small mishap in a way that put everyone else at ease because that’s what she was good at:  the pretending everything was normal.  Even when it wasn’t.  
            Because today the numbness she felt had nothing to do with a magically sedating pill and everything to do with a pregnancy test, with the sign of the cross, buried deep within a trashcan in a hotel room upstairs.  She’d forgotten that there were also eggs inside of her.  Eggs she could nurture the way she’d always dreamed she could be nurtured.  It was an inspiring thought that appealed to her.  Of course, no one would believe it was a good idea.  Not her boyfriend.  Or her mother.  Or the pageant officials.  The pressure to strip away that part of herself would be immense but she had not allowed her mind to wander down those dark corridors just yet.  For now, it was simply all about her and as she walked carefully out to the edge of the stage, she couldn’t help thinking her mother had been right.  Her mother had always said that at this moment, at the pinnacle of Alona’s career, that she would be fulfilled, and as Alona stood smiling and waving back at the crowd, she was.

***

The Secrets We Keep

As seen in the April 2011 edition of CC& D Literary & Art Magazine

     It was 12:30 am when the car pulled up to the front of the San Francisco Municipal Building.  The streets were wet, still soaking up the effects of an earlier rain and a light fog had begun to sweep into the city making everything feel as if it were an illusion.  It was my kind of night.   
    I opened the back door to the spacious sedan and slid inside.  “Where to Mr. Mayor?” the driver asked.  I gave him the address for the New Haven Hotel and settled in for the ride.
    When Joe, my chief of staff, had forced this whole car service idea on me, I had been less than receptive but I had to admit, I was beginning to enjoy it.  I have always been rather fond of my freedom and the idea of having to tell someone where I was going just seemed…smothering.  But I have warmed to those catering to my every whim.  They are one-dimensional beings who make no conversation or judgments.  If only everyone in the world could be so malleable!  Of course if everyone was so flexible, I wouldn’t have ended up having to be driven around in the first place.  
    It had all begun a few months back on a night very much like this one.  I had been on my way home after a night of dinner and drinks with friends when a young police officer pulled me over.  He apparently hadn’t been on the job long because when I rolled down my window, his face showed no emotion, no signs of recognition.  He raised his flashlight high and the light flooded my face, blinded me.  
    “Is there a problem, officer?” I asked in my sweetest voice.
    “License and registration,” he said.  
    I turned towards the interior of my car to comply but as I was shuffling through my paperwork, I could feel the heavy glow of his flashlight bearing down on me.  As I turned back to hand him my information, the light was still there.  “Do you mind not shining that thing directly in my face,” I asked, irritated.
    But the officer only looked over my information.  “Have you had anything to drink tonight, Mr. Barryman?”
    I looked him straight in the face.  I knew what he was getting at.  “Do you know who I am?” I said because if there was one thing my prick of a father taught me, it was that if you are ever in trouble, it’s best to give off the appearance you are bigger than the other guy.  It just so happened that in this situation, I was.
    “Please step out of the vehicle,” the officer said.
    I pursed my lips.  “I will do no such thing.  Let me ask you, son.  Who is your superior?”
    “Mr. Barryman, please step out of the vehicle,” he said more forcefully.
    I glanced at his badge.  It said “Justice”.  “Oh never mind,” I said.  I picked up my cell phone, hit a button to dial Joe’s number and rolled up the window.  I saw the officer radio for backup out of the corner of my eye as he headed back to his patrol car parked directly behind me.  As he walked away, I grinned slyly.  There would be no backup.
    Less than fifteen minutes later, my chief of staff, Joe Arvizu pulled up behind the officer in his white Cadillac Escalade.  Joe is a rock of a man.  He’s bald but his hard, ripped body is still reminiscent of his time in the Marines.  As he got out of his vehicle and slammed the door, I remembered just how intimidating Joe can be.  He walked right up to the officer sitting in his car and leaned into the window to talk.  While they were discussing God knows what, I saw a second vehicle pull in behind Joe’s Cadillac.  Another man got out and walked up to the patrol car.  When he was appropriately situated in the light, I recognized him as Sheriff Yost, no doubt pulled out of bed to deal with this unfortunate spectacle his young patrolman had caused.  
    After a few moments, Joe walked over to my car.  I rolled down the window.
    “What kind of trouble are we in?” I asked.
    Joe shook his head.  “No one wants it to go down like this.  So for tonight, I’m taking you home.”
    “And my car?”
    “Will be impounded,” Joe said decisively.  I scowled.  “It’s the best I could do under the circumstances,” he said.  “You’re lucky you aren’t going to jail.”
    I opened the car door and staggered out.  Joe was so good at negotiation he should have been in politics.  If only he didn’t have the charisma of a toad.  
    Sheriff Yost was already heading back to his vehicle as we walked back to Joe’s Cadillac.  Officer Justice was sitting in his car.  He glowered at me as I walked past so I vigorously waved back at him.  Joe grabbed my hand from behind.  “Don’t antagonize him,” he said.  
    “What?  I’ve always been a man of the people.”
    “Well tonight the people aren’t so enamored with you.”
    “Oh, he’s just young.  He doesn’t know how things work.”
    Joe shook his head and he took me home.  
    He sprung the whole car service idea on me the next day.  We had a nice spat about it.  Part of the deal Joe had cut the night before included permanently taking away my car keys.  The car was registered to the city so no one would know I had been the one driving unless, of course, I went to spring it out of impound.  I could have the city commission me another vehicle.  I could also privately purchase one, but Joe informed me if Sheriff Yost caught me behind the wheel again he wouldn’t intervene.
    “I don’t know what you’re so worried about,” I said.  “I’m an excellent driver.”  
    But in the end, it was better to keep Sheriff Yost as an ally so I relented and begrudgingly accepted the car service.  I just don’t like people trying to keep tabs on me.  As a public official, so little of my time belongs to me that privacy has sort of become my religion.  Not even Joe, as my closest confidant, is privy to all my secrets.  
    And I have lots of secrets. 
    For example, I don’t think Joe would be too happy to know I’d fucked our intern on my desk before leaving the office tonight.  Vincent likes the importance of being asked to stay late and I like penetrating his supple, white ass.  My groin stiffens every time I think about him sashaying through the office in his tight khaki pants.
    I also don’t think Joe would approve of the special relationship I have with the little Asian delivery girl from Hung Choy’s.  I think she believes she’s converting San Francisco’s openly gay mayor but really I just like the way her mouth feels around my cock.  And if she told anyone about it who would believe her?  She’s flat-chested with the body of a boy and her hair is always changing like a mood ring.  Today it was streaked with an urgent red that pounded my dick which, as it turned out, was a good thing because my little Asian girl had barely gotten up off of her knees when Joe burst into my office.  He does that sometimes.
    “You can’t knock?” I said angrily as Joe’s eyes moved suspiciously over to the startled girl.  I looked at her in a fatherly way.  “I think Princeton would be an excellent choice for you, my dear.  Thank you for being so kind as to bring me my lunch.”
    She nodded and edged her way around Joe who seemed to be a boulder in the door.  
    “We have to talk,” he said closing the door behind her.  “I’ve just got word that Mike Spiro from
    The Times is snooping around.”
    “So let him snoop,” I said with a wave of my hand.
    Joe shook his head.  “He’s poking around places like he knows something.”
    That got my attention.  “What do you mean?”
    “Like dispatch and impound records.”
    I leaned back in my chair and absently ran a finger over my chin.  “Who do you think is behind it?”
    “Could be Ryker.  We are up for re-election next year.”
    I shook my head.  “He doesn’t have enough on me to tell Mike Spiro where to look.”
    “What about that cop?”
     “Rookie cops don’t usually have reporter friends, but check him out, anyway.  Maybe we’ll find something we can use later.”  I shook my head.  “Damn it.  I knew we should have paid him off.”
    “Wouldn’t have done any good.  Not with that guy.”  Joe said as he headed back out the door.  “Just be careful, okay?  Mike Spiro is young and hungry.  He wants to make a name for himself.”
    I shrugged.  “There have been a hundred Mike Spiro’s in my career.  What makes you think this one is any different?”
    Joe didn’t answer.  He just lightly shut the door behind him.  
    And those were just the secrets from today.
    From the back seat of the car, I noticed it had begun to drizzle again.  The driver turned on the intermittent windshield wipers.  It was becoming very difficult to see even with the illumination of streetlights all around us.  Yet I could still pinpoint our location.  I could see that we were passing the St. Bethlehem Baptist Church on the right.  The building was dark now.  There were only two cars left shivering out in the parking lot but the sign out front was bright.  It read:  “Tonight Special Guest Speaker John Roy Decker, 7 – 10 pm.”  I imagined John Roy had packed them out tonight with his Southern charm and his sensationalized conservative values.  St. Bethlehem was probably a good choice for old Roy.  He imagined himself to be the second coming of the Messiah, anyway.
    I had met John Roy Decker three years ago down in his home state of Texas.  It had been to our mutual benefit to keep the circumstances of our meeting private but over the years, we’d developed a friendship of sorts.  Our stance politically could not have been any more different.  Not that John Roy was a politician but his thousands of evangelical followers gave him enough clout to rival even my own political prowess.  He was loud and obnoxious but he had created an empire out of his own hot air.  I had to respect the man for that.  
    So when he called last week I leapt at the opportunity even if it was almost 1 a.m. when the car pulled under the overhang in front of the New Haven Hotel.
    “Would you like me to wait, sir?” the driver asked by way of the rear view mirror.
    “No, I’ll call the service when I’m ready,” I said smiling back as I opened the door to face the night and its heavy vapor.  I sauntered into the lobby of the hotel, took the elevators to the top floor and followed the twisted jungle-designed carpeting to John Roy’s room.  The metal shoehorn bolted to the door left it cracked to provide entry to even the most ominous visitor.  I pushed the door open and walked inside.  
    The hotel suite was luxurious and broken into two distinct sections.  The kitchen and sitting area were on my left.  A conference room table was on my right.  The bedroom and bathroom were behind closed doors.  John Roy sat at the head of the polished table with three men and one woman flanking him.  No doubt they were Roy’s entourage.  I instantly realized by the shock on their faces that they weren’t prepared for me to stumble in.  So I smiled.
    “Is this an invitation-only party or can anyone join in?” I said jovially.  I could feel the hatred roll off of them.
    Roy cleared his throat.  “Ya’ll know, Todd Barryman, San Francisco’s illustrious mayor,” he said in his deeply masculine Southern drawl.  He’d taken off his trademark cowboy hat.  His sparse gray hair lay in a flat comb-over.  His meaty jowls reverberated to the sound of his own voice.  Still, no one at the table moved.  “Mr. Barryman has been kind enough to drop by at this late hour to discuss a possible alliance on the ‘Tough on Crime’ bill that has been introduced here in the city.  So why don’t we reconvene tomorrow morning at 8 a.m. before our flight?” 
    The men muttered to one another and stiffly gathered up their belongings.  I parked my behind on the back of the sofa facing the sitting area.  Two of the suited men walked out together.  “Goodnight gentlemen,” I said in my most sociable tone.  One of them scowled at me but said nothing.  I didn’t mind.  I always enjoy playing with Roy’s puppets.
    The woman, however, was more adamant in her dislike.  “I just don’t see why we need him,” she said to John Roy in confidence.  She was standing with her back to me dressed in a conservative navy suit but even from across the room, I could tell she was as stunning as a beauty queen. 
    John Roy sighed, tilted his head to one side and shoved his hands into his wrinkled pockets.  “There often comes a time when we must align ourselves with the enemy in order to do the greater good.  Remember, Jesus himself consorted with prostitutes and tax collectors.”
    She shook her blond curls.  “It just doesn’t seem right.”
    John Roy reached out and reassuringly touched her upper arm.  “It’s alright, Sarah.  The Lord watches over the way of the righteous.”
    She bowed her head as if she were under his spell, looked up demurely and nodded before gathering her things and leaving the room.
    I waited until I was sure she was out of earshot before asking, “Have you had her yet?”
    Roy burst open with a robust laugh.  “Religious girls are a tough nut to crack,” he said.  “But well worth the wait.”
    “It won’t be long.  She worships you.”
    “I hope not.  That little minx makes my dick crazy.  Come on over,” he said indicating that I take a seat in the sitting area facing the kitchen.  Roy went into the kitchen and stood behind the counter.  “Wine?”
    I held up my hand.  “No.”
    “Then don’t mind if I do,” he said uncorking the bottle.  Roy always seemed to need alcohol when I was around.  I suspected I made him nervous.  That delighted me.
    “How was your speaking engagement?”  I said to make small talk.
    “Good.  We packed the house,” he said pouring his wine into a glass.  He sipped it behind the counter.  “We don’t draw the crowds we do in Texas but it’s worth it.”
    I didn’t know whether Roy meant personally or monetarily.  I suspected it was a little bit of both.  I’d seen his wife.  I think Jesus sewed up her asshole a long time ago.  It was no wonder Roy wanted to get away.
    He came from around the counter and stood in front of me, glass of red wine in hand.  I smirked devilishly, leaned forward and slowly unzipped his wrinkled pants unleashing his beast.  Skillfully, I took the nub of him in my mouth.  I could hear him catch his breath and I paused before moving my lips down his ever-hardening shaft.  He moaned and I began to rhythmically rock back and forth in front of him.  He looked up at the ceiling and sipped his wine.
    In fact, we were so involved in our own transgressions that it was a marvel we even heard the succession of three rapid clicks.  Simultaneously both Roy and I jerked to look towards the area around the door where the sound had originated. 
    “What the hell was that?” Roy asked as I rose from the couch to investigate.  We could not see the door from that angle but I was only a few strides away.  I saw the door close as soon as I was in eyeshot and my heart began to beat wildly.  The door.  It had been held open by the metal shoehorn when I’d arrived and no one had bothered to pull it closed.  I raced over and threw it open just in time to see the red-headed kid running down the hallway towards the stairwell with a camera in tow.  He turned his freckled face to look over his shoulder and I could see my career crumble within the reflection of his eyes.  
    Mike Spiro.  The Times.
    John Roy was at my elbow in an instant.  He’d discarded the wine glass and was all zipped up.  “Who the hell was that?” he asked.
    I turned back towards the room.  “This is bad,” I muttered heading directly to the telephone to call Joe.  There are lots of things you can recover from politically but consorting with the enemy?  Well…that is the unforgivable sin.

***